Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

Oh, she was his young mare, all right! I don't care to think about it! And Papa walked and spoke like a young man again, he fairly strutted. He had stopped drinking-well, almost-and he was full of great plans for the Islands, full of life!

The whole dreadful business is "a closed chapter in my life," Edna Watson says. Did she get that phrase from Eddie, or did he get it from her, or is it simply a popular expression at Fort White?

Stepmother Edna is three years my junior. I paid a call on her at the hotel. She has a glazed look, a dull morbid manner. She tried her best to be polite, but she can scarcely bring herself to talk about it. Isn't it peculiar? The aging daughter wept and sniffled, the young wife never shed a tear, just sat there tight and stunned and scared, breaking her biscuit without eating it, not tasting her tea. Edna won't go to her people in Fort White but to her sister in west Florida, where no one knows her. She wants to get clean away, she says, so she can think. What she wishes to think about I cannot imagine.

Edna's clothes are nice (Papa saw to that) but she was wearing them all wrong, and of course they looked like she had slept in them, which perhaps she had. I urged my darlings to play with their little "aunt" Ruth Ellen, but Papa's kids are desperate creatures these days. Addison pulls and tears at Edna-When is Daddy coming? Where is Daddy? Baby Amy's big eyes stare all around even when she's nursing, hardly five months in this life and already alarmed!

But Edna scarcely notices, she cannot hear them, just herds her brood gently as if tending them in dream. In normal times she is surely a doting mother, since she is so easy with them even today, when the poor thing has no idea what will become of her. What little Papa did not owe is all tied up in house and boats and livestock, farm equipment. Walter explained to her that Papa's huge legal expenses of two years ago put him deep in debt, but she scarcely listened, didn't seem to care. Nor did she find words to thank him when he promised to send her whatever was left over once the debts were paid. I believe that Walter has advanced the money for their journey, and she has given him power of attorney to sell the last of Papa's syrup. She would have given it to anyone who asked.

When I told her we would remove Papa from that lost lonely grave out on the Gulf and give him a decent burial here in Fort Myers, she said quite simply, Beside Mrs. Watson? She didn't say that with resentment of Mama but to be polite-she might just as well have said, How nice! After five years, three children, and her shocking widowhood, she does not yet regard herself as Papa's wife! Like Walter and Eddie, Edna believes that the less said about Papa the better. The important thing is to protect our children from malicious tongues. That will be easier for her than us. Our life is here, we cannot flee, as she can, to west Florida, leaving everything behind, even the corpse! She is convinced that she and the children are not safe from their former neighbors, and so she will not even wait to see her husband buried properly. For that I cannot quite forgive her.

That's not true, Mama. I forgive her with all my heart. To think what this poor body has been through! Her stunned manner betrays how terrified she was, how desperate she is to put that dark accursed coast behind her!

We took her to the train in the new Ford-their first auto ride! She sat huddled in the coach, clutching her infants, her few scraps, longing for the train to blow its whistle and take her away. I noticed-my dear girls noticed it, too!-that she glanced over her shoulder every moment, as if that Chokoloskee mob might still catch up with her!

Then she was passing from our lives, a lorn face at the window. I said I was sure we would meet again one day. She looked away, then murmured aloud, just blurted it right out, No, I don't think so. She meant no harm, but by expressing no regrets, she hurt my feelings. Am I still so silly? Yet I wanted so to hug her, or hug someone, almost anyone. I mean, she is my stepmother, after all.

"Say good-bye for me," she whispered, in tears for the first time, as if the tears had been yanked out of her by the first yank of the train that would carry her off on its bright rails to a new life.

"Good-bye?" I sniffled, too moved by my own tears to realize her mind had wandered back to the reburial.

I walked along the track with her a little way, my fingertips on her windowsill, seeking her touch. She was aware of my hand there, but not until the final moment did she lay her fingers shyly upon mine.

"Good-bye to Mister Watson," Edna said.

NOVEMBER 3, 1910. There was a norther on the day we buried Papa. A cold hard light glanced from the river to the last leaves on the magnolias. Our little group gathered beneath the banyan, then followed the casket in by the main gate. The cemetery had sunk under the thorn since Mama and Walter's dad were buried there ten years ago, but now it's being fenced and cleared, "out of respect for our dead"-do we own our dead? How grateful they must feel, to be claimed this way! Our mama is surely smiling in her grave to hear such nonsense, her little skull, I mean. Oh, don't! I mean, I'm trying to think-did Mama ever laugh out loud, in joy of life?

We buried Papa beside Mama. It's a comfort to think that Papa is reunited with dear Mama, though somewhat the worse for wear, as he might say. I said so to Eddie, and Eddie said, No, they are not united. Mama's in Heaven, and that man is in Hell.

The darkie laborers stopped to watch, doffing their hats. Perhaps the ones who went down south and dug him up have passed the word about who was to be reburied, for the diggers knew all about the body in that casket. They did! I'm not being oversensitive. They knew something!

Frank Tippins came, he stood behind me, I heard him order them roughly back to work. The sheriff's voice seemed very loud in the old cemetery.

Goodness knows, our dreary little party needed any support that it could muster, and it was kind of Frank Tippins to appear, out of loyalty to Walter, I suppose. I wish he hadn't. In his black suit, he stood over Papa's casket looking fierce, as if delivering up his prisoner to the Lord. When I thanked him for coming, he exclaimed, "Mister Watson had my respect, ma'am, no matter what!" He was very embarrassed, as if he'd said something crude and tactless, and turned on those poor darkies once again. He looked confused. Frank's mustache, overlong and droopy, gives him a doggish look. He imagines he has always been in love with me.

After Papa's trial, when I understood that he had got off through political influence, I tried some political influence of my own. I went to see the sheriff about that poor man at the jail, condemned to hang. Papa and Walter agreed for once. If that prisoner had any influence, they said, he would be free, since he had slain the other man in self-defense. When I suggested this to Frank, he looked disturbed, and nodded a little while as if persuaded. I was thrilled! I'd saved a life, and maybe that deed might help as penance for any life our Papa might have harmed.

Instead Frank said, "Miss Carrie, you are twisting the arm of justice."

I got spitting mad. "Is hanging 'justice'? In a plain case of self-defense? My father says it's nothing but a lynching!"

And the sheriff said, "The prisoner was found guilty by a jury and condemned to death. Maybe it's not right but it sure is justice. Justice under the law."

At Papa's graveside I whispered to Frank Tippins, "Was justice done here, too?" He knew what I meant at once and got real agitated. He said, "No, ma'am! No due process! This was murder!"

Having spoken too loudly, he stood there gulping like a turkey, getting red. Then he came out with it: "Yes, ma'am." He whispered, "This was murder, yes, Miss Carrie. But I reckon maybe this was justice, too."