Lost Man's River(208)

Certain boys, including Crockett Daniels, were said to have shot into the corpse there at the water’s edge.





WITNESSES


Ted Smallwood. Ted had malaria that day, and anyway, he always said he had nothing against his old friend “E. J.,” wanted no part of it, never stepped out of his store to watch. Despite their long friendship, some people claim that Ted was as relieved as all the rest to see Watson killed.

Willie Brown. Old friend of Dad, dead set against the shooting.

Walker Carr. Old friend of Dad, dead set against the shooting.

Nelson Noble. Rowing around the point as the shooting started; his daughter Edith’s claim that he took part appears mistaken.

George Storter. Justice Storter’s nephew; in boat with Nelson Noble.

Granger Albritton. Came up from Islands after the Great Hurricane. Did not take part. His sons Sandy and Baxter were also witnesses.

Henry Thompson. Present but did not take part.

James Hamilton, and sons Frank, Lewis, and Jesse. Came back from Lost Man’s with Henry Thompson; present but did not take part.

Walter and Fred House; Alvin Brown and Owen Carr; Rob Thompson; Dinks and Tony Boggess, also younger Howell, Smith, Brown, Yeomans, and Johnson boys, also a few young girls and women, including Alice McKinney, Ethel Boggess—claim (or are said) to have been among the onlookers.





ABSENT


At various times, the following were reported to have been present. They were not.

C. G. McKinney (across the Island in his store or absent in Fort Myers on jury duty with Justice Storter)

Charlie McKinney, his son (out fishing)

John Henry Daniels, Phin Daniels, Cap and Jack Daniels (at Fakahatchee)

Tant Jenkins (ditto)

Old Man Robert Harden, and sons Earl, Webster, and Lee (all at Lost Man’s, though Earl always claimed he would have shot had he been present.)

Gene Roberts (was renting Andrew Wiggins’s Chokoloskee house, but after the storm, he went home to Flamingo.)

Adolphus Santini (a rumor persists that Old Dolphus took part, although he never returned to Chokoloskee after moving away to the east coast, soon after his near-fatal encounter with E. J.W. back in the nineties.)



To the best of my knowledge, this list is accurate and complete.



(signed) Lucius H. Watson

Lost Man’s River

Spring 1923





Southward


The Cracker Belle, which Whidden Harden kept upriver near the bridge at Everglade, was a thirty-two-foot cabin boat with a long work deck for commercial fishing. When Lee Harden owned her, Lucius recalled, she had been white, with that old-time blue trim at the red waterline, but after years of disuse, her hull was a flaking driftwood gray.

The engine started with a cavernous rumble. “Sounds pretty good, Cap,” Lucius said, and Whidden said, “Sounds good because I tinkered all this mornin. We’ll see how good she starts tomorrow.”

“He talking about his wife or his old boat?” called Sally, who was guiding Andy to a canvas boat chair in the aft end of the cockpit. In blue sweatshirt and torn-off jeans, she swung gracefully to the cabin roof and leaned back against the windshield, raising her pretty face up to the sun.

The Cracker Belle idled down current past rusty fish houses and a sagging dock and stacks of sea-greened crab pots. On a warehouse wall a notice read DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT STACKING YOUR SHIT ON THIS DOCK. “Nice,” Sally said. She fluttered her fingers at the men in rubber boots, packing ice and fish into slat boxes. Straightening, they squinted at the Belle from beneath their caps. They did not wave back.

Beyond the hotel, the tidal river turned west through the mangrove wall toward the Gulf, and the Cracker Belle set out across the bay between the sparkling white spoil banks of the channel. On the tall navigation markers, ospreys had assembled their huge nests, and cormorants, uttering low cretaceous grunts, fled their pedestals and beat away like ancient flying lizards, down the long channels between islets and out across the shallow reaches where oyster bars and mangrove sprouts and stalking egrets broke the gleam of the marl flats, all the way south to Chokoloskee Island.

Facing aft over the wake, Andy was identifying the side channels, and he grinned when they asked him how he did it. “The nests is where you hear them fish hawks, and nests in Chokoloskee Bay means channel markers.” He pointed toward the peeping osprey overhead. “In my mind’s eye I can see that bird pretty near as clear as you can, them black burnsides and that sharp crook in the wing!”

On the spoil bank stood a pair of bald eagles. The great white heads with their massive beaks like yellow ivory gleamed in the fresh sun and sparkling water. When Lucius described how unperturbed the eagles were by the boat’s wake, which washed up the shell bank, bathing their mighty talons, Andy cried out happily, “I can just see ’em!”