Lost Man's River(275)

“All my vacation time and all my savings! For a beautiful paint job that didn’t last two days! It was hardly dry!”

“Time, paint, food, and fuel,” Lucius commiserated. “And the boat rental—”

“Smallwood never charged me. Said I was crazy to waste all that good paint, but refused my money. Wouldn’t explain why and went off grumpy.”

Contemplating the steaming embers, Ad regretted what he saw as his own foolishness and sentimentality—he regretted this worse than the waste of time and money. Recalling Lucius’s offer at Neamathla to help pay his way if he would attend the Park meeting at the Bend, he said that after Lucius left, Ruth Ellen had offered the same thing. “I refused her, too!” He yanked up his big palm in angry warning lest any man imagine he sought help. “I wanted to pay for all of it out of my own pocket. Coming here to paint the house was what I could do, it was my idea, not your idea, not her idea. I wanted to settle Ad Burdett’s account with Watsons.” He looked confused, not certain what he meant by this, and in confusion gave an odd, inchoate roar.



Without the revolver and the Tucker packet, Rob’s old satchel weighed no more than a sun-dried bird skeleton high on the tide line. His estate was reduced to a change of sad grayed shorts and threadbare socks, a splayed toothbrush and plastic razor, loose among the ancient lint and crumbs. Otherwise, all it contained was a “last will and testament,” a letter to his younger brother which he had begun back in Lake City after fleeing his mother’s grave at Bethel Churchyard, with emendations added here and there along the way. In fact, he had scratched down his last words this very morning.

To Whom It May Concern, namely Luke Watson:

My birth date and her day of death being the same, I wish to return and be buried near that girl who was my mother. You may recall the place and name: Ann Mary Collins, New Bethel Cemetery, Columbia County, Florida. (Our fine times traveling to old family places meant a lot to me. I don’t suppose I ever told you that and it’s too late now but thank you anyway.)

I leave you a heirloom revolver that belonged to your father. It still works, as my remains can testify. You can probably sell it to some gun nut for enough to pay to have my carcass burned down to the bones and shook down small, so the deacon at New Bethel Church can slot me in beside my poor young mama. (I wound up kind of an old stillbirth anyway.) A man has got to come to rest someplace.



We are traveling far, we are traveling home

One by one, we are traveling home.

Across death’s river, our friends have gone,

And we are following, one by one.



That is the old Baptist hymn that your own kind mother loved. Say that for me at the graveside, Luke. Under your breath will do just fine. (If that old heathen Billie Jimmie wants to mumble some Injun ode back in the swamp someplace, that is all right, too.)





Well, two days have passed, and here I am, too drunk to organize my own demise. I will, I will. The above was written in Lake City, where I found your note. (Sure took you long enough to learn my rightful name!) Today I am on the bus south to Fort Myers.

I have carried this revolver all my life, same as my pecker, but never found much use for either one. The first and last woman I ever had was a big brown gal in that old cathouse on Black Betsy Key where E. J. took the first chip (off his old block) on his 19th birthday, September 13, 1898. (Carrie’s marriage was just two months earlier, remember?) But after that morning at Lost Man’s River, a woman could give me loving till the cows came home, and some of them did, bless their sweet hearts, but it never did me or them one bit of good. Wrath of God, do you suppose? Sins of the fathers? I’ll have to discuss this with the higher-ups when I get to Heaven.

I have hung on to this “shootin iron,” I’m not sure why. Because it is my souvenir of “Papa”? I hate to think I might be sentimental, but who can know the curlicues of the human heart? This is the weapon which took the life of an innocent young woman and her unborn babe at Lost Man’s Key. This humble paw that writes these words—my mortal hand—pulled this simple trigger—how incredible it seems!—which is why it is fitting that I perish by this weapon—and this finger and this hand—on this day I have known was coming all my life.

I stole this weapon when I left the Bend, to shoot my father down if he caught up with me (or blow out my own brains, if I so chose!). That day in early 1901, my life lay in a thousand pieces, like a precious heirloom which had come into my keeping and—because I did not pay attention—was smashed to shards of rubble in an instant. This gun muzzle touched E. J. Watson’s temple while he lay sprawled across his table, snorting like a hog. But nothing came of it—the story of my life! I was too broken, too hysterical, to muster up the resolve required to take another life on that same day, yet I think sometimes of the harm which might have been averted with one small forthright twitch of this forefinger! Would saving those lives atone for that life I took?