Lost Man's River (66 page)

During their visit the phone rang twice, and Annie Albritton's response made clear that these callers wished to know exactly what their visitor was up to.

“Why he ain't no such of a thing! Just asking a few questions, is all. What? Not
nosy
questions! Asking about his daddy, s'all it is. Old-timey things! What's that?
Course
I'll be careful!” She listened a moment, then put her hand over the mouthpiece. “You ain't workin for the federal gov'ment, are you?”

“You've been spotted for a fed,” Sally whispered, gleeful.

Sandy frowned and muttered. The feds were not a joke. “Way them boys figure, you might be informin. Revengin on your daddy that way,” Sandy said.

Annie put down the phone with care and picked her way like a sick cat back to her place. The little house had fallen silent, all but the relentless tick-tack-ticking of that rickety alarm clock in the kitchen that seemed to be dogging Lucius's steps all over Florida. The Albrittons stared imploringly at Sally, who was enjoying the whole business and perversely refused to clarify the atmosphere.

Annie hummed a little, kicked the bent dog away—“Spot's just the lovinest dawg!” Settled down again, she marveled, “Colonel Watson!” and hummed a little more. “I like to eat good, don't you, Colonel? That's all us old folks can still do, so we might's well do it good.”

“I been thinkin I'll prob'ly take up sex again,” her husband said.

“Now
Lucius
Watson was a fisherman for years,” Annie told Sally in a dreamy voice. She glanced at Lucius slyly, humming a bit more. “It was only later on they called him Colonel. I was scared of him because he was exactly like my daddy said
his
daddy was—bow to you, wouldn't let you pay for nothing, too goody-goody altogether. One time he bought me a ice cream, I weren't but fourteen-fifteen years of age. Bought my husband here a beer while he was at it. Oh, Colonel was always so polite, like his daddy before
him; do anything you want, then he might kill you. Colonel Watson's manners, they was just upstanding.”

Her husband ignored her. “I got bunions, do you?” he said to Lucius. “Want to see 'em? Worstest thing I ever got, and I had plenty.”

“My dad said he was always scared of Mr. Watson, said they all were. They knew a desperado like Ed Watson would never let himself be taken, never had and never would, so every man on that landing knew what was coming. When E. J. Watson swung that gun up, them men froze.”

“Colonel come here to find out about his daddy, and all you want to talk about is your old man, who was over to Marco and weren't nothin much to talk about in the first place!”

“So
anyways
”—Annie rolled her eyes—“Mr. Colonel Watson made him up a list of all them men.” She gave Lucius a crafty look. “Colonel? Where d'you suppose that list of yours has got to?”

“Hardly anybody on that list is still alive,” Lucius said casually. The very mention of the list made him feel weary. “Anyway, it never meant much. Kind of a hobby.”

Sandy Albritton looked skeptical and somber. “The sons are still around, and grandsons, too. Man lookin for revenge would not have to hunt far to find a target, especially a man who shoots like you done, man and boy—”

“He's not looking for revenge,” Sally declared in a firm voice. She had been smiling at Lucius's discomfiture, but now she saw that the atmosphere was shifting and that the Albrittons, infected by small-town paranoia, were growing uneasy and afraid. “We had one of the sons in the car with us all morning, and if Mister Colonel wanted his revenge, Andy House was probably the one to start with.”

“Hell, I trust Colonel and I always did.” Sandy got to his feet, motioning to his old friend to follow him outside. “That woman don't know nothin about E. J. Watson,” Sandy told him, plenty loud enough for his wife to hear. The screen door banged behind them. He led the way down the rain-greened rotten steps and crept into the colorless old car, where he cranked the windows tight against mosquitoes. “My office,” he explained. In the stifling heat, through the cracked windshield flecked with broken insects, he glowered at the hulk of his rotting boat. “A man don't need no aggravation whilst he's talkin, that is all I'm sayin.”

Old Man Sandy scrunched down in the seat, hiked his knees high as his nose, swung his black shoes onto the dashboard, and recited his eyewitness impressions of Mr. Watson's death. When he was finished, he turned his head to see how his friend had taken it. When Lucius asked calmly if the men
had planned it, Sandy gave no sign that he had heard this question, gazing out past his old mullet boat toward Half Way Creek.

Eventually he said, “That feller who rung my telephone just a while back? Crockett Junior.” Again he turned his head to peer at Lucius, to see how much he knew. “And that woman settin in my house is his damn mother. Sally tell you?”

Lucius was astonished.
“Annie?”

“Annie. Yessir. That's her name, all right.” He rolled down the window, spat, rolled it up tight again. “Life is a bitch, now ain't it?”

“Sally has never said a word. I even forgot until just lately that Speck Daniels was her father—”

Sandy Albritton held up his hand. “Nobody mentions
that
name without my permission!” He worked up more phlegm and spat it forcefully out of the window, remaining silent until satisfied that Colonel Watson was ready to hear his story without interrupting.

“Back in the Depression-time, we was pret' near starvin around here, so me'n a couple of other boys, we took and killed a steer to feed our families. We was turned in, turned over to the law, and me and them other boys, we done a year at Raiford on the chain gang.”

“I remember something about that,” Lucius said.

“Well, you don't remember what I aim to tell you, cause you never knowed about it, nor me neither. The baby boy that welcomed his daddy home from Raiford was still all red and wrinkled, hot out of the oven. But the mother told me, ‘No, no, honey! He is goin on three months of age, he was born just nine months to the day after our sweet partin!' I was fixin to name the little feller Crockett Albritton after Speck, cause Speck was my best friend since we was boys, and he'd promised to look out for Annie while I was away. But my wife said, ‘No, no, honey!' Said this baby boy was a chip off the ol' block and she wanted his name to remind her of her darlin! Said her lovin heart was dead set on the name of Sandy Junior.

“Right about then, the news come out how that damned Speck was the one who told the owner how he seen us boys butcher that steer. We done it, all right, cause times was hard, but Speck Daniels never seen us do it, he just heard about it. Nobody couldn't figure out why he was so willin to make trouble, knowin it wouldn't earn him one thin dime. Well, not long after that, ol' Speck was found half-dead back in the bushes here, boot treads all over him and a mouthful of broken teeth. I believe he spent a pretty good while in the hospital. Anyone else would of left the Bay or tried to make
amends. Didn't do neither. He took his punishment, never spoke about it, went right on like before. Takes a real ornery sonofabitch like him to stick around a place where nobody had no use for him at all. Didn't need no friends in life, I guess.”

Albritton glared at him, in pain. “I never talked to
nobody
about this stuff!” he said, resentful.

“Sandy, you don't have to tell me—”

“I told you it already. Anyways, if I don't tell, they's other ones that will. Might's well hear the truth.” He hawked and spat again. “So years fly by the way they do, and next thing you know, this Sandy Junior and Speck's daughter Sally, they get goin pretty hot and heavy in the high school. Annie got wind of it and done her best to break it up without spillin no more beans than what she had to. That Marco woman that I got in there”—he pointed at his house—“interfered so bad she almost caused a feud in the two families, cause only Speck knew what she was up to, and Speck never cared to admit nothin nor get drawed into the mess in any way. Them two kids could hump their selves to death for all he cared. But Annie nagged and threatened him so much that he got fed up and tossed poor little Sally into his truck and hauled her away to some kinfolk in Fort Myers.

“Only thing, them kids had no idea what they done wrong. The boy was rarin to foller her, he just weren't aimin to be stopped, so that female in there, she feared the worst. Finally she come blubberin to me with the whole story about how my ol' partner Speck Daniels was the natural born daddy of the
both
of 'em.”

He nodded for a long while, looking grim. “I put a stop to it. I notified Sandy Junior Albritton how his rightful name startin that day was Crockett Junior Daniels, and I sent him off to live with Crockett Senior. And his little sister that he loved so dearly and wanted so bad to put his dingus into was told the sad news as soon as she come home.”

They sat in silence for a while, out of respect for this disagreeable life situation.

“So that poor girl settin inside was so darn horrified by her own daddy, and so tore up in her feelins about her brother, that she run out of her house, never went back. Took her mama's name, but her mama bein dead, she didn't rightly have no place to go. Well, me and Annie, we was scrappin all over the house, but we always been so fond of our almost-daughter-in-law that we put her in Sandy Junior's room in place of him. Probably been in there with her panties off a time or two already, but none of us didn't say nothin about
that
.

“That's how come that girl got married so fast, sheerly out of her terrible mortification. Sally got scarred up pretty bad, and she ain't over it. You ever
notice she got kind of a sharp tongue? She is still pretty hot under the collar, and she's out to prove somethin, don't ask me what.

“I never blamed Annie all that much. I wore out a stick on her big butt so's she couldn't sit down for a month and let it go at that. I understood her, see. She was full of life to overflowin back in them days, and Speck bein her husband's oldest friend, he sidled up while I was in the pen. Got some liquor into her, to comfort her, y'know, and next thing you know, she had to have it. They's fellers will take advantage of a sad and lonesome female, especially females that look as good as Annie did. And anyways, it weren't nobody but me that asked that bastrid to look out for my darlin while I done my time. I kind of knew who Speck was before then, but I didn't think he'd do somethin like that to the last friend he had left in southwest Florida.

“I never took a stick to Speck, in case you're wonderin. With Speck, there ain't no halfway measures. You shoot at Speck, you best not miss, cause he ain't goin to.” He squinted at Lucius. “Sure, I thought about it. But I knew I couldn't kill him, not in a fair fight, and I also knew I weren't the kind to shoot him from behind. Not that there's many would of minded. Folks would of stepped right up and shook my hand, I reckon, stead of laughin behind my back all my whole life. But I made my choice and I have lived with it, and I'll die with it, too, one of these days.

“Know somethin? I don't hate that man no more. As the years go by, it's him I miss the most out of that bunch I was raised up with! Crockett Daniels is a lot of fun to get rip-roarin drunk with, I will tell you that. A
lot
of fun! He was right there when we drowned poor ol' Doc Tiger by mistake! Ain't hardly got a enemy that won't admit that ol' Speck was his drinkin buddy to start off with. Yessir, we had wild nights together, Speck and me. I get to thinkin about them times we had as boys, huntin and drinkin, chasin after the bad girls, we just never seemed to stop hootin and laughin. Life was real long back in them days, and the nights never seemed to end. Funny, ain't it? I been thinkin lately that I miss Speck more than I would of missed that woman in there if she got drunk and fell into the river. But all them good old times we had never meant no more to that damn feller than the fish gurry in the bilges of his boat.”

Watching the women come out onto the porch, Sandy raised his voice to drown out his wife, who was railing at him for taking Colonel outside. When Lucius rolled his window down, Annie Albritton told him to return next morning when her husband was out if he wanted the real lowdown on his daddy—“no ifs, ands, or buts!”

“Might give you more butt than you bargained for!” her husband shouted for her benefit, but his voice was muffled by his rolled-up window.

“She was brave to come to you that time, to protect the young people,” Lucius reminded him before leaving the car.

“Well, that ain't none of your damn business, Colonel, but it's true. That's why I'm still settin here thirty years later.”