Killing Mister Watson

sound-coons, rats, and possums, biting and biting, and the ants flowing up all them pale trees in dark snaky ribbons to bite at them raw scrawny things that's backed up to the edge of the nest, gullet pulsing and mouth 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 buzzards gets so stuffed they can't hardly fly, just set hunched up on them dead limbs like them queer growths on the pond cypress limbs in the bare winter.

The Frenchman looked like some kind of raccoon-regular coon mask! Bright black eyes and sharp brows, kind of a humpy walk, little thin, wet legs, all set to bite. Maybe his heart was in the right place, maybe not.

Chevelier never did approve of humankind, and he purely hated the rich Yankees off them yachts who come whooping up our rivers in the winters, blazing away at anything that moved, purely hated fellers like Ed Watson, who shot up the best rookeries in spring. I told the Frenchman that to live here in the Islands, a man had to take everything in its own season, but that old fella would just cuss me out in French, waving that shot-up hand of his to shoo me off. Pretty quick, he would start in to yelling about Watson's big ideas about developing this coast, draining the whole Everglades while he was at it. L'Empereur! Chevelier called him. L'Empereur! That drainage talk went all the way back to General Harney, who come out on the wrong coast through Harney River, but it never got cranked up, y'know, till Watson's time. Well, they built them big canals and dikes, crisscrossed the eastern Glades, but this west part is more lonesome than it ever was, cause the big animals and birds are mostly gone. Used to call this place God's country, and we still do, cause nobody but God would want no part of it.

It's true, we had no use for no invaders, and fast as the federal government put in channel markers for them yachts, we'd haul 'em out. Home people didn't need no markers, and we didn't want none. From what we heard, there wasn't a river in north Florida but was all shot out, not by us plume hunters but by Yankee tourists on the river steamers. Real hunters don't waste powder and shot on what can't be eaten or sold, but these sports shot at everything that flew. They crippled up a lot more than they killed and kept on going, just let them dead birds float away downriver.

We never had no time for sport, we was too busy living along, fighting the skeeters. In the Islands we worked from dawn till dark, just to get by. Didn't hardly know what sport might be till we all got hired out as sport-fish guides and hunters. This was some years later, after the fish and game was gone for good.

That Old Frenchman was fighting mad at some Yankee ornithologue named Scut who claimed right in a magazine that Jean Chevelier shot more birds than anybody on the Gulf Coast. 'This foking Scut,' the Frenchman said, 'come here on his vacation to look at his fine feathered foking friends. Visit one big rookery at Pinellas, defam LeChevallier for the worse butch-aire in west Florida! Well, who it is buy my birt specimen? Who it is write that ivoire-beel wooda-pecker ver' rare, then go and shoot ivoire-beel wooda-pecker from the only nest he evaire find? Who it is? This foking Scut! Sham me among my colleague, attack-a me in Au-du-bon Society! All of the same, he buy from my Punta Rassa colleague this short-tailed hawk LeChevallier collect at Chatham Bend! And after I am died, you are going to see it! Damn foking Scut collect first short-tailed hawk in North Amerique! Wait to see it what I am telling it to you!'

Sometimes his old plume-hunting partners Louis and Guy Bradley would come north from Flamingo, prospecting for new rookeries along our coast. We were glad to have the company, but we never passed along no information. Guy never said much but he looked at you so straight that you felt shifty just on general principles. He was the first hunter I heard say that plume hunting was winding down in southwest Florida. Guy Bradley said, 'Plain disagrees with me to shoot them things no more. Ain't got my heart into it.' I never did admit to Guy how I was collecting bird eggs for the Frenchman. Swaller-tail kite got up to fifteen dollars for a egg, depending on how bright that egg was marked. People all over America and Europe wanted them wild bird eggs, no telling why.

One night the old man come home from Gopher Key, and I laid out a nice swallow-tail clutch next to his plate, and all he done was grunt out something cantankerous about halfwit foking crackers setting out kite eggs where they was most likely to get broke. When he didn't hardly stop to look 'em over, I knowed I was in for it. Henry Thompson told me when I signed on with the Frenchman that the old frog croaked at everyone to hide how lonesome his life was out in the swamp, but this one night I wasn't so dang sure. I put on my best Sunday smile and sing out bright and cheery from the stove, 'Come and get it, Mister Chevelier!' He didn't need no more'n that to huff up like a torn turkey and start gobbling.

'Only in this sacre Amerique could 'Monsieur le Baron Anton de LeChevallier' become 'Mis-ter Jeen Shovel-leer'! These am-bay-seel damn crackaire call me Shovel-leer! For why? I ask you it-for why?'

He stabbed at the venison and grits on his tin plate, then jabbed his fork like he aimed to punch my eyes out.

'What is this craziness of guns in this con-try barbare? First time I go to Chatham Bend, Richard Hamilton stick his rifle in my face like I stick this fork to you! Then his blond angel, John Leon, he come running out, prepare to shoot! A little boy! He wish to shoot me! Next t'ing, Will Raymond, they shoot Kim! For why? Because Will Raymond shoot some other crazy crackaire! And who come next? This foking Watson! Foking crazy man! Satan foo! Try to shoot my head off of me! For why? For the plai-seer! I hear him laughing! Satan foo!'

Henry Thompson allowed as how his Mister Watson was an expert shot, that he never missed except on purpose, so I advised the Frenchman how maybe it was some kind of a joke.

'Choke? You are crazy, too?' Chevelier held up thumb and forefinger to show how close that bullet clipped his ear. 'A man who choke with bullets…? That is choke?'

Next day Chevelier ordered me to row him down to Mormon Key because he wanted to consult with Richard Hamilton. We had to go by the Watson Place, and I had an eye out for the owner, just shipped my oars and drifted past so's Mister Watson couldn't hear them thole pins creak against the current.

That was before the big white house was built, there was just Will Raymond's old palmetta shack that Watson was using for his hogs and a small thatched cabin for humankind. I didn't see no sign of Henry Thompson, but I seen Watson out in his high cane, and I edged the skiff in closer to the bank so's he wouldn't see us.

Well, damn if that man don't stiffen like a cat caught in the open, turn his head real slow, and look straight at us. He was already half into a crouch, and when he saw us, he dropped quick to one knee and reached into his shirt. That quickness, and the way he knowed that we was there, give me a chill.

How come he carried a gun into the field? And why did he go for it so fast?

I find out quick. That old French fool is standing up and ricketing around, and I turn to see he has raised his shooting iron and drawed a bead on Watson! I yell Sit down! and I row that boat right out from under him. He sits down in the stern sheets hard, nearly goes overboard. I row all-out and get in under the bank and down around the Bend before Ed Watson can run up to the water's edge and pick us off. The news was just out about what he done to Dolphus Santini at Key West, and when we was safe away downriver, I tell the Frenchman, Please, sir, don't go pointing guns at Ed J. Watson, not while young Bill House is in the boat!

While Mr. Chevelier was away down at Key West, I was to work my keep out at the Hamiltons'. I weren't so easy in their company, though they was kind to me. Mrs. Mary Hamilton passed for white, but Hamiltons didn't have much use for white people, which was probably why they lived way off down in the Islands. That Hamilton gang was kind of outcasts, didn't fit with niggers and whites wouldn't have 'em, so them and that Frenchman naturally got friendly. Old Man Richard called himself Choctaw, and he had Injun features, that's for sure, but one look at his boy Walter told you that Choctaw wasn't the whole story.

Of that whole bunch, only Eugene ever made good friends at Chokoloskee, and he was very friendly to me from the start. But some way I could not warm up to Gene, and never did, the whole rest of my life. Right from a boy- back there in 1895, he was just twelve-Gene had something to prove, he weren't never just take-me-or-don't like his brother Leon.

Henry Short used to visit with the Hamiltons, used to eat at their table, and he held a high opinion of that family. The Hamiltons acted white as anybody, but I don't believe that Henry thought so or he wouldn't have made himself so much to home.

Henry said he come down there to see me, and maybe he believed that one himself, cause we were raised together, but the one he really come to visit was young Liza. I believe it was love at first sight, on his side anyway. She weren't even a woman yet, but she was a golden coffee color, and I would have give up my right arm, or left arm anyway, to see her spread out in the sun without no clothes on. It thickened up my blood merely to think about it. Henry was in the same fix I was, one look at each other and we'd start to laugh, that's how jittery and fired-up