Lost Man's River (60 page)

D. D. House raised his boys up to be honest, and most of 'em stayed that way, least till he died, but there wasn't a one of 'em except my dad was as dead honest as Henry grew to be. He was the most honest man I ever knew, never mind all the pretendin that nigras had to do back then just to stay healthy.

So Henry started out in life a scared and puny little feller, but later on he grew into his own, six foot two and solid. Had the skull and features of a white man, and his skin stayed light. He had bushy eyebrows, too, and a mustache. He was very clean and neat, shaved every day—Henry Short wore out a lot of old straight razors!

In his younger years, Henry was well-esteemed in Chokoloskee. Never had no trouble with white folks before Watson died. Ate apart and slept apart—that's how he wanted it—because Granddad's family back in Carolina always had nigras and knew how to treat 'em, so Henry Short was treated that same way. He was the only colored on Chokoloskee Island at that time, and there ain't been one since, not so's you'd notice. Even today, you can walk around that island for a month and never spot one.

In Jim Crow days, right up into the thirties, good Christian men was terribly concerned, saying nigras was too primitive to handle their black animal natures around white women. Burnings and lynchings was still popular all around the country, to teach 'em a lesson for their own darn good. That's
what become of Henry's daddy, and lynchings by fire was all the rage in Henry's day. So Henry Short always made sure he was never alone with no white woman, no matter what. White woman might holler an order to come help her—even Grandma Ida!—and he'd go stone-deaf on her unless other folks was there to witness it. A woman wanted Henry Short to do something, she would have to get her man to tell him, that's how very careful Henry was.

One time our men was out huntin in the Glades, and Henry was hunting right beside 'em, so it bothered Dad to see Henry always eatin a ways off and by himself. So my dad said, “Henry, you just bring your plate on over here, you set with us.” Well, Henry went deaf on him, pretended he didn't hear. So Dad said, “Come on, boy, dammit, ain't nobody lookin, we're out here by ourselves!” And Henry just shook his head, he would not do it, not until Dad got mad and
ordered
him to do it—then it was okay. Dad told him, “Boy, you best look out you don't get yourself whipped for disobedience!”

Later Dad felt sheepish and pretended he was joking, but Henry knew he wasn't joking, not entirely. After that he would eat with the House men when they were out somewhere away from everybody, but always setting just a little bit off to one side, and not until he'd fixed our dinner first. Finally Dad give up on him, let him eat by himself if that was what he wanted.

No, Henry Short never forgot what they done to his father. He was a man who knowed his place, and probably that's what saved his life, more'n one time. Henry fished and farmed right alongside of us, but he wanted to be treated like a black man. Ate apart and slept apart and never talked to no one, hardly, cause there weren't hardly nobody he could talk to. I reckon he figured that loneliness was his punishment in life for what his mama done, his punishment for being Henry. I don't reckon he ever once looked up to ask his Merciful Redeemer if he himself done a blessed thing to deserve such a lonesome fate. Henry would figure he deserved a nigra's life, so he just hunkered down and took it.

In the year after Mr. Watson's death, some of them men weren't so proud no more about that killing and were looking around for somebody to blame. That was when that story started that Henry Short had fired the fatal shot, because being a nigger, he had naturally lost his head. Next, they wanted an explanation of how he got there in the first place, and why that black sonofabitch was armed, and what made him think he could get away with it—they were all for getting to the bottom of this thing right then and there.

The only trouble was, Henry was gone. Being leery of the atmosphere around that place, he had left Chokoloskee quick and he never went back. He
went to fish with the Hardens around Lost Man's, and got himself hitched up to Libby Harden. Henry was lighter than his wife, but he was supposed to be mulatta and she was supposed to be a white, so there was talk. It tore up Henry, broke his heart, when she run off with another man. That feller was certified white, I guess, but that was about all.

Some time after that, he left Lost Man's for good. Came back to our family, worked with my dad who was caretaking at Chatham Bend for Cheveliers and worked his own patch at House's Hammock, up the river. One time I said, “Henry? Ain't it lonely over there?” And Henry said something peculiar. He said, “Mist' Andy, it's less lonely alone.” First time in all the years I knew him that I picked up a hair of bitterness in that man's voice.

In them days, this was up in the late twenties, we had lots of bananas on House Hammock, we grew ninety-pound heads! Bananas just went wild down there, you took a cane knife and chopped around 'em to clear off the vines a little, then just stood back and let 'em go! Henry had a rusty old five-horse Palmer engine in an open boat, and one day he loaded a cargo of bananas, thinking to run 'em up to Everglade next morning. But when he come down at break of day, his boat was gone! He had her tied up with a new piece of line, so he knowed for a fact that his line had never parted. He made his way across to Chatham Bend, wading and swimming, and we come back with him and we searched hard for that boat all around the bays and never found her. A few days later he found her tied up in the same place she had disappeared from. By that time his banana crop was sunburnt black, couldn't be sold.

That's the kind of tricks them brave young fellers done to That Nigger Who Dared to Raise a Gun Against a White Man. Don't rightly know which boy it was, but Shine Thompson always flared when we asked questions. I never heard of any family that resented Henry for himself. Every soul that knew that man before the trouble had a very high opinion of him as a nigra. But he left Chokoloskee after Watson died, and the younger ones had never hardly known him, only his name. So when they come across him in the rivers, they might yell at him over the water. “Hey, boy? We'll git you one day, boy, see if we don't!”

Andy's wife brought lemonade and cookies. The blind man thanked her and took the glass into his hand but he did not drink it, not a drop, just held his glass tight and sat in silence, working through some thought or other. Over the air-conditioning, an old-fashioned clock ticktocked in the kitchen, reminding Lucius of Ruth Ellen's house in Neamathla.

Lucius said, “At the time of the shooting, your dad signed a deposition.
Ever hear about it? It seemed like he was defending someone against rumors.” Lucius paused. “Was that Henry? From what you tell me about Henry, that rumor never made very much sense.”

“No sense at all. Henry was dead scared of E. J. Watson, and he wasn't crazy.”

Andy's tone seemed slightly enigmatic. Lucius said gently, “No. But did he do it?”

“What are you after, Colonel? What do you think I been trying to tell you here?” The blind man turned a dangerous red, and his wife came trembling to the kitchen doorway. Sensing her there, Andy waved to reassure her.

“I'm not sure
what
you're trying to tell me,” Lucius said carefully, and the blind man nodded. Aware of his wife hovering, he said in an even voice, “I don't know where Henry is living, Colonel. Last I heard, he was someplace over near Immokalee. I have the name of some people in his church. You want to run me over there tomorrow, we might try to find him.”

According to the newspaper, there was a second suspect in the Gasparilla shooting, but there had been no formal arrest, and the victim—“the noted east coast attorney Mr. Watson Dyer”—had announced that for the moment he would press no charges. Since Rob had been kidnapped by Speck's men, and since Speck was Dyer's man on Chatham Bend, Lucius had to conclude that Dyer himself had arranged the abduction.

At Caxambas, Lucius passed an unsettled evening with his father's urn, which stood in the window like an art object or vase. At sunset, it appeared to glow in a bronze fire. He could not sleep. Feeling ridiculous, he draped the urn with a white cloth, which gave him a start when something awoke him in the night. Hearing only the soft riffles of the tide flooding the salt grass, he got up and placed the shrouded thing in a far corner before stepping outside to urinate off the deck under the flying moon.

On their way to Golden Years Estates next morning, Sally questioned Andy House's objectivity about Henry Short. “If you go listening to people who raised him up as a near-slave, then you'd better learn how his real friends felt about him!” And she told Lucius what she knew of Henry's friendship with the Harden family.

Henry Short had first visited the Harden clan before the turn of the century, on Mormon Key. He went there the first time with Bill House, when they worked for Jean Chevelier, collecting bird eggs. After the Hardens sold Mormon Key to E. J. Watson and moved on south to Wood Key and Lost
Man's River, Henry still came to visit when he could, because that family made him feel like a human being. Henry trusted Lee and Sadie Harden, who were to become his lifelong friends. After the death of Mr. Watson, Henry assured them that he had not taken part, but he also said, “They will hang it on the nigger.”

Lee Harden said that Henry Short could swing his rifle up so fast that it would scare you, said this man was the best shot on this coast, Watson included. But he never believed that Henry shot at Watson because Henry would never line a man up in his rifle sights and pull the trigger. “Henry loved the Lord, and he lived by the Ten Commandments.”

When Henry started courting Libby Harden, nobody but her brother Earl paid much attention. Libby was a beautiful coffee-colored girl, while Henry was the color of new wheat—lighter than any of the Hardens except Lee and Earl and the youngest sister Abbie. He even had blue eyes, like Mr. Watson! Henry told the family his mother was a white, and that on his daddy's side he was mostly Indian. As Sadie Harden used to say, “Henry Short is a lot more white than some of those who call him a mulatta.” Except for Earl, the Hardens never thought about his color, all they saw was a fine man and a friend.

Robert Harden was mostly Choctaw with some English and Portagee mixed in, but he never cared too much what people called him so long as they let him live in peace. Some of his children favored his wife, Maisie, whose mother was Elizabeth Osceola, a granddaughter of the great war chief. So the Hardens were white and Indian on both sides, and they had nothing against black people—that much was true.

Henry Short and Libby Harden were married by the constable at Cape Sable, but pretty soon Libby ran off with a white man from Mound Key. This man told her he had money. He did not. Libby claimed her marriage to Henry Short had been performed outside the Catholic Church and was therefore officially annulled, but she never claimed that anyone annulled it. Being strong-minded like her mother, she probably just annulled it by herself.