Lost Man's River (39 page)

“Goddammit, Buzz, you frisk this man?” Daniels hollered. “You pat him down good?” When the deputy just laughed and kept on going, Daniels cursed him. Green eyes fixed on Lucius, he emerged slowly and perched on the bunk edge with his hands beside him gripping the thin mattress. In the bad light from the fly-specked yellow bulb high overhead, the saturnine heavy mouth in his hard face was fringed by a dirty stubble.

“That smart-mouth peckerhead is goin on report,” he muttered, tossing his bristled chin toward the door. “Prisoners' rights ain't only just the rules, they're the damn law!” He glowered at his visitor, who remained standing by the door because there was no chair. “What in the hell do
you
want? God A-mighty! Here I ain't laid eyes on you in twenty years, then all of a sudden you show up way to hell and gone out to Gator Hook, and next thing I know, you track me to the county jail! You paid 'em off or somethin? Let you right in and lock the door behind, don't even frisk you!”

Lucius turned his back to him and spread his arms out wide, hands to the wall. In his dislike, he was baiting Speck a little, and he was astonished when Daniels sprang and collared him and shoved his chest hard against the cement before patting him down, then gave him an extra parting shove before returning to the bunk, where he cursed some more and stretched out in the shadow, one arm flung across his eyes.

Lucius hunkered down against the wall, trying to compose himself, as Daniels shifted his arm and watched him from beneath his elbow, reading his thoughts. “I'm waitin on you, Colonel. If you ain't here to shoot me, boy, you better remember pretty quick why the fuck you come.”

Lucius said he had been told that a man back in the holding cells might be able to tell him something about Sheriff Tippins's attitude toward the Watson case. “Turns out it was you,” he said.

“Tell
you
somethin? Man who put me on that stupid list the way you done? I wouldn't tell you fuck-all about
nothin
!”

But when Lucius got up, prepared to leave, Speck waved him toward the corner. “You can set yourself right down on my nice toilet,” he said. If anyone ended this meeting, it was going to be Crockett Senior Daniels, who wouldn't do it before gaining some advantage.

Daniels acknowledged he'd been close to Sheriff Tippins. Asked his opinion
on the absence of any reference to E. J. Watson in the Sheriff's records, he sucked his teeth as if considering his right to remain silent. He rubbed his temples with iron-scarred brown knuckles, summoning up old talks with Tippins that might lead his mind back to Ed Watson. Then he put his hands behind his head and stared awhile at the straw and broken springs which thrust forth from the bottom of the upper bunk.

E. J. Watson got blamed for plenty killins that was done by other men along this coast—that's what Frank Tippins told me. Watson was down around the Islands long as most of 'em, but he kept hisself apart. Not many knew him good as what they claimed they did. Ed Watson grew the best sugarcane and the most, nobody near him, so the Sheriff concluded it weren't no coincidence that Old Man D. D. House who was Watson's biggest rival in the syrup business was also the leader of the crowd that killed him.

When the Sheriff brought that bunch here to the courthouse, one man, Bill House, give the main testimony and the rest just mostly backed him up. Bein so old, D. D. House got left behind in Chokoloskee, also a young feller by the name of Crockett Daniels. The Sheriff knew about me and that old man. The one he never knew about was House's nigger.

Them men thought they was bound to be indicted, so they hollered self-defense, knowin there weren't nobody would contradict 'em. Yet every last one of 'em admitted they had went to Smallwood's with guns loaded, set to shoot—malice aforemost, that's what Tippins called it. All his life, Frank Tippins swore them men should of been indicted, first-degree murder.

Bill House deposition, all that evidence, should of gone to the grand jury. Well, there weren't one. No arraignment, no indictment—nothin! So who's to say what happened to the record? Sheriff might of tossed out everythin in pure disgust after the Watson family and Banker Langford put a stop to the investigation on account of more scandal might be bad for business. And the dead man's own son was court clerk, and he backed 'em up.

In them days, Frank Tippins was still green, so he was sniffin hard after the truth. He purely hated bein whistled off his bird by Watson's family. Ever' time he thought about that so-called posse they made him deputize after the man was dead, he'd get to fumin like a big ol' bear with a snootful of beeswax, eyes full of bees and stung real smart and nothin much to show for all his trouble.

Then Tippins and his coroner went down to Rabbit Key and done an autopsy, and after he seen how much lead was shot into that tore-up body, he couldn't never swaller their damn story. For years he'd holler, Now goddammit,
Speck, you was right there on the landin, son, you seen 'em shootin! Damn people must of emptied out every last load! Them bullets was just a
rollin
out! Filled a damn coffee can! Said even when his coroner quit, he figured they was more slugs left in that putrid carcass.
Thirty-three bullets!
Not countin buckshot! If thirty-three struck home, how many missed? Goddammit, boy, you goin to look a lawman in the eye and tell him that was self-defense?

Course I don't rightly know if it was self-defense or not. Couldn't hardly see nothin over the crowd. By the time I seen an opening and upped and fired, the man was fallin, deader'n a doornail.

After the autopsy, Tippins wanted to reopen up the case, but he never could figure how to go about it, not with all of 'em confessin they was in on it, and every last one of 'em in his damn posse—not your common murder case at all!

What I never could figure was why Frank took it so hard, and why he could never let it go, not for years afterwards. But I believe what dogged him most was this rumor that a nigger in that crowd had raised a gun to shoot at E. J. Watson. Now
that
would eat at Frank B. Tippins, I can tell you! Frank got on all right with Injuns but he never did see eye to eye with niggers. Course most of us was that same way, though these days some will try to tell you different.

The way that nigger story got out, a feller snuck up alongside of the Sheriff when he brought them men north to Fort Myers on the
Falcon
. This feller hinted that the man who fired first—the man who nailed Watson right between the eyes—weren't nobody else in the wide world but some fool nigger who had lost his head. Said the rest of 'em only shot afterwards, to cover up for him. Said he'd swore on his honor he would never reveal that nigger's name, and he never had to, cause there weren't but the one colored man on Chokoloskee.

Well, Tippins reckoned that this snitch was lookin out for his own skin, cause none of the rest would back that story up. Whoever told you that told a plain lie, them others hollered. Us boys don't need no goddamn nigger to do our shootin for us! Said they knew how to take care of their own business, and they done it. And the hard way they said this made Tippins conclude that some of these fellers, maybe all of 'em, knew what that day's business was before Ed Watson ever come ashore.

Tippins could not tolerate that
any
nigger would even think to raise a gun against a white man, and least of all a white man like E. J. Watson, who had every coon in southwest Florida scared up a tree. Over here in Colored Town, “Mister Watson” was the bogeyman hisself.
You doan jump inter bed dis minute, Mist' Watson gone gitcha!
Hell, he's
still
the bogeyman right to this
day, though they ain't a soul can hardly recollect who Mr. Watson was or what he looked like!

So the Sheriff chewed over what he had been told, and in later years, when he heard that same damn story, he commenced to snoopin all around about that nigger, huntin up a good excuse to take that black boy into custody and work some truth out of him. By then, o' course, that boy had made himself real scarce, he was livin way off by hisself, down Lost Man's River.

Nigger Short—pretty good nigger, too, had a real light skin. Good worker, handy, got the job done, and all the while so polite and quiet it was like he wasn't hardly there at all. From what I known of him, Henry Short was about the last nigger on this earth would raise a gun to fire at Ed Watson. But first time me and the Sheriff done some business—this was five years later—he asked me straight out, Did that sonofabitch shoot at Ed or didn't he? Well, I never seen it if he did, that's what I told him, not carin to admit I was so far in the back that I couldn't hardly see nothin at all.

As for the other nigger in the case, that boy who showed up at Pavilion Key? They took him to Key West and let him off! We all thought he had fell overboard on his way down there, but Tippins had a Miami clippin the Monroe sheriff sent him, and I seen it myself in later years—Florida
Times-Union
, December first of 1910! That sonofabitch went and testified how he helped butcher that big white woman and sink her in the river, and they let him off because he claimed Cox made him do it! Even give him some clothes and a ticket and some money, sent him home to Georgia, told him to stay in touch with the Sheriff in case Cox was caught! Oh, Tippins was boilin mad, I'll tell you!
That's a Key West jury for you, Speck! Yankees and damn foreigners, is all that is! He wouldn't have got away with that here in Lee County! I mean, Good God A-mighty, Speck! He had his damn black hands all over her!
I sure heard our Sheriff holler
that
a time or two!

One night a few years later in Key West—we was in a bar down on Duval Street—a friend of mine was tellin me how they had at least two niggers there in town who was pickin up drinks by claimin it was them who escaped from the Watson Place to report the killins. And I said, why, goddammit to hell, we got one in Fort Myers claims the same damn thing! But the real one went on home to Georgia, and they never caught Cox so I don't guess he come back. Sip Linsy, he called himself, somethin like that.

The Sheriff believed till the day he died that us fellers took and lynched Ed Watson, said we was waitin there to gun him down. Said, “Maybe you held your fire till he raised his gun, maybe you didn't.” Said Bill House was sincere, all right, believed the hell out of his own deposition, but somethin was missin in his story all the same. So Tippins called Ed Watson's death an unsolved crime where most wouldn't call it no damn crime at all. That was the
first time, Frank would say, that he never done his duty as a Sheriff. Weren't the last time by a long shot, but he didn't know that in the early days. Might been the Ed Watson case which got him so disgusted up, when you come to think about it. The Sheriff said, “The law's the law.” And killing Watson was against the law because Watson never had no chance to plead not guilty.

As for them official records of that case, here's my opinion. Eddie Watson was court clerk and he swept his daddy's case under the desk and wiped the books, and probably Banker Langford put him up to it.

Eddie, he's retired now, over here on Second Street, but that don't mean he ain't up-to-date on his neighbors' business. He is a real nosy old poop and that's a fact. Likes to fish up other people's mail out of their box. Not only reads it but jots down his personal comments on the envelope. Friend of mine was a deputy for Tippins back when Eddie started up that hobby. There was complaints, so this feller went on over, had a talk with him. Eddie denied it and promised he would quit, all in the same breath, that's how nervous he was that the deputy might get away before he could sell him this old shootin iron—single-shot, bolt-action, looked like a made-over rifle with a shotgun barrel. Hell of a lookin thing! Eddie claimed this was the gun used by the famous desperado Bloody Watson on the day he died, swore up and down that this gun was well known to be his daddy's from some kind of a black scorin on the stock. Not only that but this selfsame gun had killed the famous outlaw queen Belle Starr—no extra charge! Said it was priceless, so naturally this feller give him fourteen dollars for it. Might been priceless but it weren't what Eddie said it was.

One time I hefted the real-life gun Ed Watson was totin—I ain't rightly sure who's got her now. Twelve-gauge Remington ridge-barrel, twenty-eight- or thirty-inch double barrels, one of the earliest models ever made with smokeless steel. Didn't have no rabbit ears—that's outside hammers I'm talkin about, like on old muskets—but a real old-fashioned shootin iron just the same. Had a short forearm, wood was split but put back together pretty solid with quarter-inch squarehead screws. The safety was busted, welded back, busted again—that sound familiar? Course the wood on the stock was all raggedy-lookin from bein shot up so damn bad that day, and the barrels all pitted from layin too long in the salt water. Nobody give it a wipe of oil before the Sheriff took it for court evidence. Looks like some excited young fool flung that shootin iron into the bilges of his boat. Never stopped to think that one day that historical-type gun might be worth big money. And you know something? That fool might of been me!