“On the way downriver, Uncle Dan asked ’em why they was in such a hurry. They admitted that they never seen no bad deeds while they was here, no sign that Watson killed his help on payday, the way people said. But they knew somethin very bad had happened to the young couple that was here before ’em, and they was worried about their little children. Around that time, rumor come about Watson murderin the Audubon warden at Flamingo—well, that done it. The woman seemed calm enough, Uncle Dan said, but her husband was sick afraid.
“Mrs. Dyer let on how it was her who wished to leave, and how she was always scared in this wild country, what with all the snakes and panthers and wild Injuns. But Uncle Dan believed she only said that to cover up her husband’s fear of Mr. Watson. On the way north, she mentioned that in her estimation, Mr. Watson was a good and generous man, a gentleman, and a good Christian. Every Sunday morning without fail, they would all sing hymns in the front room and Mr. Watson would read aloud out of the Bible.
“Twenty years later, Dan House saw the husband in Fort Myers, and he said to him ‘Well, Mr. Dyer, you might not be walking around this town if it weren’t for me.’ I reckon Fred Dyer thought so, too, cause seein Uncle Dan, he whooped for joy and hugged him like a long-lost friend.”
Sally Brown said shortly, “Maybe Dan House and Gene Gandees made so much of that story because both of ’em were in the Watson mob a few years later, and they wanted to justify the execution of a neighbor who helped folks out when times were hard and never did a bit of harm to either one of them.”
“Well, Miss Sally, that is possible,” Andy House said.
When Lucius Watson first returned to the Ten Thousand Islands, people made sure that he heard the rumors about Henry Short and the death of Lucius’s father. Though he thought these stories dangerous and absurd, he eventually decided to seek out Henry and hear what he had to say.
Henry had not been easy to track down. He no longer visited the Hardens, who claimed they did not know where he might be found. This was more or less true, but it was also true that, much as they liked Lucius, they could not be sure of his true intentions. Only later did they tell him that Henry Short, still feeling unsafe, had dismantled the Frenchman’s shack again and moved it by skiff piece by piece from Gopher Key all the way south to Cape Sable, where he lugged the boards three miles or more inland to a desolate area of scrub and brackish water (“That whole cabin traveled on that one man’s shoulder,” Lee Harden marveled) only to have it blow away in the Hurricane of ’26. Meanwhile he worked from time to time for the House family here on the Watson Place, and learning of this, Lucius came to see him. Not wanting to scare Henry into hiding, he slipped up Chatham River with the tide and was at the dock at daybreak. Trying to calm the House’s mean dogs, he walked unarmed toward the house, careful to keep his empty hands out to the side.
Bill House was already on the porch. In his nightshirt, he stood like a ghost in the porch shadows. Warning Henry, he sang out, “Ain’t that a Watson?”
“Morning, Bill.”
“Lookin for me?”
“Looking for Henry.”
“What you want with him?”
Henry Short appeared at the corner of the boat shed, holding his rifle down along his leg. When Lucius said good morning, Henry Short lifted his hat a little but did not come forward. He was a strong, good-looking man with blue-gray eyes, composed and very clear in his appearance. Like most men in the Islands, he went barefoot, but unlike most, he kept himself clean-shaven, and his blue denims were well-patched and clean.
Lucius drew closer, out of earshot from the porch. He had planned to open this difficult conversation with a few civilities, but at the last second he came right out with it. “There’s been some rumors, Henry.”
Oddly, Henry chose this moment to lean his rifle against a sawhorse by the boat shed wall. His face was set, without expression, like a prisoner resigned to a harsh sentence.
“Some say you took part in my father’s death,” Lucius continued, keeping his voice low. “That you were first to shoot.”
The night before, camped under the moon at Mormon Key, his purpose had seemed clear, but standing here in the new heat of morning, with the Houses watching from the porch, he no longer knew why he had come nor what he might be looking for. He had finally caught up with Henry Short, yet within instants his whole inquiry seemed empty and unreasonable—what was the man to say? How could he act on anything this man confessed to, since even if Short’s bullet was the first one, striking Papa dead before the others fired, that astonishing circumstance could not have changed the outcome in the slightest way.