Killing Mister Watson

back in Missouri, and Belle had a little education, she played the piano fair to middling, and she wanted above all to be a lady. She rented some good bottom land to Papa and asked Mama to tutor her, for her own betterment was the real basis of their friendship.

'Mama,' I said after a while, 'did Papa kill Belle Starr or did he not?'

Mama muttered, as if quoting, 'The case was dismissed because sufficient evidence was never brought against him.' Again, she was holding on to me for dear life, murmuring into my ear. 'Mister Watson never went to trial,' Mama said. I couldn't see her eyes.

It is one thing to hear rumors about Papa's dangerous past and quite another to see it written in a book! Captain Cole asserts that Hell on the Border will cause a public scandal. I heard him exclaim to Walter on the veranda, 'They's people snooping through this thing that couldn't read their own damn name, last time I seen 'em!' Right away he hollered, 'Begging your pardon, miss!' He knew I could hear him, he was looking around the way he does to see who he might be amusing. Mama says a man like this is always on the lookout for an audience, he never talks just to the person he is talking to. But sometimes he is sort of amusing, and when Mama is around, Walter has to frown real hard to keep from grinning.

Since that famous article was written a few years ago about our refined and cultured life here in Fort Myers, all our gentry try hard to live up to it, and dime adventure novels from New York about the Wild West and the Outlaw Queen are a popular diversion among our literati-an Italian term, our paper tells us, for 'people who can read.' Everyone in America today knows everything there is to know about Belle Starr, who is already immortalized in a book about notable American females. The women are on the march! Mama says, waving her knitting needle like a baton. She winks at me when Papa clears his throat. Being indoors in ladies' company, he stomps outside to hawk and spit and does not come back. That other time, he went all the way to Chatham Bend just to cool off!

Though Walter has said not a single word, Captain Cole assures us that the Langfords know about Hell on the Border (Who do you suppose showed them the book? sniffed Mama) and are 'much perturbed.' (It is a sign of ignorant pretension, Mama fumes, to use a long word or fancy phrase when a short and simple one will do.) Captain Cole told Mama it might be best if Papa remains in the Ten Thousand Islands at the time of the wedding. Mama assured him that our family would not require his advice on suitable behavior, and bade him a very cool good day. I have never heard dear Mama take such a haughty tone.

'That man has the manners of a piney-woods rooter!' she exclaimed, banging the door behind him, but she had already come around to his old hoggish point of view about the wedding. I had, too, and alone upstairs, I cried and cried and cried. How very often I'd imagined the beautiful church service and my dear Papa giving me away, knowing how handsome and elegant he would look there at the altar in his black frock coat and silk shirt and cravat, how much more genteel than these 'upper-crust crackers,' as Mama calls the cattlemen.

But but but-O dear and patient diary, most of my upset has been caused by my great shame, my eternal shame, for giving in to everybody's wishes! I was terrified Papa might drink too much, insult our guests, or provoke some violent quarrel (as he does regularly in Port Tampa and Key West, hints Captain Cole, and Walter knows about it, too). Heaven knows what might happen after that! Walter might withdraw from our marriage-or be withdrawn, poor dear, for nobody is quite sure, and his child bride least of all, how much our Walter was responsible for his own betrothal! Papa suspects that Captain Cole, who cannot keep those thick hands out of anything, was behind this fateful match from the very start.

Well, I love Walter, yes, I do, but no one can say any thought of this marriage was mine! I was simply told how lucky I was to make such a catch 'under the circumstances' (Papa's bad name), and not to be silly about it, either, because grown-ups know best. I am frightened, truly, and sure to be found wanting.

God bless dear Mama! Being educated by our local standards, I can cook and sew. I have taken care of baby brothers since the age of five, I can run a household (with guidance from dear Mama!). But is that enough? The poor little bride, if truth be known, is scared to death.

I am scarcely thirteen-can that be old enough to marry? Oh, everything is so embarrassing, I can scarcely look one person in the face! This body of mine in an awful awful way gives sign that it is ready, or ready for child-bearing is what I mean, but it is a child's body all the same. A grown man will claim possession of it, humiliating the poor child trapped inside!

I am a child, a child! It must be a child's heart that wakes me in the night, and starts to pound even in daylight hours. Is the heart part of the body? Or the mind? Are heart and soul the same? Mr. Whidden has pimples and upsetting breath and no good answers to such questions. (The Good Book says, the Good Book says, the Good Book says…!) He dares say I am much too young to 'bother my pretty head about such metaphysical dilemmas,' he dares say 'things will work out in the end.' What I don't 'dare say,' and least of all to him, is that what truly bothers me is this low creature of flesh, blood, and ugly body hair which imprisons the pure and spiritual ME! But since I can't mention my earthly form to Mr. Whidden, we simply ignore this coarse female vessel that fidgets and perspires in his face, pretending the poor girl's sweet virginal inquiries come from some higher and more holy source.

Why won't they understand? I am still a little girl, an overgrown child. I go to Sunday School, I work hard at my lessons, and Mama tutors me and my squirming little brothers. In the evenings after school these days we read 'Romeo and Juliet' together. Juliet was just my age when Romeo 'came to her,' as Mama reminds me when the boys are absent. She is trying to teach me something about life while there is time, but the poor thing goes rose red in the face at her own words, and as for me, I want to hide, I screech Oh Mama! and burst into tears out of pure embarrassment.

Juliet lived long ago, it is only a story, but here in my budding heart it is all too real. A grown man twenty-five years old, nearly twice her age, will sleep in the same bed with Miss Carrie Watson! Mama says he is a decent young man-what's decent about lying down on top of a young girl and doing ugly things without his clothes on! She says, Well, Papa will talk to him-what can Papa say? Don't touch a hair on my daughter's head-let alone her you- know-what-or I will kill you?

No, it's not funny in the least, I can't think why I laugh, the whole town must be snickering already! Oh it's so scary, and so awful! How can Mama let this happen? I'm not ready, I'm just not!

Sometimes I cry myself to sleep.

And sometimes, riding my horse along the river, there comes a tingling that seems very far from religious yearning. Am I a sinner for seeking out these shiverings? A sinner for my curiosity-no, worse-about being kissed? A sinner for imagining that 'the fate worse than death' might not be so dreadful after all?

With my sinful attitude, can marriage itself be a sin? Please God forgive me, please God don't let anyone find this diary, or I shall run and throw myself into the river.

One day out riding we saw a stallion covering a mare in a corral, and I was horrified (I hope), and Walter got all flustered in the face and seized the reins and turned me right around. I wanted to look back, isn't that awful? It is this darn old body following me around that wants to know so much!

Walter is very shy and gentle, he tries to tell me that he will be good to me, and will not hurt me, but he cannot find a way to say this without embarrassing both of us half to death. He supposes I have no idea what he is getting at, and for my part, I can scarcely hint I understand lest he think me wanton, and so we both nod and smile like ninnies, all pink and sweaty with confusion and distress.

These are the times I trust him most and love him best. He is so boyish, for all his 'hell and high water' reputation! He is truly ashamed over that cowboy's death, he blames his drinking for the accident, and for how terrible poor Dr. Winkler must feel. Walter makes no excuses for himself, he comes right out with it, says nothing would have happened if he and his cowboys had not tormented that poor old darkie. He vows his intention to make something of himself in his new job at Langford & Hendry, not just 'punch cows,' as he puts it, and waste his hard-earned dollars in pure devilment.

Dr. Langford hasn't long to live (we just hope he will be strong enough to join the wedding) and Walter wonders if Mr. Hendry will give him a fair chance in the business after his father's death or just ignore him as a young ne'er-do-well. If that should happen, he will quit the partnership and start out on his own. Since that terrible freeze in '95, Walter has had his eye out for good land farther south. He went down to Caxambas with Fred Ludlow to look at the Ludlow pineapple plantation, and now Mr. Roach, the Chicago railroad man who has taken such a liking to him, is very interested in what Walter tells him about possibilities for citrus farming out at Deep Lake Hammock, where Billy Bowlegs had his gardens in the Indian Wars.