Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Down the southwest coast over that night, the hurricane blew the water from the bays, blew down many shacks and cabins, carried the boats out to sea or far inland. It blew that coast to ragged tatters, destroying last chances, scattering hopes. It sucked the last turquoise from the inshore waters, shrouded the mangrove in caked sandy marl, transformed blue sea and blue sky to a dead gray. It blew the color right out of the world.

  By dawn, the woods were twisted into snarls of broken growth which my borrowed horse jumped and clambered through like a huge goat. In my dark mood, the trees all felled in the storm’s direction recalled Cousin Selden’s description of the blue lines of Union infantry at Fredericksburg, struck over backwards by barrage after barrage of our artillery.

  On Tuesday evening I reached Punta Rassa from where a man ran me upriver to Fort Myers. Wanting nothing to do with disloyal offspring, I slept in the hayloft at the livery stable, dirt-bearded, smelly, and in dangerous temper. Early next morning, I went to the courthouse, where the court clerk informed me that Sheriff Tippins had left for Chokoloskee two days earlier: he must have reached Marco not long after I left.

  This court clerk in tight high collar, shirt stuffed to overflowing with self-importance, was none other than my own get, E. E. Watson, who had shunned his father after returning from north Florida the year before. Seeing his parent standing before him red-eyed and disreputable, in filthy clothes, this ingrate turned as haughty as he dared, saying, “Sheriff Tippins has interrogated your nigger. He wishes to interrogate you, as well.”

  “That’s what you call Frank now? ‘Your nigger’?” Disdaining the Lee County Court spittoon, I spat on his varnished floor. Frank Reese was a nigger, true enough, but all those years when this rufous lout infested my house in Fort White, Frank had looked out for him, cleaned up after his carelessness and plain damned laziness out in the field. “Where is he now?” I said.

  “The sheriff left strict instructions that nobody may gain access to this prisoner under any circumstances.” With wrinkled brow, he shuffled his little papers, to show he was much too busy to waste time with me. I could scarcely look at him, that’s how repelled I was by my own flesh and blood. I stripped my belt. Unless he served the public right this minute, I informed him, a certain public servant would be horsewhipped.

  “Sir, this is a court of law!” he blustered. But that belt had taken the fight out of this feller—not that I took much satisfaction from it, walleyed as I was with worry and exhaustion. Full to bursting with official disapproval, arms folded high as the law allows upon his chest, E. E. Watson, deputy court clerk, glared the other way as I strode through the rear door marked NO ADMITTANCE.

  At the holding cell, assorted drunks and drifters cat-called raucously at my appearance, claiming I belonged on their side of the bars. Informed that I wanted a word with prisoner Reese, these lowlifes told me how that stupid Tippins had locked that killer in the cellar to keep honest men from cutting his black throat the way they wanted.

  I went out a side door into the jailyard, where I knelt beside the ventilation grate for a small window below ground level along the wall. My knee pushed a trickle of dry dirt into the hole. I whispered, “Frank?” No sound came but I heard a listening. “That you, Frank? You all right? Why did you do that?” I pled with that unseen man down in the darkness. Hadn’t I helped him escape back there in Arkansas and given him employment ever since? Hadn’t I given him Jane Straughter? “Answer me, goddammit! Did Cox tell you those killings were my idea?” But nothing came up through the grate except faint urine stink.

  On my knees to my damned nigger, entreating my damned nigger, I gave my damned nigger my damned word that I never knew that bastard would go crazy, kill them all. Finally I yelled roughly, “Hear me, boy? You have to trust me!” With Frank, that “boy” was a very bad mistake.

  In the grate corner where moisture had collected in a crack grew the very small white flower of a weed. I picked that flower, twiddled it to calm myself. Kneeling this way in the heat, knees chafed by cement bits and limestone turds and broken glass, my throbbing brain hammered holes through at the temples, so incensed was I by the silence of Frank Reese and his intent to do me harm—a man I’d counted on, perhaps the only man I could still count on.

  “Frank? Goddammit, what have you told Tippins?” I jumped up, booted the grate, booted the jail, bellowing as stupid as a bull from the sharp pain. “BLACK BASTARD!” I hollered down the hole. “I hope they hang you!”

  But with that pain, don’t ask me why, the answer to Reese’s bitterness fell into place. I guess I had known it all along but refused to look at it.

  Reese had probably guessed that I’d gone along with Dutchy’s execution: had he also assumed that because I owed them so much pay, I’d had Cox take care of Green and Hannah, too? Had he also thought that I’d risked him? Perhaps I had. But had he gone to Pavilion and risked his neck by admitting to abetting in those crimes—admitted to handling a white woman’s body, for Christ’s sake—just to tell a lie that might implicate his old partner? (An old partner, dammit all, who in the past had taken his loyalty for granted, and abused it, too.)

  Yes. The silent man at the bottom of this hole assumed I’d let Cox kill Dutchy. He must have decided that if I would do that to a man I clearly liked much better than Les Cox, I might not hesitate to sacrifice Green and Hannah, in which case he himself might have been next.

  I stared down at the grate. I told Frank quietly he was dead wrong about Green and Hannah, also himself.

  My son watched from the door, hands on his hips. His smirk told me he’d heard everything. “So long, Frank. Good luck,” I told the grate. “Go fuck yourself,” I told my son as I limped past.

  If I had sense, I told myself, gimping along, I would go to the bank right down the street, mortgage my boats, mortgage everything I had, head north and start a new life somewhere else. Start a new life as a murder suspect and a fugitive, with no prospects and a young family to provide for? No? Too late for that?

  At age fifty-five, I was too tired to think, let alone run. I had to cool down, keep my head, avoid any more mistakes. The only witnesses who could implicate me in this mess were Frank and Leslie, a pair of felons whom juries would never trust: the negro witness had already recanted and the killer lacked even the smallest shred of proof. If I swore to my innocence, sidled my way through as I had done so many times before, I would go free. It was not the courts that worried me, only my neighbors.

  I caught up with Tippins at Marco late next day. At gunpoint, I told him the best thing he could do was deputize me to arrest Cox, who could neither swim nor run a boat even if he had one and was therefore trapped at Chatham Bend. Since Cox could not know where Reese had gone, much less that the murders had been reported, he would not be suspicious when I showed up. The sheriff was looking at the only man who had a chance of taking him alive.

  Tippins suspected that my real aim was to kill Cox and eliminate a witness under cover of the law. He would not deputize me. He said, “I consider myself a good friend of the family, Mr. Watson, and I’d sure like to oblige Mis Carrie’s daddy, but the best favor I could do you now would be to take you into custody for your own protection.”

  That same night I headed south.

  At Everglade, Bembery described how in the hurricane, on her way back from Caxambas, his Bertie Lee had taken refuge from the storm at Fakahatchee. Before the wind shifted and the Gulf rushed inland just before midnight, the inner bays had emptied out entirely. With no water to float the boat, the Storters did not make it home to their scared family until three days later.

  We had to winch and haul the Warrior out of the mangroves. Because she’d sucked marl into her motor when she crossed the shallow Bay and had storm water in her fuel, she started very hard with a bad grinding. I did not reach Chokoloskee until evening.

  I moored the boat in a lee cove and walked across to Aldermans, jimmied the door, and crawled in beside Kate, who pretended she had not awakened. Bereft, I
had a desperate need to hold her. She was trembling but made no sound. “Kate?” I whispered. “No,” she murmured. “Please, no, Mr. Watson.” Angry, I forced entry but wilted and withdrew, more desolate than ever.

  Arms at her sides like a tin soldier, Kate stared straight up at the ceiling.

  “You came through here before the storm and never let your family know!” she cried. “We almost drowned!” Chokoloskee was a muddy ruin, with windrows of dead fish, uncovered privy pits, piled storm debris and broken boats, and sea wrack high up in the branches. Every cistern was flooded out with brine, with no rain since the storm and no fresh water. The island stank.

  Before the winds abated and the seas retreated, the Great Hurricane of October 1910 had engulfed most of the island. The wind had been worse than the year before, everyone said—something terrible and wild, Kate whispered, like the wrath of God. She was trembling again and came into my arms. Next Monday the twenty-fourth would be her twenty-first birthday and I vowed that her loving husband would celebrate that important anniversary with his dear wife. No, she begged. Next Monday would follow two “black Mondays” of murder and hurricane, she said, and bad luck and disasters came in threes.

  I was desperate for rest but dared not sleep even when Kate rose and watched and listened from the window.

  I awakened erect, sleepless, and short-tempered, deeply melancholy with the ache of life. When I let my breath all the way out, I had trouble drawing it back in. I forgot what I was doing from one minute to the next, I mislaid things, dropped things, utterly clumsy. I lost track entirely, sitting immobilized for minutes on end before remembering to put on the other boot.

  Alderman was morose and scared at the same time. I disliked lodging where we were so unwelcome, but Will Wiggins had moved north to Fort Myers, McKinney’s was stacked to the rafters with storm refugees, and Smallwood’s had been seriously damaged, with boards torn away on the ground floor and no escape from the sweet reek of drowned chickens, caught by high water in a wire pen under the store.

  In an endless day lost to engine repair, I stalked all over Chokoloskee, worried because Tippins might arrive before I left. Maintaining my innocence to anyone who asked, I refused to lie low. The shotgun on my arm was warning against interference. People mostly stayed out of my way but eyes were watching everywhere I went. Those men who were not off hunting fresh water or lost boats were biding their time until the sheriff ’s arrival, but their mood was dangerous. Though she didn’t dare say so, it was clear that Marie Alderman wanted us out of her house and her house out of the line of fire before the men organized to come and get me.

  While Mamie rummaged through the piled-up goods for some double-ought loads for my shotgun, I slipped my boots off and stretched out on their long counter. Ted promised to warn me if anybody came. Within moments, I was dead asleep, and was still unconscious when Old Man House barged through the door, shouting for Mamie. I sat up quick, grabbing my revolver. D. D. had seen me now but did not approach to shake my hand. He turned quickly and went out. Ted Smallwood said, “Darned if I know how that old feller got past me!” I thought, I can’t trust Ted either.

  D. D. House returned with Charley Johnson, Isaac Yeomans, a young Demere. By that time, I had my boots back on and my shotgun handy on the counter where his posse could see it. Old Man Dan told me I must wait for the sheriff, give some testimony. Casual, I picked up the gun, saying, “Nosir, Mr. House. I already talked to the sheriff at Marco, told him all I knew: what I’ll do now is go to Chatham Bend and tend to Cox.”

  Those men stepped outside to consult. D. D. House came back, saying, “Well, we’ll send men with you.” And I said, “Nosir, you will not. As I told the sheriff, that boy is a good shot and will shoot to kill any man who tries to stop him. If I go alone, he will suspect nothing. I can get the drop on him and bring him in.”

  They thought that over. When I saw their resolve gathering again, I added that if Cox gave me any trouble, I would bring his head.

  “His head?” House looked startled. “You’ll bring him in dead or alive, that what you’re saying?”

  “Might wind up somewhat more dead than alive, is what I’m saying.”

  “This is no joke, Watson!”

  Though they were unhappy about letting me go, House had surely mentioned the revolver and they could see the shotgun for themselves. Again they went outside to consult. They were arguing. Charley Johnson got excited: “Hell, boys, he ain’t crazy! He’ll keep goin sure’n hell! Won’t never dare come back here to the Bay whether he shoots that skunk or not!” In short, they were persuading themselves that if I left, Chokoloskee had seen the last of E. J. Watson.

  Mamie brought me a few loads, explaining that they were storm-swept, kind of waterlogged. “I wouldn’t count on ’em,” Ted warned, “not if I was dealing with a man like that.” I broke my gun to try them. The shells were too swollen to slide into the chambers, but I took a few anyway, saying the wind might dry them out on the way south. They glanced at each other, startled when they saw that my shotgun had been empty all the while I talked those men out of detaining me. It was still empty, since I couldn’t load these shells; for all they knew, my revolver, too, might be unloaded. They did not report this—not while I was there—to Mamie’s daddy and those men, who were still muttering and shifting on the porch, but whether that was fear or friendship, I will never know.

  “Good-bye, E. J.,” Ted said somberly, shaking my hand as if for the last time. No longer wishing to seem close to Watson, he did not come outside to see me on my way. From the shadows just inside their door, my old friends watched me walk to the boat landing, shotgun on my arm, lifting my free hand to my silent neighbors in parting.

  THE KILLER

  In the wake of great storm, the broken coast lay inert as a creature run to earth, ear weakly flicking toward the passing sounds. An egret with wing dragging hunched in the mangrove roots, a drowned deer leaping upside down among the branches. And still the Glades was emptying in gray-brown raining rivers, washing through the mourning walls of broken mangrove. With every channel choked by limbs, I headed westward out the Pass to the exhausted Gulf, turning south along a salt-burned coast to Chatham River.

  At the Bend, the riverbank had sagged away into flood silt so thick that a man could hoe the water. My dock was gone, all but one piling, and the boat shed leaned precarious over the current.

  No one appeared out of the house and my shout was met with silence. And yet . . . a waiting in the air, something out of place, half-sensed, half-seen, half-hidden—there!

  Three copper figures had risen from the reeds in a little cove upriver. One raised an arm and pointed at the house and left his arm extended.

  Dressed in old-time banded skirts and blouses and plumed turbans, they bore two muskets and a long flintlock rifle. The formal dress and antiquated weapons—there was ceremony here, but what it signified I could not know.

  Bare-legged on its cement posts, wind-tattered peak and broken panes, my house looked old. The lower walls, the steps and porch, the Frenchman’s poincianas, were caked with pale clay marl in a heavy odor of earth rot and carrion. Diamondbacks stranded by high water, seeking warmth, had gathered on the cistern concrete, sliding and scraping with a soft chittering of rattles as I circled the house. One by one the flat heads turned, ob-serving the intruder through vertical gold slits: black forked tongues ran in and out in their quick listenings.

  One boot on the porch step, I stopped. “Ho! Les! You in there, boy?” Through the window came the light clicking of a spun revolver, meant to be heard. For a long time the house held its breath. I crossed the porch, rapped on the torn screen, feeling the presence tensed behind the door: who was he now? Pursued down endless nights and days by the slaughtered and their ghosts, terrified by solitude and storm, he might have howled and cracked and come apart and now in madness attack whoever came, even the one man who might help him to escape.

  The voice was guttural from disuse. “Come slow,” it said. “
My nerves ain’t good.”

  Pushing the door quietly, I was affronted by the iron reek of rotten blood. Not quite familiar and yet unmistakable, it turned my stomach. On the pine table, pointed at the door, lay Dutchy’s big matched pistols. From my chair, dirt-bearded, red-eyed, Cox watched me gag. He looked less mad than crazily aggrieved.

  In his hands he cupped my brown clay jug. “Good ol’ Unc,” he muttered. “Never come back for his pardner.” He was staring drunk in the glazed way of a man who has drunk for many days. Annoyingly, he wore the Frenchman’s hat, swiped from its old peg by the kitchen door.

  “I came back before the storm. I hailed the house. Nobody answered.” I turned from the sight of the dark viscous matter on the floor and stairs, mortally sickened.

  “Nobody answered,” he repeated with a queer laugh. He had tried to escape inland, on a hopeless trek across the salt flats: that’s where he’d been when I came the week before. When his hope and water were exhausted, he made his way back, retracing his uncertain steps across the marl. Relating this defeat brought tears to his eyes. He had not eaten in days.

  “Never come back,” he repeated. “Left me all alone in Hell. IN HELL ALONE!” he shouted suddenly, raising a revolver toward my face.

  Alone because you killed everyone else.

  “Easy, Les.” I raised my open hands, brought them down again slowly. “I figured some fisherman came by, took you people off.” I cleared my throat, hawked that clotting taste into my kerchief. “Where is everybody, Les?”

  He lowered the gun but would not meet my eye; he shook his head back and forth over and over. “Alone in Hell,” he grieved. “You never come.”