Killing Mister Watson Read online

  Then he looks up, cuts me off in a hard voice. "What's that old man up to, back yonder?"

  I told him about the clamshell midden that the old Calusas had built back in that hammock, and the clamshell canal that come all the way in there from the open water. The way I figured it, I said, Old Man Chevelier was hunting Calusa treasure back on Gopher Key.

  His eyes flicked, but he made no comment, just waited politely for my talking to run out. Then he replied, meaning no offense, that he'd give a lot for some educated company like M'sieu Chevelier-Che-vell-yay, he called him, stead of Shev-uh-leer, the way we said it-and he reckoned he'd picked a piss-poor way to scrape acquaintance.

  He was right. I knew that Frenchman, knew he had grit or he wouldn't have made it by himself out in the Islands, where the skeeter whine can get so loud you think some kind of a meteor is coming. Richard Hamilton was going to hear about that bullet, and this story was not over by a long shot. But from that day on, we had the egret rookeries to ourselves.

  I worked for Mr. Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties, and run his boats in later years when he came and went. If he done all the things laid at his door, it seems to me I would have knowed something. S.S. Jenkins worked at Watson's a good while, and if you could take and dig Tant up, he'd say the same. A whole heap of people from Caxambas, Chokoloskee, Fakahatchee, including more'n one of my own kin, worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another, and a heap more had dealings with him here and there. E.J. Watson drove him a hard bargain when that mood was on him, cause he had a good head for business, but the only one would ever claim that Mister Watson done him wrong was Adolphus Santini, who got cut in the neck in that drinking scrape down to Key West. There's men will tell you old Dolphus was drunk, too, and had it coming, but I don't want to say that, cause I wasn't there.

  January 10, 1960

  Sir-

  The enclosed material relating to E.J. Watson is culled from interviews with pioneer Floridians made years ago for the History of Southwest Florida which drew your attention to my modest researches in the first place. Though I placed no emphasis upon our subject, these interviews (arranged here in a rough chronology) contain a remarkable amount of comment on "Mister Watson." Decidedly they affirm his eminence in the imagination of his wilderness community, so isolated from the new century on these coastal islands.

  Also included are pertinent clippings from the American Eagle and the Fort Myers Press, including excerpts from their local news columns. These contemporary accounts seem more dependable than the many magazine articles and books in which E.J. Watson's name has since appeared, which tend to contradict one another on small points as well as large, and fail to represent a picture consistent with the man remembered in these narratives by those who knew him best. Indeed, they raise as many questions as they answer concerning the enigmatic figure who looms behind the few hard facts of his dark history.

  The following sketch of Watson's life is submitted in the sincere conviction that is it truthful in its general statement as well as in significant particulars. It is largely based on two brief chronicles published in the 1950s, each of them considerably more accurate than any of the better-known accounts. One appeared in a letter submitted to a "Pioneer Florida" column in the Miami Herald by the late Dr. M.B. Herlong, "a pioneer physician in this state," who apparently knew the Watson family in his younger days, both in South Carolina and later in north Florida. The other, by the late Charles Sherod "Ted" Smallwood, who was raised not far from Mr. Watson's district in north Florida and became his friend in the Ten Thousand Islands, turns up among Smallwood's reminiscences. The absence of contradictions in these two accounts (by firsthand sources entirely unacquainted with each other) seems to strengthen the reliability of both.

  Edgar Watson was born on November 11, 1855, in Edgefield County, South Carolina, just across the northeast Georgia line. According to Dr. Herlong, who was also born in Edgefield County, Edgar's father was Elijah Watson, a sometime state prison employee and celebrated brawler, known, from a knife scar that encircled his eye, as Ring-Eye Lige. The doctor says that Ring-Eye Lige so brutalized his family with his drinking and intemperate behavior that Mrs. Watson felt obliged to flee with her two children to relatives in northern Florida.

  The family traveled to the Fort White region of Columbia County rather early in our subject's life, since both Herlong and Smallwood state that he was raised there. Dr. Herlong relates that Edgar and his sister, Minnie, "grew up and married in that section."

  "One bright moonlight night," Dr. Herlong continues, "I heard a wagon passing our place. It was bright enough to recognize Watson and his family in the wagon. The report was that they settled in Georgia, but it couldn't have been for long." Probably Ted Smallwood was correct in saying that Mr. Watson married three women from Columbia County, and one may assume that the people in the wagon included a son by the first marriage, Robert or "Rob" Watson; his second wife, Jane S. Watson; his daughter, Carrie, born in 1885; and an infant son, Edgar E., born in 1887. Another son, Lucius, would be born out West. Whatever its cause, Watson's flight occurred sometime before early 1888, when the Watsons are first reported in the Indian Territory. Popular accounts of his career assert that before this departure from Columbia County, he had killed his brother-in-law, who was "cut to pieces." Another account specifies "two cousins." Smallwood mentions "a shooting" involving a brother-in-law but does not say that this shooting was fatal. Herlong mentions no killing in Columbia County in this period, but neither does he speculate on why Edgar Watson set out on his long journey in the dead of night.

  Though the facts of this episode are probably lost, the many reports of his subsequent association with Belle Stan, "Queen of the Outlaws," in the Indian Territory, are unanimous in the claim that when Mr. Watson departed for the West, he was wanted for murder in the State of Florida.

  I am in correspondence with historians and librarians in Arkansas and Oklahoma in the hope that some details of Mr. Watson's sojourn in Oklahoma can be salvaged from the great amount of myth and nonsense that has been written about Mrs. Starr. Should this material be forthcoming, copies shall be sent along at once…

  At the end of his stay in Oklahoma, Mr. Watson apparently returned to Arkansas, where he was tried and imprisoned as a horse thief. Apparently he escaped from prison, at which time he returned to Florida, though some accounts speak of an intervening stay in Oregon. (There is also occasional mention of an earlier sojourn in Texas, for which no evidence whatever has come forward.) For several years after 1889, his movements are obscure, though it seems clear that he had parted with his family.

  Mr. Watson told Ted Smallwood that upon his return to Florida in the early 1890s, he visited Arcadia, at that time a wild cattle town on the Pease River (on some maps "Peace," after the treaty in 1842 that ended the Second Seminole War), where he slew a "bad actor" named Quinn Bass. "Watson said Bass had a fellow down whittling on him with a knife and Watson told Bass to stop, he had worked on the man enough, and Bass got loose and came toward him and he began putting.38 S &W bullets into Bass and shot him down." (Though Mr. Watson is apparently the source of the Bass story-and presumably the Oregon reference, too-we must decide for ourselves if he told the truth.) According to Smallwood's chronology, this event took place not long before he appeared in southwest Florida "in 1892 or '93."

  From Arcadia, Mr. Watson proceeded to Everglade and Half Way Creek, two small farming communities on Chokoloskee Bay, in the northern part of the Ten Thousand Islands. These pioneer outposts on the swampy mainland, together with nearby Chokoloskee Island, were the last points of civilization on the southwest coast.

  RICHARD HAMILTON

  I done a lot, lived a long time, and seen more than I cared to. I remember what I seen, and learned some from it, but I was born on the run like a young deer and never had no time for improvement. What little I come by I owed to that Frenchified old feller who was Mister Watson's closest neighbor next to me.

  First time I met that m
ean old man I tried to run him right off Chatham River. That was the winter of '88, two-three years before the day Mr. Ed Watson come around the bend. We was living at Pavioni then, which is the Watson Place today. There was forty acres on that Pavioni mound, but we farmed just the one, for our own use. We was making a fair living, salted fish, cut buttonwood, took plumes in egret breeding season, took some gator hides, some otter, done some trading with the Indins, and eased on by.

  That morning I felt something coming, though I never heard a thing. Looking south across the field, I see my old woman, Mary Weeks, and it is like looking at a stranger. In a queer shift of wind and light off of the river, what I see is not my Mary but a big dark cruel-mouthed woman in long gingham, hard bare feet, bad scowl half-hid in the shadow of her sunbonnet. She is out on the river-bank and she is pointing, like she seen a vision in that glaring sky out toward the Gulf. Though I can't hear, she is hollering into the wind, her mouth round as a hole.

  Big Mary is the kind who don't come hunting you, just hollers what she wants from where she's at. Sometimes I play deaf, pay her no mind. But this day I had sign of something, so I set down my hoe and come in from the sweet potatoes, telling my two older fellers to keep at it.

  This skinny old man has rowed in from the Gulf, three miles or more against the current. He is wearing knickers, with a necktie and jacket laid across the seat, like he was out taking the air. Damndest thing I ever seen on Chatham River. I figured he had got loose off one them steam yachts that been showing up on the Gulf Coast in the winter, and I hollered at him to get the hell back down the river where he come from. He just waves me off, like I'm a fly. Picks up his spyglass and looks straight into the mangrove like he sees something in there besides mangrove, then keeps right on a-coming like he never heard me. Has to row hard cause the tide is falling, quick funny strokes, but he rowed very strong, I was surprised.

  By the time he hits the bank, he's pale and peaked, but he's all excited. "How do you are!" he says, lifting his hat, then points downriver. "Cuckoo!" he says.

  "Cuckoo yourself," I say, hitching the gun.

  This little stranger has thick spectacles and wild round eyes. His black hair sticks up like a brush, and cheeks so bony that light glances off, and wet red lips and a thin mustache that runs all the way around his mouth, and pointy ears the Devil would been proud of. This time he says, kind of cranky, "Mawn-grove cuckoo!"

  "Don't try nothin," I say.

  "What to hell you doing here?" His voice is kind of sharp and cross, like it's me who don't belong on my own property. He's too bony to be sweated up, but he takes out a neckerchief and dabs his face, and then he reaches for a shotgun he's got leaning in the bows. Had a load of bird shot in it, and he's just moving it because it's pointing at my knees, but I never knowed that at the time, couldn't take no chances. I hoist my barrel so he's looking down the muzzle, to give him an idea just what was what.

  "What to hell!" he says again, no particular reason. When he shrugs and pulls his hand back from his gun, I see he ain't got all his fingers.

  "Made that mistake before, I see."

  "Do not self-excite, m'sieu," he says, dabbing some more.

  I never had no experience with such a feller, and I'm getting riled. I pick his gun out of the boat and break it, toss the shell into the river. He flings his hands up, rolls his eyes to heaven. "What for you waste!" he yells. "What is matt-aire with this foking country!"

  "You don't hear so good," is what I tell him, laying his gun back in the boat. "Git on back yonder where you come from."

  "You are vair uppity, my good man," says he. And damn if he don't hop over the bow, push my gun barrel out of his way, and climb the bank. Hands on his hips, he looks around, like he's inspecting his new property.

  Behind me I hear my woman snickering. Ol' Mary Weeks has a mean mouth and a mean snicker. I jab the barrels into his back, and damn if he don't whip around and wrench that gun out of my hands and back me up with it, and when he's got me backed up good, he breaks the gun, picks out the shells, and drops 'em like dead mice into the water.

  I tell you, it scared me how quick and strong he was, and crazy. A man would try that when a stranger has the drop on him has got to be crazy or so fed up with life he'd rather get shot than take more shit off anybody. Willie Brown now, he is small and very strong, but he is built strong, and he's young, while this man here is getting on, he looks plain puny. I know right then he has the Devil in him. Even Mary Weeks is spooked, cause she ain't snickering no more, and Mary Weeks don't overlook too many chances.

  Around about then John Leon comes out of the shack dragging the rifle. Even at four, John Leon knew his business. Never says one word, just drags that gun across the yard a little closer so's he can line that stranger up real good and don't waste powder when he hauls back on the trigger. His plan was to shoot this hombre quick, get the story later.

  The stranger hands over my gun while Mary Weeks runs and gets ahold of our youngest boy. She don't care nothing for me no more, but John Leon is her hope and consolation.

  The old man is rubbing his sore back, disgusted. "You shoot stran-jaire just for coming on the shore?" he asks, riled up at the whole bunch of us. "In this foking country even enfant are shooting pipples like I shooting birts!"

  He brushes his jacket off and puts it on, never mind the heat. He has a pair of glasses on a string. Puts them on, too, then stands on tippy-toes in his laced boots to see who he is dealing with on this damned river. "Is Chatham Bend?" He looks around again, shaking his head. "You are squatt-aire? You have squatt-aire right?" This old feller has spotted my dusty hide, he has mistook me for some kind of help.

  In them days there weren't but maybe ten souls altogether on this whole eighty mile of coast, south to Cape Sable, which is why this feller is so surprised to find us pioneers back up the river. He complains that the Bend was uninhabited when he passed by here plume hunting a few years ago. Why, only last week, folks at Everglade and Chokoloskee had told him he could move right in. "Many year my heart have settled on this place!" he yells, putting the fingertips of both hands on his heart. "For why nobody knows it you are here?"

  "They know I'm here," I say.

  At that he turns to look at me more careful. Then he looks at the woman in the doorway of the shack, and our little boy.

  "You met John Weeks up there at Everglade? That there woman is his daughter, and that there little feller is my youngest boy." At them words, Mary looks away and goes inside. "Or supposed to be," I say. She bangs a pot.

  I can tell from the stranger's face that he has heard some rumor on this matter. "Ah, je com-prawng!" he says. He weren't no Yankee, I knew that much.

  Since our visitor was taking things so hard, I told him stay awhile, have a look around, and he shrugs some more like he is doing me a favor. We go down with the tide to detach his gear off a Key West schooner, Captain Carey, that was anchored at Pavilion Key. The captain hollers after him, "Sure you're all right? When shall I fetch you?" But the old man perched in the stern don't hardly wave at him, don't even turn around, and finally the captain drops his arm, shaking his head.

  The Frenchman is so busy asking me questions that he don't hardly wait to get an answer. As days go by, I inform him how this once was Pavilion River, but these Indins around here don't know nothing, so they say Pavioni. Well, this dang French know-it-all tells me how Pavilion got its name! Says a pirate from the Spanish Main was camped here on a offshore key with a young girl off a Dutch merchantman. Girl said even though he had killed off all her family, she would gladly suffer the fate worse than death so long as he spared her own dear life. Well, his crew got sick of looking on while he lay down with her, they said it was her or him, and so he had no choice but to poison her. Before he left, on account he loved her, he built her a thatch shelter to keep the sun off while she died in agony. When an American man-o'-war caught up with him, the Spaniard described this kindness to the Dutch girl to prove how such a courtly feller did not deserve to
hang. After they hung him, they went up there and found most of the girl under that shelter. Called it a pavilion, named that key for it, and we call it "Pavilion" to this day.

  Chevelier said he'd found no "Chatham" in the old accounts. Said "Chatham River" might of come from the Indin name of Chitto Hatchee, or Snake River, as it was called on the old war maps around 1840. Fakahatchee, now, where John Leon was born, that is Fork River. The Frenchman knew that Indin tongue like he was born with it.

  This old French feller-I always think of him as an old feller cause of that stiffness in him, though he weren't so many seasons older'n me-he told us later that he come from France with a French "ornithologue" name of Charles Bonaparte. He was an ornithologue himself and never cared who knowed it, but he sold bird plumes, too, to make ends meet. Looked like some rare old bird hisself, damn if he didn't, quills sticking out all over his head, beady eyes and a stiff gait-the dry way a man will look who lives too long without a woman. Spent too much time with his feathered friends, looked like to me, cause when he got excited, his hair went up in back just like a bird crest, he looked all set to shit and no mistake, and he screeched as good as them Carolina parrots he was hunting for.

  It was right there on Chatham Bend that Jean Chevelier shot the first short-tailed hawk was ever seen in North America, something like that. Weren't much of a claim cause it weren't much of a bird-tail too damn short, I guess. Why he thought this o' scraggy thing we couldn't eat would make him famous I don't know. He seen Carolina parrots, too, far away up inland, freshwater creeks. Bright green little things, size of a dove, all red and yeller on the head, but they was shy and he never did come up with one.