I'd surly pull back a lonesome hand that someone else won't shake, but not our Papa! He had guessed what Rob would do and he was ready, keeping that hand right out there in mid-air, minute after minute, while that fool's face went a dark red and that serly stare fell all apart, and he shot a desperite look over at Mama.
Then Rob came out with a ugly voice I hadn't heard since a few years back in Crawford County, when he had that sad little mustash and all those hickeys. "How come you run off and never left us word, and never sent for us? Never would of, neither, if she hadn't come crawling-!" Well, right there that durn fool stopped short because Papa's fist flew up and back, cocked like a gun hammer.
Mama cried, "O Edgar please, he's just upset, he doesn't mean it!" Those were her first words to her husband in five hard long years.
He brought his arm down, and he spoke to Rob real quiet. "I have some explaining to do, that's right, boy. I mean to do it when I'm ready. And next time you talk that disrespectful way, you better be mighty careful I don't hear you."
"Or you'll shoot me? In the back?"
Those were Rob's very words! And a bad sneer! We could not believe it! But this time he had scared himself, and he backed up a little, set to run.
Papa took a great big breath, turned back to Mama.
"Mandy," he said, "this young feller here is Henry Thompson. He's been my partner for some years, and he's going to make me a fine schooner captain. Henry, I have the honor to present my wife, Mrs. Jane Watson. She is a school teacher, and I hope she will see to your education, and mine, too, because we need it. This beautfiul young lady is Miss Carrie, and these fine young fellows are Eddie and Lucius."
Lucius is six, but Papa picked him up like he was two and held him straight out in mid-air for a good look. "I have not seen Lucius since he was in diapers and he's turned out fine," he said.
Lucius gave a shy sad look at Mama to see if she thought he'd turned out fine like Papa said.
The tall thin boy shook our hands all around. His hand was very hard and callised, and I hung on to it just an extra second, wouldn't let it go, to get him serching in the sky for birds again, but I let go quick when I saw Papa was watching. Without taking his eyes off Rob, he said, "And this is my oldest son, Master Robert Watson." And he took out that gold watch again, as if Rob was running out of time.
Henry Thompson put his hand out, and Rob made him wait a breath before he took it. But when Rob yanked the boy off balance, just for devilment, Henry did not fall. He would not let go of Rob's hand, and he looked at Papa, and Papa just put his arms behind his back and looked straight up at the blue sky and commensed to whissle.
The boy yanked Rob's arm around behind, twisted it up hard until Rob squeaked. When Rob gritted his teeth, we knew he would never squeak again, not even if his arm got twisted off like some old chicken wing. But the boy did not know that yet about our Rob, and Mama said gently, "Mister Thompson? Please." Henry Thompson gave Mama a shy look and let Rob go.
Rob jammed his hands right back in his hip pockets. He looked from Henry Thompson towards our father and then back again, nodding his head. I knew what he was thinking: if Papa had taken him along when he left Arkansas, the way he should of, Rob Watson would be his schooner captain, not some beanpole cracker.
HENRY THOMPSON
Sailing north to Punta Gorda, Mister Watson and me hit some rough seas in the Gulf, right up until San Carlos Bay, and the train was gone away when we put in there. I felt real sorrowful, I'll tell you, cause that train was the first I ever would of saw. I never had no chance again for twenty years, that's how far my life took me away, down in the Islands.
Mister Watson and me walked over to the depot. First depot I ever seen, let alone rails. Until a few years after the turn of the century, Punta Gorda was the end of the west coast extension of the South Florida Railroad, laid down our way from Arcadia ten years before. Fort Myers passengers went south from there by horse and hack, five hours on old cattle trails to the Alva ferry. Ted Smallwood, now, he lived awhile up near Arcadia, and he run that hack during his youngerhood. It weren't until 1904, I guess, that a railroad bridge was put across the Calusa Hatchee and the Florida Southern steamed into Fort Myers. The man who got the credit for that was the same man who married Carrie Watson.
Miss Carrie was just as pretty as her picture and put me in a haze soon's I laid eyes on her. Mrs. Watson was very kind to me, everyone was kind except young Rob, who was a year older than me and plain unruly. Rob didn't look the least bit like them others, he looked skinny and black-haired and pale-not so much pale and peaked as just pale, like the sun couldn't figure no way to get at him.
We stayed the night at the Henry Plant hotel, ordered up our grub right in the restaurant. Early next morning we set sail, bound for the Islands, and put in for the night at Panther Key. Juan Gomez called it Panther Key cause once a panther swum across and ate his goats, and that place is still Panther Key today.
Johnny Gomez, as us locals called him, boiled our newcomers their first Florida lobster. Never stopped talking and never once took that broke-stemmed old clay pipe he called his nose-warmer from between his teeth. Mister Watson had planned this feast with him on the way north, so's his kids could listen to the old man's tales, how Old Nap Bonaparte bid Juan godspeed in Madrid, Spain, and how he run off for a pirate and sailed the bounding main with Gasparilla. Mister Watson got some liquor into Johnny, got him so het up about them grand old days that he got his centuries confused, that's what Mrs. Watson whispered in my ear. She done her best not to smile at how he carried on. She was a schoolteacher, you see, she had some culture to her, and she advised me to take Old Johnny with a grain of salt.
One thing there ain't much doubt about, that man were old. Claimed he fought under Zach Taylor at Okeechobee, 1837, way back in the First Injun War. And that could be, cause one day there at Marco, I heard Captain Bill Collier's old daddy tell the men how he knew that rascal Johnny Gomez up to Cedar Key before the War Between the States, said Johnny was a danged old liar even then.
Juan Gomez ranted on into the night, and Mister Watson drank right along with him, slapping his leg and shaking his head over them old stories like he'd waited for years to get this kind of education. He was watching the faces of his children, winking at me every once in a while to get me going, I never seen him so happy in my life. And the children were happy, too, all but young Rob, who never smiled, and never took his eyes off me or else his daddy. From his lip I seen he didn't think too much of neither one of us.
Mister Watson were a stately man, for sure, setting there in the bosom of his family in the crackling firelight under the stars over the Gulf with his children all around him, and Miss Carrie's eyes just ashine with worship. And I already knew that if that girl would ever look at me like that, my heart would stop and I would go happy as a lamb to meet my Maker.
I couldn't take my eyes off of her, and Mister Watson teased me some when we went to piss. Standing there shoulder to shoulder outside the firelight, he warned me man to man but friendly not to try nothing stupid that I might regret. I'd been asking some coony questions about Carrie, but I guess they weren't as coony as I thought. He advised me she weren't but eleven years of age, and here I thought she must be going on fourteen, which is mostly when girls married in the Islands. I like to perished then and there of pure embarrassment, and put my pecker back into my pants as quick as possible.
To cover up and change the subject, I told Mister Watson that if I were him, I'd take Old Juan the Pirate with a grain of salt, and he just grinned. "Well, Henry Thompson, you're not me and never will be, so you better go easy on that salt. You take this life with too much salt already."
Sailing down the coast next day in a fair breeze, and the spray flying, Mister Watson's people all got seasick, and I had to hold Miss Carrie by the belt to keep the poor thing from going overboard. Miss Carrie got slapped across the face by a wash of foam rolled up along the hull, but when she come up for air, that girl was laughing,
never mind them flecks of spit-up in her hair. She had a fine free spirit on that day, and far as I can tell, she never lost it. Some way my heart went out to Carrie Watson, and all these years later, I ain't so sure that I ever rightly got it back.
Eddie was eight and Lucius six, but them green-faced little brothers had some grit. I rigged 'em bait lines. Pasty and puke-stained as they was, they trolled for kingfish and Spanish mackerel like their lives depended on it, and Carrie, too. We was flapping them big silver fish onto the deck until their little sunburnt arms wore out, they couldn't pull no more. Even Mrs. Watson looked contented, calling her children to see the dolphins that slipped across the bow, and the gray-green waves sliding ashore onto bright beaches, and the green walls of mangrove with no sign of human kind, and the towers of white clouds over the Glades. Hearing her fine words, I stared wherever she pointed, same as they did, like I was seeing the whole coast for the first time.
Rob Watson never hollered when he seen the dolphins, but he didn't miss nothing, and after a while, he lent a hand dragging in fish, which we was going to salt and smoke for our supplies. I knew my job and Rob could see that, he was watching careful how I done things, he learned quick. I hardly noticed him, I was so busy showing off for that sweet dark-eyed girl. That day on the schooner sailing south was the happiest I ever knew, I ain't never forgot it.
All the way down along the coast, Mister Watson went on about his plans for developing the Islands. Watching him pound his fist and wave his arms, Mrs. Watson smiled and shook her head, looking kind of peaked.
She caught me noticing. "I'm just remembering," she said, "how Mister Watson always waved his arms that way." She kept her voice low in case he would get contrary, but he heard her all the same. "No, Mandy," he said, "I only wave my arms when I am happy." He spoke more softly than he ever spoke to Henrietta, reaching over from the helm to touch her tenderly, and for a minute she looked wishful, like something was coming she was going to regret.
Henrietta had not left the Bend like she was told, hadn't hardly swept or done the dishes. She got drunk instead, and there she stood in the front door of the house with her ginger-haired baby, waving Little Min's fat arm at the nice visitors. Her bright black Daniels eyes dared Mister Watson, who hauled out his watch. She was planning to stay till she had the house all cleaned up nice, she said, then go to Tant's sister Josie at Caxambas.
Mister Watson said nothing at all. He put back his watch. He had that stiff look at the cheekbones, ears laid back close to his head. Seeing that, she begun to dither, said she'd sent word to her brother Jim but he never come. I knew she never. Jim Daniels lived down at Lost Man's Beach, near old James Hamilton. Henrietta had stayed on out of pure vexation, knowing Mister Watson would not harm her, not in front of his own children.
Mister Watson went up close, put his hand on her shoulder near her neck, never said a word. The rest of us couldn't see his face, but hers went white. She whined, "Tant never come for me, I told you!" forgetting that Jim Daniels and not Tant was supposed to fetch her.
When Mister Watson turned around, his face had settled, but his eyes stayed cold. He introduced my mother as the housekeeper. His family was staring at Min's hair, turned by the sun to the dark fire color of his own. And seeing his wife's face, and Rob's, Mister Watson gathered himself up, and coughed, and come right out with it. "This is your baby sister, Rob. Her name is Minnie, after your Aunt Minnie." He made a small regretful bow to Mrs. Watson.
Mrs. Watson seemed not to expect no better, and knowing her as I come to do, I believe she was relieved he had not lied. She took out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her lips, then smiled at Henrietta. I was grateful. When Henrietta went inside, she turned to her husband and said quietly, "Pity the place wasn't swept out before we got here."
I run my mother to Caxambas the next morning.
When Mister Watson learned that his family would come join him, he had the pine boards for a big new house shipped down from Tampa, and carpenters, too, and all the people on the place turned out to help. Used Dade County pine, which is workable when green but cures so hard you'd be better off trying to drive a nail into a railroad track-best wood in Florida. When his house was finished, he painted her white, and he kept her painted, and that big white house stood high in them dark rivers for the next half century. Except Storters at Everglade, there was nothing between Fort Myers and Key West come close to it, not even the old Santini house on Chokoloskee.
The few families squatting in the Islands had nothing like that house on Chatham Bend. What other people called a house was nothing more than old gray storm boards flung together. Most of 'em settled for dirt floor and palmetta thatch, grew a few coconuts and vegetables, maybe some cane, got by mostly on white curlews and mullet. Mister Watson was experimenting with all kinds of vegetables, tobacco, had his horse and cart, besides two cows, and hogs and chickens. Only victuals we traded for was salt and coffee. Bought the green beans, wrapped 'em tight in burlap sacking, hammered 'em up with a marlin spike. We smoked our meat, made our own grits and sugar and some spirits, too. Seasons when vegetables was short, we'd pole up the Glades creeks to the pine ridges, gather coontie root for starch and flour, cut cabbage-palm tops in the hammocks and some Injun greens.
Miss Jane was poorly when she got to Chatham Bend, and he took care of her. Even when she could still walk a little, he liked to carry her around the place, set her chair in shade where the breeze come fresh upriver from the Gulf, under them blood-red poincianas planted years before by the old Frenchman. Passing by where she sat so still against the heat, in her dress of pale blue like the Gulf sky, I always wondered what sweet kind of thoughts was going through her head. Miss Jane watched the mullet jump and the tarpon roll, and the silent herons flying up and down the river, and the huge old gator like a cypress log on the far bank. Every year it come down out of the Glades with the summer rains, and our kids called it the giant crocodile.
One day she beckoned me in close and said, "Since little Min is your half sister, Henry, we're some kind of kinfolk, isn't that true?" And when I nodded, she said, "Then please don't call me Mrs. Watson. What would you think about 'Aunt Jane'?" And she seen the tears come to my eyes, and took me in her arms real quick so both of us could pretend she never saw them.
Wasn't too long after she come that Mister Watson decided he would pack up Mrs. Watson and go to pay a social call on the Frenchman, "let bygones be bygones with that old-fangled sonofabitch whether he likes it or not" is what he told me. His idea was that educated company would persuade his wife that life in the Islands might not be so dreadful as she thought. He were somewhat drunk but quiet, feeling friendly, and he took his jug along. Took his guns, too, "in case M'sieu didn't take kindly to a social call. I won't put up with his rough language," Mister Watson added, "not in front of Mandy."
Aunt Jane wasn't feeling well, but this day he didn't pay that no attention, just bundled her down to the dock. A world of good would come from a little turn along the river, is what he told her. When they come back late that evening-it was summer, there was still a little light-he told me they wasn't so welcome at the start but things smoothed out like cream as they went along. By the end, he said, "M'sieu Chevelier was all that might be wished for as a host." Hearing them words, Aunt Jane just smiled that thin and crooked smile, too tired to talk. All the same, that visit perked her up. She had liked the Frenchman more'n he did, and made a plan to exchange books with him, but never did.
Aunt Jane always kept her books beside her, but after a while she never looked at them. Mister Watson read to her from the Good Book every day because she needed that, and he read to the rest of us on Sundays, "whether we needed it or not." He never got sick of that old joke long as I knew him. Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth!-that man would keep us on our knees for an hour at a time, burning in his message of hellfire and damnation. And the sea became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea! He'd work himself up into such a wrath,
looming over us so fierce, booming and spitting, that you might think he was Jehovah Himself-either that or he was laughing at Lord God Almighty, that's the way Rob seen it. And I think today, maybe Rob was right, maybe he was. But any young person who didn't praise the Lord would feel his razor strop; he beat that poor Rob something pitiful near every Sunday. As for Tant, he weren't so scared as he pretended, but would carry on in a way somewhat more holy than was wanted, rolling his eyes up to the Lord and warbling the hymns until Mister Watson had to frown to keep his face straight.
Tant had a sassy way with Mister Watson, having learned real quick that he ran no risk at all. He got took up by Mister Watson in a way I never would be, for all my loyalty and longing. And the thing of it was-this ate my heart-Tant never cared a hoot about what I would have given my right eye for, all he seen was ways to have some fun and smooth his road.
Sometimes in the evenings Mister Watson read from Rob's book, Two Years Before the Mast. Captain Thompson is flogging this poor sailor, who shrieks, Oh Jesus Christ, oh Jesus Christ! And the captain hollers, Call on Captain Thompson, he's the man! He can help you! Jesus Christ can't help you now!
We was all shocked when that part was read out, not the words so much as the way he read it, he was just delighted. He'd tease me, call me Captain Thompson, because that captain's name was Thompson, too. "You could learn a thing or two from a man like that," he said. Aunt Jane told me right in front of him to pay him no attention. To him, she said in a low voice, "You do them harm."
One time I asked, Mister Watson, sir, do you believe in God? And he said, Believing in Him doesn't mean I trust Him.
Sometimes he would tease Aunt Jane by telling us how all the greatest hymns was wrote by slavers, cause slavers was so religiously inclined. And his wife might smile but she would whisper, "I pray you make your peace with God before you die." We didn't know what either of 'em was trying to say, and wasn't meant to. And he would whisper back, "I have, I have," and lift his fine voice toward Heaven like an offering.
Killing Mister Watson Page 9