Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  The only trouble was, Henry was gone. Being leery of the atmosphere around that place, he had left Chokoloskee quick and he never went back. He went to fish with the Hardens around Lost Man’s, and got himself hitched up to Libby Harden. Henry was lighter than his wife, but he was supposed to be mulatta and she was supposed to be a white, so there was talk. It tore up Henry, broke his heart, when she run off with another man. That feller was certified white, I guess, but that was about all.

  Some time after that, he left Lost Man’s for good. Came back to our family, worked with my dad who was caretaking at Chatham Bend for Cheveliers and worked his own patch at House’s Hammock, up the river. One time I said, “Henry? Ain’t it lonely over there?” And Henry said something peculiar. He said, “Mist’ Andy, it’s less lonely alone.” First time in all the years I knew him that I picked up a hair of bitterness in that man’s voice.

  In them days, this was up in the late twenties, we had lots of bananas on House Hammock, we grew ninety-pound heads! Bananas just went wild down there, you took a cane knife and chopped around ’em to clear off the vines a little, then just stood back and let ’em go! Henry had a rusty old five-horse Palmer engine in an open boat, and one day he loaded a cargo of bananas, thinking to run ’em up to Everglade next morning. But when he come down at break of day, his boat was gone! He had her tied up with a new piece of line, so he knowed for a fact that his line had never parted. He made his way across to Chatham Bend, wading and swimming, and we come back with him and we searched hard for that boat all around the bays and never found her. A few days later he found her tied up in the same place she had disappeared from. By that time his banana crop was sunburnt black, couldn’t be sold.

  That’s the kind of tricks them brave young fellers done to That Nigger Who Dared to Raise a Gun Against a White Man. Don’t rightly know which boy it was, but Shine Thompson always flared when we asked questions. I never heard of any family that resented Henry for himself. Every soul that knew that man before the trouble had a very high opinion of him as a nigra. But he left Chokoloskee after Watson died, and the younger ones had never hardly known him, only his name. So when they come across him in the rivers, they might yell at him over the water. “Hey, boy? We’ll git you one day, boy, see if we don’t!”

  Andy’s wife brought lemonade and cookies. The blind man thanked her and took the glass into his hand but he did not drink it, not a drop, just held his glass tight and sat in silence, working through some thought or other. Over the air-conditioning, an old-fashioned clock ticktocked in the kitchen, reminding Lucius of Ruth Ellen’s house in Neamathla.

  Lucius said, “At the time of the shooting, your dad signed a deposition. Ever hear about it? It seemed like he was defending someone against rumors.” Lucius paused. “Was that Henry? From what you tell me about Henry, that rumor never made very much sense.”

  “No sense at all. Henry was dead scared of E. J. Watson, and he wasn’t crazy.”

  Andy’s tone seemed slightly enigmatic. Lucius said gently, “No. But did he do it?”

  “What are you after, Colonel? What do you think I been trying to tell you here?” The blind man turned a dangerous red, and his wife came trembling to the kitchen doorway. Sensing her there, Andy waved to reassure her.

  “I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me,” Lucius said carefully, and the blind man nodded. Aware of his wife hovering, he said in an even voice, “I don’t know where Henry is living, Colonel. Last I heard, he was someplace over near Immokalee. I have the name of some people in his church. You want to run me over there tomorrow, we might try to find him.”

  According to the newspaper, there was a second suspect in the Gasparilla shooting, but there had been no formal arrest, and the victim—“the noted east coast attorney Mr. Watson Dyer”—had announced that for the moment he would press no charges. Since Rob had been kidnapped by Speck’s men, and since Speck was Dyer’s man on Chatham Bend, Lucius had to conclude that Dyer himself had arranged the abduction.

  At Caxambas, Lucius passed an unsettled evening with his father’s urn, which stood in the window like an art object or vase. At sunset, it appeared to glow in a bronze fire. He could not sleep. Feeling ridiculous, he draped the urn with a white cloth, which gave him a start when something awoke him in the night. Hearing only the soft riffles of the tide flooding the salt grass, he got up and placed the shrouded thing in a far corner before stepping outside to urinate off the deck under the flying moon.

  On their way to Golden Years Estates next morning, Sally questioned Andy House’s objectivity about Henry Short. “If you go listening to people who raised him up as a near-slave, then you’d better learn how his real friends felt about him!” And she told Lucius what she knew of Henry’s friendship with the Harden family.

  Henry Short had first visited the Harden clan before the turn of the century, on Mormon Key. He went there the first time with Bill House, when they worked for Jean Chevelier, collecting bird eggs. After the Hardens sold Mormon Key to E. J. Watson and moved on south to Wood Key and Lost Man’s River, Henry still came to visit when he could, because that family made him feel like a human being. Henry trusted Lee and Sadie Harden, who were to become his lifelong friends. After the death of Mr. Watson, Henry assured them that he had not taken part, but he also said, “They will hang it on the nigger.”

  Lee Harden said that Henry Short could swing his rifle up so fast that it would scare you, said this man was the best shot on this coast, Watson included. But he never believed that Henry shot at Watson because Henry would never line a man up in his rifle sights and pull the trigger. “Henry loved the Lord, and he lived by the Ten Commandments.”

  When Henry started courting Libby Harden, nobody but her brother Earl paid much attention. Libby was a beautiful coffee-colored girl, while Henry was the color of new wheat—lighter than any of the Hardens except Lee and Earl and the youngest sister Abbie. He even had blue eyes, like Mr. Watson! Henry told the family his mother was a white, and that on his daddy’s side he was mostly Indian. As Sadie Harden used to say, “Henry Short is a lot more white than some of those who call him a mulatta.” Except for Earl, the Hardens never thought about his color, all they saw was a fine man and a friend.

  Robert Harden was mostly Choctaw with some English and Portagee mixed in, but he never cared too much what people called him so long as they let him live in peace. Some of his children favored his wife, Maisie, whose mother was Elizabeth Osceola, a granddaughter of the great war chief. So the Hardens were white and Indian on both sides, and they had nothing against black people—that much was true.

  Henry Short and Libby Harden were married by the constable at Cape Sable, but pretty soon Libby ran off with a white man from Mound Key. This man told her he had money. He did not. Libby claimed her marriage to Henry Short had been performed outside the Catholic Church and was therefore officially annulled, but she never claimed that anyone annulled it. Being strong-minded like her mother, she probably just annulled it by herself.

  Now Grandmother Maisie was a cruel, strong-hearted person, but she worshiped the ground that her boy Lee walked on. That old lady never did believe that his “conch bride” was good enough for Lee, and as for Sadie, she could not stand her mother-in-law, though she did her best not to say so. But even Sadie would admit that Mother Harden stood up strong for Henry Short, no matter what, and never had much use for Libby after she ran off with that Mound Key man, who had the habit of picking up anything loose he could lay his hands on, Libby included. Lee Harden said, “He might be a fine feller, but I never met a single soul who really liked him.”

  That pretty Libby had been Henry’s consolation for a lonely life. He was heartbroken when he lost her and never got over his abandonment. He followed the Hardens to Flamingo, fished for some years around Cape Sable, but when he returned to Lost Man’s River, who should he find living there but Libby and her husband. They were not happy to see Henry, and Henry couldn’t stand to be so near, and he took to drinking
for the first and only time in his whole life. He couldn’t handle moonshine, and one night when he was drunk, he was heard to mumble that somebody ought to take and shoot that Mound Key cracker. The Hardens knew that Henry’s threat was only a way to ease his torment, but they had to hush him up for his own safety. Because of the rumors about Henry’s part in Watson’s death, it was worse than dangerous for this man to talk this way against a white man.

  Not that he talked much, having never had much practice. Libby dearly loved a conversation, and she always complained that Henry never gave her more than the bare facts even when he talked about the weather.

  Before she took up with Henry Short, some of the Bay women called Libby Harden “white trash.” None of their slander changed the fact that every man along the coast would have sold his soul for a bite of that golden apple, and those women knew it. So they were happy when she humiliated her family—as they saw it—by marrying Henry Short and delighted anew when she abandoned him. It did their hearts good to see the Lord humble that mulatta who had married that supposed-to-be white woman.

  Henry Short was a high type of man who had a low opinion of himself. White people had robbed him of all hope for a decent life, and they took away his self-respect right along with it. That’s what we did to him, the Hardens said. But Lee Harden believed that losing his Libby to another man might have saved his life, because it got the young men cracking mean jokes instead of shooting off their drunken mouths about a lynching. “When there is enough lynching talk, it is going to happen,” said Lee Harden.

  Sometime after World War I, Henry told Lee Harden he would not remarry and would never return to Lost Man’s River. Though his grief had something to do with that decision, he also knew that his presence might draw more trouble to the Hardens, who had plenty of trouble without that. And perhaps he’d heard that Ed Watson’s son was on his way back to the Islands.

  The blind man was waiting in his doorway, a small suitcase beside him. His wife was off at church, he said, otherwise he would ask them in for a cup of coffee. Reminiscing with Colonel had made him kind of homesick, he confessed, and he wondered if—after looking for Henry at Immokalee—he might travel on with them to Chokoloskee, to visit with his relatives and friends. “As a boy, I knew your family on both sides,” he told Sally politely. “Your mama’s brothers were my friends down in the Islands.”

  “Is that a fact,” Sally said coolly, as Lucius slid the blind man’s bag into the trunk. She opened the front door for Andy, but the big hand fumbled deftly for the other handle and he climbed into the back over her protests. “Can’t see much anyway,” he told her cheerfully, “so I might’s well ride in style.”

  They headed eastward past the Corkscrew Strand bound for Immokalee, at the edge of the Big Cypress. On the narrow road across the rough savanna, Lucius slowed to pick up a black man, although the man had not stuck out his thumb nor even turned to observe the car coming up behind. Lucius had murmured, “Must be hot, walking the road,” and Andy House said, “Let’s give him a ride, then.”

  “It’s only a field hand, Mr. House—” Sally checked herself, annoyed. “I thought you might have some objection.”

  “If he can take it, I guess I can,” Andy said easily. “I rode with plenty of em.”

  With a rattle of limestone bits striking the fenders, the car slowed and drew up on the shoulder. The stringy figure sprang sideways as if startled by a snake. Alarmed that these whites had stopped, he was smiling hard, as if resigning himself to some rough joke. When Sally offered him a bright Good morning! the black man doffed a dusty cap. “Yesm,” he said. Even this single word was guarded, all one blurred and neutral syllable. He took out a bandanna and wiped his brow, glancing over his shoulder at the pine woods.

  “We’re headed for Immokalee,” Lucius told him. “Care for a ride?”

  “Hop in,” said Andy, reaching across to find the door handle, patting the seat.

  The man raised a hard-veined gray-brown hand to the bill of his soiled cap. Slow and careful as a lizard, trying to enter without touching anything, he eased into the car in a waft of humid heat and hard-earned odors. He could scarcely bring himself to close the door.

  Asked how he liked living in Immokalee, the man chuckled, cuk-cuk-cuk, like a dusting chicken. “Mokalee.” He nodded, feeling for safe ground. He would not look at them. “Any man ain’t been a nigger in ’Mokalee on Sat’day night, dat man ain’t lived right!” He chuckled a little more, cuk-cuk-cuk-cuk. “Dass what us niggers say.”

  “Oh Lord!” said Sally, when her companions laughed. She faced around toward the front.

  The black man hummed a little, peering outward at the pine savanna. Over the woods, vultures circled like swirled cinders on a smoky sky. “Gone be fryin hot t’day.” The black man sighed deeply, hoping for the best. “Deep-fryin hot.”

  “Ever come across a colored fella name of Henry Short?” Andy House asked him.

  “Henry Sho’t, you said?” He looked alarmed. “Nosuh I sho’ ain’t, nosuh. I sho’ doan know no nigger by dat name.”

  At a main corner in the outskirts of the town, the man tapped a gray fingernail on the window, saying, “Thank’ee kin’ly, kin’ly,” soft as a lullaby—kin’ly, kin’ly—until the car stopped at last and he got out. He was recognized at once, and cheered, by a pair of morning celebrants leaned on a wall, who brandished small flat bottles in brown paper bags. He turned to wave. “I’ve in good hands now as you can see!” he cried, no longer hiding a sly smile. “I thank’ee kin’ly, white folks!” he called cheerily.

  “Kin’ly, kin’ly!” Lucius repeated, not unkindly, as he drove on down the street, crossing the railroad tracks. But Sally Brown, watching the men grin, just shook her head. “Perhaps that performance still amuses your generation,” she snapped tartly, “but it isn’t funny, Professor, you know that?” She frowned, seeking a way to say this clearly. “I mean, if they go calling themselves niggers, acting like trashy niggers, then that’s the way they’re going to be seen!” This was well-intentioned, Lucius decided, but in her distress over the man’s manner—his protective coloration—she had missed not only his mischievous irony but his profound rebuke, and the great poignance in it, and a dogged love of life, and beyond everything, that brave cheerfulness and in-the-bone endurance which Lucius found so moving in such people.

  Eventually they tracked down a black family named Cooper which worshiped at Henry’s former church. The Coopers lived in a small house at the north end of town. After consultation with their neighbors, measuring the white folks from their stoops and dooryards, they all agreed that Deacon Short didn’t live here anymore, having taken work in the cane fields around Moore Haven. Yes, United Sugar. No, he had no phone and they knew no address. Their reserve seemed a sign that others had come looking for him, for these people were certainly protecting him. After another consultation, Mr. Cooper mentioned worriedly that the Deacon might be in the hospital over there. With the meeting with Dyer and the Park attorneys scheduled for next day, Moore Haven was too far out of their way. They decided to visit Henry Short on the way back.

  They headed east on the main street, past dealerships of bright green farm machinery and auto junkyards and car body shops and whistle-stop brown saloons. Still brooding, Sally pared her nails. In this damn redneck town, back in the twenties, she had heard, a local man entered the hardware store and took a revolver from the showcase, saying, “This one kill niggers?” Then he stepped to the door and shot a field hand at the end of the pay line. “Shoots pretty good,” he told the storekeeper, “I’ll take it.” Though the black man died, the man was never arrested, far less taken to court.

  Sally stared outraged from one man to the other, awaiting their horrified reaction. When they could find nothing to say but only shook their heads, she cried out, “Can you believe that? Shoots pretty good! I’ll take it!”

  “Found the model he was looking for, I reckon,” Andy said.

  Speechless, Sally scrabbled for a hankie
in the old straw bag that served her as a purse. Dabbing tears, she stared stonily ahead. In a bad silence, in the growing heat, the old car crossed grassy railroad tracks past stranded freight cars, then turned due south, and all the while Lucius frowned mightily in order not to smile at the sight of Andy’s innocent wide eyes in the rearview mirror.

  The blind man had cauterized the wound of Sally’s outrage with a darker fire even more outrageous, and his boldness, under the circumstances, was breathtaking. However, he had gone too far, and both men knew it. “That weren’t funny, ma’am. I know that. And I sure am sorry.” The blind man frowned at the big hands in his lap, sincerely penitent. “It was just … you were so … serious, Miss Sally. Beg pardon? No, ma’am, I ain’t makin excuses. I was wrong.”

  Southeast of Immokalee, where the county road made a big bend, Andy tried again to make amends. “I lived down this road in the late twenties when the KKK was cranking up, Miss Sally, and that story you told don’t surprise me one little bit. That was along about the time of the Rosewood Massacre, remember that one, Colonel? When they burnt out that nigra community down west of Gainesville?” He took a great deep breath. “Folks don’t care to remember no more how it was for black people in this part of the country. Still pretty bad today when you scratch down a little.”

  Lucius observed that Jim Crow days might have been worse around this south part of the peninsula than almost anywhere, because so many Florida pioneers had been fugitives from the Civil War or Reconstruction, bitter and unregenerate men who identified the freedmen with their loss of home. That was why so few blacks had drifted into southwest Florida, and why so few besides the migrant field hands at Immokalee had settled in this region even today.

  Andy nodded. “Course in recent years, the law there in Immokalee has been a nigra. Call him Big Boy. Ain’t too many, black or white, that cares to go up against this Mr. Big Boy.”