Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

All we knew was, no good would come from getting surveyors nowheres near to Lost Man's River. All filing land claims meant to us was paying good money that we never had for our own land that we cleared off when it was wilderness. First thing you know, we'd be paying taxes with nothing to show for it-no schools, no law, no nothing.

See, it wasn't only just the payment we was dodging but the whole damn government, county, state, or federal, didn't make one goddamn bit of difference. A man would live in a lonesome place like the Ten Thousand Islands is a man that don't like any kind of interference. Ain't got much use for humankind, you come right down to it, including some that I won't name in his own family. Or maybe his neighbors don't like him -don't matter. Them kind I'm talking about don't want no part of them damn paper-wavers from the cities, trying to tell a man where he could take a shit.

Ed Watson didn't see it like the rest of us down in the Islands who never cared if the whole world passed us by. He told them Atwells all about Free Enterprise and Progress, that's what made this country great, is what he said. The Philippines! Hawaii! Puerto Rico! America was bringing light to the benighted, yessirree, expanding our commerce all over the world, same way them Europeans done in Darkest Africa! Asked did we ever stop to think about all them Chinamen? The millions of customers just ready and waiting once them Philippines was ours? Talk about "swamp and overflowed," Ed was just overflowing with good spirits, Winky told me, and hard spirits, too.

Mister Watson's oldest boy was there, never said one word. Rob Watson stayed a little ways off to the side, went back to the field soon as his father started in to drinking. Tant Jenkins's sister was there too, down from Caxambas, served up a fine ol' feed of ham and peas. Ol' Ed got a bit boisterous and hugged his Josie around her bottom as she passed his chair, she had to rap his knuckles with her ladle. She was a pretty little thing with lots of spirit, had her a brand-new baby, Little Pearl. At that time Mrs. Watson hadn't died yet at Fort Myers, so Josie said, "The less said about our Pearl, the better!"

Ed give them Atwell boys plenty of drink, told stories about comical nigras that his family owned back there in Edgefield County, South Carolina. "You doan want to 'rest me foh no Miz Demeanor, Shurf! Ain' nevuh touched no lady by dat name!"

He had cracked that joke at the Hamilton table, too. When we didn't laugh much, he opined, "Well, I guess Choctaws don't care too much for nigger jokes." We knew he was baiting us, and we didn't like it, but Daddy never seemed to mind. Said something easy like, "Is that so, Ed?" and him and his guest would set there nodding and grinning at each other like they knowed a thing or two about this life, which I guess they did.

Anyways, Ed got to boasting, and he let on to them Atwells in no uncertain terms that he didn't need no goddamn Corsican or whatever to hell kind of Spaniard Dolphus Santini called himself to show Ed Watson one damn thing about land surveys, nosir, he didn't, not no more! His daughter Carrie had married one of them cattle kings, and them cattle kings would make damn sure that nobody messed with E.J. Watson. As for getting deeds and titles, his son-in-law's good friends had connections all the way up to the capitol in Tallahassee, so E.J. Watson was on his way! Can't hold a good man down, that's what he told 'em.

So they drank to his success, and he drank to their safe journey and happy days down at Key West, and after that, he come out into the sun with that black hat on and spread his boots and stuck his thumbs in that big belt of his and stood in front of his fine house, to see 'em off. Yessir, says Ed, I'll be down that way tomorrow, have a look at my new property.

Casting off the lines, Winky decided he'd better advise the new owner about Wally Tucker farming Lost Man's Key. Seeing Mister Watson so excited, he had not got around to that, but he felt bolder with the whiskey, so he did.

Mister Watson took the news calm as you please. He come down to the water, not hurrying or nothing, and set his boot onto the stern line as it was slipping off the dock. The current had already caught the bow of their little sloop, and she swung downstream till she was snubbed, then warped back hard against the pilings. Watson had his whiskey in his hand, still looking amiable, but he never took his boot off of that line. Never said a word while the Atwells tried to figure what them blue eyes warned 'em had better be coming next, and damn quick, too.

Knowing Winky, I reckon he was winking, along with taking desperate care, he said, not to stare at Watson's boot, which was about on the same level with his face. Ed Watson had the smallest foot of any man his size you ever seen, it was one of the very first things that you noticed, and after that it was hard to take your eye off, even worse than another man's blind eye.

Finally Winky started talking, and his words come out all in a ball. He told Ed Watson that Wally Tucker never had no kind of claim on Lost Man's Key, nosir, no claim at all, it was just he had been on there for a while-

"I know how long that sonofabitch been on there-"

"-and being as how Atwells never used it, we never had the heart to run him off."

Watson nodded and kept right on nodding, with the Atwells setting in the boat trying to show how much they agreed with him without saying nothing that might turn him ugly. They was nodding right along with him like a pair of doves.

"I'll tell you what you people do," Ed Watson said after a while. He cleared his throat and spat clear across their boat, and the Atwells looked politely at his big ol' phlegm floating away on the black water. "What you do, you notify that conch sonofabitch on your way home that the claim is sold to E.J. Watson, and you tell him to get his hind end off of there as soon as he can dump his drag-ass female and all the rest of his conch shit into his boat and haul up that old chunk of worm rock that he calls an anchor and get to hell back to Key West, where he belongs. Now how is that?"

The Atwell family being Bahamians, Winky didn't care much for that "conch" talk, but what he said was "That's just fine, Ed, not one thing wrong with it."

Watson's fury was so raw that Winky got him a bad scare, knowing there was a shooting iron under that coat. Must been winking like a baby rabbit. He had clean forgot Watson's quarrel with the Tuckers, if he ever knowed about it. But what with all the whiskey he had drunk, he got his courage up and tried again. Thing was, he said, young Tucker had built him a nice thatch house and a good dock, and cleared off a good piece of land, and had his crops in, and his wife was about to bust with her first baby. Atwells knowed from their own firsthand experience how generous a man Ed Watson was-they let that sink in, Winky said-and maybe he could see his way clear to letting them young folks finish out their season.

Ed Watson didn't care one bit for that idea. Why should he ride herd on them damned people, with Lost Man's Key so far off down the coast? The Atwells had let Tucker on there, and it was up to them to get Tucker off there, right? And Winky said that sure was right, Ed, not one thing wrong about it.

"Something's eating you," Ed said, after a moment, and took out his watch.

And Winky said, No, no, no, Ed! It was only that Tucker was a proud kind of young feller, and might not take to being told flat out to get his wife, who was in a family way, off of that Key with not a scrap laid by to eat, no place to go, and not a cent to show for his hard work.

Watson was looking down at his own boot where it trod the rope, and in that silence, Atwells said, they felt like screeching. There was no sound at all in that slow heat but the river sucking at the mangroves. Finally Watson said, "I sure do hate to hear a white man talk that way. Where I come from, a damn squatter can be proud till he's blue in the face, that don't give him the right to go up against a feller that has bought and paid for legal title. Where I come from, the law's the law."