“Big gator now, before you cut that tail, you have to cut the back open, use a stick to pry the spinal cord and twist it out, otherwise that tail could spasm, break your leg. But gator tail is ‘larripin good,’ as Old Man Smallwood used to say! Tastes somewhere between frog legs and a rattler, so they tell me.”
Andy said, “You never et one, Whidden?”
“Never et them crawly things, nosir, I didn’t. Ain’t one gator hunter out of five that cares to try one. We had our fill of ’em already, from all that raw meat and guts and blood smell, skinnin ’em out.”
“Well, I weren’t never a real gator hunter,” Andy said, “so I always et a piece if someone give it to me. Them crawly things is pretty good when you know how to fix ’em like the Injuns done. You get hungry enough, a nice fat rattlesnake can put you in mind of some lean chicken.”
“Mikasukis eat them cold-blood things but they won’t touch a rabbit. Claim it takes away your manlihood. Can’t get your courage up, you know.” Whidden leaned down to help Sally aboard. When he hugged her, she grumped, “I’m going to fix you some nice rabbit then. Get me some rest.”
For supper, they fried small jack and mangrove snappers, and two blue catfish, pin-hooked by Andy from the stern. “Better’n ladyfish, I guess,” he said, to disguise his pride in them, “but them sail-fin cat in the deeper channels eat a little better than these blues. Course in the old days, we wouldn’t touch these things. We’d have a good snook or a pompano, maybe trout or grouper. All them good kinds was right here for the takin.”
Because of mosquitoes, they prepared to sleep aboard. Whidden said, “Sally and me’ll sleep here in the cabin, and you two fellers can lay out on deck in this nice Gulf breeze. I got some mesh, so miskeeters won’t be too bad. We’ll give you a blood transfusion in the mornin.” He put his arms around Sally from behind, but she was still brooding, and was cool with him. “Or maybe I can take turns on deck with you two fellers,” Whidden sighed.
Sally said she had been told by Sadie Harden that whoever last pillaged the Watson house had stripped out the only built-in cabinets in all the Islands—
“You sneakin up on those bad ol’ Carrs again?” Whidden was cross. “Dammit, Sally, them young Carrs killed two young Hardens in an argument over some coon skins. We all know that, known it for thirty years! That don’t mean that all that family are no good from here on out!”
Sheepish, she said in a whiny cracker voice, “Honey, ah ain’t nevuh said all of ’em was bay-yud! Ah jus’ said the mos’ of ’em, is all!”
“Killed a couple of dirty Hardens, that’s all,” Whidden said.
“ ‘Dirty Hardens’! That’s exactly how they talked! There was still lynch talk when I was in school!”
“Even in the thirties, lynching was common all around the South,” Lucius reminded them, “and up north wasn’t much better. And there were massacres.”
Andy nodded. “I guess we all got our bad story. Cousin of mine was in Tavernier around 1933 when some sports fishermen went in and gunned down an old black man and his family. Didn’t like what the old man charged for bait and didn’t care for the expression on his face when they cussed him out. Went back for him after dark, of course. Drank some shine to get their courage up and found some more brave fellers to help out. The son got away, come running with his baby to get help. They was the only survivors.”
“And nobody was charged, I don’t suppose.”
“Well, the Monroe Sheriff done the sensible thing, to keep the peace. He charged that hysterical young nigra with massacring his own family, and nobody bothered their heads no more about it.”
The blind man stared away into the night, as if awaiting the judgment of the heavens upon Florida. “I ain’t too proud about them days, are you? God Bless America, we say, but I’d hate to think that God would bless the ignoramus gun-crazy Americans that done things like that.” His words were uttered quietly with a terrible finality, as if he had slowly opened up his hands on his stigmata.
Lucius lay down on the cabin roof with a life jacket under his head and hunted the Southern Cross in the Gulf sky, but fear for his brothers, seeping back into his lungs, made him sit up again. How long could an old man survive, tied and gagged in the suffocating heat and stench inside that house! The image wrenched a small cry from his throat, and beside him, the blind man’s eyes opened wide under the starry heavens.
Considering the poor alternatives of flight or prison, was an octogenarian such as Rob better off dead? If that old man were killed, he would be grief-stricken—oh God! of course!—but would he also feel that Rob’s end might be a mercy? No! He denounced himself for an unworthy idea which he vowed never to recognize again.