Shadow Country (6 page)

BILL HOUSE

Me'n Henry Short worked for the Frenchman collecting wild birds and their eggs. The Frenchman claimed that except as a collector, he never shot uncommon birds, and he liked to tell how he'd trained up boys like Guy Bradley from Flamingo and myself never to shoot into the flock but single out the one bird we was after.

Plume hunters shoot early in breeding season when egret plumes are coming out real good. When them nestlings get pinfeathered, and squawking loud cause they are always hungry, them parent birds lose the little sense God give 'em. They are going to come in to tend their young no matter what, and a man using one of them Flobert rifles that don't snap no louder than a twig can stand there under the trees in a big rookery and pick them birds off fast as he can reload.

A broke-up rookery, that ain't a picture you want to think about too much. The pile of carcasses left behind when you strip the plumes and move on to the next place is just pitiful, and it's a piss-poor way to harvest, cause there ain't no adults left to feed them young and protect 'em from the sun and rain, let alone the crows and buzzards that come sailing and flopping in, tear 'em to pieces. A real big rookery like that one the Frenchman worked up Tampa Bay had four-five hundred acres of black mangrove, maybe ten nests to a tree. Might take you three-four years to clean it out but after that them birds are gone for good.

It's the dead silence after all the shooting that comes back today, though I never stuck around to hear it; I kind of remember it when I am dreaming. Them ghosty trees on dead white guano ground, the sun and silence and dry stink, the squawking and flopping of their wings, and varmints hurrying in without no sound, coons, rats, and possums, biting and biting, and the ants flowing up all them white trees in their dark ribbons to eat at them raw scrawny things that's backed up to the edge of the nest, gullets pulsing and mouths open wide for the food and water that ain't never going to come. Luckiest ones will perish before something finds 'em, cause they's so many young that the carrion birds just can't keep up. Damn vultures set hunched up on them dead limbs so stuffed and stupid they can't hardly fly.

The Frenchman looked like a wet raccoon—regular coon mask! Bright black eyes with dark pouches, thin little legs and humpy walk, all set to bite. Maybe his heart was in the right place, maybe not. Chevelier generally disapproved of humankind, especially rich Yankee sports that come south on their big yachts in the winter.

Home people never had no use for invaders. Fast as the federals put in channel markers for them yachts, we'd snake 'em out. Us fellers don't need no markers, never wanted none. From what we heard, there weren't a river in north Florida but was all shot out, not by hunters but by tourists. Hunters don't waste powder and shot on what can't be et or sold, but these sports blazed away at everything that moved. Crippled a lot more than they killed, kept right on going, left them dying things to drift away into the reeds. Somewhere up around the Suwannee, we was told, they was shootin out the last of them giant red-crest peckers with white bills—
“ivoire-beel wooda-peckaire,”
the Frenchman called it.

Course our kind of men never had no time for sport, we was too busy livin along, we worked from dawn till dark just to get by. Didn't hardly know what sport might be till we got signed up for sport-fish guides and huntin. This was some years later, o'course, after most of the wild creaturs and big fish was gone for good.

Sometimes the Frenchman's hunting partner, young Guy Bradley from Flamingo, would come prospect in new rookeries along our coast. Guy was quiet but looked at you so straight that you felt like you had better confess real quick whether you done something or not. He was the first hunter to warn that white egrets would be shot out in southwest Florida. “Plain disagrees with me to shoot them things no more,” he said. “Ain't got my heart into it.” I never did let on to Guy how I was collecting bird eggs for the Frenchman. Swaller-tail kite, he give us up to fifteen dollars for one clutch, depending on how bright them eggs was marked.

One night the old man come home dog tired from Gopher Key. To cheer him up, I laid out a nice swallow-tail clutch next to his plate, but all he done was grunt something cantankerous about halfwit foking crack-aire kids setting down rare eggs where they was most likely to get broke. When he didn't hardly look 'em over but just cussed me out, waving that shot-up hand of his to shoo me off, I recalled how Erskine Thompson warned me that the old frog croaked at everyone just to hide how lonesome his life was, so I try again, sing out bright and cheery from the stove, “Come and get it, Mister Shoveleer!” He didn't need no more'n that to huff up and start gobbling like a tom turkey.

“For why Monsieur le Baron Anton du Chevalier ees call ‘Meester Jeen Shovel-
leer
'? For
why
?” He stabbed at the venison and grits on his tin plate. Next he thought about Watson and jabbed his fork like he aimed to stab my eyes out. “This
Wat-
son! Fokink crazy man!
Satan foo!
” Chevelier held up thumb and forefinger to show how close Ed Watson's bullet clipped his ear that morning. When I wondered aloud if Watson had been joking, he shrieked, “
Choke
? With bullet? That ees
choke
?” The Frenchman purely hated E. J. Watson.

Next day I rowed him downriver to consult with Old Man Harden. Nearing the Bend, I seen Mister Watson far out in his field. I edged the skiff in closer to the bank so's he wouldn't see us, then shipped my oars and drifted past so's our thole pins wouldn't creak. Damn if that man a quarter mile away don't stiffen like a panther caught out in the open. Turned his head real slow and looked straight at us, then dropped to one knee and reached into his shirt. I felt a chill. How did the man know we was there? How come he went armed in his own field? And why was he so quick to draw his weapon?

I found out quick. That old French fool behind me had stood up with his shootin iron and now he's ricketing around, trying to draw a bead on Watson. I yell
Sit down!
and I row that boat right out from under him. He falls back hard, nearly goes overboard. Sheltered by the bank, I row all-out to get down around the Bend, scared Mister Watson might run up to the water's edge and pick us off. Please, sir, I holler, don't go pointing guns at Mister Watson, not with young Bill settin in the boat!

Offshore, I flagged down the
Bertie Lee,
Captain R. B. Storter, who would carry the Frenchman to Key West: the old man told me to work my keep at Hardens till he got back. Trouble was, I weren't real easy in their company. That family never got along good with us Bay people, bein too white to fit with Injuns nor nigras but nowhere near fair-skinned enough to suit most whites. Old Man Richard called hisself Choctaw, had Injun features, sure enough, but one look at his boy Webster told you that Choctaw weren't the whole story by a long shot.

Times we worked for the old Frenchman, Henry Short and me used to visit with the Hardens, and Henry held a high opinion of that family, but I don't believe he thought that they was white or he wouldn't have never felt so much at home. While I was living there, Henry would come visiting, to be sure I was getting along—probably believed that, knowing Henry—but the one he really come to visit was young Liza.

Liza Harden weren't a woman yet and she weren't entirely white, but she was as pretty put together as any critter I ever saw, made me ache to look at her. I would have give up my left ear to see her stepping slow into the river without clothes on, see all that golden honey in the sun. It thickened my blood to think about that, even, and Henry was in the same fix I was, though he'd never dare say it. One look at each other and we'd look away, embarrassed, that's how jittery and fired up that young girl made us from an early age.

Henry's mama was white, his daddy mixed, what some call redbone. High cheekbones, narrow features, looked more white than Injun and more Injun than nigra. One time Old Man Richard was carrying on about his own Injun ancestry, told Henry he looked like he might be Choctaw, too. Henry got more agitated up than I ever seen him, cause being a born stickler for the truth, he would choke telling a lie. Finally he whispered, “I ain't no Choctaw, Mr. Richard. Chock-f o' nigger is more like it.” Old Man Richard laughed and laughed. “Well,” he said, “best not let on about that to my Mary, son, cause she got you figured for a white boy with a drop of Indin, same as us.”

Course Old Man Richard knew as well as I did that Henry might of said chock-f o' nigger just to show Bill House that eating at the Hardens' table hadn't give him no wrong ideas about his place. Or maybe the whole bunch was leading on this white boy, come to think about it. First time in my life I ever felt like the outsider—ever try that? I didn't care for it.

In Chokoloskee, when I told the men what Henry Short said to Richard Harden, they laughed somewhat louder than I wanted, and right away they got it twisted all around: “Nigger Henry told that old mulatter,
Hell, no, you ain't Choctaw, Mister Richard! What you are is chock-f o' nigger, same as me!
” “No, no,” I told 'em, “that ain't what he said!” Trouble was, I got tired of explainin, just grinned and went along with it, which is why they are laughin yet today about chock-f o' nigger.

Anyways, when Henry said them words, Earl jumps up so fast he spills his plate. “Well,
we
ain't niggers in
this
family, boy, at least
I
ain't, but it sure looks like we got nigger-lovers around here!” Earl was watching me so I got the idea this was a message that Bill House was supposed to take to Chokoloskee:
Mr. Earl Harden don't care to eat with niggers even if the rest of 'em puts up with it.
“I would run you off, boy,” Earl told Henry, “but it ain't my house.” Earl grabs his plate and marches out onto the stoop cause he can't look his daddy in the eye.

Richard Harden never liked commotion, and he ain't figured out yet how to handle this. Watching his brother stomping out, Webster just laughs. From outside Earl hollers, “Go to Hell, Webster!” Hearing that language, his mother comes a-running from the cookhouse and whaps Earl's ear a terrific lick with her wood ladle. I catch Webster's eye and wish I hadn't. He tried to smile, but I seen he was very angry and humiliated.

Right from a boy, Earl Harden was out to prove something to Bay people, and I guess you could say he finally become friends with one or two families at Chokoloskee—Lopezes, mostly, who weren't never really trusted, being Spanish. Earl tried to be friendly to me, too, but because he was so ornery with Henry, I could not warm up to him and never did, the whole rest of my life.

Two weeks later Jean Chevelier showed up again with Captain Eben Carey, who aimed to go partners with us in the plume trade. With E. J. Watson not a half mile down the river, Chevelier wanted company, and to make sure he got it, he had promised Captain Carey a share of Calusa treasure. He was getting too old to dig all day in hot white shell mound with them bad snakes, heat, and wasps, but being a miser, he refused my help for fear I might let on at Chokoloskee if he found something.

It was Cap'n Ebe who told us what took place at Key West in Bartlum's produce auction room, how Ed Watson come in somewhat drunk and asked Adolphus Santini of Chokoloskee for advice about filing a land claim on both banks of Chatham River. Surveys would be needed because almost all of southwest Florida was “swamp and overflowed,” turned over to the state back in 1850; the state had give most all that territory to the railroad companies. But the Everglades and the Ten Thousand Islands were still wilderness, and nobody really knew what was where nor who owned what.

Dolphus Santini was one of the first settlers on Chokoloskee and its leading landowner and farmer. Along about 1877, Santinis filed a claim to “160 acres more or less on Chokoloskee Island among the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida.” That's mostly less, cause there ain't hardly one hundred fifty acres on our whole island. Except for Storters in Everglade, who was somewhat educated, people made do with quit-claim rights—pay me to quit my claim, get the heck off, that's all it was, and maybe a handshake thrown in: Ed Watson wanted a real paper claim like Santinis and Storters. We figured later what he aimed to do was tie up as much high ground as he could from Chatham Bend to Lost Man's River, then file a claim the way Santini done, but bad rumors about E. J. Watson had commenced to wander, so he figured he needed an upstanding citizen to back him up.

Santini had heard a lot more than he cared to about this feller Watson down on Chatham River, how Watson raised the finest hogs, “how Watson could grow tomatoes on a orster bar, grow damn near anything and a lot of it.” He also heard rumors that Watson was an outlaw and a fugitive. Santini advised Watson that the State of Florida would never grant a land claim to any man “who has not paid his debt to society,” so Watson better tend to his own business.