I felt terrible, and sick. I went to my knees and I called in there to Mrs. Watson, It's all right, ma'am, ain't nothing to be scared of! Poor woman must have thought I was a crazy man, to say something like that with my gun still warm and her husband, too, still warm and bleeding, and boys and dogs running around, gone wild.
Well, I weren't one bit better than the others. No, that young woman had got deep under my skin, though she never knew it, and she stirred my desire then and there, may God forgive me. And here I was just newly wed to Nettie Howell! I was so ashamed that I hollered at the others, shoved them away, like we'd caught some lady in the bushes by mistake.
The swamp angels was something terrible that evening, but that poor little family crouched back in the dark with them putrefied chickens for damned near an hour and never made so much as a whimper, that's how frighted they was. They lay there just as still as newborn rabbits. Mamie done her best to soothe 'em, murmuring down through the storm-raised boards in the house floor, same sweet way as a young girl she talked a scairdy cat out of a tree. When finally she got the poor things calmed, and coaxed 'em out of there, them Watsons stunk so bad of rotten chickens that the people where they was staying wouldn't take 'em back. Said they wasn't fit to set foot in a decent house with that stench of Hell on 'em, and here it was dark, and three scared hungry little kids whimpering for their daddy and no place to turn to, and their mama's poor mind starting to unravel, what with all her terror.
The stink of that pathetical little family was only the excuse for what them people was aiming to do anyway. They didn't want to be anywheres near no Watsons, not with Leslie Cox still on the loose. Man sent his wife out to tell Edna Watson they couldn't put up with 'em no more. Never even let 'em in, they pushed their stuff at 'em through the cracked door.
The ones that drove that desperate family from their house, the husband was supposed to been a friend to Watson, and the wives was close-well, this man and his brother, who was visiting from Marco, they was in that crowd. He was one of 'em claimed later on he never pulled the trigger, which means he was along with us for the wrong reason. Don't matter if he pulled the trigger or he didn't.
I don't need to name no names. The men who scared Watson's little family and those folks who drove 'em out, they know who they are right to this day.
So Mamie took Edna and her children into that tore-up house of hers, and that family never did forget her kindness. Mamie had redneck ideas when it come to certain people, but she had grit and a big heart, no doubt about it. Lots of Chokoloskee folks are the same way-you hate some of that stubborn ignorance, that prejudice against everyone except their own, but you got to admire 'em all the same. They are good, tough, honest, and God-fearing people, got a lot of fiber to 'em. They have 'em a hard life, and they don't complain.
The lawmen went down to Watson's on the Falcon, picked up Mister Watson's horse and four thousand gallons of his syrup to be taken up and sold off at Fort Myers. Four thousand gallons! By Jesus, if I had sweated out the hot hard hours that man must of worked that hot hard ground, raking the shell off forty acres every year to grow good cane, I'd be heartbroke to leave it all behind. All the point of his whole life was in that cane patch he had made with his bare hands in the meanest kind of snake-crawling scrub jungle.
Oh, that was a fine plantation, I can see it yet, the boathouse, sheds, that dock, that strong white house! Chatham Bend was what he had to show at the end of his hard road. He was not a youthful man no more, he was sick of running, and maybe that is when his life caught up with him.
After a while, some of them folks that had took a liking to Ed Watson and didn't feel right about the way he died, they got to saying all the trouble come from rumor and misunderstanding, that the killings down there never started until Cox come, so it must been Cox who give E.J. Watson his bad name. For some years afterward, people was nervous that Cox was still around down in the rivers, cause that was a hombre that would shoot a man just to see him wiggle.
Unless them Injuns got to him first, Mister Watson rescued Cox or killed him. Otherwise he'd be there still, because Chatham Bend is on an island in them rivers and Cox couldn't swim too good, the nigger said, and anyway he was scared of them big gators that follow the overflow down from the Glades after a hurricane, tracking fish and turtle all along the edge of brackish water. There was no one to come by and take Cox off, lest it was Watson, cause that terrible storm just cleaned the Islands out.
Some years after, one of the Daniels boys claimed he seen Cox in Key West. He said Cox spotted him, ducked away quick. We figured Cox might of shipped out on a freighter. That was the first word of him in a long time, and the last one, too.
I never met one person yet who believed Watson killed Cox. To believe that you would have to believe that hombre set there on the Bend day after day, thinking his thoughts, until Mister Watson come back home and blowed his head off. But if you don't believe it, then you have to explain how in hell Cox got away, and where he went to, and where he is living at today.
Anyway, they dug up E.J. Watson, reburied him beside Mrs. Jane Watson in the old Fort Myers cemetery. I keep meaning to get up there, have a look, but I never do. I always heard them older children built a statue to Ed Watson by the cemetery gate, but maybe they didn't. Anyway, he's still up there, I imagine, resting in peace as good as any of 'em.
THE END OF A MOST DEPLORABLE TRAGEDY HAS COME DOWN NEAR CHOKOLOSKEE
FORT MYERS, OCTOBER 30, 1910. On October 23, a week ago, the lawmen investigating the dreadful happenings at Chatham River sailed for Chokoloskee, where they arrived on October 25. By happenstance, a group of citizens of that island was just returning from Rabbit Key, where they said they had buried Mr. E.J. Watson, owner of the plantation where the murders occurred.
Sheriff Tippins was informed that after their meeting on October 19 at Marco, Mr. Watson had stopped over at Chokoloskee to advise Mrs. Watson that he was on his way to Chatham Bend. The people there were in a very high state of agitation, especially about the killing of the woman, Miss Hannah Smith, of Georgia, with whom many in the community had been friendly. Due to his past reputation, it was generally suspected that Mr. Watson must be implicated, but nobody attempted to detain him. However, the men said, Mr. Watson was to produce Leslie Cox dead or alive or accept the consequences, and he thereupon stated that he intended to return with Cox's head.
When Mr. Watson reappeared in Chokoloskee on the evening of October 24, he produced a hat pierced by a bullet hole, said to have been worn by Cox. He claimed he had killed Cox-here was the proof. Declaring that this hat was insufficient, a posse of citizens demanded that he return with them to Chatham Bend and produce the body. He refused, stating that Cox's body had fallen into the river, and that only the hat had surfaced. When this story was challenged, Mr. Watson appeared to become incensed that his neighbors were questioning his word, and one exchange led to another. The witnesses furthermore stated that when ordered to put down his gun, Mr. Watson attempted to fire into the crowd, and the posse killed him.
Thus ends one of the darkest tragedies ever recorded in the history of this State. Leslie Cox-if indeed he is alive, as most believe-is still at large down in the Islands. Even if the Negro's account of the murders can be accepted, the red truth of what happened that day, and why it happened, may never be known.
MAMIE SMALLWOOD
I don't care to speak about what happened. Three House boys and their father had a part in it, maybe they will say why and maybe not. Ted took no part. He was one of the few could hold their head high in the long years after, cause he didn't have no cause to feel ashamed. Course the House boys never felt shame neither, which might been why we had hard feelings in our family.
The twenty-fifth, Sheriff Frank Tippins finally showed up with the Monroe sheriff, Clement Jaycox, brought down by Cap'n Collier on the Falcon. This was a week after the hurricane, and Chokoloskee was still cleaning up. The men told the sheriff he had come too late, so they was obliged to take th
e law in their own hands. Others blamed the death of Mister Watson on his late arrival.
Some men went with the law into the rivers on a hunt for Cox. Never found hide nor hair of him, of course. They took aboard a large cargo of Mister Watson's syrup, and they come on back.
Sheriff Tippins issued a summons to the men who took part in the death of E.J. Watson. He had that authority cause in 1910 Chokoloskee was still Lee County, and Chokoloskee is where E.J. Watson died. The men wanted the postmaster to go with 'em to Fort Myers and vouch for their upstanding characters, which he did. By that time there was a few complaining that the only one didn't have to go was the one who killed him-didn't count, I guess.
I asked my brother Bill about it, he just shook his head. Well, Bill, I says, what in the name of goodness does that darn old head-shake tell me, yes or no? And Bill said, Mamie, there is no way to explain. It ain't a matter of a yes or no, so just forget about it.
We done our best to forget about that killing, but no one forgot that hurricane, not around here. Everything got all tore up, salt-soaked, and rotting, everything mildewed, trees down everywhere, and everlasting mud. It seemed like our world was covered in muck and would not come clean again. Mullet cast up by that storm was a foot deep on the beach. Poor Ted raked out most of our drowned chickens the first week, but putrefaction rose up through those loose boards a month or more before he could get the store put back together and take the time to crawl back under there, bury the last of 'em.
Poor Edna was very grateful we had took her in but the smell of corruption was something terrible. Mama called it the stink of Satan's sulphur coming up from Hell. Might of had a stuffed-up nose or something. Anyway, she upset Edna, who got that chicken stink confused with everything, said she feared that stench would fill her nostrils till her dying day.
CHOKOLOSKEE, OCTOBER 27, 1910. We are still having trouble Here. On the 24th Mr. E.J. Watson came up from his place in his launch, and came to the shore and had some words with some of the folks. There was a little misunderstanding, and Mr. Watson pulled his gun and tried to fire on some of our neighbors. His gun failed fire, and he lost the deal, and was shot and instantly killed. His body was taken out to Rabbit Key and buried on the 25th. I don't know of any other grave out there. A lot of men went down to Mr. Watson's place on the next day to hunt one Leslie Cox that Mr. Watson said he had killed when he was there, but they did not find him.
FORT MYERS, OCTOBER 27, 1910. Thomas A. Edison, the famous electrician, telegraphed on Tuesday to know the depth of the water on the Caloosahatchee-
Mrs. Watson and children arrive from down coast today…
HOAD STORTER
Later years, Old Man Willie Brown would tell how he tried to stop them men that day, tried to see Justice Storter about what to do, get a warrant for Mister Watson's arrest. But Willie's boat was still at Smallwood's landing after the shooting, right there alongside of the Brave, so I don't know if he recollects things right or not.
My uncle George Washington Storter Junior was justice of the peace for the Chokoloskee Bay country, closest thing to law we had in them days. But Uncle George was in Fort Myers, summoned to jury duty, him and C.G. McKinney both. They was the two most solid citizens on Chokoloskee Bay, I guess, along with Smallwood. They was there in the courthouse when Sheriff Tippins brought them men from Chokoloskee for a hearing and ended up deputizing 'em instead. Appointed deputies to arrest a man that was already stone-cold dead by their own hand, stretched out in the bloody sand on Rabbit Key.
Before he deputized 'em, Sheriff Tippins took some depositions on the death, and the court clerk who wrote all of it down was Eddie Watson. After their mother died, back in 1901, Eddie and Lucius had lived awhile with their sister, Mrs. Langford, but pretty soon Young Ed went to live with his daddy in north Florida, never came back again until 1909. Walter Langford and Tippins was good friends-Tippins named his second son Walter Tippins-and Tippins seen to it that Eddie Watson got a job down at the court when he come back.
Well, Uncle George never got over seeing Eddie Watson on that day. Uncle George's own children done their schooling at Fort Myers, and he knew them older Watson children pretty good and liked 'em fine. That day in court, Uncle George told us, young Eddie Watson looked like he'd been bent by lightning. Never cracked during the hearing, but he never got unbended neither. Done his duty in life as a husband and provider, he was a ardent churchgoer, always up in a front pew where it was hard to miss him. He run a nice insurance business, slapped a back or two, and told some jokes. But there was something stiffened up in Eddie Watson, like a tree dead at the heart, like if he fell down he might split in two.
James Hamiltons and Henry Thompson and their families left Lost Man's River for good, and so did almost everybody else. Their houses were all swept away and their gardens spoiled by four foot of salt water. They had to make a fresh start somewheres else, cause that storm left nothing they could work with. So there was a lot of Islanders in Chokoloskee by the time Mister Watson come back from the Bend.
Folks hung on in the Islands after bad hurricanes in 1873 and '94 and 1909, but that hurricane of 1910 cleaned 'em right out. In my opinion, Watson and Cox was a big part of it. Them dark mangrove walls closing out the world, with the empty Everglades to eastward where the sun rose, and that empty Gulf out to the west where the sun set, the silence and miskeeters and the loneliness, the heavy gray of land and sea during the rains, the knowing that all you hoed and built, so much hard work and discouragement for years and years, could be washed away by storm in a single night-put that together with the fear that any stranger glimpsed around some point of river might be the man who called himself John Smith, come to take your life. All that dread had wore 'em out, never mind the blood in them black rivers.
FRANK B. TIPPINS
When those men told how E.J. Watson died, I kept my boots spread and my arms folded on my chest. I didn't show them sympathy or comment, only grunted, so pretty quick the talk diminished into mutters.
Something was missing in the story, and I said so. Sheriff Jaycox took the hint and whistled and sucked his teeth in official skepticism. Questioning their word made them draw together and fall still, like quail. Their faces closed. They had told their story, and the sheriffs could take it or the sheriffs could leave it, because no man there was going to change a word.
Well, boys, the law's the law, Jaycox informed them, and they had took that law in their own hands where it don't belong. Never mind if Mister Watson had it coming or he didn't, there was murder done here on the shores of Monroe County, Sheriff Jaycox said. Begging your pardon, Sheriff, I said, this here is Lee County, ever since 19 and 02, when they checked the survey. Mister Ed Watson was massacred in Lee County, Florida, and the Lee County sheriff could not just walk away, forget about it. Besides, the deceased had folks back in Fort Myers, and fine upstanding folks at that.
"Well, we ain't so particular which county," Charlie Boggess said. "What we been looking for is law. Ain't none showed up." Charlie T. Boggess was Ted Smallwood's sidekick and some way kin to my own clan up around Arcadia, and so felt entitled to speak his mind. But when I took a pad out of my pocket, Charlie T. thought better of his attitude, explaining that while he himself, having been crippled in the storm, had took no part, he could not find it in his heart to blame his neighbors for what they had to perpetrate in self-defense.
"That so?" I said.
"That's the way I look at it," Charlie T. concluded modestly, and everybody nodded, all but Smallwood, who harumphed and put his hands behind his back, as if encouraging us lawmen to get cracking and lay down some law.
All well and good, I told them, moving cautiously, but still and all I had to take those men responsible back to Fort Myers, procure some depositions in the case for a grand jury hearing. That put a scare in them, and certain men wanted the postmaster to come along to explain their situation, even though he disapproved of what they did.
Smallwood had an awful mess to clean up at his sto
re, but after he had thought a minute he agreed to go. "All right, Bill?" he asked his brother-in-law.
"Up to you," said W.W. House, who was short-spoken that day with almost everybody.
At Chatham Bend we found no sign of Leslie Cox, nor the dead squaw-that's where all the trouble started, went the story. The men decided her own people "must of cut her down and took her home," but how did the Indians know that she was dead? Had the nigra lied about Cox and that squaw, and if so, why? And if he lied about the Indian, what else did he lie about?
We took aboard four thousand gallons of syrup for safekeeping. Mister Watson's old horse wore no halter and ran wild around the thirty-acre canefield, the men wasted half an afternoon trying to catch him. For all I know, that wild-eyed thing is running down there yet.
At Chokoloskee, on the way back north, we took the witnesses aboard. Mr. D.D. House was the only one who had a suitcase. He stood apart, hands on his hips, close to the boiling point. Bill House announced in no uncertain terms that it wasn't right to drag his dad off like a criminal when he had been known for honesty throughout his life. If his father could be left behind, and his young brothers, too, he would speak up "good enough for all of 'em." Young Dan and Lloyd were all slicked up, with shoes on, set to go, but D.D. House turned and marched them home, never said good-bye, never looked back, never said one word.
Killing Mister Watson Page 38
