Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

For just one moment there he looked uncertain, like a dreaming man who has woke in a strange place. I felt bad about him then, or sad-that once I seen him look unsure was the one time I felt sorrowful about Ed Watson. Well, that sad feeling passed quick, I'll tell you that much. There come a eye shift, and he didn't look confused no more, he had that ears-back look, hard and sly and mean. He looked like a man who would take your life away from you and not think twice about it.

Nosir, he could not figure out, he said, why his good friends and neighbors were treating him this way when they knew he'd took no part whatever in them crimes. They knew Les Cox was the guilty man, and Cox was dead.

"Till we make sure of that, you are under arrest," I told him, just so Pap would know he was backed up.

Watson winced. He sucked his teeth and spat, and ground the spit into the ground, hard, with his boot.

"No, I am not under arrest," he said, shifting sideways a little, shifting that gun a little, "because you people don't have no fucking warrant." And he stared up the line and down again, jerking his chin when he came to Henry Short.

Hearing that anger, so sudden and so cold, the line of men went kind of wobbly, and some of 'em, we won't say who, commenced nodding and frowning in a hurry, like there sure was something to what Mister Watson said, like it might be best to run on home and think this through. There come a whispering behind me- I mean to say, boys, if there ain't no warrant, well, to hell with it, maybe we'd best go home, mind our own business.

But D.D. House had his dander up, the same as Watson, he had set like glue. People talked later about how our pap took such a fearsome hate for life in his old age, and how a angered-up old feller had nothing much to lose starting a fight that might get younger fellers killed, his boys included. Well, it weren't like that, it weren't that at all. Daniel David House had to finish what he started, boys or no boys, he didn't really know no other way.

So Pap said, "Mister Watson, lay that gun down." That was meant as a last warning to Ed Watson, but it was also a warning to his boys to start in shooting at the first false move.

Up until now, Watson had played for time, maybe figuring this crowd would lose its nerve. Or he might of suspected that we aimed to kill him whether he give his weapons up or not. He had to make a very quick decision. Truth was, if he'd surrendered up his guns, only one of his neighbors had the temperament it would of took to shoot him, and that feller was away, down to Honduras.

Knowing how quick Watson was, there is no doubt in my mind he had calculated chances even before Pap asked him for his shooting irons-hell, even before his boat had struck the shore. Probably figured if he made it into court, he'd beat the charge, because only a nigra had him implicated in the murders, and the nigra had backed off his story in front of witnesses. There was no good evidence against Ed Watson, not one bit.

Being so smart, he would also figure that we knew that, and knowing it, might take him out and lynch him, to make sure. After so many close calls in other places-in Oklahoma and Arcadia and Columbia County-he might conclude that his luck had just run out. Those stiff faces must of told him that this time he could not talk his way into the clear, but being so angry, it never occurred to him to give up. He must of seen these men were scared, which made 'em dangerous, but because we were bunched up and stiff, he had the jump on us.

When Pap stepped forward, Watson raised up that big hand, like some kind of old-time prophet in the Bible, and Pap halted.

Later we realized he had stopped us at what was the best range for a double-barrel if you wanted to kill and cripple more than two. Maybe that was not his plan, but that's the way we figured it out afterwards. To back that up, he carried a revolver in his coat, and maybe two. Two charges of buckshot right together would knock down the leaders and scatter the rest, and he might keep 'em ducking with his revolver while he pushed his boat back off the beach, shot his way out of there. At that range, with a panicked crowd, he might have got away with it, because when that anger took him, he moved fast and to the point, before we could take in what was happening-before we got it through our heads that a neighbor we had known near twenty years would shoot into the flock of us, like we was turkeys.

Some tell tourists yet today how they seen a sudden blush on Watson's face and a hard shine of crazy anger in those eyes. There wasn't enough time nor light to see no such a thing. The ones that say they seen that was so scared they couldn't see straight, or more'n likely wasn't there at all. But I'll swear to my death I heard his teeth grit when he swung that shotgun to his hip and snapped both barrels right into our faces.

I thought we was done for, I was curdling up inside myself, trying not to screech when that charge hit me, and I know Pap thought that he was done for, too.

Watson had peeled them wet shells once too often, cause they didn't hold. Hardly a thump in that wet powder, and buckshot came rolling right out the barrels. Pap was facing both them barrels at the time, and he said he seen the muzzles jump, that's how hard Ed Watson yanked on his dead triggers.

Watson was going for his revolver by the time I swung my rifle up and squeezed the trigger.

P-dang -that fateful sound still comes back yet, the first lean crack of rifle fire. Two together. Maybe the first shot was mine, maybe it wasn't. After that the evening broke apart, it was purely uproar.

Watson's legs shuffled him forward a few steps, leaning like a man on deck in a hard storm. But even while he walked, he was falling forward, falling against that roar and wind and fire, painful slow at first, like a felled tree. His coat and shirt jumped, buffeted by lead, the whack of a man's life being knocked out of him. His gun stock splintered, his revolver spun away. I seen his mouth yank, saw red jump out where his left eye burst, and still he fell.

I reckon Mister Watson died before his shotgun hit the ground, but his legs drove that dead man on, pitching him forward. I believe he was killed by the first bullet but he kept on coming. We all seen it, there ain't one won't say the same. And seeing him come after 'em that way, most of them men yelled and crowded back and kept on backing, even after he was down, flat on his face.

Ethel Boggess used to claim she was right under that big fig down there when Watson fell, and she swore he came eighteen or twenty feet before he struck the ground. With all that lead in him, he would not go down, that's how headstrong that man was even in death-that was the Devil in him, is what my mother said for long years after. Said only a demon could scare folks bad as that after he was dead.

Then the line surged back around us, near to knocked me down. They were still shooting! They were a damn mob now for sure, men hollering and cussing, and young boys running up and down yapping like dogs, and bullets flying. It's a miracle some poor soul wasn't killed.

I never seen a man struck down so hard. He lay face down on the bloody ground, the broad back with no breath to swell it, not a twitch, only stray threads on the holes tore through his coat, the night wind lifting them dark red curls on his creased neck.

Them threads and curls was all that ever stirred. Mister Watson never gave a gargle. I never saw a man so dead in all my life.

In Everglade, the cisterns was four-five feet below the ground, two-three above, and the water generally stayed cool and clear, but after the storm our cisterns was all flooded out with brine and mud, and no fresh water. What we had was a hard drought, more'n a month. Heavens was wrung dry, gray as old rags.