Lost Man's River (78 page)

“Red, white, and blue. Don't know if them boats was patriotic-meant, but they sure looked cheerful,” Smallwood said, not cheered much by the memory. “Them were the cheerful days, all right, all but that one.” His slow arm rose to point across the glittering gray water. “See where I'm pointin at? Them real high trees where that dogleg channel off Rabbit Key Pass comes out back of them bars? Hard to make out sunken bars in the late dusk, so not all of 'em would try it, but that's the way your dad come in on that October evenin. Come north on the Gulf far as Rabbit Key, cause the inside channels was all choked with broken trees after that storm. East up the Pass, took a ‘ninety' north up that short channel, follered it around them bars and clumps and on in to our landing.

“Course I was only a little boy and don't recall much, but I have listened all about that evenin over and over. The men was strung along this shore, right below where we are sittin at this minute, and the rest was back up there by the old store.”

Lucius imagined Billy Smallwood and Little Ad Burdett, at play in the old store back from the water. Those quick little boys in their noisy play, forever running—who could have foretold the heavy dour men they would become?

All around this south end of the Bay, white egrets were pinned like ornaments on high green walls of the encircling trees. The view of the shoreline and the open water which his father had crossed on his last evening on earth brought Lucius a cavernous sorrow even now. Though he had learned all—or almost all—the details, he found his father's final minutes unimaginable. Why he had returned at all was a true mystery. Surely it could not have been simply to celebrate Kate Edna's birthday! The other unknown was the terrible miscalculation—if such it was—which had brought down on him that dreadful crash of fire, the burning blows of volley after volley, the long falling to earth, the staring end.

“Nobody said a word when it was over,” Smallwood was saying. “Some men took their hats off, my dad said, but they put 'em right back on when others growled at 'em. Pretty soon, the men who done it went off in the dark, just shadows in the trees, then they were gone. My dad come down here to
the shore, straightened him out a little, crossed his arms, y'know. Toward daylight, a few men come back, hauled the body out to Rabbit Key.”

Smallwood stifled a dyspeptic grunt. “I heard your daddy killed a few. Them people needed some killing, wouldn't surprise me. They say he shot a couple niggers, too—probably had it coming. This far south, there weren't no law cept what you made. But he never killed all them men that people said. He just got the credit, you might say. Like my dad told us, ‘Ed Watson never was so bad as he was painted. But you try to push him, he'd push back, only he'd push harder.' Watson was always honest with my dad—
a fine man to do business with
! I heard Dad say that, many and many's the time.”

Smallwood's ruined breathing came and went like the slow and shallow sucking of the tide at the shore below. “I believe his foreman was behind most of the trouble. I believe Ed Watson was a pretty good man. There was just too many killed down there, and folks got tired of it.”

Not wanting to impose on him, Lucius asked him if he wanted to go home. “Home to what?” Bill Smallwood grumbled. He leaned forward again, arms on the rail, chin on his clasped fingers, looking out over the silvered glitter of the turning water. Then his laboring harsh rasp came again, in elegy and reminiscence, his arm waving in vague arcs toward the south.

“A few years after your dad died, them Chevelier people was looking to buy the rights to Chatham Bend. The feller livin on there then, he pipes right up, says he would accept some money for the quitclaim. Maybe he sold 'em something that he never owned.

“Cheveliers laid out all them plots and dug all kinds of canals to drain them islands before they seen they was only letting in the tidewater. Pretty stupid, you might say, but developers are still doin that today. Another outfit, Tropical Development, they claimed the rights to Lost Man's River, got themselves a big write-up in
The Miami Herald
, big pictures of this paradise they had discovered, royal palms all along the banks and steamships going up and down flying red-white-and-blue flags! Ain't a steamship on earth could make it into Lost Man's crost them orster bars, and the royal palms was all gone by that time, they was all dug out for them new tourist boulevards, Naples, Fort Myers.

“When Barron Collier made a harbor there at Everglade, that was the end of our fish business over here. And after the Trail went through a few years later, our Injun trade was pretty well finished, too. Course we blamed everything on Collier and the Depression, but we was already dead by then, just didn't know it. Nobody except maybe the Injuns ever looked ahead and seen how that cross-Florida highway would be the end of us. That so-called progress was the end of the Everglades, and the end of the Injuns, and the end to all us old-time people, too.

“In '27, I become a eyewitness to history when the old Orange Blossom Special come a-chuggin into Naples. That was the first train I ever seen. A few years after that, my cousin Andy House give me a auto ride over the Trail to the east coast, right to Miami! Looked like the future of Florida laid out before us, that's how fast we crossed the state, that's how shining the world seemed to us poor country fellers! Andy stayed in Miami most of his whole life trying to catch up with that future. Next thing he knew, them Spaniards come swarmin back from Cuba, and they run him out.”

“Used to be some good small pieces of high ground down in these Islands, and E. J. Watson had the biggest one at Chatham Bend. Parks took them pieces from the pioneers and never paid 'em, called them people squatters. Damn tourists was more important to 'em than home people, and they are today. A man can't hardly build a dock on his own waterfront no more without them nature-lovin sonsabitches comin in here, wavin papers in his face! Want to protect every last varmint in Creation cept us common people!” Bill waved his arm at the mangrove forest which surrounded them in all directions in a wall of green. “Look to you like we're running short of them damn mangoes? And now our old families are gettin pushed right off this island. Strangers and developers come swarmin in over that causeway, buy us out cheap cause we are poor, and it looks like we just got to set and take it.”

Smallwood's breath was erratic and too heavy. Abruptly he took Lucius's pen and reached for the petition, scratched a signature. “Local people would be sad to see ol' Chatham burn. The Bay families are all behind you, Colonel. Only thing, we don't much trust your lawyer.”

Lucius kept his expression noncommittal. “Dyer is interested in helping out because he was born there. Says he wants to see the place preserved ‘for sentimental reasons.' He's not charging us,” he added.

Smallwood snorted. “You know Dyer?” When Lucius nodded, Smallwood nodded, too. “If he ain't chargin you, there is a reason, and it ain't no sentimental reason, neither. Man over here at Parks told me one time that Dyer been snoopin around that Watson Claim since the Park took over back in '47. Got a dirty finger stuck in every pie in southern Florida, got big shots behind him all the way to Washington, D.C. Miami politicians and state legislators, lawyers and lobbyists for Big Sugar, big development. Them kind ain't sentimental about anything on God's earth except more money.

“Us local people got no love for Parks, but it ain't the Park deserves the blame nor the federal government neither, they're just doin what they're told to do by the politicians, and politicians gets their orders from big business. That's the mistake that is always made by ignorant fellers like Speck
Daniels, who hates the Park, hates the government so bad for movin him out of his home territory that he can't see them ones who are behind it, can't see who's spoilin this whole country, or what's left of it.”

Bill shook his head over the nation's prospects. “Your attorney is the mouthpiece for big developers on the east coast that fought the comin of the Park for years and years. I'm already seein a few signs that them men might be tryin to get it back. The waste and ruination of this Glades country might be just what them boys want—I believe they might even be behind it! You seen this stuff in the papers lately? You notice who's runnin down the Park—‘the big dead Park'—to the newspapers and politicians, plantin the idea with the public about the state gettin all that Park land back and sellin it off, supposedly to create jobs and help the taxpayers? Nobody else but the Big Sugar people and Watson Dyer! Get the voters talkin and writin to the papers about them tragical dead Glades out there, get editorial writers snipin back and forth, and pretty soon there'll be a referendum on the ballot.

“Idea like that would draw plenty of support amongst the voters, cause the great part of 'em ain't home-born in the first place, they are mostly all invaders from the North, and them retired people hates to see so much real estate rottin away that could be sold off to lower taxes and pay for more conveniences and damn ‘facilities'—more highways and development, more shoppin malls, y'know. Don't care nothin for our old-time Florida! Nothin at all! Them Yankees are takin over this coast country like them walkin catfish or Australia trees that every hurricane spreads faster and farther out acrost the Glades till pretty soon that wild country back there won't even look like Florida no more!

“Next thing you know, the federal government will dump the Park back on the state, same as was done with Collier County when the Colliers seen that their swamp empire weren't payin off. Next, they call in flood control, build some new canals to get more land drained off at public expense while it's still public land. And finally, once all that's out of the way, them corporations lean on their pet politicians, advise 'em how state can't let all that empty land just set there earnin nothin, and how they owe it to the voters to sell it off to folks who know what to do with it, namely big agriculture and big development. Before you know it, the last of that Glades country out there will be drained off for retirement homes and golf courses and malls. Lay concrete and spray poisons over the whole works while they are at it so no damn bugs nor snakes nor lizards can go to pesterin the senior citizens.
Yessir, folks, we guarantee our oldsters 100% security and comfort all the way down that sunset trail right smack into the casket! Might not be America no more but it sure is comfy!
”

Smallwood spat over the rail, leaning forward in time to watch the dull
phlegm falling through the air to vanish into the bright water of the tide. “You just wait and see,” he said. “Ain't goin to be one bright-eyed bit of life left in south Florida.”

In the rusty sunlight in the screen door entrance at the top of the stair, Andy House appeared with a slow old lady on his arm. They seemed confused as to who was helping whom as they shuffled through the dim and narrow store toward the balcony. More old folks were entering behind them, peering and poking in a beehive hum of gentle converse.

Barging out onto the balcony, Andy announced in a loud voice, “My cousin Bill Smallwood is a fine feller, all right, except one thing: I never could figure what give him the idea that he was irresistible to women.”

“I reckon they's one or two could resist me now,” Smallwood admitted. “But if my young cousin here keeps speakin up so smart, he might get a whippin.” He didn't stand up to greet Andy or even look around, but in his distempered manner, he was smiling. He leaned toward Lucius. “Between a blind man and a dying one,” he whispered loudly for his cousin's benefit, “you might get you a pretty fair scrap.”

Inside the store the old folks, brisk as sparrows, perched on crates and barrels, and elderly voices, crying out more loudly than they knew, carried outside onto the balcony.

“—so Colonel told Parks, ‘If you people set fire to the Watson house, you will have to set fire to a Watson!' Says he never did find much to live for, but now he's found somethin he will
die
for! And you know something? He'll do it! I fished with Colonel plenty times, I knowed ol' Colonel
good
! He'll
do
it! So we got to help out on his petition! Don't want ol' Colonel goin up in smoke!”