Lost Man's River (53 page)

“Now Watson and Tucker had a dispute over a piece of land. Tucker and his nephew had a shack on Lost Man's Key, and Emperor Watson went down there and Watson killed him. You could see the blood. Nephew got away, tried to hide back in the mangroves, but Watson had his boy Eddie with him, so he sent Eddie after that Tucker boy, to finish him. We went over there and seen the tracks.” He looked all around the room with satisfaction.

Lucius recalled what Weeks Daniels had told him—that Eddie Watson, growing older, had taken to hinting at participation in the Tucker episode, apparently to lend drama to his life. Perhaps Eddie had himself to blame for these damned stories. However, the story was untrue. Before he could object, Sally Brown had raised her hand—“Excuse me!”—and got up. She smiled briefly at Lucius, then said to the old man, “
Tucker and his nephew!
You old-timers have been trading that old tale for fifty years, and it's all wrong!”

The old man squared around to face her. “That so, Miss?” he said. He seemed to be sucking upon something.

“There wasn't any ‘nephew,' ” she declared. “It was young Wally Tucker from Key West and his wife Bet. They were friends and neighbors of my husband's parents, the Lee Hardens, down at Lost Man's River!”

A slim, fair-haired man who had been shaking hands with the young men inside the doorway had turned his head at her reference to the Hardens, and now he, too, slipped quickly down the aisle, and taking a seat, put a protective arm on the back of her chair. Lucius recognized Whidden Harden, whom he had known since he was born at Lost Man's River. And Whidden recognized him, too, and raised his eyebrows slightly, with a fleeting grin, careful not to draw attention to their acquaintance. His innate discretion and his implicit trust that “Mister Colonel” must know what he was doing on the podium under the name of Collins reminded Lucius of why he had been so fond of Whidden as a child.

From farther back, a woman called, “Ain't that your husband settin there beside you? He knows a lot more than you do about Lost Man's, so how come he don't speak up for himself?” Whidden Harden raised his hand in a shy wave, and the crowd snickered. The scent of old bad blood was in the air.

His wife had turned to the prim rows behind her, where the set faces made it plain that this young woman had previously rumpled up their society meetings. “Most of you know who I am. I'm Sally Brown. My mother's bunch of Browns lived in the Islands a good many years, and now I'm married to this Harden feller, so I guess I know a little bit about Lost Man's River!”

A loud harsh shout came from the men in back—“Your daddy ain't no Brown!” Sally, flustered, found no answer, and Whidden took her hand. The woman's voice said, “How come you don't use your husband's name? You shamed of him?” The crowd shifted restlessly, and a man yelled at the big man who had shouted, “That you, Crockett? What say there, Crockett? Hey, ol' buddy! Crockett Junior Daniels! American damn hero! Been over to Asie, give his right arm for Dermocracy!” The ragged cheer came mostly from Crockett's own group in the doorway.

Wigwagged by the Program Director, the speaker rapped his plastic glass down on the podium in an inaudible attempt to restore order, as Preston Brown, unperturbed by these interruptions, stood ready and willing to hold forth at greater length. “Well, I ain't no relation to Sally here,” he told the audience. “Way back someplace, her mama and me might been some kind of Brown kinfolks, but I sure ain't related to her daddy! And I ain't related to them Hardens, neither!”

“Lucky for Hardens!” Sally cried. She was still standing, resting her hand on her husband's shoulder and challenging the churchly silver heads, none of which would turn to meet her eye. Whidden Harden reached and took her hand again, less to comfort her than to urge her to sit down. Failing in both, he looked straight ahead at the stage curtain. In the hush, he said in a dead flat tone, “Any man in this room under forty years of age wants to tell me to my face why he don't like Hardens, he can find me right outside after the
show.” The voice was quiet but it carried nonetheless, like a voice accustomed to being heard across the water.

In the stir and murmur, one of the young men called, “We sure don't know about that feud! That was way back in Lost Man's days. But we know Whidden Harden. He's all right.”

“Yessir, I been fishin and guidin down there around Lost Man's all my life,” Preston Brown continued. “Know all about it.”

“Whidden was
born
down there,” said Sally, and sat down.

“Hardens tell you to speak up for 'em? How come you know more than your husband?”

Lucius intervened by pointing at a raised hand. A Northern voice—a winter visitor—mentioned a well-known book about the Everglades in which “Luke Short, a white fisherman,” was identified as the man who fired the first shot at Edgar Watson. “Whatever became of that man Short?” she said.

The men scratched silver ears, viewed liverish hands. Nobody answered. Lucius repeated the question into the microphone lest the visitor feel ignored, and after a few moments, a voice piped up, then another and another, like frog chorus.

“
Henry
Short, you mean?”

“Henry was a nigra! Still is, far as I know.”

“Dan House Junior claimed
he
was the first to drill Desperader Watson, on account of Watson drawed a bead on Dan House Senior! Dan claimed that till the day he died right here in Naples!”

“Well, what
we
heard when we was comin up, them House boys covered up for Nigger Short. My daddy said, ‘We was fixin to go ask him about it, get to the truth of it, y'know, but we never did come up with that sonofagun.' ”

“Made himself scarce for a few years, ol' Henry did. Can't say I blame that poor sonofagun, neither, with hard-hearted young fellers lookin to hunt him down.”

This last speaker, a small man in the front row with squirrel cheeks and merry eyes, smiled benignly at Lucius. His old-fashioned yacht club attire—sky blue trousers, navy blue polo shirt, crisp deck shoes with marshmallow white soles, bright sweater so yellow that the old man looked like a seated lemon—seemed rather at odds with his windburned hide and weather lines. Lucius grinned back at his good old friend Hoad Storter, whose father Cap'n Bembery had run the cargo schooner for the Storter trading post at Everglade and had been Papa's best friend. Like Whidden Harden, Hoad would be discreet, but Lucius realized that his identity might be exposed at any moment by Crockett Junior Daniels or some other person, and that as at Fort White, the longer he waited, the more awkward it was sure to be. Trying to
decide how to go about it, he asked old Brown for some good evidence that E. J. Watson had killed those Tuckers. His query made him feel dishonest, since he knew there was no “good evidence” and never had been—nothing but a vague account related by Lee Harden and his brothers who (with Henry Short) had found the bodies. In his Lost Man's years, the Hardens had never spoken of the Tuckers, nor had he ever wanted to ask questions. His reluctance to know the truth had disturbed him, even at the time.

“Killed that Audubon warden, too,” snarled an old man with a broken face empurpled by long falling years of drink. The man wore a soiled Panama hat and nobody sat near him or behind him. His arms were folded tight across his chest and he would not face Lucius as he spoke. “Nineteen and oh-five, that was. I was running Watson's cane plantation for him. That spring, Watson went over to Flamingo with a crate of bird plumes, and the story about Guy Bradley's murder got back before he did! That's when our family packed up and got away from there.”

Preston Brown said, “Heck, I knowed Guy Bradley! Knowed him before he went over to Audubons! Him and his brother Lewis Bradley, they was partners with the Roberts boys, huntin plume birds down around Cape Sable. Ed Watson sold his bird plumes through Gene Roberts and I reckon the Bradleys done the same. Then Guy went over to wardenin, he was goin to put Watson in the jail, so Watson shot him—”

Lucius said in a flat voice, “Guy Bradley was killed by a sponge fisherman and plume hunter named Walter Smith, who was tried for that killing in Key West.”

“That's right. Walt Smith. Knowed him all my life,” said Preston Brown.

“Tried and acquitted,” Fred Dyer insisted sourly. “Cause the word had got around that Watson done it.”

“You know better than that,” Lucius snapped too sharply. People stared at him, alarmed. “I have talked many times with Gene Roberts at Flamingo,” he told the audience, frowning down at Fred Dyer but unable to get his eye. “Gene Roberts was Guy Bradley's friend and neighbor, he was the man who picked up Bradley's body, and he knew that whole story better than anybody.”

“Gene Roberts was Ed Watson's friend, that's all I'm sayin!” Dyer cried. “Used to come by Chatham Bend when I was workin there! No wonder he spoke up for him, he had no choice about it!”

“Walter Smith never denied that he killed Bradley. He even boasted of it.” Lucius turned to Preston Brown. “Another correction, sir, if you don't mind. Eddie Watson took no part in the Tucker killings.”

“Yessir! Eddie Watson! Knowed him all my—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Brown. In 1901, Eddie Watson was still a schoolboy, living
in Fort Myers with his mother. He never lived down here along this coast.” He gazed bleakly at the audience. “I realize it's a lot more fun to implicate someone like E. E. Watson, who sits up front in church. But it isn't true.”

“Well, E. J. Watson, he's the one I'm talkin about. He liked his alcohol, he visited all the bars,” Preston Brown said. “My dad had nothin against alcohol, he was in there, too. One time there was a bunch of 'em around the bar, with Old Man Watson settin up the drinks. And a couple of nigra women come in there, wanted a bottle—weren't uncommon, because Key West was more a Yankee town than not. So Watson mutters, ‘Well, boys, I will take care of this.' And he got up and went outside where their big ol' bucks was waitin on them women. Might of seed Watson through the window and figured it was healthier outside. One of 'em said real nervous, ‘Evenin, Cap'n,' and that was about all he got to say before Watson started in to cuttin on 'em with his bowie knife. Never said a word. He had one down, pretty well killed, and the other one, he was pretty well cut to pieces. Might of finished the both of 'em, for all I know.

“So Watson had enough of it and walked away from there, but on the way over to the dock he run into some deputies who was comin to investigate all that hollerin. So Watson told 'em, ‘You boys better get on up to Jimmy's Bar.' And they said, ‘Ed, what in tarnation is making all that racket?' And Watson said, ‘My goodness, boys, they are cuttin up a couple of perfectly good niggers over there!' Tipped his hat, climbed back aboard his schooner, and went on north to Chatham River.”

Lucius closed his eyes, disgusted. He appealed to the audience's good sense. “See what I mean? These Watson tales are passed down from our parents and grandparents and we just repeat them, never bothering to find out if they are true.” He was aware that his weary tone was casting a pall over the room, which had started grumbling. He could not help it.

“Who the hell is we?” a voice shouted hoarsely. “You come from around here?”

“Hell yes, he comes from around here! I know this feller!” Fred Dyer had hauled himself straight up in his seat and was pointing a bent arthritic claw at Lucius, who took a deep breath, braced for the worst. “That ain't no professor! That is Lucius Watson!” Dyer actually stood up, staring wildly around him, but no one would let him catch an eye, no one would look at him, as if so many years of drunkenness and reckless tirade had invalidated anything that he might say. Knowing this, he protested no further but sat down slowly, alone and aggrieved, refolding his arms upon his chest. Under Lucius's gaze, he shrugged and looked away.

“Well, it sure weren't
Colonel
Watson killed them Tuckers!” Preston
Brown declared. “I knowed Colonel all my life, and a nicer feller you would never want to meet! Colonel been on my boat about a thousand times. Sweetest person that you ever seen—
good
sense of humor! Oh yes, I fished with Colonel Watson
many's
the time. He liked his whiskey!”

Lucius had never drunk with Preston or set foot on his boat. “No, it wasn't Colonel,” he said quietly, embarrassed by the old man's exaggerations and plain lies and suffocated by the greater lie he himself was perpetrating.

“How come
you
know so much about them Tuckers?” an old woman hollered at the podium. “They's only the one feller could know so much, and that's the one who done it.”

“Know somethin funny?” Preston Brown was pointing at Lucius. “This feller right here, he's the spittin image of ol' Colonel Watson!”

Fred Dyer groaned loudly. “Ain't that what
I
said?”

“Well, let's see now,” Hoad Storter interrupted. “Old Man Watson had four boys that he owned up to. There were just four brothers”—he paused ever so slightly—“that we want to talk about.” His chipmunk cheeks rounded a little when other people laughed. “The oldest boy who ran away after that Tucker business, no one remembers him anymore”—he stopped Preston Brown with a raised palm—“not even Preston. Next one was Eddie, who stayed there at Fort Myers, wouldn't surprise me if he's up there yet. Then came Lucius—well, some of us know Colonel. Never met a man yet who had bad words for Colonel Watson, not even the men who were on that list he took so many years putting together, scaring everybody half to death, himself included!” He winked at Lucius. “Then came the youngest—the little boy who saw his daddy killed.”

“How about that other little feller, supposed to been drowned in the Great Hurricane? The one Speck Daniels always claimed to be!”