The widow and her children were all packed and ready. There hadn't been a drop of rain, and a dark place by the shore where the body laid upset her when she came down to the landing. Seeing the men on the Falcon's deck, she grabbed her children, started in to trembling, then fled back to the house. One man yelled after her, You can claim the body if you find the rope! Bill House told him to shut up. Rope? I said. Some men looked down. I went over to the store.
Mrs. Watson had come all apart, and her kids were crying. She told me she forgave those men but she was afraid to travel with them on the Falcon. Mrs. Smallwood advised me she would take good care of Mrs. Watson and the children and put them on the mail boat in a few days' time. She was furious. She came back with me to the boat and hollered, Which one stole his watch? Nobody answered. They were angry too.
On the voyage to Fort Myers on the Falcon, more than one explained away his own role in the killing while the rest were out of earshot. Pled self-defense-they all did that-having agreed on this tall tale about how the famous desperado E.J. Watson had endangered the lives of twenty or more armed men. They also agreed that every man there had fired at exactly the same instant, making it impossible to identify his killer. "You'll have to hang the whole damn crowd!" Isaac Yeomans cackled. Some men were positive that they had missed, and there was one who claimed he missed on purpose. Bill House was about the only man who did not deny or defend or even comment.
While they talked, I thought about the week before, when the man now dead had sat across from me at this same mess table. We didn't make friends, not exactly, but we got friendly in some way, we laughed a little. I couldn't get Watson's voice out of my mind. Maybe, in saying he killed Cox, he told the truth.
With each hour I grew more impatient with the Chokoloskee men. No matter how often I heard 'em out, I remained dissatisfied with the whole story, yet I had faith in their sincerity. These Chokoloskee pioneers were good and honest settlers who had sent away for a teacher for their schoolhouse and held prayer meetings whenever they could catch the circuit preacher. They were fishermen and farmers, they had wives and children, and for fifteen years and more they had suffered rain, heat, and mosquitoes in these endless islands, trying to take root. None of them had the smell of liars. Yet when twenty men slay one, someone's to blame. I only hoped that the whole truth and nothing but the truth would emerge under oath at the court hearing.
Bill Collier sailed out Rabbit Key Pass so I could see just where the grave was. Rabbit Key was four miles west of Chokoloskee, on the Gulf, and the Monroe County line went right across it. One man sang out, "We was careful to plant him on the Monroe side!" and another yelled, "We run that devil clean out of Lee County!" but nobody laughed, so these two shut up quick.
What was left of Rabbit Key was a stripped sand spit, with one lonesome big old mangrove twisted hard by wind. Old Man Gandees said, The boys run a rope right to that tree. You follow that rope and dig down deep, you'll find his carcass. He shrugged when I asked him, Why the rope? and the others gazed away in different directions.
Isaac Yeomans explained that with bound limbs, the body towed better, but hearing that, Ted Smallwood whistled loud-That ain't the only reason! The men were scared Ed Watson would rise up, come back to life, and walk on water back to Chokoloskee, Smallwood said, disgusted.
When I asked why they had towed him in the first place, instead of wrapping him in a piece of canvas and laying him in the boat's stern, Ted Smallwood said that treating Ed Watson like something dirty made 'em feel like they was right to kill him. Treating him like filth, they could feel cleaner, maybe.
Bill House didn't care much for Ted's theory, but he kept his mouth shut till he'd thought it over. Then he said, Ted? How come you claim to know how we were feeling, when you don't hardly know how you felt yourself? And Smallwood said, We ain't going to settle this one, Bill. Not this year.
Ted Smallwood took his hat off as the Falcon passed the grave, but the others glared out from beneath tattered straw brims and never spoke. They sat dead quiet, looking out to sea.
The Falcon sailed north past Indian Key and Fakahatchee Pass. What little talk there was concerned the strange dry weather. There hadn't been one drop of rain since the hurricane, and no sun either, a man had to row near to the head of Turner River to find good fresh water.
Off Panther Key, Bill Collier pointed out the place where Hiram Newell and Dick Sawyer's boy had come up with old Juan Gomez's body back in 1900. That got the men talking again, and pretty soon somebody mentioned that the James Hamiltons and Henry Thompson had a plan to move in alongside J. H. Daniels on Fakahatchee, which lay a few miles up that pass. Those folks had seen all they cared to see of Lost Man's River.
The Gulf grew rough where the tide changed, going against the wind. Off Cape Romaine, Isaac Yeomans became seasick, and the men laughed and called him a dang farmer. Smallwood told how years ago, crossing the Gulf Stream over to Bimini with Isaac and his older brother seasick in the cabin, he remarked to the Bahama pilot, "Pretty rough out, is it not?" And the nigger tells him, "Nosuh, Cap'm, boss, dis yere smood Gulf."
Jim Yeomans had been on the run from killing a man at Fakahatchee over unpaid debts. Isaac sat up to explain how the man's widow came around early next morning, just when Jim was getting set to leave. She repaid the money, and Jim said, "Ain't it a shame you didn't do that yesterday."
Isaac Yeomans blew his nose and spat and laughed. He yelled, Dis yere smood Gulf! and puked again. When he came up, wiping his mouth, he nodded in my direction. "Later on Jim was living on a boat at Clearwater. He walks past the drugstore minding his own business, and damn if the new sheriff don't step out and arrest him."
"Tippins, I believe his name was," Bill House said.
"Something like that, Bill," I said.
"Took Jim to court," Isaac Yeomans said. "And Jim's wife testifies that Jim told her how he aimed to put a stop to this damn feller that wouldn't pay Jim what he owed, and how Jim didn't have no choice but to keep his word. Open-and-shut case, says the new sheriff, but the case weren't quite so shut as what he thought, cause being Jim's wife, her word weren't worth the piece of paper it was wrote on. Had to let Jim go for lack of evidence, is what it was."
"Jim went back home, I always heard," I said, mild as could be, and Isaac turned and looked back south and east into the mist toward Fakahatchee.
"Might be killing a few over there today," he said.
"Wouldn't be surprised," I said.
Yeomans spat. "Remember them two Texas fellers, Ted, at Lemon City? Said they'd come gunning for Ed Watson but got shot by Sam Lewis before they got it done?" Isaac said that Lemon City folks had dreaded Lewis the same way people on this coast were scared of Cox.
"Every time Sam Lewis pulled the trigger there was one man less," Ted Smallwood said, like he'd said it more times than he cared to remember. Isaac complained, "I was just coming up to that part!" and Ted said, "Well, come up, then." But when Isaac told about a boy at Lemon City who itched to put some bullets into Lewis, the men commenced to grow uneasy.
I said quick and hard, to startle them, "I heard there were boys like that around Watson's body." Nobody said a word. The brooding men looked out to sea again. Then someone said, Might been one them boys got his damn watch. Isaac finished his story quickly and said to Ted, "Ain't that how you remember it?" And Ted said, "Close enough, I guess."
"Anyways," said Isaac, cross, "them two Texans from Dallas was friends of Belle Starr, and they aimed to find the yeller-bellied skunk that bushwhacked her." And Ted said, "Well, that was only rumor, Isaac, and them two was in no shape to confirm it." And Isaac said, "Yessir, them Texas gunslingers was hunting E.J. Watson! Ted Highsmith told that to Ed Brewer. Ted Highsmith, he allowed as much to anybody as would listen!"
"Ed Highsmith," the postmaster said.
Isaac Yeomans was ready to fight, but Bill House told him to simmer down or he would throw his little carcass in the water.
This was only the second time Bi
ll House had spoken, he had kept himself apart, in heavy humor. I told him he was merely going to give an affidavit, and he said he disliked being taken to court when to his way of thinking no crime had been committed. Hadn't he explained to me that they'd all fired together, in self-defense? Was the sheriff questioning their word? "Did the victim injure anybody first?"
At that hard question, the others looked around as if trying to recall if anyone was hurt. Bill House said, "No. But he sure tried." Angrily he turned his back, knowing I was trying to poke up trouble. He'd already told me that he'd liked Ed Watson-"a man couldn't help but like Ed Watson"-but had no doubts and no regrets about what happened. People living where there was no law was obliged to make their own, Bill House concluded, and he'd looked straight at me when he said it.
The Falcon put in for water at Caxambas-Arawak Indian for "wells," Bill Collier said. The men from Chokoloskee looked surprised. Old Man Henry Smith said he had lived along this coast most of his life, before some of the men aboard of here was even born, hardly, and never knowed Caxambas meant a goddam thing.
Like Everglade and Chokoloskee, the small settlement at Caxambas looked like a place blown in from someplace else. The hurricane had ripped the roof off E.S. Burnham's clam factory and smashed Jim Barfield's store, and kids were diving for his canned goods in the channel. All the families had huddled for the night up at the Barfield Heights Hotel, which sat there on an Indian mound a few yards above high water.
Josie Jenkins, who'd been brought home from Pavilion, had been drinking somewhat with her son Leroy Parks, and she dragged her little Pearl down to the dock to tongue-lash "the men who massacred Pearl's daddy." Pearl Watson was about ten at that time, and kept her scared red eyes turned to the side. She had taffy hair, a pretty face, a long, brown, skinny frame-too skinny and young, seemed like to me, to be wondering what was ever going to become of her.
"Shame on you!" her ma was shrieking. "Shame on you! Took the whole trashy pack of you to bring him down!"
The small wild woman wore her long hair loose, which wasn't considered decent back in those days, and she tossed that black mop and cursed the men in no uncertain terms, till I warned her about causing a disturbance. Well, Sheriff, she said, a lady has prescribed herself a little spirits for a broken heart, is that a crime? But in the end she became dignified, and let her daughter take her hand, lead her away.
It was known by now how Josie Jenkins rode out that hurricane on Pavilion Key, how her brother Tant pushed her up into the mangroves with her five-month baby boy, and how that child was stripped away when a series of big seas washed over, and found again by some dark miracle after the seas went down. Josie hollered that her boy was taken by the hand of God and the Chokoloskee men said that was sure right, because the boy was the accursed infant of that bloody-handed sinner who had brought God's punishment down upon them in the first place, that's why his life was the only one lost in the Islands. "The living proof"-that's what Charley Johnson called the perished boy.
When I brought the men into the courthouse, young Eddie Watson, the deputy court clerk, stood up behind the desk. I'd hired him when he came back from north Florida because Walt Langford asked that favor, and Eddie promised I'd have no cause to regret it, and I never did, or not until that day.
The damned young fool, all red in the face and dropping papers, claimed he'd come in to finish up some work on his day off.
I decided not to introduce him, but one of the men knew him by sight, and the rest learned in a hurry who he was. Bill House whispered, Well, for Christ sake, Sheriff, how about giving that young feller a day off! I didn't like Bill's tone one bit, and gave him a hard look, which was returned, but he was right. I took Eddie Watson to one side and told him to go home, take the day off, I'd find someone else to record the deposition. Eddie said, no, he wasn't going to flinch from them damn lynchers. As deputy court clerk, he got paid to do a job, and he aimed to do it, he declared, hoisting his chin as I struggled to control my aggravation.
Young Eddie resided at the boardinghouse of our erstwhile saloon keeper, Taff O. Langford. Whatever he knew about his daddy's trial in north Florida two years earlier he kept entirely to himself, so what his heart's opinion of it was, I could not say, but since returning to Fort Myers, he had missed no chance to announce he was not and never had been E.J. Watson Junior. Said he was his own man, Mr. E.E. Watson.
Eddie fetched his pad and sat himself in the clerk's chair, stiff as a stick. In his rufous looks, he took after his daddy, he had the same kind of husky mulishness, but he lacked the fiery color and bold eyes.
The men seemed more uneasy than young Eddie. Some tried to look outraged when they testified, to justify themselves, others looked peaked and sad, as if to hint that their experience had hurt them worse than it hurt E.J. Watson. A couple tried to smile at Eddie, who ignored them. That boy set it all down in his notebook as if reporting a church supper for the Press. When the men were finished, he whacked his notes hard with his pencil and slapped his book shut, to show just what he thought-Never mind all this lying and false witness, you men lynched him!
Bill House nodded at Eddie before he began his deposition, friendly but not anxious to make friends. He didn't smile. As Eddie took down Bill's account of how he and the rest shot Eddie's dad to pieces, it was easy to see that House felt worse and worse. But this was Chokoloskee's version of the Death of Watson, and the affidavit of William Warlick House spoke for them all. The others added only a few details. Ted Smallwood came last and testified he had not witnessed the shooting but "I sure heard it." Said, "Far as it went," he had no reason to doubt what House had said.
That was that. I got Smallwood and a couple of others to sign their names, and the rest of 'em took plenty of time drawing their Xs, to make certain it weren't mistaken for someone else's. I told them they could go back home and wait for the grand jury to decide if and when they were going to be indicted.
"You decide if we are criminals," House said. "That what you mean?"
"Sheriff don't get to decide that," I notified him. "Least not in court."
Walter Langford and Jim Cole arrived in time to hear me say "grand jury," and Cole started hollering before I finished. How could a grand jury convict when the only eyewitnesses were the defendants? According to the American Constitution, these here men could not be compelled to incriminate themselves. Why, it made no goddam fucking sense, he yelled, to summon a grand jury-!
Walt Langford raised both palms to slow Cole down. The president of the Florida First National had the jowls of a real banker these days, not a trace of those honest cowboy bones showed through the lard. Had him a stiff collar and cravat to go with his new million-dollar smile, which was served up with everything he said. His nails were pink and his honey hair was slicked tight as a duck's wing, ol' Walt smelled like a barbershop and no mistake. But lotion couldn't cover up the reek of whiskey. Walt was a drinker, I knew that, always was and always would be, though he did his best to drink on his own time.
Walt spoke in a hushed-up voice "on behalf of the victim's family," glancing at Cole every few seconds to be sure he was making the right speech. He told us "the most merciful solution" was to "forget the whole tragedy" as soon as possible rather than "waste our public money dragging these men through the courts when there was no way justice could be done." So anxious was he to spit up his speech that he ignored the victim's son, never mind the feelings of my suspects.
Isaac Yeomans hollered out, "Justice was done, you dumb bastard, and I'm proud we done it!" The men were already upset by Eddie Watson's presence, and Langford gave them an excuse to get mad. Bill House banged his hand flat on the table, then rose up, saying, "His death weren't no tragedy! The tragedy was them deaths at Chatham Bend!"
Walt went red in a split second. "Oh Lordy, I'm trying to help you people!"
"Go on home, then," Isaac Yeomans said.
After the hubbub died a little, I advised the banker and his friend that murder was murder and could not
be ignored by law. Orderly steps had to be taken to establish responsibility for the shooting-inquest and grand jury hearing, indictment, circuit court. Right about then, Cole took me by the elbow in that way he had and coaxed me aside as if the pair of us was up to something sneaky. He was wheezing, and as was customary, his breath stank of onions.
"Why not drop it? Just forget it?" Jim Cole said.
"Lee County can't 'just forget' about a murder."
"It ain't murder if you deputized that posse, Frank."
"Little late to form a posse, Mr. Cole."
"Is it? State's attorney owes me a favor, and he won't ask questions about dates. You got my word."
"Your word," I said, feeling worn out again. "How about justice?"
"How about it, Frank?" Cole snorted out a sort of laugh, slapping my biceps with the back of his thick hand to remind me I owed him a favor, too-to remind me yet again that ten years ago, young Frank B. Tippins "came into this sheriff's office barefoot," as Cole said.
I came in barefoot, but I came in honest, too. I never asked for Jim Cole's backing. Young Frank Tippins learned the hard way that the cowmen and their cronies ran this town any damn old way they wanted. To get my job done, I had to work around the cattle kings, learning the art of give-and-take, and I reckon I took a little finally, cut some corners. My worst mistake was renting buck niggers off the county road gangs for cheap labor at Deep Lake. Cole fixed it with Langford to pay me nine dollars per week per head, plus fees for Indians to hunt them through the hammocks when they ran away.
Paying chain-gang convicts for their labor was against the law. My idea was to settle when they'd served their time, but very few came pestering me about their money, they just disappeared. The fund was illegal anyway, so I'd borrowed off it some to pay my bills.
Jim Cole would wink each time he brought the money. "Don't want to catch you giving one red cent to them bad niggers, Frank. Don't want our sheriff to do nothing that ain't legal!" And he'd slap my arm with the backs of his fingers in that same loose way he did it now, to remind me how deep he had me in his dirty pocket, along with the sticky coins and stale tobacco crumbs.
Killing Mister Watson Page 39
