Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

"Don't blame Mama," I said. "It's my weakness, too-!"

"Your Mama is not weak," he said sharply. "She is merely frail. A weak woman would not have faced me as she did. No, she is strong!"

I was sobbing, I was so ashamed, and still I tried hard to pretend that what I wept over was his decision to stay away. His hope had risen once again, yes, I saw it, for he waited a moment, eyes wide as a child's. When I did not try to change his mind, he nodded as if everything had come out for the best, which made me sob anew and all the harder.

"And Rob?" I sniffled. "Will Rob come?"

"No, he will not."

This curtness was all the punishment he ever gave me. He was not reproachful, but he peered into my eyes, squeezing my fingers urgently in his hard brown hands. "I shall always be very careful in Fort Myers, Carrie," he said. "Please tell your mother that, as well." He squeezed my hands hard as he spoke, until he hurt me. "His family has nothing to fear from Mister Watson."

He released my hands, and we walked back to the boat without a word. I thought of my tomboy days at Chatham Bend, and Henry Thompson's wandering eyes, and how Papa would growl that he'd tie net weights to my skirts if I climbed trees!

A darkness descended on my heart, but I would not let it in. After the Gladiator slipped her mooring, I ran along with her, waving desperately to Rob as the old schooner drifted downriver with the tide. Poor Rob and Papa were going home alone to that new house Papa had built to welcome his long-lost family to Chatham Bend-oh, how his pain twisted my heart!

I was jumping on the riverbank like some distracted thing, waving both arms to summon enough love to banish so much bewilderment and hurt. Seeing me, poor scowling Rob straightened and stared. When Papa bellowed from the helm, he lifted his hand a little and went on back to coiling up the lines.

Aunt Jane Watson looked too old for a woman not so far into her thirties. Had a shine to her pale skin, like a rabbit pelt been scraped too thin, so the shadow of the sun come right on through. Soon after the old Frenchman died, she got so sickly that Mister Watson took her to Fort Myers, but she never abandoned him out of her own woe. She made up her mind to go that very day her husband shot the mustache off Ed Brewer. She didn't want her children in a place where strange men might come gunning for her husband-I heard her tell him that myself, and when she did, he took out that big watch and looked at it, which is as close as Mister Watson come to a nervous habit, though it made other folks a heap more nervous than him. There weren't too much that he could say. Also, George Storter in Everglade was sending his kids up to Fort Myers to go to high school, and Mister Watson already had the idea he would do the same.

When Mister Watson took Aunt Jane to see Doc T.E. Langford, Mrs. Langford said, That island life is too darn rough for someone gently reared, you're coming to stay with us until you're better! Miss Carrie stayed on, too, helping take care of her, and Eddie and Lucius was lodged someplace, and went to school. Mister Watson told 'em all good-bye and come on back to farming his plantation.

That fine white house, so proud on Chatham Bend, was built for Mrs. Jane Watson and her children, and when the family went away, it seemed to mope like a old dog off its feed, a mite dirty, y'know, and kind of smelly. We was like strangers come in off the river, camping there and messing them nice rooms. Mister Watson had lost interest in his house. He was real somber for a year, he set inside a lot, and more and more he took to heavy drinking. I missed them children, especially Miss Carrie, and her father missed her even more than I did. Him and Rob hardly spoke a word from one week to the next.

When I asked Rob why he had not gone with his family, he snarled, "Because that's not my family, any more than she is your Aunt Jane!" He was feeling sarcastical, I guess, and made me feel awful. "Reckon you miss your natural mother pretty bad," I said. And Rob said, "Wrong as usual, stupid. I never knew her."

Me and Rob was close to the same age, and I was willing to be friends but he just wasn't. All the same, we was never far apart, cause even enemies could pass the time better than nobody. After Bill House went away, after the Frenchman died and the Hamiltons left to spend a year down to Flamingo, we never saw another boat along our river.

Miss Carrie was soon spoken for by Walter Langford, who was kin to Sheriff Tom W. Langford, so Mister Watson knew he'd get no trouble in Lee County that he didn't ask for. Mister Watson's rowdy ways got him throwed in jail in Tampa and Key West, but he went out of his way to avoid trouble in Fort Myers, and so far as I have ever heard, he never had none.

After the family left, around '97, we traded mostly in Fort Myers so's he could visit with his people. Sail up the Calusa Hatchee in the evening, passing Punta Rassa after dark. In Fort Myers, Mister Watson dressed real nice and talked real quiet, never wore a gun like them drunk cow hunters, at least not on his belt where you could see it. But he always had a weapon on him somewhere, and he kept his eye peeled. We never went to no saloons and never stayed long, just tended to business first thing in the morning and went back downriver.

One time when Walter Langford's friend Jim Cole come up behind him at the Hendry House, slapped him on the shoulder, Mister Watson told him, "Better not come up on me so sudden, friend." When he called a man friend, that was a warning, you could not mistake it. And Jim Cole, big talker though he was, backed off so fast he stumbled off the boardwalk, splattered mud on his new trousers, got himself whistled at by some drunk cowboys. Mister Watson turned and said, "I made another enemy"-not sorry, you know, but more like it was Cole who better watch his step from that day on. Didn't say it to no one in particular, not even me.

Round about '98, maybe '99, Mister Watson found Miss Jane a nice house on Anderson Avenue, which wasn't for colored like it is today, and Rob went away one season to Fort Myers school. He was older than any kid in class, and done poor cause he didn't try. He got in trouble, give his stepmother all kind of fits. Rob declared he would never be a bona fide member of her family, said he belonged at Chatham Bend if he belonged anywhere, said it so often that finally she agreed. His father brought him back to make a boatman of him, and it seemed right that he would take my place. Rob were Mister Watson's rightful son, and I never forgot it.

Not long after she moved to her new house, Miss Jane begun to waste away. That cheered her up, her husband claimed, being as how she was tired of life and knew her death was not so far away. I looked real close to see if he were teasing about death, the way he often did, and he said, No, Henry, I am serious. She makes a joke of it. The other day I said to her, You're not afraid of death, I see. And Mandy said, I guess I had it coming.

Telling me this, he had to smile, though I never knew if he was smiling at her joke or smiling because she could joke about such a thing or smiling because he seen I didn't get it. That is the trouble with no education-I guess I still don't get it. It was just some little joke between theirselves.

Mister Watson got lonely sometimes, too. We'd go to visit Henrietta and her Minnie, who was living these days at George Roe's boardinghouse there at Caxambas, and he got to know Tant's sister Josie Jenkins, who was kind of what you might call hanging fire. One day he brought Josie home to stay, but not before asking Henrietta if she minded, cause Josie were Henrietta's young half sister. Netta aimed to marry Mr. Roe, and later did so, but this night she had drunk some spirits and was feeling sassy. She said, "Mister Ed, I don't mind a single bit, just so long's you keep that durn thing in the family." They all laughed to beat the band, and I did, too, that's how good we felt, being members of our family.