Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

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."