Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Tippins informed us we were going to Fort Myers for a court hearing. The Falcon picked up the other men at Chok before heading north. Edna Watson would not travel with us. My sister glared at us like we was convicted felons, boarding that ship in chains.

  MAMIE SMALLWOOD

  No one ever forgot the Great Hurricane of October 1910, not around here. Everything not torn away was salt-soaked and rotted, trees down everywhere and marly muck. It seemed like our world would never come clean again, nor our souls either. Ted removed most of our drowned chickens but that reek of death came up through the floor a month or more before we could get the store put back together and he had time to crawl back under there, rake out the last of ’em. Mama Ida called it the sulphur stench of Satan coming up from everlasting Hell where you-know-who was suffering the torments of the damned this very minute, her expression said.

  Because he had stayed out of it, my Ted was one of the few men with no cause to feel ashamed. Course Daddy and the boys felt no shame either, which explains the hard feelings in our families that’s still festering today.

  On October 25th, Frank Tippins finally showed up with the Monroe sheriff. The men informed ’em that the law had come too late. Where they ain’t no law, you got to make your own—I’ll bet those sheriffs heard that one a few times! But Tippins chose to see that as a confession and issued a summons to Lee County Court for the whole darned bunch, Daddy included.

  I’d heard a whisper that the feller who shot first was the same man whose bullet killed Ed Watson. I was frightened it was Bill or Daddy. When I asked my brother about this, he just shook his head. “Well, Bill,” I said, “what does that darned headshake tell me, yes or no?” And he said, “Mamie, there ain’t no way to explain. It ain’t a matter of yes or no so just forget about it.”

  FRANK B. TIPPINS

  While those men told how E. J. Watson died, I only grunted, shifting my chaw. Something was missing in their story, I informed them after I had spat; we would have to take them all to court, procure some depositions under oath for a grand jury hearing. Their faces closed. They had agreed on their story, I saw that, and the law could take it or leave it.

  Sheriff Clem Jaycox from Key West, taking the hint, whistled in disgust and sucked his teeth. Never mind if Watson had it coming or he didn’t, there was murder perpetated on the shores of Monroe County, Jaycox advised ’em, so someone had to pay. Mr. C. Boggess explained in a big hurry that while he himself had took no part, he could not find it in his heart to blame his neighbors for what they had to perpetate in self-defense. All the men nodded, all but Smallwood, who only shook his head and turned away.

  At Chatham Bend we found no sign of Cox nor the dead squaw that nigger had reported. The men suggested that her people must have come and cut her down and taken her away. But how did those Injuns learn that she was dead? Had that nigger lied about that squaw, and if so, why? And if he lied about the squaw, what about Cox? All we had there was that nigger’s story.

  On the way back north, we took the witnesses aboard. Though Ted Smallwood disapproved of what they did, these men wanted the postmaster to come to court to testify to their God-fearing characters, him being the closest thing they had to a federal officer. Smallwood had an awful mess to clean out under his store but agreed to go. “All right, Bill?” he asked his brother-in-law, kind of sardonic. The man shrugged. “Up to you,” he said. I had my eye on this House feller, who was short-spoken that day with almost everybody.

  House’s daddy, Mr. D. D. House, stood arms folded on his chest, close to the boiling point. The men had made Bill House their spokesman, and House announced he would refuse to testify if the law dragged an old man away like a damn criminal that throughout his life had been too honest for his own good. If his dad was left out of it and his young brothers, too, why, he would give all the testimony we needed. When I agreed, his brothers squawked—they were all slicked up, with shoes on, set to go—but the old man turned and marched ’em home, never looked back.

  The Widow Watson and her children were all packed and ready, but when she came down to the shore, she saw that dark stain, like a shadow, where they let her husband lay all the night before. This upset her badly. Seeing the suspects watching from the Falcon’s deck, she started to tremble, then fled back to the store. Mrs. Smallwood advised me she would tend to Mrs. Watson and the children and put them on the mail boat in a few days’ time. She was furious. She flew down to the boat and hollered, “Which one of you brave fellers stole his watch?” Nobody answered. Those men were angry, too. Whole coast was angry.

  I said quick and hard, to startle them, “I heard there was a gang of boys around the body.” For a second there, nobody said a word. Then one said, “Might could been that Daniels kid took his gold watch. Crockett. One they call ‘Speck.’ ” And another snapped, “Takes a damn fool to say a name when he got no proof.”

  Rabbit Key was four miles west of Chokoloskee, on the Gulf, and the Monroe County line passed through it, west and east. Captain Collier sailed out Rabbit Key Pass so I could see just where the grave was. Man named Yeomans sang out, “We run that devil clean out of Lee County, planted him over on the Monroe side!” Charley Johnson crowed, “Wrapped him nice and tight, ready to box and ship!” They gazed away when I asked why they hog-tied a corpse. Then some man muttered that with bound limbs, the body towed better. “Superstitious, that’s why,” Smallwood commented. “Scared that otherwise he might rise up in the night, walk on water back to Chokoloskee.” And why, I asked, had they towed the body in the first place instead of wrapping it in canvas and laying it in the stern? “Treating him like a dead animal,” Smallwood said, “made E. J. seem more guilty and them less.”

  Bill House kept his mouth shut till he’d thought that over. Then he said, “Ted? How come you claim to know how we was feeling when you don’t hardly know how you felt yourself?” And Smallwood said, “You and me ain’t going to settle that one, Bill. Not today and not tomorrow. Maybe never.”

  Smallwood took his hat off as the Falcon passed the grave, but the others only stared away till that lone mangrove fell astern, and even then, they stayed quiet a good while, looking out to sea.

  On the voyage north, one man drawed near while I pissed over the rail, tried to whisper away his own role in the killing. Pled self-defense asking a lawman to believe that Mr. Watson had made a felonious assault on twenty or more armed men. (Turned out all twenty had fired at the exact same instant, making it impossible to say who fired first.) Anyway, this feller recollected that he had missed the victim on purpose, out of his great respect for human life.

  By now, the rest had learned what he was up to and were crowding around to make their own excuses. Bill House was the only man who did not try to explain and the only one, as I had already guessed, who would give me trouble.

  These men weren’t killers. They were honest settlers, fishermen and farmers, most had wives and children; they had built a schoolhouse (lost in the storm) and sent away for a teacher and they held prayer meetings whenever they could find a circuit preacher. Yet when twenty men slay one, some responsibility must be taken. Were they protecting somebody? Maybe House’s tough old daddy? Even if they’d been telling us the truth, it wasn’t the whole-truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth a court of justice would demand. That truth would have to be scared out of them when they were under oath at a court hearing.

  Thinking about that night at Marco when the victim sat across from me at this very same table, I was already impatient with their story. I can’t say I made friends with Mr. Watson but I had to respect him. I had wanted to believe him. Maybe that’s why I tended to believe he had killed Cox after all, just as he’d said.

  • • •

  Bill House kept himself apart, in heavy humor. When I told him all he had to do was give his best recollection of the shooting, give an affidavit, he said he disliked being arrested like a criminal when no crime had been committed. Like these men said, they all fired in self-defense. Was I questioning
their word ?

  “Just doing my job,” I said. “Did Mr. Watson inflict injury on any man before you killed him?”

  The men swapped quick uneasy glances. Jaycox pretended to make a note. House glared straight past me.

  The Falcon sailed north, putting in for water at Caxambas. But Caxambas had no water to spare: not a drop of rain, folks told us, in the fortnight since the storm, and no sun either. In this dead gray weather, that settlement looked like broken pieces of some godforsaken outpost that the hurricane had flung onto this coast, ripping off the clam factory roof, smashing in the store; kids were diving for canned food in the channel. These refugee families huddled every night in Mrs. Barfield’s lodging house, known as the Barfield Heights Hotel because it sat high on the big Indian mound here at south Marco.

  A small wild woman from Pavilion Key led a young girl down to the dock to screech, “Lookit these here yeller dogs that massacreed your daddy! Took this whole pack to pull one good man down!” She wore her hair loose like she’d just come from bed, though this was considered trashy and her child seemed to know it. Maybe ten years old and skinny, the child had fair thin hair and a scared face that looked worried about what might become of her, while the woman tossed that hair around and cussed out my witnesses so vilely that I had to warn her against causing a drunken disturbance. “A lady has prescribed herself a draft of spirits for a broken heart,” she wailed. “Is that a sin?”

  All the men knew that Tant Jenkins’s sister had lost her infant son at Pavilion Key during the storm. The woman hollered that her baby had been taken by the hand of the Almighty so Charley Johnson hollered back (as most of the men laughed) that she sure was right because her baby was the spawn of that bloody-handed devil who had brought the Almighty’s wrath down on this coast back in the first place. “The child of deviltry and mortal sin”—that’s what Mr. Johnson called that little perished boy.

  • • •

  At Fort Myers, I led the men straight to the courthouse, where Eddie Watson, dropping papers at the sight of his father’s slayers, claimed he’d stayed late to finish up some work. One man knew him by sight and the rest learned in a hurry who he was. Bill House exclaimed, “For Chrissake, Sheriff, how about giving that young feller the day off?” I didn’t like his tone but he was right. I told Eddie he could go, I’d find someone else to record the depositions. Nosir, Eddie answered loudly, he weren’t brought up to cut and run from a gang of lynchers: this was his job as deputy court clerk of Lee County and he aimed to do it. He took up his pad and sat himself stiff as a stick in the clerk’s chair as I struggled to control my aggravation.

  In his reddish looks, Eddie took after his daddy, with the same kind of husky mulishness about him; what was missing was the fire in his color. He put me in mind of a strong tree dead at the heart.

  Bill House nodded at Eddie before beginning his account, which would turn out to be the official Chokoloskee version of the Death of Watson; having little to add, the others mainly testified that they agreed. Being uneasy around Watson’s son, some frowned real fierce to justify what they had done while others only looked a little sad, as if to hint that their experience of shedding blood might have wounded them somewhat worse than it had his father. One or two tried a friendly smile, to show that all that unpleasantness was in the past or anyway nothing personal. Eddie ignored them. That young feller took it all down in his notebook, he could have been reporting the church supper. When the men were finished, he rapped the notebook down and slapped it shut, to show his contempt for the false witness of a lynch mob.

  Well, it weren’t that simple. Eddie Watson had kept strictly to himself whatever he knew or thought or felt about his daddy’s trial in north Florida two years before, including his true opinion of his guilt or innocence. Since returning to Fort Myers, however, he had missed no chance to state or otherwise establish that he was E. E. Watson, not E. J. Watson Jr. so it seemed to me that this show of filial loyalty came somewhat late.

  Ted Smallwood testified that he had not witnessed the shooting, only heard it, so he could not say that Bill House’s account was not true “far as it went.” House looked disgusted but remained silent. Smallwood and a couple of others signed their names and House and the rest took pains drawing their Xs, to make sure that X would not be mistaken for somebody else’s. I told ’em they were free to go on home and wait for the grand jury to decide whether or when they were going to be indicted.

  “Decide if we are criminals?” Bill House asked. “That what you mean?”

  Walter Langford and Jim Cole had arrived in time to hear me mention the grand jury, and Cole was bitching even before I finished. How could a grand jury indict when the only eyewitnesses were the defendants? By law, these men could not be compelled to incriminate themselves so it made no sense to summon a grand jury—!

  Langford raised both palms to slow Cole down. The new president of the Florida First National had a stiff collar and cravat to go with his new million-dollar smile, served up these days with everything he said. Ol’ Walt had the jowls of a drinker and banker both; the days were gone when those honest cowboy bones showed through the lard. His honey hair was slick and tight as a wild duck’s wing and his nails were pink and he reeked like a barbershop, but all that lotion couldn’t cover up the whiskey.

  Langford spoke in a hushed voice “on behalf of the victim’s family,” glancing at Cole for approval every few seconds while forgetting the victim’s son a few feet away. He urged the sheriff to understand that the most merciful solution was to shelve the whole tragedy as soon as possible rather than “waste our public money dragging these men through the courts when there was no way justice could be done.”

  The suspects were already upset by Eddie’s presence and Langford gave them the excuse they needed to get mad. House jumped to his feet. “His death weren’t no tragedy! The tragedy was all them deaths at Chatham Bend!” Isaac Yeomans hollered out. “Justice was done, you stupid bastard, and I’m proud we done it!”

  “Lordy!” Walt went red as beef. “Look, I’m only trying to help you people—”

  “Go on home, then,” Charley Johnson said.

  I advised the banker that by law, a violent death could never be ignored and that due process had to follow an indictment.

  Taking me by the elbow in that way he has, Jim Cole eased me out into the corridor as if we were up to something sneaky. “Walt’s right, you know.” He was wheezing as he pleaded, and his breath smelled of old liver and onions. “Why not just drop it, Frank? Forget it.”

  “Lee County can’t ‘just forget’ a murder.”

  “It ain’t murder if you deputize ’em as a posse.”

  “Little late,” I’d say, “to form a posse.”

  “Is it? State’s attorney owes me a favor, and he won’t pester you for no damn dates. You got my word.”

  “Your word.” I felt worn out. “How about justice?”

  “How about it, Frank?” Cole snorted that fat laugh of his, slapping my biceps with the back of his thick hand to remind me I was in his debt because young Frank B. Tippins came into this office with Jim Cole’s support and had made a few mistakes that Jim Cole knew about.

  Well, I came in honest. I never asked for his support, never understood at first why he was so eager to befriend me. Had to learn that the cowmen and their cronies owned this town and ran it any old way they wanted, laws be damned. To do my job, I had to work around that, learn to give and take. So, yes, I took a little finally, cut a few corners.

  My worst mistake was leasing out buck niggers off my road gangs for labor at Deep Lake. Cole fixed it with Langford. They paid nine dollars per week per head, plus one dollar per week for the Injuns I had to hire to hunt those boys down when they ran away. Paying convicts directly for their labor was against the law but I always aimed to turn over that pay when their time was done. However, very few showed up to pester me, they just disappeared. Same old story: the cash box sat there month after month, and one day I borrowed ou
t of it, forgot to put it back.

  Cole got wind of this some way; he would wink and nudge each time he brought the money. “Don’t let me catch you giving one red cent to them bad niggers, Frank. Don’t want my sheriff doing nothing that ain’t legal.” My sheriff! And he’d slap my arm with the backs of his fat fingers in that same loose way he did it now, to remind me how deep he had me in his dirty pocket, along with all the crumbs and sticky nickels.

  I went back into the courtroom in a fury and deputized every man but Smallwood. A mob of murder suspects got appointed as a posse to arrest the man they’d killed, a man already stone-cold dead under the sand. And nothing was done that day or later to establish responsibility because deputizing the shooters made the shooting legal. As a sheriff ’s posse my new deputies went home feeling much better about what they did that day at Chokoloskee, not as a mob but in the line of duty.

  The only angry feller besides me was William House, who refused to be sworn in. He punched the wall, then came forward and denounced the sneaky way he and his neighbors had been implicated and then let off although no crime had been committed in the first place. Said he’d damn well go to trial by himself if that was the only way he could clear his name.

  “Well? What do I do now, goddammit?” he demanded when I ignored him.

  “Do anything you damn well want. None of my business any more.”

  He nodded. “That nigra who risked his neck, broke the case open for you. What happens to him ain’t none of your business neither, ain’t that correct? You’ll turn him over to Monroe County and then you’re clear of it, correct?”

  “Correct,” I said, not looking up from the court clerk’s desk where I pretended to sort through some papers. When he didn’t move, simply waited there, I cocked an eye in warning. “That nigger’s gonna see some justice, Bill. Same justice you gave Mr. Watson,” I added, “according to your Chokoloskee story.”