Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

Teet Weeks snuffles his tin cup, wipes his stubbled chin with the back of his hand, gets my boots in focus. "Them fucking cattle kings and bankers gone to cover up for him again, ain't that right, Sheriff? Likely got you in their pocket, too-"

Bill Collier sets down the spring line he is braiding and hoists Teet off the floor and sets him down again facing the other way. Weeks spins and draws his fist back for a comic roundhouse punch, knowing that some kinsman will catch his arm before he gets himself in too much trouble. When no one bothers, he feigns imbalance, which carries him back to a safe distance, bobbing and weaving by himself in a small circle. That's how Teeter Weeks, a drunkard at fifteen, had got his name. Taking the laughter as approval, Teet winks and prances, spits on his hands. "Damn you, Bill Collier, you looking for a fight? You found your man!"

Captain Bill Collier is a broad-backed man, calm and slow to anger. His father founded Marco settlement way back in 1870. Today the son is storekeeper and postmaster, trader and ship's master, he is shipbuilder and keeper of the inn. He has a copra plantation of five thousand palms and a citrus grove on the mainland at Henderson Creek with fifteen hundred orange trees. He designed and owns the floating dredge that works the clam flats at Pavilion Key.

It was Bill Collier who discovered the strange Calusa masks off the Caxambas trail while getting out muck for his tomatoes, Bill Collier who lost two sons when his schooner Speedwell sank off the Marquesas. He has done a lot and seen much more. Ignoring Teet Weeks, he picks up his rope and resumes braiding.

I ask if anyone knows Watson's foreman.

"Your prisoner seen him last, on Chatham Bend. Nobody knows where he might of got to now."

What I should do, I think, is deputize some men, keep right on going, south to Chatham River, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction, because whoever was responsible for those three killings was not likely to wait there for the sheriff.

"…and no goddam law!" Teet cries. "Ought to take and put a bullet through them kind of crazy sonsabitches fore they get loose from their damn cradle, be fucking well done with it-"

"That where you're headed, Sheriff? Chatham River?"

"Cross the Monroe line?"

The men grin when I play dumb and say, "That's not Lee County? Guess I lost my map," but they keep pressing.

"John Smith. You found out who he is?"

"I believe the nigra knows, but he's not telling."

"Had that black boy here tonight, I guess he'd tell us."

"That could be."

The restless men half listen as Dick Sawyer describes how he once saved Watson's life.

One day he'd seen the Gladiator at Key West, and getting no answer when he hallooed, he went aboard. OF Ed was down with typhoid fever, couldn't move or talk. Dick Sawyer went up the street, brought Dr. Feroni back down to the boat, and the doctor cured him. "Ed give me not one word of thanks for saving his damn life," Dick Sawyer says. "And that is funny, cause Ed's manners was so excellent."

"Yes, sir," Jim Daniels says, disgusted. He is worried about his sister Josie on Pavilion Key. "Very well knowed to settle his accounts, keep on the right side of the storekeepers, but he still owes my oldest boy eighty dollars for motor repair. Watson as much as told my Henry he could go to hell, but he says it real polite, cause his manners is so excellent. A very mannerly man, specially when he has you where he wants you. And he has most everybody where he wants 'em, that right, Dick?"

"Had a couple your sisters, Jim, right where he wanted 'em, as you might say-"

Jim Daniels, in his fifties, hard-armed, dark-haired, with a trace of silver, cuts off Dick Sawyer just by sitting up straight.

"I was down at Lost Man's, 1901, nearby my daughter Blanche's people-that's her brother-in-law, Lewis Hamilton, cooks on the clam dredge? Well, one evening I seen a little boat burning down against the sun, way out there on the Gulf horizon. Went out there to see if we could help, found what was left of Tucker's little sloop, no trace of nobody. Nice mannerly job." He looks grimly at Sawyer. "Before that it was mostly rumors. Wasn't till after Tuckers died that folks got scared of him. If he hadn't of took off for the north, he could of had about any mound he wanted cepting Richard Hamiltons'."

"Old Man Richard's bunch, they's kin to your wife, ain't that right, Jim?"

Jim Daniels says, "Not so's you'd notice, Dick."

"Now Netta and Josie-"

"You speaking about my sisters, Albert?"

"I'm speaking about their little girls, over Caxambas. Ain't them kids Watson's?" The speaker is a morose man whose wife, Josephine, had presented him only this year with a chestnut-haired baby boy. Josie Parks-she used the name of the original ex-husband-had refused to abandon Pavilion Key before the storm, and her latest spouse, who had left without her, had been drinking for two days to drown his worry. "Thought that was common knowledge," he adds carefully, seeing Jim's expression.

"Best ask Mister Watson about common knowledge, Albert. Might could tell you some more common knowledge that you ought to know."

In the hooting, Josie Parks's drunk husband raps his cup down hard, as if set to fight, but Captain Collier, waving his long arms, has no trouble at all deflecting his attention.

"Talking about common knowledge, Albert," Collier says. "One time on his way back from Fort Myers, Mister Watson got as far as here but needed a boat to take him down to Chatham River. Hiram Newell setting over there, he worked for Watson, but Hiram had his boat up on the ways, so them two went on over to Sawyer's, that right, Dick? And Hiram told Dick through the door that Mister Watson was outside, said he wanted to know if Dick would take him home. And Dick thought Hiram was playing fun on him, and hollers out, 'To hell with you and your goddam Mister Watson!' Then he come to the door, and when he seen who was standing right outside, he said just as nice as rice, 'Why hello there, Mister Watson! How the hell you been?' Remember, Dick?"

"I took that sonbitch home, yessir!" Dick Sawyer says. "Too damn scared not to!"

Josie's husband yells at Sawyer, "You always been his friend, ain't that right, Dick? Friend of Walt Smith, too. How do you like them two fine fellers now?" Dick Sawyer, as every man there knew, had been aboard Smith's sponge boat a few years earlier when Smith had killed the game warden, Guy Bradley.

"I worked with Walt Smith, that is right," Dick Sawyer says, "and I left Key West right after that and come up here. Cause I ain't Smith's friend after what he done, and I ain't no friend to Watson, neither, not no more!" Sawyer, frowning, pounds his fist, but he has to give this up. "Ol' Ed told me that himself," he says, and laughs.

"This here time," Dick says, "me and Tom Braman was having some drink in Eddie's Bar there in Key West, and Ed Watson banged in there roaring drunk and set up shots for everybody. And two black women came in and ordered rum, because Key West being a Navy town, it allowed niggers to act that way ever since the War Between the States. So Watson turned at the sound of nigger voices, and one of them females, she lifted a glass to him, she was drunk, too. There was a bad silence for a minute while he thought that over. He did not toast back. Everyone felt a whole lot easier when Ed got up off his stool without a word and left the place. Ain't nobody never going to see Ed Watson take a drink with niggers! -I hollered that out to make sure them women knew what was what.

"Turned out two niggers was waiting for their women right outside. One of 'em said how-do to Watson, so Ed took out his knife and went right after him. There come a shriek and Ed's friends ran out, thinking to keep him out of trouble. They yelled, No, no, don't do that, Ed! Better listen to us, cause we're your friends! And Watson rolled up onto his feet as the crowd backed off. He was panting, you know, squinting. When he yanked out a neckerchief to wipe his knife, every man flinched, thought he was going for his pistol. But all he said was, very calm and quiet, I don't have no friends. Not sorrowful about it, more kind of confused, you know, like he was trying to remember something."