Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

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.

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.

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.