Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Carrie stopped smiling when her brother said, “Is that Nell’s joke or yours? About the fish hook?” Although he tried to say this lightly, his lungs were heavy with remorse for his utter failure to protect the eager feelings of sister and lover who had cherished him so much more faithfully than he’d deserved.

  Watching his face, his sister grew alarmed. “Lucius? What is it? Are you all right? Listen—it’s important that you know—Nell never spoke out against you this way—the way I do, I mean.” She was silent a moment before whispering, “I’m truly sorry. I didn’t want to do this.”

  He sat down again. “Don’t apologize. I’ve neglected you both shamefully, and Pearl, too.”

  Though Carrie resisted the mention of Pearl, she was anxious to mend things before he went away again. Before Nell’s marriage, that girl had called on Nell. Nell brought her here. It was Pearl who told them that Lucius lived in a driftwood shack at Lost Man’s River: she sought their help in persuading him to leave the Islands before he was harmed. A little miffed, she parodied Pearl’s accent: “ ‘He’ll surely lissen to yew, Miz Nell! Ah seen how much he pahns fer yew, Miz Nell!’ No mention of Miz Carrie, you notice.”

  Nell had sent no message back with Pearl. What good would it do to plead with Lucius once he’d learned that his true love and dearest friend had given up on him and was marrying another? Slightly shopworn, a bit “dog-eared,” as she described herself to Carrie, Nell had accepted the spavined hand of Mr. Summerlin, an elderly gentleman with a kind heart and a secure place in society and also an indomitable itch to stroke his young bride’s person. About all he ever did, Carrie suspected, though Nell was too loyal to confirm this. “Nothing much to be jealous about, anyway,” she assured her brother.

  Why, he thought, had Carrie mentioned jealousy if not to make him jealous?

  “That girl knew you well, you know.”

  “Too well for her own good,” he answered glumly.

  “Stop that! What a fool you are! Go call her up!”

  He did. He arranged to go meet her. He came back smiling.

  At the door, he turned and they hugged at last. “You must never forsake your silly old sister again,” she said. “No,” Lucius said. She knew he meant this for she went up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Like the bossy older sister he remembered, she nagged after him, “Don’t you ever come to town again, Mr. Lucius Watson, without letting us know.”

  He waved from the rose gate. Carrie sang out, “She’s a rich widow, don’t forget! Maybe it’s not too late!”

  NELL SUMMERLIN

  The Fort Myers cemetery lay in a fading neighborhood off the river road. By the iron gate, under dark limbs which extended out over the street, she awaited him in a blue roadster. Coming on foot up the sidewalk from behind, he coughed so as not to startle her.

  “Good Lord, is that you?” On the telephone, her voice had faltered. “Can you meet me at the cemetery? It’s high time I brought Mr. Summerlin fresh flowers.” Skillfully, she’d kept him at a distance, reminding him of that other reality that did not include him.

  Nell emerged from the blue roadster with a loud creak of the door hinge. “My jalopy and I,” she said, feigning exasperation. “We’re in this thing to the finish.” Not ready to look him full in the face, she went around to the far side and reached in for her flowers. Face half-hidden in blossoms, she paused a moment to regard him. She wore a simple linen dress of pale gray-green and a wheat-colored broad hat of soft Panama straw—all expensive and in good taste, yet all wrong and ruined by the eccentric indifference to her appearance that had led her to wear tennis shoes and cinch up her outfit with her old beaded Indian belt.

  Inept and shy, he cleared his throat. “How are you, Nell?”

  She laid her flowers on the hood and, still at arm’s length, placed her small cool hands in his rough brown ones, her smile dissolving any semblance of restraint, far less enigma.

  She picked up her skirt and moved lightly toward the gate. Passing through dark banyan shade, she reappeared in white stone sunlight—a cemetery sunlight, Lucius thought. He had become a frequenter of cemeteries. He passed under the banyan limbs and Nell’s voice called, “On the right! Just off the path!”

  A plain small white marble headstone with bare name and date:

  E. J. WATSON

  NOVEMBER 7, 1855–OCTOBER 24, 1910

  How final, those small incisions in cut stone. No inscription—what would his siblings have chosen? What would a watchful society have permitted? Rest in Peace? Of course not. Rest in Hell? A Texas headstone Papa had admired would have suited him, too: Here lies Bill Williams: He done his damndest. Beside him lay his Mandy—Jane Dyal Watson, interred in 1901. No inscription either. Mama’s request. Her dates brought an odd prickling to his temples. In a quarter century he had visited her just once, in a cold north wind on the November day of Papa’s descent into the ground beside her.

  With no river breeze to stir its dusty foliage, the burning banyan writhed and shimmered. Its thick leaves were black, the shell paths hot blinding white, no note of color anywhere, only the slim gray-green figure bent to a headstone. In the pitiless shine on the white monoliths, in a hot scent of wild lime and baked limestone, the air was cindered with black midges. He sank down in near vertigo, only dimly aware of the figure turning toward him.

  Nell was there when he came clear again. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” He waved her away, disgusted. She hooked her arm in his to balance him erect and led him back into the shade and tugged him down onto a horizontal stone. “Won’t bother ’em a bit,” she smiled, patting the marble. “I’m fine,” he repeated. She was taking his pulse at the wrist. “Of course you are,” she said.

  Nell felt his brow as she sorted out just what she wished to say. “Be honest. Would you have phoned me if Carrie hadn’t urged you?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “Why? I mean, why should I believe that?”

  Why do you care, Mrs. Summerlin? He took her hand. “Oh, I think you know.”

  Nell’s nod was vague, her hand cool and inert. What did that nod mean? And the dead hand? In a moment she released him and sat straight again and probed into her linen bag. “Enough of that old stuff. I have your History. Will you sign it?” He was taken aback by her crisp manner. Yet she sat close as he inscribed her copy. “L. Watson Collins! I’m so proud of you.” She marveled at the printed book and his inscription, For My Dear Miss N. “I always hoped—” But she cut herself off.

  “Hoped what, Nell?”

  “Hoped you might return one day, that’s all.”

  “After that old man of yours was gone, you mean?”

  She stared at him, sitting up straight again. “That’s unworthy of you, Lucius.”

  “Yes, it is. I hope it is. Unworthy of me, I mean. I’m sorry. But is it true?”

  She nodded. Disarmed, he reached to touch her cheek.

  “Don’t.” She shook him off. Though her tears had risen, none had fallen. She did not trust him and why should she? He did not trust himself. What if, fecklessly, he led her on, opened her heart again, did her more harm? He feared his own weakness perhaps even more than she did.

  Pressed like a leaf in Nell’s copy of his History was a faded envelope addressed to Rob. Though the list was missing, his note was still inside.

  Lost Man’s River

  22 May, 1923

  Dear Rob,

  I’ve entrusted this packet to a friend, to hold for you in case you should return.

  Rumors about the enclosed list of members of the Watson “posse” have made the Island people very leery of “Ed Watson’s boy,” to the point where it might be dangerous to be caught with it. But Ed’s boy is actually quite harmless, I’ve discovered, having neither Papa’s hardihood nor his Celtic code of honor, if these are what’s required for bloody revenge.

  This list is all I have to show for life at present. As the one person it might interest (other than those listed) perhaps you will know what s
hould be done with it. Having wasted years putting this damned thing together, I’m beginning to think I only persevered for the rare experience of actually completing something, however useless.

  Please come back. The Hardens at Lost Man’s River will know where to find me. Ask for “Colonel” (as I’m mostly called in this neck of the woods—not a friendly nickname, just a jibe at my “fancy” manners). I think of you often, hoping you are safe somewhere and happy. I pray you have more to show for life than I do and that I will see you again before the smoke clears.

  With love, sincerely,

  Your brother Luke

  P.S. I believe this list to be complete and accurate to the last name.

  Nell said, “He never received this letter, you know.”

  “Nor the list. Which you misplaced. In the excitement of getting married, I believe you wrote.” Again, his tone was colder than he felt. “You never found it, I suppose.”

  “I never lost it. You must have guessed that. Please, Lucius. We were all terrified you might be in danger, and that list was all the proof your family needed.”

  “Oh, come on! I’d already abandoned all that nonsense, as this note makes clear.”

  Nell shrugged, saying she’d never read it; she had no right. “But when I saw your list, I got frightened so I went to Carrie. Poor Carrie became frightened, too, and turned it over to Eddie, telling him he must go find you at once. But Eddie only said, ‘And then what? He won’t listen to me. He’s never listened to me!’ Eddie took the list to Sheriff Tippins, who would not return it, claiming he needed it for evidence—can you imagine? In his mind, your father’s death was an unsolved crime.”

  “In my mind, too. Still is.”

  “Evidently, the sheriff claimed your list had been taken from his desk. We worried so about who might have wanted it.” She gazed at him. “Your letter seemed so sad.”

  “I believe you just told me you had never read this letter.”

  “That’s what I told you, all right. Another shameful lie.” Nell’s hurt and anger were rising to meet his. “I told a white lie knowing you’d feel embarrassed because I had learned shameful secrets which of course I’d known for years—I was your lover, for goodness sake!—that you missed your long-lost brother and were incapable of killing for honor or revenge.”

  Yet from a safe distance, as a sniper, he had killed certified enemies, unlucky youths as young and frightened as himself, executed one by one as they popped up and down out of their trenches like bird heads from behind a log at a huge turkey shoot. Sanctioned slaughters century after century in the ultimate lunacy of the only insane animal ever loosed upon Creation. And finally that last weedy kid who brought him to his senses even as he destroyed him, that defenseless boy taking a crap at such close range that he could smell him. . . .

  Nell was peering at him. “Listen,” she murmured when he only stared, not quite present. “No more secrets, all right? I want to tell you something. A few days ago, I drove down to Caxambas to thank you for your book, get you to sign it—my excuse for seeing where this L. Watson Collins lived. You were gone, which was just as well. But someone was there, struggling to write something he’d promised you—”

  “The long-lost brother. He’s all right, then.”

  “No, he’s not all right. He seemed very discouraged, way out on that salt creek with no auto and no food to speak of and the place a mess. He looked just dreadful. I felt sorry for him. I told him that until you came back, there was plenty of room at Mr. Summerlin’s. He could finish what he was writing there without having to bother about trying to feed himself.”

  “He accepted?”

  “Yes, he did. Why not?”

  “You live there alone?”

  “There’s a house servant who comes in—”

  “I see.”

  “I wonder if you do.”

  “Enlighten me, then. A few years ago, you were so concerned about appearances that you felt you had to marry that old man—”

  “Not one word of that is fair. Be careful, Lucius.”

  “Sorry. Mr. Summerlin. Anyway, I assume it was quite proper—”

  “What right have you to assume anything? It’s none of your darned business. Isn’t it a little late for you to worry about my reputation?”

  In Fort Myers, she resumed after a silence, Rob had been very uneasy, he would not go out. He finally confided he was wanted by the law. Though he tried to make a joke of that, he had a great fear of what he called “a half-lived life wasted in prison.”

  They sat awhile. “He’s afraid he might be traced here or someone might report him. He has to leave. He’s just waiting in Fort Myers to see you before he goes. Wants to turn his paper in,” she added, a little meanly. “Wants to talk to you about it.”

  “What else might he want to talk to me about?”

  “You sound jealous. You needn’t be. Please listen: your brother’s desperate. He made me a little afraid. And he’s scared you might think he told you Rob was dead to make a fool of you, when actually he was trying to protect you from getting in trouble for ‘harboring a fugitive’—his words, not mine. If I doubted his story, he said, I could find his name on the public enemy notice at the post office.” When he looked skeptical, she said, “Yes, I did. I wanted to be sure. He’s been on the run for years. Did you suspect that?”

  “It crossed my mind.” He could not concentrate. He didn’t want to look at her.

  “He’s talking wildly. He didn’t sound sorry for himself but he did say he’ll shoot himself before he goes back to prison because the punishment for his escape would be added to a life sentence and he would die there. But he has no idea where to run anymore and no place to hide.” Irritated by his inattention, she said, “Listen to me! He has a pistol, Lucius. He might harm himself.”

  “That’s just Papa’s old revolver,” Lucius said, as if that circumstance took care of everything. Then his fear for Rob caught up with him. “Where is he now? At your house?”

  “I’ll leave him a message that you might be at the hotel bar at five this afternoon, all right? What’s the matter?” she asked when Lucius rose abruptly. He needed to get away from her, needed to quell this absurd jealousy before he could trust himself to speak with her any further.

  Nell neatened her cuffs. “Running off again?” Never before had he heard disdain in her voice. “I’ve often wondered if the love of my life ever understood what true love is.” He feared—he had always feared—this might be true, that when it came to constancy, he was deficient, crippled.

  “I do love you, Nell. I always have.”

  “How do you tell?”

  They longed to find each other but could not. They stared at the white stones. She said, “Lucius? Do you ever mourn the happy man you might have been?” Her words cast him back into his dread that he would miss the point of life, all the way down into the caverns of old age.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered. “You had better go.”

  He walked toward the gate. Under the banyan tree, he turned to watch her. Very slowly, arms opening and closing like the wings of a gray-green luna moth, she gathered up her things. In the heat shimmer on the stone, his lost love seemed to palpitate as if just alighted.

  DESECRATION

  At the Gasparilla, Lucius went directly to the Swashbuckler Bar, which overlooked the river. Bony hind end hitched to the farthest stool toward the window, the resurrected Rob had apparently provoked the bartender, who was banging bottles to let off steam while he reorganized the shelf behind him. Other than these two antagonists, the place was empty.

  To give his feral brother room, Lucius sat down several stools away, still sorting through the tumult in his breast aroused by Nell, letting the charcoal fume and heat of a stiff bourbon well up through his sinuses into his brain,

  “The Watson brothers,” Rob muttered finally, shaking his head at the sheer folly of it all. Lucius recognized the pallid sweaty glaze of that late stage of inebriation after which his brother mana
ged to go right on drinking without seeming drunker. Eventually he might sag down for good but he would not stagger.

  “Listen, Arb—”

  “Robert is the name. Robert B. Watson, at your service.” He lifted his glass to the other image in the bar mirror. When Lucius asked Rob why he had changed his name. Rob said he’d taken his mother’s name because he no longer wished to be a Watson. Talking out of the side of his mouth, still facing the bar mirror, he had yet to look his brother in the eye. “I’ve written down that Tucker stuff for your Watson whitewash,” he said. “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Yes. Who’s that in the urn?” He grinned. “Just dog biscuits?”

  Rob did not grin back. Turning his glass to the river light, inspecting the gleaming amber in the ice, he said, “Last time I looked, it was Edgar ‘Bloody’ Watson.”

  On his way through Fort Myers in the early twenties, heading south to Lost Man’s in search of Lucius, Rob had visited the cemetery on a night of drink with a plan to piss upon his father’s grave. At the scene, however, this gesture seemed inadequate. With a spade from the caretaker’s shed, starting at the head end, he chipped down through the limestone clay and punched through the lid of the rotted coffin. His revised plan was theft of his parent’s skull for use or perhaps sale as a souvenir but the grisly effort required in separating the brown bullet-broken skull from the tough spine had sobered and exhausted him and his palms were badly blistered. However, he persevered.

  Lucius jolted down his drink. “Is any of this true? Your father?” He was horrified. He still hoped Rob was joking.

  “My ever-loving daddy. Did my heart good.”

  “You beheaded your father but you didn’t piss on him.”

  Rob shook his head, disappointed in himself.

  Filling the hole, mounding the grave, he returned the spade to the caretaker’s shed, where he wrapped his prize in a piece of burlap. Later that day, he bribed a funeral parlor handyman to smash it into manageable pieces and install it in that inexpensive Greek-type urn. “As the rightful owner, I thought I got to do the smashing,” Rob said slyly, as his brother glared at him in the bar mirror. “Turned out I had to have a smasher’s license.”