Killing Mister Watson

Seen through the broken branches, in the onshore wind, the launch coasts down on Smallwood's landing, just west of where the dock had been before the storm. Ted's heart pounds so that the boatman must surely feel it and take warning, must sense the islanders in the dark trees.

In the last light the postmaster sees little Addison hid in the sea-grape, spying on all those grown-up men with guns. Smallwood's voice breaks when he calls the boy, and goes unheard. Hurrying down the steps, he does not call again.

What had he feared? That his neighbors would denounce his call as a shout of warning?

Warned or not, the man would come in anyway.

Now Henry Short glides like a shadow from the trees, crossing behind the men, down to the shore. He wades without a splash into the water, just to the right of Bill House and Bill's father.

A suck and wash as the bow wave slaps ashore. Time stops, spun upward in a vortex. Smallwood's heart caroms, his hands rise to his ears.

The boat stem crunches old dead mollusks. Silence.

The earth turns. A quiet greeting, an exchange of voices. The men drift forward, spreading out along the water. Smallwood gasps for breath. With the day of reckoning unbearably deferred, the postmaster's relief is mixed, without elation.

Soon Mamie and her friend venture outside. They talk and smile to ease their nerves, starting down the little slope toward the water.

A twig snaps and the twilight stiffens. A hard shift, the whip crack of a shot, two shots together. There is time for an echo, time for a high shriek, before the last evening of the old days in the Islands flies apart in a volley of wild fire.

The young woman stands formally before his house, as for a picture, brown dress darkened by the dusk, face pale as salt.

Mamie runs to her, but it is she who takes the sobbing Mamie to her bosom, strokes her hair, regards the postmaster over his wife's shoulder without the mercy of a single blink. She appears calm. It is Mamie who has shrieked; he can still hear it. He wanders toward them, feeling weak and shy.

Mamie twists away from him, mouth working. In a low and awful voice she says, 'I'm leaving! I am leaving this godforsaken place! I'm leaving!' The children stare. He shoos the little girls inside, to the staccato of boys' hoots and scared dogs barking. When little Thelma whines, he shakes her hard. 'Inside, I said!' At the fury of his voice, her face disintegrates, she runs into the house.

The young woman goes to her little boy, who has tripped and fallen in his wailing flight and has patches of hurricane mud daubed on his knees. She pulls him to her, as if away from the armed men, who are milling in the dark like one great animal. Some turn to stare.

In a moment, she will crawl under the house, dragging her brood into the chicken slime and darkness.

'No, Lord,' she whispers, as the terror overtakes her.

'Oh, dear God,' she moans.

'Oh Lord!' she cries. 'They are killing Mister Watson!'

HENRY THOMPSON

We never had no trouble from Mister Watson, and from what we seen, he never caused none, not amongst his neighbors. All the trouble come to him from the outside.

Ed J. Watson turned up at Half Way Creek back in '92, worked on the produce farms awhile, worked in the cane. Hard worker, too, but it don't seem like he hoed cane for the money, it was more like he was getting the feel of our community, what was what and who was where. He was a strong, good-looking feller in his thirties, dark red hair, well made, thick through the shoulders but no fat on him, not in them days. Close to six foot and carried himself well, folks noticed him straight off, and no one fooled with him. First time you seen the man you wanted him to like you-he was that kind. Wore a broad black hat, wore denim coveralls over a frock coat with big pockets. Times we was cutting buttonwood with ax and hand saw, two-three cords a day-that's hard and humid work, case you ain't done it, and even them coveralls got sweated-Ed Watson never changed his outfit. Used to joke how he kept his coat on cause he expected some company any day now from up north.

Nobody knew where this man come from, and nobody asked him. You didn't ask a man hard questions, not in the Ten Thousand Islands, not in them days. Folks will tell you different today, but back then there wasn't too many in our section that wasn't kind of unpopular someplace else. With all of Florida to choose from, who else would come to these overflowed rain-rotted islands with not enough high ground to build a outhouse, and so many skeeters plaguing you in the bad summers you thought you'd took the wrong turn straight to Hell.

Old Man William Brown was cutting cane, and he listened to them men opining how this stranger Ed J. Watson was so friendly. And when Old Man William never said a word, they was bound to ask him his opinion, and he took him a slow drink of water, give a sigh. 'Never knew a real bad feller yet that wasn't nice and easy in his ways. Feller running his mouth all the time, I done this and I'm fixing to do that-no need to pay that feller no attention. But a feller just taking it easy, waiting you out-you better leave that man go his own way.'

So Willie Brown, strong and lively little feller, thought a lot of Mister Watson all his life, Willie Brown said, 'Well, now, Papa, are you telling us this man is a bad actor?' And his daddy said, 'I just feel something, is all, same way I feel the damp.' The men respected Old Man William, but there wasn't one out in the field that day that took him serious.

All the same, we noticed pretty quick, you couldn't draw too close to Mister Watson before he eased out sideways like a crab, gave himself more room. My half uncle Tant Jenkins claimed he once come up on Mister Watson letting his water, and Mister Watson come around on him so fast that poor Tant thought this feller aimed to piss on him. Well, it weren't his pecker he had in his hand. By the time Tant Jenkins seen that gun, it was halfway back into them denims, he wasn't so certain he seen it after all.

Tant was always brash and kind of comical. He says, 'Well, now, Mister Watson! Specting some company from the north?' And Mister Watson says, 'Any company that shows up unexpected will find me ready with a nice warm welcome.' Very agreeable, y'know, very, very easy. But he never let nobody come up on him.

For many years Tant Jenkins and myself run his boats for Mister Watson. Especially when Tant was drinking, which was mostly all the time, he would tease poor Mister Watson something pitiful. Told him that no friend of S.S. Jenkins had a single thing to fear from north or south, though sometimes east and west could give Tant trouble. Mister Watson got a real kick out of that. 'Well, Tant,' he'd say, 'knowing you are on the job, I'll sleep much better.'

Ed Watson had money in his pocket when he come to Half Way Creek, which ain't none of my business nor yours neither. In all the years that I knew Mister Watson, right up until them bad days near the end, he always come up with money when he had to. We didn't know till later he was on the dodge, and maybe even Half Way Creek-half way between Everglade and Turner River, on the east side of Chokoloskee Bay-was too close to the lawmen for his liking. Ain't nothing much out there today but a few old cisterns, but Half Way Creek had ten or a dozen families then, more than Everglade or Chokoloskee or anyplace else from Marco Island south to Cape Sable. Weren't hardly more'n a hundred souls in all that hundred mile of coast, counting the ones that perched awhile at the mouths of rivers.

Mister Watson weren't at Half Way Creek but a few days when he paid money down for William Brown's old seventy-foot schooner. Later he bought the old Veatlis off Ben Brown, and he always remained in friendship with that family. Used to stop over at Half Way Creek, talk farming with the Browns, every time he come up to the Bay. Ain't many men would buy a schooner that didn't know next to nothing about boats, but a man that is good at one thing most generally's good at another, and Ed Watson could put his hand to anything. Time he was done, he was one of the best boatmen on this coast.

I seen straight off that Mister Watson was a man who meant to go someplace, I seen my chance, so I signed on to guide him down around the Islands. I had already worked for a year down there, plume hunting and such for Old Chevelier, before I turned that Frenchman over to Bill House. Me and Bill was just young fellers then, a scant fourteen, but a man got started early back in them days. Until some years into this century, there weren't no regular school on Chokoloskee, so you went to work. Nothing else to do when you come to think about it.