Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  “That was the first time, Frank would say, that he never done his duty. Course it weren’t the last time by a long shot, but he didn’t know that in his early days. I believe it was the Watson case that made that feller say to hell with it and give up on common justice.

  “As for them court records, you might be correct. Eddie Watson was so scared of talk that he might of wiped his daddy’s name clean off the books. Might of been his own idea or maybe not. And Tippins comin from Arcadia, he might have got that taken care of, too, as a favor to the Langfords.”

  Breaking a rust-rotted shoelace—“Shit!”—Daniels kicked his sneaker off before stretching out, hands behind his head. Enjoying his role as an authority on the Watson case, he was annoyed when Lucius rose to leave. Speck said, “Don’t aim to thank the man that found Bill House’s testimony?” He grinned at Lucius’s disbelief. “Found it right in Tippins’s own desk. Chicken Collins stole it off me but it was mine by rights.” He studied Lucius meanly. “Goddamn Chicken stole my nice souvenir from that historical-type day when us upstandin citizens wiped out Bloody Watson.”

  “So it was a lynching. You admit that.”

  Daniels shrugged. “I only joined up in that line of men to see what was goin on: I weren’t much more than a boy.” Speck considered this a moment. “Well, later I was bothered some and will admit it. Ed Watson had daughters by two Daniels females and treated our whole Caxambas bunch like family, so them ladies are still scoldin me for takin part. Hell, Josie’s Pearl ain’t spoken to me since.” He grimaced at his own attempt to excuse his role. “You Watsons got nothin to be ashamed about, is all I’m sayin. Ed Watson was his own man, done what he thought was right. Like ol’ Tant Jenkins always said, Ed never killed a livin soul that didn’t need some killin. Which puts me in mind of a nice story for your book—story Tant’s sister used to tell about how good she was took care of by her man Jack Watson.”

  BULLET NECKLACE

  “One fine day on the Bend they was settin there eatin their supper. The white cutters on the harvest crew ate with ’em at that big pine table and this one feller was findin fault with Josie’s peas. They wasn’t salted, wasn’t this, that, nor the other. So your daddy was rumblin to warn that cutter not to hurt Miss Josie’s feelins. The man shut up but pretty quick he commenced to grumblin again. Knew a bad pea when he et one, this feller did.

  “Mister Ed didn’t have no more to say about it. Set his fork down, wiped his mouth, pushed his chair back, and got up real quiet. And there come a hush and this cutter stopped his eatin cause he knowed that somethin terrible was comin down on him. But he was too scared to beg or run, he only set there starin bug-eyed out the winder as if that big ol’ croc that hunted that broad water at the Bend was clamberin right out on the near bank, comin to get him. Your daddy stepped around behind his chair and drawed his head back by the hair—didn’t yank it, Josie said, her Jack wasn’t rough with him or nothin. Laid his knife acrost his throat sayin, ‘Please excuse us, folks,’ then stood this feller on his feet and marched him outside before he slit his throat so’s not to mess up Josie’s nice clean floor.”

  Speck frowned hard to show how serious his story was. “Nobody cared much for that cane cutter to start with, that’s how Josie explained it. Prob’ly some kind of a criminal is what her Jack told ’em whilst he washed his hands before settin down to her fine lemon-lime pie.

  “When he finished his pie and got done wipin his mouth, he told ’em he was well known for a patient man but could not be expected to put up with such a criminal at his own table. Said, ‘Darn it all, the world is better off without that darn ol’ criminal!’ As Josie recollected it, he still had lime cream on his handlebar mustache when he hitched around to look out through the door at that carcass that was nastyin up his yard. ‘Lookit that barefaced sonofabitch,’ he says. ‘Layin out there like he owns the place!’ ”

  Unable to maintain his poker face, Daniels guffawed. “Nosir, Josie never did deny that her Jack put that knife to her own throat a time or two when he was in his liquor, get her to shut up her mouth and mind what she was told. She would of been the first to say it: ‘When my Jack told you to do somethin, you done it, cause he never was a man to tell you twice.’ Hell, them were the days when men was men. Don’t make red-blood Americans like that no more!” The moonshiner was doubled up with mirth, hacking to ransack his lungs and farting gleefully.

  “Whilst they was washin up the dishes, they all agreed it might be best to let bygones be bygones, say nothin more about it,” Daniels told him. “So what they done, they took and flung him to that big croc in the river. Maybe somebody give him a prayer, maybe they didn’t—they was purty busy in the harvest season. But Aunt Josie always told young Pearl that she never got her Mister Jack out of her heart on account of how sweet he was that day about her peas, how darn considerate about her tender feelins.” Speck nodded a little, wiping his eyes. “If that ain’t a nice romantical little story for your book, I don’t know what.”

  “I’m not looking for stories. I’m looking for the truth about his death.”

  “Man wants the truth about Ed Watson,” Daniels jeered. “Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods’ll tell you their truth, Hardens’ll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he’ll tell you his and I’ll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with?”

  Mistaking Lucius’s silence for acquiescence, he pointed a hard finger at his eyes. “Maybe nobody don’t need this truth you’re lookin for, ever think about that? Us kind of fellers always thought your daddy was all right the way he was.” He lay back on the bunk, one leg cocked across the other knee, old sneaker swinging. “Think I ain’t truthful, Colonel? Think I’m a liar just makin up stories about peas?” He yanked open the top buttons of his shirt, exposing a necklace of dull-burnished leaden lumps strung on a rawhide thong. He removed it, pushed it forward. “Count ’em. Thirty-three.”

  Punched in the heart, Lucius made no move to touch them. The last time he had seen those leads they were black with coagulated blood, heaped in a rusty coffee can on Rabbit Key.

  “Got ’em off the coroner’s man. Still had the blood on ’em. Paid eighteen dollars in hard cash and wouldn’t take a million.”

  One sneaker on, one sneaker off, he sat up on his bunk edge. “It was Tippins showed me that fuckin posse list of yours—almost forgot that.” He nodded when the other turned. “He was holdin it for evidence, Lucius. In case you was to go crazy, Lucius, start in shootin people such as myself, Lucius. And you know who give it to Tippins, Lucius? Eddie Watson.”

  “Eddie had no right to it. I want it back.”

  “Tell that to Chicken. He stole it off me along with the House testimony. Anyways, that Christly list don’t mean nothin no more. Purt’ near all dead on there or half dead anyways. Lest you would count that nigger.” Daniels lay back, swearing.

  “No colored man on that list as I recall.”

  “Course not!” In fury, Daniels cocked his knee and kicked the bottom of the upper bunk so hard that he split the cross slats under the thin mattress. “Ever think how a man might feel, seein his own name on a death list? Ever think what kind of a damn loon would make a list like that?”

  Crockett Daniels’s rage turned low and cold as the blue mineral flame in a wood fire. He wiped spittle from his unshaven mouth with the backs of his fingers and stropped it on his pant leg. “Chok fellers might be interested to see that list, you think so, Colonel? Them men might be mostly gone but they know there ain’t nothin to keep a Watson from makin do with a man’s son. Unless that Watson was put a stop to first.”

  “That a threat?”

  “Nosir. That is a warnin.” Daniels rolled over on the bunk, facing the wall.

  Lucius said to his back, “I lived in the Islands long after I made that list and never harmed anyone. Why would I start now?” To his annoyance, his voice had gone tight and froggish.

  “Yep.” Speck’s voice sounded like he was grinning into the mat
tress. “Men has got to be very leery of this Lucius Watson. You ever come back into our country, you better not turn your back no more’n you have to. And here’s another warnin: don’t go tellin family secrets on your damn attorney.” Speck lowered his voice. “Big-time attorney, y’know, big-time attorney. Watt Fuckin Dyer is the fixer for all the fat boys in this state, from Big Sugar and the KKK up to the governor, and he’s got his own political future to look out for. Yessir, they’s big money involved in this park fight, that’s the story. Dyer’s the mouthpiece for them east coast developers that has fought that park idea for years; them boys are workin day and night to grab that real estate before all them nature-lovers and such get the Glades nailed down by the federl gov’mint. You ain’t seen all that stuff in the papers? Gettin the public fired up against the feds for wastin half of Florida on this big green nothin? Stead of sellin off that land and cuttin taxes?”

  “You a taxpayer these days, Speck?”

  “Yessir! Mr. Crockett Senior Daniels! First man up to the winder every year!”

  But Speck’s grin faded quickly. “Taxes is rigged to help the rich, come out of the poor man’s hide. And any poor man asks the wrong questions, them bureaucrats’ll paper him to death, scatter the blame all over the fuckin gov’mint. Feds can’t pour piss out of a boot that has the instructions wrote down on the heel but when it comes to coverin their butts, you just can’t beat ’em.

  “What I’m sayin is, with so much money on the line, that man won’t want no story comin out about how he is Bloody Watson’s bastrid boy. He’ll get a chokehold on your book in court, then hit you with a lawsuit. If that don’t put you out of business, he’ll be comin after you, and he is goin to get you, and he don’t care how.”

  “Oh, come on—”

  “That’s the story. Might get beat up or you might get a bullet. They say he’s got spicks over to Miami will do a nice clean job for fifty bucks.”

  “Threat number three.” Lucius went out and this time he kept going.

  “Well, here’s another, then!” Speck Daniels hollered after him. “Stay the hell out of my territory! And we won’t need no fuckin Spaniards neither!”

  “Eddie Watson? Lives over here on Second Street.” The deputy walked him to the door. “Lately your brother been tryin to sell me your daddy’s famous shootin iron. Bolt-action, single-shot, looked like a made-over rifle with a shotgun barrel—hell of a lookin thing!” Seeing Lucius’s expression, he laughed. “Eddie swore this was the weapon used by Desperader Watson on the day he died, claimed it was well known to be his daddy’s from the black scorin on the stock. Not only that but this selfsame gun wiped out Belle Starr, the Outlaw Queen—no extra charge! Said it was priceless so naturally I give him fourteen dollars for it.” He hiked his belt. “Might been priceless but it sure weren’t what Eddie said it was cause later I got a chance to handle the real-life weapon your dad was toting on that day.”

  “That thing still around?”

  “Twelve-gauge Remington ridge-barrel, twenty-eight or thirty-inch twin barrels? Short forearm with the old wood split, put back together pretty solid with squarehead screws? Safety busted, welded back, busted again—that sound familiar?” They nodded together. “Course the stock is all raggedy-lookin from bein shot up so bad and the barrels pitted from layin too long in the salt water. Some fool had went and flung her into the bilges of your daddy’s boat, never stopped to think that one day that ol’ gun might be worth good money. Sheriff Tippins fished her out, kept her for court evidence, but nobody thought to give her a wipe of oil or nothing, from the looks.”

  “Who’s got it now?”

  “I reckon Speck still has it. Claims the sheriff give it to him but it wouldn’t surprise me if that rascal misplaced it to where he could find it again after Tippins went over to Miami. Speck collects old Watson stuff, y’know.”

  Lucius thought about the string of lead slugs hanging on Daniels’s neck. “I know,” he said.

  TANT AND PEARL

  Walking down to the river, Lucius passed the old red Langford house between Bay and First streets where he had lived with his mother in his early school days. Mama! The thought of her made him sad: he had missed her more and more over the years. And how kind she had been to her difficult stepson—had Rob appreciated this? And how brave she’d been to reprove Papa for the cold way he treated him.

  In the riverside park, a gaggle of pubescent girls in new white sneakers, shrilling and giggling, squirting life, were observed without savor by decrepit men fetched up in the corners of the benches like dry piles of wind-whirled leaves. In the river light, the noisy nymph troupe juxtaposed with those silent figures was unreal. One of these men could be Leslie Cox, drink-ravaged, syphilitic.

  Queerly, one man removed his toothpick and pointed it straight at him. In the sun’s reflection off the river, the wet pick glinted like a needle. “That you, Lucius? Where you been hidin, boy?” The man was not old, simply worn out. He shifted a little to make room on his bench.

  Tant Jenkins, whose mustache had gone to seed, seemed unaware that they had not crossed paths for years. They talked at angles for a while, finding their way. When Lucius mentioned he’d just seen Tant’s cousin Crockett, Jenkins said unhappily, “One them Cajun Danielses. We ain’t hardly related.” He looked away over the water, where gulls planed down the wind between the river bridges. “Which is a lie. It’s just I ain’t so proud about it.” Tant tried to laugh. “One them Cajuns scratched his head, said, ‘I’ll be doggoned if my own dad ain’t my son-in-law!’ ”

  Lucius mustered a chuckle at this old joke to shield Tant’s dignity. “Is he kin to me, too? He used to think so.”

  “Well, I have heard that, which don’t mean it’s true. Speck weren’t born a Watson, he were born a liar. Never had no first-hand experience of the God’s truth—just flat don’t care about it. Course Josie and Netta lived a while at Chatham Bend, had daughters there. . . .” Tant spoke cautiously, not certain how much Lucius might care to acknowledge.

  “My half sisters, you mean.”

  “I reckon that’s right,” Tant said, relieved. “But back in the nineties, when your dad first showed up, he met a young Daniels girl one night that ran so wild they called her ‘Jenny Everybody.’ Just the one time, far as I know, but she claimed her kid was his, never mind that Crockett was kind of dark, looked like a wild Injun. Course nobody never knew for sure just who the father was, not even Jenny.

  “Netta’s Minnie, now, she has her daddy’s color, blue eyes, that dark rust hair. Lives in Key West, never signed up as a Watson, but Netta called her ‘E. Jack Watson’s love child.’ Netta liked to recall how E. Jack Watson ‘ravished’ her, and when Josie was drinkin, she’d get that same idea: ‘That darned Jack took me by storm!’ Them ladies weren’t one bit ashamed about Jack Watson, they were proud about him.”

  Tant reminded Lucius of Pearl Watson’s visits in his Lost Man’s days, how she’d hitch rides on the runboat that picked up the Hardens’ fish just to go warn him about the Chokoloskee men, beg him to leave. “Young Pearl was out to mother you,” Tant said, “and here she was half your age.”

  Sometimes she called herself Pearl Jenkins, sometimes Pearl Watson. She was a pretty girl and kind, but her life had always been a sad one, looking in the window. “I guess a real home was what that poor girl wanted most,” said Lucius.

  “Well, she wound up in one. Her mind kind of let go on her so they put her in some kind of a home over in Georgia.”

  “Oh Lord! I never knew what became of her!”

  “Pearl was always so proud how you come and hugged her like a sister at your daddy’s burial. Which was more than them others done, she said.”

  Subdued, the old friends stared away across the broad brown reach of the Calusa Hatchee. Westward, toward Pine Island Sound, the lifting gulls caught glints of sun where the current mixed with wind in a riptide. “Mister Ed and me, we had some fun,” Tant mused. “Lots of comical times. I ain’t never goin to forget my d
ays at Chatham. Never seen so much food in all my life, that day to this.”

  “Papa had known a lot of hunger so he enjoyed providing food.” Happy to share fond memories of his father, Lucius smiled.

  “I reckon he was all right before that Tucker business,” Jenkins blurted. “That’s when I quit. You ain’t asked my opinion and likely you don’t want it but I better say it anyways just so we’re straight about it.” Tant cleared his throat again, frowning and worrying, torn between tact and integrity. “Some way your dad was crazy, Lucius, only he was the dangerous kind that never showed it. Act like everybody else, joke and talk and go about his business, and all the while there’s a screw loose in his brain.”

  “No,” Lucius said patiently. “No, I don’t think he was crazy.” He shook his head. But Tant persisted, eyes wide behind round glasses; he wore the dogged look Lucius remembered. “You realize how near your daddy come to bein killed before they killed him? It’s terrible to be so deathly scared day after day, folks just can’t handle it. And finally they had enough.” Tant glanced at Lucius as they walked along, distressed by his friend’s silence. “Naturally his own kids never knew that fear nor his friends neither. Captain Jim Daniels flat refused to believe all them bad stories. ‘That ain’t the Ed Watson I know’—that was all he’d say.”

  They paused at the foot of the Edison Bridge to gaze at the brick mansion on the corner opposite. Walter Langford had built that house in 1919 and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1921, leaving Carrie with more debts than assets.

  “Them years you lived down in the Islands, your sister had a dog’s share of misfortune, but she had some spirit and she had some style. Liked to drink some, have a good time like her daddy. Never talked about the scandal”—Tant shot a glance at Lucius—“but would not act ashamed about him, neither. Nobody spoke bad about Ed Watson around Carrie Langford.