Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

At the schooner's mess table, we are face to face, by lantern light. Watson leans back into the corner of the bulkhead where he cannot be seen from outside the cabin window. I say, "You'd be safer in jail." I am not calm yet.

"Ever hear Ted Smallwood's story about Lemon City? The mob goes right into the jail to get this feller, shoots the nigger jailer, too, while they are at it."

"They won't lynch you in Fort Myers."

"No? How about a legal lynching like that stranger got, a couple of years ago, for self-defense against some local meanmouth who picked a fight with him? That feller was as good as lynched, my Carrie tells me, not because he deserved to die but because that's what the local people howled for. And nobody had to dirty their hands excepting you." He puts his watch back, then waves his hand to quiet me, as if reminded by the hard night wind that the world is closing in on him too fast. "I know, I know, the law's the law, it was your duty."

"You knew that feller?"

"Nobody knew him. That's why he was hung."

After six months in jail, that prisoner still wore his hat, as if certain he would go free at any moment. I invited him out of his cell to eat a dignified last supper on my desk. He took his hat off. The drifter-Edwards was his name-was almost bald under his hat, skin white and raw. He looked up grizzle-chinned from his tin plate when he was finished. "Sheriff," he said, "I never picked that scrape, it was him or me. And if it was me, that feller would be free today, you know that just as good as I do." He wiped his mouth. "You got a planter down here name of Watson, escaped the noose up where I come from on account of his daughter married the bank president, that's what I hear. But I'm a stranger with no money, so I'll pay with my life tomorrow morning."

The man stepped over to the sink and scraped his plate. "Justice," he said.

"No need to wash up," I said.

Stolid, the man washed the plate. "What kind of justice you call that?" he insisted.

Unable to answer, I shrugged as if to say, The law's the law. He said it for me, bitterly, "The law's the law." Then he said, "I've had enough of people, you know that? Enough of you and especially of me. First time in my whole damn life I ever thought I had enough of anything." He set down his dried plate carefully, with its knife and fork, then put his hat back on. "Thanks for the feed," he said. He walked back into his cell and shut the door.

The man lay on the bench knees way up high and to the wall, awaiting daylight still and mute as if waiting to be born. Seeing the sad round holes in the cracked boot soles, I was surprised by a wave of sorrow that this drifter's road was coming to an end. I longed to go in there, touch his shoulder, but could see there was nothing of comfort to be said, so I locked him in.

"Don't stare," he said in a muffled voice. "It ain't polite."

At daylight the preacher came, fearing his duty, and the man refused him. "Brother, your God and J.P. Edwards has parted company for good." He wet his pants before the public hanging in the yard. Who knows if God watched over him or not.

Watson has been ranting, his words hang in the air. So don't try telling me they won't hang Ed Watson high, first chance they get, because you don't know any such thing!

In the echo, he hauls a small flask from his pocket. "Island Pride?"

The white lightning surprises me. I shiver like a horse. "Whoo, boy," I say, eyes watering.

"Ed Watson's syrup turned a little hard, that what you're thinking?"

I nod, in a warm flush, trying not to smile. "I saw an article in August, out of Kansas City, says Ed Watson was hung in Arkansas back in the nineties. Any truth to that?"

"Get downwind of me these days and you'll sure think so. They don't give us wanted men much time to dab under the arms." He refills my cup. "I'm not the wanted man you want," he says.

"Where do I find him?"

"Deputize me. We'll go get him."

"He's still there?"

"No way to get off. My launch is at Chokoloskee, and the nigger took the skiff, and this John Smith is dead scared of the water. Don't know enough to run that schooner by himself, even if she's still afloat after the storm. And he won't have the first idea of the bad trouble he is in, so I can come right up on him, he won't suspect me."

"He won't suspect you."

"He doesn't know that anything went wrong."

"Something went wrong, then."

Watson's eyes go flat, to measure me. The pause before he answers is one breath too long.

"If you were this man Smith, and you found out that the one witness to your crimes got away to Pavilion Key and told a story, I reckon you might conclude something went wrong." Grimly he considers me. "Am I a suspect, then? I wasn't there."

"Your nigger says you were behind it."

Under the black hat, the eyes go oddly pale as if the blue was fading back into the white. A wolf or a treed cat would show more agitation than this man is showing, an ear twitch, a shifting in the eyes, a little curl along the gums. What I see instead is the stiff muzzle, the bald unblinking eyes, of a turned bear, a transfixed visage like a block of hairy wood-like an ancient spirit mask of the Calusas, drained of all expression. I feel faint. "That was his first story." My voice sounds far away but oddly calm. "When he was warned he'd have to face you with that charge, he took it back, blamed the killings on your foreman."

The life returns to Watson's face, the blue eyes soften. "John Smith," he murmurs.

"How come you don't use Cox's name?"

Watson refuses to show surprise. "Because he don't, I imagine."

"What was Cox's motive, Mister Watson?"

"Cox don't need a motive. Not to kill."

"You knew that, but you kept him there with your wife and children?"

"Needs a motive to work, maybe, but not to kill." When I don't smile, he says, "The family mostly stayed in Chokoloskee. Also, I owed Les a favor."

"You owed Les a favor," I repeated. "Want to tell me about that?"

"Nosir I don't!" Watson drinks and gasps and frowns hard at his flask, to clear his flash of anger. "Looks like some dumb sonofabitch distilled my syrup."

"Why did you come hunting me if you won't talk straight?" His eyes go flat again, and I say in a more careful tone, "You warned me twice not to try any arrest. That's resisting arrest. So is pointing a gun at the Lee County sheriff. You want my help, you better stop breaking the law." I am talking much too much, and cannot stop. "Next time I get the drop on you, I'll take you in."

"You threatening Carrie Langford's dad?" Watson nods a little. "No sense us two quarreling, Frank." Then he says tiredly, "You get the drop on me, you'd better shoot, cause you're not taking me in." He shakes his head. "No threat intended, Sheriff, I am just informing you."

"Let's start again. Who's Leslie Cox?"

"Shit!" Watson snarls, as if I am just wasting his good time. He bangs his palm down on the mess table. "I went to Fort Myers in a damn hurricane to report a dreadful crime, tell my side of the story, before someone gets a rope around my neck! You think I don't know my reputation? If I was guilty, would I go chasing the sheriff?"

"Lee County sheriff. The murders took place in Monroe." I pause. "You're gambling you'll get better treatment in Fort Myers." I pause again. "You think maybe your daughter's friends will help you."

"Am I wrong?" Watson sticks the flask out. I shake my head. "Why don't I run? Is that it? Well, I thought about it. Could have kept right on going when I hit Fort Myers, took the railroad to New York." He drinks. "Well, I got sick of running. I decided to stand up to my own life."

We sit silent for a time, listening to the schooner creak against the pilings, the dying wind still wandering the rigging. Over by the store, metal is banging, in the star wind sucked down from the north in the storm's wake.