Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  “My brother Harley, who was just a boy, he couldn’t get over Mr. Watson, used to spy on him hoping to see his guns, and listen to his tales of the Wild West. Mr. Watson was always kind and quiet-spoken, but all the same us little girls were all dead scared of him. We’d heard so much about how dangerous he was, and when he came, we just skedaddled, ran like quail. But Mama wasn’t afraid of him—she wasn’t afraid of anybody. He was always respectful and mannerly to our mama.

  “One time, we children went with Mama on a visit to Chatham Bend. That must have been in 1906 or 1907. You were there, you were called Lucius then. I bet you don’t recall the little Wiggins girls. We spent a week! Our daddy knew that his friend E. J. was a perfect gentleman, he absolutely trusted him to take good care of us. And sure enough, your father was so hospitable, so nice to us kids, so nice to his young wife—why, our own brother or daddy couldn’t have been nicer! And the food his cook put on the table, we never saw so much food in all our life! All the same, we children were still scared of him a little bit. In early 1910, Daddy moved our family to Fort Myers so we were not at Chokoloskee that October, but I still recall how shocked we were to hear that news!”

  Weeks blurted suddenly, “Your daddy was crazy some way, Colonel, only he was the dangerous kind that never showed it. That’s what fooled folks. How could a body ever suspect such a fine-looking man? I guess there aren’t too many like that, but every once in a while one comes along. Look and act like everybody else, joke and talk and go about their business, and all the while committing murders one after the other. Mr. Watson had a screw loose in his brain, and there wasn’t a thing his family could do!”

  “Weeks? You think poor Colonel likes to hear this kind of thing?” Though Lucius smiled out of affection for Weeks’s inability to mince his words, Honey patted his hand in her distress over her husband, as poor Weeks stumbled forward and broke more, trying to mend things. “All I meant, folks used to tell how E. J. Watson would murder all his colored help on payday! But those women in our family who lived there at the Bend, they knew Jack Watson good as anybody, and they never recollected that at all!”

  Lucius said quietly, “Those rumors about ‘Watson’s payday’ always sounded like some local excuse for why my dad was doing better than the other planters, Houses included.”

  Honey Daniels nodded. “Will Wiggins grew cane for years at Half Way Creek, but he always remained a good friend to your daddy. He never wanted to believe those bad old stories.”

  “Never wanted to believe ’em, no, but in the end he did.” Her husband cleared his throat again, frowning and worrying, torn between tact and integrity. “Our Jenkins-Daniels bunch stayed loyal to your dad, but speaking for myself—talking straight, now, Colonel—I never been too sure.

  “Me and my brothers Fred and Harvey used to fish them sea trout flats northwest of Mormon Key, and one early mornin before light—we was still anchored, half asleep—we was awoke by the sound of your dad’s boat, comin down out of Chatham River to the Gulf. Wasn’t nobody around the Islands then who didn’t know that pop-skip motor from a long ways off.”

  Lucius nodded. The Brave had been the first motor launch on that coast, thirty-foot long and nine-foot beam, with a trunk cabin forward, canvas curtains aft, hull painted black. Local fishermen nicknamed her the May-Pop, he recalled, from the eccentric popping of her one-cylinder engine.

  “Well, next thing they knew, this black boat come slidin out that narrow mangrove channel. One minute there weren’t no boat in sight, the coast was empty, and the next minute, there she was, popped up in front of them green islets like she had come downriver underwater. And darn if she don’t swing off her course and head in our direction, never hailed us, just circled where we was anchored! Round and round she went, two-three-four times, slow and steady as a shark, and nobody on deck, no sign of life.

  “Us Daniels boys had our guns loaded, cause folks was nervous around Watson territory. And we was set to shoot, that’s how darn spooked we was! And we was boys who reckoned we was friends with Mr. Watson, him bein so close to our whole Daniels family!

  “I can still see that boat today, as clear as I am looking at you now. She made them circles, then come in from dead abeam like she aimed to slice our fishin boat in two. We couldn’t figure what Mr. Watson wanted or what he might do next, all we could do was sit tight and wait him out. I believe he was warnin us off them fishin grounds at Mormon Key, and was just scarin us. Well, we was scared all right, we stood up and waved our guns, but Harvey had sense, he was the oldest, and he told us to lay our guns down quick, and make sure Watson seen us do it. Harvey told us to get set to jump, cause we could swim for shore if we had no bullets in us. He didn’t care to trade no shots with that man we couldn’t see inside that cabin. But at the last second, when we started hollerin out of our fear he meant to ram us, that launch sheered off and headed out toward Pavilion.

  “After that day, my brother Fred was bone leery of Watson. Couldn’t talk about nothin else but Watson, Watson. Fred Daniels weren’t but nineteen years of age, afeared of nothin, so bein so bad spooked was hard for him to handle. Fred never killed a man, but you knew straight off he could do that if he had to. It was somethin you seen in certain men, he was that kind. And Fred Daniels was a feller could pick up his rifle and nail the head of a terrapin spang to the water.

  “Now at that time our dad was captain of the clam dredge and my brother Harvey was the engineer on the old Falcon, which carried the clams north to the factory. On his day off, he worked on other boats as a mechanic. He’d done a lot of work on Watson’s boat and was owed eighty-five dollars, which could buy you a pretty good motor back in them days. I recall the sight of Ed Watson at Pavilion, working on his boat with Harvey, the broad strong back of him stretchin the stripes on one of them old-time mattress-tickin shirts, and the black hat, and them sunburnt ginger whiskers. Mr. Watson was a good boatman, and generally a good man to do business with, but this was along toward his last year when he was dead broke from his troubles in north Florida, and had fell behind on all his debts for quite some while. At this time when he scared us so bad, he had not give Harvey what he owed, and had tried to put him off another month.

  “So hearin that, Fred Daniels said, ‘Well, now, Harvey, let’s go pay that feller a night visit. We’ll set in the reeds across from his damn house, and at daybreak when he comes outside, I’ll pick him off for you.’ He meant it, too. But Harvey was the other kind, thoughtful and careful—he’d sooner lose money than see some man gunned down. And he knew his brother was hotheaded, and might not have such a good plan as he thought. So when Fred swore he would go ahead without him, Harvey took him by the shoulder and he shook him. Said, ‘Maybe you ain’t doin this to settle up my debt, ever think of that? Maybe you just can’t live on the same coast with a man who scared you for the fun of it.’ Well, Fred gets hot and hollers at his brother, but bein dead honest, he can’t fool himself, and in a minute he admits it, comes right out with it. But that don’t mean he ain’t still furious, and he hollers out how one of these days he’d fix that sonofabitch so he don’t scare nobody no more!”

  Weeks’s eyes were wide behind his glasses. “That goes to show you how much fear and anger people felt, and just how near Ed Watson come to being killed before they killed him.”

  The wind tossed the royal palms along the river. As they walked along, Weeks glanced unhappily at Lucius, who showed no expression. “Folks was deathly scared of Mr. Watson, that’s a fact. It was always told how killing people never bothered him a bit, he would kill women if he had to. They said Belle Starr weren’t the only one, not by a long shot. Had another woman working for him, great big woman, this was in the last of Watson’s days. She was the one whose body floated up out of the river, she was the one led Watson to his grave.”

  “He did not kill Hannah Smith, that I can promise you.”

  “Nosir, I ain’t claiming that he killed her. But I ain’t never been so sure he weren’t behind it.” Weeks s
topped walking. He turned to look his old friend in the eye. “You ain’t askin my opinion, Colonel, and likely you don’t want it, but I better tell you anyways, just so we’re straight about it.” He took a deep breath. “I reckon the whole thing come out just about right. E. J. Watson was a coiled rattler, you never knowed when he was going to strike. I said that once where your sister Carrie heard it, and she told me she would not forgive me till the day she died and maybe a good while after!”

  Honey sighed, shaking her head over her husband. “Carrie has had a dog’s share of misfortune, but she’s still full of life! Everyone in town knows Carrie Langford! Course we aren’t in her social circle but we know her, too!”

  Weeks Daniels nodded. “Yessir, your sister has plenty of spirit, and she sure needed it after Banker Langford died! Remember when she opened up the Gulf Shore Inn, down at Fort Myers Beach? That was back in Prohibition times, you was in the Islands. Had kind of a speakeasy in back, but Sheriff Tippins never bothered her at all. Carrie was along in her late thirties, she’d put on some heft, but she was a fine-lookin widder woman all the same. Anyways, she got hooked up with a fish guide at the Beach. Capt. Luke Gates on the Black Flash—”

  “Oh goodness, Weeks!” his wife protested. But her husband wore that dogged look, having no idea how to go about not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God. “So one night I was in there when Gates’s wife come in—thin scratchy little blonde, she was just a-stormin! Run right over and tore into her husband where he was settin at the poker table. ‘See you, raise you five,’ he told them men. Never lifted his eyes up off the cards. And when his wife picked up his whiskey glass and let his liquor fly into Luke’s face, he never blinked. Never even reached to wipe his face! Kept right on studyin the cards with the whiskey runnin off his cheeks like nothing happened, like that hard little blonde weren’t even there.

  “Makin no headway at the poker table, his wife let fly an ugly speech about Carrie Langford’s morals or the lack of ’em, and how Carrie had come by her bad character real natural, on account of her daddy was the well-known murderer Ed ‘Bloody’ Watson. Well, darned if this banker’s widow don’t ring open the cash register, take out a revolver, and bang it down hard on the bar. And she said, ‘Let me tell you something, honey, that kind of mean and dirty talk is not permitted in my place just because some little fool don’t know how to hang on to her man!’ And seeing that gun in the hands of Watson’s daughter, that little blonde cooled off enough to run outside where it was dark. She yelled her dirty stuff in through the window, but nobody didn’t pay her no attention after that, and maybe her husband least of all.

  “Yes, your sister had some spirit and she had some style, and she could talk rough when she wanted. She liked to drink, have a good time, just like her daddy. She never mentioned him or tried to defend him, but she would not lie low or act ashamed about him. Some of her bootleg liquor trade might of come from the kind of nosy people who wanted to say they had a drink with Watson’s daughter, but nobody said nothing bad about him around Carrie.”

  They paused at the foot of the Edison Bridge to look at the white-painted brick mansion on the corner opposite. Walter Langford had built this house in 1919 and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1920. For a banker, poor Walter had never had much of a head for figures, Lucius recalled, and what he earned went mostly for appearances, so he’d left his wife with more debts than inheritance. Carrie got her two daughters married off, but she’d had to sell this fine brick house to do it, buying a smaller place down the street which in later years she opened up to lodgers. After Prohibition ended, and the Gulf Shore Inn, she had started a small restaurant on First Street called Miss Carrie’s Chicken. Being generous, Carrie spent too much, but she made shrewd investments, too, and was comfortable enough by the time the smoke cleared.

  “Methodists own that property,” Honey was saying, “but Eddie Watson is so proud of it that he comes over here most every day now that he’s retired. Likes to tell the tourists all about the good old days.”

  Shading his eyes, Weeks peered across the road. “That’s him skulkin in the corner of the porch,” he said, “so I reckon we’ll say good-bye and let you go.” Lucius confessed that he’d been estranged from Eddie, and would appreciate it if his friends would help him ease matters a little, so the Danielses accompanied him across the street. At the porch steps, Weeks doffed his hat to the bulky figure, who came forward and said good morning a bit loudly.

  “Yes?” E. E. Watson moved to the top step, to bar their way. “What do you people want here, Daniels? This is private property, church property—” But before he could crank himself too high, Honey introduced the noted historian Professor Collins, and Eddie stepped back with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “Indeed, sir! Welcome! I am honored! E. E. Watson, at your service, sir!” He stuck out a moist hand. “Yessir, if it’s history you’re after, you have come to the right place.” Grandly he waved them up onto the porch. “My brother Lucius, he’s a historian! Comes here to consult me all the time!”

  “Eddie?”

  Despite the heat, Eddie Watson was dressed formally in unclean linen suit, white shirt, green tie, the whole ensemble yellowed and flecked with sad traces of repasts long forgotten. He peered at Lucius, looking worried and confused. For all his large manner, there was no life in his eyes, and Lucius pitied him.

  “Eddie? Forgive me—”

  “This was the Langford house, of course. My sister’s house. Her Langford in-laws lived over there between Bay and First, a big pink house, it’s now the Dean Hotel. Her husband was the president of the First National Bank, and Carrie and Walter entertained the Thomas Edisons and their friend Mr. Henry Ford. I believe Mark Twain—”

  “Eddie? You really don’t know who I am?”

  “What’s that?” Eddie peered again, in great alarm. “Of course I know! What do you want?”

  Lucius reached out to touch his arm, trying to calm him. “I need your signature on a petition. To save Papa’s house. And I’m preparing a biography of Papa, and there are some questions—”

  “Oh no, you don’t!” Eddie Watson pushed past him and tottered down the steps into the sunlight, where he turned and pointed an unsteady finger. “Damn you, you’re just stirring up more trouble, same way you always did! It’s family business, will you never understand? It’s family business!” He waved wildly at the house. “You never even came to see your sister, and you broke her heart!”

  “And I have to check with you about a list of men that I sent years ago to Rob—”

  “I took care of that darned thing, don’t worry! I took care of that!” But his eye did not hold, and he glowered at the Danielses. “None of you have any business here! You are trespassing upon church property! I am calling the police!” And he rushed off down the street, waving his arms.

  They perched like three birds on the porch steps, watching him go. “Will he really do that?” Lucius asked.

  Weeks Daniels nodded. “Poor Eddie’s always calling in complaints. Kind of a hobby. They don’t pay him any mind at all.”

  Far up the street, Mr. E. E. Watson, hobbling wildly, disappeared around the corner. The hollow street of the old river town stood gaunt and empty, as if that silhouette of his lost brother had lifted up into the sun like a stray cinder. He wondered if they would ever meet again.

  “Eddie always tried to be like Carrie—uptown people, wealthy kind of people,” Honey reflected. “Not that you ever spoke against ’em, Colonel.”

  “I never spoke of them at all!” he mourned. “I always thought they were ashamed because their brother was just a fisherman. Who drank too much.” He smiled unhappily. “E. E. Watson and his Augusta had to keep up appearances, after all. My brother is a gentleman, as I’m sure he is the first to let folks know!”

  “Oh, he’s not so bad, I guess.” Honey worried that she and Weeks might have been unkind. “In his younger days, Eddie was so friendly, remember, Weeks?”

  “Maybe
too friendly,” Weeks decided, after a pause. “Big hearty man, big but not strong. Always dressed up tight cause he wanted to look like Banker Langford’s brother-in-law, wanted folks to call him Mr. Watson. But I think he knew folks never took to him, not the way they took to his younger brother. Colonel was always just plain Colonel, just himself. He could go into any house in Florida and be all right.” In his spontaneous surge of affection, Weeks Daniels went red, glaring fiercely at the tourist traffic coming off the river bridge, as if expecting the arrival from the north of a long-lost friend. “I never heard one bad word about Colonel Watson.”

  “Better go talk to Speck, then,” Lucius protested, feeling disloyal to his brother and somehow fraudulent.

  Anxious to finish, Weeks Daniels ignored him. “I reckon Eddie done the best he could. Having his sister here in town gave him the heart to stay. Used to let on how his rightful home was back up north where he was born, used to talk about retiring one day to Columbia County, but the years came and went and he’s still here.

  “E. E. Watson, Insurance. New customers would say, ‘You the Ed Watson? You ain’t fixin to murder me, are ye, if I don’t pay up my premiums?’—joking him, you know, slapping him on the back. And Eddie never blinked an eye, he made the same answer over and over—Better watch your step, all right!—and went right on filling out the forms. Never occurred to them damn jackasses that Watson’s son might be a tender kind of feller with real feelings. The few that even noticed that the poor man minded, they would blame their own stupidity on Eddie. Said, ‘Why hell, if that feller can’t take it, he ought to have left town long ago, either that or change his goddamn name!’