Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  Maybe you was too close to ’em to notice, Colonel, but a lot of men said those Harden boys was not only hotheads, they was troublemakers. There was angry talk how somethin had to be done to put a stop to ’em, because them two cousins was the ones most likely to wing a bullet past the ear of any fisherman who came anywhere within two miles of Lost Man’s Beach. After so many years of bad talk and harassment, Hardens was bitter, you can’t blame ’em, and they aimed to scare Bay fishermen off that territory, because Lost Man’s River was the last wild heart of the last wild country left in southwest Florida.

  On their side, the men resented Hardens for puttin signs up, tryin to keep others off so much good fishin ground. All the Bay families had it in for ’em, not only Carrs. The fishermen would tear their signs down, cuss ’em out, yell filth across the water at their cabins, hollerin how these Island waters was free territory and how no damn half-breeds weren’t goin to get away with hoggin the whole coast for theirselves.

  Us Houses knowed somethin was up pretty soon after it happened. Walker Carr rowed up Turner River to where we was farmin near the Trail. Showed up one night, never said what he was after—might of muttered about hard times and prospectin for gator holes or somethin. At first light, he walked off toward the east. He was a strong little feller but not young no more, so my dad was worried and he follered him a ways before he give up and let him go.

  Back then there weren’t much traffic across Florida, and the few trucks and autos never picked up drifters, not in the Depression, not way out there in the middle of the Glades. Anyways, he must of walked a good ways east over the Trail, cause he never come back through till near a fortnight later. Might of spent that second night at Monroe Station, then headed off on some Injun path south and east across the Cypress and out across that long pine ridge on the old Chevelier Road and on down into the Shark River Slough. That’s hard goin, bogs and saw grass and limestone solution holes that slash your boots, never mind the varmints, and no dry place to sleep after the summer rains.

  That’s a big country down there, so Carr must of had a rough idea where he was headed. But why he would take that hard overland journey is a mystery, unless he was aimin to make sure that there weren’t no bodies layin out in the Shark River savannas where turkey buzzards might find ’em, maybe draw some Injuns that was out huntin. Wouldn’t want to go in there by river in case he might run across the Hardens, who was out searchin for them bodies, too. The difference was, the Hardens had nothin to hide. They was searchin for sign along the edges of the creeks in broad open daylight. They wanted to find their boys, take ’em home for burial. I reckon Carr wanted to bury ’em for good right where they lay.

  Them Hardens had a heavy cross to bear, and we all felt bad about it. Lee Harden lost his oldest boy, and Earl did, too. Earl could be likable, but he was hard. All his life, he seemed kind of discontented, and he complained a lot as he grew older. Rounder than Lee, a little shorter, but not fat. Lee was a big man, and he looked real tough and craggy with that ax-scarred face, but he was easygoing, he could laugh at himself, which Earl could never do. All the same, nobody messed with Lee, because when he drank, he had that dangerous temper.

  For a few years, Lee come up to Everglade and haunted them young Carrs. Never harassed ’em directly, just anchored his boat in the river off Carrs’ fish house. Couldn’t shoot ’em only on suspicion—though men done a lot just on suspicion, back in them days! Never called out, never said a word, like he was studying on what to do and had probably come to the right place to do it. That big boat anchored out front was Lee’s way of saying that Carrs and Hardens had unfinished business, and it might of been what caused one of ’em to crack.

  Well, the truth finally come out, like Sally says. The Carr boys said they never meant to shoot, they was just nervous, and when Wilson Harden heard somethin and reared up under his miskeeter bar, a gun went off. They claimed they thought the Harden boys was up and shootin so they fired—a pure case of self-defense, to hear Carrs tell it. They admitted they run down Roark in the swamp, admitted they was shriekin at each other, tryin to decide what they should do, because Roark Harden wasn’t likely to forget what he had witnessed.

  Those Harden boys was angry wild young fellers, no doubt about it, but Walker Carr’s boys, they weren’t angels neither. One of ’em was always fidgetin his eyes, and I reckon he’s still doin that today. Got so you always had to watch what was laying around loose—life weren’t never that way in the old days.

  Whatever them Carr boys done or didn’t do, they are the ones who has to live with it, die with it, too. But it was a shame, the way they killed that poor young feller beggin for his life—that was the part that ate at Turner Carr. Said shootin Roark Harden while he crawled away was the worstest thing he ever had to do. Well, I sure hope so!

  I won’t speak for Owen Carr, but I known Turner all my life and I don’t believe he ever bragged about that killin. Nosir, he was real upset and very close to tears just in the tellin of it—this was two years later! Told me that all they wanted was their coonskins, and how when one boy got shot by mistake, they went ahead because they could not leave a witness. I warned young Turner that he better keep his mouth shut, pray for forgiveness, but he could not stop talkin—not braggin, the way Sally tells it, only talkin, like confessin his sins over and over was his only hope of getting shut of what they done.

  After the news got out, the whole Bay hunkered down, expectin trouble. The guns come out every time them Harden men come up from Lost Man’s, and them young Carrs was pretty hard to find.

  Outside of their family, most people took that coonskin story with some salt. Roy Thompson who married my cousin Ernestine, he fished with Lee Harden for some years, and fished with one of them Carr brothers, too, so he heard the inside story from both sides. Roy Thompson told me he did not believe them Hardens stole no coon hides. Whether he’d say that to the Carrs, I just don’t know.

  What it comes down to, the Carr boys knew that no matter what, the community was behind ’em. There weren’t no law south of Caxambas, that was understood by everybody, Sheriff included. Carrs knew they could take the law in their own hands, like was done with Guy Bradley and the Rice boys and Ed Watson and a lot of other men who come to a bad end down in this country.

  Like I say, Earl and Lee was tough old boys, and crack shots, too. Robert Harden was an old feller by that time, might not of known what he was shootin at but could still hit it if you got him pointed in the right direction. Even the women in that clan were as handy with shootin irons as they were with hoes. Besides that, they had Webster Harden, who usually finished what he started, and a feller named Watson right next door who could shoot as good as any of ’em and maybe better. Altogether, that was not a gang you would want to mess with.

  So everybody on the Bay was set for trouble, but the years went by and not a thing was done about it. Maybe Lee and Earl was startin to get old, or maybe too much time had passed before they learned for sure what really happened, or maybe they never did agree on what to do. They was good brothers as boys, is what my dad told me, but later in life them two men could not agree on the best place in the woods to take a piss.

  Crossing her ankles, Sally Brown sank down on the sand. Hands in hip pockets, Whidden stood behind her. In the Gulf wind, they had come up quietly, and Andy House, not knowing how long they had been in earshot, looked chagrined.

  “What was done to those Harden boys,” Sally said brusquely, “was what those people wanted to see done. The whole community was behind it, as you say. And those murders were excused by calling the Hardens mixed breed or mulatta. Well, if Hardens are mixed, then the Bay people are, too, because most of those families are blood kin to the Hardens whether they admit it or not. Sandy Albritton is not ashamed of it, but the rest will try to let on to this day that they are no kin to Hardens whatsoever. Probably think that after fifty years of telling that old lie, it might be true.”

  Andy House said carefully, “Them young Carrs we
re not the least bit proud about what happened.”

  “Back then? I’m not so sure.”

  “You weren’t born back then.”

  Cutting off their wrangling, Whidden sounded tired. “Owen Carr was hot after my sister Edie. He never came around, not once, after Roark disappeared, that was one reason our family suspected him. But we knew that if we done anything about it, we would give ’em their excuse to stage a raid down here and lynch them mixed-breed sonsabitches once and for all. My mama heard that lynch talk. Folks made sure she heard it. In the store.”

  “And even if Hardens got the case to a grand jury,” Andy said thoughtfully, “they knew that the Carr boy would testify how he never confessed to no such thing. And they knew a jury would accept that coonskin story whether they believed it or they didn’t because no self-respectin jury was going to sit still for no supposed-to-be mulattas takin white folks into court, not in Collier County nor in Lee nor Monroe neither.”

  Slowly he turned toward the Hardens. “I sure do hate to be the one to say that, Whidden, but ain’t that about right?”

  Whidden and Sally stared into the fire and did not answer, and Lucius did not know what to say to make things better. Andy’s conclusion was also self-condemnation, a gagging down of bitter medicine, but unable to see anyone’s expression, hearing no comment, the blind man, too, seemed cast down, filled with despair. Even in firelight, Andy looked ashamed of his own need to hammer out his “truth.” Yet his calm and measured voice would not relent. “And even after it come out who done it,” he resumed, “I never heard no Harden claim they was deprived of legal justice. Why?”

  Sally burst out, “I know what you think, Mr. House, because people like you all think the same! You think it’s because the Hardens knew that as ‘supposed-to-be-mulattas,’ they were not going to get justice, no matter what!” Sally Brown was very close to tears. “On the other hand, they couldn’t claim race prejudice, because claiming prejudice would seem to be admitting that there might be something for people to be prejudiced about—that about right?” She mimicked him sarcastically, voice quavering.

  Yet a moment later she spoke to him without rancor. Picking up cool sand, watching it pour away between her fingers, she blurted finally, “Oh, I guess what you’ve been saying is ‘true’ enough, Mr. House. A half-truth, anyway.”

  Whidden hauled the bow of the Cracker Belle onto the sand. Followed by Lucius, he clambered aboard and ducked down into the cabin, where he fished a bottle from beneath the coils of anchor warp in the forward cuddy and brought it back on deck. Each took a snort and gasped as the liquor eased him.

  “Like Andy says, they was wild and they was angry, they sank boats and broke up traps, they was reckless with their mouths and with their guns. And knowin how people talked about our family, that made ’em angrier than ever. Them boys swore over and over they would never be run off their home territory without a fight. Roark and Wilson was the most ornery amongst the Hardens—or bravest, depending how you look at it.” Whidden paused, observing Lucius. “So you might say—and people did say—that they had it comin.”

  “Do you believe they had it coming?”

  “I guess I do. If you believe them Carrs about them coonskins.” Whidden shrugged. “Carrs are my wife’s kinfolks. I sure do hate to call ’em liars as well as murderers.” He smiled with Lucius but his eyes were serious. “Sally wonders how them Carrs could shoot another boy while he was beggin for his life—she can’t get over that! Well, don’t let on I said this, Mister Colonel—and I’m not just sayin it, I have done some thinkin on it—but I never wondered about that, not for one minute. Back in them Fish Wars, in the Depression, with poor people so hungry on this coast, and all the ugly bitter feelins that there was? In them Carrs’ place, so scared and angry, I might of done no different than what they done.”

  “Are you saying the Hardens have forgiven it?”

  “No, I sure ain’t. I’m only sayin that most of us can understand how it could happen. That make sense?”

  Lucius supposed that the Bay people had suspended the feud after those deaths, since Whidden had been accepted when he courted Sally.

  “Not by all of ’em. Someone seen us holdin hands and commenced to holler and take on, tell the old bad stories. The Carr cousins said, ‘Why, honey, he’s a Harden!’ And Sally said, ‘That’s right, folks, and I’m fixin to marry him, cause I just dote on this here Harden boy for his sparkly green eyes and his blond hair!’ Well, she had ’em there, they couldn’t say too much, they just kept bleatin at her, ‘He’s a Harden!’

  “I loved that sweet Miss Sally Daniels right from school days, she was the prettiest girl I ever seen and she still is. When I asked her to marry, she said no but I kept at it, and Finally she took a real deep breath and told me what happened about Crockett Junior. For a while, I was pretty jealous over Junior, bein as how I seen him every day, worked alongside him. But I told her I could handle that, and asked her again to be my wife. She said Nosir, not unless you leave off workin for a certain sonofabitch name of Crockett Senior, and I said, No, Sal, I can’t just quit on him, and Sally said, ‘You will, just wait and see.’ Then she leaned over to whisper in my ear, said, ‘That means “Yes, I’ll marry you,” case you don’t know it!’ ”

  Whidden smiled with pleasure at this memory. “So I went to Speck and I said, ‘Well, Old-Timer, I aim to marry your fine daughter if you give her to me.’ I was aimin to marry his fine daughter whether he give her to me or he didn’t, but I never told him about that part.

  “Speck Daniels was in Everglade that day, whilin away the afternoon drinkin beer in his bunk on his old boat upriver by the bridge. Looked me over for quite a while there with just one red eye, gettin his brain together. Liked a Harden better as his moonshine partner than his son-in-law, I seen that straight off. Sat up finally and finished up his beer and spat most of his chewin tobacco through that little slot into the can. Then he squints at it and says, ‘This here looks like some kind of a dang twat. What’s your opinion, boy?’—them was the first words from that man’s mouth, hearin the news that his sweet daughter aimed to marry. Then he looks up and he says, ‘Our family don’t tolerate mixed people, Whidden, you know that.’

  “ ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ I says.

  “Speck looks me over for a minute. ‘Heck if I know,’ he says. Next, he says, ‘You’re a bad drinker, Whidden, I been watchin you. Old days now, a man that spent up all he made on spirits and weren’t loyal to his family might get him a whippin. What’s your views on that?’

  “ ‘Who’s gonna give me that whippin, Speck?’ says I.

  “ ‘Heck if I know,’ Speck says again, and he cracks us both a beer. ‘I got no say about it anyways, so you are welcome to her. Don’t even know where she is livin at. Her and me been lookin crossways at the other from the first time she opened up her eyes in her layette. Weren’t for me, that gal would of married her own brother, so I reckon she can’t be too much worse off hitched up to you.’ Rolled over then and closed his eyes, wavin me the hell out of his cabin. ‘Just mind she don’t go gettin you so pussy-whipped that you can’t work nights, that is all I’m askin.’

  “That was Speck Daniels’s way of saying, Let’s you ’n’ me forget it, son, cause I don’t give a shit.”

  Whidden tried to laugh at his father-in-law’s low-down ways, but he didn’t have his heart in it, and stopped.

  “Course Sally herself ain’t got it all doped out yet. But in my opinion, this grudge of hers, this refusin to forgive what was done to Hardens—well, that ain’t only just her kindly nature.” Whidden lifted his gaze from the night water and held Lucius’s eye. “She turned her back on her own family, and not only her own family but her own kind. She blames this on their bad attitudes, but she’s too honest to pretend that’s all it is.”

  Whidden sighed. “She can’t abide her daddy. Even before she got mixed up with Crockett Junior, she could not tolerate Speck Daniels, and that goes way back to the time sh
e heard how Speck and his brother-in-law helped lynch that nigra man at Marco. Course he done that as a young feller in the Depression—”

  “That made it all right?”

  “No, but he’s changed some. Might not do nothin such as that today.” Whidden cast again, hard, with a light whipping sound. “I ain’t goin to criticize Speck Daniels, Mister Colonel. I knowed all about that Marco business when I went to work for him, and it never kept me from feelin proud about my job with the number one moonshiner and gator poacher in South Florida. I never thought too much about the right and wrong of it. Never thought much at all, and that’s the truth, not till Sally come along and woke me up.” He considered Lucius with a rueful gaze.

  “But why does Sally—”

  “The Hardens are her family now cause she ain’t got one of her own, so she’s bein fierce, she tries to take on all the pain our family suffered. She can’t make these people say they’re sorry, or apologize, though she’s sure try in—you seen her in Naples!

  “In her heart, Sally wants me to be white, wants our kids to be white, not only because that is right but because our kids will have a better chance that way. But she is ashamed of wanting that so bad, cause it makes her feel disloyal some way to those old-time Hardens that were so discriminated. That’s why she’s so ready to scrap with folks like Andy who might still think that the Hardens were … mixed.

  “What I’m learning is—real slow but deep—it just don’t matter. It don’t matter! There’s a lot of families on this coast got a little color that they ain’t owned up to. Well, that ain’t nothin to be ashamed of! It comes from the wild nature of our Florida history. You take them Muskogee and Mikasuki Creeks, some were mixed-blood when they first come down here out of Georgia, and the early pioneers had children with ’em, and with runaway slaves, too. In thees meex blood ees foking gee-nee-us of America! That’s what old Chevelier used to holler at my granddad. Claimed there weren’t one white man on this earth who didn’t have some black or brown in him, because all mankind got started out in Africa!