Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  Sally had sunk onto the gunwale, weak with fear, perhaps trying to defuse the situation. Not sure what was happening, Andy House folded his arms and clutched his elbows, as if holding himself quiet by main force.

  “Junior,” Crockett mimicked Sally. He jumped down from the pilot seat as his men swung aboard the Cracker Belle. Covered by Dummy, Mud pushed Andy aside and poked the muzzle of his carbine into the boat cabin.

  “We’re not armed,” Whidden said, face set and drawn. The pit bull turned toward his voice and jammed its snout against his calf and left it there.

  “If I tole him to,” Crockett muttered heavily, “that dog’d go for a bull gator.”

  “That a fact?” Whidden’s voice was amiable and easy, but their eyes were locked like adversaries in a fight. “Yessir, you stupid fuck,” growled Crockett, “that is a fuckin fact. I lay a T-bone by Buck’s nose and go out to the store, he won’t never touch it.”

  “You got him trained up good, all right.” Whidden risked a downward glance at the rigid dog. “Course I ain’t seen Buck since a pup. Might not remember me.”

  “Buck don’t forget.” Crockett’s voice had turned aggrieved and bitter. “Buck don’t never forget. He ain’t like you.”

  “We’re supposed to meet Watson Dyer here, and the Parks people,” Lucius explained. As Sally hissed at him to stay out of this, he pointed at the skiff across the river. “My younger brother—” But he stopped as the one-armed man yanked a third carbine from a rack on the helmsman’s platform and the dog turned toward him.

  Whidden whispered, “You shut up, okay?”

  “No safety on this thing,” Crockett warned Lucius, “cause I ain’t learned to work a safety with my teeth.” He swung the short rifle like a crutch and pointed the black hole of it at Lucius’s eyes.

  “We ain’t lookin for no trouble, Junior,” Whidden said. The rifle swung toward him, and again the pit bull pushed its muzzle hard into his leg, bulk shivering. Whidden let all expression fade. With his eyes half closed, he looked almost sleepy.

  “Whidden boy? You never read our sign?” The carbine swung toward the sign reading KEEP OUT and swung right back again. “You’re lookin to get some people killed,” he muttered.

  House cleared his throat. “You don’t mean that, son.”

  The one-armed man breathed noisily. “Mr. House?” he grated. “No disrespect. You shut the fuck up, too.”

  Mud’s head emerged from the cabin of the Belle. “Nothin down here, Junior,” he told Crockett, who tossed his head sideways toward the house itself. Mud circled the house, checking the doors and windows. “Okay,” he called. Reboarding the airboat, he leaned his gun against the platform. “Your old home sure stinks,” he said to Lucius.

  Crockett whistled to the dog—“Come in here, Buck!” He climbed back up onto his seat, yelling at Whidden. “Get off this river, boy!”

  When Lucius called desperately, “Now wait a minute!” Sally cried, “Let Whidden handle this!”

  “Let Whidden handle this!” But there was no heart in Crockett’s sarcasm. He seemed to brood, easing the airboat slowly off the bank. To his own men, his quiet appeared ominous, for both moved aft, out of Crockett’s line of fire, Whidden spoke quietly to Mud Braman, “How come you fellers won’t tell Mister Colonel his brothers is all right? That ain’t askin so much.”

  “Dammit, Whidden! Just do what he says!” Mud was very uneasy, and even Dummy adjusted his genitals through his greased coveralls.

  The gorgon head of the one-armed man high on his perch was cocked back oddly on his shoulders as he spun the airboat. “You Watsons are a bunch of lunatics, you know that? I ought to take and blow the heads off them two crazy brothers, and yours, too!” He revved the airplane motor to a roar so loud and battering in its own wind that they could hardly hear him in his maddened howling, then slowed the engine to a sudden idle, as leaf and bark bits torn from the old poincianas spun down into the water, to drift away in the slow spirals of the current.

  Crockett sat motionless against the sky. In the river light, the world seemed fixed in a frieze of stillness, a silvered dance of death. The pit bull’s hackles rose, and its nails clicked on the metal deck. The pit bull whined. Crockett leaned and said something to Braman, then looked sleepily away. In a hoarse whisper, Braman said, “Get goin, Whidden. Make camp on Mormon so we know right where you’re at, then head for Lost Man’s first thing in the mornin.”

  The airboat, taken by an eddy of brown current, drifted gradually from the bank. Lucius shouted, “But we have to be here day after tomorrow!” And Mud screeched back, “He ain’t talkin about day after tomorrow! He is talking about now! Get movin now!”

  Lucius cast off the Belle’s lines and followed Whidden aboard. He shouted, “Why the hell can’t they at least tell us that those men are alive!” Sally seized Lucius’s arm, but he wrenched free of her, as Whidden gunned the engine of the Belle to blur his shouting and the old boat’s bow swung off into the current. “He told you,” Whidden said. “Sayin he ought to blow their heads off was Junior’s way of saying he ain’t done it yet.”

  Even now, headed downriver, they were scared and agitated. In the stern, the blind man sat unnoticed. No one felt like speaking. Finally Sally went aft and hunkered down beside his chair, to draw him back into their company.

  Below the bend, Harden cut the motor, letting the boat drift in a slow orbit as they listened. “They ain’t leavin. We would hear that motor. Only pretended they was takin off to see if we’d try sneakin back. And Crockett is listenin the same as we are, right this minute, and when he don’t hear our motor, he might come have a look.” He cranked the motor and, shaking off Lucius’s questions, ran his boat downriver toward the Gulf.

  Whidden guessed that both brothers were in the house, tied up and gagged. “Probably heard us callin but they couldn’t answer.”

  Andy House agreed. “When Sally and me was settin on the porch, there come this little kind of thump and scrapin. Figured it must be raccoons, but now that I think about it, that don’t seem likely.”

  Whidden supposed that the Daniels gang was clearing its contraband out of the house before Parks arrived the day after tomorrow. Lucius scarcely listened. He was trying to imagine his two misfit kinsmen, born more than a quarter century apart. One called himself Burdett, the other Collins. They had finally laid eyes upon each other for the first time in their lives only to find themselves—if Whidden was correct—bound captives in their father’s house, perhaps entirely unaware that they were brothers.

  Crockett Junior Daniels, Sally said in a tense flat voice, had been exposed all his life to an evil influence. “Speck was smart and Speck never got caught. He let his big dumb son get caught instead! Know where he spent his sixteenth birthday? In the county jail! Judge released him on probation if he would join up in the Marines, go get his head blown off for God and country.” He might have come out all right, she said, if he had not gone to war, since he’d always hoped to attend college, but when he returned from Asia, he was angry and bitter, boozing and brawling and breaking things and doing harm. It was only a matter of time before he sank back down into the swamp beside his goddamned father.

  “Whidden honey,” she finished bitterly, “you are so darn smart for a man who has wasted the best years of his life making moonshine and skinning alligators! I bet you were the brains of that whole outfit!”

  “This fine young woman here got me back on the straight and narrow path, and bound for Glory,” Whidden told the others. Holding his wife’s eye, he added, “We wasn’t such terrible bad fellers, Sal. Only kind of crooked.”

  “Crooked,” she said. With Lucius watching, she went stiff when Whidden put his arm around her shoulders.

  The Belle anchored off a little beach in the lee of Mormon Key, where Sally said she needed some time alone. Whidden tossed the dinghy overboard and she jumped down neatly on the thwarts, pushing off at the same time, taking up the oars. “Look at that Sally Brown!” her husband called.
“Real old-time Island gal!” He opened a beer and sat on the boat transom and watched his darling row away to Mormon Key. Finally he turned and said to Lucius, “Mister Colonel? I don’t believe them boys will hurt ’em lest they has to.”

  WHIDDEN HARDEN

  Crockett Junior is messed up and he is violent. He killed plenty over there in Asia, but he weren’t a natural killer before he went and he ain’t today. When he first come home, Junior used to say, “Them flag-wavin old farts up there to Washington, D.C., has lost me my damned arm, but that don’t mean they can take away my livelihood.” That poor feller is so angry that he can’t hardly get his breath, and I don’t see how any good can come of it. Got a terrible need to blow the head off somethin. That’s what Speck knows and that’s why Speck stays away.

  Dummy now, he don’t care if he kills or if he don’t, he don’t care nothin about nothin, and that’s dangerous, too. But most of the time Dummy ain’t there. He’s still in Asia, talkin to them voices in his head. So Mud is the feller that we have to work with. Ol’ Mud is tough and he is wild, but he is pretty good-hearted behind all his hot air, and he tries to keep them other two out of trouble. Mud has hero-worshiped Junior since a boy and he’ll go down in flames with Crockett if he has to, and Dummy will go right along with ’em for the goddamn hell of it.

  I ain’t sayin that Junior ain’t pretty good at his daddy’s business, never mind that he ain’t got but the one arm—fact he’s better’n most that has all their equipment. But when Old Man Speck first seen the way them boys was spendin up their money, he made hisself real scarce from that day on. Sally’s mother was long gone by then, and Sally, too, so he turned his shack over to Junior, threw his gear down in his boat, and run her south around Cape Sable to Flamingo. Meets those boys on business at the Bend or Gator Hook, then disappears again. “I ain’t doin no association with known criminals,” is what he told me. “I told Junior I don’t aim to be around when they run up against the law and start to shootin. I’ll turn my back on ’em like I never seen ’em in my life and head on down my road, same as I always done.”

  Speck is out for Speck and always has been. Even his own family never put no trust in him. But I will say this for Crockett Senior Daniels, he knows every last foot of this Glades country. Learned it the hard way, which is just about the only way a man can learn it. Put in many a long day alone out here, and long nights, too. I admired that when I threw in with him, and I still do. This wilderness out here, or what is left of it, might be the one thing in his life he loved, when you come to think about it. Speck don’t know he loves it, naturally, and wouldn’t hardly admit to it if he did.

  Course he always poached and smuggled and made moonshine, always broke the law. But you fellers know as good as I do that Speck ain’t only just a common outlaw. He was a expert hunter, too, and a expert fisherman, until Parks come along and put him out of business. He can tinker motors, pretty fair country mechanic. He builds good shacks and boats and traps, and hangs nets, too. If Speck ever decided to go straight, he’s got a half dozen trades that he could choose from. That’s another difference between him and them. Cause unless there’s some kind of a call for a militia, mercenary soldiers, them boys of his have no idea how to make a livin. They’d have trouble makin a day’s pay inside the law.

  This new breed don’t care nothin about wilderness. All they know is how to use it hard, same way they use their women and their gear. Shoot everythin that moves in case some other feller beats you to it, find out later if it’s any use—that’s their damn attitude. That’s why they got all them gator hides rottin in there. Never look ahead and don’t look back, got no respect at all for land nor life. Maybe this country could use a dose of Speck’s old-time outlaw spirit, but not this kind.

  Them boys got handed every bit of that man’s hard-earned knowledge, and they don’t appreciate it. Sure, Speck is dead ornery and ignorant, and greedy, too, but he been known to leave a little room for other people long as they don’t get in his way. These younger ones don’t leave no room for nobody, and their war experience give ’em their excuse. To their way of thinkin, the country owes ’em a free ride for sendin ’em halfway around the earth to get mangled up in some stupid Asia war that nobody give a shit about in the first place.

  Like I’m sayin, that is only their excuse, because long before they went off soldierin, them kind done what they pleased around the backcountry. And that is because they know for a damn fact that the Everglades is their God-given inheritance. Got it straight from the Bible, Faith, and Revelation that the Merciful Lord hates nigras and won’t stand for Yankees, turned His back on Injuns and despises Spanish. The Almighty, He detests a Jew, the same way they do. Nosir, their Redeemer won’t put up with nobody who ain’t Old-time Religion, which is why it’s okay to go persecutin in His Holy Name.

  So when them fellers say, “This here is God’s Country,” what they mean is, it is their country, and not only the Park but the Big Cypress. Not countin Injuns—who just naturally don’t count—their granddaddies was the first to hunt out here in the last century, so these boys don’t give a hoot in hell whether it’s state, federal, or private-owned. A man who ain’t local born and bred tries to build him a legal huntin camp back in the Cypress—well, it just don’t matter if he paid his lease, paid up his taxes. If he ain’t one of ’em, they burn him out, cause he don’t belong out there no more’n them Australia trees or them walkin catfish that come in from Louisiana. Them boys get wind of that invader, they’ll grab their guns and a few six-packs of beer, go roarin over there, swamp buggies or airboats, high-power rifles and bad dogs, throw gasoline and torch that camp right to the ground. Maybe they’ll look-see who’s inside, maybe they won’t. And what’s to stop ’em, way to hell and gone out there back of that Glades horizon?

  Tryin to deal with that mean kind is like baggin up a bunch of bobcats. Older generation now, they played hell with a new warden or park ranger, but they wouldn’t kill him, not if they could help it. These fellers here, I ain’t so sure. Older ones, if the warden was a local man, they’d tease him, play along with him, maybe throw a scare into him so next time he might shy away, all the while knowin that no local jury would convict ’em.

  A few years back, this young ranger spotted Ol’ Man Speck in his binoculars, slippin across between two hammocks in the sloughs. Speck was mindin his own business, just huntin along in his own private preserve, maybe two-three miles inside the Park boundary. He was snarin his gators, so’s not to create no disturbance. This ranger used a scullin pole to sneak around the backside of a hammock, took him half the mornin probin through the saw grass, but finally he was set. Let Speck work his way to him, he had him dead to rights—Mornin, Mr. Daniels! Speck’s rifle was layin where he couldn’t reach it, and havin the drop on this bad ol’ feller, that ranger laughed at him, feelin real cocky. All that sweat and nerves and plain hard work had made him the first man and the only man who ever brung this wily old rascal to the bar of justice.

  When that young ranger comes up alongside, Speck is shakin his head real pathetic, doin his best to look old and slow and heartbroke, is what he told me. Real wore-out and discouraged. He takes this three-foot gator by the tail, says “Ye ain’t fixin to run a old man in for this here lizard, are ye?” Distracted that ranger for one second, which was all Speck needed. Before the poor feller could speak up and say, “Yessir, I sure am!” Speck is uncoilin like a cottonmouth. Brings that young gator up off of the deck, whaps that feller upside of the head and knocks him sprawlin. Grabs that boy’s rifle, pumps the cartridges into the water, jams the muzzle deep into wet mud, then lays it back real careful in the ranger’s boat so’s nobody can’t never say he broke nor stole no gov’mint property. Ol’ Speck cranks up and heads for home, and no hard feelins. And sittin up watchin him go, that poor feller felt so sheepish and so stupid that he clean forgot to report his great adventure with Speck Daniels!

  In the old days, we had a tougher breed of warden. A lot of them men was hu
nters theirselves and knew the country, and generally they had a local clan behind ’em. You messed with one, you was messin with ’em all. You take and hit one them old wardens with a gator, you better finish it. You best leave him out there.

  Whidden watched Sally’s boat on its way from shore. “Before them other boys come home from overseas and Speck went over into runnin guns, we was just your common moonshiners and gator hunters, puttin to use what Speck was taught by his uncle Tant and Old Man Joe Lopez. We never bothered with no gator longer’n eight feet, cause after that they grow these hard buttons inside that spoils the hide. No market for that hornback, not no more. We stripped off the belly flat and left the rest, except for maybe a few tails to sell to restaurants. Any damn fool can shoot a gator, skin it out, but strippin that flat quick without nickin it or tearin it, that’s another breed of gator man entirely.

  “Big gator now, before you cut that tail, you have to cut the back open, use a stick to pry the spinal cord and twist it out, otherwise that tail could spasm, break your leg. But gator tail is ‘larripin good,’ as Old Man Smallwood used to say! Tastes somewhere between frog legs and a rattler, so they tell me.”

  Andy said, “You never et one, Whidden?”

  “Never et them crawly things, nosir, I didn’t. Ain’t one gator hunter out of five that cares to try one. We had our fill of ’em already, from all that raw meat and guts and blood smell, skinnin ’em out.”

  “Well, I weren’t never a real gator hunter,” Andy said, “so I always et a piece if someone give it to me. Them crawly things is pretty good when you know how to fix ’em like the Injuns done. You get hungry enough, a nice fat rattlesnake can put you in mind of some lean chicken.”

  “Mikasukis eat them cold-blood things but they won’t touch a rabbit. Claim it takes away your manlihood. Can’t get your courage up, you know.” Whidden leaned down to help Sally aboard. When he hugged her, she grumped, “I’m going to fix you some nice rabbit then. Get me some rest.”