Papa met José Martí in Key West, and admired his Cuban Revolutionary Party, but he says we should not fool ourselves about our interests. He hates the Spaniards as sincerely as the next man, but says the U.S. picked this fight in Cuba, Maine or no Maine, it's just an excuse to clean Spain out of our hemisphere once and for all, and grab the Philippines and Puerto Rico while we're at it. The War with Spain isn't one bit different than what he still calls "the War of Yankee Aggression": the Old South, says he, was the first conquest of the Yankee Empire.
Dear Papa will not salute the Stars and Stripes. "An Edgefield man would die first," Papa says. Yet he doesn't like it when Mama quotes Mark Twain, who has recently written that Old Glory should be changed to a pirate flag, with black stripes and each star a skull and crossbones. As long as this great land of ours is fighting, the men aren't fussy about who they fight-this is Mama talking with her small bent smile. Papa smiles, too, but he is wary. Mama's needles fly as she quotes from an editorial read at the library, "'The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people, even as the taste of blood-'"
"Kindly let me read my own paper in peace!" Papa snaps his paper.
"'This is God Almighty's war, we are only His agents'-do you believe that, dear?"
"For God's sake, Jane! Be still!"
"'In God We Trust'-we inscribe God on our coins! So even when we torment and burn the poor freed darkies"-Mama speaks more and more softly, intent on her knitting-"we always know that God is on our side."
Mama hums a little to soothe Papa and ease her own frayed nerves. I see her bosom rise and fall. She explains to her children that the dreadful poverty and famine after the War Between the States had shaken our men's confidence that they could provide for their own families on the kind of wages being paid to new black citizens. Perhaps this was why so many of our men feared and punished darkies, who were desperate for a living, too, and were wandering the roads throughout the South.
Papa says nothing. He's no longer reading. I think, Please, Mama! but she says, The men say they punish darkies to protect their women, isn't that it, dear?
Papa stared at her in dreadful warning, but she raised those innocent eyebrows and went on knitting. "A brave woman"-she pretends to address me, as if only females could make sense of the ways of men-"has recently petitioned President McKinley about the lynching of ten thousand Negroes, almost all of them innocent of any crime, and this in the past twenty years alone." And she points her needle at Papa's newspaper, which is lifted high to screen her from his sight. I am terrified by Mama's scary courage.
Papa slaps his paper down. I'll be back, he says, and leaves the room. Mama lets the air cool off a little.
I am startled by Mama's "radical" ideas, but Lucius and Eddie, who are now nine and eleven, want to run to Ireland's Dock and get their papa to buy them candy at Dancy's Stand before he sails off on the Gladiator. The two boys twist like eels upon their chairs, and Lucius pretends he is suffering a call of nature, but Mama doesn't let them off so easily. She tells them poor papa was Lucius's age at the start of the Civil War, and "not much more than Eddie's age," when it was finished. Grandfather Elijah had gone off as a soldier, and Papa had Granny Ellen and Aunt Minnie to take care of, and here he was, still only a young boy! Papa had never once complained, but she'd learned from Granny Ellen that his childhood had been very hard indeed. The family never had enough to eat, and he was deprived of formal education, while "you spoiled boys," Mama said, "have to be begged to do your lessons! And here is poor Papa, in his forties, still trying to learn something about Ancient Greece!" She pointed at Papa's poor old schoolbook, History of Greece, which resided on the table by his chair. She had brought it all the way from Oklahoma.
When Papa is not in the house, our Mama makes no bones about her strong opinions. She is still upset by the Supreme Court, which has upheld segregation on the railroads. "What can more certainly arouse race hate," she reads to us, quoting the dissenting Justice Harlan, "than state enactments which in fact proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?"
Mama says that Indians would also suffer these new "Jim Crow laws" if we hadn't wiped most Indians out with our bullets and diseases. They sure don't count for much in Florida, there's so few left. Papa describes how they come in now to Everglade and Marco with dugouts full of hides and pelts and feathers. They trade for axes, knives, and kettles, candy, coffee, bacon, sewing needles, and even sewing machines. The women make up calico in yellow, red, and black-coral snake colors, Papa noticed. He thinks the coral snake must have secret significance.
It seems the Indians are still scared that the few families left in the Big Cypress will be captured and removed to Oklahoma. They call themselves Mikasuki and not Seminole, but nobody listens to them, least of all Captain Cole, who declares in his clangorous way that he would gladly round up the whole bunch and ship 'em as far as New Orleans in his cattle schooner "at no charge to the government, just to be rid of 'em, because they ain't no different from wolves nor panthers or any other kind of skulking varmint, and sooner or later they are going to be in the way."
Papa says this was the first d--d thing he ever heard Cole say that he agreed with, and also the first that sounded sincere, all except the part about not charging.
MAY 6, 1898. Captain Jim Cole, acting too serious, has brought Mama a book. In a hushed voice, he asked her to read a brief marked section, saying he would return for it a little later. That was the one time, Mama told me, she ever heard Captain Cole speak quietly, as if he imagined one of us had died. That man was always first with the news, she said, turning the book over, bad news especially.
"Hell on the Border!" she exclaimed. "My goodness!" She held it on her lap for a long time before she opened it.
The marked pages told all about Belle Starr, the Outlaw Queen, and her "life of reckless daring" and how that life had ended on her birthday, February 3rd of 1889. Mama sniffed, saying her birthday was actually the day before. She closed the book again. I demanded it, and read aloud: "About fourteen months earlier, a neighbor, one Edgar Watson, had removed from Florida. Mrs. Watson was a woman of unlimited education, highly cultured and possessed of a natural refinement. Set down in the wilderness, surrounded by uneducated people, she was attracted to Belle, as unlike the others, and the two women soon became fast friends. In a moment of confidence she had entrusted Belle with her husband's secret, he had fled from Florida to avoid arrest for murder…" After Belle was murdered, the book said, "suspicion could point to none other than Watson," who was released for want of evidence but was later imprisoned in Arkansas for horse stealing and killed while attempting to escape from an Arkansas prison.
"Well, there you are!" I cried. "That last part proves that this know-it-all has the wrong Watson entirely."
Mama had resumed her knitting, but now her needles stopped. "No, Carrie, honey." She put her work down and took me in her arms.
My heart leapt so I had to press it with my fingertips. At last Mama whispered that the Florida death I was worrying about supposedly involved Rob's uncle. He was a most unpleasant man who had blamed Papa for Rob's mother's death. He lived some way off, in Suwannee County, and she had no idea what happened, the family never spoke about it. One day Papa came home to the farm and told her to pack everything into the wagon, they were going away. He said a shooting had occurred which would be blamed on him, said they'd be coming for him. He never said another word about it.
She held me so tight I could not see her face, I could feel a stiffness in her. Then she let me go and we sat quiet. My heart was pounding, so I knew it wasn't broken.
Even before the war, she said, a man's whole honor might depend on his willingness to fight a duel over almost anything. I knew she was thinking about Papa, our strange dear fierce Scots Highlands hothead, who sometimes drinks too much and gets in trouble, all the more when he imagines that his Edgefield County honor has been sligh
ted. Grandfather Elijah, whom Papa rarely mentions, was also very quick to take offense, and so were many men from Edgefield County, well-born or otherwise, Mama said. When I asked if Papa was well-born, she said, Your Granny Ellen and Great-Aunt Tabitha in Columbia County are educated people, and your father was taught manners, though his education was pitifully neglected.
I asked Mama if she had known Belle Starr, and she said she had. She said that Belle was a generous woman in some ways, not at all stupid, only foolish in her hankering after a romantic Wild West that never was. The Oklahoma Territory was a primitive and violent place where life was rough and cheap, and where whites, Indians, and Negroes-the worst elements of all three races-were mixed up together in an accursed country of mud, loneliness, and terrible tornadoes. Negroes were there early as Indian slaves, and after the war, a lot more blacks had drifted into the Indian Nations where civilization had been left behind. The inhabitants of this wild border country were mostly half-breeds. There was no law and no education, no chivalry, culture, morals, nor good manners, Mama said, and nothing the slightest bit uplifting about any of it. But Belle Starr's father had been a judge back in Missouri, and Belle had a little education, she played the piano fair to middling, and she wanted above all to be a lady. She rented some good bottom land to Papa and asked Mama to tutor her, for her own betterment was the real basis of their friendship.
"Mama," I said after a while, "did Papa kill Belle Starr or did he not?"
Mama muttered, as if quoting, "The case was dismissed because sufficient evidence was never brought against him." Again, she was holding on to me for dear life, murmuring into my ear. "Mister Watson never went to trial," Mama said. I couldn't see her eyes.
It is one thing to hear rumors about Papa's dangerous past and quite another to see it written in a book! Captain Cole asserts that Hell on the Border will cause a public scandal. I heard him exclaim to Walter on the veranda, "They's people snooping through this thing that couldn't read their own damn name, last time I seen 'em!" Right away he hollered, "Begging your pardon, miss!" He knew I could hear him, he was looking around the way he does to see who he might be amusing. Mama says a man like this is always on the lookout for an audience, he never talks just to the person he is talking to. But sometimes he is sort of amusing, and when Mama is around, Walter has to frown real hard to keep from grinning.
Since that famous article was written a few years ago about our refined and cultured life here in Fort Myers, all our gentry try hard to live up to it, and dime adventure novels from New York about the Wild West and the Outlaw Queen are a popular diversion among our literati-an Italian term, our paper tells us, for "people who can read." Everyone in America today knows everything there is to know about Belle Starr, who is already immortalized in a book about notable American females. The women are on the march! Mama says, waving her knitting needle like a baton. She winks at me when Papa clears his throat. Being indoors in ladies' company, he stomps outside to hawk and spit and does not come back. That other time, he went all the way to Chatham Bend just to cool off!
Though Walter has said not a single word, Captain Cole assures us that the Langfords know about Hell on the Border (Who do you suppose showed them the book? sniffed Mama) and are "much perturbed." (It is a sign of ignorant pretension, Mama fumes, to use a long word or fancy phrase when a short and simple one will do.) Captain Cole told Mama it might be best if Papa remains in the Ten Thousand Islands at the time of the wedding. Mama assured him that our family would not require his advice on suitable behavior, and bade him a very cool good day. I have never heard dear Mama take such a haughty tone.
"That man has the manners of a piney-woods rooter!" she exclaimed, banging the door behind him, but she had already come around to his old hoggish point of view about the wedding. I had, too, and alone upstairs, I cried and cried and cried. How very often I'd imagined the beautiful church service and my dear Papa giving me away, knowing how handsome and elegant he would look there at the altar in his black frock coat and silk shirt and cravat, how much more genteel than these "upper-crust crackers," as Mama calls the cattlemen.
But but but-O dear and patient diary, most of my upset has been caused by my great shame, my eternal shame, for giving in to everybody's wishes! I was terrified Papa might drink too much, insult our guests, or provoke some violent quarrel (as he does regularly in Port Tampa and Key West, hints Captain Cole, and Walter knows about it, too). Heaven knows what might happen after that! Walter might withdraw from our marriage-or be withdrawn, poor dear, for nobody is quite sure, and his child bride least of all, how much our Walter was responsible for his own betrothal! Papa suspects that Captain Cole, who cannot keep those thick hands out of anything, was behind this fateful match from the very start.
Well, I love Walter, yes, I do, but no one can say any thought of this marriage was mine! I was simply told how lucky I was to make such a catch "under the circumstances" (Papa's bad name), and not to be silly about it, either, because grown-ups know best. I am frightened, truly, and sure to be found wanting.
God bless dear Mama! Being educated by our local standards, I can cook and sew. I have taken care of baby brothers since the age of five, I can run a household (with guidance from dear Mama!). But is that enough? The poor little bride, if truth be known, is scared to death.
I am scarcely thirteen-can that be old enough to marry? Oh, everything is so embarrassing, I can scarcely look one person in the face! This body of mine in an awful awful way gives sign that it is ready, or ready for child-bearing is what I mean, but it is a child's body all the same. A grown man will claim possession of it, humiliating the poor child trapped inside!
I am a child, a child! It must be a child's heart that wakes me in the night, and starts to pound even in daylight hours. Is the heart part of the body? Or the mind? Are heart and soul the same? Mr. Whidden has pimples and upsetting breath and no good answers to such questions. (The Good Book says, the Good Book says, the Good Book says…!) He dares say I am much too young to "bother my pretty head about such metaphysical dilemmas," he dares say "things will work out in the end." What I don't "dare say," and least of all to him, is that what truly bothers me is this low creature of flesh, blood, and ugly body hair which imprisons the pure and spiritual ME! But since I can't mention my earthly form to Mr. Whidden, we simply ignore this coarse female vessel that fidgets and perspires in his face, pretending the poor girl's sweet virginal inquiries come from some higher and more holy source.
Why won't they understand? I am still a little girl, an overgrown child. I go to Sunday School, I work hard at my lessons, and Mama tutors me and my squirming little brothers. In the evenings after school these days we read "Romeo and Juliet" together. Juliet was just my age when Romeo "came to her," as Mama reminds me when the boys are absent. She is trying to teach me something about life while there is time, but the poor thing goes rose red in the face at her own words, and as for me, I want to hide, I screech Oh Mama! and burst into tears out of pure embarrassment.
Juliet lived long ago, it is only a story, but here in my budding heart it is all too real. A grown man twenty-five years old, nearly twice her age, will sleep in the same bed with Miss Carrie Watson! Mama says he is a decent young man-what's decent about lying down on top of a young girl and doing ugly things without his clothes on! She says, Well, Papa will talk to him-what can Papa say? Don't touch a hair on my daughter's head-let alone her you-know-what-or I will kill you?
No, it's not funny in the least, I can't think why I laugh, the whole town must be snickering already! Oh it's so scary, and so awful! How can Mama let this happen? I'm not ready, I'm just not!
Sometimes I cry myself to sleep.
And sometimes, riding my horse along the river, there comes a tingling that seems very far from religious yearning. Am I a sinner for seeking out these shiverings? A sinner for my curiosity-no, worse-about being kissed? A sinner for imagining that "the fate worse than death" might not be so dreadful after all?
With
my sinful attitude, can marriage itself be a sin? Please God forgive me, please God don't let anyone find this diary, or I shall run and throw myself into the river.
One day out riding we saw a stallion covering a mare in a corral, and I was horrified (I hope), and Walter got all flustered in the face and seized the reins and turned me right around. I wanted to look back, isn't that awful? It is this darn old body following me around that wants to know so much!
Walter is very shy and gentle, he tries to tell me that he will be good to me, and will not hurt me, but he cannot find a way to say this without embarrassing both of us half to death. He supposes I have no idea what he is getting at, and for my part, I can scarcely hint I understand lest he think me wanton, and so we both nod and smile like ninnies, all pink and sweaty with confusion and distress.
These are the times I trust him most and love him best. He is so boyish, for all his "hell and high water" reputation! He is truly ashamed over that cowboy's death, he blames his drinking for the accident, and for how terrible poor Dr. Winkler must feel. Walter makes no excuses for himself, he comes right out with it, says nothing would have happened if he and his cowboys had not tormented that poor old darkie. He vows his intention to make something of himself in his new job at Langford & Hendry, not just "punch cows," as he puts it, and waste his hard-earned dollars in pure devilment.
Dr. Langford hasn't long to live (we just hope he will be strong enough to join the wedding) and Walter wonders if Mr. Hendry will give him a fair chance in the business after his father's death or just ignore him as a young ne'er-do-well. If that should happen, he will quit the partnership and start out on his own. Since that terrible freeze in '95, Walter has had his eye out for good land farther south. He went down to Caxambas with Fred Ludlow to look at the Ludlow pineapple plantation, and now Mr. Roach, the Chicago railroad man who has taken such a liking to him, is very interested in what Walter tells him about possibilities for citrus farming out at Deep Lake Hammock, where Billy Bowlegs had his gardens in the Indian Wars.
Killing Mister Watson Page 14