Lost Man's River(236)

“Lee Harden went to Everglade and warned his sister that the lovebirds better fly, so they went over there to Arizona. Wrote back to inform us that out in the West where nigras ain’t so plentiful, the Injuns and Mexicans are treated even worse. Just ain’t enough black people out there for good Christians to get worked up about, cause they already have their hands full, bein mean to Injuns. Aunt Abbie never had no children, but they adopted a little black boy and they sent his picture and we sure liked the look of him. She ended up enjoy in her black family.”

Whidden stopped to sort his feelings. “In some way, the Hardens’ troubles went back to their friendship with Mr. Watson,” he said finally. “I ain’t blaming him, Mister Colonel—I said, went back to him. Because his friendship with Hardens was a warning to the Bay people: leave these folks be. Maybe all he wanted was the support of Harden guns, like some has said—that worked both ways. As long as Mr. Watson was known to be our friend, nobody messed with us. But after his death, the Hardens was resented worse than ever, especially Lee Harden, who called the men who gunned down his old friend ‘a mob of outlaws.’ Even the ones who took no part had kinsmen in that crowd, and they resented it. Mamie Smallwood purely hated what her dad and brothers done that day, but she never forgive Lee Harden for them words. That woman had it in for Hardens till the day she died.

“Once Mr. Watson was out of the way, the men took to fishing farther and farther south toward Lost Man’s River, and pretty soon, the Fish Wars started up again. The Harden clan was outcast more than ever, and when one sister married Henry Short, it got worse still, and when another run off with Dab Rowland—well, she ruined her family. Aunt Abbie give our enemies all the argument they ever needed that Hardens must be some kind of mulattas who had no right to run no white men off that Lost Man’s coast. The Bay fishermen and the trappers, too, was after our Harden territory, and it got so they were huntin an excuse to come down here in a gang and wipe us out.”

“My cousins! Carrs and Browns—!”

“Your line of Browns had nothin much to do with that feud with Hardens. Matter of fact, your uncle Harry stayed pretty good friends—remember Dollar? Called him that name because back in the old days, he sold his Lost Man’s Key claim to my dad for one silver dollar. Dollar was always selling somethin, he was full of big ideas, a real finagler. It was Dollar who invented commercial stone crabbing, he was the first man around here to set him a line of deep water traps floored with cement that would sink to the bottom and set upright in fifty foot of water. Stone crabs crawl better in winter and rough water and at night, and they are partial to a good tough bait like stingray.

“Anyways, it was Dollar Bill who warned my pa that the Lopez bunch might try to run him off this Lost Man’s claim. Lopezes lived at Mormon Key for quite a while, raised some sugarcane because fishin was so poor—two cents a pound was all we was gettin for pickled mullet—and they was very jealous of our territory. Pa always believed it was one them Lopez cousins who caught him from behind one night at Chokoloskee, cut him up like pork chops with an ax. Pa went to the hospital for the first time in his life, and when he got out, he stopped off at Smallwood’s on his way home. Didn’t suspect Old Man Ted was behind it, just pretended that he did, knowin Ted was friends with the ones who probably done it. Stood there awhile not sayin a word, just watchin Ted tryin not to look at him, cause his face was all ripped up and swollen purple. He was waitin to see if Ted would come apart, and he damn near did, he couldn’t hardly speak. So finally Pa said, ‘The day I catch up with the man who carved this Halloween mask you are lookin at’ ”—and Whidden tapped his own face, his eyes squinted—“ ‘that man is as good as dead.’ Old Man Smallwood says, ‘No, no, no, Lee! I never knew a thing about it!’ And he probably didn’t. But he spread the word about what Pa said, until even the innocent ones got nervous, in case Lee Harden decided it was them.” He shook his head. “Pa wore them heavy face scars all his life. And every year the tensions between Hardens and the Bay kept growin worse.

“Takin a life was about the only way them wars was goin to end, and both sides knew that. Even the weather give us warning signs, like that strange cold breath out of the sky before a thunderstorm. That atmosphere along this coast had to bust like a woman’s water before anybody could breathe easy again.

“Seems terrible to say it but my pa said this himself: if them ones that tried to kill him with an ax had knowed their job, and drawed off that dangerous head of steam by killin him, my brother Roark and my cousin Wilson might not of lost their lives down at Shark River.