Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  In the old days on Possum Key, Richard had enjoyed long talks with Jean Chevelier, whose view had been that human beings had never evolved from animals as greedy, cruel, and violent in their behavior as they themselves had been right from the start, and here they were, still screwing their wits out, breeding like roaches, and spreading malignancies across the globe, spoiling and killing as they went. Richard struggled to transmit to Gilbert Johnson his understanding of the Frenchman’s notion about the Original Race of Man as a gang of bright apes that spread into different continents and climates and evolved into naked races of assorted colors. However, as Chevelier said, due to ever-increasing populations, conquests, and spreading ranges, these races were inevitably interbreeding, ensuring that the species would revert to that old mud-colored Homo who started all the trouble in the first place and had made life hell for other creatures ever since.

  Sometimes they discussed Charlie Tommie, a mixed-breed Mikasuki and full fledged scavenger who had all or most of the sorry traits of the red, black, and white races, but the feller they mostly talked about was Henry Short, whose color was in the eye of the beholder, according to how you turned him to the light. Richard would say, “Them House boys claim that Henry has some tar in him, but I believe he is Indin and white, the same as me: one thing for sure, he’s a lot lighter in his shade than many of them so-called whites at Chokoloskee.”

  According to Mr. D. D. House, Henry’s mulatto daddy had been one of those smart-talking nigras that the journals used to jeer as “the New Negro.” Not having been born a slave, this New Negro was out to “ravage” white women, not merely screw them, like white men tomcatted around after the darkie girls. But according to Mr. House, whom nobody could call a sentimental man, Henry’s daddy loved his white girl truly and she loved him back. And true love between the races being a capital offense when the male is black, that’s just how the neighbors handled it.

  First time I heard Henry’s history, I had gone to House Hammock to hire him away. The old man said, “I reckon he’ll be staying with us, Mr. Watson.” But he offered a cup of his good shine, we got to talking, and it came out that he had witnessed Henry’s father’s awful death back in Redemption days. Those good Christian folks set up a platform, scrawled justice in black charcoal on the planks in front in case anyone wondered what this show was all about and had ’em a barbecue picnic, sweet corn and spareribs, a regular holiday excursion.

  Being so light-skinned, blue eyes and brown hair, Henry’s daddy could have flat denied his blood, Mr. House believed, and as a U.S. cavalryman who had spilled the blood of hostile Indians for his country, he very likely would have got away with it. But he was proud and angry and dead stubborn. He would not deny that he had served as a buffalo soldier and would not humiliate his regiment, he said, by crawling to a mob, though the girl begged him to save himself and spare their child a lifelong grief and shame. Instead, he shouted that the man they proposed to lynch was an American soldier-citizen with full rights under the U.S. Constitution.

  “Rights?” they said, “Boy, your rights just ain’t the point here. Are you a nigger that has nigger blood or ain’t you?” And that soldier paused, knowing they would have their fun no matter what. He took a deep breath and then he said, “It is my misfortune to resemble all you paleface sonsofabitches, but I’m proud to say I am nigger to the bone.” He bellowed that right at the crowd: “Nigger to the bone!”

  To punish his desecration of the girl, they ripped his pants down to castrate him. They had a special hatred for this white-skinned negro, and being drunk, they made a mess of it. When finally a moan was wrung from his clenched mouth, they laughed, as Old Man House remembered; their lank-haired women did not laugh, just stood there staring hungrily, bare-foot and grim, arms folded on their chests, as they strung him up.

  With such a fine turnout for the barbecue, folks got into a festive spirit and prolonged their sport, lowering the rope so that his bare feet touched the ground. They gave him enough slack to gasp up enough breath to scream or beg, and when he did neither, they yanked him up again and watched his face turn blue. His eyes bugged out and his mouth opened and closed until finally, skewed sideways, it fell open for good. Being born ornery, he would not come back to life, showing no response to the torches and sharp sticks. Disappointed, they turned him over to the crowd. Folks stepped up beside him, got their pictures taken, maybe holding a nice buttered corn cob, and Mom and the kiddies, only two bits each. Finished up by hacking off ear and finger souvenirs, enjoyed some target practice. Man and boy, they whacked him with so many rounds that the body spun slowly in the summer heat. By the end, the sport was Keep that nigger turnin!

  Old Man Dan had seen that battered corpse himself, strung from an oak limb. “Looked like a white man. Course you’d never know what color he was, not after them Georgia boys got done with him.” D. D. House declared he’d been a witness and he sure had all the details, but I couldn’t make out if this lynching was his own experience or a story known to all Americans in those days when lynchings were so common all across the country.

  In Tennessee, on my long ride from Arkansas to Carolina, I came across a thing like that, and I don’t care if I never see another. It brought back the Owl-Man, gut-shot and dying in the Deepwood shadows. It wore out my soul. Mr. House felt disgusted that same way, probably the only thing that old man and I ever agreed on. I forgot to ask if Henry Short was told this story, but Old Man House being so flinty, I reckoned he probably was.

  DANGEROUS TALK

  Word was out at Chokoloskee Bay that Watson had come back to the Islands and that soon after, a man had died in a strange way at Chatham Bend. Though I was innocent, I could not risk a posse; it was time to leave.

  The Russ sons had departed on the mail boat the week previous. No thanks, let alone good-byes, only a bitter demand for their father’s pay. “I can’t oblige you yet,” I told them, “not until our syrup is sold at Tampa Bay.” Those boys rolled their eyes and scowled, very angry and suspicious, but being frightened, they said nothing.

  I made a fair profit on my syrup sale at Tampa and continued northward to Fort White, where I went at once to offer my condolences to the Widow Russ. Izma was a female of my own age, dull of hair and dull of eye, due to a resigned spirit or a stupid one. With those dark silky hairs above her mouth and sharp short lines beneath, her lips looked sewn up tight as a bat’s bottom. When I doffed my hat and made a little bow, she closed her door down to a crack, leaving me out there in the rain. Through that slot I was informed in no uncertain terms that Izma and her sons and the Tolens, too, had concluded that Edgar Watson had murdered Mr. Russ for demanding his rightful earnings, which his employer had never intended to pay.

  I handed her forthwith the full amount in a brand-new store-bought envelope with posies on it—“to the last penny,” I declared. But I could have worn a high black cowl and carried a scythe across my shoulder for all the thanks that homely woman gave me. I grabbed her cold and bony hand and pressed it to my heart, pleading, “Mrs. Russ, ma’am, Izma dear, your late husband died untimely of a heart attack and that is the God’s truth.” Izma said, “What would a man like you know about God?” and closed the door. That twisted, unforgiving face told me how useless it would be to go among the neighbors pleading my innocence.

  Great-Aunt Tabitha had sent a summons. I rode over to the plantation house, rather small behind fake foolish Georgian columns. Frail at the end of her long life, the old lady spent most of what was left of it rotting away under the covers. Swathed in dry white hair and threadbare nightgown, she looked as crumbly and poor as a bit of old bread left out for the jays. The window was tight closed and there was no stink of cigars, which told me her son-in-law’s visits were infrequent if in fact they occurred at all: it was Calvin Banks’s crippled-up old Celia who hobbled over to look after her. However, Aunt Tab was still sharp-eyed and nosy, and without preamble demanded to know if I had murdered her son-in-law’s stepbrother, that man Russ.

 
; “No ma’am, I did not.”

  “A liar to boot,” she said. She peered at me as if some vile wart had grown out on my nose since she’d last seen me. “What in the dickens is the matter with you, Edgar?”

  “Is something the matter, Aunt?”

  “A great deal is the matter. Nothing but trouble around here since you darned people came.” She pointed her bony finger. “I revised my will, you know. Cut you people out of it.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’ve heard.”

  “Your mother and sister are complaining, are they?” She spoke with satisfaction. “That’s because I left my piano and some silver to your Mandy, who would have appreciated such fine things. Unlike your sister, Mandy came regularly to call in the year she lived here with the children.” She cocked her head. “I don’t suppose you killed Mandy, too?”

  “No ma’am. Please don’t say such things.”

  “Well, you never deserved a person of such quality, I know that much. Of course she failed me in the end like all the rest of you. Never acknowledged I’d left her my piano, far less thanked me. She might have been dying by that time, of course, for all anyone told me.” The old woman frowned, losing her thread. “Precious little thanks from any of you Watsons, the more I think about it, least of all that wicked little Ellen Addison, pretending to be such a friend to my poor Laura.” Suddenly alarmed by my homicidal presence, she drew the covers to her chin. “What is it this time, Edgar? What do you want here?”

  “You sent for me, Aunt Tabitha.”

  “Of course I did! I wanted to tell you that you should be horsewhipped!”

  “My mother plays the piano, Aunt. I’m sure Mandy would have wanted her to have it.”

  “Too old! Too spoiled!” She waved away the very idea. “That Addison girl was rotten spoiled right from the start! Orphaned at ten, married at twenty, lived through the War and Reconstruction, and never even learned to boil an egg!” She masticated a little while, building up saliva for some obscure purpose. “Oh yes, I cut her right out of my will and her fool Minnie along with her. I cannot imagine what my daughter saw in those two fe-males.”

  I held my tongue. From the window here in the south bedroom, I could see all the way down the long woodland drive to Herlong Lane.

  Spent, my great-aunt vented a deep sigh. “Laura was a fool, of course.” A tear came to her eye. “And this old fool rotting in her bed who banished us both to these gloomy evil woods . . .” She raised her fingers to her collarbone, the gesture wafting sad old smells from beneath the covers. “It’s hard to put your finger on the fool. Have you discovered that in life, you of all people, Nephew, who had such energy and promise? Aren’t you a fool, an accursed fool, to ruin every chance that comes your way?”

  Her eyes rose to meet mine, beseeching me. “After you left for Oklahoma, Tom Getzen told me you might have become the leading farmer in this county. Did you set fire to his barn? Oh, never mind that now, he’s dead.” She shook her head. “Look at your mother, still selfish and spoiled! She’s learned nothing from all the hardship in her life. Do people never learn? As for your sister—well, let’s not be unkind. The only one in that whole household who is not a fool is Minnie’s daughter. What did they name her? Maria Antoinett? Where did they ever hear tell of a French queen? Got the name wrong and the spelling, too.”

  “May.” I nodded. “A lovely young girl.”

  “She is nothing of the sort! She has had no proper upbringing, she has no manners, she is wayward and hard and discontented. I left that child three hundred dollars in my will but from what Mr. Tolen tells me lately, I have a good mind to take it back. She hasn’t been to see me in two years!”

  “What else has Mr. Tolen told you, Aunt?” I paused. “That I killed John Russ?”

  “It’s not your business what he told me.” Again she cocked her head, fierce as a wren. “What in the dickens is the matter with you, Edgar?” she repeated. “We had such hopes for you. Do you really suppose I would have let poor whites infest this family if you had fulfilled that early promise?”

  “Yet you let Cousin Laura marry him.”

  “I had no choice. She was always jumping on him, she was shameless. Silly fool got herself with child the first time out. We have only the merciful Lord to thank that she miscarried.” Aunt Tab was weeping. “Oh, Nephew,” she entreated suddenly, “this vulgarian is selling everything! Why did you choose that stepbrother instead?”

  She had spat up the unspeakable, this old woman of edged mouth and burning eye. I crossed the room and closed the door, came back. She held my gaze, eyes glittering with retribution. But then, with a jerk stiff as a death throe, she snapped her head away, closing her eyes and waving her fingers to banish such a sinful thought like some fume vented by the family dog.

  Taking her wrist, I whispered softly, “It’s all right, Aunt. I understand you.”

  Eyes tight closed, she shook her head. “Please, Edgar. I didn’t mean that. I was upset.” She wept and trembled, very agitated. She opened her eyes and we studied each other, knowing she had meant just what she said. She turned her head away. Her face had softened. Into her yellowed pillows, she murmured sadly, “Oh, how I longed to write back to Clouds Creek to tell those stingy Watsons how young Edgar had made good, to tell them . . .”

  “Aunt Tab? Please tell them Cousin Edgar has two farms and a fine syrup company. Tell Colonel Robert—”

  “And tomorrow?” She had tired of me and her own hopes, too. “What will you have tomorrow, Edgar? Go away.” As I left, she said, “If you do him harm, I shall testify against you.”

  Returning along the white tracks through the woods, I thought everything through. Before faltering, Aunt Tabitha had approved our family right and duty to stop Sam Tolen before he brought utter ruin to our property. Since his brothers and stepbrothers would swarm out like red ants, he would not be ousted easily from an anthill as large and bountiful as this plantation, at least not lawfully and probably not alive. And should harm come to him, Edgar Watson would be the first suspected.

  When Sunday came, I rode right up to Sam’s front door and called him out. I did not dismount. Aunt Tab had heard my horse gallop up the drive or had been spying from the window, likely both, for her voice called sharply from upstairs, “Mr. Tolen!”

  In his own sweet time, Sam waddled out onto his stoop. To conceal a weapon and more likely two, he was wearing his frock coat from church in this thick midday heat but he stripped off his Sunday collar in his caller’s presence in a gesture of disrespect. Tolen had lost some of his lard and a lot of his jolly manner along with it. He didn’t smell good even at ten paces. His dirty hair was not trimmed neat in side whiskers or beard; it was all black frizzle and the pate shone through, pale as a dog’s belly. After years of sloth and rotgut liquor, he looked like some squat nocturnal varmint poked out into the sunlight with a stick.

  “Same old Sam,” I said.

  “Yep. Only richer.” With hoggish leer, he tossed his head back toward the house. Sam enjoyed baiting me so much that he clean forgot how outraged he was over my alleged murder of his stepbrother. I don’t believe he would have cared too much whether I’d killed Russ or I hadn’t if it gave him an advantage either way.

  Mike Tolen, in the door behind him, was thickset like Sam but his paunch was small. Mike looked scrubbed up, sober as Sunday, while his brother looked like very late Saturday night. From the day he was born until the day he died, Sam Tolen would look soiled inside and out.

  I nodded at Mike but did not let him distract me, though I kept him in the corner of my eye. What I had to say was between me and his brother, I told him. This was true, I had no quarrel against Mike Tolen. Everybody but my friend John Porter, who lost out to Mike when they ran for the County Commission, had a good opinion of this younger brother, who could not be blamed for the name Tolen but only for blind loyalty to his rodent kin.

  Out of respect for the memory of John Russ, Mike Tolen spat half-heartedly, though acting unfriendly and impolite came har
d to him. To gauge his nerve, I skittered my horse out to the side, watching his boots. From where he placed ’em when he shifted with me, I knew he was armed, too. They’d been expecting me. I caught Aunt Tab ducking back behind the curtain in the upper window and gave her a little yoo-hoo kind of wave.

  From his big grin when I did that, a stranger might have thought Sam Tolen was glad to see me, and in his way he was. Because I’d let him hang around when we were younger, this fat feller still looked up to me, he even liked me. But being afraid, he would pull his gun the first time he had me dead to rights, especially with his brother there behind him. The old woman up there behind her blowing curtain might try to intervene but I couldn’t count on that.

  Not that I needed her. Sam could not shoot a nickel’s worth, not even with a rifle. With a revolver, very few farmers could hit their own front door even when, like Sam, they were standing on the stoop. I doubt if either of these two knew how to draw. They’d be dead before they dragged their hardware free of their Sunday suits.

  That’s what was going through my mind. Mike was worried, Sam was grinning. I wiped that damned smirk off his face real quick. “Nope, you haven’t changed a bit,” I told him. “You still stink like a skunk because that’s what you are. You’ve been selling off our Watson property after stealing it and you have been telling lies behind my back.”

  “Lies, you say?” His half glance warned his brother to be ready. “You told Izma and that old lady upstairs that you never killed John Russ. If that ain’t a lie, me’n Mike here never heard one, right, Mike?”

  Mike Tolen grunted but said nothing, knowing that Sam’s drunken nerve might fray. Sam started blustering. “When all you was doin was murderin your help on payday in them Thousand Islands, that’s your business, but when my stepbrother goes with you and you owin him money and he don’t come back? Come on now, Ed!” he complained. “How can you blame people?”