Maybe Old Green had Cox figured for another Dutchy Melvin, dangerous talker with his heart in the right place. Hannah Smith didn't make no such mistake. She's fighting to get up out of her chair, to get between them, she is hollering, Don't pay no attention to that drunk old idjit! Little Joe claimed he come in from the kitchen, said, Nemmine, Mist' Leslie, he just foolin. But Cox had more excuse already than his kind ever needs, and he drew down on Waller. Lined him up real careful, being so drunk, arm wobbling, you know-Sit still, you sonofabitch, is what he told him.
Waller's still cackling, but he seen the muzzle, and that cackle's starting to go high, more like a rooster. His hands are coming up real slow so as not to flare the man behind that pistol, cause it's high time to get serious, the fun is over.
Ever hear a gun go off in a small room? The nigra thought the roof fell in. They all set there a minute in the crash and echo, staring at Waller, and him looking back, kind of puzzled, trying to cackle like it all must be a joke but spitting up a lot of fizz and blood.
"Well, hell," Old Man Green Waller whispered in the echo. He looked kind of sheepish. And them were his last words, though Hannah shook him. The nigra backing up into the kitchen was pretty sure he seen God's light die out in Waller's eyes.
And Hannah whispered, "Oh, dear Jesus, Green, won't you never learn? Oh Christamighty, Green."
Hannah barged out of her chair and waddled to the kitchen, from where there come a howl of purely woe. She screeched at Cox for a yeller-bellied dog, and Cox grabbed up his gun and took out after her, never thought to duck till the split second before he went through the kitchen door. That flinch saved his life, cause Hannah Smith damn near beheaded him. She split the pine frame with her big two-bladed ax, which she always kept behind the kitchen door. She took a bullet in the shoulder, dropped the ax, then headed for the stairs, hunting a weapon, cause she had no chance of escape across the yard.
When Cox picked himself up off the kitchen floor, he pointed his gun at Little Joe, dead furious the nigra had not warned him. Said, Don't you move, boy, I got business with you.
Miss Hannah were so cumbersome that Cox caught up with her at the first landing. He give her room, knowing how strong she was, he stood a step below while they got their breath. Sounded like they was snarling, Little Joe said. Hannah weren't the kind to beg for mercy, and knew she wouldn't get none if she did. So Little Joe claimed he tried again, he said, Mist' Leslie-, and Miss Hannah screeched, Get away while you got the chance, boy, cause he'll kill you!
At the first shot, the nigra run outside, he was past the cistern by the time the shooting ended. He hadn't took no side in the argument, he was just scared that Leslie Cox aimed to murder any witnesses, settle Watson's payroll once and for all. He heard a shout and then some kind of crash. Then Cox was hollering, telling him to get his black ass up the stairs, give him a hand with this here sea sow, that's what he called her.
Cox shot poorly, being drunk, and sure enough, she were bleeding like a sow by the time he finished her. She went close on to three hundred pound, so he couldn't work her carcass down that narrow stair, and he got sniggering so hard with nerves that he fell down the whole flight and hurt his shoulder, which was when he commenced to holler for the nigra.
By now Little Joe was hid back in the mangrove, wouldn't come out when the man hollered, so Cox yells out the window he won't hurt him, he just needs a hand, and if the nigra don't come out, why, he's going in there after him, shoot him in the belly, leave him right there for the gators or panthers or bears or snakes, whichever was hungriest and got to him the first. Had big crocs up them southern rivers, too, least back in them days, but maybe Cox never knew that or forgot to mention it.
The nigra is so scared that his brain quits on him, I guess, cause after a while, he decides he will come out. Watson's skiff is tied up in the mangroves down below the house, but he can't reach that skiff without crossing the clearing. He knows Cox needs him, for a while, at least, and playing along is his one chance to reach that skiff-that's what he told us, and I don't believe a nigra would know how to make that up. So he waits a little for Cox to simmer down, and then he comes out, asking for mercy when Cox raises up the gun. But Cox just marches him into the house, hands him a gun, makes him shoot into both bodies. Says, Now you're in it right along with me.
Only a nigra would know, I reckon, why he never put his bullet into Cox instead. Probably Cox had him covered the whole time, and anyway, shooting a white man just ain't a thing your average nigra thinks to do, leastways back then. And if he shook that day holding a pistol like he shook at Pavilion Key, he wouldn't have hit a lean feller like Cox on the first ten tries.
So then Cox tells him he's successory to the crime, and will hang for murder if he ever breathes one word about it.
Well, they drug poor Hannah down the stairs and out into the yard, got blood on everything. We'll have to gut her out, Cox said, so she don't gas up. They weighted her with pig iron, done the same for Waller, and rolled 'em both into the river, but they don't do nothing with that Injun girl that's hanging in the shed. Cox went right on acting like she wasn't there.
Cox tells the nigra to go mop that blood that's nastying up the house, "get everything tidied up real nice for Miss Edna." Cox is in a high state of excitement, but he has to laugh when he says this, he's putting down a lot of shine. Before Little Joe can find the mop, Cox waves his gun and pushes Waller's glass at him. Don't let's go wasting that good likker, boy! Tells him they're in this thing together so might's well be friendly, tells him to set down and drink with him, try out some of his nigger conversation. Seems like these two knowed each other someplace, but the nigra wouldn't say how come, least not to me.
Not that they talk. They sit there drunk and getting drunker, Cox's gun square on the table. Little Joe's not only scared to be setting at a table with a white man, he's scared that Cox will blow his head off any minute. He is feeling dizzy. Maybe Cox has forgot about the skiff, maybe he aims to take care of his black sidekick soon's he gets his breath. His one chance is that Leslie Cox don't want to be alone there with his dead, knowing he is bound for Hell already. So them two set there getting drunk and looking at flies on the walls while they think over the day's work. Finally Cox informs the nigra that Mister Watson wants Dutchy Melvin dead. Once that is taken care of, Les Cox says, everything is going to be just dandy.
Pretty soon the nigra slips back to the woods and don't come out again till two days later. Cox is wandering around the yard, yelling and cursing. This was October the 13th, a few days before the hurricane. Cox has had no sleep, and his nerves are shaky. He swears he won't hurt Little Joe if Little Joe will tell Mister Watson how Les Cox were not at fault, tell him how them two drunken old fools went after Les for no damned reason-look at that there ax mark on the door!-how they give him no choice but to shoot in self-defense. And if Mister Watson was to ask why they sunk them bodies, why, heck, they done that so nobody wouldn't come snooping around to bother Mister Watson with no stupid questions.
Little Joe was surprised to see Les Cox so skittish. He doubted Mister Watson would believe that story, but he decided he had to go along with it. But when he come out, Cox locked him in the shed, said he wanted him where he could find him in a hurry.
That same evening, that was Thursday, he hears Mister Watson's motor, pop-pop-pop, coming upriver. Cox comes running, turns him loose, warning he'd better do right by their story.
Cox took Waller's shotgun and went over to the boat shed, next to the bunk room where Dutchy slept. He waited there inside the door with that young squaw turning slow in the dusty light behind him, and Hannah and Waller lifting in the river current right where Dutchy and Watson come in at the dock.
Weren't much of a life, but Dutchy Melvin got cut down in the prime of it. Cox shot him dead through the slat on the door, resting the barrel on the door hinge. Young Dutchy, that had been so cocky, took a charge of buckshot square in the face, died on that path kicking like a chicken with the h
ead cut off. He never had no chance to draw his guns.
So Mister Watson don't say nothing, just turns the body over with his boot, takes them two Colts, and gets back in the boat. Cox hollers, Where the hell you going now? and Watson says, Nowhere at all. I haven't been here in the first place.
Little Joe was going back to his first story, and he knew I knew it, but before I could say so, he said, Nosuh. Nosuh! I mistook my self! Mist' Ed Watson dropped Mist' Dutchy on the dock and headed off downriver, never knowed a thing about it, never seen them other bodies neither!
I asked him where Watson was headed, and he didn't know. I asked him why Watson never come on back when he heard the shooting, and he said, "Might be Mist' Watson thought Mist' Leslie was shootin for our supper, back to Watson Prairie."
Fed up with his lying, I hollered at him, How come Cox didn't kill you? Don't that mean you was mixed up in it yourself? He said Mist' Leslie might been spooked by all them bodies and needed somebody to talk to. Might been Mist' Leslie figured niggers didn't count, cause no nigger would dare to tell no stories on no white man. Might been Mist' Leslie had enough killing to do him for a while. All the same, he rowed for his life before Mist' Leslie changed his mind, cause all them dead folks could just as well been him.
All this made some crazy kind of sense, but I weren't satisfied.
I couldn't figure why he took his story to Pavilion Key, and why he hinted he knew Cox for a long time, like they was partners. Why did he own up he shot into them bodies, and laid his black hands on that woman when he helped to gut her and throw her in the river? And why did he cause trouble for himself by trying to get Watson suspected? If he'd said nothing about Watson, just let on that Leslie Cox killed them three people, there weren't one person would have doubted him, not for a minute.
As it was, nobody trusted him, not even me. The way I figure it, any nigra whose mouth done so much damage must be too panicky to make up lies-either that or too damn ornery and stubborn and plain furious not to tell the truth.
Watching him work his story back and forth this way, I realized that this feller just played at being panicky. He changed his story cause he didn't want to die, but first he took his risk and told the truth. Probably knew he was a goner anyway, so he wanted justice done, no matter what.
The day that colored man showed up was October the 14th. Them people must been killed about the tenth. For some days the weather had been restless, with bad squalls and rains. Come out in the paper a week later that the Weather Bureau had issued storm warnings on the thirteenth and changed that to a hurricane south of Cuba the next day. But on the fifteenth, just when the storm seemed all set to come down on us, the Weather Bureau predicted it would sheer off toward the west, through the Yucatan Passage.
Well, us poor fellers in the Islands didn't have no radio, we didn't know the first thing about it. All we knew, we was troubled by the wind, we didn't like the looks of that hard sky. Feeling so sure a storm was coming down, we naturally took what happened at the Watson Place as evil sign, like that light that tore across God's Heaven every night back in the spring. So silent it was, and faraway, like a lonesome thing in the deeps of the black ocean.
Old Beezle Bub, Aunt Josie said, had took the upper hand. She wanted to see the nigra punished for trying to lay it all on Mister Watson, said she'd take care of it herself if a few of them no-good ex-husbands of hers would lend a hand. But when Thad advised he'd take no lynchers on his boat, the men decided they'd see justice done in court. Josie called 'em yeller cowards. She swore she'd never set foot on Thad's boat if it was her last day on this earth, and neither would her new baby boy that she never did deny was Mister Watson's. Well, she'd had some drink, and we let her rant and rave.
By Saturday, all but Josie Jenkins was ready to return to Marco with Captain Thad, go to church, hear Brother Jones on Sunday, see if that done any good. Josie sent off her little Pearl with her latest husband, Albert, went down with her baby on her arm to see 'em off. She swore that she and her little boy would see it through. Asked poor Tant if her own brother would stand by her, and he give us all a comical look, but said he would.
So Captain Thad set sail from Pavilion Key on the sixteenth of October. Fine clear weather with light winds, but a strange purple cast to that blue sky. Us Storters was in our own small sloop, and kept right up with 'em. Hit a squall off Rabbit Key Pass on Sunday afternoon but got Henry Short to Chokoloskee by that evening. Mrs. Watson and family was staying with Walter Aldermans, I heard, but I never seen them. Before we went on home to Everglade, Claude seen Mister Watson at Smallwood's store and told him almost all of the whole story.
MONROE COUNTY ISLAND SCENE OF MURDERS
White Man and Negro Get in Bloody Work Last Week
White Man Still at Large
ESTERO, OCTOBER 20, 1910. A horrible triple murder is reported to have been perpetrated below Chokoloskee, at the place of E.J. Watson of Chatham River. We have very few of the particulars, but we learn that a negro has confessed that he was forced by threats on his life to assist a man named Cox, who shot and killed three persons, two men and a woman, who were working for Watson, and sunk their bodies in the river. The woman's body was discovered floating by a passerby who pushed it under the mangrove to hide it while he went for assistance. Upon returning the body was found to have disappeared, but a trail showed where it had been dragged inland. On following the trail, Cox and the negro were found near the body. The confession of the negro implicates Watson as having engaged Cox to do the deed.
MAMIE SMALLWOOD
When Mister Watson come up here to see his family-this was early October-he told us all signs pointed to a hurricane, though that storm never struck in for another fortnight. "Something is coming down on us," is what he said. Them were his very words to us, gives me chills to think about it even today.
I don't know how that man knew about the hurricane but he sure did. You ask me, this was his inkling of his own dark fate.
Mister Watson brought his children here because Chokoloskee was the highest ground south of Caxambas. He trusted his strong house to stay put, but with Baby Amy only five months old, he didn't want to take no chances on a flooded cistern and unsanitary water. Later he claimed to Sheriff Tippins that he brought his family here on account of Leslie Cox was out to kill them, but he never said nothing about that to us.
Young Dutchy was with him when he brought his family, and Dutchy went back with him to Chatham Bend, and a few days later Mister Watson returned all by himself. That was October the 16th, a Sunday.
Late Sunday young Claude Storter came up from down coast with the news of dreadful killings at the Bend. Said Watson's nigra got away, out to the clam shacks on Pavilion Key, and the nigra claimed that Mister Watson ordered the three killings. Mister Watson's backdoor family was living on that key, and when Josie Parks-Jenkins, she was-challenged his story, the nigra switched and laid it all on Leslie Cox.
Hearing Claude's story, there was talk among our men of arresting Mister Watson, holding him here for Sheriff Tippins. Well, right about then, speak of the Devil, Mister Watson come into the store! Took his usual seat with his back into the corner, and told us he thought the hurricane was on its way.
When no one could look him in the eye, Mister Watson gazed all around the room, and then he eased onto his feet, straightened his coat. Maybe his back hairs didn't rise and his throat growl, the way Charlie T. Boggess has described it, but he smelled trouble. He picked Claude Storter right out of the crowd. He said, "Something the matter, Claude?" And knowing his temper, and knowing what he wore under that coat, Claude bravely advised him as soft as he knew how about the dreadful murders at the Bend. The only part he decided to leave out was the name of the man the nigra accused first.
Mister Watson had sat back kind of slow, but now he jumped right up again, startling a lot of 'em back out onto the porch. By God, he swore, someone would pay for this! Someone would hang! He was off to Fort Myers to fetch the sheriff before "that murderin
g sonofabitch-if you'll forgive me, Miss Mamie!-could make his getaway!" Well, it was E.J. Watson made the getaway, right from under the men's noses. His determination to seek justice seemed so darn sincere that it let all the steam out of their plans, or so they was telling one another for years afterwards.
Seems like yours truly, Mamie Ulala, was the only one suspected that his outrage was put on to fool us. You never saw an upset man with eyes so calm. Runs upstairs, hugs his sweet wife and children, comes down again with his big shotgun, he's well armed and out the door before anybody thinks to stop him. They was falling all over theirselves to clear his way.
Our men were not cowards-well, not most of 'em-but Mister Watson took 'em by surprise. My brothers were young men who enjoyed a scrap and most folks would count a few others pretty fearless, but them men was confused and angry, and they had no leader. They knew Ted was a friend of Mister Watson, Willie Brown and William Wiggins, too. Gregorio Lopez was gone down to Honduras, D.D. House and Bill was on House Hammock, and C.G. McKinney, who lived across the island, claimed he never heard a thing about it.
HOAD STORTER
Sometime that week before the storm, Mister Watson was seen by the Frank Hamiltons at South Lost Man's, claimed he went there hunting Henry Thompson. He was gone another day or two before he come back to Chokoloskee. That was Sunday evening, the sixteenth. When we come in from Pavilion Key and Claude told him the news, all he could say was, Where in hell they got that damn fool nigger?
Captain Thad had took the nigra up the coast, aimed to hand him over to Sheriff Frank B. Tippins. When Mister Watson learned the nigra was in custody, on his way north, he said he was off to fetch the sheriff, then go to Chatham Bend, straighten things out. We reckoned he chose Sheriff Tippins because his son-in-law was a big shot in Fort Myers, so Tippins would have a better attitude than the Monroe County sheriff in Key West. And maybe he thought he'd catch up with the nigra at Marco, get to him before the sheriff did.
Killing Mister Watson Page 31
