Peter Matthiessen: Killing Mister Watson

We got good money for our produce, but too much spoiled before it reached the auction room down to Key West. Coleman and Bartlum, General Commission Merchants-we're probably on the books down there today. And pretty soon, except for our own table, we give up on general vegetables. Long as he could scare him up some field hands, Mister Watson figured there was more future in sugarcane, cause cane don't spoil. After that he figured out that making syrup right on the plantation, instead of shipping all them heavy stalks, made a lot more sense in a out-of-the-way place like Chatham River, cause syrup could be stored till he got his price.

Meanwhile he worked out his own way of letting the cane tassel before cutting. Syrup from tasseled cane will boil down a lot stronger without sugaring. When he went over to our high-quality syrup is when Mister Watson made his first good money, and got him a bigger schooner from Key West, called her the Gladiator. Packed that syrup in one-gallon tin cans, six to the case, shipped it to Port Tampa and Key West. Our Island Pride syrup become famous. There was planters at Half Way Creek like Storters and Will Wiggins, and Old Man D.D. House up Turner River, they made plenty of good syrup, but Mister Watson had 'em beat right from the start.

Ed Watson was the only planter south of Chokoloskee that ever made more than a bare living in the rivers, he was the best farmer I ever saw. And all the while we done fishing, too, sold some salt fish, took turtle eggs in season, shot gators and egrets when they was handy. Up them inland creeks, Last Huston Bay, Alligator Bay, egrets was thick, pink curlew, too, and we never failed to take a deer or two for venison, sometimes a turkey. Trapped otters and coons and panthers for the hides, and every little while we'd kill a bear. I thought I was pretty handy with a shooting iron, but I'm telling you now, Mr. Ed J. Watson was a deadeye shot. Only man I ever saw could shoot like that was Henry Short.

After D.D. House moved his farm from Turner River down to the hammocks back of Chatham River, Henry Short used to come over from House Hammock on a Sunday to see how young Bill was getting on with the Old Frenchman, who lived up the river, Possum Key. Henry and me got on all right, I never held a thing against him, but when he visited the Hamiltons, them people let that nigger eat right at the table. That ain't James Hamiltons I'm speaking about. This is Richard Hamiltons.

Only one besides me and Mister Watson hunting plume birds in them creeks was Old Chevelier. One afternoon Mister Watson seen the Frenchman's skiff coming out in back of Gopher Key. Sometimes Chevelier had Injuns with him, and this day I seen a log canoe slide back behind the green, soft as a gator. In the Glades Injuns use dugouts made from cypress logs, and they use push poles. Never seen Injuns paddle a canoe in my whole life.

In a dugout, the braves are standing, so they always seen you first, you were lucky to spot a Injun at all. But Injuns was watching you most all the time, that was something you got used to or you didn't. Watched us white men when we come into their country and watched us when we went away, the same way the wild critters did, the deer, the panther, stopping at the edge of cover and looking back over their shoulder. Give you a funny feeling to be watched like that, you begun to think the trees were watching, too. But a man wouldn't hear nothing but the moan of wasps, them creeks used to be full of wasp nests way back then.

If Mister Watson seen that dugout, he never paid it no attention. Chevelier lifts off his straw hat to mop his head, and Mister Watson hikes his gun and shoots that hat out of his hand. That bullet clipped right past his ear, made him skedaddle like a duck into the mangroves.

You won't hear me deny it. I was shocked. There was a silence fell across that water for a mile away. Weren't nothing to be seen in them long mangrove tunnels but green air and brown stilt roots, and that hard sparkle where the sun come through the trees, but I could feel the black eyes in them stone faces right between the leaves.

Mister Watson hollers to them trees, "Sir, that hat can be replaced at Chatham Bend!" I knew the Frenchman would not see the joke of it. Scared that poor old man to death, I reckon, cause we never heard a whisper from the mangroves.

I told Mister Watson all about Chevelier, how he was a hermit collecting rare birds for museums, used three different-size guns so as not to spoil 'em, and paying his keep by selling plumes; how he had all kinds of books there in his cabin, knew all about Injuns and wild critters, spoke some Injun lingo and had wild Injuns visiting that would never go near to Chokoloskee Bay. Them wild ones traded hides and furs through Richard Hamilton, who claimed to be Choctaw or some such, though nobody never paid that much attention. The Frenchman was always close to that Hamilton bunch, and probably it was Old Man Richard who brought them Injuns to him in the first place.

I could not stop telling all about the Frenchman, because Mister Watson was watching me so hard I just got nervous. That feller would look right past your eyes and not show nothing, or look at you straight for a minute or more without a blink. Then he would blink just once, real slow, like a old turtle, keeping his eyes closed for a moment as if resting 'em up from such an awful sight.

It was that day, while he rested up his eyes, that I first took notice how fiery he looked, that chestnut hair the color of dried blood, and the ruddy skin and sun-burned whiskers. Them whiskers had a little gold to 'em, he looked like he was glowing from inside. Then them blue eyes was watching me again, out of the shadow of that black felt hat he wore winter and summer. Only hat in the Ten Thousand Islands, I imagine, that had a label into it from Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Then he looks up, cuts me off in a hard voice. "What's that old man up to, back yonder?"

I told him about the clamshell midden that the old Calusas had built back in that hammock, and the clamshell canal that come all the way in there from the open water. The way I figured it, I said, Old Man Chevelier was hunting Calusa treasure back on Gopher Key.

His eyes flicked, but he made no comment, just waited politely for my talking to run out. Then he replied, meaning no offense, that he'd give a lot for some educated company like M'sieu Chevelier-Che- vell -yay, he called him, stead of Shev-uh- leer, the way we said it-and he reckoned he'd picked a piss-poor way to scrape acquaintance.

He was right. I knew that Frenchman, knew he had grit or he wouldn't have made it by himself out in the Islands, where the skeeter whine can get so loud you think some kind of a meteor is coming. Richard Hamilton was going to hear about that bullet, and this story was not over by a long shot. But from that day on, we had the egret rookeries to ourselves.

I worked for Mr. Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties, and run his boats in later years when he came and went. If he done all the things laid at his door, it seems to me I would have knowed something. S.S. Jenkins worked at Watson's a good while, and if you could take and dig Tant up, he'd say the same. A whole heap of people from Caxambas, Chokoloskee, Fakahatchee, including more'n one of my own kin, worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another, and a heap more had dealings with him here and there. E.J. Watson drove him a hard bargain when that mood was on him, cause he had a good head for business, but the only one would ever claim that Mister Watson done him wrong was Adolphus Santini, who got cut in the neck in that drinking scrape down to Key West. There's men will tell you old Dolphus was drunk, too, and had it coming, but I don't want to say that, cause I wasn't there.

January 10, 1960