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 Islands. 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.
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
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:
