Killing Mister Watson

by Peter Matthiessen

  I wait.

  "Look, I'm a businessman! I keep my credit up! Ask Ted Smallwood, ask C.G. McKinney. I've had no trouble since I came back to the Islands! My wife warned me I shouldn't let Cox stay, but I owed him something, that's what it was, a man has to repay an obligation. 'Honor is the highest good'-ever heard that? Plato said that. Never read Plato?" When I shake my head, Watson shakes his, too. "Well, I paid Cox back that obligation, and he'll pay me this one. If you deputize me."

  "Deputize a man pointing a gun at me?"

  Watson opens his hand, lets my cartridges roll across the table, then returns my revolver, barrel first. "Take it," he says. When I take the barrel, which is pointed at my chest, he grips it, holding my eye before releasing it. "Don't load up," he says.

  Putting the gun away, I lay both hands flat on the table in sign that our talk is over, but he raises his hand abruptly when I start to rise.

  "All I want-"

  "If Cox is taken alive, then it's your word against his, and due to your past reputation, his word might get you hung even if you're innocent. So either you kill him or you make sure he escapes." I'm feeling out of breath. "You want to go down there and kill Cox, because killing Cox would destroy a witness, maybe tend to show Ed Watson's heart is on the side of justice. And you want the sheriff alongside of you, to make it legal."

  Watson nods. "That what you think?" Slowly he takes up his own gun and looks it over. "Man that cold-blooded, now, no telling-"

  "I don't know what I think." Seeing his face, I am so scared I have to piss, I don't want to hear the end of Watson's sentence. Where's Bill Collier? All those men? Why don't they come?

  Later I wonder why I got so scared, and why, so suddenly, my chest has eased and I grow calm enough to say, "You're a suspect, Mister Watson. I can't throw in with you, and I wouldn't do it if I could." I take a breath. "As far as Lee County is concerned, you are under arrest." When Watson says nothing, inspecting the gun, I rise carefully to my feet. "You have a clean record in Lee County-"

  "Oh, shut up!" He lurches to his feet, waving me at pistol point into the night. He totters and stumbles, heaving around to close the cabin door, turning his back to me. He doesn't hurry, that is his contempt. He knows I won't jump him from behind, and shout for help. He knows I won't try an arrest, though whether out of fear or pity, he will never know, and I won't either.

  To his back, I say, "I'm heading to Fort Myers, meet the Monroe sheriff. If you kill Cox or take him off the place before we get to Chatham Bend, you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

  Watson considers me, but already his mind is someplace else. With me in Fort Myers, he will have three days head start.

  "Just you trot over to that store," he says, "and don't look back."

  Crossing the sand to Collier's store, I duck out of the light. Under the eaves, in a stew of bad emotions, I piss my tension and relief into the dark, nagged hard by the night wind, the heavy wash of seas in the night channel. When I get my breath, I fish out my cartridges, reload my gun.

  BILL HOUSE

  Ed Watson's house at Chatham Bend was strong constructed, probably the only building south of Chokoloskee that come through that hurricane of 1910 all in one piece. It sits on a mound as high above the water as any place down in them rivers, probably as safe a place as you could find. So you have to ask why, a few days before the hurricane, Watson took his family up to Chokoloskee, taking Dutchy with him, then went on back to Chatham Bend, unless he had an idea what might happen down there and wanted his people out of the way. Could be he wanted Dutchy out of the way, too, let "John Smith" do his dirty work in peace. By now it was known on Chokoloskee that John Smith's rightful name was Leslie Cox.

  Watson said he moved his family back to Chokoloskee because if their cistern flooded out in hurricane, they wouldn't have no clean water for the baby. He told Ted Smallwood that him and Dutchy was going back for the people still at Chatham Bend-Cox, old Waller, Hannah Smith, the nigra, and a Injun girl we never knowed about till later. Errand of mercy, that's what Ed Watson called it.

  When he come back, he come alone, the day before the storm. Said he'd dropped Dutchy at the landing, told him get everything tied down for storm, get everybody set to go. After that, he said, he went on down to South Lost Man's, stopped in there to see if Henry Thompson and his people was all right. On the way back north, he swung in to the dock and hailed the house, but the place was dead silent, he couldn't raise a soul. Something didn't feel right to him, but he figured his people had already been picked up by passing fishermen. He came on up to Chokoloskee and was there late Sunday when Claude Storter come in with the news from Pavilion Key. But when Hamiltons showed up after the storm, they said he showed up at Lost Man's on a Friday, and he never got to Chokoloskee until Sunday morning. Where in the hell did he go in between? And what was Cox up to all them ten damn days between the murders and October 21st, when Watson went down hunting him into the rivers?

  Could be Cox was laying for Dutchy when he got dropped off, that's what Watson said-and that's about the only thing he said that fitted with his nigra's story. What we don't know is whether Watson was behind it. I think he was, and my dad thought so, too. I think he knowed about them bodies in the river when he went down to Lost Man's to see Hamiltons, or be seen by 'em.

  When Claude Storter brought word back to the Bay about cold-blooded murders at the Bend, Watson got terrible excited and upset, and some of 'em, like Ted, that wanted to believe in Watson seen his upset as a proof he was not guilty. Well, he was upset, that was sincere, cause he'd just found out how the nigra took the story to Pavilion Key, he'd just found out how Hannah Smith had rose out of the river, pointing her big toe right at his door! His partner had made a mess of it is what he just found out, and he shook his fist and swore to Christ that Leslie Cox would be brought to justice or his name were not Edgar J. Watson. Never saw a man so sincere in all your life.

  Sure enough, all people could talk about was Watson's foreman. And seeing how dead scared they was of that murdering stranger, Watson decided he would change his story. Before he left, he allowed as how that Dade County pine in his strong house would stand up to any kind of storm, and his cistern, too. Confided to Ted how he'd brought his wife and children to Chokoloskee not on account of no old hurricane but because this murderer was out to kill him and his whole damn family. Why he had aimed to rescue such a feller when he went back to the Bend on his errand of mercy he forgot to say. And all this time he called Cox "Smith," like he was still concealing his identity, which made me suspicious at that time and does today.

  Watson departed quick as he could, caught the high tide and crossed over to Everglade that evening. Stayed with his good friend R.B. Storter and persuaded Bembery and his boy Claude to take him north. From Caxambas, he walked across to Marco, and someone took him on to Wiggins Pass, where Naples is today. He borrowed a horse, took the sand track through the woods to Bonita Springs-called Surveyor's Creek or Survey back in them days. That's where he was on Monday night when the full force of the hurricane struck in, ninety miles and better, blew trees down right through daybreak Tuesday, blew down my father-in-law's house, blew down our old packing shed up Turner River. Come morning, with the wind still rough, Watson went up inside the coast to Punta Rassa. Caught a boat upriver to Fort Myers, found Frank Tippins gone, caught up with him next day at Marco. It was the day after that-this was a Thursday-that he come through Chokoloskee, bound for the Bend.

  By now our people was dead scared of Watson, knowing it might been him ordered the murders. The way we tell it in our family, some men collected and my dad told Watson that he'd better wait there for the sheriff. So Watson declared he had waited long enough, cause Cox was going to escape unless these fellers stood aside and let him go. We noticed he weren't calling him John Smith no more. Declared he didn't need no help from no lily-livered lawman to take care of a skunk like Leslie Cox, that it was his bounden duty to them poor friends and neighbors that perished
on his property to go down there before Cox could sneak away and straighten out that blood-splattered sonofabitch once and for all.

  To prove how sincere he was, Watson said he would leave his wife and children hostage in his neighbors' care: "The Devil take E.J. Watson, boys, if he don't return in two days' time with Cox's head!" He made that promise to kill Cox right out plain in front of everybody.

  People was more scared of Cox than they was of Watson, and he made the most of it. A murdering family man was one thing, but they didn't want no murdering stranger on the loose. They told one another that if Ed did not kill Cox, Cox would kill Ed, and either way they had seen the last of both of 'em.

  Well, by God, his neighbors cheered him, and they cheered again when he bought some buckshot loads at Smallwood's store for that old double-barrel. My dad and them never realized till he bought them shells that his damn shotgun were not loaded while he was persuading them to let him go. Dad still wanted to arrest him, but none of them others had the stomach for it. If I had been there to back my father like I ought to been-that's what Dad told me-we would of put a stop to him right there.

  Well, I said, somebody would been put a stop to, that's for damn sure, and it might been you!

  Oh, D.D. House was hopping mad. Said them damn fool men he was ashamed to call his neighbors had been "bamboozled" by Ed Watson, or maybe "hornswoggled" is what he said. Rest of his life, my dad blamed me for staying at House Hammock to clean up after the storm, the way he told me to.

  So that first gang formed up to arrest Ed Watson watched him wave his hat at them as he went free. Only one feller waved back, and that was my brother-in-law, Ted Smallwood.

  Truth was, our men were just ordinary fellers that didn't care to come up against no desperader, they was grateful to be buffaloed out of a showdown if Watson would just go and keep on going. So Watson talked his way into the clear again, just like he done so many times before. That feller was a borned politician, probably could of got hisself elected president.

  Soon as the man was out of sight, they started in about how they would have grabbed him but for this and that. Very sheepish and disgruntled bunch of men, my daddy told me, like he himself wasn't never nowhere near it. Already they was muttering about how sick they was of fooling with Ed Watson, and how they aimed to take care of that there outlaw the very next time he made him a false move.

  Pretty quick some started saying, Maybe Watson went down there to help Cox make his getaway. When two days went by and he never come back, the story spread that he'd carried Cox around to the Key West railroad, which laid rail down the east coast that year as far south as Long Key. And that was fine, so long as Watson dusted out at the same time. Nobody said that right out loud, only the women, but that's what everybody hoped, that's how fearful Chokoloskee was of both them outlaws. It wasn't justice they was after but a good night's sleep.

  MAMIE SMALLWOOD

  Grandma House declared how meet and fit that Mister Watson should vanish in great storm, like the demon she herself had always said he was. And we thought we seen the last of him when he went north the day before the hurricane, cause he surely had his chance there to go free. But Mister Watson wasn't done with us, not by a long shot. Came back through from Fort Myers on the twenty-first, brought his launch across from Everglade, saw to his family. He was so red-eyed with hard travel, day and night, that he laid down on our counter while he talked, keeping a sharp eye on the door. He told us Sheriff Tippins got as far as Marco, then turned tail and headed back up to Fort Myers, awaiting reinforcements from Monroe County. The sheriff would not deputize Mister Watson, so Mister Watson deputized himself. He was on his way to Chatham Bend to "apprehend that scoundrel" while the apprehending was good.

  Mister Watson had stopped off at the store to pick up some shells for that old double-barrel, but shells was paper-wrapped in them days, and all we had was swollened storm-swept shells. I said, These ain't the shells you want when you go manhunting! Because I wanted him to kill this Cox, shoot him down same as a panther or a wolf. Everyone did. And he give me his little wink and said, Well, now, Miss Mamie, if these shells are the best you've got, they will do me fine.

  The House family was back on Chokoloskee, also Lovie Lopez and her boys, and Tant Jenkins, Henry Smith, from Pavilion Key. A lot of folks from Lost Man's straggled in after the hurricane-Thompsons, James Hamiltons, young Andrew Wiggins. None of them families ever went back south, the storm left 'em nothing to go back to.

  Daddy House and Charley Johnson, a few others, came down to where our landing used to be. They had a plan to arrest Ed Watson, though they never let on about that plan till he was gone. Mister Watson had his double-barrel out where they could see it, he had come too far to tolerate no interference, and nobody wanted to stand in his way, cause he looked half-crazy with exhaustion. His eyes were dull and teeth gone yellow, and that lively chestnut hair of his all dank and dead.

  He said, "I will be back," as if to challenge anyone might try to stop him, and Daddy House, who had some dander, said, "If you are aiming to come back, you better bring Cox with you." Mister Watson said, "Is that a warning, Mr. House?" And D.D. House said, "You could take it that way, Mister Watson."

  Mister Watson didn't like that, not one bit. He said, "Dead or alive?" and D.D. House said, "Dead is good enough."

  Mister Watson pushed off in his boat. He said, "If I don't bring him, I will bring his head," and cranked the motor.

  He went away without a word, pot-pot-potting down the Bay toward Rabbit Key Pass. For the second time that week we told each other that if that feller had one bit of sense, we'd seen the last of him. But Mister Watson, as Ted said, never did learn where to draw the line, he weren't that kind. Maybe we were finished with him, but he weren't finished with us, not with his family here.

  Mister Watson weren't hardly out of sight when his poor wife felt a shift toward her on our island. Folks closed her off, wouldn't look her in the eye. They walked around her, moved out of her way. It got so bad she wouldn't let her kids out of her sight, for fear that one of 'em might come up missing.

  The silence that followed that poor body all around our ruined island weren't nothing but pure fear and hate-fear of her husband and his murdering henchman, and hate toward this fool north-county girl who must of known what kind of bloody man fathered her children-that's what the women muttered-and more fear yet because her being in our midst with his fire-headed little demons might be enough to draw that devil back. And the people who was coldest of them all, she told me later, was the ones invited her into the house where she was staying.

  BILL HOUSE

  Our house was just east of Smallwood's store. We were still patching up after the storm when we heard that pop-pop-pop down to south'ard. Pap sighed and stood up straight and listened. Then he put his ax down, very careful-"Boys, that's him."

  Pap and me and Dan and Lloyd picked up our rifles and went on down to Smallwood's landing, Henry Short a little piece behind. Long ago Pap give Henry his old gun, but I was surprised that he brought it along. Nobody told him he should come, and nobody told him he should go away. Never said a word to nobody, just set himself off in the trees. I never did learn what was in his head, we never talked about it even once, but Henry Short were not a careless man. He knew his place and always did, and I guess he figured his place was there with us.

  My father-in-law, Jim Howell, and Andrew Wiggins, who married Jim's daughter Addie-they were with us. Close to twenty, give or take a few, was in the crowd, most all the men on Chokoloskee Island. Some carried guns so's they wouldn't be thought less of by their neighbors, but even the few present who meant business were dead scared. The sheriff hadn't showed up, so our idea was, we would try to arrest him by ourselves, hope for the best. Others, I ain't saying who, was declaring for the past three days that if Watson showed up again before the sheriff did, they was for shooting him straight off, no questions asked, that's how bad they wanted the suspense over and done with. Better to finish him onc
e and for all, they said, cause with all his son-in-law's powerful friends, and nothing against him but a nigger's word, he was certain to wriggle loose again same way he done so many times before.

  Them fellers claimed to be worried sick about miscarriage of justice. But I believe they was worried a lot more that ol' Ed Watson, left alive, would come settle up his business quick with anyone he thought had turned against him. That was a feller kept his accounts straight, like Ted said. Eye for an eye, that were Watson's motto, if he had one.

  Pap said, "He won't murder twenty men." And that bunch never would of bushwhacked him, not with D.D. House dead set against it, and his three sons, too. But later on, the story was put out how the House clan wanted that man killed no matter what, because Emperor Watson with his 150-gallon boilers, all his up-to-date equipment, was aiming to take over our cane syrup business at House Hammock, drive us out.

  Ted Smallwood came out from beneath his house but would not join the posse. Said this trouble hadn't one damn thing to do with him. Said Ed Watson was his best customer, all paid up and fair and square, and he had nothing against Watson, never did. Said he had nothing against us other fellers, neither. Said anyway he was down with his malaria, though I noticed he felt strong enough to crawl in under his house after them drowned leghorns.

  Ted said too damn much altogether. The more he talked, the harder it was to tell what the heck he wanted.

  Later people got the idea, mostly from Mamie, that her husband was the only one kept out of it. He wasn't. Some came unarmed because they passed for Watson's friends, and that includes the men from Lost Man's River, but they came anyway, and never said a word. I believe they were as anxious as the rest to see this finished.