Killing Mister Watson

by Peter Matthiessen

Henrietta was plenty upset already, she was raging and caterwauling in the kitchen. "I bore his child!" she howled, jouncing poor Minnie and kicking hens and banging a tin pot of sweet potatoes. The way I look at it today, my mother was in love with Mister Watson, but back then I thought they must be sick and crazy to get into the same bed with the other.

  When my mother seen my bloody face, she gasped straight off, "He done that a-purpose!" That fiery devil was out to murder her poor boy, that's what she said once the news come out that Mister Watson had killed in other parts. She was taking me right back to Caxambas, that was that. "In the meanwhile," she yelled as he come up on the back porch, "don't you never turn your back again on that bloody scoundrel!" I have heard it said that Netta Daniels was short on sense as well as morals, but no one ever said she lacked for spirit.

  Mister Watson paid no mind, just washed his head at our hand pump from the cistern. That was the only pump down in the Islands at that time, we was pretty proud about it. When he straightened up to mop his face, he was kind of studying Henrietta. Them blue eyes under them thick ginger brows was sparking like flints over that towel, and they seen my eye go right to where his sweat marked out his gun. He held the towel there a half minute, until Henrietta stopped her sputtering and whimpered. Then he snapped it down, looking real gleeful cause he'd scared her. He got out his jug of our cane liquor and sat down to it at a table in the other room, his back into the corner, way he always done.

  For once, Henrietta didn't jump on him for tilting chairs back, weakening the legs, which was her way of trying to show what good care she was taking of his home. Home was where the heart was at, that's what was wrote on the needlework sign she hung on our parlor wall to make things cozy, and prove what a good wife she would make a man with sense enough to appreciate her fine points. But this day, knowing what he had overheard, she was scared to speak.

  He knew that, too. He took him a long pull and sighed, like that poor old manatee out in the river the time we shot her young 'un for fresh sea pork. Finally he whispered, "Better watch out for that loose mouth, Netta. Even a murdering scoundrel like me can get hurt feelings." And he asked if she was packed, ready to go.

  She pulled me out onto the porch. "I ain't leaving you here, Henry! You can't never tell what that man will do next!" She was whispering, too, but loud so he could hear, and he made a funny bear growl for his answer. "You're coming home with me, young man, and that is that!" said Henrietta.

  "Home," I said, rolling my eyes. "Where's home at? Where the heart is?"

  "That nice needlework come down in our family," Henrietta said, kind of reproachful.

  "What family?" I said, feeling meaner'n piss.

  "Our family! Your own grandma married Mr. Ludis Jenkins that was first settler on Chokoloskee twenty years ago, Jenkinses and Weekses and Santinis!"

  Nobody never counted Old Man Ludis, cause he come to nothing, he got enough of it and shot himself. I didn't remind her about that. I said, "Tant's daddy weren't no kind of kin at all."

  Tears come to my young mother's eyes, made me feel wishful. But this was the first time Henrietta ever said she aimed to take me with her, and it kind of confused me. She was a young girl when she had me, and I left by the back door. She never brought me here, it was me brought her. I got her work with Mister Watson, and Tant, too. She didn't have no home no more'n I did.

  I whispered I weren't going to go. And she said, Don't you backtalk me, you are my child! And I said, Since when? That hurt her feelings, too.

  Anyway, said I-I am still whispering-I am the new captain of that schooner, I ain't no kid no more! Since when? she said, rubbing the blood off my head much too rough. Look out! I yell, I ain't no sweet potato! Since when? Netta said again, and we broke out giggling like little kids, I don't know why. She hugged me then and started in to cry, cause she didn't have no idea at all where her and Little Min was going to go.

  I go all soft and lonesome then, and hug her back. I missed someone bad but didn't rightly know who it could be. I ain't so sure I found out to this day, not even when the deacons told me it was Jesus.

  "Called her Minnie after his rotten old sister," Henrietta blubbered, "and I hate that name, and Min will hate it, too!"

  That talk about his sister made me nervous. Mister Watson is doing some drinking now and his silence is coming through the wall. I hush her quick. From the gumbo-limbo by the cistern comes the voice of a small greeny-yellow bird that sings even in summer, wip-dee-chee! and pretty soon the same again, over and over.

  Mister Watson calls in a hard voice, Get in here, Captain, there is business to discuss!

  Henrietta tugs my sleeve, her big eyes round. How had that man heard my whispering, heard all my bragging? But as Tant used to say, Mister E.J. Watson could hear a frog fart in a hurricane. That don't come so much from hunting, Tant said, as from being hunted.

  CARRIE WATSON

  THIS DIARY BELONGS TO MISS C. WATSON

  SEPTEMBER 15, 1895. The train south from Arcadia stayed overnight at Punta Gorda before heading on back north, and the kind conducters let us sleep on the red-fuzz seats after brushing off the goober shells and what not. Papa had wired his instructions that we were to put up in the new hotel as soon as we arrived, to get some rest, but Mama said she has learned her lesson not to count on rest in life or anything else. We should not spend good money on hotels in case something went wrong as it usely did and Mister E.J. Watson failed to appear. Anyways, this might be the wrong man, cause her husband was Mister E.A. Watson when she knew him. Mama was in a funny mood and no mistake.

  Last night I was so tuckered out I was sleeping and sleeping. Had a nightmare about crocadiles but did not wake up. At day-brake they helped us off the train and left us in a little pile here on the sand. The train gave a great whistle and hard clank and pulled away, getting smaller and smaller, it went right down to a black smudge where the rail shine made a bright steel point against the sunrise. We waved and waved and waved then the train was gone and not even an echo, just two thin rails like silver fire piercing away north to where we came from.

  The depo is locked until next week and not one sole to be seen. Buzards tilt back and forth across the sky. This sky in southern Florida is white with heat as if ash was falling from the sun. In the hot breeze, the spiky little palms stick up like clusters of black knives, and the fire ball coming up out of the palms sharpens their edges. With the sun up, the wind dies, and the redbirds and mockers fall dead quiet, and a parched heat settles in for the long day, just dry dry dry.

  Mama tries to cheer us up, she gives that funny little smile. She says Well, well, here we are at the end of the line in farthest southern Florida! as if this dead silence and this scary white sun, all this hot sand and dry thorn, was what we'd pined for all of our hole lives.

  And still no sign of Mister Watson and no word.

  I call him "Mister Watson" just like Mama, who is very very strict about our maners, and sometimes says when she is blue that maners is about all that we have left. But in my heart I think of him as "Papa" because that was what I called him back in Arkansas. Oh, I remember him, I really do! He was most always so much fun that he made up for our dear Mama when she was sereous and sad. He brought toy soldiers from Fort Smith, and sat right down with us on the cabin floor to play. (Rob was too old, of corse, he was out slopping the hogs, he'd scoot as soon as he heard Papa coming.)

  I gave Eddie the "dam-Yankee" bluecoats, him being too young to know the diffrince. Lucius was only a baby then, he can't remember Papa hardly, just pretends. But Eddie and me-Eddie and I?-have never forgot our dear dear Mister Watson, and surly our Rob never forgot him either.

  Plenty of time for you, Dear Diary, because Rob is serly, Mama is thinking, and I am dog tired of trying to soshalize with little brothers. It was Papa who gave me the idea of my dear diary so long ago when I was a little girl. I found him out under the trees, writing away in a leather book. I asked him what that was, and he took me in his lap and said, Well, Ca
rrie honey, it's a kind of jernal. I'm calling it Footnotes to my Life. He smiled in the shy way he does sometimes when he doesn't think he has amused you. Said his spelling was no good because as a boy back there in Carolina in the War Between the States, taking care of his mother and sister with his father gone, he had very little chance to go to school. But he kept up his jernal from his youth because that was a tradition in our Watson family.

  Papa's jernal had a lock on it, and he swore he would never show it to a sole, even when I powted and looked saucy. I asked him, Never? Perhaps one day, Papa said. I knew Mama was terified to pick it up let alone read it the few times she laid eyes on it, but I thought I was diferent. He warned me that any diary that is not completely privet is no longer a diary, no longer quite honest, and therefore no longer "a trusted friend." So I keep mine secret from the hole hole world, and also Mama.

  Rob was near twelve when Papa rode away. That was back in Crawford County, Arkansas, when Lucius was just a very tiny baby. Rob stood right up to those rough men that came galoping in. He told 'em they was trespissing on Papa's propity and they'd better look out or get shot between the eyes. And one of the men said to another, "In the back, more likely," and Rob went after him before Mama could shriek. It was just terifying, that pale dark boy socking so fureous on that man's knee, which was as high as he could reach. Got his hand cut bad by spurs and got knocked sprawling.

  Mama told us that Papa had to leave on business, gone to Oregon. We was all alone quite a few years before we left Arkansas and went on back to Columbia County Florida and stayed a year with Granny Ellen Watson and Aunt Minnie Collins and our cousins.

  Rob acted mean about coming to see Papa. He made Mama admit she had wrote to Papa, and that Papa never sent for us until she did that even though he was doing fine on his new farm. Probably has another woman now is what Rob told her. Rob is rude about poor Papa, rude to Mama, reminding her every two minutes that she's not his mother and how he doesn't have to mind her less he feels like it. And Mama says clamly, I may not be your mother, Rob, but I'm all you've got. Just goes clamly on about her business, leaving Rob staring after her. Those times he looks all twisted up and funny like he'd fell off a horse onto his head. Once he caught me looking at him when he felt twisted up that way and he came over and he hit me hard but never said one word.

  Rob passes for handsome with that straight black hair and fierce black brows and fair white skin that must have come down from his poor dead mother. The only thing he shows of Papa are the round red dots high on his cheekbone and those blue blue eyes from the highest heaven where blue comes from. Blue eyes with black hair are kind of scary. Those dots jump out like spots of blood, that's how fair his skin is, where Papa is so weather-browned and ruddy that the dots don't hardly show only when he's angry. Then they glow like fire, Mama says. Us kids can't wait to see our Papa glow like fire.

  I don't look like Papa nor like Mama. I feel like some strange little thing people call Carrie but they don't know where she came from. Papa is heart-faced while Mama's face is long, and mine is somewhere in between, not fat-faced and not thin-faced but high cheek bones with full kind of lips, "bee-stung lips," as Mr. Browning wrote in Mama's poem book. I have brunet hair, Lucius and Mama sort of ashy blond, while Papa's is dark reddish chestnut, with gold hairs in summer.

  Eddie takes after Papa more, he'll be big and broad and strong like that, with reddish coloring, though his hair is corse and skin more fair. His hole manner and expresion, Mama says, is very diferent, as if Papa's fire had died down or had no heat in it. (I am most like Papa, Mama says, I have his "prominent and penetrating eyes," what Granny Ellen calls "those crazy Watson eyes.")

  Lucius has Mama's narrow feetures and that crooked little twitch that so seldom breaks out in a real smile. His eyes are dark and deep, look kind of shadowed. He'll be the tall one. (I am quite tall, too, there'll be quite a lot of Carrie, Mama teases.) Lucius is gentle, very sensitive. All the same our little boy is not so sereous as Rob and Eddie, he has got more fun in him. I'm light-hearted, too. Mama says what I am is light-minded, can't stick to my studies, I want to jump up and run outside and see. What should a person do who is plain cureous?

  I was first to see the sail, white as a seabird's wing, way down toward the mouth of the Peace River. I knew it was Papa, no one else. I'd never seen a sail before, and I wanted to run right over to the landing, wave and wave. But Mama went pale, said, We don't know it's Mister Watson, we shall wait right here.

  Pretty soon the sail was so close we could hear it ticking in the breeze, and Mama said, In case that's Mister Watson, we'd best stand up so's he can see us, not make him go over there to that hotel for nothing. So we all stood up in a line outside the depo, all but Rob, who was slowched off to one side. Rob wouldn't put on his Sunday suit, he wanted to make it plain as plain that he had no part in this hole dumb plan of the family taking Papa's charity down in south Florida.

  It was pretty close to noon, there was no shade, and we stood in the hot wind watching the shore. In the glare they looked like two black creeturs, a thick one and a thin one, kind of shimmering. I thought the sun had made me dizzy. I cried, Mama, let me run to meet them! But she shook her head, and so we stood there, stiff as sticks.

  A big man in black Western hat with a tall thin boy behind came walking across the white sand flat between the landing and the depo. Here came our long-lost Papa, and not one person smiling! I felt sorry for him! But our line never broke, and finally he stopped a few yards away and took off his broad hat and made a little bow, and nobody came up with a single word. He still had his gold watch on a chain, and took a look at it. "I'm sorry we are late," he said. "Rough weather." His voice was deep and pleasant, kind of gruff, as if he had no claim on us, not yet. He came no closer.

  Mister Watson was dressed in a linen suit and black string tie, boots glissening and mustash waxed, and kept his hat off. He looked real glad to see this gloomy bunch, saying My O My with a big smile for us four frights all in a line that dared to call our selves his family.

  I could see Mama yerning to smile back but she just couldn't. The lovely new rose bonnet she had scrimped for, saying over and over how buying it was a plain disgraseful waste cause who knows she might never wear this thing again-that pesky hat had gone all lopsided like it was melting and she never even noticed, that's how wore out the poor thing was from no sleep and bad nerves. Her red hands she was so ashamed of were clenched white at her waist and her long elegant face looked pale and peaked. Seeing her this way, I felt heart-broken, because our Mama has been sad and poorly. I wonder if that is why she wrote to Papa.

  Papa said, "Well, Mrs. Watson, that's a fine-looking family you have there!"

  Mama nodded, too upset to speak. The best she could do was give a smile to the strange boy to make him welcome, cause he looked just as shy and scared as all the rest of us. He was skinny and real brown-skinned with sun-whitened hair, and very long legs in his outgrown pants, the kind that other boys called High-pockets in school because his pants hung so high above his dusty ankles. Cepting his long bare brown feet, he was dressed like Rob, rough shirt with no collar and a pair of gallises yanking his pants up, maybe underwear, too-what Rob calls Injun underwear cause it creeps up on you. Except I don't hardly imagine this boy wore any underwear which I admit is none of my fool bizness. I will say he looked cleaned and didn't smell much.

  I gave him a big sudden smile and turned it off again real quick, just scarred the daylights out of him. That boy went tomato red, frowned something terible, he looked straight up at the sky serching for birds, and when he came down again, he was faced away from us, trying to whissle.

  Papa, too sudden, stepped across the space toward Mama, holding out both hands for her to take, and I watched her red hands give each other a last clutch as if for courage. The poor fingers started up, then quit and grasped each other, and Mister Watson let his own hands fall. His hands was opening and closing, just a little. The four hands at a loss were just so
sad!

  I couldn't stand one bit more suspense, someone had to do something or dumb little Carrie would bust into tears! I let out a yip and darted forward, threw my arms around our Papa and hung on for dear life, hoping for the best. I knew he was looking at his wife over the top of my red ribbon bow. Then I felt it, he let out a breath, and something eased in his hard chest, and his arms hugged me.

  Sure enough, when I turned around, Mama was smiling. And darn it all if that silly little Carrie didn't start to blubering, and Mama, too, but she was smiling all the same, like sun in rain. It was a beautiful smile, kind of unwilling, crooked, full of hope, I never saw such a dear expresion on that lonesome face, it made my temples tingle.

  Her smile was like a signal to the boys to run and jump onto their father, not because they loved him the way I did, they were much too young, but just the way that boys will do, for the old heck of it. Mama was covering her tears up pretty well by scolding those boys for wrinkling Mister Watson's linen suit, but Papa Bear was woofing and rolling around just like he used to, thretening to run off into the woods with a hole arm lode of kids that he would eat up later in his cave. Eddie was screeching to ease his nerves, pretending to be frightened, but little Lucius, only six, let himself be bounced and tossed without a sound, turning his head so's to watch Mama over his Dad's sholder, just to make sure she didn't go away.

  All this time that poor fool Rob never budged an inch from where he was, just rocked on his heals, hands stuck in his hip pockets, and gave that serly stare to Mister Watson. So finely everyone was forced to look at his bad maners and his old curled lip, the way he wanted. But Rob could not meet his father's eye, so he jerked his chin at the strange boy as if to say, What's it to you? You better keep your durn eyes to yourself or I'll punch your nose off!

  Mama warned him, just a murmur-"Rob?"

  Papa put the small ones down, then straightened his coat up, kind of slow and formal. "Well, boy," he said, and stepped forward to shake hands. Oh how it scared me to see that, knowing Rob was going to refuse. That hand was out there for so long I could see the wind twitch the gold hairs on it.