Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  Lucius rose again to go.

  “Think I’m a liar? Think I’m makin up them stories?” Angry again, Daniels yanked opened the top buttons of his denim shirt and dragged out a heavy necklace of small leaden lumps, dull-burnished. He pushed the rough hemp string of leads at Lucius. “Count ’em. Thirty-three. Know where they come from?”

  Lucius’s heart stopped. The last time he had seen these lumps, they were black with coagulated blood, dropped one by one into a rusty coffee can on Rabbit Key.

  Speck Daniels nodded with him. “Yep. Got ’em off the coroner’s man, Willie Hendry. For good luck. I wouldn’t take a million dollars for ’em,” Daniels said.

  Still brooding about why he had come, anxious to poke and prod his visitor to see just how he worked, what he was up to, Daniels followed Lucius out of the cell door. “Speakin of Tippins, he was the first one to show me that fuckin posse list of yours.” He grinned when Lucius turned. “He was holdin it for evidence, y’know. In case you was to go crazy, start in shootin people. Such as myself.” Speck uttered a snide laugh. “And you know where Tippins got it? Eddie Watson!”

  Lucius nodded, hiding his astonishment. Had Eddie stolen it from Lucy Dyer or had Lucy been so foolish as to show it to him?

  “Course your brother is crazier’n hell, like all you Watsons, but that don’t mean that he done wrong showing that list to Tippins. Might been worried that little Lucius could get hisself killed down in the Islands.”

  “Eddie had no right to it. I want it back.”

  “You want it back? What the hell for? I ain’t even got that thing no more. Cause it was stole off me!”

  Old furies had struck all color from Speck’s face, as if he were suffering a stroke and could not breathe. His mouth was stretched open, taut as a knothole. His hair stood on end, and his rigid forefinger was pointed at Lucius’s face. The moonshiner’s mahogany hide was draining to a blue-gray hue as dead and cold as gunmetal, and he leaned against the wall, wheezing and gasping. Then he reeled backwards, sat down on the bunk, and grabbed his sneakers. Breaking a rust-rotted shoelace, he yelled—“Sonofabitch!”—and kicked that sneaker off. He hurled himself back on the bunk and with his sneakered foot kicked the upper bunk so hard that he split the pine slats under the torn mattress. “Ever think how a man might feel, seein his own name on a death list? Ever think what kind of crazy man would even make a list like that?”

  But the fit had passed, and he sat up again, cursing his sore foot. “Might been found with a bullet in your head, back up a creek, ever think of that?”

  Lucius said nothing. In this sort of man, fear was more dangerous than anger. He watched Speck’s instinct to conceal that fear take over. He was grinning again, and speaking calmly. “Course that ol’ list don’t mean a thing no more. All of ’em’s dead.” He winked at Lucius. “All but the one,” he added, bowing a little. “Unless you would count niggers.”

  Daniels awaited him with his one sneaker on. Lucius kept silent. The silence refired the man’s rage, but this time the rage was low and even, cold as the strange blue mineral flame in a wood fire.

  “Chokoloskee folks might be real interested to see that list, don’t you think so? Cause ever’ last one of them old-time families has names on there. And even if them men are gone, there ain’t nothin to keep you from killin a man’s son.” He paused a moment, nodding a little. “Unless you was put a stop to first.” He wiped spittle from his unshaven mouth with the back of his hand, which he stropped on his pant leg.

  “By you, maybe?” Lucius’s own voice had gone tight, and sounded froggish.

  “All I’m sayin is, if I was you, headed down into that country, I wouldn’t turn my back no more’n I had to.”

  Lucius said, “I lived down there for twenty-five years after I made that list and never harmed a soul. What makes you think I’m ready to start now?”

  “I’ll tell you why.” Speck Daniels nodded cannily. “Because I seen plenty of ’em go kind of loco when their life never worked out the way they wanted. Especially queer old bachelors without no family.” This meanness seemed to appease him just a little. “Fair warnin, that’s all, Colonel. Here’s another warnin, take it or leave it. If you’re writin a book, don’t go tellin no secrets on your damn attorney.” Speck lowered his voice a little to draw Lucius closer. “Big-time attorney, y’know, big-time attorney! He’s the fixer for all the fat boys in this state, from Big Sugar and the Ku Klux Klan up to the governor, and he’s got his own political future to look out for. He don’t want no story comin out about how he is Bloody Watson’s crazy bastard. He’ll get a choke hold on your book in court, then hit you with a lawsuit, and if that don’t put you out of business, he’ll be comin after you, and he is goin to get you, and he don’t care how. You might get beat up, get your house burned down, or you might get a bullet. Whatever it takes. They say he’s got Cubans over to Miami will do a nice clean job for fifty dollars.”

  “How come you’re warning me?”

  “Settlin old accounts, as you might say. But don’t show up so sudden next time.” He nodded, holding Lucius’s eye.

  “That a warning, too?”

  “Don’t talk to me no more,” Speck said, rolling over on the bunk, facing the wall.

  Calusa Hatchee

  Lucius headed toward the river, passing the red Langford house between Bay and First streets where he had lived with his mother in his school days. In the river park, a gaggle of pubescent girls in snowy sneakers, bouncing and giggling and squirting life, were observed without savor by leached-out old men, scattered and fetched up in the corners of the benches like dry leaves whirled across the hard park ground. In the river light, the tableau was surreal, as if these stick figures were arranged around the troupe of dancing nymphs like isolated pieces of a single sculpture. And one of them, thought Lucius with a start, might be a drink-worn syphilitic Leslie Cox.

  Asked if anyone had seen Eddie Watson, one of the elders, taking his time, removed his toothpick and pointed it enigmatically at Lucius himself. The wet toothpick glinted like a needle in the sun’s reflection off the river, transfixing Lucius for one piercing instant in the other’s unimaginable vision. A second man was pointing a bone finger at a third man on a bench, who was waving gently like a pale thing in a current.

  “Colonel? I sure thought that was you!” The small silver-haired man, eyes round and kindly behind glasses, shifted a little to make room on his bench. “I was savin that place for Honey,” he warned, looking over his shoulder for his wife. “We sure ain’t seen you in a while. We always wondered what become of Colonel.” Weeks Daniels did not seem to recall that they had scarcely laid eyes upon each other in the last quarter century. “We’re retired now, y’know. Tryin to get used to it.”

  The old friends talked at angles for a while, finding their way. Lucius mentioned Speck, and Weeks nodded with distaste. “We ain’t related hardly. He’s one them black-haired Cajun Danielses, look like wild Injuns and probably are. This feller fought his family from the age of one, and he weren’t much more than about ten when he run off for good.”

  Honey Daniels, coming up behind, stood patiently, not wishing to interrupt. Like her husband, she was slight and rather frail, with the same clean silver hair and innocent gaze, and even the same style of silver glasses. As young folks, Lucius recalled, they had looked like brother and sister, making it difficult to conceive of sex between them. When Lucius stood up to offer her his seat, she smiled, uncertain.

  “Remember Colonel Watson, sweetheart?” Weeks took her hand and drew her down onto the bench between them, telling her what he’d just told Colonel about Crockett Daniels. Honey nodded. “Yes, I heard you, Weeks. I believe you said that Speck was not related.”

  Red spots jumped to her husband’s paper cheeks. “Well, I ain’t so much denying him, I just ain’t proud about him.” Frowning, Weeks looked away over the river, where gulls slid down the wind between the bridges. “My dad had no use for that feller since Speck was a boy. I
ain’t no different. My dad was captain of the clam dredge, and he was always friends with E. J. Watson. You recall him, Colonel?”

  “Yes, I sure do. Your dad was Henrietta’s brother, right?”

  “Aunt Netta? I believe he was.” The old man glanced at him, a little guarded.

  “And Josie Jenkins was their half sister, right?”

  “Don’t know what Aunt Josie was, darned if I do. Aunt Josie picked up a slew of names before she give it up, but she might of been Tant Jenkins’s sister if she was a Jenkins to start off with. Mind-boggling, ain’t it? Anyways, they are all kin some way or another, no getting around it. Speaking about that bunch puts me in mind of that feller got hitched so many times that one day he looked up and said, ‘I’ll be darned if my own dad ain’t my damn son-in-law!’ ”

  Though his joke was an old one, Honey Daniels smiled freshly at her husband, creating a little space around his dignity. “Aunt Josie was real good to you back in the old days,” she reminded Lucius, not certain what he might wish to remember. “Little lady with big curly black hair, plenty of spirit? Had the same mother as Aunt Netta, I believe. They both worked awhile at Chatham Bend, and both had daughters there.”

  “My half sisters, you mean.”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I guess that’s right. Aunt Netta’s child was Minnie, named for your dad’s sister. Married a nice man from Key West. You ever see her anymore?” When he confessed he’d never even met her, she hurried on. “Well, we always heard that Minnie had her daddy’s color, blue eyes, auburn hair. She loved her daddy, he would see her in Key West, but she never wished to belong to the Watson family. After your daddy died, Netta liked to recall how Minnie’s father had forced himself upon her. And when we reminded her how often she had claimed that Minnie was a love child and that Jack Watson was the nicest man she ever met, she would cry out, ‘Well, that’s true, too, but Jack took me by storm!’ ”

  “ ‘Jack took me by storm!’ ” her husband marveled. “Aunt Josie, too. When Aunt Josie was drinking, she would always claim how Watson ‘ravished’ her.”

  Honey frowned a little. That word was too strong. ‘Aunt Josie’s Pearl was five years younger than Minnie, I believe. Pretty, kind of skinny blond. She favored her half brother Lucius. You two were very close when she was small, and she never forgot that.” Honey reached and squeezed his hand when he looked guilty. “Pearl always spoke so lovingly about her brother! She was so worried about you! Used to go all the way south to Hardens’, just to warn you, you recall? Tell you how much talk there was, how you were making the men nervous, and how your life would never be safe, so close to Chokoloskee.” Honey smiled, remembering Pearl Watson. “Tried to mother you, and here she was half your age!” She gazed at Lucius with the greatest fondness. “Know something, sweetheart?” she exclaimed, taking his wrist. “We’re just tickled pink to see your face again!”

  Her husband was still brooding about family matters. “I recollect how them ladies and their kids got talked about as ‘Watson’s backdoor family.’ ”

  “Well, those ladies weren’t ashamed about him, they were proud about him.” Honey Daniels said. “They loved him dearly and their kids did, too. And at the end of it, Josie had his little boy. Poor little feller was just five months old when he drowned in the Great Hurricane.”

  “Ol’ Speck was in the bar one night when someone was tellin about that, and Speck spoke up, said Watson’s little son weren’t nobody in the world but Crockett Daniels! Claimed he never drowned in the Great Hurricane because his uncle S. S. Jenkins—that was Tant—Tant upped and saved him! Them men at the bar was all agog, as Aunt Josie used to say. Speck told how Tant had hid the babe, just like Moses in the bulrushes, then got one of them Daniels girls to raise him up and give him a name to spare ’em all a scandal. Said if anyone had doubts about his story, well, here he was, the living proof, as big as life! And any man with something smart to say could step outside with him and settle it right now!

  “Trouble was, the one with the worst doubts was Uncle Tant! Swore he never knew nothin about it! And Josie yelled, ‘That boy’s tellin people I’m his mother? Must of been some kind of virgin birth or somethin!’

  “Speck was only havin fun, least to start off with.” Weeks Daniels shook his head. “Cause them folks knew that Speck was in the gang that had shot Watson. As Tant used to say, ‘I knew that young feller was born mean, but I never believed he would take a gun to his own daddy, not at the age of only five months old!’

  “Those ladies weren’t his only ones,” Weeks cackled. “There was another backdoor boy besides that little feller. Course we won’t talk about that one cause he don’t admit it, but local people know who he is, and we got long memories—that’s about all we got, seems like to me!”

  “Weeks, you don’t know that for a fact.” Honey warned Lucius to pay no attention to her husband. “The man denies it and I imagine he should know. Better’n you.”

  “Him and Speck ought to get together, then, cause that feller is a Watson and says he ain’t, and Speck ain’t a Watson and says he is.” However, Weeks Daniels raised his hand to show that, out of deference to his wife, he would make no further comment on Watson Dyer. “Nosir, Speck weren’t born a Watson, he were born a liar. Ain’t never had firsthand experience of the God’s truth—pays no attention to it cause he flat don’t care about it. Speck always took credit for bein in the posse, but what Speck mostly done that day was come up afterwards with other boys and shoot into the body. We were told that for a fact by one of them boys was in it with him.”

  “He’s talking about my brother,” Honey Daniels sniffed. “But Harley Wiggins didn’t always speak the God’s truth, either.”

  “Yes,” Weeks said, “Aunt Josie and Aunt Netta called your dad Jack Watson. That was the name he brung back from the Nations. Josie claimed her Jack never done but the one wrongful killing in all the years she lived at Chatham Bend. Said he went down to Lost Man’s River and shot a man who was settin in the sun patching his britches. Feller done him wrong.”

  “Tucker?” Lucius asked after a moment.

  “We don’t recall the name,” Honey said carefully.

  “Of course you know your sister Pearl married Earl Helveston from Marco.” Honey Daniels smiled. “Folks called ’em Pearl ’n’ Earl. If Earl ever laid eyes on Mr. Watson, we never heard about it, but he always swore he loved that man, and nobody understood how that could be. Crockett Daniels was another one claimed he loved Mr. Watson, never mind he raised a gun and fired at him. Your daddy had quite a strong effect on these young fellers.”

  “He was some fisherman, Earl was!” Weeks Daniels said. “But he was a cutter, pulled his knife too fast when he was drinking. Earl Helveston was rough even for Marco, and that was a rough place. Course them Marco men was always jealous they did not kill your daddy, so they went and killed a lawman later on. In Prohibition. Couple of them Helvestons was in on that one.”

  Lucius recalled that when Pearl first came to visit him at Lost Man’s River, in the twenties, she would turn up on the runboat that stopped by three times a week to pick up fish and leave off ice. In later years, she would appear with her baby and her husband in Earl’s “hobo houseboat,” a little raft with a cabin perched on top, towed by an old skiff with outboard motor. Lucius felt neglectful and a bit downcast over Pearl, who had worked for years at the old Barfield Heights Hotel there at Caxambas. She was a pretty girl and a kind girl, too, but her life had always been a sad one.

  Poor Pearl, he thought, had never had a chance to get her bearings. She had been born on the edge of society and stayed out there. Sometimes she called herself Pearl Jenkins, sometimes Pearl Watson. She had spent her life outside the window looking in. “Her people never had a home to call their own, and home was what that girl had always longed for,” he reflected.

  “She’s inside of a home right now,” Weeks said. He had gotten things confused and his wife hushed him. “Her mind gave out on her,” Honey explained, “an
d they took her to some kind of institution over in Georgia.” She looked down at her lap. “We never called to see how she was getting on. We don’t know how to talk to Pearl when she’s not right in her head.”

  Subdued by the story of Pearl Watson, they stared away across the broad brown reach of the Calusa Hatchee. Westward, toward Pine Island Sound, the lilting gulls caught glints of sun where the current mixed with wind in a riptide. “Honey and me moved here to live around the time you went south to the Islands, and we will die here, too, wouldn’t surprise me. When Caxambas got took over for development, what was left of our old bunch come up here, too, Josie Jenkins, Tant, and Pearl, along with other Daniels kin and some old friends from that section. Uncle Tant conked out in a rest home, and Aunt Josie done the same when she come of age. That was along about 1939.” Weeks Daniels sighed. “Ain’t much more to say about that branch of our family, cause it’s finished. Ain’t one Jenkins left.”

  His old friends said they knew just where to find his brother. Honey took their arms, and they walked upriver toward the Edison Bridge. She was still rummaging around the old days. “When I was little, five or six years old, your daddy would come to our house to get his supper. Mr. Watson ate many a meal in the bosom of our family. Wasn’t a boardinghouse or anything, it’s only that Mama had extra room when we lived at Chokoloskee. There were times your daddy spent the night, and sometimes his wife, too—oh, she was just a beautiful young woman, very sweet. As I recall, her name was Edna, but he called her Kate. All I remember was a fine strong-looking man who wore nice clothes, he was the sporting kind. His Kate called him Mr. Watson, but to my father, he was E. J.—Mr. E. J. Watson.