Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

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.

…how sweet the sound,

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found,

Was blind but now I see.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come.

Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

Before his family come, Mister Watson never had no interest in religion, not one bit, and he never had none after they was gone. I didn't neither. Time he was done with me, all I believed was what I saw in front of my own face, day in, day out. Later in life, there was a few held my Godless ways against me, but I couldn't help it. I didn't know who God was, or Him me.

One morning not long after Aunt Jane and the children arrived, I heard men's voices shouting off the river, and I knew his visitors from the north had come for Mister Watson. I run downstairs as he jumped to get his gun. Mrs. Watson went all trembly, saying, "Oh, please, Edgar!" She didn't want no trouble and I don't guess he did neither, not with little children in the house. So what he done, he took a bead and skinned half the handlebar mustache off of the ringleader, who had stood up in the boat and was hollering about how E.J. Watson was under arrest. Mister Watson shut him up and run that posse off his river with one bullet.

Later Bill House come along and told me how it started, and I told him how it all panned out. Bill thought it was funnier'n I did, but he was excited all the same, and had all kinds of questions about Mister Watson. Bill House was in that Chokoloskee crowd on that black Monday in October 1910, and he talked about Mister Watson all his life.

Not long after Elijah Carey fixed up Richard Hamilton's old house, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and common moonshiner from Lemon City way, south of New River. Crossed the Glades and paddled up to Possum Key from Harney River, brought quite a smell of the east coast into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on even in the house, leather galluses, shirt buttoned to the collar, wore a lot of beard and grime to head off miskeeters. Big chaw of Brown Mule stuck into his face, and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor. What Ed Brewer liked the best, folks said, was to spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye, then head out into the Glades, pep up his heathen clientele so's they couldn't think straight, let alone chase him, then trade the dregs of what them redskins called wy-omee for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut sold by fellers like Ed Brewer killed more Injuns than the soldiery ever done, and give us honest traders a bad name. He had a squaw with him that day, couldn't been more than twelve years old, and so dead drunk he laid her out under the eaves and just forgot about her. Later her band would throw her out for sleeping with a white man, and this was the one who come to a bad end, down Chatham River.

Ed Brewer were a watchful and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth till that quick moment when he lets you have it. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair. His hands set quiet but them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Ed Brewer than what was happening around our table. Sheriffs was after this poor feller on both coasts for peddling wy-omee to the Mikasukis, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind.

When he finally spoke, he cut off Captain Lige like he wasn't there. "Way I heard," Ed Brewer said, handing around his deluxe jug without no lye in it, "that big old Injun mound at Chatham Bend might be just the place for an enterprising citizen such as myself."

Captain Carey, a big red-faced feller with soft and easy ways, took him a snort of Brewer's hospitality that made his eyes pop. He shook it off, banged down the jug, and give a sigh like some old doleful porpoise in the channel.

"Whoa!" he says, and puts a big soft hand up. "Feller already on there, Ed."

"So I heard," Ed Brewer said. Them other two looked at him like they expected him to explain hisself. He didn't.

While we was pondering, the Frenchman poured himself a little lightning, eyebrows way up higher than usual and his bony nose just a-twitching with disgust, as if to say, This shit sure ain't what your quality likes to drink back in the Old World! But Captain Lige grabbed the jug again and hoisted it onto his elbow, American-style, just to be sociable, and helped himself to another slug of our guest's hootch. Next time he surfaced, he coughed out a Key West rumor: The one who cleared the way on Chatham Bend, letting on to the sheriff where he could find the late Will Raymond, was none other than a feller named Ed Watson.