Killing Mister Watson

how he aimed to put a stop to this damn feller that wouldn't pay Jim what he owed, and how Jim didn't have no choice but to keep his word. Open-and-shut case, says the new sheriff, but the case weren't quite so shut as what he thought, cause being Jim's wife, her word weren't worth the piece of paper it was wrote on. Had to let Jim go for lack of evidence, is what it was.'

'Jim went back home, I always heard,' I said, mild as could be, and Isaac turned and looked back south and east into the mist toward Fakahatchee.

'Might be killing a few over there today,' he said.

'Wouldn't be surprised,' I said.

Yeomans spat. 'Remember them two Texas fellers, Ted, at Lemon City? Said they'd come gunning for Ed Watson but got shot by Sam Lewis before they got it done?' Isaac said that Lemon City folks had dreaded Lewis the same way people on this coast were scared of Cox.

'Every time Sam Lewis pulled the trigger there was one man less,' Ted Smallwood said, like he'd said it more times than he cared to remember. Isaac complained, 'I was just coming up to that part!' and Ted said, 'Well, come up, then.' But when Isaac told about a boy at Lemon City who itched to put some bullets into Lewis, the men commenced to grow uneasy.

I said quick and hard, to startle them, 'I heard there were boys like that around Watson's body.' Nobody said a word. The brooding men looked out to sea again. Then someone said, Might been one them boys got his damn watch. Isaac finished his story quickly and said to Ted, 'Ain't that how you remember it?' And Ted said, 'Close enough, I guess.'

'Anyways,' said Isaac, cross, 'them two Texans from Dallas was friends of Belle Starr, and they aimed to find the yeller-bellied skunk that bushwhacked her.' And Ted said, 'Well, that was only rumor, Isaac, and them two was in no shape to confirm it.' And Isaac said, 'Yessir, them Texas gunslingers was hunting E.J. Watson! Ted Highsmith told that to Ed Brewer. Ted Highsmith, he allowed as much to anybody as would listen!'

'Ed Highsmith,' the postmaster said.

Isaac Yeomans was ready to fight, but Bill House told him to simmer down or he would throw his little carcass in the water.

This was only the second time Bill House had spoken, he had kept himself apart, in heavy humor. I told him he was merely going to give an affidavit, and he said he disliked being taken to court when to his way of thinking no crime had been committed. Hadn't he explained to me that they'd all fired together, in self-defense? Was the sheriff questioning their word? 'Did the victim injure anybody first?'

At that hard question, the others looked around as if trying to recall if anyone was hurt. Bill House said, 'No. But he sure tried.' Angrily he turned his back, knowing I was trying to poke up trouble. He'd already told me that he'd liked Ed Watson-'a man couldn't help but like Ed Watson'-but had no doubts and no regrets about what happened. People living where there was no law was obliged to make their own, Bill House concluded, and he'd looked straight at me when he said it.

The Falcon put in for water at Caxambas-Arawak Indian for 'wells,' Bill Collier said. The men from Chokoloskee looked surprised. Old Man Henry Smith said he had lived along this coast most of his life, before some of the men aboard of here was even born, hardly, and never knowed Caxambas meant a goddam thing.

Like Everglade and Chokoloskee, the small settlement at Caxambas looked like a place blown in from someplace else. The hurricane had ripped the roof off E.S. Burnham's clam factory and smashed Jim Barfield's store, and kids were diving for his canned goods in the channel. All the families had huddled for the night up at the Barfield Heights Hotel, which sat there on an Indian mound a few yards above high water.

Josie Jenkins, who'd been brought home from Pavilion, had been drinking somewhat with her son Leroy Parks, and she dragged her little Pearl down to the dock to tongue-lash 'the men who massacred Pearl's daddy.' Pearl Watson was about ten at that time, and kept her scared red eyes turned to the side. She had taffy hair, a pretty face, a long, brown, skinny frame-too skinny and young, seemed like to me, to be wondering what was ever going to become of her.

'Shame on you!' her ma was shrieking. 'Shame on you! Took the whole trashy pack of you to bring him down!'

The small wild woman wore her long hair loose, which wasn't considered decent back in those days, and she tossed that black mop and cursed the men in no uncertain terms, till I warned her about causing a disturbance. Well, Sheriff, she said, a lady has prescribed herself a little spirits for a broken heart, is that a crime? But in the end she became dignified, and let her daughter take her hand, lead her away.

It was known by now how Josie Jenkins rode out that hurricane on Pavilion Key, how her brother Tant pushed her up into the mangroves with her five-month baby boy, and how that child was stripped away when a series of big seas washed over, and found again by some dark miracle after the seas went down. Josie hollered that her boy was taken by the hand of God and the Chokoloskee men said that was sure right, because the boy was the accursed infant of that bloody-handed sinner who had brought God's punishment down upon them in the first place, that's why his life was the only one lost in the Islands. 'The living proof'-that's what Charley Johnson called the perished boy.

When I brought the men into the courthouse, young Eddie Watson, the deputy court clerk, stood up behind the desk. I'd hired him when he came back from north Florida because Walt Langford asked that favor, and Eddie promised I'd have no cause to regret it, and I never did, or not until that day.

The damned young fool, all red in the face and dropping papers, claimed he'd come in to finish up some work on his day off.

I decided not to introduce him, but one of the men knew him by sight, and the rest learned in a hurry who he was. Bill House whispered, Well, for Christ sake, Sheriff, how about giving that young feller a day off! I didn't like Bill's tone one bit, and gave him a hard look, which was returned, but he was right. I took Eddie Watson to one side and told him to go home, take the day off, I'd find someone else to record the deposition. Eddie said, no, he wasn't going to flinch from them damn lynchers. As deputy court clerk, he got paid to do a job, and he aimed to do it, he declared, hoisting his chin as I struggled to control my aggravation.

Young Eddie resided at the boardinghouse of our erstwhile saloon keeper, Taff O. Langford. Whatever he knew about his daddy's trial in north Florida two years earlier he kept entirely to himself, so what his heart's opinion of it was, I could not say, but since returning to Fort Myers, he had missed no chance to announce he was not and never had been E.J. Watson Junior. Said he was his own man, Mr. E.E. Watson.

Eddie fetched his pad and sat himself in the clerk's chair, stiff as a stick. In his rufous looks, he took after his daddy, he had the same kind of husky mulishness, but he lacked the fiery color and bold eyes.

The men seemed more uneasy than young Eddie. Some tried to look outraged when they testified, to justify themselves, others looked peaked and sad, as if to hint that their experience had hurt them worse than it hurt E.J. Watson. A couple tried to smile at Eddie, who ignored them. That boy set it all down in his notebook as if reporting a church supper for the Press. When the men were finished, he whacked his notes hard with his pencil and slapped his book shut, to show just what he thought-Never mind all this lying and false witness, you men lynched him!

Bill House nodded at Eddie before he began his deposition, friendly but not anxious to make friends. He didn't smile. As Eddie took down Bill's account of how he and the rest shot Eddie's dad to pieces, it was easy to see that House felt worse and worse. But this was Chokoloskee's version of the Death of Watson, and the affidavit of William Warlick House spoke for them all. The others added only a few details. Ted Smallwood came last and testified he had not witnessed the shooting but 'I sure heard it.' Said, 'Far as it went,' he had no reason to doubt what House had said.

That was that. I got Smallwood and a couple of others to sign their names, and the rest of 'em took plenty of time drawing their Xs, to make certain it weren't mistaken for someone else's. I told them they could go back home and wait for the grand jury to decide if and when they were going to be indicted.

'You decide if we are criminals,' House said. 'That what you mean?'

'Sheriff don't get to decide that,' I notified him. 'Least not in court.'

Walter Langford and Jim Cole arrived in time to hear me say 'grand jury,' and Cole started hollering before I finished. How could a grand jury convict when the only eyewitnesses were the defendants? According to the American Constitution, these here men could not be compelled to incriminate themselves. Why, it made no goddam fucking sense, he yelled, to summon a grand jury-!