Lost Man's River(26)
“They discovered this fact,” said Watson Dyer, who was not to be interrupted when speaking judiciously, “in A History of Southwest Florida, by L. Watson Collins.”
Nettled, Lucius had to wonder if Dyer himself had not pointed the sugar people to the reference. He had already told him that during World War I, his friend Rob Storter and Rob’s brother-in-law Harry McGill had grubbed out a mess of cuttings from old cane on Chatham Bend and run a boatload up the Calusa Hatchee to Lake Okeechobee and across to Moore Haven, where Big Sugar, as the industry became known, would have an auspicious start a few years later. Thus it seemed likely, he told Dyer, that the strain developed by E. J. Watson had provided the seed cane for all those green square miles at Okeechobee—
“That’s what your history claims, all right,” Dyer interrupted. And if this claim was true, United Sugar stood ready to help in the promotion of the Watson Place as a state monument.
Lucius’s pleasure in this news was tainted almost immediately by misgivings. When the Hurricane of ’26 had broken down the Okeechobee dikes and drowned over a hundred souls around Moore Haven, church voices had been raised on high to blame the devastation on the curse of “Emperor” Watson, whose cane was doubtless “steeped in human blood.” Even today, there were people who would say (and Lucius considered this out loud when Dyer remained silent) that cane plantations were accursed—no blessing but an abomination, notorious for the dreadful living conditions and misery of their field workers and the cause of widespread chemical pollution. To help Big Sugar grow ever more obese, no matter the cost to common citizens, the federal government was abetting the state in its rampant draining of the Glades, including the construction of immense canals to shunt away into the sea the pristine water that had formerly spread south through the peninsula from the Kissimmee River and Lake Okeechobee—
“Lord!” Dyer’s bark of derisive mirth had a hard ring of anger. “Why don’t we leave all that negative stuff to those whining left-wingers!” Dyer moved swiftly to his point about corporate sponsorship of Lucius’s biography in progress. “Assuming of course that your book makes clear E. J. Watson’s connection with the industry.” United Sugar, he declared, was eager to promote any worthwhile literature about pastoral traditions on the pioneer plantations of the nineteenth century, so a book by a well-known historian that mentioned the prominence of sugarcane in Florida agriculture—why heck, that would hit the nail right on the head!
Setting down Lucius’s notes again, the old man groaned. “I mean, what good is a land claim way to hell and gone inside the Park? Let ’em burn that damn house to the ground, if you ask me!”
Lucius ignored this. “Dyer wants to bargain for full repair and maintenance of the house as a Park ranger station or state monument—”
The old man stiffened like a dog on point. His burnsides bristled. “How about a murder monument? Big-time tourist attraction! First monument to bloody murder in the U.S.A.!” Unable to to maintain the huff and pomp of indignation, Arbie grinned. “Murder museum and snack bar! White rubber skeletons and black skull T-shirts, red licorice daggers! Maybe gore burgers and some nice ketchup specialties!”
But Arbie stopped smiling when he happened upon the offer from the Historical Society of Southwest Florida to pay for a lecture on the legendary planter “Emperor” Watson. Professor Collins’s name, the letter said, had been suggested by one of their esteemed sponsors, the United Sugar Corporation, which had also agreed to underwrite his honorarium.
Arbie’s worst suspicions were borne out. “They got you cheap.” He slapped the pages down. “L. Watson Collins, Ph.D.! If it ever comes out, down the road, that Watson Dyer is your bastard brother—” The old man lifted his palm to ward off protest. “No, L. Watson, I cannot prove that your daddy mounted your attorney’s mama. But I do know her ex-husband Fred has been hollering for fifty years: That goddamn Watson put the horns on me!”
Lucius was aware of Fred Dyer’s claim, and his daughter Lucy had confirmed the story, confided to her by the late Mrs. Sybil Dyer. Nevertheless, he had been sworn to secrecy, which was why, in these notes on Arbie’s lap, there was no mention of a Dyer son born out of wedlock.
“Course, Dyer don’t want this to come out,” Arbie was warning him. “According to Speck, this feller means to run for politics one of these days. It’s bad enough being Watson’s bastard without voters suspecting that he might have a crazy streak like his old man!”