Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

On October 24, late afternoon, my brother Georgie and young Nelson Noble rowed over to Chokoloskee for some drinking water. They was just rounding the point west of Smallwood's store when they heard a bang and racketing of guns, broke out like firecrackers. It was dark enough by then to see the muzzle fire, which carried on for ten seconds or better. Then silence fell across the island like a blow, and out of that silence-they both tell it-rose the chanting of a chuck-will's-widow, so loud and clear they had to wonder if that night bird had been singing all along, and never even slowed to hear the shooting.

Smallwood's dock was washed away, and the Brave was run up on the shore, and Mister Watson laying there like he'd fell from Heaven. Cepting two-three sniffing dogs, nobody wanted to go anywheres near him. Our boys stood with their water jugs but kept their distance.

Some of the men there was upset, and some was angry, and some of 'em seemed kind of shocked, wouldn't talk to nobody at all. Other ones could not stop talking-not listening, you know, just talking, the way crazy people like to do-and these ones were swearing how that man there tried to murder the whole crowd, how he kept on coming after he was shot to death three or four times over. And all this while, over the voices, that night bird never let up-over and over and over, wip, wip-WEE-too!

Georgie and Nelson never got home till close to bedtime. George told us all he seen and heard, and still we pestered him with questions, not rightly knowing yet just how we felt. Mister Watson was well liked in our family, came for dinner every Tuesday noon and never arrived without something to offer, even if it was only jokes or news. "I ain't going to speak agin Ed Watson," our dad said. "We was in friendship, and he helped me where he could and never harmed me." All the same, Dad seemed relieved, he couldn't hide it.

Watson claimed he had killed Cox, and Old Man D.D. House told Watson they would have to go to Chatham Bend, see for themselves, and said he'd better turn over his gun. Watson said Nosir, he sure wouldn't, being as how that bunch was there to lynch him. He swung his shotgun up, pointed it at Old Man House, and pulled the trigger, but it never fired-that's the story was told by them that done the talking. But something was wrong about the story no matter how often Georgie told it, and to this day we never figured what it was.

Dad said, "Well, now, if that shotgun never fired, how come they're so sure he pulled the trigger?"

"Seen his gun yank when he hauled on it," Georgie explained.

"They tell you that, boy? Or is that what you imagine?"

We were all upset.

"You sound like you doubt your son's word," my mother said.

"It ain't his word I doubt," he said. "But I doubt something."

Some men come out with it in later years, said folks had enough of Mister Watson, said the execution had been planned, though not all knew it. Others claimed that was the first they heard about it, said if they'd of known, they wouldn't of took part. So the Bay people was already split up over Ed Watson.

Dad said, "Only thing that ain't in doubt, they killed him."

Harry McGill, who later married my sister Maggie Eva, he was among them men who fired. So was Charley Johnson. Old Man Dan House, Bill House, young Dan and Lloyd-them four never denied that they took part. I don't know who else for sure, cause too many of 'em changed their stories, but I heard it was men from almost all ten Chokoloskee families, along with a few fishermen on the way through. Isaac Yeomans, Andrew Wiggins, Saint Demere, Henry Smith-all them fellers might been in on it. They was at least twenty there with guns.

Nelson Noble's daughter Edith, married Sammie Hamilton, she always said her dad was in on it, but he sure wasn't. He was coming around the point with my young brother, like I said. They seen the finish. And others that said they was just there to arrest him, not to shoot him, said they never fired-well, they did.

A lot of people still ask me about Mister Watson. I don't like to speak about him much. I like to talk about him as a gentleman, because that's the way Storters remember him. I didn't know what was inside of him, I just knew him for a jolly friendly man.

Until all this killing started, Ed Watson was all right, wasn't nobody down on him. My dad always said Ed Watson'd give you his last dollar with his left hand, slit your throat with his right. You hear a lot of people saying that today. I can't recall if anybody said it while Mister Watson was alive, but he already had a reputation at the time I knew him.

Folks just got tired of him, I guess.

My Nettie has read me from a famous Florida book where the man who fired the first shot at Watson was Luke Short, a white fisherman. That is dead wrong but about as right as all the rest. Same writer claimed that the leader of the posse, C.G. McKinney, got wounded when Watson fired. Well, Old Man McKinney wasn't leader of the posse, he wasn't even there, and the only man got wounded on that day was E.J. Watson.

All them stories in the books and magazines, they never mention who was on that posse, and that is because nobody would tell 'em. When strangers came around asking nosy questions, nobody would talk to 'em at all. Me, I don't know for a fact who pulled the trigger and who didn't, but from the look of him when they got done, very few hung back.

If Watson's gun had not misfired, my daddy would been deader'n a doornail. Knowing that, he turned his back on all that racket and just walked away. Some way he had busted a gallus and was holding up his trousers with an arm across his belly, walked soft and slow like he had a gut ache or was carrying new ducklings. I never forgot that way he walked, I never before seen my pap as an old man.

We followed him, though us boys wanted to stay, being so bad twisted up over the end of it. Dan was in tears, he was so mad, and didn't even know what he was mad at. The men who shot and the men who stood aside, they felt relief and they felt sick, too, because all of 'em had enjoyed Ed Watson and didn't have nothing personal against him-the most of us had known his generosity, one way and another. We tried to spit it up, over and over. But D.D. House never spoke of it again, and it went bad in him, turned him stiff and sour and old within the year.

When the crowd drifted back into the dark, and the dogs forgot why they was barking, Charlie T. Boggess hobbled down there with a lantern, helped Ted turn him turtle, drag a canvas over him. Smallwood tried to fold the arms across the chest, but ever so slow them arms opened up wide, like the two claws on a crab. Or that's how Charlie Boggess told about it, cause Charlie T., he made up for his short size with his tall stories. He was spooked by them slow-opening arms much worse than by that bloody eye, is what he would tell to visitors in later years, when everyone had forgot the truth, Charlie T. included.

Ted tried to close the blue eye that was left, but he come too late, the dead lid peeled right back off the gory eyeball. So they hunted around amongst the hurricane scraps spread through the bushes, found a boy's flag from the Fourth of July to lay across his face. Might been a sacrilege up North, who is to say. In the South it wasn't fifty years yet since the War Between the States, and D.D. House, who had rode off for a soldier, he never did get used to the Stars and Stripes.

Leaving a body out all night on the cold ground was bothersome. Didn't feel no guilt or nothing, just couldn't sleep with Watson laying down there by the water, so I went and paid my respects under the moon. Ted and Charlie aimed to drag him under cover but they didn't, and I went down with the same plan, didn't touch him neither. There was no place for him, he wasn't even welcome where he was. Dogs or boys had snapped away the tarp and tore that flag off him. I tucked him in again as you might say, then took my hat off and said, Mister Ed, I stand by what was done, but I want to say it sure weren't nothing personal.