When he first come, Mister Colonel had a plan to repair his daddy’s house for a Miss Lucy he had planned to marry, though he never mentioned her except when he was drinking. She had lived on Chatham Bend as a little girl, he said, she was his true love. Well, he weren’t in the Islands hardly a year when his true love married someone else. Mister Colonel had a lovin nature, and for a long while after that, I believe he was half in love with Sadie Harden, but bein a gentleman, he never said nothin nor done nothin, so Hardens never give it no thought neither.
Lee Harden used to tell about this stranger who turned up in a skiff one time at Lost Man’s Beach. Wiry feller with a black head of hair and a thin beard, spoke short and crusty. He was dead pale with smooth soft hands but seemed to know what he was doin in a boat. They said, “You off a ship someplace?” and he said, “No, I rowed down here from Everglade.” His hands was raw, all blistered up, but the man was tough cause he did not complain. Pa said, “Well, that’s far enough for a man ain’t used to pullin oars. What can we do for ye?” He thought this feller looked some way familiar.
Feller said his name was Tucker, John D. Tucker. He claimed to be Wally Tucker’s nephew, said he wanted to pay his last respects where E. J. Watson killed his aunt and uncle. So my folks took him over to the key where the Tuckers was buried back in 1901, and when they come near that burial place, this John Tucker come out all feverish and sweaty and he could not hide it. So when he asked the whereabouts of Lucius Watson, Hardens got the idea he had a feud to settle, so they told him that the last they heard, Lucious Watson had left south Florida for parts unknown. The stranger give ’em a hard eye, cross and dissatisfied. He said, “That’s what they told me in Chokoloskee, too.” And Lee Harden laughed and said, “Well, for once them goddamn people told some truth.”
They wrapped this feller’s hands in rags and watched him row away back toward the north. From his questions they had figured out that he knew more than he should about the Tuckers, considerin there weren’t no witnesses that could of told him. Then it come to Pa why he looked familiar, beard or no beard. This man was Rob Watson, E. J.’s oldest boy, the one that run away in 1901.
Rob Watson had not believed them people when they told him his young brother had moved away. By the time he got to Lost Man’s River, he was likely wonderin if these Island people had killed his brother and buried him someplace back in the mangroves.
When Mister Colonel come back from Flamingo, he started fishin commercial with Hoad Storter. Them fellers would always bring their catch to our Harden fish house at Wood Key, hose ’em and weigh ’em, ice ’em down, go get some rest. Like everyone else, they got their nets tore up on all them orster bars, but Colonel never minded. He’d whittle him a new needle out of red mangrove, which God made tough and limber for that purpose, then set in the sun and mend net all day long. Watchin him perched like a egret on his bow, hour after hour—that was my first real memory of Mister Colonel. You couldn’t never guess what he was thinkin.
Though he never said straight out about it or complained or nothin, he talked sometimes how he come back there to represent his father’s family and show the Bay people that Watson’s son—or this son anyways—was not ashamed of him. Said nobody put that duty on his head except Lucius Watson, but all the same, he felt obliged to live his life there. Made a livin as a fisherman, read all them books he had there in his shack, and drank rye whiskey. Whiskey was his enemy, I guess.
Mister Colonel was well educated, he knew much more than he would ever tell, but he was modest, always set himself aside. He meant it, too, it weren’t a humble show like some people. As Pa would say, “Colonel Watson is a real fine man that don’t appreciate himself.” In that way, he reminded us of Henry Short.
Them two good men was both close to my family but could never be friends. Mister Colonel knew about them foolish rumors that Henry was the man who killed his daddy, but he never spoke bad about Henry Short and he didn’t hate him, not so far as anyone could tell. My ma told him more’n once what Henry Short told her, that he never took part in killing Mr. Watson, but because Mister Colonel would only nod when she said that, and never made no other sign about it, she warned Henry Short to stay away from him.
Mister Colonel never spoke against his family, never spoke of ’em at all. When he would tell us that he had no family, what he meant was, no one to go home to. All he had was that Daniels-Jenkins bunch around Caxambas that his people at Fort Myers never spoke about. Sometimes he might mention how he missed his sister Carrie or his brother Rob, especially after Hardens told him how Rob come huntin him that time, then went away again. Otherwise he never let on about how lonesome his life was, though from time to time, when he was drinkin, he would remind me and my older brother Roark how lucky we was to have such a fine family of lovin folks to raise us up. Sadie Harden said that all poor Colonel wanted was to find a place in life where he belonged. Said that all his life, all he was lookin for was the way home.
Mister Colonel wore shoes most of the time, which few men did in them days in the Islands. He stayed clean and neat in his appearance, very—that man bathed and shaved most every night! Harden women done his washing and they darned his socks. Outside, he wore a cap or hat, but always pushed it far back on his head, or rolled the front, so’s nobody wouldn’t take that hat too serious. Comin inside, he’d take it off, tidy his clothes. Never came to the table without first brushing his hair. He was our adopted uncle, and he brought us presents. We was poor, so if he hadn’t brought some, we’d of never got any. Bring us kids a whole bushel of bubble gum—three hundred pieces!
Mister Colonel ate most of his Sunday meals with us. He kept his own shack down the beach but was always invited to Thanksgiving and Christmas. He loved to cook and was real good at it, and he canned a lot of vegetables with my ma, but behind them smiles he offered at our table, he always seemed a little sad to us, watching his own life pass him by. At Lost Man’s, neighbors was few and far between. There weren’t no spare women on that coast, and he didn’t hunt one. He was forty or fifty when our ma told him, “Colonel, don’t let the past eat you alive! You’ve never let yourself have any happiness, and it’s time to start!” And Mister Colonel said, “Might be too late to teach old dogs new tricks, seems like to me.” And he’d grin that sideways grin of his, to make sure nobody took him no more serious than they took his hat.
He would not whine. Never talked too much about his dad, only when drinking. “My dad might of been all right,” he might say sometimes, “if they’d told the truth about him. It was all those lies that got him so riled up, like how he murdered his own friend Guy Bradley.” Mister Colonel would never say if his dad had killed people or not, he would only relate how kind he always was to his wives and children, how he looked after ’em so well, and was always generous to his friends and neighbors. “It’s so hard to believe all those terrible stories, don’t you think so?” he might say, “How a good kind man could turn overnight into a coldhearted killer?” And Hardens could not explain that either, they could not help him.
Mister Colonel was huntin the truth about his father, he wanted to find out who he really was, but he couldn’t never find a truth that satisfied him. That’s why he could never let go of his death. People will tell you Colonel Watson never spoke about his father—well, he tried, but after a while he give it up. It was the Bay people who would not discuss Ed Watson, not with Colonel! Even old family friends would go dead quiet on him, kickin the ground. They were afraid of him, Lee Harden said, knowin Colonel’s belief that lynch law had condemned and executed E. J. Watson. They never knew who he hated worst, the ones who gunned his father down or his father’s so-called friends who stood back by the store and watched ’em do it. Hardens was about the only ones that weren’t in one bunch or the other. By the end we was the only family who made him welcome, knowin he didn’t hate no one at all.
When rumors started about his list of names, there was plenty of talk about gettin Colonel first. The men figured he w
as dead set on revenge—just a matter of time, they said, before this nice soft-speakin feller went dead crazy and picked off every man on that damn list he could draw a bead on. But years went by and nothin happened and nobody ever seen no list, and meanwhile poor Colonel never harmed a soul. Finally the Bay people figured out that Colonel Watson weren’t cut out to kill nobody, he was too gentle, too kindhearted, and never meant no harm. When still in his younger years, he had come home to the Islands, and he went and become a older feller right beside ’em, and all that while, he was neighborly and friendly, even to them that spited him and cut him cold. But it was too late, they had lost their chance to be in friendship with him, so some of ’em said what a pity it was that he was so standoffish like his daddy, and never give nobody no chance to know him.
That year the Park come in, Mister Colonel had to move out of the Islands same as everybody. Most of us Hardens went to Everglade, where I took a couple years in school. From all our good tutorin at home, I could read-and-write-and-rithmetic better than anybody in my grade except a sassy girl named Sally Daniels who had a snappy brain to see her through. As for Mister Colonel, he just lived along on his little boat, went here and there—Caxambas, Everglade, Flamingo. Kind of a drifter. Lived some seasons with other fishermen on houseboat lighters back of Turkey Key, and mostly stayed clear of Chokoloskee, like before. I reckon he liked to drink as much as most. Course us fishermen didn’t have no cocktails like you see today. Mister Colonel, he’d go get his pint and he’d turn it up till he got it all, then shiver hard like a wet dog and step out tall. Goin down the beach under the moon, his back looked like a block of wood, real stiff and straight!
When he moved away north—that’s when I lost track of him. He was finishin up his degree at the University, finishin up his history book on southwest Florida, but he never told nobody about that, and we sure never learned it till much later. When he come back south here a few years ago is when he kind of settled at Caxambas, but I never seen him from one year to the next.
Today all them Bay families will tell you how they loved ol’ Colonel. Maybe some did but damn few showed it, and that shy quiet feller never knew. That’s why he come to Lost Man’s River and stayed with us for most of thirty years.
In the phone booth on the empty mall, Lucius studied the toe of his own shoe amongst the flattened soda bottle caps and cigarette butts. Outside the booth, a shining grackle waddled on the pavement, bright cruel eye cocked for a scrap to toss and pick apart and gobble.
“You mean Colonel Watson?”
“That’s right.”
His explanation to Bill House’s son—that he was writing a biography of E. J. Watson and wished to ask about his late father’s conclusions about Watson’s death—was met by silence. Lucius breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. A meeting with Andy House was critical, not only because his clan had been the spine of the Watson posse but because only the Houses might know the truth about the man rumored to have fired first.
Among the members of the posse (all of whom he had identified and tried in vain to question years before), only a few such as the House men had readily acknowledged taking part—not that they had talked to him about it. As for the rest, anger and guilt, fear and special pleading, had muddied their “eyewitness” accounts. A few of these men, out of pride in their inside information on the most vivid event in the region’s history—or even the need of a better story with which to repay young Watson for their drink—had affirmed the rumor about Henry Short. Lucius himself thought it inconceivable that Henry Short had fired at his father, yet what had once been a stray rumor had become so commonplace that he needed the House clan to put it to rest once and for all.
Years ago he had confronted Henry—uselessly, since the man had had no choice but to deny any participation in the shooting. In those days Henry’s life was still in danger, whereas now he had moved away somewhere, and many years had passed, and those who had been out to punish him were old or gone. If he was still alive and could be located, he might dare to tell the truth, and even wish to do so, to be done with it.
House’s voice was there again, equable, mild, as if he had listened sympathetically to Lucius’s thoughts. “Just so we understand each other, Colonel. My granddad and my dad and Uncle Dan and Uncle Lloyd, they was all in on it, and none of ’em decided later they done wrong.” The voice paused a moment to let that settle. “I don’t reckon I’m the one to decide that for ’em. I ain’t glad about what they done but I don’t aim to tell you I am sorry, neither.” Another pause. “Still want to come all the way out here?”
Lucius said yes. Queried nervously by a woman in the background, House asked if he had any reason for coming that he had not mentioned. Lucius said simply, “I hoped you could help me locate Henry Short.”
“That’s honest, anyways. Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t. Depends on what you want him for.” The voice paused again. “Come ahead, then, Colonel.” There came the clatter of a dropped receiver, then the same calm voice, soothing someone else. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Yes, he’s on his way.” The telephone was fumbled roughly while being hung up, and House’s voice continued through the bump and clatter. “Now, Sue, no need to be afraid of Colonel just cause he’s a Watson …”
Golden Years Estates, in the Big Cypress country between Naples and Immokalee, was a vast pale waste in the flat landscape. Everywhere, the broken forest had been bulldozed into ramparts of tree skeletons and blackened stumps, leaving dead white clay where fossil limestone seabeds lay exposed. Fires smoldered in the desolation, and thick smoke rose to a thick and humid sky. In the near distance, ancient cypress trees in funereal Spanish moss drew back affrighted from the earth-mauling machines, which brooded among white sterile pools like yellow dinosaurs. In a litter of raw pipe and tubing, plastic cups and mud-stuck newspapers, and scraps of pine lumber crusted with gray cement, stood a lone outhouse of a bad zinc green with a stink of carnivores and a rusted door which banged in the wet wind. Here and there in this desolation, a hard-edged house perched naked on a “crescent”—Cypress Crescent, Panther Crescent, Sunset Crescent. Andy House had said laconically that his “retirement estate” could be found on Panther Crescent, but these streets seemed makeshift and unfinished, and the street signs still lay scattered on the ground.
The only living thing in sight was a big florid man in khaki shirt and trousers peering outward from a doorway. He stood like a sentinel, staring away over the white waste as if in hope of rescue, or reinforcements at the very least. “I’ll be on the lookout,” Andy House had said, but this man gave no sign that he awaited someone. Only when Lucius drew off the crescent onto the short driveway did he lift a vague hand in the car’s direction. The last time Lucius had seen this man was when the Houses lived at Chatham Bend back in the twenties.
“Notice any panthers crossing Panther Crescent?” Andy House had grown from a sturdy straw-haired boy to a big ruddy man with blue eyes in a steadfast gaze which went right past Lucius’s head toward the surrounding distance. Not until he thrust out his hand, which his visitor caught after some fumble and adjustment, did Lucius realize that Andy House was sightless.
“I chose this here retirement estate on account of all the panthers,” House said wryly. “Hoped I might hear one screamin in the night.” Holding on to Lucius’s hand, the blind man was still facing outward, as if trying to fathom the great silence of his surroundings. “Funny, ain’t it? They been sellin this swamp-and-overflowed to suckers since before I was born, and I never caught on to the deal till a few years back when I bought some myself. They couldn’t find no more darn fools to buy land underwater, so they dredged out ditches, laid roads on the fill, then called them ditches ‘bayous’ and ‘canals’ and sold ’em off as prime waterfront property. Done that first at Miami, Naples, then up and down both coasts. Today there ain’t hardly no coast left in all south Florida outside of the Park, so they’re doin the same darn thing back up inland! All you need is some old tract of swamp and you are
in business. All you got to do is dredge and fill.
“Well, don’t let me get started blowin off steam about what they’re doin to the backcountry just cause I ain’t got nothin else to do!” He raised big heavy arms and let them fall. “One of the big attorneys makin a fortune on this mess you’re lookin at, he’s supposed to be some kind of kin to Watsons. I won’t say a word against the man cause he is a big shot over to Miami. Might send some Spanish over here to beat me up.”
“Watson Dyer?”
“You said the name, not me. Called him Watt or Wattie in the old days.”
“Well, at least he’s trying to help stop the Park from burning our old house,” said Lucius, sounding more loyal to Dyer than he felt.
“You mind tellin me what’s in it for him?”
“He was born there,” Lucius said finally.
“That might be reason enough for you or me.” Andy House rocked a little on the heels of high square-toed black shoes which looked more like shoe boxes. “Hell, I don’t know a thing about it. Just bitchin, is all. Don’t you pay this mean old sinner no attention.”
A woman poked her head out of the door but Lucius’s smile only scared her back inside. “Good thing God struck me blind, I guess,” Andy was saying. “What I figured I was buying in this ‘planned community’ was a little house out in the Cypress, surrounded by green woods and fresh water. Can’t see the trees too good no more, but I sure could enjoy them musky smells and swamp cries in the night, maybe the roarin of a big bull gator in the springtime. Sound just like a ol’ outboard, crankin up!” The blind man nodded. “I guess you heard that racket plenty times!”
He turned toward the door. “Well, it ain’t likely I’ll be hearin no bull gator, nor no panther neither, cause after I had this place all bought and paid for, they changed the plan, drained off the swamp, stripped off the cypress. Had to make some room for more retirement estates, I reckon. Tore out every tree they could mangle up with their machines, smashed the country flat. And before they could clean up the mess they made, they run out of money, and before I could get out of the whole deal, I run out, too.”