Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  “So these ol’ woods was buzzing like a hornet swarm, and the men gathered, all riled up and ready to go. When the sheriff showed up from Lake City, his deputy come across hoof prints in the woods and followed that track south a mile to Watson’s place. Folks suspected Leslie was in on it but he run off someplace. Anyway, they didn’t have nothing on him.

  “Ed Watson stood boldly in his door though he surely knew what that crowd of men was there for. Come time to step forward and arrest him, there weren’t no volunteers, nobody weren’t as riled as what they thought they was. So Josiah Burdett—that’s Herkie’s daddy—Joe said, “Well, I will go.” Just upped and done it. Dogged little fella, y’know, soft-spoken, he seemed to hide behind his scraggy horse-tail beard that come down like a bib right to his belt buckle, but when he said that he would go get Watson, they knew he meant it. My brother Brooks was so impressed that when another volunteer was called for, Brooks raised his hand and said, ‘Well, I’ll go with him.’

  “Them two went up the hill to Watson’s gate. Watson had gone back inside, so Joe called, ‘Edgar, you better come on out!’ When he came out, they had their guns on him but didn’t have no warrant, so Watson said, ‘I’m sorry, Joe, but if you have no warrant then I can’t come with you.’ And Joe Burdett said, ‘Well I reckon you better come.” Probably didn’t care to shoot him down in front of his boy Herkie’s childhood sweetheart.’

  “Watson took that very calm, never protested. ‘If you boys aim to arrest an innocent man,’ he said, ‘let’s get it over with.’ Seeing Herkie’s dad, Edna busted right out crying, and her babies, too. ‘Uncle Joe, Mr. Watson ain’t done nothing wrong! He’s been home here right along!’ But Joe Burdett only shook his head, so Watson said, ‘Well, then, I’ll just step inside, change to my Sunday best, cause I don’t want to give our community a bad name by going up to town in these soiled overalls.’ Burdett says, ‘Nosir, Edgar. You ain’t going back inside.’ So Edna brought him his clean clothes and Watson says, ‘I’ll just step into my shed to change, be with you fellers in a minute.’ Joe Burdett was too smart for that one, too. Told Brooks, ‘Go take a look, make sure there ain’t no weapon hid in there.’ And sure enough, Brooks found an old six-gun, loaded, back of a loose slat on the crib wall.

  “Ed Watson changed his clothes outside on a cold March day, stripped right down to his long johns. Joe told him he better instruct Edna what he wanted done around his farm, and Edgar said, ‘Nosir, that will not be necessary, cause bein innocent, I will not be gone for long.’ Said he would sure appreciate it if he could just step inside while he give his dear wife a kiss good-bye. Joe Burdett shook his head. Let Watson get a foothold, see, there wouldn’t a-been no Josiah Burdett and no Brooks Kinard neither. Watson, he knew how to shoot, he didn’t miss.

  “Edgar told his wife to calm herself, he’d be home soon, on account he was innocent and had a alibi. Never turned to wave, never looked back. That man walked down to where the crowd was waiting, looked ’em in the eye, and strode off down the road like they’d made him their leader. They had to hurry to keep up.

  “For years after, all them fellers spoke about Ed Watson’s inner strength that saw him through. If he was afraid he never showed it, and that scary calm got poor Brooks worrying that Mr. Watson might be innocent just like he said; Brooks prayed for guidance from the Lord when he went to bed. But our older brother Luther told him, ‘Boy, a guiltier man than Edgar Watson ain’t never drawed breath in this county so don’t you go pestering the Almighty. The Good Lord got plenty to take care of without that.’

  “Watson hired fancy lawyers, got his trial moved after a lynch mob went to get him in Lake City. Luther Kinard was in that mob. These were the men most outraged against Watson. But when Watson ducked the noose, and Les Cox, too, they were the ones most frightened, knowing that them killers knew who had wanted to see ’em lynched and was honor bound to seek revenge. Might show up after dark, y’know, drill a feller coming from the barn or through the winder while he ate his supper. All that winter, the whole countryside was on the lookout. So when Edna’s family passed the news that Edgar had took her away to Thousand Islands, folks was overjoyed. Then came that January dusk when someone seen Cox walking down the road.

  “That spring there weren’t no Tolen Team so Leslie tried to pitch for Columbia City. It was so pitiful that I felt bad for him because his nerves was gone. Lost his control, he was just dead wild, and the worse he pitched, the harder he threw, till the other team become afraid to go to bat. The crowd sat quiet, watched him fall to pieces. I can see him yet today, slamming his glove down on the mound, raising the dust. Finally his own team wouldn’t take the field behind him, he was out there on the pitcher’s mound alone. So naturally Les picked a fight, punched some feller bloody till they hauled him off. Went stomping off the field in a bad silence because nobody dared razz him. Far as I know, he never pitched again.

  “Les finally seen there was no place for him, not around here. He wanted to go to Watson’s in the Islands but he needed money and he knew just where to get it. I reckon he felt humiliated, and when that feller felt humiliated, someone would pay.”

  THE BANKS FAMILY

  “Beyond that line of pecan trees is where the Banks family had their cabin. Two rooms with a kitchen shed out back, same as the rest of us. Calvin Banks had him a farm, run eighty head of cattle, worked hard cutting railroad ties, and done odd jobs. That nigra aimed to get ahead and had sense enough to save some money but not enough to take it to the bank. Calvin was taught that Jesus loved him so he trusted people. Carried his dollars in a little old satchel over his shoulder, and when he bought something, he’d take that satchel out and pay, so people seen he had money in there, twenty-dollar gold pieces and silver dollars and some greenbacks, too. My dad would say, ‘If he don’t look out, somebody’s liable to take and rob that nigra.’ Well, somebody done that, robbed and killed Calvin and his wife and another nigra along with ’em, and that somebody was William Leslie Cox.

  “We figured Les tried to scare Calvin into telling where his money was hid, then shot him when he wouldn’t do that. Calvin Banks was maybe sixty and Aunt Celia well up into her seventies, near blind and she had rheumatism, couldn’t run no more: might been setting on the stoop warming her bones. Looked like Les shot her right out of her rocker but some has said she slipped down off the stoop, tried to crawl under the cabin. Don’t know how folks knew so doggone much unless Les bragged on it, which knowing Les, I reckon he sure did. Killed the old man inside, Aunt Celia on the stoop, then the son-in-law out here on the road. Didn’t want no witnesses, I reckon.

  “Story was that Leslie got thirteen thousand dollars but our dad said it weren’t no more than maybe three hundred at the most. Back in them days a field hand got paid twelve to fifteen dollars a month, so even three hundred was a lot of money. One thing for sure, Les tore through that little cabin. I seen the mess next day. They said it was him took that metal box that two years later turned up empty in the woods, said it contained all silver dollars, so his mule had a tough time, had to walk lopsided. Les borrowed that mule from his cousin Oscar Sanford who told my brother Luther all about it.

  “Our family field was directly west across the Fort White Road. On that late autumn afternoon us Kinards was picking cotton when Oscar Sanford come along, headed toward the Banks place on his mule. We heard one shot across the fields and then another, then in a little while another. Stood up to listen but finally decided someone was out hunting. Not till next day did we learn it was them poor coloreds getting killed.

  “At the sound of those shots, Oscar turned that mule around and headed back home in a hurry. My brother Luther was putting in a well for Sanfords that same day, stayed over so he could finish work early next morning. In the evening Cox come by all pale and out of breath. Made my brother nervous, cause Luther had joined the Watson lynch mob and Les knew it. But Les paid no attention to him, just jerked his head toward the door, and him and Oscar went outside to talk. Might h
ave wanted the borrow of that mule to go fetch that metal box.

  “Because Bankses was nigras, Les might of got away with it, except folks knew that this young feller was mixed up in the Tolen business and most likely the guilty one; them killed nigras give ’em a second chance to see some justice. Luther Kinard was his teammate on our baseball club but even Luther turned state’s evidence against him. Folks wanted that mean sonofagun out of the way.

  “Will Cox was good friends with the sheriff but his boy was convicted all the same. Les spoke up in court, ‘You’re giving that life sentence to a young feller that can’t tolerate no cooped-up life! I weren’t cut out to make it on no chain gang!’ Maybe the judge winked, as some has claimed, maybe he didn’t, but everybody heard him say, ‘You’ll be all right, boy.’ That judge knew what he was talking about, too.

  “Les was sent to prison for the rest of his natural life and stayed three months. He was on the road gang out of Silver Springs. One day his daddy was out there talking to the guard and a railroad car got loose some way while Les was on it. Rolled down the grade to where he jumped off and run. Never been seen since, not by the law. Supposed to be dead but there’s plenty who will tell you he came back in later years hunting revenge. nobody around this county could believe Les Cox was dead and they don’t today.”

  FORT WHITE

  At the paved highway they turned south toward Fort White, then west again on the Old Bellamy Road. Where wisteria and a few old pecan trees recalled to him a long-gone homestead, Mr. Kinard said, “As a young feller, Edgar lived a while in an old cropper’s shack used to be right over yonder, shade of them oaks. Later years, he bought some Collins land just down the road here, built his own house and farmed several hundred acres. Good farmer, too, cause if he’d of been a poor one, we’d of knowed about it.”

  On a hilltop on the north side of the road stood a sallow house with a dark-shaded porch and a rust-streaked tin roof shrouded by the Spanish moss on an immense red oak. “That’s the place. That’s where Brooks Kinard and Joe Burdett served him that warrant. I was up there one day with my dad, we was driving him a well, fixing his pump, so I remember Edgar. He was thick through the shoulders and uncommon strong, my daddy told me.”

  Across the Fort White Road was Elim Baptist Church which Grover Kinard wished to visit. Though the church had been replaced, his parents awaited him in the old churchyard, also his sister and his brother Brooks. “See his dates? May 1910, same month we seen the Great White Fire in the sky. Some thought poor Brooks had took sick from that comet but I reckon he died of his consumption.” The lettering on the Kinard headstones was blurred by moss and lichens and the stones had shaggy grass around the base. “My folks ain’t hardly had a visit since the day they come here,” mourned the Deacon, scraping the lichens uselessly with a weak penknife.

  Not far from the Kinards lay D. M. Tolen, 1872–1908. His gravestone read, “How Desolate Our Home Bereft of Thee”—a graveyard irony, Lucius thought, since according to Kinard, Mike Tolen’s widow had fled that bloodied cabin and gone straight back to her Myers family in South Carolina.

  Nearing Fort White, the county road narrowed to a shady village street of gaunt frame houses in old weedy yards. At a counter in the grocery store, they bought barbecue ribs with soft rolls and soda pop, then carried their lunch outside to a wood picnic table where three old black men hitched along to the far end of the bench, ceding most of their space to the white men.

  Working his toothpick, the Deacon frowned and muttered, patting the pockets of memory for something lost. “Born right here in this ol’ town and I ain’t been back in years,” he sighed, “and it ain’t like I live so far away. Eleven miles! Just goes to show how life leaks away when you ain’t paying attention. One day you look up, look around, and the world is empty. Not empty exactly but something is wrong, there ain’t no color left to life.” outraged, he glared at Lucius. “Watsons long gone and Coxes moved away, Burdetts and Betheas, too. Ain’t none of them good old families left. Died out or gone off to the cities, gone away like they was never here at all.”

  CRAZY WATSON EYES

  Following Kinard’s directions to the Collins house, Lucius traveled south through the old woods on a clay track as white as bonemeal, with dust so fine that the tires made no sound. He passed no cabin, heard no dog. Then the wood opened and the old schoolhouse rose on a knoll under great oaks.

  Already in the door was Ellen Collins, a rather thickset person who looked cross. Over her shoulder, gazing at him from the wall across the room, were three figures in a large old-fashioned photo in an oval frame. A young girl in a white dress, full-mouthed, not quite pouting, stood behind a pert, quizzical old lady in a black dress with white scarf and brooch who was seated beside an imposing man in a dark suit, white embroidered shirt, and black bow tie. The man’s gaze was forthright and his brow clear. His hair was plastered to his head after the fashion of the time, and a heavy mustache flowed down into bushy sideburns that extended to the corners of his jaw.

  “Great-Uncle Edgar, about 1904.” Ellen Collins swept her arm in introduction, having missed his start of consternation at this unexpected confrontation: why was a portrait of unmentionable Uncle Edgar hanging on the wall of a Collins house? “With Great-Grandmother Ellen Watson and my aunt May Collins as a girl,” Ellen Collins was saying. She introduced Cousin Hettie Collins and her daughter April before pointing him to a chair.

  When pretty Hettie welcomed him with a warm peck on the cheek, her daughter teased her. “Mama? Are we ‘kissin’ cousins’?” April Collins, not yet twenty, had taffy hair hacked short—by herself, from the look of it—and the same bald gaze as the great-uncle on the wall, the same white crescent underneath the pupil. “Yep,” she laughed. “I got ’em, too. ‘Crazy Watson Eyes.’ ”

  Lucius saw nothing crazy in his father’s eyes, only that fixed gaze, as if he had never blinked in all his life. But as he watched, Papa’s likeness seemed to shift and resettle into a visage swollen with intransigence—a change effected by that crescent, white and hard as boiled albumen, as if a trapped madman were glaring out through the eye slits of a mask.

  From their hard settee, the silent ladies watched him, mystified by his intense absorption in the portrait. He took a deep breath and let the vision go. On the wall, a serene Papa resumed his place between his mother and his niece.

  “That’s the first photograph I’ve ever seen,” he explained, finding his voice.

  “That’s the only photograph: how could you have seen it?” Cousin Ellen sat stiffly, arms folded on her chest, ready to bar his admission to this household. “If I hadn’t told you, how would you even know that that was him?”

  “He’s kin, Aunt Ellie! L. Watson Collins? Got to be kin!”

  “For all we know, that’s an alias,” said her aunt severely. Plainly she was having second thoughts about permitting this self-styled Collins to cross their sill. “If Julian ever got wind of this, or Cousin Ed—”

  Lucius cut her off by asking boldly if, in the opinion of this Collins family, Great-Uncle Edgar had really been a cold-blooded killer. Startled, his cousins deflected the question. April jumped in. “When that man smiled, watch out! Uncle Edgar—”

  Ellen Collins cut her off. “Uncle Edgar could be ever so pleasant and considerate, but nobody dared cross him. Oh, just a violent temper! My brother has that explosive temper, too. He’d pick a quarrel with a fence post. More than once, I’ve heard him say, ‘If I had lived in Uncle Edgar’s day, I’d have killed those Tolens, too.’ ”

  “Uncle Edgar was acquitted, Ellie,” Hettie reproved her. “But he never learned to control his temper, that is true. We know something dreadful happened in his youth in Carolina. That story arrived with the Herlongs, who came south from Edgefield County after Granny Ellen, but the grownups would never repeat it.”

  Ellie inquired, “I suppose you know about Belle Starr? That was a story he never quite denied. He always said he’d had no choice because she’d ride around hi
s place, shooting her pearl-handled six-guns, spooking his horses, so one day, he just stepped out and took care of it.”

  “Probably fooling,” Hettie said. “Everybody said he liked to tease.”

  “Granddad Billy Collins was very offended by that Belle Starr story. He told his boys it was dishonorable to shoot a woman, even an outlaw queen. Granddad died young, before the Tolen trouble, but he’d made up his mind about his brother-in-law before he went.”

  “One thing we heard, Uncle Edgar sang ‘The Streets of Laredo’ with real feeling. Claimed it came from an old Celtic lament which had tingled up the iron blood of his Highlands ancestors, but we think he brought that song from Oklahoma along with his black hat. You never caught him out without that hat on.”

  “Probably going bald,” April suggested. “Wore black hats and sang sad songs because he knew he would die before his time and was remorseful for his misspent life.”

  “Oh, what nonsense, girl!” The ladies tittered.

  Lucius liked these new cousins very much, especially Hettie, who was pretty in her old-fashioned brown dress, though slight and fragile as if ill. He knew he should confess right now that he was Cousin Lucius but this would make them instantly suspicious—Why are you masquerading as a Collins? Once they mistrusted him, they would tell him nothing. On the other hand, the telephone could ring at any moment—strait-laced Julian warning them that nosy Cousin Lucius was in town.

  His kin awaited him in a stiff row like frontier women squinting over the hammers of long muskets. Mind racing, he frowned intently at the picture. “I’m named for Granny Ellen,” Ellie Collins said. “And that’s Aunt May at about fourteen. Her brothers are my daddy, known as Willie, and my uncle Julian, who won’t so much as mention their late uncle.”