Killing Mister Watson

name of the original ex-husband-had refused to abandon Pavilion Key before the storm, and her latest spouse, who had left without her, had been drinking for two days to drown his worry. 'Thought that was common knowledge,' he adds carefully, seeing Jim's expression.

'Best ask Mister Watson about common knowledge, Albert. Might could tell you some more common knowledge that you ought to know.'

In the hooting, Josie Parks's drunk husband raps his cup down hard, as if set to fight, but Captain Collier, waving his long arms, has no trouble at all deflecting his attention.

'Talking about common knowledge, Albert,' Collier says. 'One time on his way back from Fort Myers, Mister Watson got as far as here but needed a boat to take him down to Chatham River. Hiram Newell setting over there, he worked for Watson, but Hiram had his boat up on the ways, so them two went on over to Sawyer's, that right, Dick? And Hiram told Dick through the door that Mister Watson was outside, said he wanted to know if Dick would take him home. And Dick thought Hiram was playing fun on him, and hollers out, 'To hell with you and your goddam Mister Watson!' Then he come to the door, and when he seen who was standing right outside, he said just as nice as rice, 'Why hello there, Mister Watson! How the hell you been?' Remember, Dick?'

'I took that sonbitch home, yessir!' Dick Sawyer says. 'Too damn scared not to!'

Josie's husband yells at Sawyer, 'You always been his friend, ain't that right, Dick? Friend of Walt Smith, too. How do you like them two fine fellers now?' Dick Sawyer, as every man there knew, had been aboard Smith's sponge boat a few years earlier when Smith had killed the game warden, Guy Bradley.

'I worked with Walt Smith, that is right,' Dick Sawyer says, 'and I left Key West right after that and come up here. Cause I ain't Smith's friend after what he done, and I ain't no friend to Watson, neither, not no more!' Sawyer, frowning, pounds his fist, but he has to give this up. 'Ol' Ed told me that himself,' he says, and laughs.

'This here time,' Dick says, 'me and Tom Braman was having some drink in Eddie's Bar there in Key West, and Ed Watson banged in there roaring drunk and set up shots for everybody. And two black women came in and ordered rum, because Key West being a Navy town, it allowed niggers to act that way ever since the War Between the States. So Watson turned at the sound of nigger voices, and one of them females, she lifted a glass to him, she was drunk, too. There was a bad silence for a minute while he thought that over. He did not toast back. Everyone felt a whole lot easier when Ed got up off his stool without a word and left the place. Ain't nobody never going to see Ed Watson take a drink with niggers!-I hollered that out to make sure them women knew what was what.

'Turned out two niggers was waiting for their women right outside. One of 'em said how-do to Watson, so Ed took out his knife and went right after him. There come a shriek and Ed's friends ran out, thinking to keep him out of trouble. They yelled, No, no, don't do that, Ed! Better listen to us, cause we're your friends! And Watson rolled up onto his feet as the crowd backed off. He was panting, you know, squinting. When he yanked out a neckerchief to wipe his knife, every man flinched, thought he was going for his pistol. But all he said was, very calm and quiet, I don't have no friends. Not sorrowful about it, more kind of confused, you know, like he was trying to remember something.'

'Watson said that?' Jim Daniels looks surprised.

'I don't have no friends-that's what he said! You ask Tom Braman!' Dick Sawyer looks all around the place, triumphant. 'Then Ed put his black hat back on and went down to the wharf to where his schooner was. On the way, he run into a deputy, and he says, Depitty, best get your ass on up to Eddie's Bar before they kill someone. Course by that time, he had one them niggers killed already, and the other one figuring he might as well be dead. By the time a posse got back down to the wharf, his boat was gone, and nobody went north eighty miles to Chatham River after E.J. Watson, not on account of no dead nigger.'

'Way I heard that one, Dick, you wasn't even there! Heard it right from Braman and you wasn't there!'

'I wasn't there, Jim? Where was I at, then?'

'Way I heard that one, wasn't no niggers messed up in it at all. Ed Watson had some mixed-breed feller on the floor and was hauling out that goddam bowie knife, said, Maybe I'll fillet this one here in case he's a damn Spaniard, cause I never got to go to San Juan Hill.

'The Roberts boys, Gene, Melch, and Jim, was over from Flamingo, tried to talk him out of it. Gene Roberts was always Watson's friend, and he'd tell you that today. And Gene said, Come on now, Ed, you're looking for some trouble, and you don't need no more. You better listen here to us, cause we're your friends. And Watson looked around at all them men, then blinked as if he was coming up out of a dream. He wiped his knife off on the Spaniard's hair and snapped it shut, let that half-dead bleeding feller crawl away like he'd never noticed him in the first place. Got up and put his knife away and dusted himself off. Then he looked all them men over once again, and said real quiet, Boys, I ain't got no friends.'

'Haven't got no friends, more like it,' Sawyer says. 'Ed don't say ain't.'

Hiram Newell, who had served as Watson's schooner captain, clears his throat. 'Well, I ain't ashamed to say ain't, Dick, and I ain't ashamed to be in friendship with Ed Watson. If Tant was here tonight, he'd say the same. Ed Watson got him a big heart-'

'Jesus!' Jim Daniels snorts, and stamps the floor. 'Got him a big heart, all right, to go with them good manners. Too bad them Tuckers ain't here this evening, tell us their opinion! Jesus Sweet Christ!'

'Where is Tant, anyway?'

'Pavilion Key, unless he been washed off.' Daniels scowls again at Josie's husband. 'Had to stay on there, tend to his baby sister.'

'Your sister, too, ain't she? Half sister anyway.'

'Big family,' Jim Daniels says.

'The reason Ed and me ain't friends no more,' Dick Sawyer says, taking advantage of a silence, 'he got in trouble some way in Wakulla Springs and was headed back to Chatham Bend. Come through here, asked me to take him home. No moon that night and no stars neither, I didn't want to go. But I seen that stare he gets sometimes, and knew not to say no. We weren't hardly clear of Marco when he went below to sleep it off. Pretty quick he stuck his head out of the cuddy and looked around him at the night. He shook his head, says, Can't see much, from the look of it. And I said, Can't see is right! Can't hardly navigate! I was thinking he would tell me to turn back. And he said, Partner, if you run this boat aground, I guess I'll kill you.

'That was the first time I was not so sure Ed Watson was my friend. Might been one of them little jokes he makes when he is drinking, but I couldn't count on it. So what I done, I headed way off shore, let the flood tide rise a little before I tried them flats off Chatham River.

'Well, we never once scratched bottom. Landed Ed safe on his dock, and he yawned and stretched and told me then, You come on in and drink with me, have a bite of supper. So I said, I'd be proud to do that, Ed. Be with you in a minute. But when he went on up to the house, I just slipped my lines and drifted off downriver. He come out of his house and looked, but he never called. Just stood there in the moonlight up against that big white house and watched me out of sight around the Bend.'

Since my chance of finding Cox is small, I had to locate E.J. Watson. That's what I'm thinking when the door bangs open in the wind, bangs closed again with a man backed up against it, as the Marco men heave back, groaning like cattle. Hand hid in his baggy coat's right pocket, the man is watching nobody but me. Picked me out through the window, and picked out his own vantage point, as well. He knows that every man in this small settlement would be here in Collier's store, leaving the women to huddle where they could.

'Mister Watson.'

Bill Collier's greeting warns the room. Collier gives me a blank gaze of comical astonishment, but Watson hasn't missed the shift I make to free my holster, so I elevate my knee real slow with both hands clasped on it, resting my boot carefully on a keg of nails.

Watson acknowledges the signal with a small nod of his chin and draws his hand out of his pocket. He stays where he is against the door, to cover his back and the whole room at the same time. He looks windblown and sleepless, waterlogged, his ruddy sunburned face packed with dark blood, his breathing hoarse. Also, he appears alert, even exhilarated, not the least likely to make a move that would put him at our mercy. Being endangered, he is very dangerous.