Lost Man's River (63 page)

“Horace's mother always said her poor boy was a real nice feller till he married up with a greedy woman and went for the fast money. The Law hung Horace in Fort Lauderdale around 1925. Before he went, Horace wrote up his life story, explained all about it, but maybe his mama never got around to readin it. That old body puzzled and prayed but never did conclude where her boy went wrong.

“And the Rices? Wasn't there something about a bank robbery, and a
shooting on Chokoloskee—?” Lucius stopped short, glancing at Sally, as Andy frowned and cleared his throat.

“—and Speck Daniels?” Sally finished.

“The Rice boys come to a bad end, too. I reckon God is done with them three now, so mentionin their names ain't goin to hurt nothin.”

“I had those names already. I was just confirming.”

“Just confirmin. You got your list all learned by heart, wouldn't surprise me.” The blind man's smile had an edge like a broken knife. “I sure hope there ain't nobody named House on there.”

“I'm not gunning for anybody,” Lucius said crossly.

“Well, Bill House never thought you was real serious about it, neither, but having young children, he couldn't take no chances.”

Lucius appraised Andy's expression in the rearview mirror. “Bill could never be sure, though, could he, Andy?”

“Nosir. You was a Watson. He never could be one hundred percent sure.”

The sun was high and the hot noon road empty, boring ever farther south into the swamp country. On the spoil bank of the black canal that paralled the road, a thick gator lay inert, like a log of mud. Gallinules cackled in primordial woe, and long-necked cormorants and snakebirds, like aquatic reptiles, rose in the canal and sank away again. A cottonmouth lay coiled in a rotted stump along the water edge across the canal, and farther on, a bog turtle had climbed to the pavement edge to point its snout at the howl of passing tires.

Across an old railroad-tie bridge, the wall of liana, vine, and thorn was broken by a sagging roadhouse, in a yard inlaid with broken glass and bottle caps and flattened beer cans, motor oil, lube buckets, tires, defunct batteries. Big-finned autos and rangy motorcycles baked in the Sunday heat, and men in dark glasses and motorcycle boots, attended by scraggy kids and hounds and dragged-out women, leaned back on their elbows, watching strangers pass.

Among the decrepit vehicles were two big swamp trucks, one red, the other black. When Lucius braked, Sally said tersely, “Don't even think about it. Don't even slow down.”

At the crossroads, they turned left onto the Tamiami Trail, passing the few cabins at Ochopee and continuing on a little distance to the low shaded bridge where the Trail crossed the headwaters of Turner River. Here Capt. Richard Turner had guided a punitive expedition against Chief Billy Bowlegs
at Deep Lake; here Big Hannah Smith had farmed awhile before traveling down to Chatham Bend to meet her Maker; here the House family and Henry Short had raised tomatoes for the Chevelier Corporation; here the Mikasuki Seminole, protesting this highway which had split the Everglades wide open like a watermelon, had made their last desperate plea to the encroaching white men.
Pohaan chekish
, the Indians had said. “Leave us alone.” The Trail engineers had commemorated this historic death song with a nice roadside picnic table and a sign.

When Sally read the sign aloud, the blind man nodded. “Yes, ma'am. ‘Leave us alone!' ” He told them how the Indians had spied on the House family when it pioneered out this way during the Depression, how they had felt those black eyes watching from way back in the trees, or peering through the grass tips from a dugout—how they might get that feeling ten or twenty times for every Indian seen, until they realized that everywhere they went, the Indians watched them. Lucius remarked that Indian scouts had tracked white strangers day and night since the first Spaniards came ashore on this peninsula. “ ‘We are your shadow'—that's what Indians say.”

“Course the red man favored black men over white men, least in the old days,” Andy said. “The red men—I ain't never seen a red one yet, have you?—they give shelter to runaway slaves and also white fugitives and outlaws who hid out in the swamp. Any man the white people was after deserved help—that's how the Injuns always seen it. That is why folks around here thought Leslie Cox might of gone over to the Injuns.

“Them Government Injuns ain't so sure of who they are no more, so they look down on black people because the whites do. That way they might feel a little better about being nobody in their own land—land of the free and home of the brave but
NO
INDIANS AND DOGS ALLOWED
. Might still run across that sign back in this country.”

Lucius led Andy to an opening in the trees. At Andy's request, he described the southern prospect out across the blowing grasses and sun-glittered waters which under the broad Atlantic light slid slowly, slowly south toward Shark River. White egrets in breeding plumage lifted airy crests to the Gulf wind, and white ibis crossed the sky over Roberts Lake, where Bill House and Ted Smallwood and their partners, Andy said, had killed the thousand alligators that paid for most of Smallwood's land on Chokoloskee. “I still see this place! Still got our Turner River shack in my mind's eye!”

In the Florida Boom, back in '24, the Chevelier Corporation had sent Andy's father to this Turner River land to demonstrate to the Trail settlers how tomatoes could be grown commercially on palmetto prairie. “Once the
company learned how Dad done that, it took that fine new farm right out from under him. That's when he had to go back to Frank Tippins. Dad worked this prairie so darn well he worked himself right out of his job!

“Turner River was a clear wild stream before the Trail construction broke her. There's a little lake back in this strand where fish are plentiful, but because there's no trail through that hot thicket no more, nobody don't even
know
about that lake, let alone go there! Why go sloggin through the backcountry when you can ride in a nice auto to Miami or sit on your sofa, watch your new TV?”

Back at the picnic grove, the blind man raised his hands in a vague gesture. “Right about here where they got these roadside tables, that's where Henry raised his watermelons—”

“Darkies love watermelons,” Sally said, laying out forks.

“Sally? You plan to jump on Andy every time he opens his mouth from now on?”

“Well, she's right, Colonel. Maybe I talk too much. Talkin about old times makes me happy, and when I'm happy is when I tell all the old stories.” For want of a way to give vent to his well-being, he circled the table, sniffing the air, lifting his big arms, letting them fall. And in a while, finishing his meal, he was reminded of Henry and his brothers.

Henry Short come to Turner River with our family, and this is where his long-lost past caught up with him. This was in 1928, maybe 1929, because the Tamiami Trail was just put through. Well, one day two white fellers showed up in a old flivver. Never mixed words about who they was and what they come for. Got out of their car and told my dad that Henry Short was their half brother and they come to visit with him. If they was ashamed of it, that never showed.

First time them brothers tried to find him was way back before World War I, a couple years after Ed Watson was killed. They tracked him all the way south to Lost Man's River. Henry was living at Lee Harden's then, but he hid back in the bushes, never showed himself nor talked with 'em at all, because he believed them men had come to kill him. Hardens was pretty leery, too, so they said nothin to help. Them big barefoot men just stood there with their guns, set to run them strangers right back where they come from.

At Lost Man's them brothers left Henry a letter, and when he come in out of hiding and he read it, that poor feller wept. He kept that letter all them years, he must of read them words one thousand times, but he never showed it to our family, only said politely that his letter was them brothers' business.
I reckon he didn't want to take a chance that some word or joke or maybe just somebody's expression might go spoiling something. But over the years, he referred to it some—he had it memorized—and finally we had the story pieced together.

After the lynching of Henry's father, his young mother was punished severely, but her father kept his ruined daughter, he took her back and her child, too, least till the age of four, when he got rid of Henry in the way I told you. Once the child was gone, he found some feller to marry her, and she give her husband them two sons, as white as you or me. And them two come south just to make sure their half brother was getting on all right. And when they showed up on the Trail, Henry's eyes was shining like he seen a miracle. I met them men myself, four or five times. The name of those two brothers might been Graham, and they had settled some good land west of Arcadia, around where the old settlement called Pine Level used to be. They were ranchers—they owned cattle, they weren't ranch hands—and both of 'em were good steady men, polite and very quiet like their brother.

Well, our House family could not get over that. We used to wonder if Henry's mother sent 'em. Her community had made her witness it when Henry's daddy was burned and killed, and she never forgot it. She was yearning to know where her firstborn was, and if he was all right. In the eye of God, she was a sinner, but to us mortals she must be a good woman if she could raise up two white sons to take responsibility for that half brother they had never seen and never
had
to see, him being a poor colored field hand way off in some godforsaken part of Florida who didn't even know them two existed.

Granddad House told his boys many's the time what that lynch mob done to Henry's daddy, but I'm shamed to say I never give much thought to it. It's sinful how we shut things out that we don't care to look at! But after I met his two half brothers, I had a gruesome dream about Henry's father, a man of flesh and blood like me who
become
me in my dream, or I was him, nailed up to that oak in that night fire circle, sufferin them torments of the torch and rope in woe and terror, looking down into the howling faces of them Christian demons. That dream has come back all my life, no matter how hard I try not to think about it.

One night before his white brothers showed up, Henry whispered, looking deep into the fire, “If there is one thing that is sorrier than a nigra, it is a white woman who
traffics
with a nigra.” We never did know if he meant his mother or his wife, but we was shocked to hear such bitter words. After his brothers come and claimed him, and told him how much his mother missed him all her life, I never heard him speak such words again. I believe he was
tore up and sick at heart that he had said something so cold and hard about his mama.

If Henry understood why his half brothers stayed in touch with him, he never said, but knowing Henry, he probably thought them men was plain darn crazy to go up against the common prejudice that way! All the same, he was very very grateful, he would whistle and smile for days after they left, we never seen him look that way before nor since!