Shadow Country (9 page)

ERSKINE THOMPSON

Like most Island families, what we called home weren't nothing but gray ol' storm boards flung together, palmetta thatch for roof and a dirt floor, but when Mister Watson learned his family was coming, he had new lumber for a honest-to-God house shipped down from Tampa Bay. Two carpenters came, too. Used Dade County pine, which is workable when green but cures so hard you'd be better off driving a nail into a railroad track. Best construction wood they is. When the house was finished, he painted her white and that white house stood so high up on that mound you could see her over the mangrove tops, sailing upriver. Except Storters at Everglade, there weren't no home close to her between Fort Myers and Key West, and we got her finished just in time.

Sailing north to Punta Gorda, Mister Watson and me hit rough seas in the Gulf right up to San Carlos Bay. Punta Gorda at that time was the end of the South Florida Railroad, so unless we come for 'em by sea, the family had to go on south by horse and hack, five hours overland on the old cattle trails to the Alva ferry across the Calusa Hatchee. The railroad train was gone back north when we come in. This made me sorrowful. That train was the first I ever would of saw.

Mister Watson and me walked over to the depot. Miss Carrie was real pretty and her smile put me in a haze. Mrs. Watson was kind to me, they was all friendly except Robert, who was a year older than me and didn't look nothin like them others. He was black-haired and pale, like the sun couldn't figure no way to get at him. Mister Watson got mad at him, called him Sonborn or something, made him cry.

We stayed that night at the Henry Plant Hotel. Ordered up our grub right in the restaurant. Set sail at daybreak bound for the Islands with a following wind and put in after dark at Panther Key, named by Old Man Juan Gomez for that time a panther swum across and ate his goat. Johnny Gomez boiled 'em their first Florida lobster. Never took that broke-stemmed old clay pipe he called his nose-warmer from between his teeth and never stopped talking. The Watson kids heard every one of that old man's tales, how Nap Bonaparte bid him godspeed in Madrid, Spain, and how he run off for a pirate. Mister Watson got some liquor into Johnny, got him so het up about them grand old days on the bounding main that he got his centuries mixed up, that's what Mrs. Watson whispered, doin her best not to smile. Bein a schoolteacher she had some education and advised me to take Senor Gomez with a grain of salt.

One thing there ain't much doubt about, that man were old. Claimed he fought under Zach Taylor at Okeechobee, 1837, way back in the First Seminole War. And that could be because one day there at Marco, Bill Collier Senior told the men how he had knew that rascal Johnny Gomez even before the War Between the States, said he was a danged old liar even then.

Old Gomez carried on into the night and Mister Watson done some drinking along with him, slapping his leg and shaking his head over them old stories like he'd waited for years to get this kind of education. He was watching the faces of his children, winking at me every once in a while, I never seen him so happy in my life. He were a stately man for sure, setting there right in the bosom of his family. In fire light under the stars over the Gulf, Miss Carrie's eyes was just a-shine with worship, and mine, too: I couldn't take my eyes off her.

When I went outside the fire light, Mister Watson followed me, we was standing shoulder to shoulder back of a bush. In a whisper he warned that his Carrie weren't but only ten years of age and here I thought she must be going on fourteen which is mostly when girls marry in the Islands. I like to perished out of my embarrassment and slipped my pecker back into my pants as quick as possible. The coony questions I'd been asking about his daughter were maybe not as coony as I thought.

Sailing down the coast next day in a fair breeze and the spray flying, Mister Watson's family all got seasick, and I had to hold Miss Carrie by the belt to keep her from going overboard. Miss Carrie got slapped hard and soaked by a wave that washed up along the hull, but that girl was delighted, she was laughing and her face just sparkled. That was when my heart went out to Carrie Watson and I ain't so sure I ever got it back.

I rigged 'em bait lines. Eddie was eight and Lucius six and them little green-faced brothers had some spunk. They was all puked out but trolled like their lives depended on it, and their sister, too. We was flapping big silver kingfish and Spanish mackerel onto the deck until their red-burnt arms wore out, they couldn't pull no more. Mrs. Watson called 'em forward to see the dolphins play under the bow. I stared, too, wherever that lady pointed. For the first time in my life, I really looked at my own home coast, the green walls broken here and there by a white strip of beach. Back of that beach rose a forest of royal palms and back of them palms the towers of white clouds over the Glades.

Rob was watching very careful how I done my job. I hardly noticed him, I was so busy showing off for that dark-eyed girl. That day at sea was the happiest I ever knew and I never forgot it.

All the way south, Mister Watson told his plans for developing the Is lands. Watching him pound his fist and wave his arms, Mrs. Watson said, “He's still waving his arms in that boyish way.” She kept her voice low but he heard her all the same. “No, Mandy,” he said, “I only wave my arms when I am happy.” He spoke real tender, reaching over from the helm to touch her. She smiled a little but she looked worried and wishful.

Mister Watson warned Netta before we left that she better be packed up ready to go by the time we got back. Said already gone would be okay, too.

She had not left. She had not swept up nor even done the dishes. She stood in the front door of the house with her ginger-haired baby, waving Little Min's fat arm at the visitors. Seeing Mister Watson's face, she begun to dither, said her brother Jim never come. He knew she was lying. She had stuck around out of her spite, knowing he would not harm her in front of company.

Mister Watson went up close, put his hand on her collarbone near her neck. We couldn't see his face but hers went white. Then he lifted his hand, turned around, and introduced her as the housekeeper, but his family was staring at Min's hair, which in the sun showed the dark rust color of his own.

Mister Watson gathered himself up and come right out with it. “Children, this is your baby sister. Her name is Minnie, after your aunt Minnie Collins.” He made a small bow to Mrs. Watson, who acted unsurprised. She took out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her lips, even smiled at Henrietta just a little. But after my mother scooted back inside, she told her husband, “Too bad the place wasn't swept out before we got here.”

I run my mother to Caxambas the next morning.

Mrs. Watson was already poorly when she got to Chatham Bend, and within the year her husband had to carry her outside into the sun. He'd set her down real gentle in her wicker chair under them red poincianas where the breeze come fresh upriver from the Gulf and she'd sit real still in her faded blue cotton dress so's not to stir the heat, her head bent just a little, watching the mullet jump and the tarpon roll and the herons flap across the river. Sometimes she might see big gators hauled out on the far bank that come down out of the Glades with the summer rains. I always wondered what sweet kind of thought was going on behind her smile.

One day when I called her “Mrs. Watson” she beckoned me in close and said, “Since Little Min is your half sister, Erskine, we're family in a way, isn't that true?” And when I nodded, she said, “If you like, then, you may call me Aunt Jane.” When she seen the tears come to my eyes, she took me in her arms and give me a quick hug so both of us could pretend she never noticed 'em.

Aunt Jane always had her books beside her, but after a while she looked at them no more. Mister Watson read to her from the Good Book every day and brung God's word to the rest of us on Sundays under the boat shed roof.
Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth!
Might keep us on our knees for an hour at a time with his preachings of hellfire and damnation.
And the sea became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea!
He'd work himself into red-faced wrath, looming over us booming and spitting, a regular Jehovah—either that or he was making fun of God. That's the way Rob seen it and I reckon Rob was right. For refusing to love the Lord, Rob got the strap; his daddy beat him something pitiful most every Sunday. He never called Rob by his rightful name no more, it was always Sonborn. A joke, I figured, but I could see that Aunt Jane disliked it and Rob hated it.

As for Tant, he carried on somewhat more holy than was wanted, rolling his eyes up to the Lord and warbling the hymns until Mister Watson had to frown to keep his face straight. Pretend to love God same way Tant does, I advised Rob. He only said, If I did what Tant does, Stupid, he'd beat me for that, too.

Tant had a sassy way with Mister Watson, having learned real quick that he ran no risk at all. Just by making that man laugh, he got by in a way I could never even hope for. And the thing of it was—this ate my heart—Tant never cared a hoot about them warm grins I would have given my right eye for and Rob, too. All he seen was another way to get out of his chores and have his fun.

Mister Watson read to us one time from a story called
Two Years Before the Mast.
Captain Thompson is flogging a poor sailor. The sailor shrieks, Oh Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ! And the captain yells,
Call on Captain Thompson, he's the man! Jesus Christ can't help you now!
We was all shocked when that part was read out, not the words so much as the heartfelt way he read it, looking at me.

Aunt Jane did not like him drinking on a Sunday, she told us not to pay him no attention. To her husband she said in a low voice, “You do them harm.” But he would only tease Aunt Jane by telling how all the finest hymns was wrote by slavers who never repented till after they got rich. She tried to smile but looked unhappy and ashamed, lowering her eyes when he lifted his strong voice like an offering:

Mister Watson never had no interest in such hymns before his family come and he never had none after they was gone. Me neither. One time I asked him, Sir, do you believe in God Almighty? And he said, God Almighty? You think He believes in you? I never found out what he meant. Time he was done with me, I believed in nothing in the world but what I seen in front of my own nose.

•                           •                           •

One early morning we was woke by a man hollering. “E. J. Watson, this here is a citizen's arrest!” When I run downstairs, Mister Watson was already at the window with his rifle. Three armed men was in a boat out on the river, and one of 'em was that crazy old Frenchman.

Mrs. Watson was all trembly, in tears. She said, “Oh, please, Edgar!” She didn't want trouble, not with little children in the house. So what he done, he took a bead and clipped the tip of the handlebar mustache off of the ringleader, Tom Brewer, who howled and ducked down quick. In a half minute, that boat was gone. With one bullet. Mister Watson had run them citizens right off his river.

Next day, Bill House come by to tell about the citizens' posse. What excited him was Mister Watson's marksmanship—had he really clipped Brewer's mustache on purpose? Bill told that story all his life. The truth was, Mister Watson skinned him by mistake. All he aimed to do, he said, was pass his bullet so close under Brewer's nose that he could smell it.

I worked for Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties and run his boats for him from time to time in later years, so if he done all the things laid at his door I would of knowed about it. Plenty of men worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another and plenty more had dealings with him; if you could take and dig 'em up, they'd say the same. He drove him a hard bar gain when that mood was on him, but the only one claimed that Mister Watson done him harm was Adolphus Santini, who got his throat slit a little in that scrape down to Key West. There's men will tell you Santini had it coming. I don't know nothin about that cause I wasn't there. I do know Mister Watson got a mule that year and named him Dolphus.

BILL HOUSE

Not long after Captain Eben Carey joined the Frenchman on Possum Key, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and moonshiner from Lemon City on the Miami River. Crossed the Glades, then paddled north from Harney River, brought quite a smell into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on at the table, never cared about spillin food on his greasy shirt. Claimed beard and grease was all that stood between him and the miskeeters. Had a big chaw of Brown Mule stuck in his face and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor.

Rumor was that this Tom Brewer would spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye to fire up his heathen clientele so's they couldn't think straight, then trade 'em the dregs for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut—what Injuns called
wy-omee
—killed more redskins than the soldiers ever done, give traders a bad name all across the country. Had him a squaw girl, couldn't been more than nine-ten years of age; lay her down right in his boat and had his way, then rented her out to any man might want her. No harm in that, he said, on account her band had throwed her out for fooling with a white man, namely him.

Tom Brewer were a sleepy and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth, but even when his hands lay quiet, them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Tom Brewer than what was happening around our table. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair down past the collar. Claimed to be the first and only white man who ever crossed the Glades in both directions so Mister Watson nicknamed him the Double-Crosser. The law on both coasts was after this feller for peddling
wy-omee
to the Injuns, taking away good business from the traders, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind.

“From what I heard,” Tom Brewer said, handing around his deluxe jug that had no lye in it, “that ol' Injun mound at Chatham Bend might be just the place I'm looking for.” Cap'n Carey, a big pinkish feller, took him a snort of Brewer's hospitality that made his eyes pop. He banged down the jug and give a sigh like some old doleful porpoise in the channel. “Whoa!” he says. “Count me out! Man already on there, Tom!”

“I heard,” Tom Brewer said. Them other two looked like they expected him to explain hisself. He didn't.

Whilst we was pondering, the Frenchman sniffed his cup of shine, one eyebrow cocked and bony nose a-twitching with disgust. That nose was sayin,
This here shit sure'n hell ain't up to what your quality is served back in the
Old
World!
But it was plenty good enough for Cap'n Ebe, who grabbed the jug and hoisted it frontier-style on his elbow. Next time he come up for air, he coughed out a Key West rumor: the man who had let on to the sheriff where he could apprehend the late Will Raymond was none other than this selfsame feller Ed J. Watson.

“We heard about that clear across to Lemon City,” Brewer said. “Any sumbitch would snitch on a feller human bean ain't got no right to private property if you take my meanin.”

“In a manner of speaking, Mr. Brewer, sir, you are correct,” says Captain Ebe. “But he paid off the widow for the claim, so he has rights according to the law.”

“Law!” the Frenchman scoffed, disgusted. “
Satan foo!
In
la belle Frawnce,
we cut off fokink head!
La geeyo-teen!
” And off he went on one of his tirades, quoting Detockveel and Laffyett and some other Frenchified fellers that could tell us dumb Americans a thing or two about America. (Erskine Thompson told me Mister Watson called Chevelier the Small Frog in the Big Pond. Erskine never did know why I laughed, him not being too much of a help when it come to jokes.)

“Fokink!”
Brewer repeated, trying out some French. Said the news was out in Lemon City how this skunk Watson were a wanted man in two-three states. Here was our chance to do our duty as good citizens, says he, and a good turn to ourselves while we was at it. So us good citizens sat forward, put our heads together, while Brewer laid his cards upon the table or maybe some of 'em. His plan was that him and Carey and the Frenchman would get the drop on Watson, claim they had a warrant, hogtie that sumbitch, Brewer said, and get his fancy ass sent back to Arkansas, leaving the plume birds to upright citizens such as ourselves. Tom Brewer figured that bringing in a famous desperader would improve his reputation with the sheriff on top of earning the reward.

I tried to warn him there was just no way of coming up on Watson by surprise. His small clearing on the river was the only break in a thick wall of jungle a greased Injun couldn't slip through, and when the water rose in time of storm and flood, the high ground on the Bend was the worst place for rattlers and cottonmouths in all the Islands.

“We'll come downriver in the dark,” Brewer decided, “and take him when he comes out in the mornin.”

Cap'n Carey's chuckle didn't sound so good. “Mister Watson never goes unarmed and he is a dead shot,” Ebe says, his voice real tight. Brewer takes his rifle, steps to the door, and shoots the head clean off a snake bird that's craning down from the top of a dead snag over the creek. He let that bird slap on the water and spin a little upside down, legs kicking. Then he comes in, sets his gun back by the door. “We got three guns to his one,” he says.

I sing out, “Make it four!” I ain't got one thing in the world against Mister Watson, I just don't want to miss out. I shoot pretty good for a young youth, better'n most, and I aimed to make sure none of these drunks shot my friend Erskine, who was down in the mouth enough already without that. But the Frenchman called me
whippaire-snappaire,
shooed me away, so I never got to join that Watson posse. Had to wait another fifteen years.

In Cap'n Ebe's opinion, which me and the Frenchman got to hear nightly, we gentlemen was sick and tired of bloodshed in south Florida. What with desperaders hiding out here in our swamps like dregs in the bottom of a jug of moonshine, violence on the Everglades frontiers was worse than out in the Wild West where men was men.

There was no law in the Islands, I reminded 'em (though the Islands was kind of like them Hardens, Isaac Yeomans used to say, they never was as black as they was painted). Of course Key West was trying out some law so Watson paid Santini not to take the case to court. Most folks concluded that Dolphus was right to accept Ed Watson's money but Cap'n Ebe said Ebe P. Carey disagreed and didn't care who knew it, he slapped his hand down on the table, spilling drinks. “Watson had that money on him! Nine hundred dollars in blood money right there in his pocket! And every red cent of it illgotten, you may be sure!” A wrong done to a wealthy citizen should never go unpunished, Cap'n Carey told us.

Nine hundred dollars was stiff punishment, it seemed to me: that's what Santini got from Smallwood for his whole darned claim when he cleared out of Chokoloskee. Ebe Carey never knew Santini, never knew how he got to be so rich back in the first place: you show Dolphus nine hundred dollars, his eyes would glaze over like a rattler. But he earned every penny and I guess you could say he earned Ed Watson's money, too.

Anyways, he took it. Maybe he thought the prosecutor might bring a poor attitude to the case just because he drank with Watson at Joe's Bar. More likely, Watson had him scared. Having no choice about the scar, he decided he would take the money. This way, next time they met, there'd be no hard feelings.
How's that ol' throat coming, Dolphus?
And Dolphus says,
Thanks for asking, Ed! Nice little scar and she's coming along fine!

“Mr. Santini accepted a bare-faced bribe instead of putting that villain behind bars where he belonged,” Ebe Carey complained. “I was astonished!”

“Ass-toneesh!”
The Frenchman inched a little more of Brewer's lightning into his glass like it was medicine. “I am ass-toneesh from first fokink day I set my foots in fokink Amerique!”

To make a long story somewhat shorter, Tom Brewer could shoot him a blue streak, and by the time they had his moonshine polished off, Chevelier and Carey could shoot pretty good, too, so it sure looked like this deadly bunch would bring Watson to justice. Only trouble was, Ebe Carey had no heart for the job. Maybe he seen that one of his partners was a drunk outlaw with an eye on Watson's property and the other a loco old foreigner so angered up with life he couldn't see straight let alone shoot. Every little while, Ebe described Ed Watson cutting loose down in Key West, shooting out lights in the saloons, never known to miss. Drunk or sober, he said, Mister Watson was no man to fool with. His partners was too liquored up to listen. First light, they fell into the skiff and pushed off for Chatham Bend, figuring to float downriver with the tide, and Cap'n Ebe never had the guts not to go with 'em.

Come Sunday, I snuck off to Chatham Bend, where Erskine and me fished up some snappers while we swapped our stories. I told Erskine how them three deputies was up all night getting their courage up and he told me what happened the next morning. Maybe the posse was bad hung over and nerves wobbly, he said, because all they done was stand off on the river and holler at the house. Chatham River is pretty broad there at the Bend, and being they was way over toward the farther bank, they had to shout their heads off to be heard at all.

Mister Watson got up out of bed and poked his shooting iron through the window. He knowed Tom Brewer from the saloons at Key West, knowed him for a polecat east coast moonshiner, and he also knowed that the Key West sheriff would never appoint no such a man to be his deputy. So when Brewer hollered, Mister Watson fired, and his bullet clipped most of his handlebar mustache on the left side. Brewer yelped and them other citizens near fell out of the skiff, putting their backs into them oars too hard, too quick. What he
should
have done, his boss told Erskine, after he cooled off some and got to laughing, was give them varmints a bullet at the waterline, sink their skiff and let 'em swim for it, cause there weren't nowhere but the Watson place for them to swim to.

When that citizens' posse slunk back to Possum Key, Ed Brewer shaved off what was left of his mustache, cussing real ugly when the razor bit on his burned lip: took it out on that squaw girl of his, knocked her down right on the dock. Before noon he headed east for Lemon City on the Miami River, where he accused E. J. Watson of attempted murder and told all about his shoot-out with the worstest outlaw as ever took a life around south Florida. Cap'n Carey spread his version in Key West—that's how Watson got that name “the Barber.” A few years later they were calling him “the Emperor”—the Frenchman said that first—because of his grand ambitions for the Islands. It was only when he was safe under the ground that anyone dared to call him Bloody Watson.

After that morning Mrs. Watson made up her mind to leave the Bend. She didn't want her children risked in a dangerous place where men might come gunning for her husband—Erskine himself heard her say that. A few days later, Mister Watson took his family to Fort Myers, put his kids in school. In Fort Myers, Dr. Langford told him Mrs. Watson was looking too darn old for a woman only in her thirties. Said life in our Islands was too rough for a lady gently reared and he rented her rooms in his own house until she recovered. Miss Carrie stayed there, too, to help take care of her, and the two younger boys were put in school and lodged nearby.