Killing Mister Watson

by Peter Matthiessen

  In the Ten Thousand Islands, the Bonton anchored off Shark River and also "inside of Pavilion Key," in pursuit of roseate spoonbills, egrets, boobies, and white pelicans. Farther up the coast, "we came to an island that had a palmetto shack on it where lived an old Portuguese named Gomez with his cracker wife. Mr. Chevelier had known Gomez some years before." This was Gomez or Panther Key, from which Gomez guided them on a hunt for roseate spoonbills (or "pink curlew") the next morning.

  Juan Gomez, like Mr. Watson, was a local legend in the Islands, still celebrated for the claim that in his youth he had been addressed kindly by the emperor Napoleon in Madrid, Spain, and had later sailed with a buccaneer named Gasparilla. By his own calculation, Gomez was 108 years old at the time of the Bonton's visit, and he was still there in 1900, when a visitor described this region as "that maze of intricate channels… a place that was once the refuge of pirates, and even now retains the flavor of bloodthirsty tales."

  Although harshly criticized a few years later by W.E.D. Scott (in the Audubon Society publication called The Auk) for "wanton destruction" at Tampa Bay in 1879, M. Chevelier was a dedicated naturalist. Doubtless the plume-bird shooting financed his scientific investigations, since he was collecting in Labrador and donating bird skins to the Smithsonian as early as 1869. Since Scott's day, three "LeChevellier" bird skins have turned up at the Smithsonian and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Scott himself listed seven rare bird specimens credited to "A. Lechevallier," including two short-tailed hawks collected at "Chatham Bay" in 1888 and early 1889.

  Jean Chevelier was drawn fatally to this wild coast, where he would spend the remainder of his life. In his first year he lived on the great Calusa mound on Chatham Bend, having purchased quitclaim rights from Richard Hamilton (see interviews); the Hamilton clan, which remained close to him, was also closely associated with Mr. Watson.

  BILL HOUSE

  I worked for the Frenchman for some years, guiding, plume hunting, and bird collecting, nests and eggs. Chevelier claimed he never shot uncommon birds except as a collector, and he liked to tell how he'd trained boys like Louis and Guy Bradley, also Henry Thompson and myself, not to shoot into no flocks but single out the birds we was really after. I guess that was mostly true, most of the time.

  Plume hunters never shot cept in the breeding season when egret plumes are coming out real good. When them nestlings get pretty well pinfeathered, and squawking loud cause they are always hungry, them parent birds lose the little sense God give 'em, they are going to come in to tend their young no matter what, and a man using one of them Flobert rifles that don't snap no louder than a twig can stand there under the trees in a big rookery and pick them birds off fast as he can reload.

  A broke-up rookery, that ain't a picture you want to think about too much. The pile of carcasses left behind when you strip the plumes and move on to the next place is just pitiful, and it's a piss-poor way to harvest, cause there ain't no adults left to feed them starving young 'uns and protect 'em from the sun and rain, let alone the crows and buzzards that come sailing and flopping in, tear 'em to pieces. A real big rookery like that offshore island the Frenchman worked, up Tampa Bay, four-five hundred acre of black mangrove, maybe ten nests to a tree-hell, might take you three-four years to clean it out, but after that, them birds is gone for good.

  It's the dead silence after all the shooting that comes back today, though I never stuck around to hear it; I kind of remember it when I am dreaming. Them ghosty white trees and dead white ground, the sun and silence and the dry stink of guano, the squawking and shrieking and flopping of dark wings, and varmints hurrying without no sound-coons, rats, and possums, biting and biting, and the ants flowing up all them pale trees in dark snaky ribbons to bite at them raw scrawny things that's backed up to the edge of the nest, gullet pulsing and mouth open wide for the food and water that ain't never going to come. Luckiest ones will perish before something finds 'em, cause they's so many young that the carrion birds just can't keep up. Damn buzzards gets so stuffed they can't hardly fly, just set hunched up on them dead limbs like them queer growths on the pond cypress limbs in the bare winter.

  The Frenchman looked like some kind of raccoon-regular coon mask! Bright black eyes and sharp brows, kind of a humpy walk, little thin, wet legs, all set to bite. Maybe his heart was in the right place, maybe not.

  Chevelier never did approve of humankind, and he purely hated the rich Yankees off them yachts who come whooping up our rivers in the winters, blazing away at anything that moved, purely hated fellers like Ed Watson, who shot up the best rookeries in spring. I told the Frenchman that to live here in the Islands, a man had to take everything in its own season, but that old fella would just cuss me out in French, waving that shot-up hand of his to shoo me off. Pretty quick, he would start in to yelling about Watson's big ideas about developing this coast, draining the whole Everglades while he was at it. L'Empereur! Chevelier called him. L'Empereur! That drainage talk went all the way back to General Harney, who come out on the wrong coast through Harney River, but it never got cranked up, y'know, till Watson's time. Well, they built them big canals and dikes, crisscrossed the eastern Glades, but this west part is more lonesome than it ever was, cause the big animals and birds are mostly gone. Used to call this place God's country, and we still do, cause nobody but God would want no part of it.

  It's true, we had no use for no invaders, and fast as the federal government put in channel markers for them yachts, we'd haul 'em out. Home people didn't need no markers, and we didn't want none. From what we heard, there wasn't a river in north Florida but was all shot out, not by us plume hunters but by Yankee tourists on the river steamers. Real hunters don't waste powder and shot on what can't be eaten or sold, but these sports shot at everything that flew. They crippled up a lot more than they killed and kept on going, just let them dead birds float away downriver.

  We never had no time for sport, we was too busy living along, fighting the skeeters. In the Islands we worked from dawn till dark, just to get by. Didn't hardly know what sport might be till we all got hired out as sport-fish guides and hunters. This was some years later, after the fish and game was gone for good.

  That Old Frenchman was fighting mad at some Yankee ornithologue named Scut who claimed right in a magazine that Jean Chevelier shot more birds than anybody on the Gulf Coast. "This foking Scut," the Frenchman said, "come here on his vacation to look at his fine feathered foking friends. Visit one big rookery at Pinellas, defam LeChevallier for the worse butch-aire in west Florida! Well, who it is buy my birt specimen? Who it is write that ivoire-beel wooda-pecker ver' rare, then go and shoot ivoire-beel wooda-pecker from the only nest he evaire find? Who it is? This foking Scut! Sham me among my colleague, attack-a me in Au-du-bon Society! All of the same, he buy from my Punta Rassa colleague this short-tailed hawk LeChevallier collect at Chatham Bend! And after I am died, you are going to see it! Damn foking Scut collect first short-tailed hawk in North Amerique! Wait to see it what I am telling it to you!"

  Sometimes his old plume-hunting partners Louis and Guy Bradley would come north from Flamingo, prospecting for new rookeries along our coast. We were glad to have the company, but we never passed along no information. Guy never said much but he looked at you so straight that you felt shifty just on general principles. He was the first hunter I heard say that plume hunting was winding down in southwest Florida. Guy Bradley said, "Plain disagrees with me to shoot them things no more. Ain't got my heart into it." I never did admit to Guy how I was collecting bird eggs for the Frenchman. Swaller-tail kite got up to fifteen dollars for a egg, depending on how bright that egg was marked. People all over America and Europe wanted them wild bird eggs, no telling why.

  One night the old man come home from Gopher Key, and I laid out a nice swallow-tail clutch next to his plate, and all he done was grunt out something cantankerous about halfwit foking crackers setting out kite eggs where they was most likely to get broke. When he didn't hardly st
op to look 'em over, I knowed I was in for it. Henry Thompson told me when I signed on with the Frenchman that the old frog croaked at everyone to hide how lonesome his life was out in the swamp, but this one night I wasn't so dang sure. I put on my best Sunday smile and sing out bright and cheery from the stove, "Come and get it, Mister Chevelier!" He didn't need no more'n that to huff up like a torn turkey and start gobbling.

  "Only in this sacre Amerique could 'Monsieur le Baron Anton de LeChevallier' become 'Mis-ter Jeen Shovel-leer'! These am-bay-seel damn crackaire call me Shovel-leer! For why? I ask you it-for why?"

  He stabbed at the venison and grits on his tin plate, then jabbed his fork like he aimed to punch my eyes out.

  "What is this craziness of guns in this con-try barbare? First time I go to Chatham Bend, Richard Hamilton stick his rifle in my face like I stick this fork to you! Then his blond angel, John Leon, he come running out, prepare to shoot! A little boy! He wish to shoot me! Next t'ing, Will Raymond, they shoot Kim! For why? Because Will Raymond shoot some other crazy crackaire! And who come next? This foking Watson! Foking crazy man! Satan foo! Try to shoot my head off of me! For why? For the plai-seer! I hear him laughing! Satan foo!"

  Henry Thompson allowed as how his Mister Watson was an expert shot, that he never missed except on purpose, so I advised the Frenchman how maybe it was some kind of a joke.

  "Choke? You are crazy, too?" Chevelier held up thumb and forefinger to show how close that bullet clipped his ear. "A man who choke with bullets…? That is choke?"

  Next day Chevelier ordered me to row him down to Mormon Key because he wanted to consult with Richard Hamilton. We had to go by the Watson Place, and I had an eye out for the owner, just shipped my oars and drifted past so's Mister Watson couldn't hear them thole pins creak against the current.

  That was before the big white house was built, there was just Will Raymond's old palmetta shack that Watson was using for his hogs and a small thatched cabin for humankind. I didn't see no sign of Henry Thompson, but I seen Watson out in his high cane, and I edged the skiff in closer to the bank so's he wouldn't see us.

  Well, damn if that man don't stiffen like a cat caught in the open, turn his head real slow, and look straight at us. He was already half into a crouch, and when he saw us, he dropped quick to one knee and reached into his shirt. That quickness, and the way he knowed that we was there, give me a chill.

  How come he carried a gun into the field? And why did he go for it so fast?

  I find out quick. That old French fool is standing up and ricketing around, and I turn to see he has raised his shooting iron and drawed a bead on Watson! I yell Sit down! and I row that boat right out from under him. He sits down in the stern sheets hard, nearly goes overboard. I row all-out and get in under the bank and down around the Bend before Ed Watson can run up to the water's edge and pick us off. The news was just out about what he done to Dolphus Santini at Key West, and when we was safe away downriver, I tell the Frenchman, Please, sir, don't go pointing guns at Ed J. Watson, not while young Bill House is in the boat!

  While Mr. Chevelier was away down at Key West, I was to work my keep out at the Hamiltons'. I weren't so easy in their company, though they was kind to me. Mrs. Mary Hamilton passed for white, but Hamiltons didn't have much use for white people, which was probably why they lived way off down in the Islands. That Hamilton gang was kind of outcasts, didn't fit with niggers and whites wouldn't have 'em, so them and that Frenchman naturally got friendly. Old Man Richard called himself Choctaw, and he had Injun features, that's for sure, but one look at his boy Walter told you that Choctaw wasn't the whole story.

  Of that whole bunch, only Eugene ever made good friends at Chokoloskee, and he was very friendly to me from the start. But some way I could not warm up to Gene, and never did, the whole rest of my life. Right from a boy-back there in 1895, he was just twelve-Gene had something to prove, he weren't never just take-me-or-don't like his brother Leon.

  Henry Short used to visit with the Hamiltons, used to eat at their table, and he held a high opinion of that family. The Hamiltons acted white as anybody, but I don't believe that Henry thought so or he wouldn't have made himself so much to home.

  Henry said he come down there to see me, and maybe he believed that one himself, cause we were raised together, but the one he really come to visit was young Liza. I believe it was love at first sight, on his side anyway. She weren't even a woman yet, but she was a golden coffee color, and I would have give up my right arm, or left arm anyway, to see her spread out in the sun without no clothes on. It thickened up my blood merely to think about it. Henry was in the same fix I was, one look at each other and we'd start to laugh, that's how jittery and fired-up young Liza made us. Henry Short, who was raised up by my daddy, was only half a nigger, maybe less, had very light skin and narrow features, but him and Old Man Richard had bad hair. One time me and Henry was visiting the Hamiltons, and Old Man Richard was carrying on about Injun ancestry, and how Henry Short looked like a Choctaw, too. And Henry kept looking across at me, got more agitated than I ever seen him, cause Henry Short was a born stickler for truth. Finally he whispered, "Heck, I ain't Choctaw, Mr. Richard, I am chock full o' nigger, that's what I am." The old man looks around, see where his wife was, and after that he said, "Well, don't go telling my Mary," and he laughed. Didn't care none, long as his old woman didn't hear about it.

  Those were Jim Crow days for nigras in this country, and Old Man Richard probably knew that Henry might of said that just to show me that eating at the Hamilton table didn't give him no funny ideas about his place. Or maybe all of 'em was teasing me, come to think about it. I just don't know. Hell, we don't know those people, we just think we do. Funny feeling, being the outsider-ever try that? I didn't care for it, I'll tell you. Made me think too much.

  Back in Chokoloskee, I told the men what Henry Short had said to Richard Hamilton, and pretty soon that got twisted around, cause folks was always looking for to laugh at Old Man Richard. Way they said it, it was Nigger Henry telling that goldurn mulatter, Hell, no, you ain't Choctaw! What you are is chock full o' nigger, just like me! No, no, I told 'em, that ain't the way it was! But I laughed, too, and I paid for that laugh all my life. Cause they're still telling that old tale down there about chock full o' nigger, don't care one bit about the truth, and I flinch every time I have to hear it.

  Anyway, young Eugene Hamilton didn't care none for what Henry said. Gene jumps up so fast he spills his plate. "Well, we ain't niggers, boy, at least I ain't, but it sure looks like we're nigger-lovers around here, letting you set at our table!" Gene is looking more at me than Henry, and I got the idea this was a message that Bill House was supposed to take on back to Chokoloskee, that Gene Hamilton didn't care to eat with niggers even if the rest of 'em put up with it. "It ain't my table," Gene is saying to Henry, glaring at his daddy, "so I can't run you off, but I don't have to eat at it, neither!" And he grabs his plate and marches out onto the stoop.

  Richard Hamilton never liked commotion, and he ain't figured out yet how to handle this. But the older boy, Walter, he's a lot darker than Henry Short, he looks at Gene marching out and laughs. "Go to hell!" Gene yells out. Hearing that language, his mother comes a-running from the cookhouse and whaps his head with her wood ladle.

  I catch Walter's eye and wish I hadn't. He had winked at me when Gene stomped out the door, but sitting there in his dark skin, he was shamed bad. I snuck a good look at him after that, probably first time I ever did. Next to young Liza, dark Walter Hamilton was the handsomest of all that handsome family.

  The Hamiltons flagged down the Bertie Lee, Cap'n R.B. Storter, who took the Frenchman over to Key West. Two weeks later that old man was back with Elijah Carey, who aimed to go partners with us in the plume trade. There was bigger rookeries down around Cape Sable, which the Bradleys was working with the Roberts boys, but the Cape was just too far from Gopher Key. With Watson around, Mr. Chevelier wanted some company, and to make sure he got it, he told Carey h
is high hopes about Calusa treasure. He was getting too old to dig all day in hot white shell, and didn't want to let me help him for fear I might let on at Chokoloskee.

  Captain Lige Carey stayed awhile, built him his own house on Possum Key. One night Lige told what had took place at George Bartlum's produce auction room down at Cayo Hueso, or Bone Key-that was the real name for Key West, Lige informed us-how Watson come in there good and drunk and announced to Dolphus Santini of Chokoloskee that he needed help with a land claim in the Islands.

  Adolphus Santini was amongst the oldest settlers on Chokoloskee, our leading landowner and farmer right up until the time he left, in '99. John Weeks come first in '74, if you don't count whoever planted them large lime trees, and he give half the island to Santinis to keep him company, and that family got the other half after Weeks moved to Flamingo. The Santinis built their first real house above the drift line of the '73 hurricane, and later on they built a chapel-they was Catholics.

  Dolphus's brother Nicholas, called him Tino, was a fisherman, took turtle eggs for about four months in the spring season. He used to say the Santinis was Corsicans like Napoleon, but he never said why they left South Carolina, and nobody asked; that was a question that was never asked down in the Islands. Old Man James Hamilton, down Lost Man's River, it come out on his deathbed that he was known in other parts as Hopkins, but nobody asked why he got tired of that name, and he never said.

  Along about 1877, Santinis filed a claim to "160 acres more or less on Chokoloskee Island among the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida." That's mostly less, cause there ain't one hundred fifty acres on the whole island. Old Injun War scout named Dick Turner, same feller who guided the U.S. Army on a raid to smoke out the last of Billy Bowlegs's warriors and got his captain killed up around Deep Lake-Dick Turner filed a claim back in '78 for eighty acres of Calusa mounds that he was farming up on Turner's River. Later he sold 'em to a Key West man, who sold 'em to my dad, Daniel David House, for two thousand dollars. Far as I know, Santini and Turner was the only claims except Storters in Everglade that was down on paper at that time, and even them ones wasn't validated until 1902. All anybody had was quitclaim rights, Watson included. Pay me to get the heck off, that's all it was.