Well, Bill House did know Watson pretty good, knowed him eighteen years from when he first showed up down in the Islands. Kind of liked him, too, the same as everybody—said you couldn’t help it. But Bill House made no jokes about him, cause E. J. Watson weren’t no laughin matter. My dad never forgot how it was that dark October, that black drought hanging over this coast like the Almighty had given up on us forever.
A lot of people who was secretly relieved to see their friend Ed Watson shot to pieces was the same ones who hollered later on how he deserved a trial—the same ones who pointed fingers at the House family and called us lynchers. That cousin of mine is still sayin that today, don’t know the first thing about the truth and don’t care neither. Well, the House men never lynched nobody. Never had no plan to kill Ed Watson in cold blood, and never fired till he swung that gun up.
All his life my dad would talk about that piece of history that happened here on this little stretch of shore. Talked about that October twilight, talked about that death like it happened yesterday—“clear as stump water,” them was his words. What he meant by that: when the sun catches it right, the little pool of water in the heart of an old stump shines as deep as a black diamond, dark silver black but full of holy light, like that shine in them little limestone sinkholes in the hammocks. In them deep small holes, they ain’t a breath of wind to rile the surface, nothin but some little leaf that might drift down and float on that black mirror just as light as teal down or wild petal or dry seed, with the treetops and clouds and the blue sky all contained in the reflection. “Clear as a deer’s eye”—that’s the way Bill House described how clear that moment was, every detail, right to the bright red of Watson’s blood flecks on his rifle barrel, right to the hairs the evening wind was stirring on the dead man’s neck where he lay face down.
That’s the way Bill House recalled the death of Mr. Watson. He never mentioned Henry Short at all.
The Harden men weren’t there that day but later years, they asked Henry for the truth about what happened. Hardens weren’t liars, neither, they was honest people, and from what Henry told ’em, they concluded that Henry never fired at Ed Watson. Course bein a black man back when lynchin nigras didn’t hardly make the papers, he would never admit to shooting at a white man, not to Houses and not to Hardens, neither. Not to God in Heaven! Because if that one he told ever let on, them men would say, “That dang nigger bragged he killed a white man”—say that real sweet and soft, you know, which is the sign amongst them fellers that some poor nigra is headed for perdition. But so long as he never bragged on it, it was all right, because he had the whole House clan behind him, seven men and boys.
Now them other men was very glad that Henry Short was in that line, and his rifle with him. Later years, a few of ’em took on about it some when they was drinking, but they liked Henry and they was grateful, and I don’t believe they would of raised their hand against him. It was them men’s sons who hated to admit that a black man had took care of Watson while the white men only finished off the job. So pretty soon certain ones was saying that Henry Short had lost his head and murdered Watson. We gone to stand for some damn nigger shootin down a white man? Who in the hell give him the idea he could get away with that? Who give him that damn rifle in the first place? And maybe, they said, Henry’s bad attitude come from the way them Houses spoiled him, and anyways, Houses done wrong to arm that nigger, never mind lettin him foller ’em over to Smallwood’s. The way some of the younger ones was carrying on when they got drunk, you would have thought that Henry Short was the only armed man there. Then someone would say, Ain’t he the one married that Harden down to Lost Man’s River? And a few of them fools started in to saying, “Well, who’s going to teach that boy his lesson?”
Course they was not so much bad fellers as big talkers. They never rightly understood what a terrible fear had weighed on our community. And their daddies went along with it, they kind of nodded. In their hearts, they knew Henry was there that day because they wanted him there, but bein a little bit ashamed, they would not discuss it in the family. The fathers never admitted to the sons how scared they was of Watson—scared enough so for that one day, they forgive a man his color because that man could shoot better’n they could and might of kept some of ’em from getting hurt.
So Henry Short never told nobody he fired that gun, not even my dad, who was raised with Henry and was standin right beside him when he done it. And Dad would never think to ask, because Henry was dead honest all his life, and Dad would never want to be the one to make a liar of him. Henry Short never had no choice about what he had to do. From the very first minute after Watson’s death, he was setting a backfire, trying to keep that firestorm away.