Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  If Eddie Reed had shot Belle’s stallion instead of figuring he would inherit him, I thought later, there would have been time to scratch away those boot prints.

  At the last minute Leslie showed up with his mama, who hated the Tolen brothers worse than anybody. Frank groaned to me that women were bad luck, he was all set to back out, and I was, too: nobody else was supposed to know a thing about this. But like it or not, Cornelia knew about it, so finally I persuaded Les that this was men’s work, not fit for a lady, and offered his mother my respects along with my earnest wish that she go home. I never asked Will then or later if he had known what his wife and son were up to.

  Leslie looked drawn, watching her go. “How come it ain’t you doin the shootin, if you know so much? You think I’m some kind of a dumb kid? Think I don’t know you want this worse’n I do?” But afraid I would walk away, he only muttered this, then let it go, nervously checking the loads in my double-barrel.

  I was suffering mixed feelings, I admit. First of all, after those Tuckers, I had put away my gun. Second, I had known Sam Tolen most of my life and we’d had some fun before we had hard feelings. However, it was too late to back out now.

  In the corner jamb where the fence rails joined to make a barricade of thorn and vine, we crouched in a kind of cave under the brambles. There we waited near an hour before the squeak of buggy axles came down the road. It was a fine and bright May morning and early sun streamed through the new small leaves. I heard a thrush—like a child’s sweet question, as my Charlie once observed, pausing to listen in our cabin not a hundred yards from where we skulked right now. All around, the spring chorus resounded strangely loud and clear, and I wondered if Sam’s hairy ears ever heard these woodland melodies of his last morning—thick-bodied Sam, slapping his reins on the rump of his red horse as he rattled down the track from Herlong Lane toward Ichetucknee Springs, still belching on his burly breakfast of hominy and hog.

  I doubt he heard anything at all. Half stupefied by his long evening of drink, lulled by the pounding rhythms of the big bay’s hooves, the powerful workings of its dung-flecked haunches and its fly-switch tail, poor old Sam would be as deaf to birdsong as he was to the stillness of the white road where three men lay in wait and his dull gaze would not pick out the amorphous shapes obscured by rails and brambles. So I hoped. I hoped his Baptist Lord would show him that much mercy.

  Hearing those hoof shots and the clicking of the wheels, Reese raised his barrel to the rotting rail under the vines, deep-creased black finger on the trigger; a moment later, the whole morning quaked at the crash of gunfire. The red horse shied and shrieked and fell, all within the echo of the shot as the buggy climbed the fallen horse and overturned, pitching the driver out onto the road. At the blast, Sam must have grabbed his shotgun because he came up with it as he struggled to his knees, mouth wide in a black hole. His eyes were huge. Unable to believe his end had come, he tried to holler. He still had time because Leslie Cox had frozen on the trigger.

  With a shrill yelp, Sam floundered sideways to get behind the thrashing horse as he swung his gun up, but even before he got it to his shoulder, he despaired, flinging it away like something burning. On his knees, he raised his hands.

  “Shoot!” Frank ordered Leslie, furious. Frank had been furious before he got there, wanting no part of this damned business, but no matter how often I explained this to Cox later, the black man would never be forgiven for that contemptuous order although it did the trick. “Right then is when Mist’ Sam Tolen knowed he was a goner,” Frank reflected later. “That’s when I looked away. Ain’t decent to watch a man afeared as that. Just plain embarrassin.”

  My old adversary and nemesis had sought and found me through the thorns and rails. Too scared to speak, he whimpered like a pup. Those last whimpers burned a hole into my heart, and I cursed Leslie for it, after all my warnings that these things must be done quick or not at all. In that instant he pulled the trigger and Sam’s face ruffled up bright red, bug eyes obliterated. Spun half around and down by a charge of buckshot at close range, he gave only a few quick short kicks as if trying to run while lying there face down. The body sprawled on the clay road, snuffling up blood-spattered dust like a slaughtered hog.

  With a victory whoop like some wild Indian, Leslie jumped out on the road and gave the body a second barrel in the back of the head, almost be-heading it. That second barrel made no sense, just made a mess, and Leslie backed away, squinching his nose in disgust. “See how scairt he was? He shit his pants!” But the dead man might never have had time to soil himself if Cox had done his part.

  “You sure that isn’t you?” I snarled. Hearing Reese snicker, this fool kid turned on him. Reese saw it coming, knocked the twin barrels up. “Wouldn’t try that, boy, if I was you,” Reese said. “Least not till you reload.”

  All three of us were enraged, isn’t that peculiar? Why I was so angry I don’t know, but it was much more than annoyance at Les Cox, who was screeching now, fighting back tears. He looked on the point of passing out and was incensed that we could see that. “You and your fuckin jokes! Got a dead man layin here in his own shit and blood and you’re still jokin? Wasn’t you never taught no common decency?”

  I had to grin at that, and Frank did, too, but Cox burst into tears of rage mixed with his fear and relief that it was over. His feelings tumbled around together and got in one another’s way like new blind puppies. But even while he wept, this fool was jamming shells into the chambers. When Reese wrenched the weapon away from him, he yelled, “Fuckin nigger! Gimme that fuckin gun!”

  Reese was an outlaw and he knew his business. He emptied Leslie’s gun and Sam’s gun, too, then stripped Sam’s wallet and good boots. When he slung the boots for Leslie to catch, our young killer went pale, as if these humble sweat-stunk relics of the dead man’s days had brought home the revelation that his life had taken a sharp turn and perhaps not for the better. He knocked Sam’s yellow pigskin wallet from Frank’s hand.

  “I ain’t no fuckin vulture,” Leslie snarled.

  “You doan take his stuff, then nobody gone be huntin for no robbers. They be huntin for his best-knowed enemy. Tha’s you. Mos’ likely they will do that anyways but no sense makin it easy for ’em.” He held the wallet out a second time, raising his voice a little. “Take the money, boy, an’ drop the wallet. We got no business standin round here on this road.”

  “Don’t you go givin me no nigger orders!” But he snatched the wallet, picked the money out, then hurled it at the body. Seeing Sam’s wallet bounce onto the road, I had the thought—more like a pang—that if his carcass would just come to and sit up, I could probably make Fat Sammy laugh about the way his career as a rich plantation owner had panned out.

  “Show some respect,” I said. “That’s a man laying there.”

  “Was a man, you mean!” But Leslie’s jeer was fractured and his eyes looked moist again. Feeling injured that his partners had no respect Whatever for his dangerous deed, committed in the name of family honor, he was fairly quivering with self-pity.

  That is how Sam Tolen, quiet, washed, and well-behaved, happened to follow his loved ones into Oak Lawn Cemetery. To keep up appearances, I went, too, accompanied by Kate and Granny Ellen. As befitted the occupant who had administered the money, my mother noted, Aunt Tabitha’s stone loomed over the lesser markers, chaperoning her daughter and her lowlife son-in-law even in death.

  SHERIFF DICK WILL PURVIS

  Mr. Woodson Tolen of Andersonville, Georgia, as administrator of Sam’s estate, gave power of attorney to his son James. Apparently Woodson did not think that our county commissioner was bright enough to take over the looting of the plantation, and knowing Mike, I’d have to say that this judgment was correct.

  Jim Tolen hustled back from Georgia and moved into the manor house like he was born to it. After the funeral, he stayed on for the fight to keep the Myers Plantation in the Tolen name, wearing his rented funeral suit in court. Of the three brothers, including th
e deceased, I liked this one least. I treated Jim Tolen like a shard of slag, too base and worthless to be noticed, yet too mean and sharp-edged not to keep an eye on.

  Being less greedy than his brothers, our county commissioner had no ilsssssslusions about the moral worth of the Tolen claim on other people’s property but he was loyal to Sam and that was that. After the burial I went up to Mike and offered my hand, saying I was sorry. Tolen flushed under his beard and refused my hand with everybody watching. He said loud enough for folks to hear, “I know who killed my brother, Watson. They will pay.”

  He knew no such thing, not for a fact. But by spurning my hand for all to see, the dead man’s brother had accused me publicly without evidence, flouting the most cherished principle of justice. I said to him in a low voice, “I’ll make allowance for your grief but you’d better be more careful who you threaten.”

  Jim Tolen was a fox-eared feller, born to overhear. “You’re takin his words personal, ain’t that it, Watson?” Indeed I was, and for good reason. Yet in showing my anger, I had made a bad mistake. I had helped Mike set in motion something that could not be stopped. This business could only finish badly.

  Mike Tolen went to Sheriff Purvis in Lake City and filed a complaint against William Leslie Cox and both his parents. The evidence was entirely circumstantial—the public dispute at the Junction between Leslie and the deceased and the faint boot prints of two men, also a woman’s prints, that Mike had discovered in the fence jamb near Sam’s body. However, those prints had been rained away and Will Cox had beaten Mike to his friend Purvis. The sheriff reminded Commissioner Tolen that he too had visited the scene and that he had found no evidence against the Cox boy. No offense, he added, but from what he had been told about Mr. Tolen’s brother, almost any man in the south county might have lent a hand, so the sensible thing for you to do, Commissioner, would be to go on home, get a bite to eat and a good night’s sleep, and forget the whole damn business. From the look of him, Sheriff Dick Will Purvis had resorted to his own remedy on numerous occasions, in the simplehearted faith that food and a lot of it would cure anything.

  The commissioner protested with some heat that the whole south county knew that Dick Will Purvis was a crony of Will Cox from old Lake City days, besides being a jackass and a kiss-ass. Dick Will promptly kissed Mike’s ass, saying, “Well, since you feel that way, Commissioner, I will get that Cox boy in here, ask a few questions.” Leslie came in and informed the sheriff that he was otherwise engaged on the day in question. That being the case, the sheriff had no choice but to let him go.

  Before leaving the sheriff ’s office, Leslie mentioned that while in High Springs on the day following the murder, he had heard that a nigger known as Frank was attempting to peddle the dead man’s gun and boots. Whether he said that to avenge the way Frank Reese had spoken to him or simply in some fool attempt to deflect suspicion from himself, Leslie must have known that any black man implicated in the killing of a white might very well get lynched before his trial. But implicating was a very stupid move on Leslie’s part, since Frank could give plenty of firsthand testimony that might get Cox hung.

  Reese was arrested two weeks later although Mike knew he was not the man he wanted. And yet he went along with Purvis, hoping “the nigger” might be made to talk, so I went up there and informed Purvis that my hired man had spent that day with me. “That make him innocent or guilty?” one deputy sang out, and the lawmen laughed and I did, too, to show I knew a good joke when I heard one. Frank was jailed while awaiting his June trial, which was very fortunate for his own safety.

  As a tough ex-convict, Reese kept his head when the deputies kicked him black and blue or rather black and purple, in poor Frank’s case. They pissed and spat on him, reviled him, told him they aimed to cut his balls off, hang him slow, but if he confessed, they might not torch him first. And Frank just hunkered down and took it like he was too ignorant and scared to understand, rolled his eyes back like a minstrel darkie, hollered yassuh, nosuh, nevuh knowed nuffin about nuffin, nosuh, yassuh. He plain wore ’em out. When it came to nerve as well as brains, Black Frank had a big jump on Leslie Cox.

  Les was drinking too much, shooting his mouth off, though he always claimed he never knew why Frank had been arrested. He was too excited for his own damned good, not to mention ours. Still unable to believe what he had done, he would come over to my place and hoot and crow in glee, somersaulting in the dirt behind the barn just to remind me how that big bay horse came crashing down with the red buggy humping up over its haunches, the iron shoes racketing against the buckboards, and Tolen staring, on his knees in that white dust. “Looked like a fuckin woodchuck!” Leslie whooped—one of the few times I ever heard him laugh out loud.

  Next day, he acted out Sam’s death for May Collins and her brothers and young Jim Delaney Lowe, telling them he’d got the story from “that nigger was mixed up in it.” The Collins boys, though not mourning Sam Tolen, were horrified by the queer pleasure Leslie took in every detail and realized at once that he must have been involved. Their testimony would help get him indicted a year later.

  Naturally Les claimed I had put him up to the bad deed he was so proud of. When it came to killing, he confided in his cousin Oscar Sanford, Les Cox sure went to the right teacher. “Mister Ed, you damn near got me hung!”—he’d shout that at me as a joke. But Leslie wasn’t good at jokes and his eyes never fit his smile. If a June bug flew into his eye, you would hear the smack of it; those eyes were hard as shiny stones.

  Will and Cornelia spoiled their oldest boy because he had good looks and stood up for his family; the community overlooked his arrogance and spite because of his exploits on the baseball diamond. All his life he had gone un-punished for his fits of meanness—killed by kindness, as my mother used to say—and maybe his friend Mister Ed had indulged him, too. True, the killing could be seen as self-defense, for he’d been threatened, and it was a public service, too: Sam had pissed on everybody. But by agreeing to stand by this boy, I might have let him think that his act was justified, and I guess I knew better even if he didn’t.

  “Double-crossing Frank wasn’t too smart,” I told him. “What if he talks? Better tell the sheriff it was a case of mistaken identity. Maybe remind him that most nigras look alike.”

  I warned Reese, too, in the course of a jail visit. “Frank, you can’t implicate him without implicating yourself. You will get lynched.” He only grunted cynically, looking away. Frank assumed he had no chance whatever. “Instead of being hung lawfully,” I added, sad to see such bitterness in a negro person. However, he was in no mood for my jokes.

  I made Cox back off his Reese story for his own good. Manfully, he told Sheriff Purvis, “I might could been mistook there, Shurf Dick. I been thinkin I would surely hate to see a innocent man hung, nor a nigger neither.” Although Purvis had been quite content to make Frank Reese the scapegoat, he had nothing to show to a grand jury, not even a lynch mob in the street demanding justice, since most folks figured that, with Sam’s death, justice had been served about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. To hell with it, said the judge, and sent Reese home, doubtless assuming that the Tolens and the Russ boys would attend to him.

  Frank and I sat back against my barn and celebrated his triumph over bigotry with a jug of moonshine. Impressed by how sensibly and well my old partner had behaved, I sent for Jane Straughter and reminded her that she owed me a big favor, having caused me so much unjust aggravation over John Russ’s death. Winking, I said I would not hold it against her anymore if she let Frank Reese hold it there instead. Marry him common-law or any way she wanted.

  Jane Straughter did not smile. She liked Frank well enough, I guess, but moving in with him was quite another matter. The Robarts-Collins clan would not like it either, she reminded me, and anyway I had no right to coerce her. By the end of it, she was spitting mad. “You’re done with me so you’re handin me along to your coal-black nigger!”

  Meanwhile, Kate Edna, scared by
her own persistence, was plaguing me for my opinion on who killed Sam Tolen.

  “I did not kill Sam Tolen, Kate. How often must I tell you that?”

  “Not often,” she said, ambiguous. “Just reassure me.” She crept over in the bed. “Tell me you love me.” “Love!” I exclaimed, pretending astonishment that she would speak of such a thing when discussing murder. “You suspect your husband of coldblooded murder, and then you say, ‘Tell me you love me’?” Frightened, she burst into tears, and I relented and took her in my arms. I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black or white, every last one is pretty pink on the inside and they are all impossible.

  Jane Straughter still helped around the house but would scarcely look at me. Seeing Jane and Frank together, I wondered if she ever thought about Henry Short, and one day, drinking in my corner, I asked just for the fun of it if she still missed him. Jane came around on me so fast that I threw my hand up, thinking she might fly straight for my eyes. In her distress, she had gone so pale that the tiny freckles in that delicate skin beneath her eyes stood out in points.

  When I give in to that urge to stir up trouble, there comes an even stronger urge to drink more and behave worse. Jane’s fiery ways, so different from Kate Edna’s, hit me almost as hard as in the past, and before I knew it, I had grasped her wrist and told her fervently how pretty she looked and how very much I needed her. Still in my grasp, she gazed out the window at my wife, sailing across the sunshined yard, pinning up washing. “Supposin I was to tell Mis Kate what was done to a young virgin girl at Chatham Bend?” she whispered. “Supposin I told your black man what his boss was up to?”