Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  The hurricane had took away Ted’s dock so the Warrior come in just east of the boatway. Cut his motor maybe twenty yards out, let her wake come up under the stern and ride her high onto the shore.

  Grounding her fast and hard like that, with that loud crunch, Watson took the whole crowd by surprise. The fellers behind us give a grunt and snort as they backed up, jostling like steers at the chute, and somebody shit his pants cause we could smell it.

  Some has said he never left his boat. Well, our House gang was right up front and seen it. Timed his move forward as she went aground and jumped as the bow struck, holding his shotgun up across his chest and twisting in the air so’s to land where he could cover the whole crowd. Must of knowed he risked getting hisself shot by the most nervous one out of buck fever, cause right away he dropped his barrels down along his leg, no threat to nobody but where he could still swing ’em up fast if he had to.

  E. J. Watson knew his neighbors, knew we lacked experience at pointing guns at feller men, never mind pulling the trigger. All of us stood stock still and staring, feeling stupid, as if we’d come outside at evening to have us a bat shoot or something. On that twilight shore on October 24 of 1910, the only man who appeared easy—the only man who “leev in his own skeen,” as the old Frenchman used to say—was E. J. Watson, but I believe that underneath he was as scared as we was.

  Knowing how quick and wily Watson was, we had no doubt he had calculated his chances pretty close long before his bow struck ashore. Probably figured if he made it into court, he’d beat the charge, because only his nigra had him implicated, and even that man had backed off his own story, put it all on Cox. As usual, there really weren’t no good evidence against him. But being so smart, he would also figure that some of us might be smart enough to know that, too, and might just lynch him.

  “Evening!” he said, his smile friendly as ever. “Anybody seen Mrs. Watson and the children?”—his way of reminding us that Ed J. Watson was a family man and not no common killer. The man knew from start to finish just what he was doing. Having bluffed us twice in the last fortnight, he was pretty sure he could pull it off again. Them double barrels down along his leg reminded us how fast us ones up front could be laying there stone dead, whilst his friendly grin took the last fight out of those fellers that wasn’t scared half sick to death already.

  The soft water sound of the Warrior’s wake, still follering in, riffled and washed along the muddied shore. Dusk had come and the miskeeters. We was too tense to pay ’em any mind.

  D. D. House was the man nearest to Watson. I stood alongside him on his right hand, young Dan and Lloyd on his left. The rest were kind of bunched on that left side.

  D. D. House was an impatient man, never liked to wait. He said, “You got a body in that boat? Where’s his head?”

  Boys, Watson said, he sure was sorry to disappoint ’em. He’d shot Cox as planned when that skunk come down to meet him at the dock but damned if the body didn’t roll right off into the current. Worked for two days with gator hooks in that storm flood, never come up with him. Nosir, all he had to show was the bullet hole in Cox’s hat. And he dragged a crumped-up brown felt hat out of his coat pocket and held it out to Daddy with a rueful smile.

  Daddy shook his head, he wouldn’t take it. “That hat ain’t good enough.”

  “Sir? Not good enough for what?” Watson’s voice turned cold.

  Someone leaned and whispered in my ear, “Cox never wore no hat, the

  times I seen him.” Watson with his wolf ears snapped, “How’d that go, Wilson?” and I thought, Lordamighty! What’s he doing here? Alderman had worked for Watson in north Florida and still passed for his friend; the Watson family was lodging in his cabin.

  When my dad would not accept the hat, Ed Watson poked a finger through the bullet hole and beckoned comically like he might do with little kids or dogs or idiots. Angry that Pap refused to take his word, maybe outraged that Alderman stood there with us, he was rubbing our noses in that hat, defying us. (Erskine Thompson seen it later, claimed it were the same hat Watson shot off the old French man’s head back in the nineties that had hung on a peg in his kitchen ever since.)

  Watson lifted the hat with his finger through the hole and twirled it. nobody spoke. Some feller broke wind. Nobody laughed. This weren’t no kind of joke but a damn insult. Watson waited, gazing from face to face. Eyes flinched when he yanked his hand out of his coat to slap a skeeter on his neck. Didn’t slap it exactly, just reached up slow and pinched it dead, then studied the blood between his thumb and finger like that blood was a sign of something he should know about.

  A breeze came racketing through the storm-torn palms, died away too quick. Isaac Yeomans spat, maybe more loud and disgusted than us other fellers might of wanted. “You use your revolver, Ed? That shotgun never made that hole in that damn hat.”

  Watson smiled a disappointed smile, shaking his head. At the Bend, he had left his shotgun in the boat to make sure Cox let him come close enough to talk, after which he had taken care of him with his revolver. “See for yourself.” He pointed at his boat. “Got his damn blood all over my stern.”

  Pap said, “You told us he fell off your dock.”

  “That’s correct. Fell headfirst onto the transom, bleeding like hell, thrashed off the stern into the current before I could grab hold of him.”

  Isaac waded out to inspect the cockpit. “There’s blood all right,” he said. He put his finger to the blood, then sniffed it. “Smells like fresh fish,” he said. “It sure ain’t three days old.”

  That’s when Pap said quietly, “Might be a good idea to hand over your weapons, Watson.”

  Slow and growly, Watson said, “Nosir, Mr. House. That ain’t a good idea at all.” When he hitched his gun onto his arm, there come a gasp and shuffle, and I never had to look behind to know which ones was getting set to scatter. Why was his neighbors acting so suspicious, Watson inquired kind of grieved. He could not figure for the life of him why his friends and neighbors would treat him like some kind of a criminal when they knew Cox was the guilty man and Cox was dead.

  But he wasn’t really arguing no more, he was gathering himself for his next move. Pap must of seen it that same way cause he warned him hoarse and urgent, “Better drop that gun.” But Watson only gazed over his head toward the store where Mrs. Watson had come outside with my sister and was starting down to meet him. Maybe he seen her. Maybe he seen his Lost Man’s friends, just watching. Maybe he wondered why none of them friends such as Erskine ever tried to warn him, wave him away from shore, never even hollered at him now to drop his weapons. Not one man came down to meet him. They were keeping a safe distance, out of shotgun range.

  He looked lost—the only time I ever seen Ed Watson seem unsure what to do next. For one second there, I might have felt a little sorry for him. That feeling passed quick. In the shift of an eye, he had a ears-back look, real hard and mean, like he would take your life and not think twice about it. Of course that look might of been put on to bluff and scare us.

  “Mister Watson, you are under arrest,” I warned, to back Pap up. “Citizen’s arrest,” said Isaac Yeomans.

  “Citizen’s arrest?” Watson spat out his contempt and ground the spit into the ground, hard, with his boot toe. “You boys are full of shit,” he grated, shifting his feet a little, shifting his weapon. “You have a warrant?”

  Hearing that anger, so sudden and so cold, beyond all reach, the line of men went wobbly, and some of ’em, I ain’t saying which ones, begun to whine: If there ain’t no warrant, it ain’t legal, ain’t that right, boys? Ed ain’t all wrong on that, y’know. . . . Well, I mean, to heck with it, we best go on home till we think this over. But D. D. House had to finish what he started, sons or no sons, he never really knew no other way. When he growled, “Watson, lay that gun down by the count of three,” his sons stiffened, set to fire at the first wrong move.

  We was all bad scared, which makes men skittish, very dangerous. We was tense and
all bunched up; he could do some heavy damage with a shotgun. But after so many close calls on so many frontiers, the man might have seen in them stiff weary faces that this time his neighbors meant business, that maybe his luck was running out, that the day had come when he might not talk his way into the clear.

  When D. D. House stepped forward to take his gun, Ed Watson raised his palm up high like some kind of old-time prophet in the Bible. At first I thought he was about to say, Okay, I quit. You win. Later I realized he had stopped us at good shotgun range if killing and crippling more than two was what was wanted. Maybe that were not his plan but that’s the way it looked. Two charges of buckshot would knock down the leaders, scatter the rest, and he might keep ’em ducking with his revolver while he pushed his boat back off the beach, crouched to reload, shot his way out of there. At that range, with a panicked crowd, he might have got away with it; the trouble was—so’s to keep his gun handy when he jumped instead of fooling with a bow line—he’d run his boat aground on a falling tide to where he’d never push her off without some help.

  A bad mistake, some said. I don’t think so. I don’t think Watson made mistakes like that. I doubt if he ever considered shooting his way out. His chances were poor and anyway, a man so proud would not leave his family behind.

  When Watson swung that shotgun up, my guts clenched tight to meet the burning lead. I knew we was done for, Pap did, too, because we was looking down both barrels and we seen them jump, that’s how hard Watson pulled his triggers. To fit storm-swollen shells into the breech, he’d peeled ’em down too much, the paper didn’t hold, that was the theory: when them barrels tipped, the buckshot rolled right out the muzzles. I ain’t saying I seen them pellets but some claim they did.

  I don’t recall swinging my rifle up or squeezing the trigger but I do know I fired. After that, all them guns let go together.

  Ed Watson was spun half around but didn’t fall. I reckon he died before his shotgun hit the ground, but his legs kicked back some way and drove his body on, pitching him forward against that roar and fire. His coat and shirt jumped, whacked by lead, the sound of his hard life being whacked out of him. Some say they seen his gun stock splinter, seen his revolver spin away. Me, I seen his mouth yank, seen blood jump where his left eye burst. Christ. And still he came.

  Hell, we all seen it, ain’t one man won’t say the same: with all that lead in him, Ed Watson kept on coming, that’s how headstrong that man was even in death—that was the demon in him, Mama Ida House would say for long years after, cause only a demon could scare folks as bad as that after they exercised him. He never crumpled but fell slow as a felled tree.

  Seeing him come ahead that way, the men yelled and crowded backward. Then the evening broke apart, the line surged forward, near to knocked me down. It was purely uproar, hollering and cussing. They were a damn mob now for sure, with young boys running up and down snapping their slingshots at the body, yapping like dogs, and every dog on that dark island howling.

  Our neighbor lay face down on the bloody ground like he wanted to peer into the darkness all the way down to the center of the earth. The broad back in the black coat had no breath to swell it. Never jerked nor spasmed, never groaned nor gargled. Them fire-colored curls on his sun-creased neck was all that twitched even a little in the evening wind.

  Fallen angel, Mama Ida said, and it was true. Laying so still at our feet, Mister Watson looked like he had fell all the way from Heaven. You never seen a man so dead in all your life.

  HOAD STORTER

  In Everglade the cisterns were four-five feet below the ground, two above, and the water generally stayed cool and clear, but after the Great Hurricane they were flooded out with brine and mud and after that we had more’n a month of wind and a hard drought. The heavens were gray as old torn rags wrung dry.

  On October 24, late afternoon, my brother and I had rowed across to Chokoloskee, hunting fresh water. We were rounding the point west of Smallwood’s store when a loud racketing of guns broke out; it was just dark enough to see the muzzle fire. For a few moments, silence fell over that island like a blow, and out of that silence for just one brief moment rose the voice of a night bird, over and over, so loud and clear I had to wonder if that bird had sung right through the shooting and continued on through the dog and human outcry we heard next.

  Mister Watson had run his Warrior right up on shore. His body lay on the bank just off her bow, circled by sniffing dogs. No man stood near him. We went ashore with our water jugs, trying to keep out of the way. Watching from a little distance we could see that while some men were yelling angrily, others were crowing in relief, passing a jug. Some seemed to wander around shocked, avoiding talk with anyone at all; other ones could not stop talking—not listening, you know, just talking, the way crazy people do—and these ones swore it was nobody’s fault, the dead man tried to attack the crowd, kept coming after he was shot to death three or four times over. And all this while, over the excited voices, that night bird came and went, over and over and over, wip, wip, WEE-too!

  BILL HOUSE

  What I never forgot was the shock of silence after the shock of noise. First thing I heard out of that silence was a woman’s high clear voice—Oh God! Oh God! They are killing Mister Watson! By the time Edna Watson realized what had happened, her husband was dead and on his way to Hell.

  Watson’s young family was sunk down on the store steps in a sobbing heap. Poor Edna was plain terrified, my sister said, that this “mob,” having tasted blood, might turn on the dead man’s widow and his little children. I hate to admit this but she weren’t all wrong. Their fear made these men vengeful, and the most dangerous was the very ones who had looked the other way for all them years—the ones claimed Watson never killed a soul, only one-two riffraff on his place that had it coming. Same ones who was so angry he had scared ’em all them years that they pumped bullets into the dead body. These same brave fellers scared his widow so bad that she grabbed her kids and crawled on hands and knees under the store, even cheered and jeered the fine round of her hip when her frock tore as she crawled into the dark, then dirty-joked about Old Man Watson mounting his young mare. If that man laying there had could of heard how them men terrified his wife and little children, he’d of flew straight back from Hell like an avenging angel.

  I hollered, tried to shame ’em off like I’d caught ’em peeping at some lady in the bushes, then quit because I weren’t no better. I peeped, too.

  Mortified, I called under the store, “Come on out, Mis Edna! Ain’t nothing to be feared of!” (To say something that stupid with my rifle barrel still warm and her dead husband, too? That poor widow must of thought I lost my mind!) All that come back was little squeaks and whimpering. Poor things was huddled in there amongst them putrefied chickens for damn near an hour, laying still as rabbits, though the skeeters was whining something terrible and that stink was sickening, just awful.

  My sister done her best to soothe ’em, murmuring down between her storm-warped floorboards like she might talk to a scaredy-cat or something. When finally the last men was gone and she could coax ’em out, them poor souls stunk so bad that the family where they was lodging wouldn’t take ’em back. That stink was only the excuse for what them people was aiming to do anyway. They had a new baby and was scared Cox might come prowling after Edna like he done up in north Florida, was the excuse. Told that little family they weren’t welcome because they had the stench of Hell on ’em. Pushed her stuff at Edna through the door crack. Didn’t want no truck with outcasts, not with armed drunks wandering around, not with Cox still on the loose. And here Wilson Alderman who was supposed to be Ed Watson’s friend was right there alongside of us down at the landing, though of course he would claim he never pulled his trigger. Didn’t want either side to think the less of him, I reckon.

  So here it was black moonless night and the mother crazed by her own fear and them broken kids bewailing that queer mound down by the water that had been their daddy.

&nb
sp; Mamie took Edna and her kids into her tore-up house. My sister has ugly ideas when it comes to nigras, but she has grit and a big heart. Lots of our Chokoloskee folks are that same way. Mule-head ignorant, suspicious of everyone except their own, but good, tough, honest, God-fearing Americans that lives out a hard poor life and don’t complain.

  HOAD STORTER

  We never got home to Everglade till bedtime. We told our family all we’d seen and heard, and still they pestered us with questions, trying to figure out what they should feel as their dead friend’s friends. I told ’em what we had been told (the official story, as Dad called it, kind of bitter), how Mr. Watson tried to murder Mr. D. D. House but his damp shells misfired, by which time the posse was already shooting.

  “The posse?” Dad shook his head, disgusted. “If his shells misfired, what makes ’em so darned sure he pulled his triggers?”

  “One man claimed he saw his barrels yank when he tried to shoot. Saw pellets rolling out the barrels.”

  “What man?”

  “You sound like you doubt Hoad’s word,” my mother chided him. “It’s not Hoad’s word I doubt,” Dad said. “It’s the whole story. Something’s missing.” But I got the feeling that in the end, they felt some way relieved. Didn’t want to feel relieved, just couldn’t help it.

  Some would say in later years that folks just had enough of Mister Watson, they got tired of him. Said the lynching had been planned by Houses, who wanted to make sure his 150-gallon boilers and new machinery didn’t put their own small sugar operation out of business. Others in the crowd protested, said if they’d known this was supposed to be a lynching they would have never taken part. His neighbors were split bad over Ed Watson and they are today.