Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  “How’s that?” Dyer grinned with satisfaction. Nevertheless, he had wanted to make sure that the Watson Claim was unassailable, that it would be sustained by the court in perpetuity. A preexisting building helped the claim, he said, because without the house, there was no historic monument. Since any man-made structure within Park boundaries could never be repaired or replaced, and because Park land could not be used for private purposes, the loss of the house might weaken the whole claim by making it appear frivolous, in fact pointless.

  “With your endorsement of the claim”—he tapped his briefcase—“we should win an indefinite extension of the court injunction against burning. Meanwhile, your biography will establish Watson’s prominence in our state history and provide good cause to make the house a monument. With public opinion in our favor, it becomes unlikely that the Park will continue to contest our claim. We’ll have these family affidavits, we’ll have your petitions from the local families, and we’ll have favorable publicity from the newspapers which will save face for our farsighted Park officials by giving them all the credit. I’m even arranging the requisition of a new military helicopter to junket them across the Glades in a few days for our official meeting at the Bend!”

  Dyer put his clipping away, and still they sat there on the moonlit river with the car still running. Beside himself, Lucius burst out, “Goddammit, what about Rob? How can I be certain they’ll release him?”

  “Why don’t we simply assume that he will be turned over to you at Chatham Bend. All he has to do is sign our documents.”

  And still they were dissatisfied, not finished. Lucius said, “How about Fred Dyer’s affidavit that you are E. J. Watson’s natural son?”

  For the first time since Lucius had known him, Watson Dyer was taken by surprise. Clearing his throat, Dyer said finally, “Just wanted to cover all contingencies. In a tight decision, it might be helpful to make the formal claimant a Watson heir who was actually born on Chatham Bend—”

  “How about Pearl and Minnie? They were born there, too.”

  “—but as long as you and your brother are present at the meeting,” Dyer continued, “I hardly think such an affidavit will be necessary.”

  “Formal claimant. That the same as the sole claimant? Under your new name? Watson Watson, maybe? You could hyphenate it!” He brooded bitterly. “Something’s missing, Dyer. The truth, maybe? If the house is set aside as a historic monument within the park, what does it matter whose name is on the claim? Am I missing something? What do the Watsons have to lose by making you the ‘formal claimant,’ if that saves the house?”

  “Precisely. The point is to win the claim. If the claim is denied, then the Watson family loses. Not that you’ve welcomed me into the family.”

  “And you’re going to all this trouble out of sentiment? Out of the goodness of your heart? I don’t believe it!”

  “You have a better explanation?”

  “Not yet. But I will.”

  Anxious to catch up with Crockett Junior, Lucius got out of the running car and hurried back to the hotel, walking upriver, but Crockett and Sally were no longer in the bar.

  To Chokoloskee

  Lady Bluehair at the desk impaled his frugal breakfast check upon a spike, in a manner suggesting that solitary elders who dined sparsely were not to be taken seriously as clientele. “Enjoy your little snack?” she said, not looking up. Between black roots of hard blue hair, the pallid skin was taut over her pate, and he wondered if Papa, provoked beyond endurance, might have seized up a blunt instrument and obliterated this creature at a blow. “Thank you,” he said, with a courtliness entirely lost on her. “Thank you kindly,” he repeated vaguely, turning away across the lobby where huge tarpon leapt in painful arcs high on the dark wood walls. The ocean pearliness on the Triassic scales of the great armored herring had been transmuted to an opaque dull yellow, and the huge jaws, stretched forever in pursuit of that last fatal lure, were gray with spiderwebs.

  Out of the east, in brilliant morning, the sun roared up out of the Glades, filling the great mahogany at the front door and flying in wild shards from the black palm fronds. That woman’s spite, compounding the evil feeling left by Dyer, had soured his morning before it was half-started. At a loss about Rob and growing desperate, he felt assailed by the hard light which smote his eye.

  Sandy Albritton cracked his door but would not unlatch the screen. “The wife ain’t home today,” he said, ignoring the cigarette coughs in the background. “Tomorrow neither.” Through the rusty screen, he observed Lucius with glee.

  “I wanted to get your signature on my petition. To stop the Park from burning down the house on Chatham Bend.”

  “I ain’t feelin good,” said Sandy, eliciting a cackle from the room behind. Abruptly, he closed the door, lest Watson attempt to force an entry. “Don’t bother comin back here, Lucius,” came his muffled voice. “If I was you, I would head right out of town.”

  A woman’s face withdrew from a small window next door. The kitchen door creaked at the back. Sally Brown did not greet him but marched straight to the car. When he opened the front door for her, she climbed into the backseat, and he felt the heavy stir of paranoia—the Albrittons’ refusal to let him in the house, then Sandy’s contemptuous use of “Lucius,” now Sally’s coldness. “They have their orders, that’s all,” Sally said, closing her eyes. Knowing he was watching her in the rear view mirror, she snapped irritably, “Don’t you ever give up? When are you going to learn?”

  Driving back to the hotel, he tried to justify himself, which annoyed him further. Unsupported versions of long-ago events (including her own renditions, though he did not say this) were unacceptable, of course. But if a certain story was confirmed repeatedly by different people, an echo of the truth might still be heard. One way or another, all these local families had a part in the Watson legend, and their memories and opinions had to be considered.…

  The peremptory gesture of her hand, glimpsed in the mirror, dismissed his entire quest, and not politely. “No Albrittons were in that posse, yet even Albrittons don’t want to talk to you!” She opened her window to get some fresh air. “You’re not going to get straight answers from these people! They’re all related one way or another, they’re all snarled up amongst each other like a tub of snakes. Every family on the Bay has relatives on that list of yours! Why should they help you?”

  Sally looked drawn and tired as well as irritable. He supposed she was upset because he’d seen her drunk and in the company of Crockett Junior. He had to know if she had anything to tell him.

  “About Crockett? Yes. Mind your own business!”

  “About Rob. Dyer told me last night they would release him.”

  Her eyes shot open. She sat forward and laid her hand on his arm. “Oh sweetheart, don’t torture yourself this way! You can’t count on that! They don’t like Dyer and don’t trust him. They don’t owe Watson Dyer a damn thing!”

  Andy was awaiting them beneath the great mahogany. “Later,” she murmured, but she held his eye. “In case you’re worried, Prof, I didn’t do it. With Crockett, I mean. I hoped to find out something about Rob.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t say a word, he only growled. Said, ‘That fuckin Mud has talked too much already.’ ”

  With Andy House, they headed south toward the new causeway that connected the mainland with Chokoloskee Island. The fire color of the sun had turned ash white, boiling the humid air. Told what had happened at the Albrittons’, Andy nodded, unsurprised. “Folks are wondering why Colonel Watson came to town. They’re leery, that’s all,” Andy said finally.

  “Guilty, you mean—”

  “You’re too rough on ’em, Miss. When these Bay folks know you, they are kind and generous—too darn generous! My dad used to buy his gator hides from Sandy, so when I’m visiting, those Albrittons won’t let me pay for one darned thing. Bought some mullet from Annie years ago and she wouldn’t take my money, so I never bought from them again. It hurts me when poor people give
away everything for nothing! I can’t let ’em do that, so I don’t announce my visit! But I like to sneak back this way once in a while, just to remind myself how much I like these people after all!

  “Course Sandy was a terrible drinker. I always liked that sonofagun but when he drank, he had some hell in him, I’ll tell you! Albrittons always like to say how much they liked the Injuns, but them poor Injuns was plain scared to death of him, and nigras, too! He used to hang out with Speck Daniels, and them two together was a public menace. One time when our family was livin at Ochopee, them boys come along to where some nigras with long bamboo poles was fishing perch along the Trail canal, and they shot rifles from the truck, made them black folks dance till every last poor soul jumped in the water!

  “Frank Tippins, now, he was another one had a high opinion of the Injuns, it was only black people he had no use for. My aunt Mamie Smallwood was a wonderful, good, generous woman, but she was that way, too—always very concerned about the Injuns. Ever notice how popular Injuns can be with folks who are mean-mouthed about blacks? Maybe liking Injuns that way is proof to their own selves that despising black people don’t have nothing to do with anything so ignorant and ugly as race prejudice—proof that they are fair-minded Americans, I mean, and that being so fair-minded in the Land of the Free, they are free to despise the colored people to their hearts’ content.”

  Andy’s words were lost as the black truck came roaring up behind on its huge tires, filling the rearview mirror to bursting before veering onto the road shoulder and buffeting them as it passed on the wrong side. A moment later, it swerved across, filling the windshield, then bounced over the divider in the middle of the road. It rocketed ahead down the wrong-way lane before careening in a crashing turn back over the divider and hurtling back in their direction, wrong way and head-on, running them off the road as it blared past.

  In the howl of knobbed tires biting at the concrete, rags of shouted filth drifted past their ears. Shaken, Sally cried, “He warned you! Don’t come farther south! And you came anyway!”

  Lucius’s nerves gave way, too, and his temper spilled over. “It’s my fault, what that maniac just did?”

  “That’s the message them boys give to strangers,” Andy said, trying to smooth things. Despite his calm demeanor, his own voice was tight. He peered away over the Bay—the broad low-tide flats and the reflected clouds, the channel markers, oyster bars, and tall gaunt stalking herons—as if, in this crisis, his blind eyes might read that mirror of the sky for signs and portents.

  “I’m sorry, Mister Colonel.” Sally pressed her brow on the cool glass of the window as if resting up after the effort of apology. “Know what his ever-lovin daddy said to Crockett Junior? ‘You’re pretty handy with that big toy truck, leastways for a cripple with one arm.’ ”

  Chokoloskee

  The causeway went south past Half Way Creek and bent offshore from the mangrove wall at the mouth of Turner River. It ended at the round high mound of Chokoloskee, which had risen forty feet above sea level, Lucius told them, before this new road had laid it open to the bulldozers. Excepting the Caxambas hills on Marco Island, Chokoloskee had been the highest Indian mound along this coast. Andy observed that the Islanders had started selling off their land, and that speculators were leveling the mounds to create “prime water-view properties.” Within a few years, what the Calusa had built slowly over centuries would be graded off as fill for new development.

  The old Lopez graveyard was an abrupt rise which had been ground level for this part of the island before the land around it had been carved away. The cemetery reminded Andy of that time some local boys had rustled a Lopez cow to feed their families. “Joe Lopez wouldn’t listen to one word about them boys paying it back,” Andy remembered, as Lucius cast about for a quick change of subject. “Nosir,” said Andy, “they brung in the Sheriff. The families was ready to start the Spanish War all over again, run that Lopez bunch right back to Spain, they were that angry! Old Man Sandy ever tell you about that, Miss Sally?”

  Sally’s face had closed as tight as a persimmon. Knowing Old Man Sandy’s reckless tongue, she doubtless suspected that he had been indiscreet in his talk with Lucius, who might have passed the story on to Andy. At the blind man’s question, she flushed with emotion, and her answer, intended to be casual, came out wavering and crushed and close to tears. “The year Sandy went to prison was the year my brother Crockett was conceived and born. That what you’re getting at?”

  “No, it sure ain’t! Oh Lord, Miss Sally, I just clean forgot! Us Houses was mostly gone from here by that time!” Chagrined, he stuck his little finger in his ear as if scraping his brain for a new topic. How had she met Whidden—were they schoolmates in Everglade after the Hardens came north from the Islands? “I heard he was put in with the white kids—”

  “Mr. House? Excuse me! They put him in with the white children because he was a white child. He was born white, Mr. House! The Hardens are white people, white and Indian—the rest is slander!”

  The blind man groaned. “Heck, it sure don’t matter none. I was just—”

  “Nosir, it sure don’t matter none,” she said—not to mimic his unlettered speech but to confront this local man on common ground. “Nosir, not one little bit. Less you’re a Harden.”

  House was red-faced and nettled. “Might not matter much to Hardens neither, not no more, Miss,” Andy warned her.

  Beyond lay the wooded Smallwood cemetery, where they all got out. Looking around him, Andy smiled, saying that some way he could see everything better when he was standing up on his two feet. He made a slow circle on the grass, getting the feel of things, as a big dog makes its turn before lying down. Long ago, with other boys, he had played in this canal and its deep inner basin, which was perhaps fifty feet across, ringed around by trees. Canal and basin had been excavated by the Calusa, whose seagoing dugouts had been hewn and fire-hollowed from great cypress. “You could lay a long rifle in the bottom crossways,” Andy said.

  “My dad moved us off this island when I was still a boy, and it sure don’t look like I’ll be comin back. The House family was close-knit once, but we’re scattered now, we’re all over west Florida. Smallwoods stayed, the most of ’em, but they’re squabbling over what little land is left. The rest of the old families don’t hardly own no land no more, they got just about everything sold off to strangers.”

  Lucius could recall the abounding gardens and fine avocado groves which the early families had hacked and hoed from the old shell. Already those gardens were disappearing, and a few years from now, this island, beaten flat, would disappear beneath the tar and concrete, the tourist courts and house trailers, the noisy cars of vacationers with their red faces, funny sun hats, candy-colored clothes. Here and there, some faded figure might be glimpsed along the weedy edges—a relict islander, living along on government handouts and thin reminiscence of the way things were.

  “It’s important to line up the old frontier families behind the petition,” Lucius said. “Smallwoods. Browns and Thompsons. Carrs.”

  “Browns and Thompsons. Carrs!” Sally rolled her eyes and went ahead on foot.

  Andy turned toward the sound of her retreating steps. “Well, I’m kin to all them families, kin to all these folks down here,” he reminded Lucius. “And they’re all related to each other, back door, front, and every whichy-way, which is why they all think the same when they get around to thinkin, which ain’t often.” He smiled with wry affection. “No sense thinkin if you know what your daddy thought. Just get yourself all flustered up for nothin.

  “What Sally forgets, there is a difference between ignorance and evil. I’d like to take and shoot some of these Chok folks for being so ornery and cranky, but I love ’em, too—I do! It’s only a crowd of ’em that bothers me. I take after Bill House, I guess. Whenever he spoke about that day your daddy died—well, he never regretted it or nothing, but he’d sure mutter some about the way us rednecks act when we’re in a crowd. Different animal a
ltogether, Dad would say.”

  Lucius said, “I was talking with Hoad Storter yesterday about those Harden boys killed at Shark River.”

  Andy stopped short, pointing his cane at him. “Colonel? You best not stir up that ol’ mud, not if you’re huntin up support for that petition.” He resumed walking. “I was heartsick for them Harden families when them boys come up missin, same as you were. Roark and Wilson was close to my own age, so I knowed ’em good when our family was living at the Bend.”

  “And you don’t think all that bad gossip about the Harden family was involved.”

  “Nosir, I sure don’t. Them two cousins was wild and angry boys. They was looking for trouble, and you know that good as I do.”

  “Are you saying they got what they deserved?”

  “Darn it, Colonel, I never said nothin like that! Don’t you go to cornerin me like she done, just cause I ain’t educated good!” He fumed and stumped along. “Sure, Hardens had some Injun, like the girl says. But that ain’t all they had! I ain’t sayin that is bad nor good, but facts is facts! And when they commenced to shootin rifles over the men’s heads, folks just naturally got their dander up against ’em!”

  “That’s not all they had—you sure about that, Andy?”

  “Hell, Colonel, everybody was sure about it! I never heard my daddy say no different!”

  “No sense thinking if you know already what your daddy thought. Get yourself all flustered up for nothing.”

  “Hell, I’m flustered up right now!”

  The blind man headed down the road alone. When he heard the motor come up slow behind him, he waved it off, using his cane. “Leave me be! I see the sun and I see this white shell road—don’t need much else to find my way on my home island!”

  Lucius caught up with Sally Brown, who had paused to watch Andy’s slow progress. “Think he’ll be all right?” she said, annoyed by her own concern. She would keep an eye on Andy, see him safely to the Smallwoods. Whidden, she said, might turn up at the Smallwood store toward noon.