Mr. J.M. Howell lost his home, and quite a number of people lost their homes down the coast and at Fakahatchee. All our crops are gone. Water rose about eight feet, filling a lot of cisterns with salt water. Some of the folks ran out and climbed trees; some fled to the highest mounds and had a bad, damp rest. Fishermen lost all nets and some boats.
One poor woman on Pavilion Key climbed a tree with her baby and was compelled to let it go adrift from her arms. She had the luck to save herself and buried her baby after the water went down.
We are all in a bad fix; provisions nearly all ruined in the stores.
Notwithstanding water ran eight feet on some cattle pastures, some of the cattle lived it out. I have seen some dead rabbits, and a big lot of fine chickens got drowned…
Mr. C.T. Boggess sprained his ankle or at least it slipped out of joint. His little power fish boat was driven up in the bushes a good ways and is nearly a wreck.
Great quantities of dead mullet and other fish are on the shores, and some today are not dead, but cannot swim, possibly from muddy water getting into their gills.
The Everglade schoolhouse went off of its foundation and went up the river.
Mr. Wm. Brown, on Turner's River, lost his crop, and his cistern-the best and largest in the county-was filled with salt water. All the Everglade cisterns were ruined with salt water.
A lot of our folk here fled to the schoolhouse. The water ran up over the floor ten inches and they took off the door and the blackboards and made a raft of them, tied with a rope, on which to flee to other parts if the house left its foundation. Nearly three fourths of Chokoloskee Island was underwater. We began to realize what those high mounds were built for.
All of our own folk are very busy hunting up their lost household goods and stores of grub, boats, nets, etc. Some of us are planting again. I find a few of my peppers sprouting out and growing and some tomatoes and cabbage that the water was six feet deep over are growing. Okra could not stand the racket at all, but I have some seven-top turnips that are growing and they were under three feet or more…
SAMMIE HAMILTON
The day Mister Watson come to Lost Man's was a Friday, three days before the hurricane and four days after Cox went wild at Chatham Bend. Where was he all them days in between? Mister Watson told us he come up from Key West, but later we learned he was at Chokoloskee, him and Dutchy. Did he come to us after he dropped off Dutchy? What was he doing so far south? Where was he headed? Did he want us to back up his Key West story so he had an alibi? And where was Cox? Was that bloody-handed sonofabitch hid in the cuddy of that launch while he was talking to us?
I believe he knew about the killings, I believe he was setting up an alibi he never needed. Being such a thorough man, he must of knowed he was in bad trouble whether he ordered them three deaths or not. Maybe he figured if he took our savings, he could head out for Key West or Port Tampa, find a ship out of the country. Tampa, more likely-they would be looking for him at Key West. If so, something changed his thinking, cause he showed up again in Chokoloskee one jump ahead of the bad news from Pavilion Key, and he talked his way out like he had so many times before. Swore he was going for the sheriff, swore he would bring Cox in, then got away from there while the getting was good.
By the time the hurricane struck in, Leslie Cox was all alone on Chatham Bend, if you don't count that dead squaw in the boat shed or them three bodies in the pit across the river. You had to wonder what was going through his mind, if he was dead drunk or just wild-eyed and jittery, like Watson's horse, whinnying away out in the shed. That storm must have looked to him like the wrath of God come to strike him off the earth.
We was down there in the rivers and we seen it, and I'm telling you now, it filled our hearts with dread. That howling sky and gales and roaring river in that Hurricane of 1910 was enough to scare the marrow out of anybody, let alone a direful sinner that has slaughtered three poor souls and gutted out their carcasses like they was hogs and rolled the bodies off the bank into the river. If Leslie Cox had a human spark left in him, he spent that night upon his knees just a-howling for the Lord's forgiveness. Whether or not he got it no one knows.
Few days later, Mister Watson come back through alone, and went hunting for Cox down Chatham River. So many times I have pictured him walking around that place of his, shouting and listening, feeling them old ghosts. Maybe Cox hailed him from the mangrove, maybe they talked. All we know is, there was no sign of life when Henry Thompson went up there after the storm. Course Uncle Henry never knew there was three dead buried by the river, never imagined Leslie Cox might been watching through some crack or broken pane. When he realized that, he got the shakes. Took a snort every little while to stiffen up his nerves, and never lost that habit all his life.
Yessir, we had a time of it that day! Hurricane of 1910, October 17th of 1910. That storm was the worst to strike this coast until Hurricane Donna come along fifty years later. Every house at Flamingo washed away. Louie Bradley and the Roberts boys, all the docks and houses down there, even that old copra warehouse on Cape Sable. As for us islanders, most was living in board cabins, and some had lean-to camps, y'know, moving from garden to garden, way the Injuns done. Excepting Ed Watson's big strong house at Chatham Bend, there weren't one roof left in that whole stretch of Islands. Course Chokoloskee is four miles inland, with high ground, but Jim Howell's Chokoloskee house, that was lost, too.
Hurricane caught twenty-two clammers out on Plover Key, took all their skiffs but three. Rowed back to Caxambas, but they were in poor shape by the time they got there. Brought the news that Josie Jenkins lost her baby boy to drowning while she hung on where her brother Tant had her hoisted up a tree. Got tore right out of her poor arms when the waves broke all across Pavilion Key. She found him when the seas went down, where his little arms stuck up out of the sand. Later we heard he was a Watson, and far as I know, Aunt Josie never denied it. Some folks made too much of it that Mister Watson's little feller was the only human soul lost in that storm.
Us Hamiltons come out all right, the Lord be praised, but that hurricane blowed what fight was left out of our family. When that storm got done with us, we didn't have no home nor garden, we had to take what help we could at Chokoloskee.
After all them years, the time had come to say good-bye to Lost Man's River. Grandpappy James was old and poorly, and times was plenty hard enough without having to wonder where Cox might of got to. We took Grandpap to Chokoloskee and from there to Fakahatchee but he never come back from the woesome ruin of that hurricane of 1910, and died soon after. Before he passed, he told his sons that his name was James Hopkins and not Hamilton. Said he come from a rich Baltimore family but acted rashly in his youth, had to kill some dastard in a duel, something like that, had to change his name and travel to other parts to seek his fortune. So his sons went down to Everglade to discuss this matter with Justice Storter, and George Storter said, You boys come into this world with the name of Hamilton, so you might's well go out of it that same way.
FRANK B. TIPPINS
"You boys know Sheriff Tippins," Collier says.
At Marco Island, most of the men are gathered at Bill Collier's Mercantile Store. The small limestone building stands apart from his Marco Hotel, with its twenty small guest rooms, parlor, dining room, and bathroom. Constructed from burnt oyster shell the year before, the store has a hurricane crack three inches across from roof to ground and is still draining eighteen inches of high water. The bare ground around both buildings, littered with brown fronds, is set about with salt-killed planted palms.
Worn by wind and liquor to a nervous edge, the men talk fitfully. Two days before, on the eve of the hurricane, Captain Thad Williams had delivered the black suspect at Fort Myers. I returned with Captain Thad to Marco, where the Cannons and Dick Sawyer and Jim Daniels had confirmed Thad's story that in his first testimony at Pavilion Key, the black suspect had implicated E.J. Watson.
Turns out Watson had come through here on Monday, and
crossed to the mainland before the storm struck in. He had probably arrived at Fort Myers this very morning. Said he was looking for the sheriff, Bill said, and might been hunting up that nigra, too, while he was at it.
"You ask me, that nigger told the truth when he claimed that crazy Watson was behind it."
"Nigra changed his story," I tell this man. The Monroe sheriff has been notified to come get him, and I wonder if I shouldn't start on back, in case Watson finds a way to get him first.
Teet Weeks snuffles his tin cup, wipes his stubbled chin with the back of his hand, gets my boots in focus. "Them fucking cattle kings and bankers gone to cover up for him again, ain't that right, Sheriff? Likely got you in their pocket, too-"
Bill Collier sets down the spring line he is braiding and hoists Teet off the floor and sets him down again facing the other way. Weeks spins and draws his fist back for a comic roundhouse punch, knowing that some kinsman will catch his arm before he gets himself in too much trouble. When no one bothers, he feigns imbalance, which carries him back to a safe distance, bobbing and weaving by himself in a small circle. That's how Teeter Weeks, a drunkard at fifteen, had got his name. Taking the laughter as approval, Teet winks and prances, spits on his hands. "Damn you, Bill Collier, you looking for a fight? You found your man!"
Captain Bill Collier is a broad-backed man, calm and slow to anger. His father founded Marco settlement way back in 1870. Today the son is storekeeper and postmaster, trader and ship's master, he is shipbuilder and keeper of the inn. He has a copra plantation of five thousand palms and a citrus grove on the mainland at Henderson Creek with fifteen hundred orange trees. He designed and owns the floating dredge that works the clam flats at Pavilion Key.
It was Bill Collier who discovered the strange Calusa masks off the Caxambas trail while getting out muck for his tomatoes, Bill Collier who lost two sons when his schooner Speedwell sank off the Marquesas. He has done a lot and seen much more. Ignoring Teet Weeks, he picks up his rope and resumes braiding.
I ask if anyone knows Watson's foreman.
"Your prisoner seen him last, on Chatham Bend. Nobody knows where he might of got to now."
What I should do, I think, is deputize some men, keep right on going, south to Chatham River, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction, because whoever was responsible for those three killings was not likely to wait there for the sheriff.
"…and no goddam law!" Teet cries. "Ought to take and put a bullet through them kind of crazy sonsabitches fore they get loose from their damn cradle, be fucking well done with it-"
"That where you're headed, Sheriff? Chatham River?"
"Cross the Monroe line?"
The men grin when I play dumb and say, "That's not Lee County? Guess I lost my map," but they keep pressing.
"John Smith. You found out who he is?"
"I believe the nigra knows, but he's not telling."
"Had that black boy here tonight, I guess he'd tell us."
"That could be."
The restless men half listen as Dick Sawyer describes how he once saved Watson's life.
One day he'd seen the Gladiator at Key West, and getting no answer when he hallooed, he went aboard. OF Ed was down with typhoid fever, couldn't move or talk. Dick Sawyer went up the street, brought Dr. Feroni back down to the boat, and the doctor cured him. "Ed give me not one word of thanks for saving his damn life," Dick Sawyer says. "And that is funny, cause Ed's manners was so excellent."
"Yes, sir," Jim Daniels says, disgusted. He is worried about his sister Josie on Pavilion Key. "Very well knowed to settle his accounts, keep on the right side of the storekeepers, but he still owes my oldest boy eighty dollars for motor repair. Watson as much as told my Henry he could go to hell, but he says it real polite, cause his manners is so excellent. A very mannerly man, specially when he has you where he wants you. And he has most everybody where he wants 'em, that right, Dick?"
"Had a couple your sisters, Jim, right where he wanted 'em, as you might say-"
Jim Daniels, in his fifties, hard-armed, dark-haired, with a trace of silver, cuts off Dick Sawyer just by sitting up straight.
"I was down at Lost Man's, 1901, nearby my daughter Blanche's people-that's her brother-in-law, Lewis Hamilton, cooks on the clam dredge? Well, one evening I seen a little boat burning down against the sun, way out there on the Gulf horizon. Went out there to see if we could help, found what was left of Tucker's little sloop, no trace of nobody. Nice mannerly job." He looks grimly at Sawyer. "Before that it was mostly rumors. Wasn't till after Tuckers died that folks got scared of him. If he hadn't of took off for the north, he could of had about any mound he wanted cepting Richard Hamiltons'."
"Old Man Richard's bunch, they's kin to your wife, ain't that right, Jim?"
Jim Daniels says, "Not so's you'd notice, Dick."
"Now Netta and Josie-"
"You speaking about my sisters, Albert?"
"I'm speaking about their little girls, over Caxambas. Ain't them kids Watson's?" The speaker is a morose man whose wife, Josephine, had presented him only this year with a chestnut-haired baby boy. Josie Parks-she used the name of the original ex-husband-had refused to abandon Pavilion Key before the storm, and her latest spouse, who had left without her, had been drinking for two days to drown his worry. "Thought that was common knowledge," he adds carefully, seeing Jim's expression.
"Best ask Mister Watson about common knowledge, Albert. Might could tell you some more common knowledge that you ought to know."
In the hooting, Josie Parks's drunk husband raps his cup down hard, as if set to fight, but Captain Collier, waving his long arms, has no trouble at all deflecting his attention.
"Talking about common knowledge, Albert," Collier says. "One time on his way back from Fort Myers, Mister Watson got as far as here but needed a boat to take him down to Chatham River. Hiram Newell setting over there, he worked for Watson, but Hiram had his boat up on the ways, so them two went on over to Sawyer's, that right, Dick? And Hiram told Dick through the door that Mister Watson was outside, said he wanted to know if Dick would take him home. And Dick thought Hiram was playing fun on him, and hollers out, 'To hell with you and your goddam Mister Watson!' Then he come to the door, and when he seen who was standing right outside, he said just as nice as rice, 'Why hello there, Mister Watson! How the hell you been?' Remember, Dick?"
"I took that sonbitch home, yessir!" Dick Sawyer says. "Too damn scared not to!"
Josie's husband yells at Sawyer, "You always been his friend, ain't that right, Dick? Friend of Walt Smith, too. How do you like them two fine fellers now?" Dick Sawyer, as every man there knew, had been aboard Smith's sponge boat a few years earlier when Smith had killed the game warden, Guy Bradley.
"I worked with Walt Smith, that is right," Dick Sawyer says, "and I left Key West right after that and come up here. Cause I ain't Smith's friend after what he done, and I ain't no friend to Watson, neither, not no more!" Sawyer, frowning, pounds his fist, but he has to give this up. "Ol' Ed told me that himself," he says, and laughs.
"This here time," Dick says, "me and Tom Braman was having some drink in Eddie's Bar there in Key West, and Ed Watson banged in there roaring drunk and set up shots for everybody. And two black women came in and ordered rum, because Key West being a Navy town, it allowed niggers to act that way ever since the War Between the States. So Watson turned at the sound of nigger voices, and one of them females, she lifted a glass to him, she was drunk, too. There was a bad silence for a minute while he thought that over. He did not toast back. Everyone felt a whole lot easier when Ed got up off his stool without a word and left the place. Ain't nobody never going to see Ed Watson take a drink with niggers!-I hollered that out to make sure them women knew what was what.
"Turned out two niggers was waiting for their women right outside. One of 'em said how-do to Watson, so Ed took out his knife and went right after him. There come a shriek and Ed's friends ran out, thinking to keep him out of trouble. They yelled, No, no, don't do
that, Ed! Better listen to us, cause we're your friends! And Watson rolled up onto his feet as the crowd backed off. He was panting, you know, squinting. When he yanked out a neckerchief to wipe his knife, every man flinched, thought he was going for his pistol. But all he said was, very calm and quiet, I don't have no friends. Not sorrowful about it, more kind of confused, you know, like he was trying to remember something."
"Watson said that?" Jim Daniels looks surprised.
"I don't have no friends-that's what he said! You ask Tom Braman!" Dick Sawyer looks all around the place, triumphant. "Then Ed put his black hat back on and went down to the wharf to where his schooner was. On the way, he run into a deputy, and he says, Depitty, best get your ass on up to Eddie's Bar before they kill someone. Course by that time, he had one them niggers killed already, and the other one figuring he might as well be dead. By the time a posse got back down to the wharf, his boat was gone, and nobody went north eighty miles to Chatham River after E.J. Watson, not on account of no dead nigger."
"Way I heard that one, Dick, you wasn't even there! Heard it right from Braman and you wasn't there!"
"I wasn't there, Jim? Where was I at, then?"
"Way I heard that one, wasn't no niggers messed up in it at all. Ed Watson had some mixed-breed feller on the floor and was hauling out that goddam bowie knife, said, Maybe I'll fillet this one here in case he's a damn Spaniard, cause I never got to go to San Juan Hill.
"The Roberts boys, Gene, Melch, and Jim, was over from Flamingo, tried to talk him out of it. Gene Roberts was always Watson's friend, and he'd tell you that today. And Gene said, Come on now, Ed, you're looking for some trouble, and you don't need no more. You better listen here to us, cause we're your friends. And Watson looked around at all them men, then blinked as if he was coming up out of a dream. He wiped his knife off on the Spaniard's hair and snapped it shut, let that half-dead bleeding feller crawl away like he'd never noticed him in the first place. Got up and put his knife away and dusted himself off. Then he looked all them men over once again, and said real quiet, Boys, I ain't got no friends."
Killing Mister Watson Page 33
