Lost Man's River(254)
Lucius stood transfixed at the edge of firelight. He could not seem to think, far less move away or return into the circle.
“One time a feller was tellin me how Mr. Watson took his boy to the red-light district in Key West, this was in the last years of Watson’s life. Lucius must been twenty years of age, but this was the first female he ever fooled with, and damn if he don’t get a good dose of the clap the first time out! Now I heard plenty said about Lucius Watson, but nobody never said he was a lucky feller.”
Sally muttered something and her father turned on her. “Excuse me, Miss? You sayin, Miss, that Mister Colonel is not a man that would catch a dose of gonorrhea? Well, I might not know so much as you about gonorrhea, Miss, but he sure had the clap. What them Navy boys down to Key West call ‘a chancre on your anchor,’ ever hear that one, Miss? While you was studyin up on gonorrhea?”
Startled by this attack, Sally’s sharp tongue faltered, and she groped for a response, flushed close to tears. “Have you ever felt the least respect for women? Ever in your life?”
Speck dismissed her with a grimace and turned back to the men. “See, folks was only scared of Colonel on account of his last name. Even Flamingo people was a-scared of him when he fished down there in the twenties, after his fool list made things hot for him up around home. Feller name Maxwell was Parks ranger up Little Coot Bay, and he was gettin on to Colonel for some reason. And a feller says to him, ‘Maxwell, you best leave that man alone! You keep on messin, one of these days you gone to come up missin! Don’t you know who that man is? Hell, Desperader Watson was his daddy!’ Well, that news took Maxwell’s cold, cold heart and turned it right around, and after that, them fellers always said, they never seen nobody nicer than what this Maxwell was to Colonel Watson.”
“I believe Sandy Albritton was the one who told me how when Edgar Watson first come to southwest Florida, the train stopped someplace—was it Arcadia?—and there was a man had another feller man down and was beatin on him somethin pitiful. So Mr. Watson swung down off that train and he walked over there and said, ‘How come you onlookers don’t stop this man from beatin this here feller half to death?’ ‘No, no,’ they said. ‘They ain’t nobody can’t stop him, cause that is Quinn Bass, the meanest hombre in all Manatee County!’ So Desperader Watson said, ‘Well, I can stop him.’ And darned if he don’t step over there and shove his revolver into the burl of that man’s ear. Never advised him to quit or nothin, he weren’t the kind to tell another man his business. Just squeezed the trigger and climbed back on the train and went on south.”
Infuriated, unfairly defeated, Lucius had returned and sat down across the fire. Sally leaned toward him and whispered, “I don’t believe Sandy Albritton ever told any such story!” Her father gave her a funny smile, then reached and whacked her blue-jeaned thigh above the knee. She reared around at him, tears in her eyes. “Keep your cotton-picking hands to your damned self!” Father and daughter measured each other, tasting old bad episodes in their past history, and he raised his brows in unabashed appreciation of her pretty bosom, which was heaving in emotion, Speck picked a broken horsefly off the sand by the gauze wing and turned its glass green body between thumb and forefinger, catching the firelight. “Sharpshooters,” he said. “That’s what old-timers used to call ’em.” He turned to Lucius.
“Anyways, your daddy had no chance that time Mr. Short killed him, cause when he come ashore, them men was waitin on him. Old Man Lloyd House, had a fish dock at Flamingo for a while—Barrelhead House, we called him, cause he liked hard cash—Mr. Barrelhead was in on the whole plan, and in later years he told me all about it.” He cocked his eye to observe Lucius as a hawk might eye the creature in its talon prior to feeding. “Course I was in Chok that day myself, I was what you might call a eyewitness. But bein so young and comin there that day from Fakahatchee, I weren’t asked to join up, so I follered my uncle across to Smallwood’s landin and joined up in that crowd all by myself.”
Andy said, “Lloyd House told you they planned it? That sure weren’t the way his brothers told it!”
“I can’t he’p it,” Speck said airily, waving off the interruption. “Talkin about Fakahatchee, Aunt Emmeline Daniels over there is one of the last ones left alive around south Florida who knew Mr. Desperader Watson from the early days. They give her a family party every year since she broke ninety, and some years she will draw three hundred head, all kissin kin. Don’t have no idea at all who the hell they are but gets into the spirit of it all the same. She used to say Ol’ Desperader Watson had the neatest foot in all the world, looked like a ought-seven shoe, she couldn’t get over it. Smallest foot for a man his size I ever saw, she’d say, and a sparklin personality to go with it.”