Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  Some time later he arose and took the bedrolls over to the beach. He spread them at a little distance from the fire, not far downriver from the place where Rob and Papa must have slipped ashore. The Tucker shack had been around the point, on the west shore, and he dimly recalled the great hardwood from some tropic river, cast up by hurricane, against which Wally Tucker must have leaned his rifle while he patched his pants.

  In the firelight, Andy and Whidden were laughing warily with Daniels. Instinctively, Sally sat behind her husband’s shoulder, keeping Whidden between her and her father. By reputation, the hard-drinking Daniels would remain upright and articulate to a point just short of brain death before passing out.

  “Course my daughter here got the queer idea that her daddy prefers gators to niggers—hell, that ain’t right at all! I was brung up with old-fashioned views but I kept up with the times better’n some.” Daniels glanced slyly at Sally Brown, whose face was closed. “If I go in a restaurant, Key West, and a nigger comes in there and sets down, I ain’t gone to open my damn mouth, cause I respect the law. But far as one comin into my own house and pullin a chair up to my table, well, I weren’t raised that way. After we’re done eatin, he can come on in, case of a mergency, to use my phone—that’s different. But as far as settin down just like a white person? Nosir! I don’t hold with that. I weren’t raised that way, and it’s hard to change so much after all these years.”

  Sally burst out, “Don’t let him get started! He just bullies everybody with his viciousness. And it isn’t funny just because he’s drunk!”

  Speck Daniels turned slowly to confront his daughter, looking her over in the same judicious way in which earlier he had met criticism from the blind man. “Course my daughter here was raised up with her daddy’s views, ain’t that right, Sally? When she was young, some people name of Hyatt come to town and word was going round they might be colored—”

  “Oh don’t!” begged Sally, jumping up. “I was only twelve!”

  Speck kept nodding. “So this Hyatt girl told her best friend Sally Daniels she was white, and I guess she was, to look at. But my daughter was kind of a mean girl back at that time, talked and thought like her own kind of people. So Sally would not let it go, and them two had a catfight in the school yard every day. Sally called the other girl a dirty nigger, and other kids got into it and then the grown-ups. Finally it was settled, Hyatts was black. Wanted to be white in the worst way but people wouldn’t let ’em. So they got moved acrost the bridge and their kids was sent to the nigra school, and Miss Sally Daniels got most of the credit.”

  Her husband put his arm around her but no one could protest, since Sally did not deny that it was true. “That was the way he brought us up!” she cried. Speck contemplated his daughter while she wept. He said, “Them people suffered somethin terrible, y’know. I was almost sorry it was me let on to Sally how they might be niggers.”

  Nobody spoke. The blind man, who had propped himself onto his elbows, let himself down again and folded his big hands over his eyes.

  “I will say this much, when it come to looks, that Hyatt girl was about as cute as us fellers ever seen in our hometown. Had a couple of state cops hangin around there a good while that wanted to shack up with her, that’s how pretty that girl was, but her people proved to be niggers all the same.

  “Black nor white, a person can’t control what he was borned to be. It’s like a dog or cat. A good cat’s a good cat, and a good dog’s a good dog. I like a good dog, but a sorry one is about the sorriest thing there is on God’s good earth. You take a good nigger, it’s the same. But a sorry nigger—”

  Whidden said, “Speck? Let’s—”

  “All I’m sayin is, God give His own strength to the white race! And the strong ones eat the weak ones and they always did, that’s the way of fish and the way of man and the way of God’s Creation—dog eat dog! And for all us poor fools know about it, this dog-eat-dog might just be the way God wants it! Might be His idea of justice, ever think of that? Keepin His Creation strong? Might be God’s Mercy!”

  “I’m ashamed,” Sally murmured, weeping. “Truly ashamed.” She got up and headed for the boat, and her father leaned forward around Andy House to admire her movements. “Ain’t she sweet?” He sighed when he sat back again. “I got another daughter in Miami just as purty, only this girl purely loves her daddy, loves to set on her bad old daddy’s knee.” He winked at Whidden, who looked past him, watching Sally brush her teeth and crawl into her bedroll. Her father nodded in approval, as if she were being a good little girl about her bedtime.

  “Speakin of that other daughter, you fellers hear about them black boys that busted in when I was over visitin Miami? When my little grandchild run outside and left the door unlocked while I was layin on the sofa? These two snuck in and when they seen me, they run right over and started in to beatin on me. One straddled me and broke my nose all up while the other was yankin at my pockets, huntin my wallet, and neither of ’em spoke a word the whole time they was there. Money for dope, that’s what the cops told me, but it seemed more like plain old hate to me. Old man that never done a thing to them damn people, and here they’re invadin in broad daylight, just a-beatin on him? Got to be hate! I sure don’t know what’s the matter with that kind, with all our tax money they are gettin free on nigger welfare!

  “Had a stray bullet whap into my daughter’s house, fall on the floor, when the cops was runnin dopers there on the back avenues. This is dangerous stuff that’s goin on! Used to be you could leave everythin unlocked, now you have to guard your house twenty-four hours a day. I ain’t so much a religious person, but I think that the Old Man Up There, He’ll have to take and thin some of this out. The world is gettin so wicked, y’know, something has to stop. They talk about old-time desperaders like Ed Watson, but the killin back then ain’t nothin like it is today. See more killed in one week on the news than Watson done away with in a lifetime!

  “Miami now, there’s a barbecue on the next block has a nigger in it who just thinks the world of me. Said he’d find them ones who beat me up, get ’em took care of. Good nigger people, they don’t want that kind around no more’n we do.

  “Next day a man drove right up to the house. Very easy and polite, like he was in some kind of law enforcement. Handed me a card without no name on it, only a Miami phone number. Says, ‘Mr. Daniels, I seen in the papers where niggers invaded into your home and robbed and beat you. You think you would know them ones that done it? Cause if you ever run acrost ’em, you can call this number and describe ’em, say where they are at. You can reach this number twenty-four hours a day, you understand me, Mr. Daniels? Twenty-four hours every day. All you got to do is call and then you’re out of it.’ Got back in his big car and went away. Don’t seem like that man worked in law enforcement, what do you think?”

  Asked what the man looked like, Speck said, “Well, I ain’t forgot him. Heavy-set strong-lookin feller, pale moony face, dark jowls, y’know, but clean-shaved all the same. Had these pale blue eyes with a dark outside ring. Why I recall ’em, I seen that same dark eye ring on a panther that come prowlin into camp one night, took my best hound. This was back before the Park, up Lost Man’s Slough. I heard somethin and sat up and worked my flashlight. This big cat had my best dog by the throat, haulin him off. Had that hound killed on the first jump, hardly made a sound. When the beam hit him, he dropped that dog and crouched. Didn’t back up, he didn’t want to leave it. Stared down my light beam all the while I was fumblin for my rifle. Then he was gone, weren’t nothin left, only that circle of the beam with the dead dog in it.”

  Lucius called, “That man look anything like Watson Dyer?”

  Speck relit his cigarette before he answered. “I ain’t never laid eyes on Watson Dyer,” he said, expelling smoke. “Him and me done all our talkin on the phone.”

  “How about that military officer? In the helicopter?”

  Speck chewed on this idea. “With the sunshine blazin up the windshield—oil
haze and smashed bugs and scratches on that plastic—I never got a good look at the face. All the same, he looked some way familiar.” He nodded a little. “Might been that same man but I ain’t sure.”

  Speck finished his jug and tossed it aside and tottered to his feet. “Got to get goin early in the morning.” He said this to all of them, by way of parting. He was already headed for his boat when he stopped short and wheeled so fast he almost fell.

  “Colonel? I believe you might be right. He might been Dyer. Same real deep calm voice, like a old-time preacher. And that military man, I never got a good look at his face, but I seen his hind view when he got out to take a leak. Same set to his walk as that Miami feller, back on his heels with his boot toes pointed out, like a bear reared up on his hind legs. That sound like Dyer?”

  “That’s the feller in my gas station!” Andy exclaimed. “All you got to do is call and then you’re out of it—the selfsame feller!”

  Speck had come back and was swaying over the fire. “I ain’t so much for coloreds, now, don’t get me wrong. But a growed man runnin around on his own time and money, huntin down niggers he ain’t never even seen? That is a man with a bad case of race predu-juice or somethin!” Speck looked sly again, and not wishing to encourage him, the others went off to their blankets, leaving him tottering and hooting by the fire. But soon, he pitched his voice toward their blankets, and his tone grew angry as his oratory rose. He was still ranting at the world when Lucius fell asleep.

  “—yessir, Friends, them Glades today is layin out there DEAD! No use to NO-body! A big ol’ godforsaken swamp, ain’t hardly fit for reptiles nor mosquiters! And these here Islands goin to wind up the same way! Don’t you dumb-ass taxpayers realize how much prime tourist coast is goin to waste right here in southwest Florida? When we could pump white sand out of the Gulf where it don’t do a single bit of good, make gorgeous beaches, dredge nice cocktail-boat canals right smack through them mis’rable ol’ mangroves, throw up deluxe waterfront condoms just like we got right here in ol’ Miam-uh? Condoms a-risin on the Sun Coast Skyline in just a thrillin silver line, all the way south around Cape Sable! If that ain’t the American Dream, I don’t know what! Sunset on the Golden Gulf, just a-glintin off them condoms, turnin ’em from silver into gold!”

  Lucius Watson tossed on the hard sand. Had he lived his entire life in dread of awful revelations which in some realm below consciousness were already known? Rob’s tale seemed so utterly remote, corresponding but faintly with his own sun-filled memories of Papa and the Bend—had memory betrayed him? Had there been no shadows? Had he never wondered?

  He felt gutted. So near its finish after all these years, his biography of E. J. Watson seemed invalidated, wasted, in the half-light of Rob’s story, with its implicit validation of what Daniels had so vilely called “Watson’s Nigger Payday.”

  And Rob? If Rob survived and were miraculously set free to be a fugitive, where would he hide? There would be no sanctuary at Gator Hook, far less Caxambas. The old man would be entirely dependent on his brother, for who else would look after him? Next week? Next month? Next year?

  Lying there hour after hour, his mind struggled against Speck Daniel’s insinuation that Lucius … that in the end, it might be best for everyone—Rob in particular—if Rob Watson were … to disappear? How could Daniels imagine that Rob’s own brother might harbor such an unnatural idea! Surely this came from his own ugly misanthropy and bitter feelings, his disappointment in his own half-crazed, doomed son!

  But after midnight, started up from restless sleep, Lucius was breathless with deep anxious guilt that in his heart, at least, he had betrayed his brother. Why had Speck’s insinuations so upset him, unless his shock and outrage were not honest? Was a craven and exhausted hypocrite named Lucius Watson so willing to believe that death would come as a relief and mercy to Rob Watson, setting him free from a badly broken life?

  Speck Daniels had forced his nose into an unsuspected seam in his own nature, an inadmissible twinge of regret over the fact that someone—Rob—had survived to bear witness against their father. Would Daniels have hinted at Lucius’s ambivalence if the scent of that ambivalence had not encouraged him? Did he truly intend to set Rob free or—imagining he understood Lucius Watson’s secret wish—did he mean to let those others kill him? This would have to be settled first thing in the morning. Lucius tossed and twisted, only to sink away toward the night’s end, harried by dreams. Across the cove where moonlit water danced like crystals in the mangroves, a night heron gave its strangled quock, to unknown purpose.

  At first light, he awakened, unsure where he was, cobwebbed by dreams. The mangrove delta, still guarding the nighttime, lay in darkness. Squatted on his heels by a new fire, Whidden Harden was making coffee. The blond head at one end of the bed rolls would be Sally, and the blind man was the amorphous lump beyond.

  Speck Daniels’s ancient cabin boat was gone.

  Lucius dragged himself half-sick from his damp bedding and wandered clumsily toward the point. Far out on the Gulf, the dark cloud rims were edged with pewter, and the sea, roiled to a smoky green by distant storm, was smooth after night rain. On this shore where the innocent young victims had been lifted from the sandy shallows, he mourned for Rob and for the waste of his own life, which over the night seemed to have lost all purpose.

  At the fire, without looking up, Whidden Harden handed him hot coffee. Respecting each other’s silence, warming their hands on the cups, they hunkered together as they had so often when Whidden was a boy.

  “Does he ever say good-bye?” Lucius said at last.

  Whidden shook his head. “Likes to stay one jump ahead and sometimes two.”

  Awakened before daybreak by the kick and quiet burble of Speck’s motor, Whidden had gone down to the water and unhitched the bow line from the driftwood stump and waded out with it. In cool water to his waist, he stayed the old boat against the drag of current while they shared a smoke. Speck told him he was heading for the Bend to help his crew with the last loads. “Keep these people away, you understand me?” When Whidden nodded, Speck insisted, “Don’t you cross us, boy. This ain’t no kind of picayune deal we’re talkin here. With all the money and big men that’s tied up in munitions, it ain’t got to go very far wrong before somebody comes up killed.” He flicked his cigarette butt toward the blanket lumps by the dead fire. “Them, for instance.”

  “Your own baby daughter, Speck?”

  “Maybe her first,” Speck said with a sour smile.

  Sifting this, Lucius found no clue to Speck’s intentions. He dredged his brain for the worst implications of what he’d said to Speck, and the way he’d said it, down to the last inflection, knowing the while that none of this mattered, it was all too late. Rob Watson’s fate was in Daniels’s hands, and Daniels was on his way to Chatham Bend. The one hope was the plan to release the hostages this afternoon. Was it only despair that made him certain that for whatever reason, this release would not occur, and that Daniels had known this when he proposed it?

  When Lucius questioned him about Speck’s promise to let his brothers escape to Mormon Key, Whidden looked doubtful. Maybe Speck’s men would go along with that, and maybe not. But in case there were six mouths to feed at Mormon Key this evening, Whidden said, they should go fishing.

  Over the Glades as the skiff moved up the river, the purple sky went the bad yellow color of old bruise. The mangrove delta seemed gray and dead and the current empty, turning and turning with the earth in great slow spirals, wandering ever westward down First Lost Man’s Bay. “Comin off the Gulf, headin upriver, the first bay you would come to”—Lucius imagined this was how, in the old century, this vast, uninhabited mangrove reach had got its name. The lost man, the man lost—who might he have been? What age and color, origin and destination? Indian, Spaniard, castaway, slave—where was his lost voice now? And where his bones?

  For the first time in all the years he had inhabited this region, he found himself disturbed by the river’
s name. In this gray void of silent water and dark forest, the lonely intuition came that he had strayed into some Land of the Lost where the man lost was the man doomed to apprehend his ultimate solitude on earth as his ordained existence. And again he recalled his father’s fascination with “the Undiscovered Country,” which signified not wilderness, but death.

  Perhaps Whidden Harden sensed this dread, perhaps this was why he seemed so sad and shy. Drifting downriver, avoiding Lucius’s eye, he whistled and picked and chirped and trilled, invoking river spirits. He muttered as he rigged the lines, he uttered incantations. “Got to coax ’em on there,” he sang to the river over the soft purl of the outboard. “Got to coax ’em.”

  At sunrise, the flood quickened with life, the smooth swift surface of descending current broken now by myriad swirls and slits cut by scaled creatures. Working the current points for sea trout, Whidden coughed softly, sun-up cigarette in the corner of his mouth.

  Lucius cast his lure with a quick whisk, dropping it beneath the branch tips. He worked it in an arc across the current, awaiting the strike from hidden depths that might reconnect him to the heart of the world. In sleepless exhaustion, needing an end, he asked Whidden’s opinion of what Speck Daniels had said the night before about “Watson Payday.” Perhaps this was what Whidden had feared coming, for he grunted. In a little while, with no changes of expression, he began speaking.

  “Early thirties, now, before the Park come in, a few men was still shootin plume birds for the foreign market. Late as ’35, a seaplane come in and cleaned out the last egrets, Whitewater Bay, and them Audubons was tryin to put a stop to it. Back at that time, a feller name of Charlie Green was Audubon warden up the coast at Duck Rock rookery. Remember Charlie? Pretty good feller, never paid no mind if a man shot a few white ibis for his supper, cause curlews was common. Well, one fine evenin the head Audubon, a Yankee from New York, come with Charlie on the Audubon boat—the old Widgeon, cabins fore and aft, remember her?—to where the fishermen was living on these houseboat lighters back of Turkey Key. They heard somebody shootin in the bayou, and when that man learned how us local boys was takin a few curlews, he cussed out ever’body, Charlie included. So later that night, around the moonrise, them two turned in. And knowin Charlie’s cabin was up forward, some of us boys circled that boat, shot the portholes clean out of the after cabin. And you know somethin? That head Audubon never poked his head out once to tell us ignorant local fellers we done wrong!