Lost Man's River (40 page)

Speck Daniels had taken off his boots and stretched out on his bunk, hands behind his head. After so much talk about the old days, he was feeling almost amiable, and sat up, annoyed, when the deputy came and opened the cell door.

“Had enough?” the deputy asked Lucius.

“Enough what?” Speck demanded. “We had enough of
you
already, and you only just showed up!”

The deputy departed, laughing, leaving the door open, and Lucius rose to leave.

“Set down a minute!”

Lucius waited in the doorway. Speck winked in a poor attempt to appear friendly and relaxed, but was scowling again almost at once. “Don't care for my company?” he said. “Well, that is natural, I reckon, for a man that's livin in the past like you been doin. But if you're still thinkin about shootin me, just remember who give you that Bill House deposition for your book!”

“
You
sent that?”

“I saved it out from bein lost, let's put it that way. Found it myself, in Tippins's desk—he never missed it. Ol' Frank is dead now, he'd of
wanted
me to have it. Ain't goin to thank me?” Speck's voice rose when Lucius did not answer. “Don't matter who sent it, it was mine by rights, and it was stole off of me! Think I don't know what that thing's worth?” He studied Lucius meanly. “As a souvenir of the famous day when us boys went and wiped out Bloody Watson?”

“You admit that, then.”

Speck Daniels squinted. “When your daddy died, I was startin out as a young gator hunter, not much more than a boy. I happened to be visitin that day from Fakahatchee, and I follered my uncle Henry Smith over to Smallwood's. Figured I might's well join that line of men, see what was goin on. I never had one thing in the world against your daddy! I just hated to miss out, is all it was.”

“Hated to miss out on a lynching?”

Speck was short of breath and short of temper, too, he was actually thrashing on his bunk, like a cottonmouth pinned by a stick. “I looked up to your daddy,” he muttered finally.

“That makes it worse.”

Speck considered this a moment. “Weren't none of us fellers was born killers exceptin maybe Horace Alderman, and we didn't know that about Horace, not that day. Even Horace didn't know it, hardly, till years later. So I was bothered some and will admit it. Your dad had daughters by two females in our family and he always helped take care of 'em, always treated us like kinfolks, in a manner of speakin. Them two ladies has been dead awhile so
they can't scold me no more for takin part at Chokoloskee, but their children ain't speakin to me to this day!” Daniels laughed unpleasantly, shaking his head. “Colonel, you ain't got a thing to be ashamed about, is all I'm tellin you. Ed Watson was his own man, done what he thought was right. Never killed a livin soul who didn't need some killin.” The moonshiner was grinning a sly vicious grin, as if to recover the pride lost from having tried to make excuses for himself. “Here is a nice story you'll be proud to write up your book—story my aunt Josie used to tell about how good she was took care of by her man Jack Watson.

“One fine day they was settin there eatin their supper on the Bend, had nice fresh peas. And there was a gang of cane cutters that ate at that big table, and this man was findin fault with Josie's peas. They wasn't salted—wasn't this, that, nor the other. So her Mister Jack, he started in to rumblin and he warned the man to be more careful not to hurt Miss Josie's feelins. This cutter shut up, but pretty quick he commenced to grumblin again, bad as before. Knew bad peas when he seen 'em, this feller did.

“Well, Mister Jack didn't have no more to say about it. Finished his dinner, set his fork down, wiped his mouth. Then he pushed his chair back and got up, lookin ever so calm and quiet and respectful, like a good citizen in church leavin his pew. And there come a hush, and this field hand stopped his eatin, cause he knowed that somethin terrible was comin down on him. But he was too scared to try to run, he only set there kind of bug-eyed starin out the winder, like that big ol' croc that used to hang around that stretch of river was clamberin right out onto the bank, comin to get him.

“Takin his time, Ed Watson walked around to that man's place. He laid his hand on this man's head, drawed his head back by the hair—didn't yank it, Josie said, her Jack wasn't rough with him or nothin. He laid his bowie knife acrost his throat and said, ‘Folks, please excuse this unfortunate interruption.' He stood this feller on his feet because his knees weren't workin good no more and walked him outside before he slit his throat, so's not to mess up Aunt Josie's nice clean floor.”

“Christ!” Lucius swore. “No wonder he's got such an evil reputation, when people like you spread stuff like that!”

Speck Daniels shrugged, not in the least put out. “Now Aunt Josie never did deny that Jack Watson put that knife to her own throat a time or two when he was in his liquor, get her to simmer down, shut up, or mind what she was told. Aunt Josie would been the first to say it—‘When my Jack told you to do somethin, you done it, cause he never was a man to tell you twice.' ” He spluttered, frowning hard to show that this story was serious. “See, nobody cared much for that hired hand to start with, that's how Josie
explained it. He was some kind of a damn criminal, they figured, had some kind of a damn criminal mentality, and probably a damn criminal record to go with it, least that's what her Jack told them other diners when he come back in from out of doors and washed his hands and set down with 'em again to eat up Josie's lemon-lime cream pie.

“When Jack Watson finished up his pie and got done wipin his mouth, he said he were a patient man but could not be expected to put up with such a criminal at his own table. Said, ‘Darn it all, the world is just plain better off
without
that darn of criminal!' As Josie recollected it, her Jack still had some lime cream on his mustache when he hitched his chair around to get a better look at the dead body, layin there barefaced in his boots out in the yard. Said, ‘Look at that darn criminal sonofabitch! Layin out there like he owns the place!' ”

Speck Daniels was struggling not to laugh into Lucius's face. “Oh yes! Them were the days when men was men! They don't make no Americans like
that
no more!” Unable to maintain his poker face, Speck doubled up with mirth, hacking and coughing with emphysema, farting joyfully, and Lucius gave up on indignation and laughed with him, a long deep hopeless laugh that came all the way up from his belly. That laugh took him by surprise—how very long it seemed since he had laughed like that! And for some reason that he could not fathom, tears rose behind his eyes.

Mercifully, Speck was too carried away to notice. “So whilst they was washin up the dishes, they all agreed it might be best to say nothin more about it, let bygones be bygones. They took that damn ol' criminal and flung him to that big croc in the river, then done their best to forget all about him and his criminal ways. Maybe somebody give him a prayer, maybe they didn't—the Watson Place was pretty busy in the harvest season. But Aunt Josie always told young Pearl that one reason she never did get over her Jack Watson was on account of how sweet he was that day about her peas, how darn considerate about her tender feelins.” Speck nodded a little. “Nice romantical little story for your book.”

Lucius rose again to go.

“Think I'm a liar? Think I'm makin up them stories?” Angry again, Daniels yanked opened the top buttons of his denim shirt and dragged out a heavy necklace of small leaden lumps, dull-burnished. He pushed the rough hemp string of leads at Lucius. “Count 'em. Thirty-three. Know where they come from?”

Lucius's heart stopped. The last time he had seen these lumps, they were black with coagulated blood, dropped one by one into a rusty coffee can on Rabbit Key.

Speck Daniels nodded with him. “Yep. Got 'em off the coroner's man, Willie Hendry. For good luck. I wouldn't take a million dollars for 'em,” Daniels said.

Still brooding about why he had come, anxious to poke and prod his visitor to see just how he worked, what he was up to, Daniels followed Lucius out of the cell door. “Speakin of Tippins, he was the first one to show me that fuckin posse list of yours.” He grinned when Lucius turned. “He was holdin it for evidence, y'know. In case you was to go crazy, start in shootin people. Such as myself.” Speck uttered a snide laugh. “And you know where Tippins got it? Eddie Watson!”

Lucius nodded, hiding his astonishment. Had Eddie stolen it from Lucy Dyer or had Lucy been so foolish as to show it to him?

“Course your brother is crazier'n hell, like all you Watsons, but that don't mean that he done wrong showing that list to Tippins. Might been worried that little Lucius could get hisself killed down in the Islands.”

“Eddie had no right to it. I want it back.”

“You want it back? What the hell for? I ain't even got that thing no more. Cause it was stole off me!”

Old furies had struck all color from Speck's face, as if he were suffering a stroke and could not breathe. His mouth was stretched open, taut as a knothole. His hair stood on end, and his rigid forefinger was pointed at Lucius's face. The moonshiner's mahogany hide was draining to a blue-gray hue as dead and cold as gunmetal, and he leaned against the wall, wheezing and gasping. Then he reeled backwards, sat down on the bunk, and grabbed his sneakers. Breaking a rust-rotted shoelace, he yelled—“Sonofa
bitch
!”—and kicked that sneaker off. He hurled himself back on the bunk and with his sneakered foot kicked the upper bunk so hard that he split the pine slats under the torn mattress. “Ever think how a man might feel, seein his own name on a
death
list? Ever think what kind of crazy man would even
make
a list like that?”

But the fit had passed, and he sat up again, cursing his sore foot. “Might been found with a bullet in your head, back up a creek, ever think of that?”

Lucius said nothing. In this sort of man, fear was more dangerous than anger. He watched Speck's instinct to conceal that fear take over. He was grinning again, and speaking calmly. “Course that ol' list don't mean a thing no more. All of 'em's dead.” He winked at Lucius. “All but the one,” he added, bowing a little. “Unless you would count niggers.”

Daniels awaited him with his one sneaker on. Lucius kept silent. The silence refired the man's rage, but this time the rage was low and even, cold as the strange blue mineral flame in a wood fire.

“Chokoloskee folks might be real interested to see that list, don't you
think so? Cause ever' last one of them old-time families has names on there. And even if them men are gone, there ain't nothin to keep you from killin a man's son.” He paused a moment, nodding a little. “Unless you was put a stop to first.” He wiped spittle from his unshaven mouth with the back of his hand, which he stropped on his pant leg.

“By you, maybe?” Lucius's own voice had gone tight, and sounded froggish.

“All I'm sayin is, if I was you, headed down into that country, I wouldn't turn my back no more'n I had to.”

Lucius said, “I lived down there for twenty-five years after I made that list and never harmed a soul. What makes you think I'm ready to start now?”

“I'll tell you why.” Speck Daniels nodded cannily. “Because I seen plenty of 'em go kind of loco when their life never worked out the way they wanted. Especially queer old bachelors without no family.” This meanness seemed to appease him just a little. “Fair warnin, that's all, Colonel. Here's another warnin, take it or leave it. If you're writin a book, don't go tellin no secrets on your damn attorney.” Speck lowered his voice a little to draw Lucius closer. “Big-time attorney, y'know,
big
-time attorney! He's the fixer for all the fat boys in this state, from Big Sugar and the Ku Klux Klan up to the governor, and he's got his own political future to look out for. He don't want no story comin out about how he is Bloody Watson's crazy bastard. He'll get a choke hold on your book in court, then hit you with a lawsuit, and if that don't put you out of business, he'll be comin after you, and he is goin to get you, and he don't care how. You might get beat up, get your house burned down, or you might get a bullet. Whatever it takes. They say he's got Cubans over to Miami will do a nice clean job for fifty dollars.”

“How come you're warning me?”

“Settlin old accounts, as you might say. But don't show up so sudden next time.” He nodded, holding Lucius's eye.

“That a warning, too?”

“Don't talk to me no more,” Speck said, rolling over on the bunk, facing the wall.

Lucius headed toward the river, passing the red Langford house between Bay and First streets where he had lived with his mother in his school days. In the river park, a gaggle of pubescent girls in snowy sneakers, bouncing and giggling and squirting life, were observed without savor by leached-out old men, scattered and fetched up in the corners of the benches like dry leaves
whirled across the hard park ground. In the river light, the tableau was surreal, as if these stick figures were arranged around the troupe of dancing nymphs like isolated pieces of a single sculpture. And one of them, thought Lucius with a start, might be a drink-worn syphilitic Leslie Cox.

Asked if anyone had seen Eddie Watson, one of the elders, taking his time, removed his toothpick and pointed it enigmatically at Lucius himself. The wet toothpick glinted like a needle in the sun's reflection off the river, transfixing Lucius for one piercing instant in the other's unimaginable vision. A second man was pointing a bone finger at a third man on a bench, who was waving gently like a pale thing in a current.

“Colonel? I sure thought that was you!” The small silver-haired man, eyes round and kindly behind glasses, shifted a little to make room on his bench. “I was savin that place for Honey,” he warned, looking over his shoulder for his wife. “We sure ain't seen you in a while. We always wondered what become of Colonel.” Weeks Daniels did not seem to recall that they had scarcely laid eyes upon each other in the last quarter century. “We're retired now, y'know. Tryin to get used to it.”