Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  For once, his brother Eddie had been right. The crude warnings and drunken threats were followed by the hornet whine of a bullet across his bow, the echo of a rifle shot across the water. Then one day his boat was sunk on one of his rare visits to Chokoloskee. Hearing of this, the Harden family—the last friends whom he could trust—prevailed on him to head south around Cape Sable and fish out of Flamingo until things cooled down.

  During Lucius’s stay in Flamingo, where he lived at the house of his father’s friend Gene Roberts, his brother Rob had come looking for him in Fort Myers. During his brief visit, Rob told the Fort Myers family almost nothing about himself except to say that he was always “on the road” and had no address where he might be located. Rob had learned from Carrie that Miss Lucy Dyer might know their brother’s whereabouts, but all Lucy could tell him was that Lucius might be living near the Harden family at Lost Man’s River. Rob traveled by mail boat, then rowed a skiff for the last twenty miles, from Everglade to Lost Man’s, where Lee Harden, suspicious of this intense stranger (Rob had called himself John Tucker), would only reveal that Lucius Watson was away.

  Returning to Lost Man’s, Lucius was determined to dispense with the useless list he had worked on for so many years, always changing and adjusting and revising, always striving to get closer to the fact, the “truth,” which might permit him to put the thing behind him, and his father, too. He realized that, short of his own death, there was no end to that list, any more than there could be an end to life itself. Far from putting his heart to rest, its very existence had become a burden and a danger, rebuking him not only for his failure to avenge poor Papa but for the folly of his self-banishment to the Islands, and for the huge part of his life which had been wasted. How much better that time might have been spent in a real life with Lucy Dyer, raising children—that was his fresh new dream.

  That year, Lucius received word of Walter Langford’s death. He arrived in Fort Myers too late for the funeral. Carrie assured him that she understood, but it was plain that she could not quite forgive him for never having visited or written. “Nobody seriously expected you,” Eddie said sourly. With customary spite, from behind his hand, he informed his younger brother that the President of the First National Bank had “died of drink,” having failed to provide properly for their sister. As for himself, he was prosperously embarked on his own insurance business.

  During his visit, Lucius entrusted Lucy Dyer with a packet for Rob Watson in the vain hope that Rob might turn up again. Since he could not bring himself to destroy it, he enclosed the posse list, to avoid any chance of its discovery by the men listed and to be rid of it once and for all. But a few years later, in the course of changing households, Lucy would misplace the packet, as she confessed to Lucius in a letter which also brought word of her recent marriage to old Mr. Summerlin. So stunned was he by her abandonment (he had somehow assumed that his first love would await him forever) that he scarcely noticed her mention of the list.

  In the next years, he made a hard sparse living as a hunting and fishing guide and commercial fisherman, and most of the men accepted him again as talk of his list died down. His only trouble came about through his association with the Hardens, whose side he would take in a dangerous feud with the Bay people which had ended in the murder of two Harden sons.

  In 1947, when the Ten Thousand Islands were appropriated for the national park, Lucius moved north to Caxambas. There he found a warm welcome from the women and children of the Daniels-Jenkins clan, whom his father had always spoken of as “my backdoor family.” A decade later he returned to the University of Florida at Gainesville, where he accepted a teaching post as an assistant professor while completing his History of Southwest Florida. In his class was Sally Brown of Everglade, a lovely young woman with long flaxen hair bound loosely with rawhide at her pretty nape who had recently separated from Lee Harden’s son Whidden and returned to college.

  Sally made herself wonderfully useful in his work, not only as a researcher but as a source of information on the Island families. Of Everglades pioneer stock on both sides—he had almost forgotten that she was Speck Daniels’s daughter—she had repudiated what she perceived as the racism and redneck ignorance in her community which had made life so dangerous for her husband’s family. But as she ruefully confessed, her fierce tirades in defense of the Hardens had reawakened a lot of the mean gossip which that family imagined had been put to rest, until finally the Hardens themselves rebuked Whidden for not bringing his wife’s tongue under control. For this reason—and others—the marriage had come apart. “My fault,” Sally admitted, making no excuses.

  Sally Brown was passionate, intemperate, and very angry (he suspected) for more primal reasons than those that she invoked. Though never certain how much he could trust her version of local events, he liked her because she was generous and wry and because her high opinion of “Mister Colonel” Watson, learned from the Hardens, had made her delightfully affectionate right from the start. Indeed, he felt affectionate himself, and had longed to kiss her from the first day she came by his rooms to say hello.

  Lucius had been careful not to flirt with Sally, even in an avuncular sort of way. A courtly and old-fashioned man, he thought his need unnatural, considering their discrepancy in age. He also condemned it as immoral, since he was close to the Harden family and had been a sort of uncle to her husband, back in the early days at Lost Man’s River. Besides, he was unhappily aware of his emotional limitations, which all his life had made him choose loneliness over commitment, no matter how fearful he might be that his one life on earth would pass him by. One night in a bar, he had confessed to the attraction, denouncing himself as “a dirty and villainous old man.” Sally, who had long since known he was attracted, informed him that his whole attitude was ridiculous.

  Meanwhile, his History had been well received by the university press, which encouraged him to proceed at once with his biography of E. J. Watson. The proposal specified, however, that a pseudonym be used for both books, since the subject had already been cited in the History as a notable pioneer in Florida agriculture, and the editors questioned the suitability of extolling the author’s father in both volumes, all the more so when this parent—as they not so subtly reminded him—was indelibly associated in the public mind with something else. Thinking it dishonorable to hide behind another name, he withdrew the History.

  Sally Brown had applauded his intention to mend his father’s reputation, all the more so since E. J. Watson had always been a good friend to Whidden’s family, and like those Harden boys down at Shark River, had been “murdered in cold blood by those damned rednecks.” And it was Sally who finally persuaded him that a pen name was preferable to abandoning his project or damning his father with faint praise. Together they constructed a “family” pseudonym, L. Watson Collins. A year later, when the History was published, L. Watson Collins moved back to Caxambas, where he set to work on the biography, and placed the ads requesting information on his subject which would produce the Bill House deposition.

  One day at the crossroads store where he picked up his mail, Lucius received a formal letter requesting that he get in touch with Watson Dyer, in Miami. Attorney Dyer notified him that his father’s house was now officially scheduled for demolition by the National Park Service and offered his own services to help protect it.

  In the early years, Dyer explained, the Park had not bothered with the Watson Place, since its first task had been the construction of paved roads and facilities between Homestead and Flamingo that would open the eastern region to the tourists. But now, pursuant to Park policy that “the region be returned to its natural condition as a wilderness,” all sign of man was to be eradicated, even the rain cisterns and fruit-bearing trees. The old camps and shacks at Flamingo and Cape Sable, together with those at the river mouths and on the outer islands on the Gulf, had already been destroyed, and the Watson house on Chatham Bend was the only house left standing in the Islands except for the shack of an old lon
er who had been granted a life tenancy on Possum Key and the Earl Harden cabin at Lost Man’s River, which had been taken over as a ranger station.

  Although Lucius had heard these rumors from Speck Daniels, the formal notice was an unpleasant surprise, for the first and last house ever built on Chatham River would always be what his heart told him was home. Letter in hand, he strode angrily to the pay telephone outside the store. Over a bad line, after stiff greetings, Lucius demanded, “What do those idiots mean by ‘natural condition’? Before Indian settlement or after? Before which Indians? Do they hope to wipe out every trace of the Calusa? Those Calusa canals? It would cost millions just to fill them in, in all that backcountry! And how do they propose to level and fill without gouging more scars on a fragile landscape than they were trying to eliminate in the first place? If the Park wants the Watson Place back the way it was, it will have to bulldoze all forty acres of Chatham Bend into the river, because the Bend is nothing but shell mound, don’t they realize that? One huge Indian midden, built by human hands!”

  Like an unseen presence in the room, the lawyer’s silence commanded him to be still. In a moment, Dyer said, “Indians don’t count.” The voice was less ironic or cynical than plain indifferent.

  So far as the lawyer could determine, the Watson family had gone uncompensated for the claim on Chatham Bend, which in the aftermath of the great scandal at the time of the claimant’s death, none of his descendants had seen fit to pursue. If the Watson claim was valid, the old house might still be spared, and the land awarded legal status as an inholding within the Park for which life tenure, at least, might be negotiated. Could Lucius give him family authority to pursue this matter?

  “I’m afraid I can’t afford a lawyer—”

  “Pro bono,” Dyer said. “Sentimental reasons.” He reminded Lucius that he had been born at Chatham Bend and had been named after the claimant. In fact, he was just the man to represent the family, since his practice specialized in real estate law. He was well-informed about inholding cases and had excellent contacts, state and federal, which might prove useful. For the moment, all he required from the family was power of attorney, in order to file for a court injunction against any attempt by the Park to burn the house before the status of the claim could be ascertained.

  All right, said Lucius. But should the decision be left to him, he would gladly waive all claim to an inholding if the Park would simply restore the house and take good care of it—make it a historic monument, perhaps, to pioneer days in southwest Florida, the home of the pioneer cane planter E. J. Watson.

  He awaited a comment, which was not forthcoming. Watson Dyer sighed, then proceeded to observe that this proposal would be stronger once the claim was validated, since an offer of waiver before the claim had been reinstituted could only undermine its legal standing. Lucius was not certain he had grasped just what was meant, but he promised Dyer he would do his best to enlist the support of the surviving heirs. Excited, he also assured him that any claim that would protect the house could count on strong support from the numerous local families which had occupied the house at various periods since Watson’s death. Those old Island pioneers knew the historical value of that house, he said, more and more enthusiastic, and many others were bound to speak up, too! He could go talk with them!

  “Perhaps even the Dyer family will speak up,” the lawyer said, forcing a strange hard snort of laughter.

  “Yes. The Dyers, too,” Lucius said doubtfully. So far as he knew, Dyer’s mother was dead, and Dyer and his sister Lucy were not speaking, and the father, Fred Dyer, had been estranged from his children for years.

  In Dyer’s professional opinion (he chose that phrase), the Watson Claim could not be vacated or summarily dismissed if Watson’s heirs lent their support to it in writing. Well, said Lucius, Rob was dead, and Carrie and Eddie would want no part of anything that might stir scandal from the past, and Addison, who was not yet four when his father was killed, had been given his new stepfather’s name the following year and might not even know he was a Watson. As for the two younger sisters—

  “Looks like it’s up to you, then,” Dyer said smoothly, bringing the call to a quick end. “You’ll be hearing from me.” By cutting off the conversation before anything substantive had been decided, he made Lucius feel restless and a bit disturbed. He could not get a feel for Dyer, nor could he imagine what the man might look like. Surely he looked nothing at all like his gentle sister. How odd that neither of them mentioned Lucy, who years ago had been his dearest friend.

  Arbie

  Returning home that afternoon, Lucius was met on the dock by the molasses reek of a cheap stogie. In the tattered hammock on the houseboat deck, an old man in red baseball cap and an Army-surplus overcoat lay sifting pages, the bent cigar a-glower between his teeth. In the corner lay a dog-eared satchel. Before Lucius could speak, the old man removed the cigar and spat bits of cheap tobacco leaf, the better to recite from his host’s manuscript notes on Leslie Cox.

  “ ‘… an old man known by some other name may still squint in the sun, and sniff, and revile his fate.’ Same way I write! Not bad at all!” He rested Lucius’s papers on his belly. “Arbie Collins is the name,” he said, pointing his finger at Lucius’s eyes by way of renouncing that old drunk at Gator Hook and presenting a new, respectable identity. “Yep,” he said. “I had this idea about Cox before you even thought about it. Folks said Cox had been seen down at Key West, and another time right in the river park there at Fort Myers. Then I heard from this Injun friend of mine who used to be a drunk up around Orlando—”

  “Billie Jimmie, you mean?”

  Arbie Collins shook him off, impatient.

  “—that a feller who met Cox’s description had been holed up for years out on the Loop Road. That’s why I went out there in the first place, to hunt down that sonofabitch, ask him some questions. Never found hide nor hair of him. Ran out of money, never made it back.” He resumed reading.

  “What did you plan to do if you had found him?”

  Arbie Collins lowered the manuscript. “Same thing you did with that posse list of yours,” he snapped. “Pass the dirty job along to someone else.” Scowling hard, he hunched down again behind the pages.

  “You saw that list?”

  “Rob Watson showed it to me.”

  “I never knew that Rob ever received it!”

  Arbie Collins scoffed, using the manuscript page to wave him off. Every old cracker in southwest Florida had a story about that list, he said. The only man who thought that thing was secret was the fool who made it. He winked at Lucius, blowing smoke, then claimed he’d found the list among Rob’s papers.

  “You’re the one who showed it to Speck Daniels.”

  The old man nodded. One evening out at Gator Hook, noticing the name Crockett Daniels on the list, he’d called it to Speck’s attention as a joke.

  “Speck think it was funny?”

  “No, he sure didn’t.”

  “Mr. Collins? I’d like that list back.”

  The old man resumed reading, raising the page to hide his face. “That list is the lawful property of Robert B. Watson, who left his estate to me.”

  Lucius sat down carefully on a blue canvas chair. “Are we related? Through the Collinses in Fort White?” This old man, washed and clean-shaven, reminded him of his Collins cousins—slightly built and volatile, black-haired, with heart-red mouths and pale, fair skin.

  “Sure looks like it!” Arbie waved the title page, derisive. “ ‘L. Watson Collins, Ph.D.’!”

  Sheepishly, Lucius explained that the publishers had insisted on a pseudonym and also on citing his degree. That “Ph.D.” was ridiculous; he had not bothered to attend his graduation, much less used his title. In fact, he was not really an historian—

  “A historian.” Arbie grinned slyly at his host’s surprise.

  This raffish old man was somewhat educated. He was also careless, dropping and creasing pages, flicking ash on them. Finally Lucius sto
od up and crossed the deck and snapped his notes off Arbie Collins’s stomach, exposing the white navel hair that sprouted through the soiled and semibuttonless plaid shirt. “You certainly make yourself at home!” he said.

  “Well, I’m a guest. You invited me, remember? You sure don’t act too glad to see me—”

  “I don’t like people rooting through my notes—”

  “I found ’em.” Arbie Collins sat up with a grunt and swung his broken boots onto the deck. “Right where you left ’em, on the table inside. And they look to me like notes for a damn whitewash.” He stood up spryly and performed a loose-boned shuffle, snapping his fingers. “ ‘Notes on the Ol’ Family Skeleton.’ ” He cackled. “Clackety-click.” Like a skeleton danced on a string, the old man shuffled jerkily through the screen door. In a moment he was back, lugging a big loose weary carton. “The Arbie Collins Ar-chive,” he announced, setting it down.

  Politely, Lucius rummaged through the carton, in which dog-eared folders stuffed with clippings were mixed with scrawled notes copied out of magazines and books—mostly lurid synopses and brimstone damnations from the tabloids, dating all the way back to the newspaper reports from October and November of 1910. Most of the items were well-known to Lucius—the usual “Bloody Watson” trash, all headline and no substance. None was as interesting as the fact that this old man had made a lifelong hobby of Ed Watson.

  One coffee-stained packet of yellowed clippings slid from Lucius’s lap to the porch floor. Retrieving it, he recognized the top clipping in the packet, which had come from the official tourist guide to the state of Florida—ripped from a library copy, from the look of it. It described how the young widow Edna Watson, informed by her husband’s executioners that she might reclaim the cadaver by following the rope strung from its neck to a nearby tree, had inquired coldly, “Where is his gold watch?” That was certainly not poor Edna’s character, and anyway Papa had sold that watch to help pay off his legal debts, as Edna knew.