Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  Two days after Mr. Watson’s death, I was having an ice cream soda in Doc Winkler’s drugstore when Carrie Langford came in with her Faith and Betsy. Doc Winkler was the only doctor in Lee County, and his prescription shop sold ice cream sodas. Miss Carrie looked just beautiful, as usual, but that day the poor thing had gone dark around the eyes, and her wonderful thick hair had lost its shine. And little Faith whispered, kind of scared, “Mama’s been crying all day long, we don’t know why she’s crying so!” And I came busting out with it—“She’s crying cause some bad men shot your grandpa!”

  Oh, when my mother heard what I had done, she almost killed me! I was only ten but that was no excuse, I don’t know what came over me! Hearing those terrible words, poor Faith became hysterical, that’s how upset she was, at least until she realized she might miss her ice cream soda! As for Betsy, who was only five, she started hollering, “Grandpa, Grandpa!” because she needed some attention, too.

  Well, just that moment—can you believe it?—the first Indian we children ever saw came into the drugstore in a high silk hat with an egret plume and a long Seminole men’s skirt. It was like he’d walked straight in out of the Glades! Faith stopped crying right away. She said, “Mama! Is he going to kill us?” Because in those days, people still talked about the Indian Wars, and most of the few Indians left were still hiding from the white settlers out in the Cypress. The Mikasuki Seminoles forbade their women to speak to a white man or even look at him. If an Indian woman had a child by a white man or a negro, both mother and child were put to death! Later I learned that this Mikasuki man at Doc Winkler’s soda fountain had been threatened with death by his own people for coming in too close to the white people and learning to speak English, and for eating ice cream sodas, too, for all I know!

  Anyway, Mrs. Langford comforted poor Faith about this Indian in the high silk hat, saying, “No, child, that is Mr. Conapatchie, he’s not here to kill little girls but only to enjoy an ice cream soda.” And Billie Conapatchie hiked up that long skirt to seat himself more comfortably, I guess, and he didn’t have on a single stitch beneath! Sat down and dropped the skirt over the stool and picked his ear while waiting to be served!

  A few years later, Mama sent me to apologize to Mrs. Langford for picking a beautiful rose which grew out through her fence onto public property, and Miss Carrie invited me inside for a cookie. She was gracious and well-mannered, beautiful, everyone loved her. Soft brown hair and rose complexion—oh, a lovely person, and a good, good woman. We became fast friends, and that friendship has lasted all our lives.

  Since her menfolk would never talk about Mr. Watson, Miss Carrie had no clear opinion about his guilt or innocence, she only knew that she missed her “Papa” dreadfully, and was very confused and upset about what her own feelings and position ought to be. After his death, it just seemed best to hush up and go along with the men’s silence. But Lucius felt no such obligation, and poor Miss Carrie became mortally upset when her younger brother became estranged from the family. She admired his loyalty towards his father, but she also felt that his refusal to be silent was a lot easier for a footloose brother who could leave Fort Myers—and go to college, go to war, and finally disappear in the Ten Thousand Islands—than for her and Eddie, married with small children, who had to stay home and suffer the stares and whispers.

  Poor Lucius Watson could never settle down for long—a “lost soul,” as his sister often called him. Eventually, he borrowed from Mr. Langford’s bank to go to college. There he studied Southern history and wrote his thesis on the history of the Everglades and southwest Florida. For fear people might laugh at him, he told no one about it except nosy Lucy, declaring that she was the only one who would ever take him seriously as a historian!

  Having been born the year Lucius’s mother died, Miss Dyer was now sweet sixteen—which was when most girls married, back in those days! Lucius was in his late twenties then, still modest and handsome, with that natural ease in his own body. One would look up to find him watching from nearby, head slightly averted in that wary and quizzical way that was so dear to me. That shy bent smile (which came straight from his mother, according to Miss Carrie) was his only greeting. He would leave in the same way, slipping away without a word, leaving no trace. On the rare occasions he lingered long enough to hold a conversation, he would lightly flex fingers and knees, keeping them limber, as if at any moment he might be called upon to spring to a high perch or limb or fly away.

  During World War I, only months before receiving his degree from the university, Lucius returned home in profound melancholia. As usual, he kept silent about his darkness, and soon he was drinking so relentlessly that his family more or less gave up on him. The one person he saw regularly was Lucy Dyer, who was always ready to walk with him and listen, too, on those rare occasions when he felt like talking.

  This young hussy would shamelessly recount her fond memories of his father in order to win the favor of the grieving son. Thus she became his confidante and friend. She loved him dearly—so dearly that within that year, they committed “mortal sin” together. How immortal—how amazing and mysterious!—it seemed! The fond and foolish thing was overjoyed, knowing they would soon marry and have children (and live happily ever after!). She did not notice that her somber swain had lain beside her as if dead, utterly incapable of speech. And when finally he croaked a few poor words, it was not of love but only of the dishonor he had brought upon them both.

  Alas, their love had only deepened the despair of Lucius Watson. Not until she pled for an explanation did her true love confess that he passed most of his days in darkness in which even the red rose and blue sky withdrew their colors and the air turned ashy, filled with fire smudge and hellish vapors. At those times he could scarcely get his breath, let alone remember joy and beauty, or maintain a thought, or rest in sleep. Though he never mentioned suicide, and assured her he was fine, he seemed to be drifting ever faster toward some fatal act. At these times he drove away his shy new lover, afraid she might be drawn down with him into that “undiscovered country,” as he called it.

  But we are together, she would cry. I am your lover!

  One day in 1917, not telling anyone, not even lovelorn Lucy (who was mortally wounded, sobbing inconsolably, on the point of hurling herself into the river etc. etc.), Lucius joined the Navy and went off to the Great War and was gone for well over a year. When he finally came home, he seemed almost sheepish that he had survived, and his drinking was worse than ever. Asked what the matter was, he muttered cynically, A man can’t even go and die for his own country anymore! In another person, this might have been self-drama, but in Lucius, that dark laconic irony—so like his father’s, though it never became cruel—masked a deeply pessimistic spirit.

  By now Lucius was twenty-nine years old and his life was wandering away from him. He had some education, yes (and his history of southwest Florida, still half written), but in his opinion, he had no real profession and no prospects. Even worse—as his family would ceaselessly point out—he had no ambition. “Stop this drinking, go find yourself a job, get married, go to church, get on with life!” That’s their life they are talking about, he told young Lucy, but it isn’t mine.

  Lucius had always been skillful with his hands, and very competent as a commercial fisherman. In 1919, fishing was poor on this part of the coast—at least that was his excuse—and late in the year, without warning his Lucy, he left Fort Myers and returned to the Ten Thousand Islands—the last place on earth one would imagine that a son of the late Mr. Watson would care to go. His sudden departure alarmed his family and broke his Lucy’s heart. When he returned the following year for Walter Langford’s funeral, he discovered that his faithful Miss L had succumbed during his absence to the adoring blandishments of Mr. Summerlin, an older man with a good generous heart as well as a secure place in our society. She had done this—oh Lucius!—because once again our hero had abandoned her without a word and never written even once to say he loved her, until fi
nally his own sister urged the girl to forget this distracted and recalcitrant young man who could only be counted upon to hurt his dear ones.

  Poor dear Carrie, who worried so about her baby brother, invited young Mrs. Summerlin to tea on the terrace of the Royal Palm Yacht Club. There his womenfolk agreed that their sweet Lucius was still haunted by his father, and also by the lost home in the Islands, the only place he could remember being happy.

  Poor Lucius looked so scruffy at Mr. Langford’s funeral—the long wrists in the old dark Sunday suit, always too small for him, the fisherman’s weather lines and lumpy hands. What a shame it was, his sister said, that such a sensitive and educated person had lost himself among rough, uneducated people who had killed his father and might do as much for him! He had banished himself, condemned himself, to exile in that lonely wilderness, and for what? for what?

  One day a young woman who identified herself as Lucius’s half sister came all the way north from Caxambas to seek Carrie’s help in persuading “their” brother to leave the Islands for good. This Miss Pearl Watson (Pearl Jenkins, Carrie calls her) also talked with Lucy Summerlin, who joined her plea to theirs. For such a gentle and obliging person, Lucius Watson can be astonishingly stubborn, and on the question of leaving the Islands, he would only say that the Islands were his home! It soon became plain to Lucy Summerlin that he had changed entirely—not only his closed, remote expression but that coarsening of the face and hands as well as clothes and speech, and an ingrained odor of whiskey and tobacco.

  Like Carrie Langford, Lucy was distressed that a man of such intelligence and promise had thrown himself away among those people, but he only said, “ ‘Those people’ take me as I am.” “So do we!” she cried. “We!” he exclaimed, waving her away. His thought was never completed, but plainly he meant that in their hearts, his brother and sister and their families—all the “good families” of Fort Myers—had dismissed Lucius Watson as a hopeless failure.

  In consequence, Lucy’s marriage to Mr. Summerlin was seen by Lucius as clear proof that his dearest friend had dismissed him this same way, but of course it was only Lucius who discounted Lucius. What he saw reflected in the eyes of other people was only his poor opinion of himself.

  Everything she’d written in her “Life of Lucius Watson”—the girlish exclamations, the old stories, the longing and sweet lies—was a cry of pain over a bitter loss of hope for which he himself had been responsible.

  Lucius sat awhile, sorting himself out.

  A faded envelope had fluttered from the journal, to lie as if awaiting him in the white dust. He picked it up. The envelope had Rob’s name on it, and a letter from Rob’s brother Lucius was still inside.

  Dear Rob,

  I have entrusted this letter to Mrs. Lucy Summerlin, to hold for you in case you come back through Fort Myers. I am sorry I missed seeing you when you came to Lost Man’s. I certainly hope this finds you well.

  The enclosed list of the so-called Watson Posse is all I have to show for life at present. Eddie and Carrie would certainly disapprove of it, and none of us are in touch with our father’s third family, who went away to north Florida and changed their names, so it looks like there’s no one left but you who might be interested. You or your son if you have one might know what to do with it. I put this list together for some reason, but I never had Papa’s code of Southern honor (or his guts either, if that’s what’s required to take a human life).

  I think of you often, hoping you are safe somewhere, happy and well. Being cut off from our family, I miss you all the more. Is it true that you were searching for me? If so, that is a great relief, but it is probably just as well you didn’t find me. I might have been off on a drunk someplace, and anyway, I had to lay low for a while because of rumors about this list, which has made my neighbors leery of a useless fellow who couldn’t harm them even if he wanted to! (You’ll think I exaggerate my drama, and no doubt I do!)

  If you come again (please do), Lee Harden and family will know where to find me. (Ask for Colonel—that’s what they call me these days around here.)

  Hope you have more to show for life than I do.

  Your loving brother, Lucius

  P.S. Let’s try to meet before our lives get away from us entirely.

  P.P.S. I believe this list is accurate to the last name.

  Lucy had rejoined him. “He never came back,” she murmured. “He never got that letter.” Rob had turned up just that one time, when his freighter was in dry dock in Port Tampa, looking very pale for a man who lived at sea. He had written to Lucius, receiving no response, and was concerned about Lucius’s safety in the Islands. On his way south, he planned to stop off at Caxambas to talk with Pearl Watson, having learned that Pearl and Lucius stayed in touch.

  “That made Carrie feel terrible, and me, too, I’m afraid. By then I was friends with Carrie, who had taken pity on me. Rob found out from Carrie that I might know where you were. He thought I might know something that the family didn’t.” Instead she had to confess to Rob that she had scarcely laid eyes on Lucius since his return from overseas, two years before. Very disturbed, Rob had exclaimed, “He was safer overseas than in the Islands, Miss, I will tell you that!”

  “This was the first time you had met him?”

  “Yes. I wrote you about our meeting, don’t you recall? And after Mr. Langford’s funeral, you gave me this letter.”

  “And the list.”

  “And the list,” she whispered.

  “Which you misplaced. In the excitement of getting married, I believe your letter said. And you never found it.”

  “I never lost it. Surely you knew that.” Her eyes had been cast down at her lap but now they rose to face him. “Please, Lucius. This inquisition is unworthy of you. With your romantic idea of family honor, we—your family—were already terrified you might do something rash down in those islands! That list was proof!”

  “I’d already given up on rash behavior. Doesn’t this silly note to Rob make that quite clear?”

  Lucy said she wouldn’t know, since she’d never felt she had the right to read his note. She took a deep breath, contemplating her own hands. “But I saw the list, saw what it was, and I simply could not bear so much responsibility. I went to Carrie. Poor Carrie became frightened, too, and showed the list to Eddie, telling him he must bring you back at once. But Eddie only shouted, ‘He won’t listen to me!’ He took the list to Sheriff Tippins, who would not return it, claiming he needed it for evidence—can you imagine? We had no idea that the Sheriff was still brooding over Mr. Watson’s death! And finally Eddie told me that before the Sheriff retired and moved over to Miami, that list was stolen. Nobody could imagine who might have wanted it!”

  Lucius nodded. “So you are saying that you never read this letter?”

  “I told a lie. Feel better? I told a white lie to spare Lucius Watson his absurd embarrassment over revealing an honest sadness and affection.” She took his hand. “You can still give it to him, Lucius. He’s come back. He phoned this morning, asking if you’d been in touch with me. He will be at the bar of your hotel this afternoon, in case you wish to see him.” And she walked away.

  “Lucy? I’m sorry! Thank you!” he called after her, groaning when she did not turn. Despite all her innocence and flutter, Lucy had always known when not to turn. Once again, he had driven away the only person he had ever opened his heart to, the only one who knew who he was and loved him anyway.

  But she returned, bringing a copy of his History. Watching him inscribe it—“For Dearest Miss L”—her eyes filled again. “The hole in my heart was so deep and dark!” She wept in bitterness, and when he reached to take her hand, she made a fist of it, withdrawing. “Everybody needs a place where they belong. Because of gossip”—here she glanced at him, without malevolence—“I lost what little place I had in this community. I have it back, thanks to that kind old man. And now I’m ‘that nice Miss Lucy Summerlin’! The Widow Summerlin!”

  She laid her head e
ver so lightly on his shoulder. Overcome, he did not respond, and in a moment she sat straight again, neatening her cuffs. “I have often wondered if Lucius my darling really knew the first thing about love,” she murmured coolly.

  He feared—indeed he had always feared—that what she’d said was true, that when it came to love, he was some sort of cripple. Hearing her speak those words aloud sent his mind spinning into that ever-waiting dread of lost love and life wasted, of a hollow old age and a long lonely death. Somewhere he had missed the point of life entirely.

  Sensing the grief in him, she lowered her head to his shoulder again, hugging his arm. “Now never mind, dearest, all the girls adored you, one especially.” But instead of taking her into his arms, he stared at the old hands clenched on his knees. In our need, he thought, we may draw too close before we are really ready. I may do more harm.

  He said dully, “And your brother?”

  “And my brother.” She sat up, stung by the abrupt change of subject, and the makeshift question, as Lucius described her brother’s legal efforts to save the Watson Place. “Did he ever go back to Chatham Bend?”

  “He remembers nothing about Chatham. To the best of my knowledge, he has never gone back. He has no interest in the past—too busy manipulatinging the future, I suppose. My brother is a very ambitious man.” She cocked her head to consider Lucius’s face, then gazed away across the white haze of the cemetery. “The truth is, I don’t know my brother,” she continued tersely. “We have nothing in common. We lost touch years ago. I think it’s safe to say that I don’t interest him. He lives over in Miami now, at least that’s the address that he uses. He’s always on his hunting circuit, like a wolf. He has never married. As for his romantic life, if he has any, I don’t care to think about it.”