Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

What really twisted up the Frenchman was a wood carving of a cat kneeled like a man. A drawing of that cat was in the papers, and when Lige Carey took them papers up to Possum Key, Chevelier give it one hard look, then sat back hard. After staring out the door a little while, he whispered the one word "Egyptian!" and begun to weep. He was like a man shot through the spine, didn't move for days.

Finally he said to Captain Carey, "I know right away what I am looking, from vair first time I see big foking mounds! But I am looking in wrong foking place!" He never went back to Gopher Key again, he just give up on life. Didn't have no fight left in him, didn't last the year.

"I am… homesick?" he would tell my children, to explain his tears. "That is how you say it? Sick of home?"

When the kids visited, they would set him outside like a doll while they cleaned the cabin, but he never noticed nothing, in or out, just set there on his little stoop staring at the sun till he couldn't see no more. Struck his self blind. Might let out a yelp once in a while, but that's about all. Wouldn't let them bathe him, just waved 'em off, that's how furious he talked inside his head. Showed no interest in his feed, just wasted away. Jean Chevelier died of his own spleen, he choked on life.

Young Bill House had been gone a while from Possum Key, and Elijah P. Carey only came and went. Toward the end, as lonely as he was, the old man got tired of Cap'n Carey. "I am alone," he said one day, "no matter he is here or isn't. Silence is better."

Cap'n Carey weren't such a bad feller, but he told himself too many lies. He was a man needed to talk, couldn't stand no silence very long, and when that old man paid him no more mind, didn't hardly notice he was there, the poor man took to giving speeches to the wild things that watched from the green walls that was closing in. He was getting so crazy back in there with that silent old man glaring at the sun that he could hear the sun roar and the trees groan in the night, that's what he told us. Had to listen to God's silence, and what he heard put a bad scare in him, is what it come to. He weren't cut out for solitude, and anyway he was always scared his neighbor Mister Watson might recall him from Ed Brewer's posse, maybe take a mind to put a stop to him for good. As for Indins, he was sure them devils was spying on him night and day.

The captain clean forgot how much he despised redskins, that's how lonesome he got when he seen they would not make friends. He was always a big cozy feller, arm around your shoulder, but Indins didn't feel so friendly, not in them days. They was up to something, in the captain's estimation. He'd feel their eyes on him and whip around and see 'em standing there. He'd laugh, you know, like they had played a joke to fool him, but they never blinked. The Indins took what he had in trade for plumes and pelts and hides, then went away again, as deaf as ghosts, paying no attention to his holler.

When he got desperate, the captain would pay us a call, and get all upset and red in the face over how mean and ungrateful that old man was who wouldn't even talk to him! We didn't have nothing to say to that, and anyways, our family never spoke much cept on Saturdays. Nobody spoke much in the Islands cepting our gabby Liza. That river silence closed over our words like wet mud filling a fresh coon print. Still and all, we'd set with him a little, simmer him down some with good coffee, fish, and grits, and more and more he would not leave, he'd want to stay the night. He wasn't easy in our company, and as my dark boy, Walter, said, you had to feel sorry for a man would take the charity of mixed-breed people. All his life our Walter spoke real quiet, and I never did learn how to read his smile.

One morning that big white man heaved up from our table and kept right on going, headed south. He left some money but not much to take care of his old partner till he come back, he almost threw his arm out waving good-bye. That is how afeared he was we might think poorly of him, which I guess we did, cause we knew that was the last we'd see of Elijah Carey. That big cabin we built for him on Possum Key is up there yet, all thorn-growed and blind windows, and the varmints slinking in and out, and flowers growing through the chinks where wind and rot clear space for the sun and air.

Not long after the captain left, E.J. Watson and his missus paid a call on the Old Frenchman and engaged in a fine educated conversation. When Chevelier told me that, I thought he must of had him a French nightmare, but years later, Watson told me the same thing. Neither one cared to speak about it much. But Old Jean told John Leon later he had satisfied himself our neighbor was a murderer, and crazy, too. He begged us to shoot Watson like a dog, first chance we got.

I guess I liked that cantankerous old devil. He spoke plain, he knew some things, and he give me a education, right from the day he came to Chatham Bend. This was four-five years before Watson came there. Jean Chevelier was first to see that Mister Watson would mean trouble, and that he would change our life there in the Islands.

John Leon and Liza tended the old man on his deathbed. He called 'em his godchildren and kind of let on he would leave 'em his property to repay their kindness cause he had no kin. And Leon was very happy about that, cause he had took a liking to Possum Key the time we lived there, and had his heart set on a life down in the Islands.

One day John Leon took Gene to Possum Key because that day his sister could not go. John Leon was twelve-thirteen at the time, Gene two years older. Going upriver with the tide, the two boys passed the Watson Place and never seen a soul, but when they got to Possum Key, they found Ed Watson standing on the shore watching 'em come, and when they waved at him, the man did not wave back. Gene was all for turning tail and heading home but his young brother said Nosir, not till we give Mr. Jean his fish and vegetables. Watson watched them till they had that skiff tied up, they was sidewinding to walk on past him when he cleared his throat and said, Good morning, boys. When he asked what they wanted, John Leon tells him they have brought some vittles for the Frenchman.

Mister Watson says, "He has died off of old age." He points to a fresh mound of earth where he has buried him, and the three of 'em stood a little while, thinking that over.

After a while John Leon says, "Never said nothing about me and Liza?" Watson shakes his head. Says he has bought the quitclaim to the place, he is the owner, and that is all he knows. Leon is upset. He says, "Mr. Jean looked pretty good, day before yest'day!" And Watson says, "He don't look good today."

Seeing that man smile a little, Gene give a moan and lit out for the boat, John Leon close behind. The boys never knowed nothing bad about Ed Watson-I never told 'em nothing, cause I didn't want to scare 'em-but that day they got wind of something dark, and they headed for home as fast as they could row.

The way John Leon told it puzzled me awhile, cause he admitted Mister Watson never said a single thing to fright 'em. And there was no doubt Jean Chevelier was going to his reward that week if he had one coming. He didn't need no help from E.J. Watson, never mind what Eugene would say later. So maybe those kids was just upset by the shock of hearing the old man had died.

Only mystery was why my old friend changed his mind about his will. Lige Carey always did complain that Jean Chevelier was born ungrateful, and I guess he was.

Next time I seen Mister Watson was in McKinney's little trading post at Chokoloskee, but I never asked that man a single question. Never asked how a dying man planned to spend the money that he got from Watson for the quitclaim, nor what become of that quitclaim money after Old Jean died. So far as I know, ain't nobody asked them questions, then or later, and I'll tell you why.