"In April, the coast weather is still dry, and most of the island's fresh water is brought down from Needhelp. No fishing yet to speak of, but new icehouses are being built for the summer season.
McKinney noted that few actually danced at a dance given by Gregorio Lopez-they were either too old or too young, he comments, and there was "no booze." Charlie McKinney, Charley and Mack Johnson, and Jim Demere leave on a long gator hunt. Mr. Shorty Weeks will be running the mail boat, Chokoloskee to Marco.
"Mr. John A. Johnson and Mr. Leroy Parks were on the Island today from Pavilion Key." (Johnson was one of seven husbands outlived by Pearl Watson's mother, Josephine Jenkins, and Leroy Parks was her son by another.)
"Captain W.W. House, his brother Dan, and their father are going to sail tomorrow for Ft. Myers with a cargo of ornamental plants for the homes of the upper ten."
"Miss Hannah Smith has left the Needhelp settlement and is now staying at Mr. E.J. Watson's place at Chatham Bend."
BILL HOUSE
I remember the day, it was April 1910, when Watson hired poor Miss Hannah Smith. Old Man Waller, worked at Watson's, come in to the store with a woman three times the common size, introduced her to his boss as a prime female who could outwork three men ricking buttonwood and show a horse a trick or two about spring plowing. By that he meant behind a horse, not putting the traces to Miss Hannah.
Well, Watson said he had a horse already, but Dolphus was old and useless now, and the sorry help he had at Chatham Bend-and he winked at Waller-couldn't pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel. That was the first time we heard that one, and us fellers roared. There was some shine being passed around, and we all decided we better have another. If Hannah Smith would come on home with him, Watson was claiming, show this old hog thief Waller how to work a ax, maybe he could yoke her up alongside Dolphus when time come to plow. Or maybe-he said this real serious, lifting his hat-him and her could get yoked up together when poor ol' Green had drunk hisself under the table.
Well, they laughed hard over that one, too, all but Old Waller. I seen straight off Waller was sweet on Hannah, cause she was handsome way a man is handsome-looked like a man wearing a wig-while he was ugly, and lame, too, all bones and patches. From the wear on him, he'd had more rough in life than smooth, and had that habit. Watson was tipping his hat to him-this was the bully that come out when he was drinking-and Big Hannah looked across at that old man of hers, see what he'd do. But Waller only belched and then looked vague, like that was a belch that needed some consideration.
Before she drifted down to Chatham Bend, this Hannah Smith from the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia had been around the Bay a year or two. Had a sister, Sadie, was camped across the Glades northwest of Homestead, where they call Paradise today. Their folks got word to Sadie that Hannah was at Everglade, and asked would she kindly pay a call on her little sister, see if she was getting on in life all right.
Now Sadie Smith was well knowed as the Ox-Woman, and when she found out that Everglade was clean over to the other side of Florida, maybe two-three months around to there by land and sea, she bided her time until the dry season, then hitched up two young oxen and cut and burned and hacked her way across the Everglades by cart. First time that was ever done, might been the last. Went north along Shark River Slough and followed the Injun dugout trails west through the Big Cypress, dug out wheels and chopped whole forests down to get that cart through. She come out near the head of Turner River and come on down to Chokoloskee Bay. Just showed up one day in her black sunbonnet, smelled like a she-bear.
Up to that time Hannah Smith was the biggest female ever seen around these parts, she was knowed as Big Squaw to the Injuns. Well, Sadie went a whole hand bigger, six foot four, built like a cistern, with a smile that split her whole face like a watermelon. Said she was hunting Little Hannah, aimed to come up with her little sis or know the reason why. Well, there weren't one thing little about neither of 'em, and there was two more, bigger yet, back up there in the Okefenokee, that's what we was told by that there Ox-Woman. Said her sister Lydia was so big she would sit in a rocker on the porch, holding her husband in her arms, singing him lullabies. Married at sweet sixteen, Sadie said, but her husband got hung at Folkston, Georgia, so she took work hauling limestone and cutting crossties for the railroad. Ran a barbershop in Waycross for a while before she went off to have a look at Florida, said she could handle a razor so good she could shave a beard three days under the skin. I'll go along with that one, too, cause that big woman, and Hannah, too, could work a ax good as any man I ever saw, made that ax sing. That was the old style of pioneer womenfolk, come down out of the Appalachian mountains. Don't make females like that no more, or we'd have one running the whole country.
Hannah had her a sweet voice to go with her feats of strength and winsome ways. In the evenings she would haul on her other dress and set out on McKinney's dock, singing "Barbry Allen" to the Injuns that was in to trade. Remembering the way she was out there, that big old heap of womanhood just a-singing so sweet under the moon over the mangroves, and them Injuns by their fires staring past her-that's their polite way of keeping an eye on a wild thing that might turn dangerous-that picture still gives me the shivers just to think about it. Course I was too young for her, and probably too small, one way and another, and besides I aimed to marry up with Nettie Howell.
Tant Jenkins, now, Tant was an expert in the hunting line, always claimed that common labor disagreed with him, and I told Tant if he was smarter'n what people said he was, he'd send away to the Okefenokee for one of them big lonesome sisters, do his chores for him, keep him in whiskey, and rock him to sleep when he come home at night drunk and disgusting. And Tant said, "Best keep talking, boy, I ain't heard nothing wrong about her yet!"
So them giant girls from the Okefenokee had a real reunion, and they drunk Tant and two Danielses to a standstill, with a young Lopez thrown in. Sadie said them four fine boys sure made a body feel at home, long as they lasted. Only trouble was, she couldn't find land enough to farm here, said she needed ROOM! Next day she hitched her oxen up and trundled north, found a good big hammock in the cypress east of Immokalee, lived on there quite a while and died there, too, while she was at it. Might been from heartbreak over Little Hannah.
It was not so long after Sadie left that Hannah decided she would try her luck down Chatham River. She had got sick of farming all alone up there at Needhelp, and was pining away as you might say for her mangy old admirer, who had went down ahead to tend Watson's hogs, help cut the cane. Now he was back to fetch her and had Watson with him.
This man Waller, Watson was saying, might act like a Godfearing farmer but he'd never amount to nothing more than exactly what he looked and smelled like, and the first time a hog was missed at Chatham Bend, a well-knowed hog thief might come up missing, too.
Waller could laugh over coming up missing but he couldn't laugh none about Hannah, cause he was in love, and women in his life was very, very few and far between. Matter of fact, Big Hannah was the first, and he didn't care who knowed it. Said, Made my old mama a promise on her deathbed that her virgin boy would go to his grave as pure in the Lord as the first day she wiped his bottom. Them words, he said, made his old mama die happy. But Satan had sent this big Smith girl to Needhelp, and she is stronger'n what I am, Old Waller hollered, and next thing I knowed about it, boys, she had me down and was doing something dirty!
Meantime Big Hannah fetched her stuff, had all she owned save her ax and gun in a burlap sack she could swing across her shoulder with one hand. The day she went down to Chatham Bend was the last day on this earth I ever seen her.
That big bashful virgin and her ragtag old man-he wasn't much more than Watson's age, but looked like he'd come around the bend a second time-they lived with all their sinning in the Tuckers' little shack on a knob of ground not far downriver from the sheds and workshop. Hannah cut fuel for the syrup boiler, helped the young missus with the kitchen and the chores, then
washed up good under the arms and lugged her hog thief home, put him to bed. Ed Watson claimed they yelped all night like a pair of foxes.
MAMIE SMALLWOOD
Mister Watson kept bad company but doted on his family, and anyone as ever seen him said the same. 1907, he took Edna home to Columbia County for the birth of little Addison, and her Amy May was born at Key West in May of 1910. Mister Watson would not stand for having his young wife pawed over in her pregnancy by that barefoot old man down in the Islands, using his oyster knife for the delivery, more than likely. Ted didn't like it when I talked like that, claimed Mister Watson had nothing against that old mulatta, he just wanted the best there was for his young Edna. But Ted only said that cause them people was his customers and he didn't want 'em switching to McKinney's.
Excepting maybe for Gene Hamilton, who was ashamed about his family, Ted didn't like that bunch no better than I did. Didn't know their place, or never paid attention to it, one. Course you'd have to say that Old Man Richard knew his birthing business, because there's quite a few was shucked by him down in the Lost Man's section that growed up none the worse for wear.
Long before Amy May was born, Mister Watson had the Bend right back to where it was the best farm in the Islands, never mind his unpaid legal debts. The word was out that field hands were welcome on the Watson Place, no requirements of sex nor color, no hard questions. No real trouble down there neither, not to speak of, or we'd of heard about it from Miss Hannah, who kept in touch with her many friends at Chokoloskee. Mr. Jim Howell, whose daughter Nettie was engaged to my brother Bill, Jim Howell worked down there one harvest season, and Mister Watson made a fast worker out of a slow one. Jim Howell said he was "scared to death the whole durn time" but never got treated better in his life. Even folks who lived in dread of Mister Watson began to cheer up some and crack some jokes, cause it sure looked like that man had changed his ways.
First one give me a clue there might be trouble was Henry Thompson, who still ran Mister Watson's schooner now and then. Henry mostly stayed down there at Lost Man's, he wasn't on the Watson Place no more, but he had worked for that man since a boy and knew his ins and outs as good as anybody.
One day Henry was trading in Fort Myers when an old darkie come up and asked if her son was still hoeing cane down there for Mister Watson. Said the colored there on Safety Hill had no word from the missing man for close on to a year, and another field hand that she knew about had never turned up neither. Well, Henry seemed to recollect that Watson himself had run that darkie back up to Fort Myers when his time was up and he needed his pay. Mister Watson visited with Carrie and her children, then picked up another colored and came back.
"Funny we ain't seen him, then," the woman said.
"Probably took his saved-up pay and run off to Key West," Henry Thompson told her. "Might of heard about them nigger-lovers down that way." Didn't say that for a joke, cause Henry never was a one to joke much, and he never bothered his head about her nigger feelings.
Next, a pair of men showed up in a small sloop, said they was just out gallivanting from Key West. Mister Watson decided they wasn't no such thing, he got to brooding about how them two might be deputies out to make their mark at his expense, just waiting for their chance to lay him low. But the cane was ready so he put 'em to work, kept a close eye. Well, one day Henry brought the boat back from Port Tampa, and their little sloop was still tied to the dock but the men was gone. Mister Watson mentioned he had bought the sloop and run 'em up the coast as far as Marco, paid 'em off, give 'em the names of some likely folks in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Henry never thought a thing about it at the time, but another day, cleaning out that sloop, he came upon a picture of a woman and small kids, love letters, too, that was stuck in a dry cranny under the cabin roof. He wondered why those men would leave such things behind, and he put that stuff away in case they sent for it. They never did.
One day I took Henry to the side and asked what he was really saying with these stories. Was Mister Watson killing off his help instead of paying 'em? Because if Henry had no such suspicions, how come he was spreading these darn stories-well, not so much spreading 'em as letting 'em drop for the rest of us to sniff over.
Henry's eyes opened up real wide, first time in years I seen him pay attention. He backed up fast, got mean-mouthed on me, saying it just goes to show how rumors get their start, said he never believed no such thing about Mister Watson! Why, that man was like a father to him, always had been! Ask Tant Jenkins, Tant would say the same! But Tant would never say the same, cause Tant left Chatham Bend after the Tuckers and did not go back, and anyways, I knowed James Henry Thompson since a boy. Henry and I was always the same age, he couldn't fool me.
Henry Thompson was loyal to Mister Watson and he always would be, leastways until he grew old and needed drinking money. And drinking money was about all he got for that magazine interview about his dangerous youth with Bloody Watson. Maybe he started dropping hints to let off his own worries, cause there weren't no doubt at all Henry was troubled. And if that feller was troubled, so was I.
Another man knew Watson pretty good was Henry Short, and I knew Henry Short real well, he was our nigger. Called him Nigger Short, sometimes Black Henry, to keep him separate from Henry Thompson, Henry Smith. He was the same age as my brother Bill and raised right up by the House family, and he stayed close to us the first half of his life.
Back there before the century's turn, when Bill was working for the Frenchman, Black Henry used to visit Bill down in the Islands. Stayed with them mulatta people, and for a while he sailed Ed Watson's schooner. Well, one time he sank the Gladiator in a squall down off Cape Sable, got picked up by Dick Sawyer, who was headed north. Henry owned right up to Mister Watson, which is more than most of our men would have done. Gregorio Lopez always said, That nigger was too scared to think if he took a piece of news like that to E.J. Watson.
Mister Watson had to chase off Key West scavengers to save his boat, but never once did he raise his voice to Henry. He was very tolerant that time, Henry never forgot it. Course Henry Short was always saying how good he was treated by this white man and that one, he sure knew better than to speak out otherwise. But the way he carried on about Mister Watson, he was not just grateful, he was truly thankful the Lord had let him live to tell the tale. Cause he never forgot that day at Lost Man's when he went upriver with the Hamilton boys to find the Tuckers.
After Mister Watson disappeared, back in 1901, I asked Henry Short straight out if Watson done it. Black Henry never said one word, just kept on sorting avocados in the sun. Jim Crow days was well begun, and cruel punishment was being done to upstart niggers all around the country, and after the age of about twelve, this feller would never talk alone with any white woman. So I told him give me a hand packing tomatoes, led him over toward the produce shed where the men could see us talking but not hear us, and I whispered, Answer me! Did he do it or did he not?
Henry Short was looking straight ahead, and he turned his head away like he was talking to the skeeters, but I heard him murmur, "Mister Watson was sure good to me." That was Henry's way of telling that in his opinion, E.J. Watson killed them Tuckers.
When Mister Watson come back here in 1909, he tried to get Henry to come work for him again, offered good pay, because Henry always was outstanding at whatever he would put his hand to, he could farm, fish, or run boats, mend net, set traps, go hunt a deer and not come back without one. Henry was working at House Hammock on and off, and he got my dad to advise Mister Watson that he could not spare him. That colored man was just plain spooked by Mister Watson.
Sometimes in that last long summer Henry Short went mullet fishing with the Storter boys and their nigger man Pat Roll, set gill nets down around the mouth of Chatham River. Most of them Storters lives at Naples now, long with my brothers Dan and Lloyd. Well, not so long ago Claude Storter told me that Henry never once went past the Watson Place without he had his rifle loaded in the bow. That might could be, but all the same, Bl
ack Henry thought the world of Mister Watson.
Mister Watson had a fugitive off of the chain gang hiding out down there, a desperado, killed a lawman in Key West; he also had a older man, Green Waller, supposed to been some kind of jailbird, too. The only law-abiding help was Hannah Smith, great big strong woman, farmed awhile on them Turner River mounds at Old Man McKinney's place, where he called Needhelp, not so far from where our family settled when the House clan first come down into this country. Hannah worked good as any man, and the men will tell you so, though they was mean about her. "The next size comes on wheels," Charlie Boggess said. Well, you know something? Her sister showed up at Everglade not long after Charlie said that, and she come on wheels! Sadie Smith went a size bigger than Hannah, and she drove an ox-cart!
Green Waller was at Needhelp for a spell, them two old loners got along like rum and butter. Waller went down to Chatham River to tend Mister Watson's big prime hogs, and Hannah got sick and fidgety all by herself, fighting skeeters and panthers for a year with no man to help her haul her crops, and that old breed Charlie Tommie trying to take advantage. Long about April 1910, Old Waller went up there and fetched her back with him to Chatham Bend. We heard there was also a Injun squaw got kicked out by the tribe for laying with white men, and a black man who come south with Watson from Columbia. If that field hand ever had a name, I sure don't know about it.
In that dry dark year of 1910, the evil feeling that was growing in the Islands come out in the open and could not be put away. Even my Ted knew something bad was stewing. The one that brought the whole stew to a boil was a "John Smith" who come through Chokoloskee that same spring. He was a well-set-up young feller, middling handsome, with dark brown hair worn long, close to the shoulders, and close hard green eyes. His lower lids cut straight across, no curve to 'em, and his eyebrows grew too close together. Had a old-fashioned kind of black frock coat that he wore over torn farm clothes, looked halfway between a gambler and a preacher. As Tant remarked, you couldn't bet your life he would go to Heaven.
Killing Mister Watson Page 27
