Lost Man's River (41 page)

The old friends talked at angles for a while, finding their way. Lucius mentioned Speck, and Weeks nodded with distaste. “We ain't related hardly. He's one them black-haired Cajun Danielses, look like wild Injuns and probably are. This feller fought his family from the age of one, and he weren't much more than about ten when he run off for good.”

Honey Daniels, coming up behind, stood patiently, not wishing to interrupt. Like her husband, she was slight and rather frail, with the same clean silver hair and innocent gaze, and even the same style of silver glasses. As young folks, Lucius recalled, they had looked like brother and sister, making it difficult to conceive of sex between them. When Lucius stood up to offer her his seat, she smiled, uncertain.

“Remember Colonel Watson, sweetheart?” Weeks took her hand and drew her down onto the bench between them, telling her what he'd just told Colonel about Crockett Daniels. Honey nodded. “Yes, I heard you, Weeks. I believe you said that Speck was not related.”

Red spots jumped to her husband's paper cheeks. “Well, I ain't so much denying him, I just ain't
proud
about him.” Frowning, Weeks looked away over the river, where gulls slid down the wind between the bridges. “My dad had no use for that feller since Speck was a boy. I ain't no different. My dad was captain of the clam dredge, and he was always friends with E. J. Watson. You recall him, Colonel?”

“Yes, I sure do. Your dad was Henrietta's brother, right?”

“Aunt Netta? I believe he was.” The old man glanced at him, a little guarded.

“And Josie Jenkins was their half sister, right?”

“Don't know
what
Aunt Josie was, darned if I do. Aunt Josie picked up a slew of names before she give it up, but she might of been Tant Jenkins's sister if she was a Jenkins to start off with. Mind-boggling, ain't it? Anyways, they are all kin some way or another, no getting around it. Speaking about that bunch puts me in mind of that feller got hitched so many times that one day he looked up and said, ‘I'll be darned if my own dad ain't my damn son-in-law!' ”

Though his joke was an old one, Honey Daniels smiled freshly at her husband, creating a little space around his dignity. “Aunt Josie was real good to you back in the old days,” she reminded Lucius, not certain what he might wish to remember. “Little lady with big curly black hair, plenty of spirit? Had the same mother as Aunt Netta, I believe. They both worked awhile at Chatham Bend, and both had daughters there.”

“My half sisters, you mean.”

“Well, now that you mention it, I guess that's right. Aunt Netta's child was Minnie, named for your dad's sister. Married a nice man from Key West. You ever see her anymore?” When he confessed he'd never even met her, she hurried on. “Well, we always heard that Minnie had her daddy's color, blue eyes, auburn hair. She loved her daddy, he would see her in Key West, but she never wished to belong to the Watson family. After your daddy died, Netta liked to recall how Minnie's father had forced himself upon her. And when we reminded her how often she had claimed that Minnie was a love child and that Jack Watson was the nicest man she ever met, she would cry out, ‘Well, that's true, too, but Jack took me by storm!' ”

“ ‘Jack took me by storm!' ” her husband marveled. “Aunt Josie, too. When Aunt Josie was drinking, she would always claim how Watson ‘ravished' her.”

Honey frowned a little. That word was too strong. ‘Aunt Josie's Pearl was five years younger than Minnie, I believe. Pretty, kind of skinny blond. She favored her half brother Lucius. You two were very close when she was small, and she never forgot that.” Honey reached and squeezed his hand when he looked guilty. “Pearl always spoke so lovingly about her brother! She was so worried about you! Used to go all the way south to Hardens', just to warn you, you recall? Tell you how much talk there was, how you were making the men nervous, and how your life would never be safe, so close to Chokoloskee.” Honey smiled, remembering Pearl Watson. “Tried to mother you, and here she was half your age!” She gazed at Lucius with the greatest fondness. “Know something, sweetheart?” she exclaimed, taking his wrist. “We're just tickled pink to see your face again!”

Her husband was still brooding about family matters. “I recollect how
them ladies and their kids got talked about as ‘Watson's backdoor family.' ”

“Well, those ladies weren't ashamed about him, they were proud about him.” Honey Daniels said. “They loved him dearly and their kids did, too. And at the end of it, Josie had his little boy. Poor little feller was just five months old when he drowned in the Great Hurricane.”

“Ol' Speck was in the bar one night when someone was tellin about that, and Speck spoke up, said Watson's little son weren't nobody in the world but Crockett Daniels! Claimed he never drowned in the Great Hurricane because his uncle S. S. Jenkins—that was Tant—Tant upped and saved him! Them men at the bar was all agog, as Aunt Josie used to say. Speck told how Tant had hid the babe, just like Moses in the bulrushes, then got one of them Daniels girls to raise him up and give him a name to spare 'em all a scandal. Said if anyone had doubts about his story, well, here he was, the living proof, as big as life! And any man with something smart to say could step outside with him and settle it right now!

“Trouble was, the one with the worst doubts was Uncle Tant! Swore he never knew nothin about it! And Josie yelled, ‘That boy's tellin people I'm his
mother
? Must of been some kind of virgin birth or somethin!'

“Speck was only havin fun, least to start off with.” Weeks Daniels shook his head. “Cause them folks knew that Speck was in the gang that had shot Watson. As Tant used to say, ‘I knew that young feller was born mean, but I never believed he would take a gun to his own daddy, not at the age of only five months old!'

“Those ladies weren't his only ones,” Weeks cackled. “There was another backdoor boy besides that little feller. Course we won't talk about that one cause he don't admit it, but local people know who he is, and we got long memories—that's about
all
we got, seems like to me!”

“Weeks, you don't know that for a fact.” Honey warned Lucius to pay no attention to her husband. “The man denies it and I imagine he should know. Better'n you.”

“Him and Speck ought to get together, then, cause that feller is a Watson and says he ain't, and Speck ain't a Watson and says he is.” However, Weeks Daniels raised his hand to show that, out of deference to his wife, he would make no further comment on Watson Dyer. “Nosir, Speck weren't born a Watson, he were born a liar. Ain't never had firsthand experience of the God's truth—pays no attention to it cause he flat don't care about it. Speck always took credit for bein in the posse, but what Speck mostly done that day was come up afterwards with other boys and shoot into the body. We were told that for a fact by one of them boys was in it with him.”

“He's talking about my brother,” Honey Daniels sniffed. “But Harley Wiggins didn't always speak the God's truth, either.”

“Yes,” Weeks said, “Aunt Josie and Aunt Netta called your dad Jack Watson. That was the name he brung back from the Nations. Josie claimed her Jack never done but the one wrongful killing in all the years she lived at Chatham Bend. Said he went down to Lost Man's River and shot a man who was settin in the sun patching his britches. Feller done him wrong.”

“Tucker?” Lucius asked after a moment.

“We don't recall the name,” Honey said carefully.

“Of course you know your sister Pearl married Earl Helveston from Marco.” Honey Daniels smiled. “Folks called 'em Pearl 'n' Earl. If Earl ever laid eyes on Mr. Watson, we never heard about it, but he always swore he loved that man, and nobody understood how that could be. Crockett Daniels was another one claimed he loved Mr. Watson, never mind he raised a gun and fired at him. Your daddy had quite a strong effect on these young fellers.”

“He was some fisherman, Earl was!” Weeks Daniels said. “But he was a cutter, pulled his knife too fast when he was drinking. Earl Helveston was rough even for Marco, and that was a rough place. Course them Marco men was always jealous they did not kill your daddy, so they went and killed a lawman later on. In Prohibition. Couple of them Helvestons was in on that one.”

Lucius recalled that when Pearl first came to visit him at Lost Man's River, in the twenties, she would turn up on the runboat that stopped by three times a week to pick up fish and leave off ice. In later years, she would appear with her baby and her husband in Earl's “hobo houseboat,” a little raft with a cabin perched on top, towed by an old skiff with outboard motor. Lucius felt neglectful and a bit downcast over Pearl, who had worked for years at the old Barfield Heights Hotel there at Caxambas. She was a pretty girl and a kind girl, too, but her life had always been a sad one.

Poor Pearl, he thought, had never had a chance to get her bearings. She had been born on the edge of society and stayed out there. Sometimes she called herself Pearl Jenkins, sometimes Pearl Watson. She had spent her life outside the window looking in. “Her people never had a home to call their own, and home was what that girl had always longed for,” he reflected.

“She's inside of a home right now,” Weeks said. He had gotten things confused and his wife hushed him. “Her mind gave out on her,” Honey explained, “and they took her to some kind of institution over in Georgia.” She looked down at her lap. “We never called to see how she was getting on. We don't know how to talk to Pearl when she's not right in her head.”

Subdued by the story of Pearl Watson, they stared away across the broad brown reach of the Calusa Hatchee. Westward, toward Pine Island Sound,
the lilting gulls caught glints of sun where the current mixed with wind in a riptide. “Honey and me moved here to live around the time you went south to the Islands, and we will die here, too, wouldn't surprise me. When Caxambas got took over for development, what was left of our old bunch come up here, too, Josie Jenkins, Tant, and Pearl, along with other Daniels kin and some old friends from that section. Uncle Tant conked out in a rest home, and Aunt Josie done the same when she come of age. That was along about 1939.” Weeks Daniels sighed. “Ain't much more to say about that branch of our family, cause it's finished. Ain't one Jenkins left.”

His old friends said they knew just where to find his brother. Honey took their arms, and they walked upriver toward the Edison Bridge. She was still rummaging around the old days. “When I was little, five or six years old, your daddy would come to our house to get his supper. Mr. Watson ate many a meal in the bosom of our family. Wasn't a boardinghouse or anything, it's only that Mama had extra room when we lived at Chokoloskee. There were times your daddy spent the night, and sometimes his wife, too—oh, she was just a beautiful young woman, very sweet. As I recall, her name was Edna, but he called her Kate. All I remember was a fine strong-looking man who wore nice clothes, he was the sporting kind. His Kate called him Mr. Watson, but to my father, he was E. J.—Mr. E. J. Watson.

“My brother Harley, who was just a boy, he couldn't get over Mr. Watson, used to spy on him hoping to see his guns, and listen to his tales of the Wild West. Mr. Watson was always kind and quiet-spoken, but all the same us little girls were all dead scared of him. We'd heard so much about how dangerous he was, and when he came, we just skedaddled, ran like quail. But Mama wasn't afraid of him—she wasn't afraid of anybody. He was always respectful and mannerly to our mama.

“One time, we children went with Mama on a visit to Chatham Bend. That must have been in 1906 or 1907. You were there, you were called Lucius then. I bet you don't recall the little Wiggins girls. We spent a week! Our daddy knew that his friend E. J. was a perfect gentleman, he absolutely trusted him to take good care of us. And sure enough, your father was so hospitable, so nice to us kids, so nice to his young wife—why, our own brother or daddy couldn't have been nicer! And the food his cook put on the table, we never saw so much food in all our life! All the same, we children were still scared of him a little bit. In early 1910, Daddy moved our family to Fort Myers so we were not at Chokoloskee that October, but I still recall how shocked we were to hear that news!”