him. Folks was leery of this feller Dutchy Melville but allowed as how he was always full of fun. That October day at Chokoloskee, Dutchy got foul-mouthed, sneered at Watson to his face in front of everybody. Called him Ed. Said, “Ed? How about let’s you and me just settle this fucking goddamn thing right here and now?”
Watson told him calmly that no man could draw as fast out of his pocket as a feller drawing from a holster. “You want me dead as bad as that,” he said, “you better shoot me in the back.” And Dutchy said, “Back-shooting, Ed? I always heard that was
There come a gasp but Watson knew his man. Dutchy was no backshooter and never would be. “What this young feller needs is another drink,” Ed Watson said. They drank together, took the jug along for the trip home to Chatham Bend. That was the last we ever seen of Dutchy Melville.
OWEN HARDEN
All that long summer of 1910, crops withered in the worst drought Daddy Richard could remember. With fishing so poor and the last clam beds off Pavilion staked out by Bay crackers, all we had left was ricking buttonwood for charcoal.
For ricking, a man has got to cut ten cords a day. Tote ’em and stack ’em, cover the rick with grass and sand to make it airtight, all but a vent on top and a few holes at the bottom to fire it. Get twenty bags of charcoal at the most for all that donkey work and still don’t make a living. Man winds up with a sooty face and a crook-back, is about all.
For fishermen used to open water and Gulf breeze, ricking is killing work in the wet heat. Up at first light, work till dusk, lay down stinking cause you’re too tired to wash. Get up bone stiff, sore, half bit to death, still stinking, do the same damned thing all over again, day after day, year after year. See any sense to it? Daddy Richard weren’t up to the chopping and stacking, not no more, not ten cords in a day. No feller that age is going to last long ricking but our stubborn old man aimed to die in the attempt. Down at Shark River, they was cutting out the last of them giant mangrove trees for fuel for tanning, but that work was too heavy for him, too. So it looked like Hardens might have to leave all our hard years behind-clearings, cabins, fish docks, all our gear. Say good-bye to Lost Man’s and our old free life, go to Caxambas to work in the clam cannery because Daddy Richard had worn out his heart down in the rivers and it was too late in life to start again.
Up till very near the end, my folks never bothered their heads about all them Watson stories. Hadn’t Ed been our good neighbor? (But maybe they were forgetting certain stuff, cause when I was little, my ma used our neighbor as the Bogeyman:
HOAD STORTER
Early October, with my brother Claude and Henry Short, I was fishing the bayous up inside the Chatham delta (what’s called Storter Bay on the marine charts of today), and selling the catch to the clam diggers on Pavilion Key. My good old friend from boyhood, Lucius Watson, usually came downriver to fish with us, but Lucius had left the Bend after some trouble, he was in Flamingo.
One evening we were at Pavilion selling mullet when Jim Cannon from Marco and his boy came in and caused a uproar. The Cannons were farming vegetables on Mr. Chevelier’s old place on Possum Key. Some said they were prospecting for the Frenchman’s treasure (or maybe the miser money folks claim Ed Watson killed him for) but Jim was just provisioning the clam crews, same as we were. Bananas and guavas were still thick on Possum in the years bears didn’t clean ’em out, also the gator pears and Key limes put in by the Frenchman. His garden was kept cleared and his cistern fresh by Indians who camped there on their way north from Shark River.
After Watson came back to Chatham Bend in early 1909, the Cannons never cared to stay the night at Possum Key. Camped with the clam crews on Pavilion, went upriver each day on the tide. On that dark squally morning, Jim’s boy saw a pale small thing breaking the surface. “Pap,” he calls, “I seen something queer stick up, right over there!” And Jim Cannon says, “No, you ain’t never! Must been some ol’ snag or somethin.” The boy hollered, “Nosir! It was white!” Well, Cannon paid him no more mind, and they went on upriver. But that boy worried all day about what he’d seen, and coming back that afternoon, he was on the lookout, and pretty quick he’s hollering and pointing.
Know that eddy just below the Watson place, off the north bank? Jim Cannon swung the boat in there, saw something white and puffy sticking up that turned out to be a woman’s foot. The current curling past it was so strong that they had to take a hitch around the ankle just to stay put, but there was nothing to be done, they could not come up with her. That corpse seemed moored to something deep down in the river and they pretty near capsized trying to boat her.
The boy was scared and getting scareder: he figured that the giant croc reported from this stretch of river must have a hold of her. Staring at that ghosty face mooning deep in the dark current and the hair streaming like gray weed, he burst into tears of fright, he was shivering in some kind of a fit. So Cannon cut her loose, said, “Never mind, son, we’ll just go ashore, report this here calamity to Mister Watson.” Having more sense than the father, the boy screeched, “Nosir, I ain’t going!” He had heard those stories about Watson, he was scared stiff.
Jim told him to hush up so he could think. He concluded that whoever committed this foul deed had nothing to lose by getting rid of witnesses and he’d better go back to Pavilion, find some help.
Next morning, a party went upriver. Henry Short was very much afraid but he went with us. Kept his old rifle handy and nobody objected, the body being just below the Watson place. That giant woman had been gutted out like you’d gut a bear, then anchored off with sacks of bricks left over from the syrup works and some pig iron. When she bloated up and floated all that iron off the bottom, that one foot broke the surface and wigwagged the first boat that came along. Every man was boiling mad to see a woman as good-hearted as Hannah Smith treated so brutally. Some of ’em were talking big about going up to Watson’s house, but except for Henry we weren’t armed so we never went, and nobody came out of that house to see what we were up to.
Hannah’s hog-thief boyfriend was still with her. Somebody looked down and there he was! He had been weighted separately but their lines tangled, he rose with her, and that spooked us, too.
Those bodies had been there a few days and nobody wanted to look at ’em, let alone smell ’em-made our eyes water. We dug a pit on the south bank down the river, maybe thirty feet in from the point where Watson had been clearing off another cane field. Henry Short helped dig the hole but he knew better than to lay a hand on her. Maybe someone mumbled a few words and maybe not.
Returning downriver, someone spotted a third body wedged into the mangrove roots, all torn by gators. We rigged a hitch to Dutchy Melville and towed him back and buried what was left of him beside the others. One feller threw up and I came pretty close.
A man can go there yet today and see that lonely grave. Big and square, maybe sunk about a foot, and nothing growing, even some years later, as if someone had lifted a barn door stuck in the marl. Those three lost souls are laying in there right this minute. You open that pit, you’ll have a look at Hell.
We hardly got back from the burial when in came this big nigra from the Watson place, dark husky feller in torn coveralls. He had taken a skiff and got away from Chatham Bend-a desperate act because he was no boatman, his palms were raw from pulling on old splintery oars. One minute he was moaning and blubbering so much you could
