Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Alarmed, they warned him about Watson’s temper. Wally looked scared but bravely said, “Long as I don’t turn my back, I’ll be all right. Anyways, we got nowheres to go.”

  The Atwells took his note to Watson the next day. Watson never told ’em what was in it, just tossed it on the table and went away into the field without a word. They never asked him for the money owed them. They set sail for Key West, left it all behind them.

  A fisherman, Mac Sweeney, showed up on New Year’s Day. Mac was a drifter, lived on an old boat with a thatch shelter. Didn’t belong nowhere, took his living where he found it. Just at daybreak, headed north from Hamilton’s on Lost Man’s Beach, he had heard shots on Lost Man’s Key—one shot and in a little while another.

  “Varmints, most likely,” Sarah said, gone pale as lard. That girl weren’t but twelve that year, another year went by before we married, but she was already the saucy kind that gets into the thick of the men’s business. Sarah said, “We better go right now.” “No,” Daddy Richard said, “the day is late. The boys will go there first thing in the morning.”

  That same evening Henry Short come in. He was looking for Liza but was too shy to go to her straight off, though he could hear her singing by the cook shack. Henry knew that he was always welcome but Earl made sure he also knew how Earl Harden felt about a brown boy sniffing around our little sister, never mind that the sister was somewhat browner than what he was.

  So Henry hunted hard for an excuse for having rowed all the way south from House Hammock, though it was true he’d forgot his pocketknife or some fool thing. We helped him off his hook as best we could but Earl was nervous, finding trouble every place he looked. Earl said, “Your knife ain’t waitin on you here, boy, and our sister neither.” Daddy Richard asked had Henry noticed anything at Watson’s on his way downriver? Henry said he seen no boat, no sign of anyone: the Bend was silent as he drifted by. Mac Sweeney moaned, “Oh Jesus, boys! It’s like I told you!”

  We crossed to Lost Man’s first thing in the morning. We come too late. Winding in around the orster bars, Henry pointed at something laying over in the shallows.

  “Oh Christ, what’s that?” Earl yelped.

  “Shut up, Earl,” I said. I felt sick. I didn’t want to look.

  Wally’s hair was lifting and his eyes ringed black with tiny mud snails were sunken back into his head. Scared of his touch, Webster reached deep for a boot, aiming to draw him alongside, but the boot leather was slick as grease from the salt water and it slipped away. I jumped over the side, took a deep breath, and seized him up under the arms. Walking backwards, hauling him out onto the sand, I seen the shadow of a shark move off the bar into the channel.

  Dead blood was still leaking from a hole blowed in his chest. “Oh Christ!” Earl said again and begun coughing. Webster looked peculiar for a darkskinned feller, kind of a bad gray. Henry’s light skin had went a little green and I was fighting hard to keep my grits down. We hollered and swore to keep from crying, all but Henry, who was not free to join in, not with Earl watching.

  Near the cabin was a silver driftwood tree and near the tree Wally’s net needle lay in the gill net we had lent him and blackish blood was caked thick in the mesh. His sloop rode peaceful on her mooring. No sign of Bet. We hoped she had run off and hid but no voice answered when we hollered, only the whistle of black orster birds out on the bar.

  We rolled Wally in sail canvas, hoisted him into the boat. Hunting for Bet, we crisscrossed the island back and forth, even searched the end of Lost Man’s Beach, across the Channel. The long day passed. We called and called. Once a hoot owl answered, way back in the trees. Dusk was coming and dark overtook us before we reached Wood Key.

  Sarah stared at the boots that stuck out from the canvas.

  “How come you brought him back?”

  “Didn’t want to leave him there alone, I reckon.”

  “You left Bet alone.” First time I ever seen her cry.

  It was Sarah’s idea we should take Wally back, bury him close to his little shack; that’s why he was still with us in the boat next morning. Crossing the flats, I seen a keel track in the marl. My heart give a skip just as Henry said, “Mist’ Watson.” Most Island men had learned that keel mark. Never knew when they might need to know he was around someplace.

  I felt Bet near and pretty quick I seen her. Over the night she had surfaced in a backwater behind the point. Face down and all silted up ain’t no damned way to find a good young woman big with child whose smile you won’t never forget from the last time you seen it. Using an oar, Webster drew her toward the boat, but she got loose, rolled over very slow. Them little snails was pretty close to finished with Bet’s face. Without no lips, her white buck teeth made her look starved as a dead pony. Only mercy was, no eyes was left to stare.

  This time we all jumped into the shallows, very angry. Earl grabbed an ankle, taking no time to get a proper hold under the arms. Earl is always in a rush, that’s the life itch in him. Not wanting a scrap with him that day, I took the other ankle, but when we hauled, her head went under and her shift hitched high on the oarlock coming in, laying bare her blue-white thighs and hair and swollen belly. The careless way we handled her made me ashamed. When I yanked that old rag of a shift back down, it tore half off her hips. “Show some respect!” Earl hollered. We almost capsized the damn boat, dragging her in.

  Much too rough, Earl rolled Tucker out of his canvas, flung the canvas across to me, firing orders as usual. “Make her decent!” he yells. But what was indecent mostly come from his own hurry. To Henry, he says, “Don’t go lookin up her shift, you hear me, boy?”

  Henry squints past him like he’s studyin the weather in the summer distance. No more expression on his face than on the dead man layin in the bilges. But Webster who is generally real quiet said to Earl, “We all hear you and we seen you lookin, too. White boys only, right?”

  “This ain’t no time for this,” I said.

  We hunted around till we come up with Wally’s shovel, dug two pits in the sea grape above tide line, stuck two stick crosses in the sand. We lowered Bet first, unborn babe and all. Earl hesitated to throw fill onto her face, he looked real shaky. When Webster cut the back out of his shirt, laid it across the head, Earl grumped, “Smelly damn ol’ shirt. That ain’t no good.” And Webster snapped, “Just shovel.”

  Back at the boat, I took a deep breath, took the dead man underneath the arms. Webster and Henry took his ankles. His clothes had dried and warmed a little, but under that warmth he was cold, stiff, smelly meat, like a dead porpoise on the tide line after a storm.

  A dead man totes a whole lot heavier than a live one, who knows why. I hoisted the shoulders so’s to clear the gunwales; his dank hair flopped over his face, his body sighed. I held a breath against the sudden heavy stink.

  We laid him on the ground beside the hole. His eyes looked bruised and the lids sagged open like he didn’t trust us. I felt ashamed of humankind, myself included. I said, “We come too late, Wally. I sure am sorry.” Them words twisted right out of me, tears right behind ’em; I was ready to fight Earl if he noticed, but he was busy hawking up the taste of the dead man’s smell and spitting it away. Couldn’t hurt Wally’s feelings none but that hawking turned my stomach. I grabbed the shovel back from him and covered Wally as fast as I could swing it, covered that puffed face staring at the sky. With one shovelful, I closed them eyes, filled that dry mouth with sand, which shook me so bad that I let loose a groan. The next load I shot straight at Earl’s belly to wipe away his smirk and he knew better than to say one word.

  I have buried men since and buried children, but that young couple with their unborn child was the saddest sight I ever care to see. When the graves was banked, I jammed the shovel blade into the sand with all my might.

  Webster growled a Webster kind of prayer: “God Almighty, here is two more meek that has inherited Your earth.” Webster spoke in his own peculiar way; we never did learn how to hear him. Sudden and loud,
Earl heehawed at his brother’s prayer, shaking his head over something or other as Webster watched him.

  Richard Harden always claimed that Watson could not help himself, being doomed by accursed fate. In later years that give Sarah her excuse for forgiving him a little bit for what he done here. Ain’t doom the same as fate? I ain’t sure what Daddy Richard meant, unless God put a curse on E. J. Watson. But if God done that, then who was we to blame for them dreadful murders?

  One funny thing: along the shore we came across two sets of fresh prints. Who did them other prints belong to? Cause we knew Rob Watson was a friend to Tuckers, he even come here once to see how they was getting on, also to warn ’em.

  Mac Sweeney had left for Key West and two deputies showed up a few days later with orders to deputize them Wood Key boys who found the bodies. Earl Harden advised the deputies that foul deeds had been done and that E. J. Watson was the only man suspected. He never told about the second set of tracks we found crossing the Key.

  Webster went out the back door as the law come in the front, that was his answer. To me, they said, “How about you? Two dollars just to show us where he’s at?” I said, “Nosir, I sure won’t.” I felt sick angry at Ed Watson but I didn’t want no part of it. Daddy Richard told ’em nothing one way or the other. Cornerin Pap was like tryin to nail a orster to the floor. He give a kind of muddy groan, mumbling and carrying on about deputizin boys too young to die and such as that, but I believe what worried him the most was Hardens takin the law’s side against a neighbor.

  Pap said, “You fellers might could deputize that female settin over there fixin them snap beans. She can shoot a knot out of wet rope and won’t settle for no ifs, ands, nor buts.” Mama banged her pot down, went outside, and the two deputies, who was scared of Watson and sufferin from ragged nerves, advised Pap that they was here to solve a case of cold-blood murder and had no time for no damn mulatta jokes.

  I said, “Better look out who you go calling mulatta,” but Pap hushed me. “Now don’t you fellers get us wrong,” he said. “This family don’t hold with cold-blood murder of no race, color, nor creed.” Said young folks was bloody murdered, yep, they sure had that part right, but he ain’t seen no evidence it was Ed Watson. “Hell, Pap,” Earl yelled, “we seen his keel track! Ain’t that proof?” And Daddy said, “Might been proof, but like I say, I never seen it.”

  Scoffing, Earl stepped forward and got deputized. Once he had his badge pinned on, he told his feller deputies, “Looks like my brothers might be scared of Watson.”

  Pap grabbed my wrist before I went for him. “You said a mouthful that time, Earl,” Pap told him in a dead voice. “You might be correct, who is to know? But the law here ain’t got nothin on Ed Watson, and you will have to live with him after these fellers are gone.”

  Come time to leave for Chatham River, their new deputy had already begun to sweat. Looked back over his shoulder, hoping his daddy would forbid his boy to go. Pap took no notice, just set there in the sun, whittling him a new net needle out of red mangrove. Rest of his life, Pap was civil to Earl but he was finished with him. That’s the way our daddy was. Never got angry, just dropped bad stuff behind him like he’d took a crap. Life was too short to waste time looking back, he said, or too far forward either.

  When the law dropped him off on their way back south, Earl was raring to tell every last thing he seen. Evidence in the case was confidential, Deputy Earl advised us, but quick as a goose squirt, it come out: Watson and his son was gone, his house was empty. On the floor they found Wally Tucker’s crumped-up message, but not wishing to admit they could not read even big letters printed out with pencil, the deputies never bothered with it. “Handwrit note don’t count for nothin in no court of law”—that’s what they told Earl. Even so, Earl had the sense to save it.

  Sarah read it out loud and got furious before she finished. “Might mean nothing to deputies but it sure is proof that Wally Tucker was the fool who got Bet murdered!”

  MISTER WATSON WE WILL STAY

  ON THIS HERE CAY TILL OUR CHILD IS BORN

  COME HELL OR HIGH WATER

  Hell showed up quicker than poor Wally expected, and high water, too.

  ERSKINE THOMPSON

  First day of January, 1901, sailin north from Lost Man’s Beach, I seen the black smoke of a cane fire from way out in the Gulf, smelled that burned sweetness in the air like roasting corn. That fire was still going strong when I passed Mormon Key and tacked into the river.

  At the Bend, the trees was just a-shimmering in that heat, and the hawks and buzzards comin in from as far away as cane smoke can be seen to feed on small varmints killed or flushed from cover.

  What was burning was our thirty-acre field. This year we was too broke to hire outside labor for the harvest season, so there was only the Boss and me and Rob, and maybe Tant if we were lucky. The Boss must of gone crazy—that’s the way I figured. He was firing a cane field we could never harvest.

  Tying up, I seen no sign of Rob, let alone Tant. All I seen was Mister Watson on the half run in his field setting fires like he’d heard a shout from Hell; he was drifting over the black ground in a ring of fire like a giant windswirled cinder. Had his shotgun in his other hand, and that made no sense neither, cause he hadn’t lit fires on three sides the way we done when we wanted a shot at any critters that might run before the flames. Something was on the prowl here in the hellish air and spooky light where the sun pierced the smoke shadow. I never hollered or went near the house, just waited on the dock.

  Toward nightfall, with his fires dying down, he come in from the field, eyes darting everywhere. “Who’s aboard that boat?” He was coughing hard, fighting for breath. He went on past, then swung that gun around quick as a cottonmouth, like he meant to wipe me out. I yell out, “Hold on, Mister Ed! I come alone!” but he don’t lower the muzzle. Don’t like turnin his back to me but minds his back turned to the schooner even more. And damned if he don’t go aboard, checking on me over his shoulder, and poke that shotgun into every cranny on that boat, from stem to stern.

  Coming out, he growls, “No harvest, boy. I’m broke.” He explains the fire: if the cane is left unharvested, with no burn-off, next year’s crop would be choked out. We walked up to the house, me in the front.

  Tant and Josie were gone. Rob never come to supper. Me and Mister Watson ate Tant’s cold venison, left on the hearth. No bread baked, no greens. No life in that house, just us two men chewing old cold meat not smoked through proper because Tant never banked the cooking fire, just let it die, as usual; damned meat had a purply look and a rank smell to it. I never get none down, that’s how dry my mouth was. Mister Watson threw it to the dogs and we et grits. He gets the bottle out, then forgets about it, just sits there panting, staring out over the river. And right then I begun to know that our good old days at Chatham Bend was over and I’d better be thinking about moving on. I was near to twenty and had my eye on young Gert Hamilton at Lost Man’s Beach who was boarding at Roe’s up to Caxambas while she went to school.

  Mister Watson coughs and hacks. He says, I am sorry for the way I acted, Erskine. You are my partner, are you not? Yessir, say I, very serious and proud. Then he tells me he is leaving in the morning and all about what he wants done in his absence. He nods his head awhile, and after that, starts in confiding about his bygone life.

  As a young feller in Columbia County, Mister Watson had a good farm leased, made a fine crop, but lost his first wife that was Rob’s mama in childbirth, broke his knees in a bad fall, was bedridden while his land went all to hell, drank himself senseless, got in bad trouble. Never said what the trouble was and I never asked him. “Matter of honor,” Mister Watson said. So him and his new wife head west with the kids. Left by night and lit out northward for the Georgia border.

  The next spring—this was 1887—they sharecropped a farm in Franklin County, Arkansas. Got his crop in and went on west into the Injun Nations, Oklahoma Territory—the first place he felt real safe, he said, beca
use Injuns figured that any white in trouble with other whites must have some good in him. Plenty of renegade Injuns, too, and the worst of ’em, Mister Watson said, was Old Tom Starr, head of a Cherokee clan on the South Canadian River where the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee Nations come together.

  “Tom Starr was a huge man and he killed too many. Got a taste for it, know what I mean, boy?” Mister Watson nodded, kind of sarcastic, when I piped up real eager, “I sure do!” In one feud Tom Starr and his boys set fire to a cabin and a little boy five years old run out and Tom Starr picked him up and tossed him back into the flames. “I don’t know that I could do a deed like that, how about you, Erskine?” Mister Watson was frowning like he’d thought hard on this question before deciding.

  “Nosir,” I said.

  “ ‘Nosir,’ he says.”

  So Old Tom Starr asked a white Christian acquaintance if the white man’s God would ever forgive him for that black deed he done, and this Christian said, “Nosir, Chief, I don’t reckon He would.” Mister Watson’s queer laugh come all the way up from his boots, and that laugh taught me once and for all this man’s hard lesson, that our human free-for-all on God’s sweet earth never meant no more’n a hatch of insects in the thin smoke of their millions rising and falling in the river twilight.

  Right away he was looking grim again. “I’m not so sure I’d want to give that answer to a black-hearted devil like Tom Starr. What’s your opinion on that question, Erskine?”

  “Nosir,” I said.

  “Nosir is right.” He was peering into my face, shaking his head. “Looks like I will have to do the laughing for us both,” he muttered.