Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  As if drawn to the boom and thunder of the firestorm, the helicopter came whacketing in over the treetops like a tornado. A wild light blinded him, and whips of fire flayed his skin “like the terrible swift sword in the old hymn!” He screamed for mercy, certain this machine had come to hunt him down. Cringing from the heat and noise, too frightened to run out into the open, he was driven by terror to hide himself in the old cistern, clinging like a frog to the slimy wall. He screeched with all his might for the Lord’s mercy, not only for himself but for that agonized old man whose mortal cries had died but whose coil lay charring in hellfire.

  Here Ad broke down again. They retreated a little, giving him time. Lucius said softly, “Nothing you could do, Ad. Don’t torment yourself.”

  Ad did not believe that the helicopter had caused the fire, for it had materialized after that huge soft explosion. Yet he was convinced that as it passed, he had glimpsed something falling in a long swift arc, for the house had shuddered in a deep rumbling boom, followed by a rush of fire and black smoke, then a rain of burning bits and shingles. A minute later, when he dared to lift the cistern cover, the burning house was gone as if evaporated. There was only that devouring heat and the low rushing of the burning timbers. Where the house had been, through the oily emptiness and cindered air, he could see a swimming bird, far our on the broad bend of the river.

  “Firebomb,” Whidden pronounced. “I had that idea the minute I seen that first quick flare at Lost Man’s. Maybe the old man blew up that gas can, but it looks to me like they firebombed just to make sure. Or maybe,” he continued, trying to make sense of it, “the gas can touched off some explosives. Speck told me they was concentratin on the automatic weapons, cause there weren’t no time to transfer all them cargos.”

  “That’s right!” Ad cried. “Those crates inside were stacked right to the ceiling!”

  “Made a dawn run a whole day early to catch ’em inside,” Whidden decided. “And when they seen the smoke, they bombed her anyway, cause that was their damn orders. Very childish men. Enjoy all them big shiny toys, enjoy destruction, but they want it all wrote down on a paper, want it all official. Who or what might be inside, that ain’t their business.”

  Lucius, sick and dizzy, mumbled dully that the firebomb might have been a mercy to the man burning. His brother’s agonies were talons in his heart. The uselessness of Rob’s self-immolation! The Watson house would have been destroyed without him!

  Only last night, under the stars at Lost Man’s Key, the death of that foredoomed old man—in the light of the alternative—had seemed an endurable idea. This was because it was just that—an idea, an abstraction, with none of the furious pain and terror of a death by fire, none of the stunning immediacy of Ad’s “hellfire,” or even of that dog-eared satchel, huddled there like a reproach on the blackened ground. To perish screaming, mouth stretched wide as a black hole, twisting like the human damned in some Black Ages painting, the descent of sinners into Hell—

  His lungs brought up an ugly sound like the hard cough of a choked dog. In the blackening air he lost his sight and sank onto his knees, pressing his hands to the scorched earth to keep from sinking further into darkness. Around him dim voices came and went, hoarse incantations from the netherworlds—

  Rob—one word, sepulchral, formed and vanished

  Rob

  Who was calling?

  God have mercy

  … all right?

  Old pine subsumed, crack and shudder of the burning, spiral goings and returnings, the blood, the suffering of sentient things purified to the last atom by blue mineral flame, primordial ash and ancient gases, gathered in by air and water and returned at last to ocean and to earth, world without end

  Amen

  Rob Watson

  the whispering as he came clear again, the dim shifting of specters, the black tree silhouettes on the bend of silent river

  still on his knees, staring down at the blood conduits and sinews of the two gnarled hands, affixed like dragon claws to the black earth

  You all right, Mister Colonel?

  What’s the matter with him? What’s the matter!

  Faces. Whidden Thomas Harden. Andrew Wiggins House. Sally Daniels Brown Harden. Addison Watson Burdett.

  What’s the matter?

  Lucius struggled to stand up. When the Hardens sought to support him under the arms, he shook them off, only to relapse onto hands and knees. Kneeled on all fours, letting the blackness fade, he watched a drop fall from his eyes to strike a tiny crater in the ash.

  Ad whimpered. He had burned his leg. All stared at the red burn on the pale and hairy slab as he pulled aside his poor charred shreds of pant leg.

  Brother, we cannot kiss your wound. We cannot make it well.

  Lucius straightened slowly and sat back upon his heels, trying to clear his head, as Addison, in fits and starts, finished his story—how the helicopter had returned, how it came in low and hovered as he sank into the green water, fingers clinging to rough places in the cistern wall.

  “Taking official pictures for their official damn report.” Whidden was still piecing it together. By now, he guessed, the helicopter crew must have noticed that the only boat at Chatham Bend was that empty skiff on the far bank.

  “Seeing no boats, they probably assumed that nobody was in the house,” Lucius suggested, wondering why he needed to excuse them.

  The helicopter had swung off toward the north and descended slowly until it disappeared behind the trees. Certain it had landed, Ad was terrified he had been seen, that these unknown enemies would come in on foot to hunt him down. Even when the thing rose again over the trees and headed back toward the east, and he crawled out into the hot sun, stinking with slime, he remained crouched beside the tarn until he heard the Cracker Belle, coming upriver.

  Lucius wanted to stay long enough to retrieve his brother’s body from the embers. Although they had no more food and little water, Whidden nodded. He did not have to say that as boat captain, he was responsible for their safety, and that the sooner they got away from here, the better. As the humid afternoon wore on, he became more and more restless, certain that the helicopter would return.

  The housepainter, in choked fits and muffled starts, emptied out his fifty years of throttled feelings.

  A week earlier in Neamathla, when he’d learned from Lucius that this house might be burned, Ad had rushed away from his sister’s place feeling hugely angry and upset, though why or against whom he did not know. For the first time in years, he returned to heavy drinking, raging away at strangers and bar mirrors that E. J. Watson and the Watson Place had nothing to do with Addison Burdett. Sobered by a rude arrest for disorderly conduct, he took his savings from the bank and left next day for the Ten Thousand Islands, telling nobody, not even Ruth Ellen. “Why? Who knows why?” Ad grumbled. “Because I’m some kind of a misfit and a crank, and always have been!” He struggled to pretend this was a joke, and Lucius chuckled as best he could to help him out, but the fraternal moment failed, and they plodded onward.

  “All my vacation time and all my savings! For a beautiful paint job that didn’t last two days! It was hardly dry!”

  “Time, paint, food, and fuel,” Lucius commiserated. “And the boat rental—”

  “Smallwood never charged me. Said I was crazy to waste all that good paint, but refused my money. Wouldn’t explain why and went off grumpy.”

  Contemplating the steaming embers, Ad regretted what he saw as his own foolishness and sentimentality—he regretted this worse than the waste of time and money. Recalling Lucius’s offer at Neamathla to help pay his way if he would attend the Park meeting at the Bend, he said that after Lucius left, Ruth Ellen had offered the same thing. “I refused her, too!” He yanked up his big palm in angry warning lest any man imagine he sought help. “I wanted to pay for all of it out of my own pocket. Coming here to paint the house was what I could do, it was my idea, not your idea, not her idea. I wanted to settle Ad Burdett’s account w
ith Watsons.” He looked confused, not certain what he meant by this, and in confusion gave an odd, inchoate roar.

  Without the revolver and the Tucker packet, Rob’s old satchel weighed no more than a sun-dried bird skeleton high on the tide line. His estate was reduced to a change of sad grayed shorts and threadbare socks, a splayed toothbrush and plastic razor, loose among the ancient lint and crumbs. Otherwise, all it contained was a “last will and testament,” a letter to his younger brother which he had begun back in Lake City after fleeing his mother’s grave at Bethel Churchyard, with emendations added here and there along the way. In fact, he had scratched down his last words this very morning.

  To Whom It May Concern, namely Luke Watson:

  My birth date and her day of death being the same, I wish to return and be buried near that girl who was my mother. You may recall the place and name: Ann Mary Collins, New Bethel Cemetery, Columbia County, Florida. (Our fine times traveling to old family places meant a lot to me. I don’t suppose I ever told you that and it’s too late now but thank you anyway.)

  I leave you a heirloom revolver that belonged to your father. It still works, as my remains can testify. You can probably sell it to some gun nut for enough to pay to have my carcass burned down to the bones and shook down small, so the deacon at New Bethel Church can slot me in beside my poor young mama. (I wound up kind of an old stillbirth anyway.) A man has got to come to rest someplace.

  We are traveling far, we are traveling home

  One by one, we are traveling home.

  Across death’s river, our friends have gone,

  And we are following, one by one.

  That is the old Baptist hymn that your own kind mother loved. Say that for me at the graveside, Luke. Under your breath will do just fine. (If that old heathen Billie Jimmie wants to mumble some Injun ode back in the swamp someplace, that is all right, too.)

  Well, two days have passed, and here I am, too drunk to organize my own demise. I will, I will. The above was written in Lake City, where I found your note. (Sure took you long enough to learn my rightful name!) Today I am on the bus south to Fort Myers.

  I have carried this revolver all my life, same as my pecker, but never found much use for either one. The first and last woman I ever had was a big brown gal in that old cathouse on Black Betsy Key where E. J. took the first chip (off his old block) on his 19th birthday, September 13, 1898. (Carrie’s marriage was just two months earlier, remember?) But after that morning at Lost Man’s River, a woman could give me loving till the cows came home, and some of them did, bless their sweet hearts, but it never did me or them one bit of good. Wrath of God, do you suppose? Sins of the fathers? I’ll have to discuss this with the higher-ups when I get to Heaven.

  I have hung on to this “shootin iron,” I’m not sure why. Because it is my souvenir of “Papa”? I hate to think I might be sentimental, but who can know the curlicues of the human heart? This is the weapon which took the life of an innocent young woman and her unborn babe at Lost Man’s Key. This humble paw that writes these words—my mortal hand—pulled this simple trigger—how incredible it seems!—which is why it is fitting that I perish by this weapon—and this finger and this hand—on this day I have known was coming all my life.

  I stole this weapon when I left the Bend, to shoot my father down if he caught up with me (or blow out my own brains, if I so chose!). That day in early 1901, my life lay in a thousand pieces, like a precious heirloom which had come into my keeping and—because I did not pay attention—was smashed to shards of rubble in an instant. This gun muzzle touched E. J. Watson’s temple while he lay sprawled across his table, snorting like a hog. But nothing came of it—the story of my life! I was too broken, too hysterical, to muster up the resolve required to take another life on that same day, yet I think sometimes of the harm which might have been averted with one small forthright twitch of this forefinger! Would saving those lives atone for that life I took?

  And yet I keep this weapon. I touch it now and then, as a reminder. This cold cold metal, this burnished hickory, fashioned somewhere in 19th century America, the simple precision of its parts—its very simplicity puts me in touch with sanity, it seems, or at least reality. For in some strange irony, that long ago day at Lost Man’s River is the only real episode in a long and ghostly life. Does that make sense?

  I have never learned much about life. Maybe you know something.

  Another delay. I am a prisoner and no longer have the gun, though my keepers have promised to return it. I should have gotten out of this damned life while the getting was good, because now I’m in trouble and have brought you trouble, too—“a peck of trouble” as Mama used to say, do you remember, Luke? Your mama, not mine, of course (though she did her gentle best to love me, too). It’s years since I thought about dear Mama’s “peck of trouble”—eight whole quarts of trouble! That’s enough!

  Here I am on Chatham Bend, which I prayed I would never see again! How God rebukes us! What I can’t get over is this shining house, which looks almost exactly as it did when we first arrived at Chatham back in ’96 except for the screened porch and covered cistern, which came later. You were seven then so you might not remember—that big new house, fresh-painted white, way out in a vast wilderness all by itself, as if it had just dropped out of the sky! The boat sheds and the little cottage (which I only know from old photos sent me about 1909 by Julian Collins)—none of those outbuildings were built when I first knew this place, and now they are all lost to flood and hurricane.

  By now you have read the true story of the Tuckers. Can you forgive me for my part in that fatal deed even though I cannot forgive myself? (being quite unable to accept, therefore atone for the eternal fact that the man I see in the mirror is a killer). To this day, I howl to the highest heaven: I am not a killer! I was never a killer! But I don’t suppose it is Heaven where I’m headed, so I’m ranting instead at my poor dear brother Lucius Watson, because he is all I have left.

  Luke? Do you hear me? Do you believe me? Do you forgive me?

  If not you, then who?

  Tonight Speck’s kind clean-cut young fellows gave us moonshine and white ibis and fried gator tail. Life is grand! It’s just that I never got the hang of it, I’m “tuckered out.”

  If I don’t stop talking, you will decide I am not serious about “taking my life.” I am serious, Luke, although not gloomy and downhearted. I am still in lively spirits! Here Lies Rob Watson: Nothing Daunted—that’s how I count on you to remember R. B. Watson, a.k.a. “Arbie Collins,” a.k.a. “Chicken.”

  I have one last duty to perform—the house. I will not ask forgiveness, knowing you won’t give it. As for my own oblivion, the prospect heals me. I have put it off for fifty years but now I’m ready. So long, ol’ Luke! I miss you!

  With warmest good wishes from your old pal Arbie, alias (signed) your loving brother,

  Rob

  Reading these hard-earned pages as Lucius passed them along, Ad Burdett wept. “Rob must have been drunk and crazy, to write stuff like this!” Lucius shook his head, attempting to explain. Their brother had suffered unspeakable loss, then the unjust penance of a long and hollow life without hope of redemption. The only crazy thing about him was the crazed endurance it required to survive such an ordeal so long on nerve alone.

  Mercifully, Rob had been spared Ol’ Luke’s innate melancholy and self-doubt, as well as the self-pity which plagued Addison. And how very different he had been from Eddie, who had aged so early and whose mask was cracking with fatigue. Poor Eddie, worn out by propping up appearances, would end his days the craziest of all. Lucius would have to notify him of Rob’s death—not that Eddie would care, having always disliked Rob, in his fear of Rob’s unvarnished insights and outspoken ways.

  No, he was too tired to explain this to the housepainter, who was mopping his leaky nostrils with his knuckles. Without much heart, he tried teasing Ad a little. “If you think Rob was crazy, how about us? Runs in the family—The crazy Watson brothers
’! Wait till you meet Eddie!”

  “My name’s not Watson and I am not crazy!”

  “No, of course not.” He patted Lucius Ad’s shoulder. “Carrie and your sisters are fine, too.”

  “I don’t know Carrie.” Ad complained, his voice starting to rise, with tears behind it. “I was never crazy.”

  “I guess I was talking about ‘crazy’ gestures, like spending all your savings to come here from north Florida to paint an abandoned house, even though you were told it might be destroyed. I mean, that is a great gesture, Ad! I really admire it!” But Addison would not be consoled, he would not smile, nor even take pleasure in the compliment. Bowing his neck, he stared at his own paint-spotted shoes, moved to grief once more over his losses.

  Oh Lord, thought Lucius, how much he missed Rob!

  Under the ancient poincianas, he reread Rob’s jaunty and heartbroken letter, which brought on an up welling of pity for this man beside him. He had no business finding fault with Ad and Eddie. In the view of his entire family—all but Rob, perhaps—the greatest fool, the brother who was given the best chance of all and threw his life away, had been none other than Lucius Hampton Watson. “It’s hard to put your finger on the fool”—wasn’t that dear Mama’s saying, too?

  Ad Burdett was not a fool, merely a casualty. Wasn’t that true of all the Watson brothers? Even Dyer?

  Clouds came from the Gulf, dragging shrouds of ocean rain across the mangrove islands and raising acrid steam from the brooding embers. The brothers took shelter with the Hardens and Andy House in the boat cabin, where in dense wet heat, they sat too close and knee to knee. Finding room for Ad, trying to make him feel welcome and comfortable, Sally actually permitted herself a few sips of the moonshine which Whidden had miraculously discovered tucked away beneath the Belle’s rust-rotted life jackets and moldy slickers. He winked at Lucius, holding up one of Speck’s unlabeled bottles. “Astoundin, ain’t it?”