Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Santini had heard a lot more than he cared to about this feller Watson down on Chatham River, how Watson raised the finest hogs, “how Watson could grow tomatoes on a orster bar, grow damn near anything and a lot of it.” He also heard rumors that Watson was an outlaw and a fugitive. Santini advised Watson that the State of Florida would never grant a land claim to any man “who has not paid his debt to society,” so Watson better tend to his own business.

According to Ebe Carey, both men were drunk. Watson never spoke a word, just kind of nodded, like what the man was saying made good sense. But while he nodded, he was moving toward Santini, and the whole crowd skittered to the side like baby ducklings, that’s how fast they made that man some room. And this was before they knew what they know now about Ed Watson.

It was the look on Watson’s face that scared ’em, Ebe opined. Mister Watson could cuss him a blue streak when he got aggravated, but the louder he cussed, the easier you felt, knowing he’d end up yelling something so outrageous that he’d bust out laughing. When he was truly angry, his face went tight. That day them blue eyes never blinked but once, Cap’n Carey swore, and that one blink was very, very slow.

The auction room fell still. Watson hadn’t touched Santini but he stood too close, having slowly backed him up against a counter. Maybe he hadn’t heard too good, he whispered, but it sure sounded like some dirty guinea slander. Would Mr. Santini care to make his meaning plain? Watson’s soft voice should of been his warning, but Dolphus was too puffed up to hear the quiet and he probably thought he had this feller buffaloed. He winked at the onlookers and said, “Nosir, our great sovereign State of Florida don’t welcome desperaders, Mr. Watson.”

Watson’s knife was at his throat before he’d hardly finished. Watson told Santini to get down on his knees and beg his pardon. Santini kneeled but was too scared to speak. Hearing no apology, Watson shrugged, then drew that blade along under his jaw just deep enough to spatter blood onto the cucumbers. Looked calm and careful as a man slitting a melon. But when they grabbed his arms, he just about went crazy, and he was so strong it took four or five men to rassle him to the floor. By the time they got his knife away, the man was giggling. “Dammit all, I’m ticklish!” he told ’em.

Somebody run quick and fetched a doctor, and it was known Santini would survive by the time the news got back to Chokoloskee, though he carried that thick purple scar for life. Later on, Dolphus told his boy that Watson reached around him from behind and cut his throat without no warning. Might be true but that ain’t the way Ebe Carey told it.

At the hearing Watson raised up his right hand, swore on the Bible that he never meant to kill Mr. Santini because otherwise it stands to reason that he would have done it. Said this so innocent and so sincere, them blue eyes wide, that the crowd had to laugh to see the indignant Dolphus strangling with rage inside them bandages. Mister Watson paid Santini nine hundred dollars in hard cash not to take the case to court and that was that. But the Monroe County sheriff weren’t so sure that justice had been done, so he used his new telegraph machine to see if this man had a record. An Edgar A. Watson was the only man taken to court for the murder of Belle Starr, “Queen of the Outlaws,” in Oklahoma Territory, back in ’89, but Edgar A. was killed a few years later in an escape from Arkansas federal prison. However, an Edgar J. had been suspected in a slaying in Arcadia just a few months before Mr. E. J. Watson first turned up in Monroe County. By the time word come to arrest him, ship him back to the Arkansas penitentiary, he was safe at home in Chatham River.

The man killed in Arcadia was named Quinn Bass. Our House family homesteaded in Arcadia a while before we drifted south to Turner River and my pap had knowed the dead man as a boy. From the point of view of his community, he said, that feller might be better off deceased. De Soto County sheriff must of thought so, too, cause he let Ed Watson pay his way into the clear, same as he done in Key West with Santini. Only difference was, Quinn Bass never sat up to count his money.

That’s how word got out on the southwest coast that E. J. Watson was a wanted man, which explained why he come to the Islands in the first place. And even though plenty of other men was known to have come to the Everglades frontier for the same reason, folks begun to worry. We felt more at home with common ol’ backcountry killers than with some well-dressed desperader out of the Wild West.

Not that anybody put hard questions to this feller. If lawmen was hunting him across four states, that was not our business. His life was his own responsibility and he took it. If any man could of used a change of name, it was Ed Watson, but except for changing “A” to “J,” he was always exactly who he said he was, never denied it and was not ashamed. You had to respect that. He was a hard worker and a generous neighbor, and for many years we done our best to live with him.

Ted Smallwood knowed Ed Watson from their days at Half Way Creek, they was always friendly. Both come here from Columbia County, in the Suwannee River country of north Florida. Ted worked for my dad up Turner River for a while, married our Mamie in ’97, bought a small property from Santinis when he went to Chokoloskee that same year. About the only settlers on the island then was Santinis, Browns, Yeomans, and McKinneys. A half dozen families was at Half Way Creek, another half dozen at Everglade, with a few more perched on such high ground as could be found down through the Islands.

C. G. McKinney started out by farming them old Injun mounds back in Turner River. Wonderful black soil but once it was cleared, the full sun killed that land. Burn off another mound, make a fine crop, and the next year it wouldn’t grow an onion. McKinney come on to Chokoloskee, built a house and store, got in his supplies from Storters’ trading post in Everglade. His billhead said, “No Borrowing, no Loaning, I Must Have Cash to Buy More Hash.” Sold extra-stale bread that he called “wasp nest.” Set up a sawmill and a gristmill, founded the post office, tried his hand at common doctoring without no license, done some dentistry, delivered babies; the kids all thought he brought them babies in that big black satchel.

Mr. McKinney was a educated man who didn’t hold with plume hunting. The Frenchman used to rant and rave about plume bird rivals such as Watson but he hollered “Eepo-creet!” about McKinney, who went on just one egret hunt, then give it up for good. C. G. seen all them crows and buzzards picking on the nestlings, figured what they’d went and done was not God’s will.

Ted felt the same way about plume hunting but he had a blank spot in his heart when it come to gators. The year after he married our Mamie was the great drought year of ’98 when a man could take a ox cart across country. Every alligator in the Glades was piled up in the last water holes, and one day out plume hunting, I come on a whole heap of ’em near the head of Turner River. Got wagons and a load of salt, got a gang together and went after ’em. Me’n Ted and a couple others, we took forty-five hundred gators in three weeks from them three holes that join up to make Roberts Lake in rainy season. They was packed so close we didn’t waste no bullets, we used axes. Don’t reckon them buzzards got them carcasses cleaned up even today. Skinned off the belly skins, what we call flats, floated our flats down Turner River to George Storter’s trading post at Everglade and got good money. That year Cap’n Bembery Storter’s Bertie Lee carried ten thousand flats up to Fort Myers out of that one hole, and after that, it was war against the gators. Hides was coming from all over, deer and otter, too. Trader Bill Brown from Immokalee, he brung in one hundred eight otter on one trip, got a thousand dollars for ’em, along with gator flats by the oxwagon load. Another trip he hauled twelve hundred seventy flats into Fort Myers after selling eight hundred there not three weeks before. Said he’d brain every last gator in the Glades before he’d see one wasted. Thousands of God’s creatures was laying out there skinned and rotting before we seen that even gators can’t stand up to massacres. The gator trade was pretty close to finished.