Ted heard me say that and he didn't like it, but I just set my jaw and wouldn't look at him. In my belief I said the truth: Ed Watson's nigra must of had a reason.
By that time Mister Watson was long gone, headed for Everglade. He knew from hard experience, he'd told us, how quick a gang of flustered men can turn into a mob that has to
The storm came in next morning and built up all day. Our house was the old Santini house, come with the property Ted bought, 1899. Santinis built her well above the drift line of the hurricane of '73, and that were good enough in '96, and again in 19 and 09, but it weren't near good enough for that hurricane of 1910, which come roaring in around us like a dragon. Rain and sea was all mixed up together, the trees all around lost in the swirl until we couldn't see 'em anymore. Gray thick waves heavy as stones pounded our shore as if our island was way out on the open Gulf, and the island grew smaller, smaller, smaller, as the water rose. Seemed like our little bit of land had been uprooted and had gone adrift, far out to sea.
According to C.G. McKinney, who passed in these parts for somewhat educated, nine tenths of Chokoloskee Island and ten tenths of Everglade was underwater. Had to abandon our poor home and then the schoolhouse, which was ten foot above sea level. Edna Watson was up there with the Aldermans, he carried Addison, she had little Amy and was leading her Ruth Ellen by the hand.
Storm water rose up to its highest maybe four o'clock that morning, left a line on the wall ten inches higher than the school-house floor. The men begun to make a raft out of the schoolhouse, and the bang of hammers was all that could be heard over that wind. Meanwhile we hurried all the kids to the top of Injun Hill.
Poor Edna was close to hysterics. Having been raised far inland from the sea, she never believed such a fearful storm was possible. She promised her kids they would all stay in the schoolhouse and face together whatever dangers was to come. That way they would not get rained on, Edna told 'em. Finally we persuaded the poor thing that she better come uphill long with the rest of us.
By the end of it, all ten families on the island was perched out like wet birds in the black weather. It was late October, don't forget, our teeth were chattering in the cold rain. All night we were staring at that rising water, until finally the Good Lord heard our prayers, and the thundering eased a little and that coast got a breath, and we seen that the seas weren't climbing any more but sucking themselves back down into the torrents, leaving behind dark dripping silence, mud, and ruin.
At daybreak, this was the eighteenth, there was no real dawn at all, it stayed half-dark. The water still swirled around our house, and what goods from the store weren't gone into the Bay were washed way back up into the woods. I lost my whole new set of china, and seeing that, I just shook my head and laughed and cried. Grandma House was hollering, How can you laugh, girl, with all your livelihood lost in the mud? The former pert Miss Ida Borders of South Carolina was pretty disappointed in the Lord, seemed like to me. And I said, Well, Mama, I am thankful we are all alive and in one piece and lived to tell about it. This ol' mud looks pretty good to me.
Only one hurt was Charlie T. Boggess, who threw out his ankle bad, tending the boats. Jumped off a boat where the dock was underwater, and the dock weren't there no more. Fetched Old Man McKinney over here to yank him straight again and bind him up, and after that Ted lugged him on his back all the way across the hill to his own house, told him to stay there and not cause any more trouble. That's why Charlie T. still limped so bad, and why he was bringing up the rear when the posse came down to our landing here a few days later. He made it, though, he never was a feller to miss out on nothing.
SAMMIE HAMILTON
Sunday had some sun and a light wind, but by ten that evening, the sixteenth, the barometer commenced to fall too fast, with wind from the northeast, thirty, forty, fifty miles, and climbing. At dawn high tide come right up to the cabin, the seas was washing all across the ridge back of Lost Man's Beach. By noon that day the wind, still building, shifted over to southeast, then south, and that afternoon of October 17th, when she blew hardest, she blew steady out of the southwest, all the way across the Gulf from the Yucatan Channel.
I was only a little feller then, seven years of age, but I never forgot how the sky fell, that black and awful sky rushing off the Gulf and looming over us, the whole earth turning black at noon. Seas come in off the horizon, crashing on the coast, couldn't hear one wave break no more, it was all thunder. And the rain slashing straight across in sheets, and that groaning wind twisting the trees when the gusts struck us. When the thatch tore off of our poor cabin, what few worldly goods we had was snatched away. By nightfall, we knew we was the last ones in the world, with the whole universe caving in on us poor lost souls.
The cabin begun to shift a little after dark, though when high water come it was past midnight. We abandoned our old home for the skiff, let the wash carry us well up in the black mangroves, lashed the boat tight, and prayed to the Lord Almighty for deliverance. All huddled up, white-faced as possums on a limb, hour after hour, and worried sick the whole damn time about Aunt Gert's family. Well, them Thompsons rode the storm out in a skiff tied up into the mangroves, same as us. Shine Thompson-that's my cousin Leslie-Shine was just a little feller then, and Aunt Gert set a washtub over Shine to keep him dry. The hurricane washed Uncle Henry's sloop so far back in the swamps we never got her out. Might be there yet.
By daybreak, the worst of it was past, the wind was down, but all the banks of Lost Man's River was broken snags and thick gray marl, like a coat of death on every living thing. We could see ripped trees swirling past with wild things clinging, staring back as they was carried out to sea. Lost Man's Key was awash in a tide so high that the river looked a mile across, and the sea and the river were jumbled up together, thick chop and wind roil of a dead lead-gray, like all life color had been bled away.
I asked our mama was this Judgment Day that was spoke of so much in her Holy Bible? Was we in Purgatory or in Hell? And she said, No, honey, best I can make out, we are still on earth. And Grandpap James says, That is Hell enough for me. And Frank Hamilton, my daddy, told us, This here is like the Flood of Noah's time, come around again as warning from the Lord. And we knew he was thinking about Mister Watson.
Over that long night, Grandpap James Hamilton fell quiet, wouldn't talk at all, and after the wind died out a little, he looked all around that silence like he just woke up. Everything poor Grandpap put together in a lifetime was twisted down to trash or washed away, but he didn't act jagged and mean no more, he looked round-eyed as a little child. Finally he started in to murmuring, never stopped again. He was speaking in tongues, that's what my daddy told us, but I believe it was mostly his old memories of days gone by.
Come Wednesday, Henry Thompson took a row skiff up the rivers to the Watson Place, and was kind of surprised no one answered him when he sung out. Said that big house looked like she drifted in and stranded, cause everything around her was smashed flat, boat sheds, bunkhouse, little cabin, most of the trees, too. Uncle Henry come to the conclusion that Mister Watson had taken the whole bunch away before the storm. His schooner had rode it out all right, because somebody had lashed her tight to them big poincianas by the house, and they was about the only trees left standing.
Henry Thompson figured Mister Watson would not mind if he brought the
We arrived on Chokoloskee the 21st of October, 1910, and that was when we first had word about the murders. That news give Henry Thompson a bad start. Now that he thought about it, he recollected evil in the air, said the silence on the Bend was something terrible, said the reason Cox never sung out was because he had a bead on Henry from up under the eaves. Way we imagined it, Cox's mouth was set the way a snake's mouth sets, kind of a smile, while that shiny black forked tongue slithers in and out.
Fortnight later when my dad told Grandpap that the Chokoloskee men had killed Ed Watson, the old man shook his head. He did not believe it. Said, 'You just tell that bloody-headed devil he is welcome to my Lost Man's claim if he can find it.'
Most of Richard Hamilton's gang moved to Lost Man's River after the Hurricane of 1910 swept 'em off Wood Key. People would perch from time to time on our old territory, but them Choctaws or whatever the hell they called theirselves, they was about the only ones that never left. I'm talking about good steady folks was trying to make a
