Lost Man's River (80 page)

The plaint of wasps was audible throughout the room.

“You're the one ain't makin too much sense,” Bill Smallwood warned him. Bill was breathing heavily again, shifting his cramps and pains.

“Well, answer me, then, Bill. Explain it to me.”

“Seems like you changed your thinking in Miami,” Smallwood said sourly.

“That's where I
begun
my thinking. I ain't done yet. Maybe I had to get struck blind to make me see.”

“One night Old Man Carr was headed back to Lost Man's, stopped by here to pick up his supplies, caught them same two Hardens right here in this store! They busted in!”

“Well, Old Man Carr was your friend Owen's daddy, ain't that right? And nobody never heard that story you just told till after you boys was accused,” the blind man said.

“Andy, whose side are you on?” Owen Carr cried desperately. “Them sonsabitches, they would shoot at your damn boat! Fishermen had to carry guns around that Lost Man's territory! And after they was put a stop to, there weren't no more trouble. Don't that prove somethin?”

“Proves they was dead, I reckon.”

“Proves Lee Harden was gettin old, that's about it. Losin his oldest boy that way just took the fight out of him.”

“Didn't take no fight out of Lee's wife! For years and years, Sadie Harden would put a bullet in your boat if you drifted too close inshore around South Lost Man's!”

“Earl Harden lost his boy, too, don't forget. I liked Ol' Earl all right, most of the time. He took it hard. That brought them two brothers back together for a while.”

“Goddammit to hell! Are you fellers on
their
side? Men I growed up with on this island? Goddammit to hell—”

“Owen, this here's Sunday, and there's Christian ladies present—”

“Anyways, we know your side of the story. Been hearin it thirty years and more. What's past is done with.”

Owen Carr looked at the floor between his shoes, then rose, unsteady, and went reeling past his neighbors as if running a gauntlet. His calm large wife took plenty of time to fold and tuck away her knitting before following him out of doors into the afternoon.

The atmosphere was shifting and uneasy. Lucius changed the subject. “After so many years, I've never learned where my stepmother was staying when my father died.”

“Aldermans,” Smallwood said wearily. “Smallwoods took 'em in after Aldermans threw 'em out.”

“Well, Alice McKinney was her good friend, too.”

“It weren't my mother she was staying with. It weren't McKinneys.” Lloyd Brown peered suspiciously at Lucius. “How come you're writing down all this old stuff?”

“Firsthand accounts help me understand things better.” Lucius put his pen away when nobody returned his smile.

“Alderman knew that feller Cox, he knew how bad he was,” Bill Smallwood said. “Knew Cox had his eye on Watson's wife and might come lookin for her. Walter had a young family startin up, didn't want no trouble.”

“Marie had her new baby just a few months later, so she was well along when all that happened. Her husband was afraid for her and he was right to be,” Bill's sister said.

“Walter come right out with it,” Bill said. “His nerves was shot that day. He was even scared some of them men might take it in their heads to bust into his house and finish off them Watsons and have done with it. Don't seem possible, setting here today, but I do know Mrs. Watson was plain terrified of that armed crowd, cause Mama said so.”

Andy said, “Bill? You aimin to stand there and tell me your House uncles would of let that happen? Let that crowd murder the young widow and three little children?”

Smallwood growled stubbornly, “Some of them men had drunk somewhat to steady up their nerves, and once that crowd of men had got their blood up, got the killing instinct, your dad and his brothers and Grandpa House might not of had much say. After what happened, and all that racket, I sure ain't surprised the young widow was nervous.”

Lucius said, “Did Alderman join in the shooting?”

“You're the man to tell us, Colonel. All you got to do is check your list.”

Again, the blind man mended a tense silence. “Walter might of went along but I don't believe he fired. He was always a nice quiet feller. Moved away from here soon after that, become a fish guide at Fort Myers Beach. He guided them writers, Hemingway and Mr. Zane.”

A heavy step banged up the stairs and kicked open the screen door. Crockett Junior Daniels, fulminating beer, came straight at Lucius, tugging crumpled yellow papers from beneath his stump and thrusting them into his face. To the elders he bawled, “This here is his damn list of your kinfolks in the crowd that put Ed Watson out of his damn misery!”

Lucius snapped the list out of his hand, intending to tear it into little pieces, but voices protested, calling out their right to see it first. Relinquishing the list to Smallwood, he followed the one-armed man outside, yelling after him down the steps. “He's too old to harm anybody, Crockett! Let him go!”

Crockett Junior lurched around at the bottom of the steps. “If that old loon weren't gunnin for Speck Daniels, how come he was packin a loaded .38 and some spare loads, never mind that fuckin list with all the names scratched out but just the one?”

“He never cared about revenge! He hated his father all his life! Just ask him!”

Batting the words away like gnats, the one-armed man kept on going toward his truck.

Bill Smallwood declaimed the list aloud, as people groaned. Those familiar names, read out like a list of dead, had exhumed ancient guilt and fear which people imagined had been safely buried under the old leaf litter of the years. Once Smallwood had finished, the people rose, forcing Lucius to pitch his last entreaties over the commotion, and he lost all hope of signatures for his petition. His audience made their escape, hurrying one another through the doorway. One old man muttered crossly as he passed, “Us people know who was here that day! We don't need no darn ol' list!” Even Hoad Storter and Weeks Daniels, Lloyd Brown and Roy Thompson, scarcely looked their old friend in the eye. Lloyd muttered regretfully, “Trouble is, that list makes our old-timers look like a damn lynch mob.”

Then all were gone. The screen was empty and the old store silent, in the hum of wasps. When Bill Smallwood, waiting at the door to lock up after them, gave him his list, Lucius tore it in half and tore the halves in quarters. Hearing the papers rip, Andy looked alarmed, and his big hand flew up and outward, finding Lucius's arm. “That list is history! You aim to write the whole story or just part of it?”

“He got the names about right,” Bill told Andy, as Lucius folded the torn posse list into his breast pocket. “Sure took him long enough.” And Andy said, “Bill, that list don't
mean
nothin no more and you damn well know it!”

Smallwood squinted at his cousin. “Your own family got four men on there, and they got sons and grandsons, and you're one of 'em. You fool enough to tell me that don't
mean
nothin?”

“If I thought for one minute he was after Houses, or after Henry—even if I thought he was after Speck—you think I would of rode down here in his car with him?”

Bill locked the door behind them and descended ahead of them. “It sure is pathetic to see you so mixed up in this,” he told his cousin from the bottom step. “You've growed so goddamn open-minded since you went over to Miami, I'm startin to think that all your brains fell out.” He walked away.

“Bill?” Andy one-stepped down the stair, using the rail. He looked more vulnerable than before, and he flinched when Lucius took his arm to steady him. “Well, Colonel,” he said, “I'm the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest member of the posse, and you got me all alone right where your daddy died. Might be a pretty good chance to bump me off.” He tried to smile. “I
reckon you can't blame these folks for being leery.” The blind man turned toward him. “See, it ain't that you might be gunnin for Speck Daniels that's got people upset. It's the
idea
of it—the idea of
any
man, even Speck, bein shot down by a Watson for takin part in what was done for the common good.”

“Not everyone agreed.”

“That so? A lot of your dad's friends was standin where we are standin right this minute, and nobody disagreed enough to try to stop it. And none of 'em hollered out a warning, neither, when he come near shore.”

“He would have come in anyway. That's the way he was.”

“Bill House always said the same.” The blind man shrugged.

“Just now, you said, ‘what was done for the common good.' I keep hearing things that sound as if the whole business was planned. Sheriff Tippins spoke with all those men, and that's what he believed. Malice aforethought,” Lucius paused. “First-degree murder.”

“All I know is, the House men never planned nothin aforetime.”

The sun was hot. Lucius finally said, “I meant to ask where my father came ashore.”

The blind man turned without a word, using his cane to poke his way toward the west side of the store, as if guided by the splash of wavelets off the bay. “The old boat ways are still here under the mud, cause I can feel 'em, but the dock was tore out by the hurricane. The stumps of the old pilings might be out there yet.”

In the shallows, the outlines of the silted rails emerged from beneath the marl, in the glimmerings and glints beneath the surface. Andy's shoe had located a rusted section that lay under dead turtle grass along the water's edge. “Colonel? You see my toe? Go west about fifteen feet”—he pointed his cane tip. “That's where your daddy run his boat up on the shore. That's where he jumped out. That's where he died.” Out of respect, the blind man stood there quietly a moment. “My dad drove a stake into that spot when we come home to bury Grandma Ida.”

“You going to tell me your dad's version of what took place here that afternoon?”