Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  The slow stone metamorphoses filled him with longing—longing for what? Simplicity? Was simplicity the true nature of homegoing? The simple harmonies, earth order and abundance. In this churchyard in a woodland meadow at the end of a white road, he missed what he had never known, the peace of living one day then another in communion with others of one’s blood and at the end, at the close of one’s works and days, to draw that last breath and come to rest in earth where one’s bones belonged.

  Belonging. His encounter with his kin would not change his fundamental isolation from his family—his “lonelihood,” as Henry Short once called it. In a knowing beyond knowing, he knew that lovely Hettie, on a none too distant day, would be left behind here in the silence after the last mourner had departed Tustenuggee. Perhaps her transience, her mortality, explained why, so suddenly and strangely, she had touched his heart.

  The sad solace of old cemeteries was a morbid sort of healing, though not to be despised on that account. The country graveyard in the woods was a last sanctuary, inviolable, not to be transgressed—man’s last hope of equity, as Papa might have said, with everyone content in their own bones. Yet even here, the car horns could be heard, searching every distance. In the end there was no escape from the bonds of space and time short of release into the void, leaving no more trace of one’s swift passage than the minnow’s glimmer on the flooded road to Gator Hook or the disintegrating mushrooms become dust in the sunny leaf-bed of this autumn wood or the circles of great raptors gyring high over the Glades in the passing of ancient winds across the sky.

  A jay’s blue fire crossed the sun from one wall of spring leaves into another. In the stillness, a stray thrush song came in wistful query from the wood. He turned to listen. Nothing. Only the fall of a lone acorn, a small point of sound on the surface of the silence, a point of emptiness in the great roar of the turning earth.

  At the hotel, he found an unsigned note. “Fort White was a bad idea. Look for message at Gen. Delivery, Fort Myers.” Fear of exposure at Fort White explained Rob’s resistance to coming, Lucius decided, but why had he changed his name? Was he a fugitive?

  He telegraphed Rob in care of General Delivery and sent him money, assuring him that his brother was neither angry nor upset but only looked forward to finding out who the hell was in that urn.

  Before checking out, Lucius rang Hettie to apologize and say good-bye. She seemed relieved to hear from him, saying she quite understood why he might have wished to conceal his identity; she’d worried about him ever since he’d left, realizing how shocked he must have been by the sudden resurrection of his long lost brother. “Please tell Rob how happy we would be to welcome him back into the Collins family. And Lucius, too,” she added, her soft smiling voice warming his heart. He asked if one day he might pay another visit and she told him that she dearly hoped he would. “Come soon,” she said, by which he knew she shared his premonition. He said, “I will, Hettie, I will,” and put the phone down.

  Catching his own sappy smile in the lobby mirror, he thought of Nell and reviled his inconstant heart. His despair was sincere and yet he was still smiling.

  ALACHUA PRAIRIE

  South of Fort White, Lucius followed the old county road across the worn-out cattle range of the Alachua Prairie. The potholed road passed a humble church then a few poor habitations patched into the scrub edge.

  Will Cox, winding down his days in a blue shack surrounded by junked autos, stood in his narrow doorway with his hat on. “Next time you might find my grave but you won’t find me,” he sang out cheerfully, as if this stranger had turned up late on a long-awaited visit. Paying no heed when Lucius got out and introduced himself, he crossed the yard with bony steps and climbed into the backseat. “Been a while since I seen where I am headed for,” Mr. Cox said. “Let’s go have us a look.”

  The little church back up the road had been founded by Will Cox after his family had been “hated out” of the Fort White district. He mentioned the exile without bitterness, far less self-pity.

  Lucius helped the failing man out of the car. His Second Adventist church consisted of one white room with a cheap upright piano and small narrow pulpit; the unfenced yard was bare hard clay haired lightly by sparse weeds. No bird call brought the hot scrub wood to life, no color refreshed the petals of the artificial flowers in the rusted wire holders at the graves. “Be here for good before you know it,” Will Cox declared, gazing about with satisfaction. “I am just ate up with cancer, so they tell me.”

  Cox shuffled forward, removing his old felt, and pointed a proud trembling finger at twin stones ten inches high and barely wide enough to carry the small initials. “W. W. C. That’s William W. Cox only I ain’t in there yet. And C. F. C., that’s Cornelia Fralick Cox. She’s down there now, bless her heart! Before she knows it, she’ll be layin beside her darlin same as she always done.” Will Cox contemplated his wife’s grave. A toppled jam jar lay behind the stone. “Been aimin to get me and Ma a big ol’ tombstone but I been down sick about ten years and never got to it.”

  Asked if he’d seen Leslie in recent years, Mr. Cox said, “My boy Leslie Cox weren’t a-scared of nobody.” He glanced behind him in case Les might have turned up at last out on the road. When Lucius pressed him—had his son ever returned?—he shook his head. “If Les ever come back, folks would of knowed him, cause Les had a scar right to his ear where that mule kicked him, laid him out stone cold. We thought that boy would never sit up again. And when he did, his momma seen into his eyes, then whispered, kind of funny, “ ‘This here ain’t the same boy no more as we have knew.’ ” Out of respect for his loved ones, he took his hat off, put it on again, and stood a while, hands folded simply on his breast. “Had a big picture of Les up on the wall before our neighbors burned us out and we come here. Him and his wife May, they was both on there. Burned down to nothin.

  “Les weren’t never a bad boy the way they say. Went to church regular and done his lessons, got to be star pitcher on the ball club. Folks thought the world of Les. Never had no trouble before Watson come.” Saying this, the old man gave his visitor a hard sharp look. “You’re a Watson, I reckon.” When Lucius nodded, he did, too. “Yessir. We been waitin on you.” When he did not explain this, Lucius caught a fleeting scent of backwoods menace, like the quick sharp musk of mink on a night road. “Let me know if you get tired, Mr. Cox,” he said.

  “I stay tired,” the old man said, holding his eye. But in a moment, his attention wandered. “Now that is a thing I wouldn’t hardly know,” he muttered, responding to some inquiry in his own head. “That was way back yonder, long, long time ago. Ed Watson warned me. ‘Listen, Will, these Tolen skunks raise hell with croppers so you got to go along with ’em somewhat.’ And I says, ‘Nosir, Ed, I don’t got to go along with nobody if they don’t do right.’

  “Along about that time, Sam Tolen showed up at our fence, told me what I could do and could not do, carried on like he founded the damn county. Our rent was settled but Tolen claimed there was more land than he figured so he needed more money. I told him, ‘Mister, have it surveyed out, and if I owe more money, I will find it some way.’ ” Cox shook his head. “Nosir, we wasn’t lookin for no trouble but Tolens brought it and my boy Les took care of it.

  “Where it started, Jim Tolen done Ma’s sister wrong so Ma swore a feud against all Tolens. Knowin I don’t hold with blood feuds and the Fralick boys bein all killed off or in the pen, she went and mentioned to her oldest how he had to revenge poor Sister’s honor, bein as how she was fresh out of brothers. My boy went to Watson for advice. About that time Jim Tolen slunk off home to Georgia, so maybe Watson advised Les to make do with the next one.” He gazed admiringly anew at the small C. F. C. stone in the sand. “Cornelia Fralick had a piece of Hell in her, y’know. When them deputies come to arrest Leslie for Sam Tolen, she reared so high they had to put the cuffs on her till they got him away.”

  Was Mr. Cox saying that his son dealt with both those Tolens? Will Cox lifted his fel
t hat to scratch his scalp before he nodded. “I reckon. I reckon it might been Les who done ’em both.” The direct question had not bothered him, since unlike the Collins clan, so proud and prim, the Coxes were unashamed and unequivocal: whatever Leslie might have done, he was their blood and, for better or worse, had stood up for his family.

  Had he never believed Ed Watson was involved?

  The old man frowned. “I thought a lot of E. J. Watson, had a very high opinion of that man, but I never heard Les say Watson was in on it.” He pulled his ear. “Judge sent my boy to jail for life after that nigger trouble. Had to run off from the rail gang.”

  “Guards never tried to catch him?”

  “Nosir, not so’s you’d notice.” Will Cox almost smiled. “Our boy come home, worked in our field the same as always. His wife was livin with us, too, on account of her own people didn’t want her. Our family thought the world of Miss May Collins! Then some fool seen Leslie in the field, told Will Dick Purvis, ‘That boy is up to Coxes, Sheriff, best go git him.’ So Les hid up under the roof when Purvis come. Will Dick never tried to hunt him, he just sung out, ‘Well, if I was Les, I’d sure head out for other parts, cause if he gets caught in this neck of the woods, folks just might hang him.’ ”

  “The judge had no business sending Leslie to prison for killing that black family—that the way the sheriff saw it?”

  Cox squinted at him hard. “That’s the way ever’body seen it, mister.” He set his hat straight. “Anyways, Les got sick of hidin, wearin women’s clothes out in the field and all like that. Stayed to help with spring plantin, then told us all good-bye for now, take care of May, he’d see us soon. Went on south to Thousand Islands and that was the last he was ever knowed about exceptin hearsays.

  “Feller who generly told the truth claimed he run across Les down around the coast, said ‘I’m your cousin.’ Said Les told him, ‘Well, that don’t mean that if you ever say you seen me, I won’t shoot you.’ ”

  Will Cox squinted. “Some said it was Watson done for Les. I said, ‘You talkin about E. J. Watson ? Shit, no!’ I said. ‘E. J. was my good old friend, he never done no such of a thing.’ ”

  Will Cox toed the clay soil with his broken shoe. “We heard it was a nigger man killed Watson. Heard Ed’s own boys never raised a hand to set that right.” He studied Lucius. “Which boy was you?”

  “I’m Lucius, Mr. Cox.”

  “Times must of changed when I weren’t lookin, Lucius.” Will Cox spat tobacco juice, turned back toward the road. “Me’n my younger boys, we was fixin to go south to Watson’s, find out what they done with Les, hunt up that nigger, too, while we was at it. But like I say, I been down sick and never got to it.” He spread his hands in the hot sun and both men watched them shake. “Don’t look like I’m ever goin to get there, what do you think?”

  “Nosir,” Lucius murmured gently, “I don’t think you are.”

  Baleful, Cox regarded him. “Don’t think so, huh?” Both grinned and Lucius took him home.

  Lucius’s instinct was to take Will Cox’s word that after his son’s departure in the spring of 1910, his family never laid eyes on him again. Either Leslie had lived out his bad life in other parts or Papa had shot him dead at Chatham Bend just as he’d claimed.

  Lucius remembered Leslie’s mule kick scar—“pretty good scar upside his head,” Grover Kinard had called it. Coldness and detachment, fits of violence, indifference to the suffering of others—weren’t those known symptoms of brain damage?

  To judge from Will Cox’s pride in him, his family seemed well satisfied that Leslie had killed both Tolens—another argument in Papa’s defense. In north Florida as well as south, it was turning out that the murders behind much of the Watson myth had been committed by another. Yet he felt uneasy. Had Papa encouraged hero worship in the unsophisticated Leslie and then exploited him, prying wide a dangerous fissure in his brain?

  And what of “Uncle Edgar” ’s brain? Yet Papa had never beaten his children nor appeared deranged even in drink, at least at home. For forty years after leaving South Carolina, he had farmed and traded, maintained neighborly relations, and remained beloved of his family, always excepting the one nicknamed Sonborn—the prodigal son, the long-lost brother, Robert Briggs Watson. R. B. Arbie. Rob.

  IN THE FALL

  After supper on his last evening at Chatham Bend, Lucius had joined his father on the river porch. Papa awaited him in his rocking chair, placed in the darkest corner. He seemed to know that this would be a showdown over Cox.

  In his power, Papa’s foreman had grown so intimidating that the field hands would fall mute the instant he appeared, shuffling about their work with eyes cast down, reduced in moments to drones of the human animal, stripped of every trait of voice and movement that each man might have shown without Cox present. They moved like penitent dull beasts rather than draw the smallest attention to themselves. Cox’s utter indifference to their welfare, their very humanity, had made them indifferent to it, too: he moved them about like checkers on a board he might knock over on a whim at any moment, scattering these lives into the grass. In other years it had pleased Papa to tease the hands, cajole them into acceptance of their hard and dangerous labor. Now he scarcely noticed, and when Lucius protested Cox’s cruelties, roughly waved his son away, not wanting to know what the foreman was up to so long as the work got done.

  Lucius’s outrage and frustration drove him to challenge his father on another matter. Declaring his intention to find Rob, he asked if his father knew what had become of him, and this time he did not back off when Papa sighed, his eyes half shut, sinking heavily into that iron silence. “Papa? He’s my brother. I have a right to know.”

  Through the window, the porch was dimly lit by the kerosene lantern on the supper table inside but he was unable to make out the expression of the figure in the shadows. Lucius said, “If you don’t know, please say so. Maybe I can locate that Collins cousin he knew in Key West.”

  His father sat up in a sudden rage, upbraiding him for resurrecting ugly stories. Lucius heard him out, then protested mildly, “Papa? I’m only asking about Rob.”

  Papa seemed to sense that this time his son meant business—that he might in fact be on the point of losing the last of his older children from whom he was not estranged and the one, further, whose assistance was critical for that autumn’s harvest. He rose and slammed inside. Lucius thought he’d gone for good. Instead he lit a fresh cigar at the table lantern, came back out, and resumed his seat. While he smoked, the tobacco ember glowed. He cleared his throat.

  For years, he said, he’d been sad to see the fear behind the feigned warmth in his neighbors’ faces. Fairly or unfairly, his reputation was torn beyond repair, and since he was already fifty-five, that situation was unlikely to change. Though he’d never been unduly bothered by public opinion, he explained, he hated the idea that because of rumors, he might be thought a cruel killer in his own family, and in particular by the son who would inherit this plantation and the syrup business. (In the near dark the cigar ember described a sweeping arc to include the boats, outbuildings, house, and fields.) Kate Edna and her kids, he said, would have to be con-tent with the Fort White farm. Not once did he mention his three older children.

  Waiting out this preamble, Lucius said nothing. Annoyed by his silence, his father said that Lucius could believe any rumor he wished: the truth was something else. Here he stopped to grind out his cigar, as if to bring this degrading discussion to an end, but in a moment, he said, “There’s no evidence. Two sets of tracks reported by some mixed-blood fishermen. Who took them seriously? People would have forgotten the whole business a long time ago if your brother hadn’t lost his head and run away.”

  “Was Rob guilty, Papa?”

  “The whole thing was an accident.”

  “Both deaths.”

  His father nodded. And because Rob had fled, he added, it had seemed sensible to remove himself, too, to avoid questioning. When he returned a few years l
ater, he was never challenged. Before this evening, in fact, he had never mentioned that day to anyone except Lucius’s mother. “You are the first person to confront me, boy.”

  “If it was an accident, why would he leave so suddenly? Taking your ship?”

  His father leaned back into the shadows. “He was afraid, I reckon.”

  “Of his own father?”

  “That, too. Of being arrested and accused . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Lucius took a great big breath. “Papa? Are you saying—you seem to be saying—”

  “I’m saying I take sole responsibility for what happened at Lost Man’s Key. Satisfied? Now leave me the hell alone.”

  Lucius followed him inside and back out again. “How come we can’t ever mention Rob? Why did you call him Sonborn? He hated that!”

  “ ‘Son Born’ was the only notation in the Columbia County register in Lake City because I turned my back on him from the first hour and never bothered to go there and record a name.” Blurting this out, his father was gasping in distress.

  “Did you ever love him, Papa?”

  “No. Yes. Much too late. I never realized it until that day at Lost Man’s. After I’d harmed him.”

  “Did you let him see it?”

  “He was probably too stunned to see it, and he fled before I found a way to reach him. After that, I didn’t want to think about him. I couldn’t—I still can’t—handle it. Not man enough, I guess.” Papa had always been caustic about his own weaknesses, the drinking, women, and propensity to violence that had led to his worst missteps; he seemed to take a perverse satisfaction in catching himself out on even the smallest evasions. But this remark bared a weary self-disdain that his son had never thought to see.