Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

By daybreak, the worst of it was past, the wind was down, but all the banks of Lost Man's River was broken snags and thick gray marl, like a coat of death on every living thing. We could see ripped trees swirling past with wild things clinging, staring back as they was carried out to sea. Lost Man's Key was awash in a tide so high that the river looked a mile across, and the sea and the river were jumbled up together, thick chop and wind roil of a dead lead-gray, like all life color had been bled away.

I asked our mama was this Judgment Day that was spoke of so much in her Holy Bible? Was we in Purgatory or in Hell? And she said, No, honey, best I can make out, we are still on earth. And Grandpap James says, That is Hell enough for me. And Frank Hamilton, my daddy, told us, This here is like the Flood of Noah's time, come around again as warning from the Lord. And we knew he was thinking about Mister Watson.

Over that long night, Grandpap James Hamilton fell quiet, wouldn't talk at all, and after the wind died out a little, he looked all around that silence like he just woke up. Everything poor Grandpap put together in a lifetime was twisted down to trash or washed away, but he didn't act jagged and mean no more, he looked round-eyed as a little child. Finally he started in to murmuring, never stopped again. He was speaking in tongues, that's what my daddy told us, but I believe it was mostly his old memories of days gone by.

Come Wednesday, Henry Thompson took a row skiff up the rivers to the Watson Place, and was kind of surprised no one answered him when he sung out. Said that big house looked like she drifted in and stranded, cause everything around her was smashed flat, boat sheds, bunkhouse, little cabin, most of the trees, too. Uncle Henry come to the conclusion that Mister Watson had taken the whole bunch away before the storm. His schooner had rode it out all right, because somebody had lashed her tight to them big poincianas by the house, and they was about the only trees left standing.

Henry Thompson figured Mister Watson would not mind if he brought the Gladiator south and took us Hamiltons aboard for Chokoloskee. Andrew Wiggins had walked Lost Man's Beach from the mouth of Rodgers River, him and his wife and homeless baby, they was with us, too.

We arrived on Chokoloskee the 21st of October, 1910, and that was when we first had word about the murders. That news give Henry Thompson a bad start. Now that he thought about it, he recollected evil in the air, said the silence on the Bend was something terrible, said the reason Cox never sung out was because he had a bead on Henry from up under the eaves. Way we imagined it, Cox's mouth was set the way a snake's mouth sets, kind of a smile, while that shiny black forked tongue slithers in and out.

Fortnight later when my dad told Grandpap that the Chokoloskee men had killed Ed Watson, the old man shook his head. He did not believe it. Said, "You just tell that bloody-headed devil he is welcome to my Lost Man's claim if he can find it."

Most of Richard Hamilton's gang moved to Lost Man's River after the Hurricane of 1910 swept 'em off Wood Key. People would perch from time to time on our old territory, but them Choctaws or whatever the hell they called theirselves, they was about the only ones that never left. I'm talking about good steady folks was trying to make a life down in the Islands, not moonshiners nor renegades that came and went.

My grandmother Sallie Daniels and old Mary Hamilton was Weeks sisters from Marco Island, so Walter and Gene and Leon and the girls was Mama's cousins. But the two families wasn't close because we was not so proud about 'em, they was another bunch of dogs entirely. Some of 'em was pretty dark, though the dark ones had good features and the girls was comely. Mama and her sister-in-law, Aunt Gertrude Thompson, decided we weren't no kin whatsoever. How they figured that one out they never said.

I guess I wasn't proud about our cousins, but they never bothered me, we got on good. Like I say, I never was ashamed about 'em, ceptin maybe the one who acted shamed about himself. No, me and Dexter never had no trouble with them boys. They was all nice fellers and fine fishermen, they just wanted to be left alone, but folks didn't like their standoffish attitudes, wouldn't let 'em be.

Way I heard it, one time Old Man Richard Hamilton was telling Henry Short from Chokoloskee how he was Choctaw Injun out of Oklahoma. And Henry told him, You ain't Choctaw, you're chock full o' nigger, just like me! Henry Short was a good nigger, and I reckon he still is if he ain't died or something.

In the spirit of its epigraph ("No Stormy Weather Enters Here, Tis Joyous Spring Throughout the Year") the Fort Myers Press ran the headline THE STORM CAME BUT WE ARE HERE. It conceded the devastation caused by the Great Hurricane of October 17, reporting, however, that "All Are Optimistic" and that "No fear for the Future" could be detected.

FORT MYERS, OCTOBER 20, 1910. In Key West, the storm disabled the anemometers at the weather observation office, along with seven hundred feet of new concrete dock being installed by the War Department, and finished off the three-story concrete cigar factory of the Havana-American Company, severely damaged in the hurricane the year before. Winds reached their greatest velocity on Monday afternoon of the 17th, with gusts up to 110 miles per hour. The rainfall, however, could not be measured, the gauge having been carried out to sea.

The recent storm occupies the thoughts of everyone…one's sympathies are with the small householders, who in many instances have spent their savings in erecting a little home, often built in the cheapest style, which was ill-fitted to withstand the violence of the storm, and is either shattered or so injured as to require considerable outlay in repairs before becoming habitable. The colored population has in these ways encountered heavy losses…

ESTERO, OCTOBER 20, 1910. One peculiarity of the wind was that it would blow steadily for a minute or more with increasing violence, bending the trees before it, then there would come a hard puff that appeared to have a circular motion, twisting and whipping the trees until it seemed they must be torn to pieces or lifted out of the ground. About midnight the wind began to shift from northeast toward the south, until by Tuesday morning it had veered around to almost the opposite direction, that is, from the southwest… then abated…

CHOKOLOSKEE, OCTOBER 21, 1910. We are all in a fearful condition here. Some are destitute of a house, or clothing, only what they happened to have on when the gale struck on the night of the 17th.

Mr. J.M. Howell lost his home, and quite a number of people lost their homes down the coast and at Fakahatchee. All our crops are gone. Water rose about eight feet, filling a lot of cisterns with salt water. Some of the folks ran out and climbed trees; some fled to the highest mounds and had a bad, damp rest. Fishermen lost all nets and some boats.

One poor woman on Pavilion Key climbed a tree with her baby and was compelled to let it go adrift from her arms. She had the luck to save herself and buried her baby after the water went down.

We are all in a bad fix; provisions nearly all ruined in the stores.

Notwithstanding water ran eight feet on some cattle pastures, some of the cattle lived it out. I have seen some dead rabbits, and a big lot of fine chickens got drowned…

Mr. C.T. Boggess sprained his ankle or at least it slipped out of joint. His little power fish boat was driven up in the bushes a good ways and is nearly a wreck.

Great quantities of dead mullet and other fish are on the shores, and some today are not dead, but cannot swim, possibly from muddy water getting into their gills.