“Where’s Green and Hannah, Les? Where’s Reese?”
Crafty, he said, “How come you ain’t askin after Dutchy?” Fully awake now, he raised the revolver. In a while, he said, “Them old fools got agitated up when I shot Dutchy. Got ugly with me, Unc, is what it was. Got on my nerves.” He shrugged, not certain where I stood. “Good riddance, right? What with you owin ’em so much?” He spun the chamber of the gun. “I figured, hell, ain’t I the foreman? Ain’t I paid to clean up Unc’s damn mess for him? Course I ain’t been paid yet neither—”
“Green and Hannah were my friends.”
My tone startled him. “Ain’t you the one told me you couldn’t pay ’em? It ain’t fair gettin hard with me for doin what you wanted done back in the first place. I sure do hope you won’t go blamin all your troubles on a young country feller as was only tryin to help out.”
Cox ranted on in his relief at having somebody to talk to. “One time up to Silver Springs before I run away, the road boss caught me lookin at the woods. Hauls out this long-barrel revolver, says, ‘Best not go runnin on me, kid. See this shootin iron I got here? She shoots real good and one round got your name on it.’ While he’s talkin, he’s pickin cartridges out of his gun, one after the other, holdin each one up to the light before he drops it back into the chamber. ‘Got her right here, bud. Not this’n—nope. Not this’n—nope. It’s this’n here. Yep! C-O-X! Got your damn name wrote right on there, cracker boy!’ ”
His mirthless laugh showed his brown-coated teeth.
“C-O-X.” I nodded wisely. “That spells Cox, all right.”
He hoisted the six-gun and pointed it between my eyes. “You funnin with me, Unc? I’d surely hate to have to haul back on this trigger.” But Leslie wouldn’t shoot, I knew that. Anyway—I knew this suddenly, at just that moment—I didn’t care. I didn’t. I no longer cared. Whatever held body and soul together was stretching and weakening, letting go softly like an old rawhide lace.
Cox sensed I was somewhere out beyond his reach. He saw that deadness in my eyes and whimpered, blaming all that had befallen him on my bad influence.
When Cox heard the Warrior coming upriver and ran over to the shed to waylay Dutchy, he almost collided with the Mikasuki girl, who had hung herself from a boat shed crossbeam. Loomed at him out of the shadows, stirred a little in the draft. Those big deer eyes in the purpled face, watching him come, scared hell out of him. Hung right behind him while he hurried to get set for that damned spick pistolero who had come to kill him. “Lookin right over my shoulder, Unc!” he cried. “She watched me do it!” Next morning, the corpse was gone. “Injuns been skulkin around. You reckon they come took her?”
“Looks like they got business with you, boy.”
“They come any closer, I’ll shoot ’em!” Leslie scowled without much heart. “Then Frank run off on me. You seen him anywheres?” He lost his thread again when I didn’t answer. “Know what I been thinkin, Unc? All them bad nights alone?” He was pointing that damned gun at me again, sighting with one eye, and his drunken trigger finger made me nervous, also angry. “When you never come, I got to thinkin maybe ol’ Unc sent that fuckin Dutchy over to the shed to murder me. That what you wanted?”
I ignored this, awaiting my chance to disarm him. “Why Green and Hannah? Harmless drunk? A woman?”
“Them two was troublemakers, better off dead. Disrespected me, that’s what they done.” Disillusioned, he shook his head. “Them old warts was drinkin. Green started in to hollerin about the Injun hangin out there. See what I mean? Disrespectin me! Then Hannah went to wagglin her fat finger in my face. Says, ‘It’s all your fault! Weren’t no call to go rapin that lost child the way you done.’ Dirty squaw girl, and here she was callin me a raper! My daddy always told me, ‘Boy, don’t never let nobody go callin you a raper, cause that damn word will hang onto a man worse’n stink onto a dog.’ ”
“So you taught Hannah a lesson.”
“I done Green first. We had some words. Burned his belly out under this table with this here six-gun. I seen my cup jump with the boom, or maybe he give the table leg a kick, and his mouth dropped open and I heard his shootin iron hit the floor. Had it right there acrost his lap! Man might of killed me! Next thing I knew, his woman grabbed her big two-blader ax from behind that door, near took my head off! Out to murder me the same as he was! Dropped her ax after I winged her, tried to run up the stairs. Lookin for some weapon on the second floor to kill me with, I reckon.”
“You’re lucky to be alive,” I said. Leslie was lying. Green never had a weapon all the years I knew him. “How come you never cleaned up all that blood? You had two weeks.”
“That was her job or the nigger’s: I’m the foreman.”
I had to finish this. “And those four harvest hands?”
He set down his revolver and slumped back in his chair, grinning a little. “Ain’t your worry, Boss. Cuttin costs, that’s the foreman’s job. Locked ’em in the bunkroom before Dutchy come so’s they wouldn’t go gettin in the way. Couple days later, I marched ’em back out yonder same way you done.”
“God almighty, boy!” My gut too twisted to sit still, I got to my feet. He sprang up, yelling, “Nosir! You ain’t leavin! Not without me you ain’t!” He was so panic-stricken about being abandoned that for a moment he forgot Dutchy’s weapons. I reached across and pulled them in and pointed one at his forehead; he shied back, then shut his eyes and waved his hands before his face to wish that gun away.
Shoving the other into my belt, I waved him toward the door. “Let’s go,” I said.
“It weren’t only me! Frank helped, goddammit!”
“At gunpoint, right? That’s what he told ’em at Pavilion and that’s what they believe. Me, too. He had no motive. Which don’t mean they won’t hang him anyway—that make you feel better?” I kicked open the door onto the porch. “They’re not going to settle for Frank Reese. It’s got to be you or me and that means you.”
“They aim to hang Les Cox?” Cox was incredulous. “Supposin I tell ’em how Ed Watson was behind it?”
“Did you tell Reese I wanted you to kill those harvest hands? That why he turned on me?”
“No! Before he run off, he ast me real suspicious, ‘Mist’ Jack tell you, kill them field hands? Them four young fellas that’s locked in the bunkroom?’ I told him, ‘Boy, that ain’t your business. Wait till the Boss hears how you been runnin your damn mouth!’ ” Cox stared at me, eager. “I was plannin on shuttin him up for good soon’s we got them people in the river. I hate that nigger!”
Everything was puling out. He seemed relieved to be confessing, putting responsibility for his fate into my hands.
“You have finished me, boy.” I could only whisper in weak lassitude, as a man who has opened his veins in a tub feels the last heat in the water running out.
He was already elsewhere. “Nosir, I ain’t never goin back, not on no chain gang.” He asserted this without energy, eyes averted. After so many days of hallucination, what flame was left in Leslie Cox was guttering out down to the stub, even as his eyes still searched for some rat hole of escape. “You ain’t takin me to Chokoloskee, Unc. You’ll have to shoot your niece’s darlin first. You wouldn’t do that.”
“Not if I don’t have to.”
The tear shine of self-pity in his eyes had a hard glisten like the brine in clams. “If you’re so fuckin smart,” he jeered, “how come you never noticed what your wife was up to when you wasn’t lookin?” There was plenty more to tell about Les Cox and Kate Edna, that leer said. And I was vulnerable. My wife and I had been apart most of this year; we had scarcely touched in months. Anyway, I wasn’t the man I was. Good enough to bring Josie along most of the time but Josie never needed too much help.
Cox waited for his insinuation to work its rot. When I said nothing, showed no expression, it occurred to him that I might shoot him in a jealous rage. “Just funnin with you, Unc.”
“You don’t know how,” I said, waving him outside
. “Reese went to Pavilion and told what happened and they found those bodies in the river and you are going to hang. Just funnin with you, son,” I added coldly.
“Supposin I won’t go?” he said, testing my resolve.
“Rather stay here, wait for those Injuns?”
I was ready when he lunged for the gun, so weak and dizzy from his days of drink that when I stepped back, he fell forward onto his hands. “Don’t shoot!” he screeched. Scrabbling to his feet, he pitched and banged his way onto the porch and half fell down the steps.
The Indians were still there, watching from the wood edge not a hundred yards upriver as he went reeling down the path toward the dock.
To take him north alive, I would have to hogtie him; otherwise, he might jump me on the way. But even this drunk and dissolute, he would not be easily overpowered without knocking him out first, which might be difficult. When Leslie saw the Warrior, he stopped short. He did not turn but his voice came back over his shoulder. “Unc? You aimin to witness for me in the court like I done for you?”
“No, Les,” I said. “I aim to testify against you.”
In the shock of my betrayal, he sank onto his knees at the head of the dock. Then, incredibly, he gloated. “I reckon I’m the outlaw they want worst.”
More than any man I ever came across except possibly Quinn Bass, this boy deserved to die: I was his posse or his executioner as I wished, with my own survival as my fee. But when I saw my old friend’s son shrunk up to nothing, my finger backed off the trigger. Dammit, I was going soft just when my last hope of life demanded that I act fast without mercy. Get it over with! Shoot him as he steps into the boat, just topple him in and deliver the body as promised. The job could be over in a moment, and only Will and his Cornelia and maybe my fool niece would ever miss him. A public enemy so detested could be done away with at will, on the house, for free. Killed for free—was that why Bass’s execution had always troubled me? Because it was done for money, without risk or reckoning?
For taking a human life, one paid with one’s own soul. To extinguish the light in another’s eyes was the death of self: those eyes, reflected forever in your own, would never close. I had willed that curse to boys like Eddie Reed, who could cross my fence and move forward in the echo of his shot and with his boot toe overturn his mother in the road and damn her to Hell as the last glimmer dimmed in her staring mud-flecked eyes. Old cunt! I hope you’re satisfied—that’s what her boy told Maybelle Shirley Starr as her back arched in spasm and her jaws drew wide, baring her teeth.
Hard Eddie Reed had been hell-bent on his own mother’s life, with or without support from Edgar Watson. I was told by the postmaster at White-field that the day Belle whipped him for lathering her horse, her son vowed publicly that he would kill her, and having a badman reputation to keep up, he naturally felt honor bound to keep his word.
Really? That’s your story? Jack Watson had no part in it?
The truth about my shadow brother: Jack Watson never showed up anymore because we two had become one. Probably we were never different. Now I know that.
“Looks like I ain’t never goin home.” Leslie was pleading. “Ain’t never gone to see my ma and pa, ain’t never gone to pitch Major League ball. And I can hit good, too. Ask anybody, Unc. It ain’t only my fastball I am knowed for.”
“No indeed.”
“Got to go home,” he moaned. “Got to see Pa.”
He must have glimpsed those Mikasuki because just then he turned his head. Seeing my raised gun, he yelled in panic and leapt off the dock toward the shore. Because it was senseless, this leap for life surprised me, and when I fired, my gun hand jumped, unused to the six-gun’s weight. His body twisted in the air and his back thumped heavily on the steep bank. In a heavy thrash he bucked and rolled and lay face down in the edges of the current.
He was not shot clean and might be drowning. Drown then, I thought, but then No, wait. My life depended on him. I charged into the water, grabbing for his galluses, but the river had already taken hold. Just out of reach, a shoulder broke the surface, then a turn of hair and face, the mouth coughing swallowed water.
I dropped the revolver and ran downstream a little ways and shucked my boots. I was a poor swimmer and my fear was cutting off my wind and I got no farther than hip-deep, afraid not only of the current’s strength but the life grasp of a man drowning. I dreaded the touch of him and dreaded worse that crocodilian, turning silently toward the commotion. Right then I felt the push against my leg, a heavy mass. I plunged a hand, got hold of an arm, the underarm. I hurled my shoulders backwards, dragging the body to the bank, where with frantic strength, I rolled him onto his belly and pushed both hands hard into his upper back until he vomited out lungfuls of brown river.
Slowly he came to. Blood trickled from the wound above his temple, slidssssing down across his cheekbone, parting at the scar. He was scalp-creased, stunned, more or less unhurt. When I sat him up, his eyes started to focus, and I found myself grinning with relief before remembering: he must be bound at once while still half conscious or be shot again.
I could not shoot Will’s boy a second time if my life depended on it.
Something tossed from the bank above bounced off my neck. The Indians had picked up that spent cartridge by the dock as they came along. One kept me covered with his ancient flintlock while the other two jumped down. They seized Cox roughly, yanking his arms straight out in front of him and binding his wrists before hauling him groaning onto his feet, dazed and passive. Supporting him, the two Mikasuki pushed and propped and pulled him up the bank. Another line was run between his arms and hitched around the binding at the wrists, after which, with a hard jerk of his leash, he was led upriver.
I had climbed the bank after him on a weak impulse of pity but having caught up I made no protest. That rifle was still aimed at me; they weren’t going to change their minds.
“Unc?” Leslie looked bewildered. “Where we goin, Unc?”
At the wood edge, the last Indian turned, making sure I would not follow. He met my gaze without expression, then dropped the revolver and followed the others into the river wood, bound eastward and inland into the Glades.
My neighbors would never accept a truth so strange—that the wild Shark River Mikasuki had come for Cox with the probable intent of putting him to death. I knew this was so but had no evidence whatever.
Chevelier’s hat had spun away into the shallows when Cox leapt. It was still there, caught on a mangrove sprout. My old black-ringed bullet hole through the peak was matched now by a second hole in the paler felt where the hatband had once been: that hole would have to be my evidence that Cox was dead. My story of a wounded Cox fallen off the dock and drowned was very weak but it was better than capture by wild Indians, and might be strengthened if I claimed that Leslie Cox alive would never have relinquished this old hat, a precious keepsake from his daddy.
Wet and cold, hunched into myself, I squatted by the river, arms wrapped tight around my knees, trying to think. Staring into the shallows, I was almost frightened by the apparition of two ugly lumps, pasty and yellow-clawed, so different from the tanned clear feet of boyhood. The destruction of the body, dissolution of the spirit: I felt death in me like an inner semblance, mute and numb, that had usurped my limbs and trunk, an inert Edgar of dead matter lacking nerves and blood.
Crouched there under its blind windows, I suffered a great horror of my house, with its reek of spilled moonshine and rotted blood, its filthied floors, streaked walls, stained mattresses—the Watson place no longer, only a grim solitary presence, squatted on the bank of a lost river.
I slept in the boat.
By morning, the wind had changed. It bore the scent. I found the shovel. In the salt scrub east of the cane fields, the four corpses lay in a loose row, shot in the back of the head, maybe brained by a hammer. The humbled cutters must have huddled in a group, necks bent, awaiting death. No longer men, those poor devils would have touched torn hats and dug their own gra
ves without complaint if Cox had thought their burial worth the delay.
Kerchief bandit-style over nose and mouth, I set to work in the thick heat. Driving myself in fury, never resting, I had them covered in a shallow pit by noon. I straightened up, mumbled Amen, and stumbled off, emptied by exhaustion and the heat. That afternoon, for the first time, I slept.
Awakening toward dark, I wandered my torn, matted cane in the thin light of a crescent moon. And in this moonlight, in this vast river silence, I was overtaken by feelings about Rob I could outrun no longer. I thought about that girl, his mother, killed bloodily in childbirth: I thought about his boyhood years when in cruel mindlessness I called him Sonborn. I walked faster and faster until I was trotting, almost running, in hopeless flight to escape my brain, my heart, my filthied hide and misbegotten life.
By lantern light, I scraped in vain at the spilled blood that fouled my house until I could scrape no more. I sat in darkness, hour after hour. I fled back to the boat. In fitful sleep I dreamed that the great crocodile had crossed the river and now lay stranded on the bank like a dead tree. I took fright at the size of it, the long heavy head implanted in the mud like a rough slab of pig iron, the jutting teeth outside the curl of jaw under the old stone eye, the pale claws and spread toes of the small greedy forefeet. On the dorsal scales grew dark green algae from lost ancient epochs as if this armored brute had lain here since the first emergence of the land.
In a thrash of its heavy tail, the thing was gone. The mud exhaled the smell and weight of it with a hard thuck, and the brown water opened like a wound and slowly closed, leaving strange viscous bubbles. Where it had lain sat a fossil defecation, a white sphere smooth as clay or burnished stone.
The river remained turgid under rainless heavens in a pewter light. Wind gusts of autumn raked the turning circles of the current and dark tips of broken trees, revolving slowly, parted the surface and were drowned again on their way downriver to the Gulf. On my last day, thinking I must eat, I shot a doe that the cistern’s scent had drawn from the salt prairie. I re-moved the gall, dressed out the carcass, but I’d seen too much blood: the flesh smell seeped into my sinuses and made me gag.
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