this old hog thief Waller how to work a ax, maybe he could yoke her up alongside Dolphus when time come to plow. Or maybe-he said this real serious, lifting his hat-him and her could get yoked up together when poor ol' Green had drunk hisself under the table.
Well, they laughed hard over that one, too, all but Old Waller. I seen straight off Waller was sweet on Hannah, cause she was handsome way a man is handsome-looked like a man wearing a wig-while he was ugly, and lame, too, all bones and patches. From the wear on him, he'd had more rough in life than smooth, and had that habit. Watson was tipping his hat to him-this was the bully that come out when he was drinking-and Big Hannah looked across at that old man of hers, see what he'd do. But Waller only belched and then looked vague, like
Before she drifted down to Chatham Bend, this Hannah Smith from the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia had been around the Bay a year or two. Had a sister, Sadie, was camped across the Glades northwest of Homestead, where they call Paradise today. Their folks got word to Sadie that Hannah was at Everglade, and asked would she kindly pay a call on her little sister, see if she was getting on in life all right.
Now Sadie Smith was well knowed as the Ox-Woman, and when she found out that Everglade was clean over to the other side of Florida, maybe two-three months around to there by land and sea, she bided her time until the dry season, then hitched up two young oxen and cut and burned and hacked her way across the Everglades by cart. First time
Up to that time Hannah Smith was the biggest female ever seen around these parts, she was knowed as Big Squaw to the Injuns. Well, Sadie went a whole hand bigger, six foot four, built like a cistern, with a smile that split her whole face like a watermelon. Said she was hunting Little Hannah, aimed to come up with her little sis or know the reason why. Well, there weren't one thing little about neither of 'em, and there was two more, bigger yet, back up there in the Okefenokee, that's what we was told by that there Ox-Woman. Said her sister Lydia was so big she would sit in a rocker on the porch, holding her husband in her arms, singing him lullabies. Married at sweet sixteen, Sadie said, but her husband got hung at Folkston, Georgia, so she took work hauling limestone and cutting crossties for the railroad. Ran a barbershop in Waycross for a while before she went off to have a look at Florida, said she could handle a razor so good she could shave a beard three days under the skin. I'll go along with that one, too, cause that big woman, and Hannah, too, could work a ax good as any man I ever saw, made that ax sing. That was the old style of pioneer womenfolk, come down out of the Appalachian mountains. Don't make females like that no more, or we'd have one running the whole country.
Hannah had her a sweet voice to go with her feats of strength and winsome ways. In the evenings she would haul on her other dress and set out on McKinney's dock, singing 'Barbry Allen' to the Injuns that was in to trade. Remembering the way she was out there, that big old heap of womanhood just a-singing so sweet under the moon over the mangroves, and them Injuns by their fires staring past her-that's their polite way of keeping an eye on a wild thing that might turn dangerous-that picture still gives me the shivers just to think about it. Course I was too young for her, and probably too small, one way and another, and besides I aimed to marry up with Nettie Howell.
Tant Jenkins, now, Tant was an expert in the hunting line, always claimed that common labor disagreed with him, and I told Tant if he was smarter'n what people said he was, he'd send away to the Okefenokee for one of them big lonesome sisters, do his chores for him, keep him in whiskey, and rock him to sleep when he come home at night drunk and disgusting. And Tant said, 'Best keep talking, boy, I ain't heard nothing wrong about her yet!'
So them giant girls from the Okefenokee had a real reunion, and they drunk Tant and two Danielses to a standstill, with a young Lopez thrown in. Sadie said them four fine boys sure made a body feel at home, long as they lasted. Only trouble was, she couldn't find land enough to farm here, said she needed ROOM! Next day she hitched her oxen up and trundled north, found a good big hammock in the cypress east of Immokalee, lived on there quite a while and died there, too, while she was at it. Might been from heartbreak over Little Hannah.
It was not so long after Sadie left that Hannah decided she would try her luck down Chatham River. She had got sick of farming all alone up there at Needhelp, and was pining away as you might say for her mangy old admirer, who had went down ahead to tend Watson's hogs, help cut the cane. Now he was back to fetch her and had Watson with him.
This man Waller, Watson was saying, might act like a Godfearing farmer but he'd never amount to nothing more than exactly what he looked and smelled like, and the first time a hog was missed at Chatham Bend, a well- knowed hog thief might come up missing, too.
Waller could laugh over coming up missing but he couldn't laugh none about Hannah, cause he was in love, and women in his life was very, very few and far between. Matter of fact, Big Hannah was the first, and he didn't care who knowed it. Said, Made my old mama a promise on her deathbed that her virgin boy would go to his grave as pure in the Lord as the first day she wiped his bottom. Them words, he said, made his old mama die happy. But Satan had sent this big Smith girl to Needhelp, and she is stronger'n what I am, Old Waller hollered, and next thing I knowed about it, boys, she had me down and was doing something dirty!
Meantime Big Hannah fetched her stuff, had all she owned save her ax and gun in a burlap sack she could swing across her shoulder with one hand. The day she went down to Chatham Bend was the last day on this earth I ever seen her.
That big bashful virgin and her ragtag old man-he wasn't much more than Watson's age, but looked like he'd come around the bend a second time-they lived with all their sinning in the Tuckers' little shack on a knob of ground not far downriver from the sheds and workshop. Hannah cut fuel for the syrup boiler, helped the young missus with the kitchen and the chores, then washed up good under the arms and lugged her hog thief home, put him to bed. Ed Watson claimed they yelped all night like a pair of foxes.
MAMIE SMALLWOOD
Mister Watson kept bad company but doted on his family, and anyone as ever seen him said the same. 1907, he took Edna home to Columbia County for the birth of little Addison, and her Amy May was born at Key West in May of 1910. Mister Watson would not stand for having his young wife pawed over in her pregnancy by that barefoot old man down in the Islands, using his oyster knife for the delivery, more than likely. Ted didn't like it when I talked like that, claimed Mister Watson had nothing against that old mulatta, he just wanted the best there was for his young Edna. But Ted only said that cause them people was his customers and he didn't want 'em switching to McKinney's.
Excepting maybe for Gene Hamilton, who was ashamed about his family, Ted didn't like that bunch no better than I did. Didn't know their place, or never paid attention to it, one. Course you'd have to say that Old Man Richard knew his birthing business, because there's quite a few was shucked by him down in the Lost Man's section that growed up none the worse for wear.
Long before Amy May was born, Mister Watson had the Bend right back to where it was the best farm in the Islands, never mind his unpaid legal debts. The word was out that field hands were welcome on the Watson Place, no requirements of sex nor color, no hard questions. No real trouble down there neither, not to speak of, or we'd of heard about it from Miss Hannah, who kept in touch with her many friends at Chokoloskee. Mr. Jim Howell, whose daughter Nettie was engaged to my brother Bill, Jim Howell worked down there one harvest season, and Mister Watson made a fast worker out of a slow one. Jim Howell said he was 'scared to death the whole durn time' but never got treated better in his life. Even folks who lived in dread of Mister Watson began to cheer up some and crack some jokes, cause it sure looked like that man had changed his ways.
First one give me a clue there might be trouble was Henry Thompson, who still ran Mister Watson's schooner now and then. Henry mostly stayed down there at Lost Man's, he wasn't on the Watson Place no more, but he had worked for that man since a boy and knew his ins and outs as good as anybody.
One day Henry was trading in Fort Myers when an old darkie come up and asked if her son was still hoeing cane down there for Mister Watson. Said the colored there on Safety Hill had no word from the missing man for
