Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

We took aboard four thousand gallons of syrup for safekeeping. Mister Watson's old horse wore no halter and ran wild around the thirty-acre canefield, the men wasted half an afternoon trying to catch him. For all I know, that wild-eyed thing is running down there yet.

At Chokoloskee, on the way back north, we took the witnesses aboard. Mr. D.D. House was the only one who had a suitcase. He stood apart, hands on his hips, close to the boiling point. Bill House announced in no uncertain terms that it wasn't right to drag his dad off like a criminal when he had been known for honesty throughout his life. If his father could be left behind, and his young brothers, too, he would speak up "good enough for all of 'em." Young Dan and Lloyd were all slicked up, with shoes on, set to go, but D.D. House turned and marched them home, never said good-bye, never looked back, never said one word.

The widow and her children were all packed and ready. There hadn't been a drop of rain, and a dark place by the shore where the body laid upset her when she came down to the landing. Seeing the men on the Falcon's deck, she grabbed her children, started in to trembling, then fled back to the house. One man yelled after her, You can claim the body if you find the rope! Bill House told him to shut up. Rope? I said. Some men looked down. I went over to the store.

Mrs. Watson had come all apart, and her kids were crying. She told me she forgave those men but she was afraid to travel with them on the Falcon. Mrs. Smallwood advised me she would take good care of Mrs. Watson and the children and put them on the mail boat in a few days' time. She was furious. She came back with me to the boat and hollered, Which one stole his watch? Nobody answered. They were angry too.

On the voyage to Fort Myers on the Falcon, more than one explained away his own role in the killing while the rest were out of earshot. Pled self-defense-they all did that-having agreed on this tall tale about how the famous desperado E.J. Watson had endangered the lives of twenty or more armed men. They also agreed that every man there had fired at exactly the same instant, making it impossible to identify his killer. "You'll have to hang the whole damn crowd!" Isaac Yeomans cackled. Some men were positive that they had missed, and there was one who claimed he missed on purpose. Bill House was about the only man who did not deny or defend or even comment.

While they talked, I thought about the week before, when the man now dead had sat across from me at this same mess table. We didn't make friends, not exactly, but we got friendly in some way, we laughed a little. I couldn't get Watson's voice out of my mind. Maybe, in saying he killed Cox, he told the truth.

With each hour I grew more impatient with the Chokoloskee men. No matter how often I heard 'em out, I remained dissatisfied with the whole story, yet I had faith in their sincerity. These Chokoloskee pioneers were good and honest settlers who had sent away for a teacher for their schoolhouse and held prayer meetings whenever they could catch the circuit preacher. They were fishermen and farmers, they had wives and children, and for fifteen years and more they had suffered rain, heat, and mosquitoes in these endless islands, trying to take root. None of them had the smell of liars. Yet when twenty men slay one, someone's to blame. I only hoped that the whole truth and nothing but the truth would emerge under oath at the court hearing.

Bill Collier sailed out Rabbit Key Pass so I could see just where the grave was. Rabbit Key was four miles west of Chokoloskee, on the Gulf, and the Monroe County line went right across it. One man sang out, "We was careful to plant him on the Monroe side!" and another yelled, "We run that devil clean out of Lee County!" but nobody laughed, so these two shut up quick.

What was left of Rabbit Key was a stripped sand spit, with one lonesome big old mangrove twisted hard by wind. Old Man Gandees said, The boys run a rope right to that tree. You follow that rope and dig down deep, you'll find his carcass. He shrugged when I asked him, Why the rope? and the others gazed away in different directions.

Isaac Yeomans explained that with bound limbs, the body towed better, but hearing that, Ted Smallwood whistled loud-That ain't the only reason! The men were scared Ed Watson would rise up, come back to life, and walk on water back to Chokoloskee, Smallwood said, disgusted.

When I asked why they had towed him in the first place, instead of wrapping him in a piece of canvas and laying him in the boat's stern, Ted Smallwood said that treating Ed Watson like something dirty made 'em feel like they was right to kill him. Treating him like filth, they could feel cleaner, maybe.

Bill House didn't care much for Ted's theory, but he kept his mouth shut till he'd thought it over. Then he said, Ted? How come you claim to know how we were feeling, when you don't hardly know how you felt yourself? And Smallwood said, We ain't going to settle this one, Bill. Not this year.

Ted Smallwood took his hat off as the Falcon passed the grave, but the others glared out from beneath tattered straw brims and never spoke. They sat dead quiet, looking out to sea.

The Falcon sailed north past Indian Key and Fakahatchee Pass. What little talk there was concerned the strange dry weather. There hadn't been one drop of rain since the hurricane, and no sun either, a man had to row near to the head of Turner River to find good fresh water.

Off Panther Key, Bill Collier pointed out the place where Hiram Newell and Dick Sawyer's boy had come up with old Juan Gomez's body back in 1900. That got the men talking again, and pretty soon somebody mentioned that the James Hamiltons and Henry Thompson had a plan to move in alongside J. H. Daniels on Fakahatchee, which lay a few miles up that pass. Those folks had seen all they cared to see of Lost Man's River.

The Gulf grew rough where the tide changed, going against the wind. Off Cape Romaine, Isaac Yeomans became seasick, and the men laughed and called him a dang farmer. Smallwood told how years ago, crossing the Gulf Stream over to Bimini with Isaac and his older brother seasick in the cabin, he remarked to the Bahama pilot, "Pretty rough out, is it not?" And the nigger tells him, "Nosuh, Cap'm, boss, dis yere smood Gulf."

Jim Yeomans had been on the run from killing a man at Fakahatchee over unpaid debts. Isaac sat up to explain how the man's widow came around early next morning, just when Jim was getting set to leave. She repaid the money, and Jim said, "Ain't it a shame you didn't do that yesterday."

Isaac Yeomans blew his nose and spat and laughed. He yelled, Dis yere smood Gulf! and puked again. When he came up, wiping his mouth, he nodded in my direction. "Later on Jim was living on a boat at Clearwater. He walks past the drugstore minding his own business, and damn if the new sheriff don't step out and arrest him."

"Tippins, I believe his name was," Bill House said.

"Something like that, Bill," I said.

"Took Jim to court," Isaac Yeomans said. "And Jim's wife testifies that Jim told her how he aimed to put a stop to this damn feller that wouldn't pay Jim what he owed, and how Jim didn't have no choice but to keep his word. Open-and-shut case, says the new sheriff, but the case weren't quite so shut as what he thought, cause being Jim's wife, her word weren't worth the piece of paper it was wrote on. Had to let Jim go for lack of evidence, is what it was."

"Jim went back home, I always heard," I said, mild as could be, and Isaac turned and looked back south and east into the mist toward Fakahatchee.

"Might be killing a few over there today," he said.

"Wouldn't be surprised," I said.

Yeomans spat. "Remember them two Texas fellers, Ted, at Lemon City? Said they'd come gunning for Ed Watson but got shot by Sam Lewis before they got it done?" Isaac said that Lemon City folks had dreaded Lewis the same way people on this coast were scared of Cox.