Killing Mister Watson

Watson nods. 'That what you think?' Slowly he takes up his own gun and looks it over. 'Man that cold-blooded, now, no telling-'

'I don't know what I think.' Seeing his face, I am so scared I have to piss, I don't want to hear the end of Watson's sentence. Where's Bill Collier? All those men? Why don't they come?

Later I wonder why I got so scared, and why, so suddenly, my chest has eased and I grow calm enough to say, 'You're a suspect, Mister Watson. I can't throw in with you, and I wouldn't do it if I could.' I take a breath. 'As far as Lee County is concerned, you are under arrest.' When Watson says nothing, inspecting the gun, I rise carefully to my feet. 'You have a clean record in Lee County-'

'Oh, shut up!' He lurches to his feet, waving me at pistol point into the night. He totters and stumbles, heaving around to close the cabin door, turning his back to me. He doesn't hurry, that is his contempt. He knows I won't jump him from behind, and shout for help. He knows I won't try an arrest, though whether out of fear or pity, he will never know, and I won't either.

To his back, I say, 'I'm heading to Fort Myers, meet the Monroe sheriff. If you kill Cox or take him off the place before we get to Chatham Bend, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.'

Watson considers me, but already his mind is someplace else. With me in Fort Myers, he will have three days head start.

'Just you trot over to that store,' he says, 'and don't look back.'

Crossing the sand to Collier's store, I duck out of the light. Under the eaves, in a stew of bad emotions, I piss my tension and relief into the dark, nagged hard by the night wind, the heavy wash of seas in the night channel. When I get my breath, I fish out my cartridges, reload my gun.

BILL HOUSE

Ed Watson's house at Chatham Bend was strong constructed, probably the only building south of Chokoloskee that come through that hurricane of 1910 all in one piece. It sits on a mound as high above the water as any place down in them rivers, probably as safe a place as you could find. So you have to ask why, a few days before the hurricane, Watson took his family up to Chokoloskee, taking Dutchy with him, then went on back to Chatham Bend, unless he had an idea what might happen down there and wanted his people out of the way. Could be he wanted Dutchy out of the way, too, let 'John Smith' do his dirty work in peace. By now it was known on Chokoloskee that John Smith's rightful name was Leslie Cox.

Watson said he moved his family back to Chokoloskee because if their cistern flooded out in hurricane, they wouldn't have no clean water for the baby. He told Ted Smallwood that him and Dutchy was going back for the people still at Chatham Bend-Cox, old Waller, Hannah Smith, the nigra, and a Injun girl we never knowed about till later. Errand of mercy, that's what Ed Watson called it.

When he come back, he come alone, the day before the storm. Said he'd dropped Dutchy at the landing, told him get everything tied down for storm, get everybody set to go. After that, he said, he went on down to South Lost Man's, stopped in there to see if Henry Thompson and his people was all right. On the way back north, he swung in to the dock and hailed the house, but the place was dead silent, he couldn't raise a soul. Something didn't feel right to him, but he figured his people had already been picked up by passing fishermen. He came on up to Chokoloskee and was there late Sunday when Claude Storter come in with the news from Pavilion Key. But when Hamiltons showed up after the storm, they said he showed up at Lost Man's on a Friday, and he never got to Chokoloskee until Sunday morning. Where in the hell did he go in between? And what was Cox up to all them ten damn days between the murders and October 21st, when Watson went down hunting him into the rivers?

Could be Cox was laying for Dutchy when he got dropped off, that's what Watson said-and that's about the only thing he said that fitted with his nigra's story. What we don't know is whether Watson was behind it. I think he was, and my dad thought so, too. I think he knowed about them bodies in the river when he went down to Lost Man's to see Hamiltons, or be seen by 'em.

When Claude Storter brought word back to the Bay about cold-blooded murders at the Bend, Watson got terrible excited and upset, and some of 'em, like Ted, that wanted to believe in Watson seen his upset as a proof he was not guilty. Well, he was upset, that was sincere, cause he'd just found out how the nigra took the story to Pavilion Key, he'd just found out how Hannah Smith had rose out of the river, pointing her big toe right at his door! His partner had made a mess of it is what he just found out, and he shook his fist and swore to Christ that Leslie Cox would be brought to justice or his name were not Edgar J. Watson. Never saw a man so sincere in all your life.

Sure enough, all people could talk about was Watson's foreman. And seeing how dead scared they was of that murdering stranger, Watson decided he would change his story. Before he left, he allowed as how that Dade County pine in his strong house would stand up to any kind of storm, and his cistern, too. Confided to Ted how he'd brought his wife and children to Chokoloskee not on account of no old hurricane but because this murderer was out to kill him and his whole damn family. Why he had aimed to rescue such a feller when he went back to the Bend on his errand of mercy he forgot to say. And all this time he called Cox 'Smith,' like he was still concealing his identity, which made me suspicious at that time and does today.

Watson departed quick as he could, caught the high tide and crossed over to Everglade that evening. Stayed with his good friend R.B. Storter and persuaded Bembery and his boy Claude to take him north. From Caxambas, he walked across to Marco, and someone took him on to Wiggins Pass, where Naples is today. He borrowed a horse, took the sand track through the woods to Bonita Springs-called Surveyor's Creek or Survey back in them days. That's where he was on Monday night when the full force of the hurricane struck in, ninety miles and better, blew trees down right through daybreak Tuesday, blew down my father-in-law's house, blew down our old packing shed up Turner River. Come morning, with the wind still rough, Watson went up inside the coast to Punta Rassa. Caught a boat upriver to Fort Myers, found Frank Tippins gone, caught up with him next day at Marco. It was the day after that-this was a Thursday-that he come through Chokoloskee, bound for the Bend.

By now our people was dead scared of Watson, knowing it might been him ordered the murders. The way we tell it in our family, some men collected and my dad told Watson that he'd better wait there for the sheriff. So Watson declared he had waited long enough, cause Cox was going to escape unless these fellers stood aside and let him go. We noticed he weren't calling him John Smith no more. Declared he didn't need no help from no lily- livered lawman to take care of a skunk like Leslie Cox, that it was his bounden duty to them poor friends and neighbors that perished on his property to go down there before Cox could sneak away and straighten out that blood-splattered sonofabitch once and for all.

To prove how sincere he was, Watson said he would leave his wife and children hostage in his neighbors' care: 'The Devil take E.J. Watson, boys, if he don't return in two days' time with Cox's head!' He made that promise to kill Cox right out plain in front of everybody.

People was more scared of Cox than they was of Watson, and he made the most of it. A murdering family man was one thing, but they didn't want no murdering stranger on the loose. They told one another that if Ed did not kill Cox, Cox would kill Ed, and either way they had seen the last of both of 'em.

Well, by God, his neighbors cheered him, and they cheered again when he bought some buckshot loads at Smallwood's store for that old double-barrel. My dad and them never realized till he bought them shells that his damn shotgun were not loaded while he was persuading them to let him go. Dad still wanted to arrest him, but none of them others had the stomach for it. If I had been there to back my father like I ought to been-that's what Dad told me-we would of put a stop to him right there.

Well, I said, somebody would been put a stop to, that's for damn sure, and it might been you!

Oh, D.D. House was hopping mad. Said them damn fool men he was ashamed to call his neighbors had been 'bamboozled' by Ed Watson, or maybe 'hornswoggled' is what he said. Rest of his life, my dad blamed me for staying at House Hammock to clean up after the storm, the way he told me to.

So that first gang formed up to arrest Ed Watson watched him wave his hat at them as he went free. Only one feller waved back, and that was my brother-in-law, Ted Smallwood.

Truth was, our men were just ordinary fellers that didn't care to come up against no desperader, they was grateful to be buffaloed out of a showdown if Watson would just go and keep on going. So Watson talked his way into the clear again, just like he done so many times before. That feller was a borned politician, probably could of