Lost Man's River: Shadow Country Trilogy

by Peter Matthiessen

  As if white people had leased Henry his life, thought Lucius, and now he was obliged to give it back.

  Henry said, “What I aim to tell is the God’s truth.” He pointed at a shelf above the bed. Though his visitor said that Henry’s word was good enough, the patient closed his eyes and shook his head. Lucius took the Bible from the shelf and slid it beneath the mitt of bandages on the right hand.

  “Mist’ Lucius, your daddy always seen me.” He opened his red eyes and searched the other’s face, wondering if the white man understood. “Seen I were a somebody—some kind of a man, with my own look to me and my own way of workin. Seen I counted. Seen I weren’t just nothin-but-a-nigger. By seein me, he give me some respect, and I was grateful, all them years I knew him.” He rested a little. “But that don’t mean he was aimin to put up with no gun-totin nigger, not in no line of men come there to judge him. When I went down to the Smallwood landin, I was deathly afeared of Mist’ Edgar Watson, and afeared of them men waitin on him, too. All I wanted was to run and hide. Cause whether I fired or I didn’t, them white men, they was honor bound to kill me.

  “Mist’ Edgar looked red-eyed, all wore out, like he’d laid awake most of that week. Spoke in a low and scrapy voice, said, ‘Henry, you got no business here. You get on home.’ And I seen he would not tolerate me. I seen the murder shinin in his eye.”

  “Would not tolerate your color?”

  Henry closed his eyes. He was running out of time. “Nosir. What I told you. Nigger-actin-to-be-a-man. Somethin like that.” His dry mouth twitched in that gaunt shadow of a smile. When Lucius fed him water in thin sips, he nodded minute thanks, shifting and settling his pain before resuming. In a hurry to expel his truth, he talked too fast, exhausting himself. Lucius touched his arm to slow him down.

  “Knowin this here black feller could shoot, your daddy didn’t take no chances. He hefted up that double-barrel nice and easy, like he was fixin to hand it over to Mist’ Dan. But by the little shiftin of his feet, I knowed he was gettin set to swing that gun, shoot from the hip. I was standin apart, out in the shatters, so it weren’t no trick to blow me off that line.” Henry nodded. “Show them others he meant business. Show ’em that the next one he shot might be a white man.”

  In a bout of agony, Henry gasped. He raised a hand and lowered it again onto the Bible. “Lord is my witness, I believe that Mist’ Edgar was dead soon as his gun come up. What Henry Short done or did not do never made no difference.”

  Henry was not looking at him now but past him. “Mist’ Edgar’s gun come up in a snap swing, and mine did, too,” he murmured after a while. “He had me beat cause I held my fire, still prayin I would not have to shoot.” Henry spoke in sorrow, as if truly regretful that Mr. Watson had not killed him. “His gun misfired, Mist’ Lucius. I seen his eyes go wide—out of his surprise, y’know—but it was too late.” He sighed. “I had pulled that trigger, not knowin there was no need of it, not knowin the good Lord had already went and saved me.”

  Henry closed his eyes. “It was all over so fast! Mist’ Edgar was fallin. Somebody has shot Mist’ Edgar Watson! Took me a minute to understand who might of done it. I was starin at him lay in there while them men shot and shot, and all I could think was, Henry Short, you will die here, too.”

  “Is it possible you miscalculated, Henry? Maybe figuring he might shoot you, you fired first—”

  Henry Short grimaced, raising his hand a little, then lowering it again onto the Bible. “Nosir. Weren’t no time to figure nothin.”

  “Bill House—?”

  Henry shook his head. “I heard his shot. Mist’ Bill shot just behind. Young Mist’ Dan, Old Mist’ Dan—all them Houses was good shots, and very likely hit him, but Mist’ Watson was already fallin by the time they fired.”

  “You know you hit him.”

  The wrapped hands jerked on the coarse coverlet.

  “And you know you killed him.”

  Hollowed out like little leather dishes, the burned man’s temples pulsed. When Lucius put a rag of water to his lips, he could muster up no thanks. His eyes had closed. “Hell is waitin, Henry Short,” the burned man whispered.

  For a long while he lay quiet, yet he seemed intent, as if trying to hear a distant birdsong in the late spring woods. When Lucius shifted and cleared his throat, the burned man lifted the stiff club of his mitt as if to hush him. When it seemed that he might sleep and not awaken, Lucius leaned and whispered at his ear.

  In the stillness, it seemed that this last question had been asked too late. Henry Short had gone and he would not return. But the lids opened and for a long moment those inflamed eyes met Lucius’s gaze.

  In a cardboard suitcase underneath the cot, Lucius found a large heavy cigar box bound in tarred fish line. Henry nodded, and he opened it, knowing already that the box contained old belt buckles and metal buttons, small rusted pocketknives, a few spent bullets.

  Bones and skulls? Henry Short nodded. Had he ever told anyone about this? Just Lee Harden. Nobody else? He shook his head. Why not?

  Henry closed his eyes without a word. Yet Lucius imagined that he understood. Perhaps Henry Short had kept his secret out of loyalty to Ed Watson, who had “seen” him. Or perhaps he had done it because of his unnameable friendship with Ed Watson’s son.

  The sojourners in the brown room rushed to the cot, for Henry’s heart had faltered. Spasms yanked his body as one hand flew up and his eyes went wide. When he fell back, he lay as if transfixed, red eyes rolled back in his skeletal brown head in a stare of wonder, mouth stretched in a famished yawn of mortal yearning.

  Then, in a twitch, the failing heart in the mortal husk of Henry Short restored faint blood to the grayed skin, and the mouth eased, and the eyes softened and dampened and came back to the room with a dim shine of bewilderment and wonder. Once again, the white mitt wandered weakly on the rough coverlet, seeking Lucius’s hand. He whispered, “No more secrets, Mist’ Lucius. No more lyin.”

  Henry Short would lie in torment in that silent ward for another seven days. On the eighth night, his Redeemer set him free.

  On the way south, Andy House said, “You get the truth from Henry?” And when Lucius nodded, he said sharply, “Well? Feel any better?”

  ANDY HOUSE

  Hearing his boat, them island men had formed a line along the shore. Ed Watson seen that crowd waitin in the dusk before he come into gun range, but he never learned how to back up, that’s what my dad said. He had his shotgun out where they could see it, and knowing them men the way he did, he probably figured he could bully ’em, same way he always done.

  Some say he never left his boat. Well, the House boys was right up in the front, and they said Watson took ’em by surprise, runnin his boat hard aground and jumpin ashore in the same moment as she struck. Had his feet set and his shotgun up across his chest. When they asked him what he done with Cox, he pulled Cox’s hat out of his coat, pointed at the blood splatter in the stern, claimed he had shot him in the boat but the body fell overboard and was lost in the river.

  Well, there was mutterin over that, so a man who was drunk leaned in over the gunwales and put a finger to that blood and sniffed it. Said, “That sure smells like fresh fish blood to me.” And Watson scowled. “You calling me a liar?” And there come a moan of fear out of that crowd. “No, Ed, we ain’t calling you a liar,” says my granddad, “but we will have to go to Chatham, hunt up that dead body for ourselves. Meantime, you best hand over that gun.”

  Well, that done it. Watson lost his temper. He hollered out, “You boys want this gun so bad, you are goin to get it!” And them were the last words that he ever spoke.

  Course he might been bluffing—didn’t make no difference. When he swung that shotgun up, he was a dead man. Them men was scared and their trigger fingers twitchin, and they didn’t need no excuse at all to gun him down.

  My dad weren’t ten foot away, longside my granddad, and Henry Short was next to Dad. Henry stood half-leg deep in water, carryin his old 30-
30 Winchester. You couldn’t say he was in the crowd exactly, cause bein a nigra, he did not belong. But not countin him—that was your daddy’s worst mistake, probably his last one. He let Henry distract him, that is what my dad said. He seen that nigra and he seen his gun, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. Bill House thought he heard him growl something at Henry, and maybe Henry mumbled something back. Next thing he knew, Watson’s gun muzzles come up like a boar’s snout, they was lookin down them twin holes straight into hell. And right about then come that whipcrack shot that Granddad recognized as his old Winnie.

  No two guns shoots just alike, not to a man who has hunted years and years with just the one of ’em. You don’t mistake it. But knowin what might come down on Henry, Granddad never let on what he heard till he lay on his deathbed seven years later. He summoned his three older boys that was with him that day at the landin, made ’em take a swear that what he aimed to tell ’em wouldn’t never go outside that room. Even then, he did not say that Henry Short fired his rifle at a white man. He only said he’d heard the crack of his old Winnie if he weren’t mistaken—said that last part twice. That was Granddad’s way of sayin, “Henry shot but don’t you boys say nothing, about it, not to nobody.”

  Dad was standin there longside of Henry. He seen his gun go up, and them other men did, too. I myself have never heard no different, not from any man who was in that line. Henry and another man fired together, and that other feller was my dad, and their two shots was so darn close that most folks never heard but just the one. There was four or five shots in the next second but they wasn’t needed.

  Bill House was an expert shot, but he knew Henry was better and shot faster. Henry fired. And Henry Short was not a man well-knowed to miss.

  Because his wife was away at church, Andy tarried on his doorstep, reluctant to enter the small empty house on Panther Crescent. They sat a little while out in the sun. The blind man mourned, unable to put Henry Short out of his mind. “While you was speaking with his brothers, Henry told me he was through with life even if life was not quite through with him. He had never knew God struck me blind, that’s how many years has passed since a House found time to go visit that poor feller! After all them years he lived with us, I knew no words to say to him when he was dying!

  “When it comes to Henry Short, you know, you’re looking at a sinner. I should of hunted him up years ago, if only just to let him know he weren’t forgotten by our family just because he broke off with my dad—let him know we always wondered how he might be getting on, after all the years out of his life that good man give us. But I never done that, no I didn’t, it was too much trouble!

  “Funny, ain’t it? My cousin-in-law over to Marco, the one who helped to lynch that nigra in the thirties? Well, that man never missed a meal until his last morning, when he overslept his breakfast. Died peaceful in his sleep and after a long, healthy life. How do you figure that one?

  “I never did commit a crime against a black man, and I’m darn glad of it. But I never done a darn thing for ’em neither, even when I had the chance. You reckon that’s why the Good Lord up there struck this sinner blind? Because I knew better? Because I knew better?”

  Andy House held both hands high as if warding off the molten fire of the sinking sun. “Kind of late now, ain’t it, Colonel? I have missed my chance. Sins of omission, they will call it, where I’m headed for.”

  In a long silence, the blind man gazed away, his blue eyes wide, as if to behold everything on earth. From the scarred prospect of the Golden Years Estates came the harsh grind and bang of earthmoving machines and the snort of air brakes. “Panther Crescent!” he exclaimed at last with a great rueful sigh, and slapped his big hands down upon his knees, turning to Watson. “Where you headed for, Colonel, this late in the day?”

  The question startled Lucius, who had fallen silent, in the dread of home. He had nobody to meet, no place he had to be.

  Sensing something, Andy House groped for his hand and gripped it with emotion. “You best stay and eat supper with us.” Forgetting that Andy could not see him, Lucius shook his head, and Andy shrugged. “Well, heck!” he said. “It ain’t none of my business. But I sure been happy to make your acquaintance. You ain’t a bad feller, Colonel, and you never was.” He grunted in his struggle to stand up. “You don’t have to wait here, Colonel. I will be just fine.”

  Finding his voice, Lucius assured him he was in no hurry. He would be glad, he said, to stay a little longer, in case Andy needed any help fighting off those panthers.

  ALSO BY PETER MATTHIESSEN

  THE PETER MATTHIESSEN READER

  edited by McKay Jenkins

  In this single-volume collection of the distinguished author’s nonfiction are essays and excerpts that highlight the spiritual, literary, and political daring so crucial to Matthiessen’s vision. Comprehensive and engrossing, The Peter Matthiessen Reader celebrates an American voice unequaled in its commitment to literature’s noblest aspiration: to challenge us to perceive our world—as well as ourselves—truthfully and clearly.

  Nonfiction

  LOST MAN’S RIVER

  In Lost Man’s River Matthiessen returns to the primeval landscape of the Florida Everglades, the setting of his bestseller Killing Mister Watson. In 1910 a sugarcane planter named E. J. Watson was gunned down by a group of his neighbors, perhaps in cold blood, perhaps in self defense. Years later, E. J.’s son Lucius tries to discover the truth of his father’s life and death. And even as Lucius tries to redeem his half-lost life by gathering the testimony (and braving the threats) of poachers and renegades, he struggles for the future of the remote country in which they live.

  Fiction/Literature

  AFRICAN SILENCES

  A powerful and sobering account of the cataclysmic depredation of the African landscape and its wildlife. Through Peter Matthiessen’s eyes we see elephants, white rhinos, gorillas, and other endangered creatures of the wild. We share the drama of the journeys themselves, including a hazardous crossing of the continent in a light plane. And along the way, we learn of the human lives oppressed by bankrupt political regimes and economies.

  Current Events/Travel

  AT PLAY IN THE FIELDS OF THE LORD

  In a malarial outpost in South America two misplaced gringos converge and clash. Martin Quarrier has come to convert the elusive Niaruna Indians to his brand of Christianity. Lewis Moon, a stateless mercenary who is himself part Indian, has come to kill them on behalf of the local comandante. Out of their struggle Peter Matthiessen has created a novel of Conradian richness that explores both the varieties of spiritual existence and the politics of cultural genocide.

  Fiction/Literature

  ON THE RIVER STYX

  And Other Stories

  “Mr. Matthiessen proves himself here to be a connoisseur of coiled tensions, between men and women, between people of different social classes, and, repeatedly, between races.… There is something almost mysterious about his achievement … qualities for which one can think of only classical or old-fashioned words: gravitas, grandeur, beauty.”

  —The New York Times

  Fiction/Literature

  KILLING MISTER WATSON

  Killing Mister Watson is a fictional masterpiece, the first novel of the Watson trilogy, written at the peak of Peter Matthiessen’s powers as a novelist. Drawn from fragments of historical fact, it brilliantly depicts the fortunes and misfortunes of Edgar J. Watson, a real-life entrepreneur and outlaw who appeared in the lawless Florida Everglades around the turn of the century.

  Fiction/Literature

  MEN’S LIVES

  “Matthiessen’s portrayal of a disappearing way of life has a biting eloquence no outside reporter could command. The fishermen’s voices—humorous, bitter, bewildered, resigned—are as clear as the technical procedures of their work and the threatened beauty of their once quiet shore.”

  —Newsweek

  Literature

  FAR TORTUGA

  “Far Tortuga is a
singular experience, a series of moments captured whole and rendered with a clarity that quickens the blood.… From its opening moment … the reader senses that the narrative itself is the recapitulation of a cosmic process, as though the author had sought to link his storytelling with the eye of creation.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  Literature

  VINTAGE BOOKS

  Available wherever books are sold.

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