Killing Mister Watson

young Liza made us. Henry Short, who was raised up by my daddy, was only half a nigger, maybe less, had very light skin and narrow features, but him and Old Man Richard had bad hair. One time me and Henry was visiting the Hamiltons, and Old Man Richard was carrying on about Injun ancestry, and how Henry Short looked like a Choctaw, too. And Henry kept looking across at me, got more agitated than I ever seen him, cause Henry Short was a born stickler for truth. Finally he whispered, 'Heck, I ain't Choctaw, Mr. Richard, I am chock full o' nigger, that's what I am.' The old man looks around, see where his wife was, and after that he said, 'Well, don't go telling my Mary,' and he laughed. Didn't care none, long as his old woman didn't hear about it.

Those were Jim Crow days for nigras in this country, and Old Man Richard probably knew that Henry might of said that just to show me that eating at the Hamilton table didn't give him no funny ideas about his place. Or maybe all of 'em was teasing me, come to think about it. I just don't know. Hell, we don't know those people, we just think we do. Funny feeling, being the outsider-ever try that? I didn't care for it, I'll tell you. Made me think too much.

Back in Chokoloskee, I told the men what Henry Short had said to Richard Hamilton, and pretty soon that got twisted around, cause folks was always looking for to laugh at Old Man Richard. Way they said it, it was Nigger Henry telling that goldurn mulatter, Hell, no, you ain't Choctaw! What you are is chock full o' nigger, just like me! No, no, I told 'em, that ain't the way it was! But I laughed, too, and I paid for that laugh all my life. Cause they're still telling that old tale down there about chock full o' nigger, don't care one bit about the truth, and I flinch every time I have to hear it.

Anyway, young Eugene Hamilton didn't care none for what Henry said. Gene jumps up so fast he spills his plate. 'Well, we ain't niggers, boy, at least I ain't, but it sure looks like we're nigger- lovers around here, letting you set at our table!' Gene is looking more at me than Henry, and I got the idea this was a message that Bill House was supposed to take on back to Chokoloskee, that Gene Hamilton didn't care to eat with niggers even if the rest of 'em put up with it. 'It ain't my table,' Gene is saying to Henry, glaring at his daddy, 'so I can't run you off, but I don't have to eat at it, neither!' And he grabs his plate and marches out onto the stoop.

Richard Hamilton never liked commotion, and he ain't figured out yet how to handle this. But the older boy, Walter, he's a lot darker than Henry Short, he looks at Gene marching out and laughs. 'Go to hell!' Gene yells out. Hearing that language, his mother comes a-running from the cookhouse and whaps his head with her wood ladle.

I catch Walter's eye and wish I hadn't. He had winked at me when Gene stomped out the door, but sitting there in his dark skin, he was shamed bad. I snuck a good look at him after that, probably first time I ever did. Next to young Liza, dark Walter Hamilton was the handsomest of all that handsome family.

The Hamiltons flagged down the Bertie Lee, Cap'n R.B. Storter, who took the Frenchman over to Key West. Two weeks later that old man was back with Elijah Carey, who aimed to go partners with us in the plume trade. There was bigger rookeries down around Cape Sable, which the Bradleys was working with the Roberts boys, but the Cape was just too far from Gopher Key. With Watson around, Mr. Chevelier wanted some company, and to make sure he got it, he told Carey his high hopes about Calusa treasure. He was getting too old to dig all day in hot white shell, and didn't want to let me help him for fear I might let on at Chokoloskee.

Captain Lige Carey stayed awhile, built him his own house on Possum Key. One night Lige told what had took place at George Bartlum's produce auction room down at Cayo Hueso, or Bone Key-that was the real name for Key West, Lige informed us-how Watson come in there good and drunk and announced to Dolphus Santini of Chokoloskee that he needed help with a land claim in the Islands.

Adolphus Santini was amongst the oldest settlers on Chokoloskee, our leading landowner and farmer right up until the time he left, in '99. John Weeks come first in '74, if you don't count whoever planted them large lime trees, and he give half the island to Santinis to keep him company, and that family got the other half after Weeks moved to Flamingo. The Santinis built their first real house above the drift line of the '73 hurricane, and later on they built a chapel-they was Catholics.

Dolphus's brother Nicholas, called him Tino, was a fisherman, took turtle eggs for about four months in the spring season. He used to say the Santinis was Corsicans like Napoleon, but he never said why they left South Carolina, and nobody asked; that was a question that was never asked down in the Islands. Old Man James Hamilton, down Lost Man's River, it come out on his deathbed that he was known in other parts as Hopkins, but nobody asked why he got tired of that name, and he never said.

Along about 1877, Santinis filed a claim to '160 acres more or less on Chokoloskee Island among the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida.' That's mostly less, cause there ain't one hundred fifty acres on the whole island. Old Injun War scout named Dick Turner, same feller who guided the U.S. Army on a raid to smoke out the last of Billy Bowlegs's warriors and got his captain killed up around Deep Lake-Dick Turner filed a claim back in '78 for eighty acres of Calusa mounds that he was farming up on Turner's River. Later he sold 'em to a Key West man, who sold 'em to my dad, Daniel David House, for two thousand dollars. Far as I know, Santini and Turner was the only claims except Storters in Everglade that was down on paper at that time, and even them ones wasn't validated until 1902. All anybody had was quitclaim rights, Watson included. Pay me to get the heck off, that's all it was.

Watson knew about them paper claims, he was always asking questions. What he wanted to do, we figured later, was tie up as much high land as he could from Chatham Bend to Lost Man's River, maybe all the way south to Harney River, then file a claim the way Santini done. Santini knew his way around the law, and Watson went to him for help. But rumors about E.J. Watson had commenced to wander, and maybe Ed figured he needed an upstanding citizen to back him up.

Well, I wasn't there so I don't know what happened, but Elijah Carey said he seen it. Dick Sawyer always claimed that he was there, Dick never missed much, and he told me pretty good about it, too. Santini was our leading citizen, and he was also the outstanding farmer, nobody near him, mostly cause he owned all the good land. Chokoloskee is just one big mound that them old Calusas started up from scratch. Tomatoes did fine high on the mounds, sugarcane down on the flats, with any vegetable you wanted in between. By 1884 Dolphus Santini had over two hundred alligator pear trees, and he also had Jamaica apples, sour and sweet oranges, bananas, guavas- biggest farm in that part of the country. Most all our Chokoloskee produce went south to Key West, cause Key West could claim eighteen thousand head if you was to count Yankees and nigras. In them days, Fort Myers, the biggest city in Lee County, never had but seven hundred. On the coast between, not counting Injuns, I don't believe there was two hundred people, and half of 'em lived on Chokoloskee Bay.

Dolphus had been hearing a sight more than he cared to about this feller Watson down on Chatham Bend, how Watson raised up bigger hogs than anyone around, how Watson could grow tomatoes on a orster bar, could grow him damn near anything and a lot of it. He had also heard rumors that Watson was a wanted man. Dolphus was a drinker, too, and that night he was drunk. According to Captain Elijah Carey, who was in the thick of it, Santini advised Mister Watson that the State of Florida would not give preemption papers to any citizen who had not paid his debts to society, said Watson better look out for his own business.

Watson didn't show a thing, just kind of nodded, like what Dolphus said made pretty good sense. Then he put his hand into his pocket and moved up alongside Dolphus, never spoke, and the whole crowd skittered to the side like baby ducklings, that's how fast they made that man some room. And this was before they knew what they know now about Ed Watson.

It was the look on Watson's face that scared 'em worst, or that's what Lige said. Watson could cuss him a blue streak when he got aggravated, but the worse he cussed, the easier you felt, cause he'd end up saying something so outrageous that the whole outburst would collapse, he'd bust out laughing. When he was truly angry he went cold. That ruddy face went stiff and dead, it turned to wood. What Elijah Carey noticed was, them stone eyes never blinked but once-that's how come he noticed it-and that blink was very, very slow.

Though Watson hadn't touched Santini, he stood much too close, he had ol' Dolphus backed against a table. Then he whispered how he hadn't heard too good, but it sure sounded like some dirty guinea slander. Would Dolphus care to make his meaning plain? Watson spoke to him very soft, and that soft voice should of been a warning, but Dolphus was too puffed up to hear, he probably thought he had this feller buffaloed.

The whole auction room fell still, but Dolphus was too full of his own noise to hear that quiet. He cleared his throat and smiled at all the men, winking one eye, and then he says, 'Our state of Florida don't welcome desperados on the run from somewheres else.'

Watson's bowie knife was at his throat before he finished. Watson drew a thin red line, then told Santini to beg his pardon or have his throat cut. Santini was too scared to talk, so Watson went ahead and cut his throat, near took his head off, spattered blood across three bushel of cucumbers. Would have finished the job, too, if they hadn't