Lost Man's River(14)

Lucius wandered the overgrown plantation in the river twilight. In the old fields, cane shoots struggled toward the light through the thorn and vine. Fetching his whiskey from the boat, he sat in the empty house all that long evening, until finally he was so drunk and despairing that he crawled outside and fell off the porch steps, howling in solitude. Next day he headed south to Lost Man’s River, where Lee Harden and his Sadie, who were close to his own age, had always been his friends and made him welcome. On impulse, he offered them the place on Chatham Bend. They were disturbed by his haggard appearance and did not believe that he was serious, and Lee Harden had lived on the Bend as a small child and had no wish to return there, having already filed a claim on Lost Man’s Beach. He thanked Lucius politely, reminding him that the Hardens were fishermen. There was no sense in letting a forty-acre plantation go to waste. Anyway, they informed him gently, the Chevelier Development Corporation had somehow acquired rights to Chatham Bend.

Having no heart or temperament for a legal battle, Lucius abandoned the Bend and built a cabin near the Hardens at South Lost Man’s, where he resumed his former life as a commercial fisherman. Though he did his best to be friendly with everyone, he refused to ignore his father’s death. He wished to identify every man who had been present in that October dusk on Smallwood’s landing, and to look him so squarely in the eye that he could not doubt that Watson’s son knew all about his participation. In this way, he hoped he might be free of that bitterness and atavistic shame which had crippled his spirit for so many years.

The first man Lucius sought out for advice was Henry Thompson, who had worked for E. J. Watson back in the nineties and later became captain of his schooner. Henry had always been his father’s friend and had denounced the killing. Yet it seemed that Henry was avoiding him, perhaps because he himself avoided Chokoloskee, where the Thompsons lived. When they finally met one day on the dock at Everglade, and he asked Thompson who had been involved, it appeared that Henry had forgotten. Though he put both sets of knuckles to his temples and racked his brain extra hard, he could not recall a single name from that crowd of men. When Lucius expressed astonishment, Thompson turned cranky, as if held responsible unjustly. He all but suggested that Watson’s son had no business returning to the Islands in the first place. “All that Watson business” was over and done with, he told Lucius, and the less said about any of it the better. He did not add “if you know what’s good for you,” not in so many words, but very clearly that was what he meant. Better let sleeping dogs lie, Henry advised him as they parted, and anyway—this was shouted back over his shoulder—Mr. E. J. Watson still owed Thompsons money! After that day the Thompson family, which had always been so friendly, turned cold and avoided him, like the Willie Browns.

But Lucius persisted in his quiet inquiry, speaking with anyone willing to discuss his father’s life and death. The men of Everglade and Chokoloskee had liked “Ed Watson’s boy” back in the old days, and when he had first returned, and appeared friendly, some of the men put their uneasiness aside and answered questions about Mr. Watson’s years on Chatham Bend, his crops and economics, boats and marksmanship, his moonshine and plume-hunting days, even his wild rioting in Tampa and Key West—anything and everything but the dark events which finished in that October dusk at Smallwood’s landing.

They called him Colonel. The nickname had not been affectionate, not in those early days, but only certified his separation from the Island people due to his courtly educated tones and “city manners.” The more amiable he became, the less they trusted him, in their stubborn suspicion that his friendliness was intended to disarm them while some course of bloody retribution was being plotted. As posse leaders, the men of the House family had most reason for concern. The patriarch, Daniel David House, had died two years before, but the three House boys who had taken part were very leery of him, especially the eldest son, Bill House.

Rumors drifted like low swamp mist through the Islands that “Colonel” Watson was asking the wrong questions. The local men became more taciturn each time he approached. Braving cold-eyed silences everywhere he went, Lucius did his best to avoid blame or rancor, but the Islanders grew ever more uneasy—indeed, those families which had decried the killing were at least as reticent as those which had participated, or approved it. Some were wary, some were scared, backing inside and shutting the door when they saw Watson’s son coming. He could knock for ten minutes without response, knowing that if he touched the latch, somebody hidden behind that door might blow his head off. That this quiet and soft-spoken man would risk this—that despite the hostility of the community, he kept coming back—was only more proof that “Watson’s boy,” who could “drop a curlew bound downwind with a bullet through the eye,” was “every bit as dangerous as his daddy.”