Lost Man's River(261)

“If everythin goes right, your brothers will be comin downriver in that skiff tomorrow afternoon. You fellers wait for ’em at Mormon Key, and keep ’em at Mormon tomorrow night, give us a little more time in case we need it. Still with me, Colonel? You’re lookin kinda peaked, boy. Okay so far? Whidden can take that skiff in tow next mornin, run your whole bunch back north to the Bay. And after that, you get in your damn car and you drive that old man out of southwest Florida and keep him out.”

At the boats, Lucius waded out with him and boosted him over his gunwale. A minute later, Daniels emerged from his boat cabin with the packet marked LUCIUS H. WATSON that had lain at the bottom of Rob’s satchel.

Drunkenly Speck swung back overboard and splashed ashore. “You ain’t goin to enjoy his story, Colonel. Might be more truth in there than you was wantin.” Saying this, he leaned way forward to peer into Lucius’s eyes. “Less you been lying to yourself all these long years? About how much you really knew about your daddy?” He winked at Lucius and set off again, hailing the others, usurping the conversation even before he reached the smoke swirls and blown sparks at the driftwood fire.

Lucius climbed aboard the Belle and lit the kerosene storm lamp in the cabin. Building a pillow out of life jackets, he lay back with the opened packet on his chest, weighing Daniels’s insinuation: All these long years—that was unfair, of course. But was it true?



To My Little Brother “Luke”:

Here is the truth about what happened early in 1901 at Lost Man’s River. I hope this will help you understand my sentiments or lack of same about your “Papa.” I am writing this in the sincere hope that it will end your well-meant but mistaken struggle to restore his reputation.

I know (because I saw them, too) that our father had bold, generous qualities. I also know that he adored my mother, perhaps more than he adored yours. I don’t say that out of pettiness, I hope, but only to clarify what I say next—that he was mortally embittered when she died, and made an enemy of his firstborn throughout childhood, into early youth. Such kinship as we had came to an end on the first day of Anno Domini 1901.

Late in 1899, Wally Tucker and his bride Elizabeth, lately of Key West, came to work for E. J. Watson at Chatham Bend. At age fourteen, Bet was no more than a child, but Tucker was close to my own age, we were twenty-two. Wally was “the driver” in the cane field, Bet helped Aunt Josie Jenkins with the housekeeping, and the wash and yard chores—slopped the hogs, tended the bees and poultry and the kitchen garden—while Josie was tending her little Pearl.

Late in the next year of 1900, the Tuckers fled from Chatham Bend in their small sloop after Papa’s hogs sniffed out two shallow graves way out in the northeast part of the plantation. Bet had wandered out there, calling in the hogs, which were penned up at night on account of panthers. She discovered the remains of two black field hands whom she had befriended in the months before. These hands had confided that they wished to leave the Bend. They were owed more than a year in their back wages and could not get Papa to pay attention to it.

I ran into the Tuckers dragging their stuff down to their boat. Someone killed Zachariah and Ted, they cried, almost hysterical. I told them this was impossible, since I knew my father had paid off those hands and carried them back north to Fort Myers. Wally told me I should go see for myself, and poor Bet wept some more. Though they didn’t dare say so to his son, they seemed scared they might be next if Mr. Watson found out what they knew, and so had decided to flee the Bend at once.

I ran out past the cane fields to the place they had described. I smelled those corpses long before I got there. I put a neckerchief to my face and went in close, and I had to get away on that same breath to keep from puking. The bodies were all bloated up, half-eaten by the hogs, and the ground chopped up by hog prints all around. I recognized the clothes. There was no question.

By the time I got back, the Tuckers were gone. Papa was dead drunk in the house. According to Aunt Josie, who came flying out to warn me, Wally had finished loading their sloop, put Bet aboard, then took his gun and walked up to the house and demanded their year’s wages, saying not a word about the graves. Papa was incensed because they were quitting without notice, right at the start of the cane harvest, and furious also at the gun raised to his face when he threatened Wally. Being drunk, he shouted, “Shoot me, you conch bastard! You don’t dare!” It terrified Aunt Josie because it was so crazy, but as usual, E. J. Watson knew his man. Wally Tucker was not a killer, never would be. Lunging for him, your father spun and fell down hard and fell again when he tried to get up, so lay there cursing.