Shadow Country

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 bargain 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