Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  “Remember Chevelier’s old shack on Possum Key? Never burned, because some feller took that shack down for the lumber, took her right down to the ground. That was a while back—”

  “We got a pretty good idea about that, don’t we?”

  “Hardens, you mean?”

  “Nosir! Nigger Short! Can’t blame everything on Hardens! Henry took that lumber and built him a little cabin way back on the inside of North Cape Sable, laid low a good long while down there, all by his lonesome.”

  “Whoever taught a colored man to shoot as good as Henry done has got to answer for it to his Maker.”

  “Henry Short put his bullets in so close, you could lay a dollar bill acrost the holes—”

  “Heck no! They say he never fired but the onct! He hit ol’ Emperor right between the eyes!”

  Nobody had noticed Sally in the doorway. She said, “Henry Short was there, all right, but he never fired.”

  Hearing her voice, the blind man welcomed her. “Folks, you all know Sally Brown. Come sit here, Sally.” Andy stood up and offered her his place. Considering how abrasive she had been, his gentle use of her first name made Lucius’s temples tingle. “We was having a good talk about the old days,” Andy said, with a warm smile in the general direction of the door.

  “The good old days,” said Sally, edging no farther into the room than a stray cat. Her gaze had fastened on Owen Carr, trapped in the corner. “I don’t sit down with murderers,” she said.

  Penny Carr’s tone was a sharp warning. “You’re Speck Daniels’s girl, ain’t that right, Miss? Married a Harden?”

  “That is correct, ma’am. And you know which Harden, too, and probably a lot else that is not your business.” Her gaze remained fixed on the old man in the corner. There came a scattering, a shifting, as the old people rearranged themselves, like setting hens shuffling feathers when the coop door is thrown open to the sun and air. “Roark Harden was my husband’s older brother. Roark was shot down in cold blood by that man and his brothers, and nobody on this Bay said a word about it.”

  Owen Carr twisted on his seat like a thing burning. “Old Man Owen,” Sally said finally, “who lived to tell the tale, and even brag about it.”

  “That was a long time ago,” Hoad Storter said. “And he is kinfolks to your mama. Your kin, too.”

  “The Hardens let it die, girl,” Lloyd Brown told her, not unkindly. “It ain’t your place to stir it up again.”

  “ ‘The Hardens let it die!’ Of course! Because otherwise they might have died themselves! Might have been burned out one fine night by a nice Pentecostal lynching party, the sons of the same bunch that lynched Ed Watson!”

  The door screen whacked behind her like a pistol shot, and her sandaled feet fled lightly down the steps.

  “My, my, my,” sighed Penny Carr, still knitting.

  Owen Carr let a tight breath escape, trying to smile. “Her husband’s daddy was Lee Harden, he had a temper, too!” He smiled still harder. “Might been my brother Alden made a joke about Lee’s sister at one of them old-time Harden shindigs down at Lost Man’s. Called her Nigger Libby. And darned if Lee don’t take out after him, run him all the way down the beach to where Alden got away into his boat at Sadie’s Hole!”

  “Guess everybody has their own idea of what’s a joke,” the blind man said.

  Penny wove a determined stitch and purl. “Honest to goodness! You never told me about those Harden shindigs, Mr. Owen Carr!”

  “Owen was chasing Edie Harden!” Mary Brown exclaimed, as Owen snickered. “And my brother, he was chasing Edie, too!”

  “Edie’s aunt Libby was a golden kind of color—a real smooth yeller gold, same as a mango. It was Libby who married up with Nigger Short.”

  “Henry Short.” Andy bowed a little, in the certain instinct that all eyes in the room had turned toward him. “Times has changed,” he persisted, addressing the darkness with those clear wide eyes. “Even if we ain’t.”

  “Well, her sister Abbie run off with Storters’ man, who was black as they make ’em! ‘Black as Dab’s ass’—remember that? I recall that sayin from when I was a boy!”

  “This is Sunday, Mr. Owen Carr, case you don’t know it!”

  Andy persisted in that stolid voice, “Now how come all those boys was courting Edie Harden? Sandy Albritton, too! Wanted to marry her, at least Bob Thompson did. That sure strikes me as peculiar if Hardens were mulatta, like folks called ’em” A bad silence was filled by loud keening of the wasps in the low rafters. “How come nobody thought twice about accepting Hardens’ hospitality, sitting right down, eating up their food—same men who wouldn’t never sit down with Dab or Henry?” He looked all around the room as if he could see deeply into every heart. “Don’t make too much sense when you come to think about it.”

  The plaint of wasps was audible throughout the room.

  “You’re the one ain’t makin too much sense,” Bill Smallwood warned him. Bill was breathing heavily again, shifting his cramps and pains.

  “Well, answer me, then, Bill. Explain it to me.”

  “Seems like you changed your thinking in Miami,” Smallwood said sourly.

  “That’s where I begun my thinking. I ain’t done yet. Maybe I had to get struck blind to make me see.”

  “One night Old Man Carr was headed back to Lost Man’s, stopped by here to pick up his supplies, caught them same two Hardens right here in this store! They busted in!”

  “Well, Old Man Carr was your friend Owen’s daddy, ain’t that right? And nobody never heard that story you just told till after you boys was accused,” the blind man said.

  “Andy, whose side are you on?” Owen Carr cried desperately. “Them sonsabitches, they would shoot at your damn boat! Fishermen had to carry guns around that Lost Man’s territory! And after they was put a stop to, there weren’t no more trouble. Don’t that prove somethin?”

  “Proves they was dead, I reckon.”

  “Proves Lee Harden was gettin old, that’s about it. Losin his oldest boy that way just took the fight out of him.”

  “Didn’t take no fight out of Lee’s wife! For years and years, Sadie Harden would put a bullet in your boat if you drifted too close inshore around South Lost Man’s!”

  “Earl Harden lost his boy, too, don’t forget. I liked Ol’ Earl all right, most of the time. He took it hard. That brought them two brothers back together for a while.”

  “Goddammit to hell! Are you fellers on their side? Men I growed up with on this island? Goddammit to hell—”

  “Owen, this here’s Sunday, and there’s Christian ladies present—”

  “Anyways, we know your side of the story. Been hearin it thirty years and more. What’s past is done with.”

  Owen Carr looked at the floor between his shoes, then rose, unsteady, and went reeling past his neighbors as if running a gauntlet. His calm large wife took plenty of time to fold and tuck away her knitting before following him out of doors into the afternoon.

  The atmosphere was shifting and uneasy. Lucius changed the subject. “After so many years, I’ve never learned where my stepmother was staying when my father died.”

  “Aldermans,” Smallwood said wearily. “Smallwoods took ’em in after Aldermans threw ’em out.”

  “Well, Alice McKinney was her good friend, too.”

  “It weren’t my mother she was staying with. It weren’t McKinneys.” Lloyd Brown peered suspiciously at Lucius. “How come you’re writing down all this old stuff?”

  “Firsthand accounts help me understand things better.” Lucius put his pen away when nobody returned his smile.

  “Alderman knew that feller Cox, he knew how bad he was,” Bill Smallwood said. “Knew Cox had his eye on Watson’s wife and might come lookin for her. Walter had a young family startin up, didn’t want no trouble.”

  “Marie had her new baby just a few months later, so she was well along when all that happened. Her husband was afraid for her and he was right to be,” Bill’s sister said.


  “Walter come right out with it,” Bill said. “His nerves was shot that day. He was even scared some of them men might take it in their heads to bust into his house and finish off them Watsons and have done with it. Don’t seem possible, setting here today, but I do know Mrs. Watson was plain terrified of that armed crowd, cause Mama said so.”

  Andy said, “Bill? You aimin to stand there and tell me your House uncles would of let that happen? Let that crowd murder the young widow and three little children?”

  Smallwood growled stubbornly, “Some of them men had drunk somewhat to steady up their nerves, and once that crowd of men had got their blood up, got the killing instinct, your dad and his brothers and Grandpa House might not of had much say. After what happened, and all that racket, I sure ain’t surprised the young widow was nervous.”

  Lucius said, “Did Alderman join in the shooting?”

  “You’re the man to tell us, Colonel. All you got to do is check your list.”

  Again, the blind man mended a tense silence. “Walter might of went along but I don’t believe he fired. He was always a nice quiet feller. Moved away from here soon after that, become a fish guide at Fort Myers Beach. He guided them writers, Hemingway and Mr. Zane.”

  A heavy step banged up the stairs and kicked open the screen door. Crockett Junior Daniels, fulminating beer, came straight at Lucius, tugging crumpled yellow papers from beneath his stump and thrusting them into his face. To the elders he bawled, “This here is his damn list of your kinfolks in the crowd that put Ed Watson out of his damn misery!”

  Lucius snapped the list out of his hand, intending to tear it into little pieces, but voices protested, calling out their right to see it first. Relinquishing the list to Smallwood, he followed the one-armed man outside, yelling after him down the steps. “He’s too old to harm anybody, Crockett! Let him go!”

  Crockett Junior lurched around at the bottom of the steps. “If that old loon weren’t gunnin for Speck Daniels, how come he was packin a loaded .38 and some spare loads, never mind that fuckin list with all the names scratched out but just the one?”

  “He never cared about revenge! He hated his father all his life! Just ask him!”

  Batting the words away like gnats, the one-armed man kept on going toward his truck.

  Bill Smallwood declaimed the list aloud, as people groaned. Those familiar names, read out like a list of dead, had exhumed ancient guilt and fear which people imagined had been safely buried under the old leaf litter of the years. Once Smallwood had finished, the people rose, forcing Lucius to pitch his last entreaties over the commotion, and he lost all hope of signatures for his petition. His audience made their escape, hurrying one another through the doorway. One old man muttered crossly as he passed, “Us people know who was here that day! We don’t need no darn ol’ list!” Even Hoad Storter and Weeks Daniels, Lloyd Brown and Roy Thompson, scarcely looked their old friend in the eye. Lloyd muttered regretfully, “Trouble is, that list makes our old-timers look like a damn lynch mob.”

  Then all were gone. The screen was empty and the old store silent, in the hum of wasps. When Bill Smallwood, waiting at the door to lock up after them, gave him his list, Lucius tore it in half and tore the halves in quarters. Hearing the papers rip, Andy looked alarmed, and his big hand flew up and outward, finding Lucius’s arm. “That list is history! You aim to write the whole story or just part of it?”

  “He got the names about right,” Bill told Andy, as Lucius folded the torn posse list into his breast pocket. “Sure took him long enough.” And Andy said, “Bill, that list don’t mean nothin no more and you damn well know it!”

  Smallwood squinted at his cousin. “Your own family got four men on there, and they got sons and grandsons, and you’re one of ’em. You fool enough to tell me that don’t mean nothin?”

  “If I thought for one minute he was after Houses, or after Henry—even if I thought he was after Speck—you think I would of rode down here in his car with him?”

  Bill locked the door behind them and descended ahead of them. “It sure is pathetic to see you so mixed up in this,” he told his cousin from the bottom step. “You’ve growed so goddamn open-minded since you went over to Miami, I’m startin to think that all your brains fell out.” He walked away.

  “Bill?” Andy one-stepped down the stair, using the rail. He looked more vulnerable than before, and he flinched when Lucius took his arm to steady him. “Well, Colonel,” he said, “I’m the oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest member of the posse, and you got me all alone right where your daddy died. Might be a pretty good chance to bump me off.” He tried to smile. “I reckon you can’t blame these folks for being leery.” The blind man turned toward him. “See, it ain’t that you might be gunnin for Speck Daniels that’s got people upset. It’s the idea of it—the idea of any man, even Speck, bein shot down by a Watson for takin part in what was done for the common good.”

  “Not everyone agreed.”

  “That so? A lot of your dad’s friends was standin where we are standin right this minute, and nobody disagreed enough to try to stop it. And none of ’em hollered out a warning, neither, when he come near shore.”

  “He would have come in anyway. That’s the way he was.”

  “Bill House always said the same.” The blind man shrugged.

  “Just now, you said, ‘what was done for the common good.’ I keep hearing things that sound as if the whole business was planned. Sheriff Tippins spoke with all those men, and that’s what he believed. Malice aforethought,” Lucius paused. “First-degree murder.”

  “All I know is, the House men never planned nothin aforetime.”

  The sun was hot. Lucius finally said, “I meant to ask where my father came ashore.”

  The blind man turned without a word, using his cane to poke his way toward the west side of the store, as if guided by the splash of wavelets off the bay. “The old boat ways are still here under the mud, cause I can feel ’em, but the dock was tore out by the hurricane. The stumps of the old pilings might be out there yet.”

  In the shallows, the outlines of the silted rails emerged from beneath the marl, in the glimmerings and glints beneath the surface. Andy’s shoe had located a rusted section that lay under dead turtle grass along the water’s edge. “Colonel? You see my toe? Go west about fifteen feet”—he pointed his cane tip. “That’s where your daddy run his boat up on the shore. That’s where he jumped out. That’s where he died.” Out of respect, the blind man stood there quietly a moment. “My dad drove a stake into that spot when we come home to bury Grandma Ida.”

  “You going to tell me your dad’s version of what took place here that afternoon?”

  “Version?” Andy raised his pale eyebrows high on his pink brow. “You talked all these years to all these people and still you ain’t heard the story you want to hear?” He turned and started back toward the road.

  Lucius explained that all he could expect was a general agreement on what had happened. So far, accounts differed on whether or not there had been a dispute, and whether E. J. Watson had been shot down in his boat or on the shore. Was it self-defense or according to a plan? Did Henry fire? And who fired first?

  “You ain’t never goin to arrive at no agreement, not if you nag folks for a hundred years. The only man who could walk you through it is the man whose lifeblood soaked into this ground, and even your daddy might not know just how it happened.” He sighed. “Let him go, Colonel. For your own sake.”

  “Can’t you tell me just what your father told you? About Henry, for example?”

  Andy shook his head. “You keep coming back to Henry Short. I tell you what I know. You ask again.” He resumed walking. “I told you, yes, Henry come here with Houses. I told you, yes, he had his rifle with him. That don’t mean he raised that gun and aimed it at your father.”

  “Your dad told you that Henry Short did not fire at Ed Watson?”

  Andy flushed. “Ain’t you kind of calling me a liar, Col
onel?” He pointed a thick finger toward the place where Watson died. “My dad was lookin down Ed Watson’s gun barrels! He was raisin his own gun, pullin the trigger! There weren’t no time to keep his eye on Henry!” He tried to calm himself. “Henry was standin right here in the shallers, like I told you. Bill House was standing right beside him. He said your dad was killed by the first bullet. That is all he knew and that is all I know!” He stumped ahead.

  They sat down in the thin shade of a casuarina. Leaning back against the leafy bark, facing the water, the blind man breathed deeply for a long, long time. “I sure do like that south wind in my face, don’t you? I can smell that Lost Man’s country all the way from here!”

  Whidden Harden came down the road from the motel and joined them at the tree. “Mister Colonel?” He kicked at the dust, clearing his throat. “I seen Crockett. He told me the story.” Andy groped and put his hand on Lucius’s arm, tugged him down beside him. Whidden settled on one heel on the other side.

  “The other night, them boys got word from Dyer to go and grab some crazy old feller who would likely be hanging around outside the Naples church hall. Said this man was a fugitive from justice, ‘armed and dangerous.’ As soon as the old man hollered through the window, they knew that must be him. They went and grabbed him, grabbed his satchel, slapped a gunnysack over his head so’s he wouldn’t know where he was headed, then hustled him into the truck and hauled him over east to Gator Hook. Said he kicked and bit—he give ’em a real scrap—but bein old and drunk, he didn’t change nothin.

  “Maybe halfway there, the old feller sobered up enough to recognize their voices. So he pipes up in his sack, yells ‘Don’t you know me, Boys?’ They open the sack and sure enough, the armed and dangerous fugitive from justice is Old Man Chicken! He was shaved and washed, which they sure wasn’t used to, so they never recognized him in the dark. So they all have a good laugh over that, give him a little shine to make him feel better, and pretty soon he’s as drunk as before and hollerin how he wants to talk to the man in charge! ‘Where’s that damn Speck at? I got to talk to him!’ But when he learns that Speck is on the Bend, he yells, ‘Hell, no! I ain’t goin!’ Said he’d prayed to God to strike him dead before he ever set foot on that place again!