Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  “In Prohibition, she run the Gulf Shore Inn, down Fort Myers Beach. Had a speakeasy in back but Tippins never bothered her. Course Carrie was well up in her thirties, she’d put on a little heft, but a fine-lookin widder woman all the same. And pretty quick, she got hooked up with a fish guide at the Beach, Cap’n Luke Gates on the Black Flash.

  “One night I was in there when Gates’s wife come in—thin scratchy little blonde, she was just a-stormin! Run right over and tore into her husband where he was settin at the poker table. Picked up his glass and let his liquor fly into his face. Cap’n Luke never lifted his eyes up off the cards. Never blinked, never reached to wipe his face. Kept right on studyin them cards with the whiskey runnin off his cheeks. ‘See you, raise you five,’ he told them men.

  “Makin no headway at the poker table, the wife let loose an ugly speech about Carrie Langford’s morals or the lack of ’em and how Carrie come by her bad character real natural, her daddy bein a cold-blooded killer. Well, darned if this banker’s widow don’t ring open the cash register, break out a revolver, and fire off a round into the ceilin. Ever hear gunfire in a small room? And in that silence Carrie said, real calm and ladylike, ‘Let me tell you something, honey. That kind of mean and lowdown talk is not permitted in my place just because some little fool can’t hang on to her man.’ And seein a weapon in the hands of Watson’s daughter, that little blonde cooled off in a hurry. She run outside where it was dark and yelled some dirty stuff in through the window but nobody paid her no attention after that.”

  EDDIE

  Tant Jenkins peered across the street. “Methodist Church owns that brick house now but Eddie still calls it ‘the Langford Mansion,’ comes over here most every day to tell the tourists all about it.” Shading his eyes, he said, “I reckon that’s him back in the corner of the porch.”

  At the porch steps, they awaited Eddie, who came forward, saying “Good morning!” much too loudly. Despite the heat, he was dressed formally in linen suit, white shirt, green tie, well flecked with souvenirs of repasts long forgotten. He peered nearsightedly at Lucius, looking uncertain, and for the first time Lucius could recall, he felt a start of pity for his brother.

  Tant Jenkins smiled. “Mr. Watson? Care to make the acquaintance of Professor Collins? Famous historian?”

  Eddie stepped back with a sweeping gesture of welcome. “I am honored, sir! E. E. Watson, at your service, sir!” Grandly he waved them up onto the porch. “My brother, too, is a historian, comes to consult me—”

  “Eddie?”

  “This was the Langford Mansion, sir. My sister’s husband was the president of the First National Bank and Carrie and Walter entertained the Thomas Edisons and their friend Mr. Henry Ford. I believe that Mr. Samuel Clemens—”

  “Eddie, wait—”

  “What’s that?” Eddie looked alarmed; he recoiled when Lucius touched his arm to calm him. “What do you want?”

  “I just wanted to ask you a few questions. For a biography of Papa—”

  “Oh no you don’t!” His brother pushed past him down the steps into the sunlight, where he turned and pointed an unsteady finger. “Damn you, it’s family business, will you never understand? Family business.” His arms waved wildly. “You never came to see your sister even after she was evicted from this house! You broke her heart!”

  Lucius said he had never been notified; he would go see her right away. “I just wanted to ask about a list of names sent years ago to Rob by way of Nell Dyer—”

  “Mrs. Summerlin to you!” Eddie yelled crazily. “Oh, I took care of that darned thing, don’t worry!” Unable to meet his brother’s eye, he glowered at Jenkins. “You people are trespassing! This is private property, church property! I’ll call the law!” Stumbling, he hurried away and disappeared around the corner. The old river street stood gaunt and empty. They sat down on the steps.

  “Eddie’s always callin in complaints, kind of a hobby. Depitties don’t pay no attention. Most days, he’s friendly, maybe too friendly. Still tryin to keep up with the Langfords, I reckon.”

  Lucius nodded, unhappy.

  “I reckon he done the best he could,” Tant continued, “bein mulish as his daddy but not strong. Lately he begun to call himself Ed Watson Junior. Figured bein the son of a famous man made him somebody, too, and brung in customers. Ed Watson, Insurance. Buy a policy, get to shake the hand of Bloody Watson’s son. ‘You the Ed Watson? You fixin to murder me if I don’t pay up my premiums?’—teasin, you know. And Eddie come back with the same answer every time—‘Betcher life! So watcher step!’—and went right on fillin out the forms. Never occurred to ’em, I guess, that Watson’s son might be a feller with real feelins. Said, ‘Why hell, if he can’t take a joke, he should of left this town or changed his name.’ Go back home and tell their friends that this Ed Watson is the spittin image of his daddy, which he sure ain’t.

  “Folks always thought of Eddie as pretty meek and mild behind his bluster, but lately he took to hinting how he’s a chip off the old block, might have a violent streak. Figured your average American might take to an insurance man with a dangerous past and he weren’t wrong. Even hauled out a copy of your list, let on as how he went down to the Islands took care of them ringleaders. ‘Didn’t have no choice,’ he told ’em. ‘Watson honor.’ ”

  Chortling, Tant wrote down the phone number of Pearl Watson’s institution. “She’d be tickled to hear from you,” he said.

  In parting, Tant clung a moment to his hand. “You could always count on your backdoor family, Lucius, and you still can, what’s left of us.”

  INSULTED PEAS

  Pearl Watson had been nine or ten when their father was killed, a self-starved creature, a fugitive from the sun whose thin pale hair with its thin white ribbon let her scalp shine through. At Caxambas that black autumn, Tant had said, the child had been dumbstruck by her father’s death and terrified by the outcry of her mother, who had lost her infant son and fled her agony for days with shrieks of woe.

  Pearl’s frail voice came over the wire after a long wait.

  Who are you? Who is calling?

  This is Lucius. Your brother Lucius.

  Brother Who?

  Pearl, this is Lucius. I just called to say hello, see how you were getting along.

  Why are you hollering? Did you say Lucius? Oh Good Lord! Oh, Lucius honey, I was so worried, sweetheart! Lucius? Do you look awful, too? Where are you? Why are you calling?

  Please, Pearl, don’t upset yourself. I just wanted to hear your voice. Pearl honey? I’m so sorry I haven’t called before. I never knew you’d gone away.

  What’s become of you, sweetheart? Why haven’t you called?

  I—well, I’ve been so busy doing a book about our father.

  Our Father Who Art in Heaven. Those men killed Mr. E. J. Watson, blew him to Kingdom Come—did you know that?

  Pearl, listen—

  Did you know J. stood for Jack? Did you know my mother married up with E. Jack Watson? Had a daughter by Mister Jack and that was me so how come you forgot me?

  Pearl? Don’t cry—

  When E. Jack Watson died my mother was still married to him, common-law. My mother loved him, too, all except his temper. He was a drinker but he loved his children dearly.

  Pearl? Did your mother ever tell a story about a hired hand at Chatham Bend who insulted her nice peas?

  No, I never heard about insulted peas. But if Jack Watson told you he would kill you, he would do it, Mama said, because being a man who kept his word, he expected the same integrity in others. She was weeping. Who are you anyway? Whoever you are, you must be a liar! Lucius would have called me long ago! I’m his baby sister!

  Pearl, please don’t be upset. I don’t mean to upset you. I’ll call another day, maybe next week.

  They won’t let me go home! They say I have no home to go to! I’m all alone and they won’t let me go home! They say I have no home!

  CARRIE LANGFORD

  Carrie Langford lived in th
e shadow of her husband’s bank in a small house off First Street. Turning the corner, he caught her in a dressing gown of faded blue with a frayed pink satin collar, fetching her newspaper at the picket gate.

  At the sight of him, her hands flew to her hair. “You could have called first, Lucius. Or are you just on your way somewhere else?”

  Fussing with her collar when he leaned to peck her cheek, she withdrew through the rose gate into an arbor of trellised wisteria and bougainvillea. He did not venture through the gate. “Carrie, I’m sorry—” She turned away to ward off any bluster. “Well, come in, then, darn it. You want me arrested for soliciting?”

  He held the screen door as she preceded him into a small sitting room overfilled with big dark furniture from the house at the Edison Bridge. “From ‘the good old days,’ ” she sniffed with a dismissive wave. In louvered shade, in the hum of fans, the room was dark and silent like a funeral parlor, as if somewhere within Banker Langford lay in state.

  In a formal portrait, proud-bosomed Carrie in white evening gown made a handsome subject, and Walter in a suit of houndstooth tweed appeared portly and prosperous. His hairline, slicked back hard, was rapidly receding, but his eager amiability seemed undiminished. He did not look the least bit like a man whose liver would fail for good just three years later.

  Lucius took a hard chair near the door in sign that his visit would be brief; to reassure her, he perched forward on the chair edge, poised for flight. On the sofa, hands folded on her lap, Carrie shrugged off his civilities as he struggled to explain what he’d been up to. “I thought you’d like to know that Papa’s bad reputation was much exaggerated—”

  “So you’ve always claimed. That why you’ve come?”

  “That’s my excuse. I wanted to see you—”

  She checked him again.

  “I wanted to see you,” he insisted when she closed her eyes. “Though I’ve never been sure how welcome I would be. I thought you and Eddie—”

  “We don’t consult about you, Lucius.” Changing the subject, she asked crossly if he’d had any news of their young stepmother and her children. “I must say I thought less of Edna for running away before the burial, then changing the children’s names like that—”

  She stopped, anticipating his frown of protest and accepting it; Carrie had no heart for unkindness. Then suddenly her defenses fell away. “You and Edna left. You never had to deal with those dreadful writers who pestered us year after year for yet another lurid article slapped together to make money with no regard for truth. And how often I thought”—here she looked up, close to tears—“if only I could talk with Lucius. I so hoped you’d come. You never did. The baby brother I adored lived only a few miles down the coast and never even came to Walter’s funeral, never bothered to inquire how his sister might be getting on.”

  “Carrie? I came. I arrived late—”

  “Of course you did. I hardly saw you.” She paused to compose herself. “I got almost no help from Walter’s partners and would not accept it from others—not even my own brothers, had they offered it, which they did not. For different reasons, of course. You, at least, were generous when you had anything, which was almost never.” She was teasing now, yet unready to be mollified.

  With parents and husband dead, with Rob and Lucius vanished from her life and her two girls married, Eddie was all she had left in the way of family. Fortunately, she added with a little smile, Eddie adored her.

  “Kindred spirits,” Lucius suggested.

  Carrie cocked her head, elevating her eyebrows. “Let’s just say,” she reproved him gently, “that dear Eddie feels a bit more kindred to his sister’s spirit than she feels to his.

  “Though Eddie can be very courtly, don’t forget,” she added dutifully when Lucius smiled. “Mama taught him manners and he has his own peculiar charm, at least he used to. But because of Papa, the poor stick is always out to prove something, make a good impression. You suppose that’s why he never dared to drink?” She shrugged, not much interested. “You were the opposite, of course—quiet, a bit pensive, but when you grinned, you really grinned, and your eyes sparkled.” That memory made her smile herself and he was smiling with her. “See?” she laughed gaily, pointing at his eyes. “As a boy, you were very handsome, Lucius. You still are. And you drank too much. All the Watsons were handsome”—she took a deep hard breath—“and they all drank too much. Myself included. And I married another handsome drunk while I was at it.”

  “Carrie—”

  “Well, I’ve made my own way and the girls have married well so we came out all right. But last year I was pretty ill, and I thought, Damn it, I’m not going, not before I see my little brother. I wanted you to come for Christmas, a real visit, but Eddie reported that you were drinking and all you wanted was to rot on your old boat. He said you stayed away because you thought your Fort Myers family was ashamed of you. That broke my heart.”

  Though Lucius had never said any such thing to Eddie, he knew that, in the past, he might have intimated that idea to others; he did not defend himself. He rose, saying, “I’m sorry, Carrie.”

  “Oh, don’t go, sweetheart, please don’t go. I won’t make you feel guilty anymore, I promise.” With a warm smile, she patted the cushion beside her, but when he sat down, both felt so shy that she jumped up and brought him family photographs. “My wild cracker cowboy became so darned dignified. Our little girls asked if their daddy’s pajamas had starched collars!”

  Carrie read aloud from a school report that little Faith had written about her grandpa the year after he died: “ ‘I remember Grandpa’s ginger brows: he looked like he was filled with fire. He always had a nice warm smell of wisky . . .’ ” Carrie smiled fondly at her brother. “Papa would perch one child on each knee and tell them about the big old owl who lived on Chatham Bend. Then he would pop his eyes open like . . . THIS!” She popped her eyes at Lucius and her clear peal of delight brought childhood back and with it something of their old affection for their father and each other.

  ROB’S VISIT

  Lucius asked her to describe Rob’s visit of a few years before. Did she recall just when it was? When she figured out the approximate date, he realized that Rob’s return corresponded closely with the arrival at the Hardens of the stranger who had called himself “John Tucker.”

  “One day Eddie turned up with a bearded man in worn-out clothes, a merchant seaman. Eddie called him ‘our half brother Robert,’ right in front of him. Not having laid eyes on Rob in almost thirty years—since before my wedding—I might not have believed that this was him except for those feverish red points on his cheeks, remember? The dark hollow eyes? With that beard, he looked like some poor martyr out of those old paintings. ‘Calls himself Collins these days,’ Eddie announced, rolling his eyes the way he does. ‘I use my mother’s maiden name,’ Rob explained for my sake.

  “I said, ‘Rob? Is that really you behind that beard? Oh, Rob, for goodness sake!’ And I grabbed him and hugged him hard, though he didn’t want that. For a man who supposedly lived at sea, he was so pale that I thought he must be ill.

  “ ‘He’s looking for Lucius,’ Eddie said, to hurry us. Eddie was sulky. I confessed to Rob that I’d scarcely laid eyes on you since your return from the Great War. I felt ashamed. I told him how much it worried me that you were living at the mercy of those people. ‘He was safer in the War than he is down there,’ Rob said. ‘That’s why I’m here.’ Eddie snapped, ‘Sure took you long enough,’ and Rob said he was unable to come sooner. He did not say why and we did not dare ask him: he was just as prickly as the Rob of old but had turned a little hard, a little scary. He refused a drink. ‘I can’t handle it,’ he said.

  “Eddie was still sulking so I led Rob outside. I took his arm and we walked a little ways along the river. I said, ‘It’s your first visit in thirty years, Rob. Can’t you stay for supper? Stay the night?’ No, he said, he had to catch the ship that was sailing that evening to the Islands. Said good-bye and turned and w
alked away. I never learned if he had a family or even where he’d lived since I’d last seen him.”

  “He’s back,” said Lucius. He told his sister the whole story of Arbie Collins.

  “Oh Lord, we have to help him,” Carrie said. At a loss, they sat quiet a while. “We’ll think of something, won’t we, Lucius?” She did not seem hopeful and soon relapsed into resentment. “Have you called on Nell? That girl adored you, Lucius. To go off to war without a word then run away to the Islands after she’d sacrificed her reputation? Did you care? Were you even aware of the guts it took to live on in a small nosy town after you disappeared? Of how much she was willing to give up for you against all advice? Including mine?”

  Carrie’s indignation on Nell’s behalf was tinged by her own hurt. “Knowing how sensitive you are, I’ll bet you felt injured when she finally gave up on you and accepted that old man. She’s poor, you idiot! She has no family worthy of the name and no security. Women need security. Are you really so damn blind?”

  He sat quiet. Made unhappy by her own remarks, she said, “We did our best to forgive you, Lucius, because after Papa died, you weren’t yourself. Where was our old easygoing Lucius? You were fun, remember?” She took his hand. “Nell loved talking about you. She still does! Your ‘shy bent smile,’ she called it—came straight from Mama, by the way—your ‘deep-shadowed wistful eyes.’ ” Mocking Nell gently, Carrie squinted to verify those eyes. “And Chatham Bend. It seems you protected her from her awful brother, she imagined that Lucius Watson was some sort of angel. She told me how quick and merciful you were around your otter traps and even killing chickens for the table—that made a great impression. The pains you took to remove your fish hook gently: more than he ever did for this poor fish! Nell can laugh at herself even when she’s sad, and she never complains—I love that about her.”