Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

"Think? Are you bit or ain't you?"

So she comes across the swamp, hikes up my britches to have a look, and there ain't a sign of nothing, not a mark. "Well," I said. "I think I'm feeling a mite better." "Don't think so much," says Sarah, plumb disgusted. She pokes that snake so it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.

Sarah and Rebecca knew Bet Tucker well. Said it was her had the real pioneer spirit to make do with the hardship and the loneliness, said that her husband was a nice enough young feller but lacked the ambition and the grit to hack him out a livelihood there in the Islands.

Young Tucker had a lot more grit than Sarah and Rebecca give him credit for. He aimed to stand up to Ed Watson, which not many did. Ed could shoot, and Ed would shoot, that was the rumor. Lot of us could shoot real good, but we wouldn't trade shots with E.J. Watson less we had to, and by the time we knew we had to, we'd be dead.

Sarah Johnson weren't but twelve that year, we married two years later, but she was already the bossy kind that gets into the thick of the men's business. She said Bet was like an older sister so she wanted to go look, but I said no, cause night would fall before we got there. The men would go down there first thing in the morning, and Miss Sarah Johnson would stay home.

For once Sarah didn't argue, maybe because she loved me so darn much. "If Bet loses that baby, it's all Wally's fault" is all she said. And Gene busts out, "If that baby's all she loses, she'll be lucky!" We all knew that, of course. There was no call for Gene to upset my brave young girl.

This fine and frisky female had a way with E.J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. He thought a lot of Sarah, he respected her, and later on it would surprise me how kind of shy this hard man seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. Oh, she was blunt, she would come right out and want to know the truth about his life. He seemed grateful that someone cared to hear his side of the story, and it got so he confided in her, he told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe some of 'em was true, maybe they wasn't. But Sarah couldn't believe that Mister Watson would "ever, ever harm such a sweet young person."

We was just figuring what we should do when Henry Short come in looking for Liza. Not that he ever said as much. He couldn't. He never mentioned that girl once, though he could hear her singing by the cook shack. Poor feller knew we liked him pretty good and he was welcome, but he also knew how our mama might feel about a brown boy paying court, never mind that Liza was browner'n he was.

In them days, all around the country, they was lynching black men left and right for lusting after our white virgins. Most of the settlers in these parts had come south to get away from Reconstruction, so they brought their hate of nigras to our section, wouldn't tolerate 'em. Earlier this same year I'm telling about, it come in the papers about a nigra in New Orleans who was desperate enough to resist arrest when they come to lynch him. This man turned out to be a deadeye shot, which nigras ain't supposed to be, and he killed a whole covey of police before they finished him. So these days Chokoloskee folks was talking about how Henry Short was a crack shot, too, and who the hell taught a nigger to shoot like that, don't people know no better?-stuff like that. So Henry Short spent a lot of time back in the rivers. He stuck close to the House clan, didn't make no extra commotion.

Well, Henry hunted around for an excuse for rowing the twelve miles down here from House Hammock, said he forgot his pocket knife last time or some fool thing, and we helped him off his hook as best we could, all except Gene, who was full of himself and full of piss and finding trouble every place he looked. Gene said, "Your dang knife ain't around here, boy. Liza ain't neither." To smooth this over, we asked Henry if he noticed anything at Watson's on his way down Chatham River from House Hammock, and he nodded. "Funny thing," he said, "I always notice everything at Mister Watson's." Said there was no boat at Watson's dock, no sign of anyone. Nobody hailed him, and there was nobody out in the field. The Bend was silent as the grave when he drifted by. And Mac Sweeney said, Oh sweet Jesus, boys! It's like I told you!

Crossing to Lost Man's first thing in the morning, we had rifles ready but we come too late. Smoke was rising from the shell ridge where the cabin was. Coming in there through the orster bars, I could feel something waiting for us on that shore. We was still a good ways off when Henry pointed.

Something had stranded on the bar, lifting a little on the current. "God, boys, what's that!" Mac Sweeney yelled.

"That's him," I said.

Wally's hair was lifting and his eyes was sunken back, made him look blind, and he hadn't been there very long cause his sockets wasn't loaded up with mud snails. Still had his boots on, slippery as grease from the salt water. A boot was what Walter grabbed ahold of, first time we tried him, and he slipped away. When I jumped over the side and took him up under the arms, the shadow of a shark moved off the shelf into the channel.

Hauling the body out onto the sand, I seen a dark stain spreading on my pants. It were not a shark bite leaking but a hole blowed through his chest, took his heart right with it. "Ah shit!" Gene said, and begun coughing. Walter looked peculiar for a dark-skinned feller, not pale so much as kind of a bad gray. Henry Short's light face looked a little green.

Me, I don't know how I looked, but it wasn't good. I was breathing through my mouth just to keep my grits down.

"Back-shot," Henry said, and us three brothers starting hollering and cursing-"Back-shooting bastard!"-to keep from puking or busting into tears. Henry just shook his head a little, but he quit even that when he seen Gene watching.

Near the burned-out cabin we found a crate where Tucker had been setting, and his gill net and needle, and dried blood on the mesh and in the sand. There was no sign of Tucker's boat, no trace of Bet. We come on a circle in the sand and a bag of marbles, and a big sand castle by the water, like a boy had been there, but there was no sign of a boy neither. Must of been the tomboy in young Bet, passing the time. We hoped she'd run away and hid, but no voice answered our calls, only the crying of big orster birds out on the bar.

We rolled Wally Tucker in a piece of canvas and hoisted him into the boat. Nobody wanted to find Bet but we went looking, rowing east into First Lost Man's Bay and all around the back side of the key. We crisscrossed the island back and forth, we worked the riverbanks and the long strand of Lost Man's Beach, all the way south to Rodgers River.

"Sonsabitches!" Gene burst out, real close to blubbering.

We called and called. A hoot owl answered, way back in the trees. Dusk come from the mangroves and dark caught us at Wood Key.

Sarah came down to the boat and stared. All she seen was boots and canvas. She said, "Why did you bring him back?" I said, "We didn't want to leave him all alone." She whispered then, "Bet's alone too." One of the few times in this life I seen my Sarah cry.

Next morning Mac Sweeney took off for Key West. He was headed there anyway for a good drunk and wanted to be the first with the bad news. Sarah said we should take Wally back and bury him close to his new house, and so Wally was still with us in the boat when Henry Short and us three brothers went next morning.

Crossing the flats, I seen a keel track in the marl. My heart give a skip and I hollered out, cause it never come to me before that I knew Watson's boat track when I seen it. Must of watched his big old skiff cross a flat somewhere back up into the bays and made a point to notice what his boat track looked like.