Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  The Ox Woman, and Hannah, too, could work a ax good as any man we ever saw, made that ax sing. Them two was that old style of pioneer womenfolk that come roarin up out of the swamps and down out of the mountains. Allowed as how their sister Lydia liked to set in a rocker on the porch with her husband in her arms, singin him lullabies. Ed Watson said, “It’s a damn good thing they don’t make women of that kind no more or they’d run the country.”

  Hannah had her a sweet voice to go with her feats of strength and winsome ways. Evenings she hauled on her other dress and set out on the dock singing “Barbry Allen” to the Injuns that come in to trade. Remembering that heap of womanhood singing so pure under the moon over the mangroves, and them Injuns by their fire gazing past her so polite while keeping a sharp eye on this big wild thing that might turn dangerous any minute still gives me the shivers just to think about it.

  Tant Jenkins was an expert in the hunting line and always claimed that common labor disagreed with him. I told Tant that if he was smarter’n what people said he was, he’d send away to the Okefenokee for one of them big lonesome sisters to do his chores for him, keep him in whiskey, and rock him to sleep when he come home at night drunk and disgusting.

  Them two giant girls celebrated their reunion, drunk Tant and Isaac and two-three Daniels boys to a dead halt. Sadie said that while they lasted, them nice fellers made a body feel at home, but in a day or two, she hitched up her oxen, yee-hawed north, found a big hammock with good soil east of Immokalee. She lived on there quite a while, died on there, too, likely from heartbreak over the bad news that was comin her way about her Little Sis.

  Not long after Sadie took her leave and Waller went back to Chatham Bend, Big Hannah got sick and fidgety on McKinney’s Needhelp Farm, pining away for her hog-loving admirer and fighting off the skeeters for a year alone with no man to help her with the crops except a dirty old Injun called Charlie Tommie, who chased her even harder than the skeeters, till finally she had to slap him away, too. Not till April 1910 did Green and Watson pick her up at Smallwood’s store as they had promised. Watson warned her that her man had stole hogs all his life, so the first time a hog went missing at the Bend, a well-knowed hog thief might come up missing, too. Waller could hoot over coming up missing but he never laughed none when it come to Hannah because he was deeply in love—them were his words—and women in his life was very few and very far between. When his sweetheart went off to fetch her stuff, he confided to the men how he’d promised his mama at her deathbed that her virgin boy would go to his grave as pure in the Lord as the first day she wiped his bottom. “Them holy words made my old mama die happy. But Satan sent me this big Smith girl that is stronger’n what I am,” Waller moaned, “and next thing I knowed about it, boys, she had me down and was doin somethin dirty!”

  Hannah brung her ax and gun and a spare dress in a burlap sack she slung across her shoulder. Follered her boyfriend to the boat and headed south for Chatham River and that was the last time we ever seen her. From what we heard, that big bashful lady and her dog-eared boyfriend got along like rum and butter; they done their sinning in that little shack downriver from the boat sheds. Hannah chopped wood for the syrup boiler, helped the young missus with the chores, ate a whole lot, washed up good under the arms, and lugged her hog thief home, took him to bed. Ed Watson claimed they yelped all night like a pair of foxes.

  MAMIE SMALLWOOD

  In early 1909, when Ed Watson got acquitted in north Florida and came south after nine months in jail, he announced that he was home for good and darned glad of it. The whole coast was leery now, including them few who was too scared not to greet him, but even folks who dreaded him finally cheered up and relaxed, cause it sure looked like Edna had changed his ways. For over a year they had no trouble down on Chatham Bend or we’d have heard about it from Miss Hannah, who kept in touch with her many friends around the Bay.

  The first person to hint something was wrong was Erskine Thompson. Course Erskine was always the first to hint something was wrong, but he had worked for Mister Watson since a boy and knew his ins and outs as well as anybody. One day in Fort Myers an old nigger woman came up to Erskine and asked if her son was still cutting cane for Mister Watson. Said she’d had no word for more than a year, said another field hand who had lived awhile with the colored there on Safety Hill had never come home either. “Ain’t never seen him since,” the woman said.

  “Took his pay and run off to Key West, I reckon,” Erskine told her. “Prob’ly heard about them Yankee nigger-lovers down that way.” (Erskine never bothered his head about nigger feelings and my brother Bill tells me I’m darned near as bad. Says, “How come you’re so nice to Injuns, Mamie, then turn around and be so mean to coloreds?” “Well, Bill,” I told him, “you just go ask Daddy. Know what he’ll tell you? A nigger is a nigger, boy, and that is that.”)

  One day Erskine told me how two white men showed up at the Bend in a small sloop, claimed they were just out gallivanting from Key West. E. J.

  Watson took to brooding, thinking this pair might be deputies out to make their mark at his expense or maybe thieves that had stolen this nice sloop. However, the cane was ready so he put ’em right to work, kept a close eye. Well, one day after harvest when Erskine arrived back from Port Tampa, their little sloop was still tied to the dock but the men were gone. Mr. Watson said he had bought the sloop and paid ’em off, then run ’em up the coast as far as Marco. Erskine never thought a thing about it till he cleaned out that sloop’s little cabin and came across a photo of a woman and small kids in an envelope slipped into a dry slot in the cabin ceiling. He was so surprised something like that would be left behind that he put it away in case they sent for it. They never did. Mr Watson finally sold that sloop, made some good money, too.

  This sun-baked feller was E. J.’s old friend and had taken pains to keep it that way so I was surprised to hear any such tale out of his mouth. I asked him what was he really saying—was Mister Watson killing off his help to avoid paying them? Because if Erskine had no such suspicions, how come he was spreading these darned stories—not spreading ’em exactly, just letting ’em drop here and there for folks to sniff at? He backed up fast, got mean-mouthed on me, saying it just goes to show how rumors get their start: gossiping women! Said he never believed any such thing about Mister Watson! Why, that man was like a father to him, always had been! Ask Tant Jenkins, Tant would say the same! When I reminded him that Tant left Chatham Bend after that Tucker business and never went back, he said he had no time for gossip and walked away.

  I had known this feller for too many years for him to fool me. (Erskine was mostly loyal to his old boss until later in his life when he needed drinking money, which was all he got for that fool interview about his dangerous youth with “Bloody Watson.”) I wondered if he was spreading stories as a way to ease his worry. And if Ed Watson’s ship captain was worried, so was I.

  Henry Short was with the Harden boys that day at Lost Man’s Key. One morning in a funny mood, I asked Henry straight out if he thought Mister E. J. Watson killed those Tuckers.

  Henry never said a word, just kept on sorting gator pears in the hot sun. In 1910, cruel punishment would come to any upstart nigger who dared hold dangerous opinions about white folks, and anyway, a careful man like Henry Short would never be caught talking alone with a white female, even chubby me whom he had known since a small baby. I ordered him to give me a hand packing tomatoes and he followed me over toward the produce shed where the men could see us talking but not hear us. “Yes or no, Henry?” I said. “I’ll never tell.”

  Henry was looking straight at the tomatoes. Finally he turned his head away. I heard him mutter, “Mist’ Watson always been real good to me, Mis Mamie.” Not denying. That was Henry’s sign.

  For a nigger, our Henry was a real good Christian who read his Bible every evening, also a strong hardworking man who could farm, fish, run a boat, mend net, set traps, go hunting deer and never come back without one. Knowing this, Ed
Watson was always after him to work at Chatham Bend. Afraid to refuse, he got Daddy to notify Watson that we could not spare him.

  One time when Mister Watson was away, Henry made the mistake of sailing Watson’s produce to Key West for Erskine Thompson, who said he was too busy at Lost Man’s but more likely was just feeling lazy. As a ship captain, Henry was not experienced and Erskine knew this: he counted on Henry’s natural ability and good sense and sent him off, persuading him that he would have no difficulties in such fine weather. Henry Short sank E. J. Watson’s ship and cargo in a squall down off Cape Sable and was picked up by a sponge boat headed north. Went straight to Watson and took full responsibility, which is more than most white fellers would have done. As Old Man Gregorio Lopez said, “That nigger must been too damned scared to think if he took news as bad as that to E. J. Watson!”

  Mister Watson and those Hardens chased off Key West scavengers, raised his ship, but he never raised his voice to Henry Short, just told him he would take him home. They went alone, camped overnight at Possum Key. Something happened there but neither of ’em would ever talk about it. Anyway, Henry was grateful but never forgot what was done at Lost Man’s Key. Sometimes he seined mullet with the Storter boys, set gill nets down around the mouth of Chatham River. Claude Storter told my brother Bill that whenever they came upriver past the Bend, Henry loaded that old rifle Daddy gave him and kept it handy in the bow, “in case he seen a deer or something,” he would say.

  • • •

  In that last long summer of 1910, most everybody knew that something bad was brewing on the Watson place, and Edna and her kids mostly stayed with us. One morning she broke down and told us that a chain gang fugitive was working there, a desperado who had killed a lawman in Key West; another man tending the hogs and that hard-faced nigger who came south with them in early 1909 were jailbirds, too. Except for his son Lucius, his only law-abiding help was Hannah Smith.

  What brought this whole stew to a boil was a stranger who showed up on Chokoloskee around the time of the Great Comet in the spring. Said he was looking for an E. J. Watson, hawked and spat out the door when he was told that Mister Watson was away in Key West, with his wife expecting. This stranger was a husky young man, scar on his cheekbone but handsome in a hard-set way, with dark brown hair grown long, down to the shoulders, and green eyes set too close under thick brows that met in one heavy line. Had an old-fashioned kind of black frock coat that he wore over his farm clothes, made him look halfway between a gambler and a preacher.

  Mr. Smallwood was leery of this stranger from the first minute he came into the store. When he asked “John Smith,” as he called himself, if he might be kin to Miss Hannah Smith at Chatham River, the man shook his head, surly and uninterested. He sat out on our porch while we hunted up someone to run him down to Chatham River. “E. J. may be tickled pink to see this hombre, but I doubt it,” Mr. Smallwood fretted, watching him leave on Isaac Yeomans’s boat. “That frock coat might be hiding a whole arsenal.” And I teased him, saying, “Same style of coat your friend E. J. wears, you notice?”

  Ted did not feel like being teased. He reminded me that it was this day in the month before, on April 22nd, that the white wake of the Great Comet was first seen in the east, thirty degrees above the horizon, with its scorpion tail that curled across the heavens like an almighty question mark. That question mark set our preacher a-howling about the eternal War between Good and Evil, and how that scorpion tail was the first sign of Armageddon. The Good Lord had imparted to Brother H. P. Jones His intention to wipe out us poor sinners, leave only the few pure-in-hearts such as Mrs. Ida House still breathing easy. Pure-in-hearts were never plentiful around the Bay, and once the sinners had been packed off to Hell, it might get pretty lonesome around here, I warned her, crying in the wilderness and such as that.

  E. J. Watson kept bad company but doted on his family and anyone who knew him said the same. In 1907, he had took dear Edna home to Columbia County for the birth of little Addison, and her Amy May, born in May of 1910, was delivered at Key West because he would not stand for having his young wife pawed over in her labor by that barefoot mulatta man at Lost Man’s River who would probably use his oyster knife to shuck her out. Ted didn’t like it when his wife talked rough like that. Said E. J. was good friends with Richard Harden but insisted on more up-to-date care for his young Edna, and anyway, he added, getting cross, there was quite a few was shucked by Old Man Richard that were still alive today to tell the tale.

  Maybe Ted defended that old man because he let Hardens sneak into our store, not wanting to lose customers to Storters. Any Harden with a few pennies in his hand could knock on our door late of a Sunday evening and Ted Smallwood would go right down in his nightshirt, though he didn’t care for that mixed-breed bunch any more than I did: never knew their place or paid it no attention, I don’t know which is worse, and probably stole.

  On their way home from Key West, E. J. and Edna and little Amy May passed through on their way to Chatham River. Told about the man awaiting him, E. J. stopped short and said, “That man look Injun?”

  “Dark straight hair. Could be a breed.”

  “Look like some shiftless kind of preacher?”

  “No.” Ted would not grant any resemblance between that stranger and a man of God. I didn’t contradict my husband but Mister Watson glimpsed my doubt. Making that little bow, he asked “Miss Mamie” if he might impose on our hospitality once again? Would we look after Edna and the children while he saw to his visitor at Chatham Bend?

  In two days he came back for the family. The Watsons had a quarrel up in our spare room before Edna came down teary-eyed to get the children ready. Plainly this stranger’s presence on the Bend was a dreadful blow to that young woman. Not that she ever spoke of him, that day or later.

  All that hot summer, Edna and her children spent more time at Chokoloskee than at Chatham Bend. Stayed under our roof most of the time but also with Alice McKinney and Marie Lopez, who was newly wed to Wilson Alderman under that dilly tree at Lopez River. Wilson had worked on E. J. Watson’s farm in Columbia County, knew a lot about his murder trials in north Florida but would not speak about it. All the same, I reckon it was Wilson who let slip this John Smith’s real name.

  OWEN HARDEN

  With the wild things scarce and fishin poor, me’n Webster went to digging clams off Pavilion Key. We was glad to find Tant Jenkins there that we hadn’t hardly seen since he left Mister Watson, he was stilll lank as a dog and lots of fun. One day Watson showed up, and he hardly got ashore before ol’ Tant was riding him. “Lookee here what’s come to call! Damn if it ain’t that dretful desperader!” Us onlookers was hunting for a place to hide, but Watson was so tickled to see Tant, he just smiled and waved. Seeing that, Tant started showin off. “Well, men, I’m tellin you right here and now that Mr. S. S. Jenkins don’t aim to take no shit off this here dretful desperader just on account he’s some kind of a Emp-erer!”

  Mister Watson dearly loved that bony feller, he’d take about anything off Tant where he might of took his knife to someone else. But after the Tuckers, it seemed like Tant’s teasing had grew an edge to it, and this day he strutted around cocking his head back like a turkey gobbler, looking Mister Watson up and down. “Nosir, boys, I ain’t a-scaird of no damn desperader just on account he’s packing so much hardware under that coat he cain’t hardly walk!”

  Mister Watson laughed till he had to wipe his eyes. Tant purely made him feel good, you could see it. Only thing, feeling that edge, he made Tant finish what he started.

  Tant seemed to know that if he dared grin, dared let the air out of his own joke, he would lose the game. And this day he went too far, went to bobbin and weavin in and out, fists up like a boxer. His little mustache was just a-bristling. “Step up and take your punishment lest you ain’t man enough!” Watson grinned some more but that grin was a trap. He enjoyed letting this mouse run. Tant knew that, too, but couldn’t help himself, he bust out laughing, and Watson�
��s grin closed down tighter’n a orster.

  Ed Watson fished his watch out, looked it over, as if figuring how many minutes of life this man had left. The men all knew Ed must be foolin, but they couldn’t be dead sure so they edged away. Very sudden, Watson barked into Tant’s face, “You never heard about that feller who died laughing?” And them words purely terrified ol’ Tant, had him strugglin to pull some shape back to his face.

  Knowin Ed Watson as he did, Tant guessed quick that the man wanted him to put up some kind of fight, so he come right back as best he dared: he turned to us onlookers and swore in a tight voice that S. S. Jenkins had just seen the light and would never again make fun of this here Emperor, not even if we was to pay him fourteen dollars.

  With no money left when he came home and more work to be done than his home crew could handle, Ed Watson took any harvest labor he could find. Chatham Bend already had a reputation for hiring escaped convicts and got a worse one when rumors went around that field hands were disappearing. Course nobody knew who was down there in the first place, but people were hinting that Watson must be killing off his help when the time come to pay ’em. He had killed before, they said, he had that habit.

  Us Hardens never put no stock in what folks took to calling “Watson Payday.” But knowing what we knew about the Tuckers, we couldn’t quite forget about it either.

  The foreman at the Watson place was Dutchy Melville, a Key West hoodlum who got caught looting after the Hurricane of 1909, then burned down a cigar factory on account them Cubans wouldn’t pay him not to. Killed a lawman who tried to interfere but escaped the noose due to his youth and winning ways. Escaped from the chain gang, too, while he was at it, and stowed away on the Gladiator, it being well-knowed around Key West that Planter Watson weren’t particular about his help. Dutchy told his friends, I’ll go to Hell before I go back on no chain gang, and I ain’t goin neither place without I take a couple lawmen along with me. Probably meant that, too, Florida chain gangs being as close to Hell on earth as a man could get.