Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Besides being ridiculous, this boy’s lying conceit was annoying and it stung, reminding me that I was nearing fifty while Kate Edna was not yet sixteen. And maybe she did love Leslie, just a little, because if she didn’t, she was the only adolescent female with that much sense for miles around. My niece Maria Antoinett Collins, her best friend Eva Kinard, and that whole flock of linsey-woolsey damsels at the Centerville School were all aflutter over the star pitcher on the baseball team. They blushed and gushed over his husky voice and that cheekbone scar inflicted in a duel. According to May (whose poetical nature was encouraged by her grandmother), this young swain’s hair “filled with light in summer and turned gold.” She loved the strong and graceful way he moved and ran and threw, doubtless imagining how all that rampant youth might feel entwined by a maiden’s arms and legs. No, it was not Kate Edna but May Collins who tagged after the star pitcher every chance she got, at least when her daddy wasn’t looking.

  “That young man’s scar is the mortal imperfection that makes immortal the beauty of his face,” pronounced Granny Ellen, as my mother was called by Minnie’s children. (Granny Ellen still got her fanciest ideas from her old book of English poems, brought south from Edgefield.) But later on, when his zeal for taking life twisted that scar and hollowed out his face, our church folk would recognize the mark of Cain.

  I told Les sharply to watch his tongue when referring to Miss Kate Edna Bethea. He cocked his head with a knowing leer, trying out a frontier drawl: “I never figured Desperader Watson would fuss hisself so bad over no filly.” I guess what he meant by this gobbledegook was that no true gunman from the West would let himself get hot and bothered over some fool girl. In my experience, sad to say, so-called desperados—like most individuals of perilous and uncertain occupation—got hot and bothered only rarely about anything else, but not wishing to spoil a young person’s illusions, I did not impart that information to Les Cox.

  In the end Preacher Bethea was forced to deal with E. J. Watson’s reputation but it never changed his plans even a little. In a last-minute precaution as the day drew near, he found some excuse not to perform our wedding, after which, with his daughter safely off his hands, he assured his neighbors that he had strongly disapproved her match right from the start. Kate Edna was hurt, having done what she thought he wanted; she was learning the hard way who her father was. She said, “If Daddy disapproves of you, you see, he won’t feel obliged to provide a dowry”—the one bitter remark I ever heard this loyal daughter make. She was shocked when it turned out that she was correct.

  Neither the bride’s father nor the groom’s mother was invited when we were married in a civil ceremony at Lake City by County Judge W. M. Ives, with whom I would have less amicable dealings a few years later. As a wedding present, Kate gave me a white shaving mug in floral porcelain with gold trim, the first elegant object I had ever owned. I was so proud that I grew a mustache to inset into its mustache cup, which kept my fine new growth out of the lather.

  The wedding was celebrated on a two-day honeymoon at the Hotel Blanche, where Kate tasted her first champagne and oysters. For a girl who had grown up around farm animals, she set out on her erotic life distinctly nervous—not jumpy really but inert and damp, like suet, breaking out in sudden little sweats. Gently I stroked her back and rump, murmured her down and murmured her down, same way you might calm a foal, and pretty quick, with more champagne, she got taken by surprise by her own free nature. Her knees went back and her mouth opened wide and her farm girl body turned sweet pink all over, which got me cranked up, too. God’s so-called Creation, I decided a few minutes later, might be nothing more than the cumulative energy of all animal ecstasies, human and otherwise, exploding out into the universe in one mighty revelation.

  We spent most of the next day in bed. Lying spent, I recalled that epitaph I saw somewhere in Texas: here lies bill williams: he done his damndest. I gave it hell but the next time around I was hard put to keep up with her. Even so, we raised such a rumpus in our squeaky bed that poor Kate felt too giggly to dress in front of me next morning.

  SYBIL AND NELL

  In the Islands, my foreman had been hearing Tucker rumors, his wife told me when I returned to Chatham in late autumn. Dyer came reeling to the dock, advising me without so much as a greeting that he wanted to be paid off right now since he aimed to quit. I looked him over up and down and sideways. When he could no longer meet my eye, I reminded him that this Chatham Bend plantation had always required a year’s notice from a foreman. If he left before the harvest, he would have to forfeit this year’s pay. No word escaped his frightened face, but with Sybil’s help, he sobered up and changed his mind.

  In November, when Mis Sybil was near term, her husband had been off at Tampa on a bender. Having no time to summon Richard Harden, she delivered her child with only the help of our Indian woman, who told her to get out of bed and squat. This ill-smelling old aborigine disdained the boiling water and hot towels fetched to the cabin door, just hacked and coughed and spat that out before closing it again. Having broken in her own tough twat long since, she could not imagine what the fuss was all about: giving birth for her was more like yawning. When the child arrived stillborn, the squaw indicated in sign language that when that weepy white woman got her breath back, she could walk down to the river and wash off if that was what she wanted.

  Hurt by her husband’s absence—and confused when I told her that he had remarried—Sybil tried to feel grateful for my concern. She never reproved me for forcing her door, saying I had warned her: hadn’t I given her that pistol to protect herself? It was scarcely my fault, she said with a weak smile, that she could not bring herself to pull the trigger.

  The following year I was away when Fred showed up, red-blotched, shaky, and ashamed, according to Lucius; he had been frightened by a story at Key West that E. J. Watson had murdered the plume bird warden Guy Bradley at Flamingo a few weeks earlier. By the time I got back to the Bend, the Dyers were gone. Lucius said they had departed on the mail boat, leaving only a scrawled address where the five hundred dollars that Dyer claimed was due him should be sent. All things considered, their departure was for the best. I certainly felt no obligation to send money.

  Young Lucius, who was now living at the Bend, told me Mis Sybil had urged her husband to await my return and not leave till he was paid. Dyer was too frightened, however, telling his wife that he was leaving and that if she did not come with him, she and the children would never see him again. By now he had persuaded himself that I would send his salary anyway after the harvest. “Mis Sybil knew better,” Lucius said in a wry tone, sounding skeptical of his daddy’s business practices.

  Sybil’s small Nell, who adored Lucius just as much as her mother adored me, had left in a flood of grief, and Lucius confessed that he was going to miss that lively little Nell, though he was sixteen and the girl was only seven.

  WE HAVE PARTED

  A few weeks before she died, Great-Aunt Tabitha had summoned me to her bedside, where the smell of decay already rose from her yellowed linen. She seized my wrist in a birdy grip and whispered in weak sulfurous gasps that she wanted her silver to remain in the Watson family and that therefore it should go to my new bride.

  Possibly her son-in-law had hurried her along before she could get that last wish down on paper, because on a soft hazy day that spring, she suddenly gave up the ghost. Her mortal coil was boxed and trundled up the highroad to Lake City, where she was laid in next to Cousin Laura under that tall haughty stone that she had ordered for herself right after her daughter’s death ten years before. We have parted—whom could she have meant with that inscription? Surely not her son-in-law, Mr. S. Tolen, who did not attend the funeral, being drunk in celebration of his strengthened claim to our plantation.

  Paying a call on the bereaved, I mentioned the Watson silver that kind Aunt Tab had left to my new bride. Sam chuckled, “I wouldn’t know nothin about that, Ed. That new bride that you are speakin about has got to be t
he one who died on you a few years back down at Fort Myers cause there ain’t one word about old silver and new brides in the last will.” Comfortably, he contemplated his big house, as if to say, I reckon I got it all now, ain’t I, Ed?

  I spoke each word carefully to make sure he heard. “That silver, like this property, belongs in the Watson family.”

  “That a warning, Ed? Or is that a threat? Cause a feud ain’t goin to help you Watsons none. Even if you was crazy enough to shoot me, my brothers are in line for the whole thing. I know the law on this real good cause I done the papers with the lawyers. And next in line after Tolens come them Myers nephews. So you Watsons are way into the back, suckin hind tit.”

  In 1903, the two Myers nephews, contesting Sam Tolen’s flouting of their uncle’s will, had acquired by tax deed nearly half of the mismanaged plantation and had filed a suit to claim the rest. Incredibly, that suit had been invalidated by the last will and testament of Tabitha Watson, who had bequeathed everything to Samuel Tolen. Since her act was incomprehensible, our family had assumed that, all alone and undefended in her house, at the mercy of this son-in-law who stood leering at me now, the old lady had been starved, terrorized, and otherwise coerced to do his bidding.

  A man lacking shame can go far in life, especially one who feels no need for friends. Tolen had been all ready for those nephews, he’d had his shyster on the case for years. As a precaution, he had sold much of the land before the case could be adjudicated, so that even if he lost, much of the loot had been salted away, probably in Georgia. This great plantation that could have been the pride of northern Florida was being chewed apart by rats before my eyes, and my hopes with it. Suffocating, I walked out to my horse without a word.

  DEEP LAKE

  In May, pink-haired little Ruth Ellen was born in my new farmhouse, and as soon as Kate was on her feet again, we made our preparations to head south. Kate was happy to escape the gossip, not to speak of the dangerous Tolen feud. One night not long before we left, driving Eddie and my nephew Julian along Herlong Lane, I halted the buggy on a sudden premonition, listening and peering, that’s how sure I was that a bushwhacker crouched behind one of those trees. Perhaps I was mistaken or perhaps he slipped away, but after that I kept a sharp lookout everywhere I went, lest I be murdered by a Russ or Tolen.

  We traveled south on the new railroad, stopping off at Fort Myers to introduce the baby to my older children. Walter and Carrie were melancholy, having recently lost their infant boy, but Carrie walked her new stepmother over to Miss Flossie’s and decked her out in an egret bonnet in the latest fashion. From there, they strolled to the photo parlor where Kate had her portrait taken with her baby. I carry that picture in my billfold, show it to anyone who cares for a look and some who don’t.

  Though both of these young women worked hard to be charitable and understand each other, Kate and Carrie had no more in common than chocolate and grapefruit. My wife, who was four years younger than her stepdaughter, was calm and rather quiet (“a bit bland,” Carrie would remark to Eddie, who made sure I heard this later), while my daughter had an obstreperous side that she had to stifle for her banker’s sake except when her bad daddy was around to egg her on.

  While I was in town Jim Cole stopped by the house. He grew uneasy when he saw me, talking too loudly about Henry Ford’s impending visit to “Tom” Edison. Eventually he got around to the great prospects for Walt’s Deep Lake citrus plantation, and his mealy-mouthed manner told me he had carved himself a fat slice of that pie and also that Deep Lake must be in trouble. The partners knew that Watson Syrup Company was the fastest-growing business on the southwest coast, and though Cole tried to be casual about it, my son-in-law made no bones about the fact that they needed advice.

  From Fort Myers to Deep Lake was a long slow forty miles through the Big Cypress over poor track. As president of the First National Bank, Walt was twice the weight and half the fun of the hard-drinking cowboy I’d first met ten years before, but he was desperate enough to ride out there with me, spend a few days. The forest floor was crisscrossed by bear and panther tracks and a hundred turkeys came into that clearing every evening; just as I’d heard, the old Indian gardens at Deep Lake had enormous promise. The soil was dark and soft, just beautiful, and all the young trees were doing well, yet that golden fruit lay rotting on the ground because the place was surrounded by vast cypress swamps and thorny limestone thicket, with no good road to bring in labor and supplies and get the citrus out.

  My son-in-law had acquired the expansive style of most bankers and businessmen, who paste on great big friendly grins and wink to sugar all the lies they have to tell. Being new at the wilderness plantation game and anxious to look the part, Walt lit up a cigar and hooked his thumbs into his armpits, rocked back on his heels, and smiled unmercifully for no sane reason before letting me know that when Lee County got around to putting in its western section of the proposed Tampa-Miami Trail, which would pass Deep Lake only a few miles to the south, all their marketing problems would be solved for good. It was only this first year that was the problem—

  I raised my hand. There had been talk of a cross-Florida road long before Nap Broward became governor, I said, and not one cypress or saw palmetto had bit the dust so far. This beautiful citrus might lie rotting on the ground year after year. He’d be a hell of a lot better off, I told him, to persuade his railroad partner Mr. Roach to lay a narrow-gauge rail spur not forty miles northwest to Fort Myers but twelve miles south to the salt water at Ever-glade, get that citrus out each week on the coastal shipping.

  Walt stared at me. He’d never thought of that. “As for field labor,” I continued, “your good friend Sheriff Tippins would probably rent you big buck niggers cheap, right off his chain gang. He could set up a road-gang camp out here, kill two birds with one stone.”

  By the time we got back to Fort Myers, Banker Walt was so excited by my new ideas about citrus railroads and sound labor management that he promised to write to Mr. Roach recommending my participation in the venture. Hearing him talk with such enthusiasm, Carrie was delighted. “Daddy, your dreams are coming true!” she whispered. And Kate was smilng, too, of course, eager to join in the celebration but not yet clear why my own family had not sought and welcomed my participation before now.

  • • •

  Strolling around the growing town, I was astonished by the changes in Fort Myers. The oil and gas lamps, the horse-drawn buggies of the nineties were all but gone, replaced by backfiring and very smelly autos, and the railroad whose new river bridge had connected our frontier cattle town to the outside world. One day soon, I predicted, winter visitors would come here in the aeroplane, which had had its first flight in North Carolina just three years before. For two thousand years, there had been no improvement on the horse as the speediest mode of human travel, and now America had led the world into the Twentieth Century with what the newspapers were calling “a veritable explosion of invention,” with two of its greatest pioneers, Mr. Edison and Mr. Ford, exchanging bold ideas here in our little town.

  How painful and humiliating, then, that at Chatham Bend we were still mired in the living conditions of a century ago and for many dark centuries before that. It was enough to drive a man of enterprise half mad to be left so far behind in this rush of progress. My head ached with throttled rage every time I thought about it. Ed Watson was a very able man—I knew it, all our businesspeople knew it—yet all his fate permitted him to contribute to his times was an adaptive strain of sugarcane and a few good ideas that other men would profit by such as Deep Lake’s citrus railway. His passthrough window between his indoor kitchen and the dining room, his mesh screens primed with motor oil to keep out black flies and mosquitoes, an improved hand pump that raised three hundred gallons of water to a roof tank from where gravity feed delivered it to the indoor sink—such innovations made farmhouse life so much more tolerable that my naive Kate compared her Mr. Watson to Mr. Ford and Mr. Edison as an American genius, when in fact not
one of these strokes of genius would deserve a patent, far less invite capital investment. Oh God, how puny my contributions were when compared with electricity and the combustion engine, which had already changed the world.

  The only sign of modern times one could find at Chatham Bend was the first motor launch ever to ply the coast south of Fort Myers, a twenty-six-footer with an eight-foot beam, a one-cylinder engine, a large cargo space aft, and a framed canopy of black canvas forward, forming a cabin. I named her Warrior to keep my courage up until I could join the flow of progress and make my mark.

  JULIAN AND LAURA

  In Fort White, my nephew Julian Collins had married Miss Laura Hawkins on April Fool’s Day. I never understood what that girl saw in him, for my nephew was humorless, ingrown as a toenail, whereas Laura was fun-loving and lively. Not unpleasantly plain, she had big soft eyes that could drive a man of sensibility and taste to groans of soulful longing. To Kate’s great joy—for she and Laura had been bosom friends since childhood—the newlyweds would travel south with us to spend that summer at the Bend, with a vague plan to stay on for a year.

  Lucius met us in the Warrior at Everglade, where he was to pick up his new skiff with outboard motor: he invited his cousin Julian to accompany him and do his first saltwater fishing on the way. Kate and our new baby came with me in the launch, also Julian’s Laura and Jane Straughter, whom the Collinses had brought along as nursemaid-cook. Hope of seeing Henry Short was probably why Jane came.