Lost Man's River(2)

On his hunkers on the road, arms loose across his knees, the Indian awaited him, watching the gun. Lucius pointed the barrels down along his leg. Back in the night shadow of the trees, he could just make out the hulk of an ancient pickup.

Asked if he had come alone, the Indian nodded. Asked who he was, he identified himself as a spiritual leader of the traditional Mikasuki out on the Trail.

Lucius said, “You came halfway across Florida in that old junker to deliver this—”

“Burial urn. The old man sent it.” With a generous wave, the Indian invited him to admire the urn. “He seen your ad in the paper about Bloody Watson.”

“Mr. E. J. Watson? Planter Watson? That what you meant to say?”

The big Indian sighed. “Our old-time Indin people down around Shark River, they always thought a lot of Mr. Watson, cause he give ’em coffee, somethin warm to eat, whenever they come up along the rivers. Had good moonshine, too. Folks say he killed some white people and black ones but he never killed no red ones, not so’s you’d notice.”

Lucius Watson had to laugh. This hurt his head. “What old man?” he scowled.

“Call him Chicken-Wing.”

“Chicken-Wing. So Chicken-Wing said, ‘See that Mr. Lucius Watson gets this burial urn on the stroke of midnight.’ Am I right so far?”

The Indian nodded. “Stroke of midnight,” he assented slyly. “Them were his very words.”

“Christ.” Lucius tried to focus on the urn, which was a cheap one, ornamented with crude brassy angels. “And you don’t know his real name.”

The Indian shrugged. “Used the name Collins when I first come acrost him, some years back. Course that don’t mean nothin. Them people out where he is livin at don’t hold so much with rightful names. Call him Chicken on account of he’s so scrawny—”

Lucius hoisted the gun, and the sudden motion hurt his temples, making him curse. “Come on, dammit! You come sneaking in here after dark—!”

“Just brung that urn, is all. The way I told you.” His black eyes remained fastened on the gun. “Guess I’ll be gettin along,” he said, easing to his feet.

Lucius broke the gun and ejected the shells and stuffed them into his pocket, feeling ridiculous. “You better come on back over to the boat, have some coffee before heading back. Who’s that in the urn? Let’s start from the beginning. If this old Collins wants to see me, why didn’t he come here himself?”

“He don’t feel so good.” The Indian eased his nerves with a low belch. “Other day, one them frog hunters lives back out there come by my camp and let me know Old Man Chicken wanted to see me. Told me Chicken been rottin in his bedroll goin on three days, hardly a twitch, so them men figured he was close to finished. Soon as I got there, Chicken says, ‘For fifty years I been standin in the way of my own death.’ I weren’t so sure what he meant by that, but it sounded like he had about enough.

“Next thing, he told me where you was livin at. Said, Take this here urn to that man Lucius Watson, he’s my rightful hair. Tell him he better come see me, cause I got me a whole ar-chive here on his old man—whole carton of documents and such. And if that don’t do it, you just tell him that them bones in that urn used to be his brother.”

“That’s Rob in there?” Lucius laid the shotgun on the grass and sank to his knees in the white sand beside the urn. He lifted and turned it carefully in both hands in a tumult of emotions. Rob Watson! To clear his head, he took deep breaths of the night air, filling his lungs with the heavy bog smell of low tide. He set the urn down again and stared at it.

Using a bird bone taken from his shirt, the Indian drew a sort of spiral in the sand. “He reckons you owe him a visit. He’s the one sent you them old papers where some man tells how them Chokoloskee fellers killed your daddy.”

“My God.” Lucius sighed. “Tell him I’m coming.” Whoever he was, this old Collins knew what had become of Robert Watson, having somehow come by his remains before Rob’s own siblings even knew that he was dead.

Pressing huge smooth hands to his knees, Billie Jimmie rose as slow as smoke, to such a height that Lucius Watson, a tall man himself, had to step backwards. “Gator Hook,” the Indian said. He set off down the white moon road without a wave. At the wood edge, he half-turned to look back, then disappeared into the dark wall of the forest, leaving Lucius alone with the strange urn, under the moon.





Gator Hook


The day after the Indian appeared out of the forest, Lucius Watson drove eastward on the Tamiami Trail through the Big Cypress, which opened out into wet saw grass savanna. A century ago, in the Seminole Wars, the Indians still crossed their Grassy Waters, Pa-hay-okee, to the high hardwood hammocks where palm-thatch villages and gardens lay concealed from the white soldiers. Since then, the bright waters had been girded tight by the concrete of progress, and a wilderness people, like the native bear and panther, could scarcely be imagined anymore. Of the half-hidden dangers which in the nineteenth century had sapped the spirit of the U.S. Army and led at last to its defeat, what remained were the tall scythes of toothed saw grass and the poison tree called manchineel, the treacherous muck pools and jagged solution holes in the skeletal limestone, the insect swarms which could drive lost greenhorns to insanity, the biting insects and thick water moccasins, opening their cotton mouths like deadly blossoms, and the coral snakes and diamondbacks on the high ground.