"Well, for pity's sake, what is it, Walter?"
"He better not go back down there hunting no names."
"Stop him, then. I don't want him to go back!"
Walter doesn't care to interfere in Watson family matters, never has and never will. He hid behind his paper. "That boy is just as stubborn as his daddy," his voice said. "There ain't nobody going to stop him."
"Isn't," I said.
"Isn't nobody going to stop him," Walter said before I snatched his paper from his hands. "If I know Lucius," he said gently, taking the paper back, "he'll be asking them hard questions the whole rest of his life."
OCTOBER 30, 1910. How changed is poor young Widow Watson from his girlish Kate brought here by Papa just four years ago! Miss Kate Edna Bethea, as I still think of her, lacked utterly our mama's elegance and education, but I saw at once her merry spirit and high bust and drayhorse haunches, her rosy prattle about farmyard animals back in Fort White-this young thing suited our vigorous papa better than Mama's indoor virtues ever had.
Oh, she was his young mare, all right! I don't care to think about it! And Papa walked and spoke like a young man again, he fairly strutted. He had stopped drinking-well, almost-and he was full of great plans for the Islands, full of life!
The whole dreadful business is "a closed chapter in my life," Edna Watson says. Did she get that phrase from Eddie, or did he get it from her, or is it simply a popular expression at Fort White?
Stepmother Edna is three years my junior. I paid a call on her at the hotel. She has a glazed look, a dull morbid manner. She tried her best to be polite, but she can scarcely bring herself to talk about it. Isn't it peculiar? The aging daughter wept and sniffled, the young wife never shed a tear, just sat there tight and stunned and scared, breaking her biscuit without eating it, not tasting her tea. Edna won't go to her people in Fort White but to her sister in west Florida, where no one knows her. She wants to get clean away, she says, so she can think. What she wishes to think about I cannot imagine.
Edna's clothes are nice (Papa saw to that) but she was wearing them all wrong, and of course they looked like she had slept in them, which perhaps she had. I urged my darlings to play with their little "aunt" Ruth Ellen, but Papa's kids are desperate creatures these days. Addison pulls and tears at Edna-When is Daddy coming? Where is Daddy? Baby Amy's big eyes stare all around even when she's nursing, hardly five months in this life and already alarmed!
But Edna scarcely notices, she cannot hear them, just herds her brood gently as if tending them in dream. In normal times she is surely a doting mother, since she is so easy with them even today, when the poor thing has no idea what will become of her. What little Papa did not owe is all tied up in house and boats and livestock, farm equipment. Walter explained to her that Papa's huge legal expenses of two years ago put him deep in debt, but she scarcely listened, didn't seem to care. Nor did she find words to thank him when he promised to send her whatever was left over once the debts were paid. I believe that Walter has advanced the money for their journey, and she has given him power of attorney to sell the last of Papa's syrup. She would have given it to anyone who asked.
When I told her we would remove Papa from that lost lonely grave out on the Gulf and give him a decent burial here in Fort Myers, she said quite simply, Beside Mrs. Watson? She didn't say that with resentment of Mama but to be polite-she might just as well have said, How nice! After five years, three children, and her shocking widowhood, she does not yet regard herself as Papa's wife! Like Walter and Eddie, Edna believes that the less said about Papa the better. The important thing is to protect our children from malicious tongues. That will be easier for her than us. Our life is here, we cannot flee, as she can, to west Florida, leaving everything behind, even the corpse! She is convinced that she and the children are not safe from their former neighbors, and so she will not even wait to see her husband buried properly. For that I cannot quite forgive her.
That's not true, Mama. I forgive her with all my heart. To think what this poor body has been through! Her stunned manner betrays how terrified she was, how desperate she is to put that dark accursed coast behind her!
We took her to the train in the new Ford-their first auto ride! She sat huddled in the coach, clutching her infants, her few scraps, longing for the train to blow its whistle and take her away. I noticed-my dear girls noticed it, too!-that she glanced over her shoulder every moment, as if that Chokoloskee mob might still catch up with her!
Then she was passing from our lives, a lorn face at the window. I said I was sure we would meet again one day. She looked away, then murmured aloud, just blurted it right out, No, I don't think so. She meant no harm, but by expressing no regrets, she hurt my feelings. Am I still so silly? Yet I wanted so to hug her, or hug someone, almost anyone. I mean, she is my stepmother, after all.
"Say good-bye for me," she whispered, in tears for the first time, as if the tears had been yanked out of her by the first yank of the train that would carry her off on its bright rails to a new life.
"Good-bye?" I sniffled, too moved by my own tears to realize her mind had wandered back to the reburial.
I walked along the track with her a little way, my fingertips on her windowsill, seeking her touch. She was aware of my hand there, but not until the final moment did she lay her fingers shyly upon mine.
"Good-bye to Mister Watson," Edna said.
NOVEMBER 3, 1910. There was a norther on the day we buried Papa. A cold hard light glanced from the river to the last leaves on the magnolias. Our little group gathered beneath the banyan, then followed the casket in by the main gate. The cemetery had sunk under the thorn since Mama and Walter's dad were buried there ten years ago, but now it's being fenced and cleared, "out of respect for our dead"-do we own our dead? How grateful they must feel, to be claimed this way! Our mama is surely smiling in her grave to hear such nonsense, her little skull, I mean. Oh, don't! I mean, I'm trying to think-did Mama ever laugh out loud, in joy of life?
We buried Papa beside Mama. It's a comfort to think that Papa is reunited with dear Mama, though somewhat the worse for wear, as he might say. I said so to Eddie, and Eddie said, No, they are not united. Mama's in Heaven, and that man is in Hell.
The darkie laborers stopped to watch, doffing their hats. Perhaps the ones who went down south and dug him up have passed the word about who was to be reburied, for the diggers knew all about the body in that casket. They did! I'm not being oversensitive. They knew something!
Frank Tippins came, he stood behind me, I heard him order them roughly back to work. The sheriff's voice seemed very loud in the old cemetery.
Goodness knows, our dreary little party needed any support that it could muster, and it was kind of Frank Tippins to appear, out of loyalty to Walter, I suppose. I wish he hadn't. In his black suit, he stood over Papa's casket looking fierce, as if delivering up his prisoner to the Lord. When I thanked him for coming, he exclaimed, "Mister Watson had my respect, ma'am, no matter what!" He was very embarrassed, as if he'd said something crude and tactless, and turned on those poor darkies once again. He looked confused. Frank's mustache, overlong and droopy, gives him a doggish look. He imagines he has always been in love with me.
After Papa's trial, when I understood that he had got off through political influence, I tried some political influence of my own. I went to see the sheriff about that poor man at the jail, condemned to hang. Papa and Walter agreed for once. If that prisoner had any influence, they said, he would be free, since he had slain the other man in self-defense. When I suggested this to Frank, he looked disturbed, and nodded a little while as if persuaded. I was thrilled! I'd saved a life, and maybe that deed might help as penance for any life our Papa might have harmed.
Instead Frank said, "Miss Carrie, you are twisting the arm of justice."
I got spitting mad. "Is hanging 'justice'? In a plain case of self-defense? My father says it's nothing but a lynching!"
And the sheriff said, "The prisoner was fou
nd guilty by a jury and condemned to death. Maybe it's not right but it sure is justice. Justice under the law."
At Papa's graveside I whispered to Frank Tippins, "Was justice done here, too?" He knew what I meant at once and got real agitated. He said, "No, ma'am! No due process! This was murder!"
Having spoken too loudly, he stood there gulping like a turkey, getting red. Then he came out with it: "Yes, ma'am." He whispered, "This was murder, yes, Miss Carrie. But I reckon maybe this was justice, too."
Only three men came up from the Islands. Stiff and shy, they stood apart in ancient suits and overstarched white shirts buttoned to the collar, without ties. I did not speak to them until Lucius shook hands and introduced them-Captain R.B. Storter, Gene Roberts, Willie Brown. Where, I thought, was his friend Postmaster Smallwood? Where was Henry Thompson and Tant Jenkins, who knew us as children in the Islands?
Nearby was a small common woman-pretty, I suppose-with bright dark eyes and long black hair not put up as it should have been in one her age. She had a child with her, a ten-year-old or thereabouts, eyes leached out by weeping, rather plain. It was their real grief, not their poor clothes, that distinguished them. When the child caught me peeping, she tried a little smile, then looked away.
Lucius greeted them a bit familiarly, I thought. When I asked him who they were, he blushed and said, That's Tant's sister from Caxambas and her daughter, Pearl.
I said, The one who used to be housekeeper for Papa? Lost her baby in the hurricane? And Lucius nodded. Is that the one that he called Netta? No, Lucius said, this is Aunt Netta's half sister. I kept after him, feeling mean: Was this one close to Papa, too, like your "Aunt Netta"? Why is she sniffling so hard? She enjoy funerals?
He looked at me, not sure yet what I knew. Guess she took it to heart, he said, with that shy bent smile, wrinkled at one corner, that always reminded me of our dear Mama.
Frank Tippins was frowning hard at Lucius, shaking his head. People had commenced to notice, and Lucius moved away. My father was no saint, I murmured, to let Frank off the hook. No, ma'am, he wasn't. That child is my half sister, I insisted, putting him back on it. Yes, ma'am, she is, the sheriff said.
The gash of raw earth looked desolate, unwelcoming. I was glad of this cold norther because even in the wind, the odor of that box was something terrible. It was shocking, truly. Surely these would-be mourners must abhor the rotting human whose awful face was glowering at this pine lid from the inside. I felt sick-and sick with shame at my own shame-that my own flesh and blood could smell so dreadful. The infernal stench of Satan, said these Baptist faces, risen from Hell! The men looked stuffed, that's how hard they were holding their breaths, and the women coughed, resorting to their hankies. Everyone must be tussling with poor Papa, doing their utmost to pretend nothing was wrong.
Oh, dear Lord, have them hurry my remains into the ground before anyone can even think about the worms, the odor, the dank gray hair and fingernails that grow like fungus, so they say, from our poor dead flesh in the grave. Have them remember "the real me," a fresh-smelling young foolish and romantic girl, Miss Carrie Watson!
Walter put his arm around my shoulders, drawing attention to my distress by his loving kindness.
Lucius ground his teeth, he could not stand still. He was absolutely furious, with God, I guess. He wandered away from our stricken party to stand beside Papa's little woman and the thin little half sister that I didn't even know I had until today! As for Eddie, the poor fellow was so upset by the stink of his father's corruption that he stood stiff as a wood Indian, as if he might topple right into the grave.
The only man who dragged out his big kerchief and held it to his nose, the only one who hawked and spit, was ol' Jim Cole, who drove up late in his new Cadillac, you would have thought Mr. Edison himself was getting buried. I was very, very sorry that he came, and did not greet him. Even Walter turned away from him with a curt nod. He had no business here among the mourners. Captain Jim Cole hated Papa because Papa had contempt for him and didn't hide it.
Am I being unfair to "Captain Jim"? I am, and I don't care. He was only there not to miss out on something scandalous that he could jeer and chortle over later.
Dear gentle Mama could not abide what the Press calls "this fine upstanding citizen." Once Mama said, Your father has his violent spells, he is accursed, and I fear for his immortal soul, but he is also kind and generous, and he is manly, and he does not stint. This greedy, cruel man, with all his getting, does violence to the spirit, and I would understand the Good Lord better if I knew which man He would raise up on Judgment Day.
When Papa came north through Fort Myers not long before she died, poor Mama guessed that he was on the run. He said goodbye to her and went away for the last time, cursing the fate that prevented him from taking care of her. Mama told me she had asked him where poor Rob was, and he said, If God knows, He has said nothing to me. Telling this, she looked bewildered, as if wondering at the last minute if she had known her husband after all.
Mama lay with her hands flat on the coverlet, those fine hands with their long sensitive fingers that had the same waxen hue in death as in her life. She was mustering up strength, I think. While I went downstairs to make her tea, she scratched a note.
There is a wound in your poor father I could never heal, and may the Lord who gave him life have mercy and forgive him at the last, and give him rest. Because Papa, too, is made in our Lord's image. He is a man, a human being, whose violence is only the dark part of him, there is also a life-giving side that flourishes in the full light. That side is loving, merry, full of courage, and that is the side that you must cherish, knowing he loves you children very dearly.
The family had agreed there would be no eulogy, but I had kept that pitiful scrawled scrap, and I read it aloud at Papa's graveside. It got tear-spotted some more as I read along, but my tears were like lost raindrops in the sun, I could not grieve. Poor Lucius wept without change of expression, his tears rolled down quiet as dew. I hoped that letter would redeem some of Eddie's anger and permit his grief, but I couldn't tell how Mama's words affected him. He acted as if unaware of my beseeching, he pretended he was hardly there at all.
Our Papa and Mama lie just near the Langford plot, with its two little stones: John Roach Langford, 1906-1906. Infant Langford, 1907. Two little stones. So much for Mother Carrie.
Whichever bunch they put me in, I'll be near Papa. The Langfords arranged for a small stone, without an epitaph.
EDGAR J. WATSON
November 11, 1855 – October 24, 1910
My Fay asked in her sweet clear voice what the J stood for, and the "mourners" looked a little startled. All these years he was known as E.J. Watson, and it took a child to ask about that J! Mama once told me that his given name was E.A. Watson. When and why he changed to J she did not know. Our Granny Ellen in Fort White can no longer tell us, since she died before her son, early this year-God's final mercy! As for Aunt Minnie Collins, who was said to be so beautiful, she was "indisposed," her family wrote, and could not come.
Papa's woman from Caxambas had already turned to go when she heard Fay's question. In a whiskey voice, more like a croak, she called out "Jack." When Lucius kindly hurried her along, she tottered backwards, still seeking my eye. When I turned to her, she called out "E. Jack Watson!"
As we left the cemetery Walter's Aunt Poke asked aloud why Eddie didn't use his middle name. Couldn't he call himself Elijah, like his grandfather? Her idea was that a change of name might spare the poor boy (as she called him) difficulties in the future-that is, if he means to stay here in Fort Myers, Aunt Poke said.
We had all thought about Eddie's name, poor Eddie most of all, but no one but Aunt Poke had said a word. Eddie knew Aunt Poke was speaking "for the family." So did I. We thought she was suggesting that he move away. He went red but managed to control himself and not burst out with anything unseemly.
But Lucius said in a flat voice, "To change his name could only mean Eddie had something he
should be ashamed of." And he gave that old lady a hard look that challenged her to say just what she meant right then and there. One hand flew towards her throat but she made no sound. It was only later that she said to Walter, That younger boy has something of his daddy in him, don't you think?
I was very proud of both my brothers, and grief came quietly, at last, at last.
Peter Matthiessen
***
[1] Not her real name.
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Killing Mister Watson Page 41
