Shadow Country (53 page)

“Sheriff always aimed to summon a grand jury and reopen up the case but the family was dead set against it and anyway he never could figure how to prosecute, not with his whole posse confessin they took part. Not your common prosecution case at all! Still and all, he couldn't let it go cause by now he'd heard some crazy story how a nigger was first man to fire at Ed Watson. Now
that
would eat at Frank P. Tippins, I can tell you! Sheriff got on pretty good with Injuns but niggers was another breed entirely. This snitch told Tippins he had swore a oath he would never reveal that nigger's name and he never had to, cause there weren't but the one colored man on Chokoloskee.

“Now Henry Short were known to be a purty good ol' nigger, but Frank Tippins could not tolerate that
any
colored man would think to raise a gun against a white man, and when the white man in the case was E. J. Watson, who had every coon in southwest Florida scared up a tree, he flat refused to believe it, especially when none of his damn suspects would confirm that story. Said they never needed no damn nigger to take care of their business. And from the hard way they said this, Tippins concluded that some of these fellers if not all of 'em knew what that day's business was before Watson's boat ever come in and struck ashore.

“All of the same, that rumor ate at him. For years Frank was huntin an excuse to take that black boy into custody and work some truth out of him. Only thing, he couldn't come up with him. Short was gun-shy and kept movin cause Tippins weren't the only man was huntin him. Somebody else was gunnin for him, I always heard. Maybe still is.

“When Prohibition come along and me and the sheriff done some business, he was still bothered. Asked me straight out, ‘Dammit, Speck, did that darn nigger shoot at Ed or didn't he?' Well, I never seen it if he did, that's what I told him, not carin to admit I was so far in the back I couldn't see nothin at all. By the time I got my chance to fire, your daddy was already down, deader'n dirt.”

“But you fired anyway. Snuck in there and fired a .22 into his head, is what I heard.”

Speck raised his hand. “Now don't go barkin up all them wrong trees: we're talkin about niggers, ain't we? That other colored in the case? One you was askin about that ain't on the sheriff 's books? I always heard he drowned some way on the trip south to Key West but Tippins heard they got him there, then let him off. Give him a new shirt and sent him home, up Columbia County. Sheriff Frank was just a
-boilin
mad. ‘That's Key West jusstice for you, Speck! Nigger-lovin Yankees, all them foreigners! I mean, God a'mighty, Speck! That boy confessed how he had his black hands all
over
that big lady!' ” Speck shook his head. “Feller was tellin me the other day how two different niggers in Key West was claimin to be the one escaped off of the Watson place after them killins. And I told him, ‘Why, goddammit to hell, we got another one up to Fort Myers claims the same damn thing!'

“Anyways, Tippins believed till the day he left here for Miami that us fellers took and lynched Ed Watson, concluded we was waitin on the shore to gun him down. Said, ‘Maybe you held your fire till he raised his gun, maybe you didn't.' Said Bill House was sincere, all right, believed the hell out of his own story, but somethin was missin all the same. Sheriff called your daddy's death an unsolved crime where most wouldn't call it no damn crime at all.

“That was the first time, Frank would say, that he never done his duty. Course it weren't the last time by a long shot, but he didn't know that in his early days. I believe it was the Watson case that made that feller say to hell with it and give up on common justice.

“As for them court records, you might be correct. Eddie Watson was so scared of talk that he might of wiped his daddy's name clean off the books. Might of been his own idea or maybe not. And Tippins comin from Arcadia, he might have got that taken care of, too, as a favor to the Langfords.”

Breaking a rust-rotted shoelace—“Shit!”—Daniels kicked his sneaker off before stretching out, hands behind his head. Enjoying his role as an authority on the Watson case, he was annoyed when Lucius rose to leave. Speck said, “Don't aim to thank the man that found Bill House's testimony?” He grinned at Lucius's disbelief. “Found it right in Tippins's own desk. Chicken Collins stole it off me but it was mine by rights.” He studied Lucius meanly. “Goddamn Chicken stole my nice souvenir from that historical-type day when us upstandin citizens wiped out Bloody Watson.”

“So it was a lynching. You admit that.”

Daniels shrugged. “I only joined up in that line of men to see what was goin on: I weren't much more than a boy.” Speck considered this a moment. “Well, later I was bothered some and will admit it. Ed Watson had daughters by two Daniels females and treated our whole Caxambas bunch like family, so them ladies are still scoldin me for takin part. Hell, Josie's Pearl ain't spoken to me since.” He grimaced at his own attempt to excuse his role. “You Watsons got nothin to be ashamed about, is all I'm sayin. Ed Watson was his own man, done what he thought was right. Like ol' Tant Jenkins always said, Ed never killed a livin soul that didn't need some killin. Which puts me in mind of a nice story for your book—story Tant's sister used to tell about how good she was took care of by her man Jack Watson.”

BULLET NECKLACE

“One fine day on the Bend they was settin there eatin their supper. The white cutters on the harvest crew ate with 'em at that big pine table and this one feller was findin fault with Josie's peas. They wasn't salted, wasn't this, that, nor the other. So your daddy was rumblin to warn that cutter not to hurt Miss Josie's feelins. The man shut up but pretty quick he commenced to grumblin again. Knew a bad pea when he et one, this feller did.

“Mister Ed didn't have no more to say about it. Set his fork down, wiped his mouth, pushed his chair back, and got up real quiet. And there come a hush and this cutter stopped his eatin cause he knowed that somethin terrible was comin down on him. But he was too scared to beg or run, he only set there starin bug-eyed out the winder as if that big ol' croc that hunted that broad water at the Bend was clamberin right out on the near bank, comin to get him. Your daddy stepped around behind his chair and drawed his head back by the hair—didn't yank it, Josie said, her Jack wasn't rough with him or nothin. Laid his knife acrost his throat sayin, ‘Please excuse us, folks,' then stood this feller on his feet and marched him outside before he slit his throat so's not to mess up Josie's nice clean floor.”

Speck frowned hard to show how serious his story was. “Nobody cared much for that cane cutter to start with, that's how Josie explained it. Prob'ly some kind of a criminal is what her Jack told 'em whilst he washed his hands before settin down to her fine lemon-lime pie.

“When he finished his pie and got done wipin his mouth, he told 'em he was well known for 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 better off
without
that darn ol' criminal!' As Josie recollected it, he still had lime cream on his handlebar mustache when he hitched around to look out through the door at that carcass that was nastyin up his yard. ‘Lookit that barefaced sonofabitch,' he says. ‘Layin out there like he owns the place!' ”

Unable to maintain his poker face, Daniels guffawed. “Nosir, Josie never did deny that her Jack put that knife to her own throat a time or two when he was in his liquor, get her to shut up her mouth and mind what she was told. She would of 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.' Hell, them were the days when men was men. Don't make red-blood Americans like
that
no more!” The moonshiner was doubled up with mirth, hacking to ransack his lungs and farting gleefully.

“Whilst they was washin up the dishes, they all agreed it might be best to let bygones be bygones, say nothin more about it,” Daniels told him. “So what they done, they took and flung him to that big croc in the river. Maybe somebody give him a prayer, maybe they didn't—they was purty busy in the harvest season. But Aunt Josie always told young Pearl that she never got her Mister Jack out of her heart on account of how sweet he was that day about her peas, how darn considerate about her tender feelins.” Speck nodded a little, wiping his eyes. “If that ain't a nice romantical little story for your book, I don't know what.”

“I'm not looking for stories. I'm looking for the truth about his death.”

“Man wants the truth about Ed Watson,” Daniels jeered. “Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods'll tell you their truth, Hardens'll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he'll tell you his and I'll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with?”

Mistaking Lucius's silence for acquiescence, he pointed a hard finger at his eyes. “Maybe nobody don't
need
this truth you're lookin for, ever think about that? Us kind of fellers always thought your daddy was all right the way he was.” He lay back on the bunk, one leg cocked across the other knee, old sneaker swinging. “Think I ain't truthful, Colonel? Think I'm a liar just makin up stories about peas?” He yanked open the top buttons of his shirt, exposing a necklace of dull-burnished leaden lumps strung on a rawhide thong. He removed it, pushed it forward. “Count 'em. Thirty-three.”

Punched in the heart, Lucius made no move to touch them. The last time he had seen those leads they were black with coagulated blood, heaped in a rusty coffee can on Rabbit Key.

“Got 'em off the coroner's man. Still had the blood on 'em. Paid eighteen dollars in hard cash and wouldn't take a million.”

One sneaker on, one sneaker off, he sat up on his bunk edge. “It was Tippins showed me that fuckin posse list of yours—almost forgot that.” He nodded when the other turned. “He was holdin it for evidence, Lucius. In case you was to go crazy, Lucius, start in shootin people such as myself, Lucius. And you know who give it to Tippins, Lucius? Eddie Watson.”

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

“Tell that to Chicken. He stole it off me along with the House testimony. Anyways, that Christly list don't mean nothin no more. Purt' near all dead on there or half dead anyways. Lest you would count that nigger.” Daniels lay back, swearing.

“No colored man on that list as I recall.”

“Course not!” In fury, Daniels cocked his knee and kicked the bottom of the upper bunk so hard that he split the cross slats under the thin mattress. “Ever think how a man might feel, seein his own name on a
death
list? Ever think what kind of a damn loon would
make
a list like that?”

Crockett Daniels's rage turned low and cold as the blue mineral flame in a wood fire. He wiped spittle from his unshaven mouth with the backs of his fingers and stropped it on his pant leg. “Chok fellers might be interested to see that list, you think so, Colonel? Them men might be mostly gone but they know there ain't nothin to keep a Watson from makin do with a man's son. Unless that Watson was put a stop to first.”

“That a threat?”

“Nosir. That is a warnin.” Daniels rolled over on the bunk, facing the wall.

Lucius said to his back, “I lived in the Islands long after I made that list and never harmed anyone. Why would I start now?” To his annoyance, his voice had gone tight and froggish.

“Yep.” Speck's voice sounded like he was grinning into the mattress. “Men has got to be very leery of this Lucius Watson. You ever come back into our country, you better not turn your back no more'n you have to. And here's another warnin: don't go tellin family secrets on your damn attorney.” Speck lowered his voice. “Big-time attorney, y'know,
big
-time attorney. Watt Fuckin Dyer is the fixer for all the fat boys in this state, from Big Sugar and the KKK up to the governor, and he's got his own political future to look out for. Yessir, they's big money involved in this park fight, that's the story. Dyer's the mouthpiece for them east coast developers that has fought that park idea for years; them boys are workin day and night to grab that real estate before all them nature-lovers and such get the Glades nailed down by the federl gov'mint. You ain't seen all that stuff in the papers? Gettin the public fired up against the feds for wastin half of Florida on this big green nothin? Stead of sellin off that land and cuttin taxes?”

“You a taxpayer these days, Speck?”

“Yessir! Mr. Crockett Senior Daniels! First man up to the winder every year!”

But Speck's grin faded quickly. “Taxes is rigged to help the rich, come out of the poor man's hide. And any poor man asks the wrong questions, them bureaucrats'll paper him to death, scatter the blame all over the fuckin gov'mint. Feds can't pour piss out of a boot that has the instructions wrote down on the heel but when it comes to coverin their butts, you just can't beat 'em.

“What I'm sayin is, with so much money on the line, that man won't want no story comin out about how he is Bloody Watson's bastrid boy. He'll get a chokehold on your book in court, then hit you with a lawsuit. 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.”

“Oh, come on—”

“That's the story. Might get beat up or you might get a bullet. They say he's got spicks over to Miami will do a nice clean job for fifty bucks.”

“Threat number three.” Lucius went out and this time he kept going.

“Well, here's another, then!” Speck Daniels hollered after him. “Stay the hell out of my territory! And we won't need no fuckin Spaniards neither!”

“Eddie Watson? Lives over here on Second Street.” The deputy walked him to the door. “Lately your brother been tryin to sell me your daddy's famous shootin iron. Bolt-action, single-shot, looked like a made-over rifle with a shotgun barrel—hell of a lookin thing!” Seeing Lucius's expression, he laughed. “Eddie swore this was the weapon used by Desperader Watson on the day he died, claimed it was well known to be his daddy's from the black scorin on the stock. Not only that but this selfsame gun wiped out Belle Starr, the Outlaw Queen—no extra charge! Said it was priceless so naturally I give him fourteen dollars for it.” He hiked his belt. “Might been priceless but it sure weren't what Eddie said it was cause later I got a chance to handle the real-life weapon your dad was toting on that day.”