Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  I was very frightened. I saw his jug of moonshine on the table. I jolted a big snort to nerve myself, then opened the storm shutters to let in air and light. Your father lay snoring on his bed with muddy boots on. When I shook him awake, he opened one eyelid, raw bright red as the slit throat of a chicken. Then he rolled over, dragging a pillow over his head; he couldn’t take the light or stand the sight of me.

  I told him what had happened. His voice growled from beneath the pillow that he knew nothing about it. Then he said that Mr. Wally Tucker better be damned careful about spreading slander against E. J. Watson. This reminded him that they’d left him short-handed; he reared up with a roar, rolled off the bed, but blacked out again and crashed against the wall.

  At these times, “hair of the dog” was all that helped him. By the time I fetched the jug, he was sitting up holding his head, wheezing for breath. His skin was blotchy and his breath came out of Hell. He opened his eyes and glared at me, then looked away. He did not bother to lie. “How could I pay ’em, Sonborn?” he said quietly. “Nothing to pay ’em with.”

  Sick as he was, he went with me after dark. This time I puked and so did he: maybe the first thing we ever did together! We heaped and scraped those remains onto some burlap, made a big sack of it, filled the pits and scattered brush, lugged that sack between us to the river downstream from the boat sheds, and let it go into the current. All that while, we never spoke a word. He was sober now and trying to suggest that Ted and Zachariah had been thieves as well as troublemakers and maybe the other hands had killed them. I wanted badly to believe that. Anyhow, he said, there was nothing to be done about it, and for the sake of our plantation’s good name, I must forget what I had seen. Being too needy, too eager to please him, I agreed. He was very worried that the Tuckers might spread lies.

  With the Tuckers gone and Tant off hunting, there was no one to talk to but the harvest crew and Josie. I was all alone in my awful knowledge. I don’t believe Josie ever learned about those hog-chewed cadavers, but even if she’d known, she would have claimed that no matter who did ’em in, they probably had it coming. Her “Mister Jack” paid no attention to what Josie overheard, knowing this little woman was so crazy for him that no secret that might do him harm would pass her lips.

  Unpaid and penniless after their long year of hard work, the Tuckers were taken in by Richard Harden at Lost Man’s River. Because they risked jail at Key West, he suggested they camp on Lost Man’s Key, which was quit-claimed by the Atwell family up in Rodgers River but uninhabited. Lived aboard their sloop and subsisted mostly on palm tops and on shellfish while they built a driftwood shack, having borrowed tools, gill net, and seed corn from the Hardens. They planted a piece of ground across the river mouth, near the spring at the north end of Lost Man’s Beach.

  Toward the end of 1900, your father bought that quit-claim from the Atwells, who took back his rough note warning Tucker to remove himself in three days’ time. With his vegetables still green and his wife near term, Tucker was outraged: he sent word back reminding Watson that “as was well known or soon would be,” he and his wife were still owed a year’s wages, and until these were paid, they would not leave Lost Man’s Key “come Hell or High Water.” My heart sank when I saw that message, knowing your father would take it as a usurpation of his quit-claim and a threat.

  On the last night of the old century, your father broke out a new jug of Tant’s moonshine and sat down heavily at the table. Aunt Josie came in with Baby Pearl in hopes of New Year’s cheer but took one look at his closed face and went right out again. She knew better than to break his mood and she didn’t need to warn me to keep my mouth shut. We sat in the dark kitchen in deep gloom.

  Josie warmed up beans but we hardly ate. Your father read Tucker’s note over and over; he drank and brooded until nearly midnight. Finally he took a last big slug and shoved the jug across the table, commanding me (as he often did) to hide it from him. I put it on that ledge under the cistern cover—you remember, Luke?—where I placed the buckets when I fetched in water.

  In a while he staggered out onto the riverbank to check the tide. We knew where he was going. When he came back in, he took his shotgun off the wall but dropped it on the floor. I picked it up for him, astonished to see him drop a weapon, drunk or otherwise.

  Praying he might sag down and sleep, I complained that I was weary—“Sleep, then, damn you!” Maybe we should wait till daylight to depart. “We? You’re staying here!” In the doorway, Aunt Josie put a finger to her lips. But desperate to save him from some terrible mistake, I slipped ahead of him into the sailing skiff, which he nearly capsized when he crashed aboard. By that time, he’d forgotten that he’d ordered me to stay behind. Glaring balefully at the full moon, he muttered, “Row then.”

  There was no wind. I rowed upriver on the rising tide. Drunk though he was, he had planned for that tide, staying our departure until after midnight. Leaving Possum Key to starboard, I rowed south down Chevelier Bay, and all that hour, silhouetted on the moonlit water, he sat motionless, jutted up in the stern like an old stump. Sometime later, we went ashore on Onion Key. It was still dark when he woke me. Exhausted, I protested: it was not yet daybreak. His silence warned me not to speak again. He had sobered some by now but his mood was ugly.

  We descended Lost Man’s River on the falling tide as he had planned. I rowed hard anyway just to keep warm. Soon there was breeze. He pointed at the mast and I raised her small canvas. With the dark bulk of him hunched at the tiller, the old skiff whispered through cold mists across broad discs of current, westward over the gray reach of Lost Man’s Bay.

  At daybreak, we slid the skiff into the mangroves on the inland shore of Lost Man’s Key. Telling me to wait there, he set off at once, rounding the point to the Gulf beach. I followed. My teeth chattered in the damp and my voice shook when I nagged him: Why were we sneaking up in darkness? Why not just run them off our claim? Distracted by my pestering, he stepped into a hole and twisted his ankle and cursed violently in pain.

  Where Tucker’s small sloop on her mooring could be glimpsed through the big sea grape leaves, he dropped two shells into the chambers of his double-barrel. On the beach ridge, a small thatch roof had come in view. One last time, I begged him not to harm them. He fixed me with a look I could not read. Was it contempt? I don’t think so. Then he limped forward.

  The Tuckers had no lamps; they lay down at dark and rose at daybreak. Wally was already outside, perched on a big driftwood tree mending his cast net. His rifle leaned against the silver trunk beside him. It was too late to warn him: if he laid one finger on that gun he would be killed.

  Favoring his bad ankle, your father moved out of the sea grape in stiff short steps like a bristled-up dog. I heard no sound though I was close behind him but Tucker picked up some tiny pinching of the sand. His hand dropped the net needle and flew for his rifle, only to stop short in midair and sink back slowly as he raised his hands.

  “You people get the hell off of my claim,” your father said—something like that. He tossed his head toward the shack. “Tell your bitch to clear her trash out before I burn that pigsty to the ground.” Wally Tucker went all pale and blotched like someone slapped, but sensing perhaps that this man had spoken brutally to provoke an attack he only blinked back tears of rage and fear.

  “Go get her,” Papa ordered me. “Trot her out here.”

  I shook my head. “Please, Papa, I can’t do that—”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake. Keep him covered, then,” Papa said, disgusted. He tossed me the shotgun. Hungover and exhausted, he was jumpy, on the point of rage. He drew his revolver and limped toward the shack. Wally whispered, “Please, Rob. Don’t let him harm Bet.” I sensed a distraction and backed off a step, yelling, “Don’t try it, Wally!” but he had lunged and grasped the barrels. The morning exploded in red haze. In the same moment that I shrieked, your father shouted with great violence. “SHIT!” Fucking Sonborn! Hadn’t he told me not to come? Now we were ruined�
�all that was included in that one furious word.

  Having spun toward Wally, he had not seen Bet rush outside, clutching a pot. At the sight of her man’s body twisting on the sand she moaned and staggered, but she kept her head; she did not run to him but dropped her pot and fled for the shore wood. I see her still, round with child in her white shift, sailing away like a child’s balloon over the sand.

  I believe murder might have been his intention when he left Chatham Bend, but after he’d sobered during the long hours of the river journey—who can say? Perhaps he never knew himself. He looked bewildered, unimaginably weary. He did not rage at my inattention, only said dully, “Damn fool tried to kill us.” He eased himself down like an old man on that same limb on which the dying man twitching on the sand had bent to his mending moments earlier, as if considering how we might start over and relive this sunrise scene in a sane way; he sat with his hands square on his knees, boot toes not five feet from the body, which he didn’t look at. Only then did he recall Bet Tucker; he turned in time to glimpse her before she disappeared. Realizing I must have seen her flight—seen it and not warned him—he said nothing, simply handed me the revolver. Still in shock, I dropped it. He picked it up, thrust it at me again. Imagining that out of his remorse he was inviting me to kill him, I raised and pointed it at his unblinking eyes. “No, Rob,” he said. I lowered the weapon. Would I have shot him? I don’t know. In the expression on his face, this man enthroned on the silver tree seemed stranger than any stranger. He had called me Rob.

  “He attacked us, you said!”

  “Yes, he did. The gun went off by accident. Who will believe that?”

  The families on Lost Man’s Beach, his voice said urgently, might come to investigate the shot; we could not stay long enough to make a search, we had to catch her quick; if she got too deep into that scrub, we just might lose her. I stared after her, unable to take this in. Then his voice broke through. “You hear me, Rob? We have to finish what we started.”

  I could not look at Wally’s death throes without retching. My agony burst through. “What you started, Papa!”

  “I can’t catch her,” he said calmly, after getting to his feet, testing his ankle. “I’m too fat and too lame. I’m sorry, boy.”

  Swallowing and shivering, teeth chattering, I protested wildly. To shoot Bet Tucker in cold blood would be terrible and crazy, we would burn in Hell! He folded his arms upon his chest, saying, “Well, boy, that is possible. But meanwhile, she is the only witness and if she gets away, we are going to hang.”

  All was unbearable, every breath. To run that girl down, put this hard heavy weapon to her head and pull the trigger—I wept helplessly. “Don’t make me do that, Papa. I can’t do it.”

  He was losing patience, though still calm. “Why, sure you can, son,” he told me then, “and you best jump to it. It’s her life or ours.” That exhausted look returned into his face. “You are innocent in all this, boy, no matter what becomes of us. But will that save you?” He turned away, looking toward the wood edge. “Too late for tears,” he said.

  I was running, I was wailing. Unless it was only in my heart, my wail could be heard as far off as South Lost Man’s.

  Bet had not run far. In the thick tangle, she had no place to go. Small footprints, prints where she had fallen to her knees, hand prints—some animal on all fours—then the whiteness of her shift in the cave of vines where she had crawled, trying to hide. She lay panting on her side in tears of shock, her wet cheek stuck with sand.

  Somewhere Papa’s voice was calling, coming closer. I sank to my knees beside her, fighting for breath. “Please, Bet, don’t look.” She gasped, “Oh Rob, we never done you harm.”

  I crept forward. Her eye was fixed on the root and sand inches away, her lips parted by whimper, the soft skin pulsing at the temple, the life blood pink in the transparent ear—the new life in her . . .

  At the sound of sand crushed by oncoming steps, that eye flew wider and her whole body trembled. I bent to her, whispering, “Please, Bet. Forgive me.” Forcing my will—oh Christ be quick!—I grasped my wrist to steady my hand, touched the muzzle to her temple, sucked a breath deep to lock my nerve in place, and squeezed the trigger.

  A crimson spatter in my eyes as all went black.

  Round sea grape leaves in a sunrise dance of shadows on the sand. I lay suspended, praying that this dream of bright water might not end. It was too late. Before squeezing my eyes shut again, I’d seen those boot prints where the girl had lain, the darkened sand kicked over that blood shadow, the stained face of earth. Rob Watson was dead from that day forward and forever. What had taken place was drawn over my corpse like a leaden shroud. I could not move.

  The boots returned. He leaned and shook my shoulder. “Time to go.” I struggled away from him, struggled to stand and run. I could not. I was too weak. Get away from me! Were those the last words I ever spoke to him?

  He bent then and with one hand under my armpit lifted my weight without effort, stood me on my feet. With the other hand, he used sea grape leaves to scrape the worst of the red bits and vomit from my shirt and pants. Never before had he taken care of me in this way. But his guilt or remorse, if that is what it was, had come too late. I had no heart left for anything but hate.

  He had already fetched the sailing skiff and dragged both bodies off the sand into the channel. As he waded me past Bet’s shape toward the skiff, I wondered if the baby in her womb might still pulse with no foreboding of its end.

  In the boat, he ordered me to curl up on the bilge boards at his feet. His coat lay folded on the stern seat within reach; the revolver butt protruded from its inside pocket. At the oars, facing astern, he had to turn repeatedly to check his bearing; I touched the weapon twice. On the fourth try I slid it free and slipped it under my shirt. In my great hate, I mourned that I had not shot him when he first gave me the gun.

  All New Year’s Day afternoon, curled like a fetus, I observed the murderous drunkard at the oars, the blue eyes squinted in the sun, the ginger beard and the black hat, the shoulders hurled forward and back, forward and back against the passing treetops—all I could see while lying in the bilges except the far towers of Glades cumulus off to the east.

  Chatham Bend was empty. Perhaps Tant had returned from hunting, heard Josie’s tale, and taken his sister and Pearl back to Caxambas. Nerved up and overtired, your father could not sleep. He resumed drinking, shouting threats against imagined enemies, then ran out and torched the cane, which made no sense. He was still out there running like a madman when Erskine Thompson came in on the Gladiator. When they went indoors to find something to eat, I boarded his ship and slipped her lines, drifted downriver.

  At break of day off Mormon Key, an onshore wind was chipping up the surface, a fair breeze for a run south. Passing Lost Man’s, I stared dead away to sea. I still had his revolver, knowing he would come after me: I have it still.

  My history in the quarter century since is hardly worth the telling. Too much of it has been spent in prison and the rest mostly in flight—another sort of prison, I’ve discovered.

  Luke, I beg you to believe I was not a killer then nor am I now.

  THE ONE SURVIVING WITNESS

  Soft mist rose off the salt marsh, thinning in the sun.

  Was all this true? Perhaps all Papa had ever intended was to run those people off his claim and burn their shack. As the man who would be vilified and damned, Edgar Watson, too, had been a victim of Tucker’s desperate lunge, and in his despair might have succumbed to the seeming necessity of suppressing that girl’s witness rather than see his last hope of redemption on his new plantation end on the gallows, leaving his penniless family to the mercies of the Islanders. Bet Tucker’s life or his family’s future: that was his terrible choice and he had made it, accepting responsibility for both deaths and unspoken abomination in his community. Hadn’t he concealed his son’s participation, even his presence? Wasn’t that why he had made him lie down in the boat, out of sight bel
ow the level of the gunwales? Had Rob realized this? It would not seem so.

  Or was he awarding Papa too much benefit of too much doubt? If Papa was guilty of the Tucker deaths, how could that upright and responsible historian, L. Watson Collins, proceed with the “whitewash,” as Rob called it? Had he ignored inconvenient facts and disturbing intuitions because of his love for Papa (and ambitions for his book)? Had he thought he might skim over the Tucker episode without risk of contradiction since the only conceivable witness was the missing Rob?

  At least Papa had not lied. Rob’s own account established that Papa had not drawn attention to how panicky or inept or careless Rob might have been as a cause of that first death nor attempted to evade the fundamental blame. Because he’d wished his younger son to know that there were mitigating circumstances (imagining that his oldest son was gone for good, and in any case safe from prosecution) he had hinted that Rob might have shared the guilt.

  Look at Papa’s first reaction to Tucker’s death, as recalled by Rob. Couldn’t that “SHIT!” signify tragic dismay? What have you DONE boy! Yet apparently Papa had stifled his recriminations, for subsequently—Rob’s account again—he had actually attempted to comfort his stricken son, assuring him it was self-defense and not his fault. To protect his son’s feelings—and right from the start—Papa had acted with a certain stoic grace, wasn’t that true? And ever since, he had stoically endured the massive judgment that those deaths had brought upon him.