Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Mama cried Mister Watson please hes just upset he means no harm! Those were her first words to her husband in five years.

  He brought his arm down and he spoke real quiet. I have some explaining to do that is correct boy and I aim to do that when Im ready. But next time you speak about your mother in that way you better be mighty careful I dont hear you.

  Rob had scarred himself. He backed up set to run. She aint my mother!

  Papa said in fury Sonborn you are dam lucky to have her!

  He turned away and jerked his chin toward the lanky boy with the bare feet. This young feller here is Erksin Tomsin. Hes going to make me a fine schooner captain. Erksin I have the honor to present Mrs. Jane Watson. She is a school teacher and I hope she will see to your further education and mine too. This beautiful young lady is Miss Carrie Watson and these fine fellows are Eddie and Lucius.

  Lucius is six but Papa picked him up like he was two to gayze into his face. I have not seen this feller since he was in diapers he told Erksin Tomsin setting him back down. Hes turned out fine. Lucius gave Mama a shy look to see if she thought hed turned out fine like Papa said.

  Erksin Tomsin shook hands all around. He looked clean and did not smell too bad. His hand was very hard and callised. I hung on an extra second so I could watch him serch the sky again but I let go quick when I saw Papa watching. And this said Papa is my oldest son Master Robert Watson.

  Sonborn Rob wispered.

  Rob? He was only teasing Mama said.

  When Erksin Tomsin put his hand out Rob yanked him off balance but he did not fall. He gripped Robs hand and looked over at his boss. Papa put his arms behind his back and looked toward the gulf and hummed a toon.

  The boy yanked Robs arm around behind and twisted it up hard til Rob squeeked. We knew Rob would not squeek again not even if his arm got twisted off like a boyled chicken wing. But this boy did not know that yet so Mama said gently Erksin? Please. Let him go.

  Rob jammed his hands into his hip pockets. He looked from Erksin towards our father and then back noding his head like he was ploting his ravenge. I knew what he was thinking and felt sorry for him. If Papa had only sent for us a few years ago his oldest son would be his scooner captain not some skrawny cracker.

  ERSKINE THOMPSON

  Like most Island families, what we called home weren’t nothing but gray ol’ storm boards flung together, palmetta thatch for roof and a dirt floor, but when Mister Watson learned his family was coming, he had new lumber for a honest-to-God house shipped down from Tampa Bay. Two carpenters came, too. Used Dade County pine, which is workable when green but cures so hard you’d be better off driving a nail into a railroad track. Best construction wood they is. When the house was finished, he painted her white and that white house stood so high up on that mound you could see her over the mangrove tops, sailing upriver. Except Storters at Everglade, there weren’t no home close to her between Fort Myers and Key West, and we got her finished just in time.

  Sailing north to Punta Gorda, Mister Watson and me hit rough seas in the Gulf right up to San Carlos Bay. Punta Gorda at that time was the end of the South Florida Railroad, so unless we come for ’em by sea, the family had to go on south by horse and hack, five hours overland on the old cattle trails to the Alva ferry across the Calusa Hatchee. The railroad train was gone back north when we come in. This made me sorrowful. That train was the first I ever would of saw.

  Mister Watson and me walked over to the depot. Miss Carrie was real pretty and her smile put me in a haze. Mrs. Watson was kind to me, they was all friendly except Robert, who was a year older than me and didn’t look nothin like them others. He was black-haired and pale, like the sun couldn’t figure no way to get at him. Mister Watson got mad at him, called him Sonborn or something, made him cry.

  We stayed that night at the Henry Plant Hotel. Ordered up our grub right in the restaurant. Set sail at daybreak bound for the Islands with a following wind and put in after dark at Panther Key, named by Old Man Juan Gomez for that time a panther swum across and ate his goat. Johnny Gomez boiled ’em their first Florida lobster. Never took that broke-stemmed old clay pipe he called his nose-warmer from between his teeth and never stopped talking. The Watson kids heard every one of that old man’s tales, how Nap Bonaparte bid him godspeed in Madrid, Spain, and how he run off for a pirate. Mister Watson got some liquor into Johnny, got him so het up about them grand old days on the bounding main that he got his centuries mixed up, that’s what Mrs. Watson whispered, doin her best not to smile. Bein a schoolteacher she had some education and advised me to take Senor Gomez with a grain of salt.

  One thing there ain’t much doubt about, that man were old. Claimed he fought under Zach Taylor at Okeechobee, 1837, way back in the First Seminole War. And that could be because one day there at Marco, Bill Collier Senior told the men how he had knew that rascal Johnny Gomez even before the War Between the States, said he was a danged old liar even then.

  Old Gomez carried on into the night and Mister Watson done some drinking along with him, slapping his leg and shaking his head over them old stories like he’d waited for years to get this kind of education. He was watching the faces of his children, winking at me every once in a while, I never seen him so happy in my life. He were a stately man for sure, setting there right in the bosom of his family. In fire light under the stars over the Gulf, Miss Carrie’s eyes was just a-shine with worship, and mine, too: I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  When I went outside the fire light, Mister Watson followed me, we was standing shoulder to shoulder back of a bush. In a whisper he warned that his Carrie weren’t but only ten years of age and here I thought she must be going on fourteen which is mostly when girls marry in the Islands. I like to perished out of my embarrassment and slipped my pecker back into my pants as quick as possible. The coony questions I’d been asking about his daughter were maybe not as coony as I thought.

  Sailing down the coast next day in a fair breeze and the spray flying, Mister Watson’s family all got seasick, and I had to hold Miss Carrie by the belt to keep her from going overboard. Miss Carrie got slapped hard and soaked by a wave that washed up along the hull, but that girl was delighted, she was laughing and her face just sparkled. That was when my heart went out to Carrie Watson and I ain’t so sure I ever got it back.

  I rigged ’em bait lines. Eddie was eight and Lucius six and them little green-faced brothers had some spunk. They was all puked out but trolled like their lives depended on it, and their sister, too. We was flapping big silver kingfish and Spanish mackerel onto the deck until their red-burnt arms wore out, they couldn’t pull no more. Mrs. Watson called ’em forward to see the dolphins play under the bow. I stared, too, wherever that lady pointed. For the first time in my life, I really looked at my own home coast, the green walls broken here and there by a white strip of beach. Back of that beach rose a forest of royal palms and back of them palms the towers of white clouds over the Glades.

  Rob was watching very careful how I done my job. I hardly noticed him, I was so busy showing off for that dark-eyed girl. That day at sea was the happiest I ever knew and I never forgot it.

  All the way south, Mister Watson told his plans for developing the Is lands. Watching him pound his fist and wave his arms, Mrs. Watson said, “He’s still waving his arms in that boyish way.” She kept her voice low but he heard her all the same. “No, Mandy,” he said, “I only wave my arms when I am happy.” He spoke real tender, reaching over from the helm to touch her. She smiled a little but she looked worried and wishful.

  Mister Watson warned Netta before we left that she better be packed up ready to go by the time we got back. Said already gone would be okay, too.

  She had not left. She had not swept up nor even done the dishes. She stood in the front door of the house with her ginger-haired baby, waving Little Min’s fat arm at the visitors. Seeing Mister Watson’s face, she begun to dither, said her brother Jim never come. He knew she was lying. She had stuck around out of her
spite, knowing he would not harm her in front of company.

  Mister Watson went up close, put his hand on her collarbone near her neck. We couldn’t see his face but hers went white. Then he lifted his hand, turned around, and introduced her as the housekeeper, but his family was staring at Min’s hair, which in the sun showed the dark rust color of his own.

  Mister Watson gathered himself up and come right out with it. “Children, this is your baby sister. Her name is Minnie, after your aunt Minnie Collins.” He made a small bow to Mrs. Watson, who acted unsurprised. She took out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her lips, even smiled at Henrietta just a little. But after my mother scooted back inside, she told her husband, “Too bad the place wasn’t swept out before we got here.”

  I run my mother to Caxambas the next morning.

  Mrs. Watson was already poorly when she got to Chatham Bend, and within the year her husband had to carry her outside into the sun. He’d set her down real gentle in her wicker chair under them red poincianas where the breeze come fresh upriver from the Gulf and she’d sit real still in her faded blue cotton dress so’s not to stir the heat, her head bent just a little, watching the mullet jump and the tarpon roll and the herons flap across the river. Sometimes she might see big gators hauled out on the far bank that come down out of the Glades with the summer rains. I always wondered what sweet kind of thought was going on behind her smile.

  One day when I called her “Mrs. Watson” she beckoned me in close and said, “Since Little Min is your half sister, Erskine, we’re family in a way, isn’t that true?” And when I nodded, she said, “If you like, then, you may call me Aunt Jane.” When she seen the tears come to my eyes, she took me in her arms and give me a quick hug so both of us could pretend she never noticed ’em.

  Aunt Jane always had her books beside her, but after a while she looked at them no more. Mister Watson read to her from the Good Book every day and brung God’s word to the rest of us on Sundays under the boat shed roof. Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth! Might keep us on our knees for an hour at a time with his preachings of hellfire and damnation. And the sea became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea! He’d work himself into red-faced wrath, looming over us booming and spitting, a regular Jehovah—either that or he was making fun of God. That’s the way Rob seen it and I reckon Rob was right. For refusing to love the Lord, Rob got the strap; his daddy beat him something pitiful most every Sunday. He never called Rob by his rightful name no more, it was always Sonborn. A joke, I figured, but I could see that Aunt Jane disliked it and Rob hated it.

  As for Tant, he carried on somewhat more holy than was wanted, rolling his eyes up to the Lord and warbling the hymns until Mister Watson had to frown to keep his face straight. Pretend to love God same way Tant does, I advised Rob. He only said, If I did what Tant does, Stupid, he’d beat me for that, too.

  Tant had a sassy way with Mister Watson, having learned real quick that he ran no risk at all. Just by making that man laugh, he got by in a way I could never even hope for. And the thing of it was—this ate my heart—Tant never cared a hoot about them warm grins I would have given my right eye for and Rob, too. All he seen was another way to get out of his chores and have his fun.

  Mister Watson read to us one time from a story called Two Years Before the Mast. Captain Thompson is flogging a poor sailor. The sailor shrieks, Oh Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ! And the captain yells, Call on Captain Thompson, he’s the man! Jesus Christ can’t help you now! We was all shocked when that part was read out, not the words so much as the heartfelt way he read it, looking at me.

  Aunt Jane did not like him drinking on a Sunday, she told us not to pay him no attention. To her husband she said in a low voice, “You do them harm.” But he would only tease Aunt Jane by telling how all the finest hymns was wrote by slavers who never repented till after they got rich. She tried to smile but looked unhappy and ashamed, lowering her eyes when he lifted his strong voice like an offering:

  Through many dangers, toils, and snares

  I have already come.

  ’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

  And grace will lead me home.

  Mister Watson never had no interest in such hymns before his family come and he never had none after they was gone. Me neither. One time I asked him, Sir, do you believe in God Almighty? And he said, God Almighty? You think He believes in you? I never found out what he meant. Time he was done with me, I believed in nothing in the world but what I seen in front of my own nose.

  • • •

  One early morning we was woke by a man hollering. “E. J. Watson, this here is a citizen’s arrest!” When I run downstairs, Mister Watson was already at the window with his rifle. Three armed men was in a boat out on the river, and one of ’em was that crazy old Frenchman.

  Mrs. Watson was all trembly, in tears. She said, “Oh, please, Edgar!” She didn’t want trouble, not with little children in the house. So what he done, he took a bead and clipped the tip of the handlebar mustache off of the ringleader, Tom Brewer, who howled and ducked down quick. In a half minute, that boat was gone. With one bullet. Mister Watson had run them citizens right off his river.

  Next day, Bill House come by to tell about the citizens’ posse. What excited him was Mister Watson’s marksmanship—had he really clipped Brewer’s mustache on purpose? Bill told that story all his life. The truth was, Mister Watson skinned him by mistake. All he aimed to do, he said, was pass his bullet so close under Brewer’s nose that he could smell it.

  I worked for Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties and run his boats for him from time to time in later years, so if he done all the things laid at his door I would of knowed about it. Plenty of men worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another and plenty more had dealings with him; if you could take and dig ’em up, they’d say the same. He drove him a hard bar gain when that mood was on him, but the only one claimed that Mister Watson done him harm was Adolphus Santini, who got his throat slit a little in that scrape down to Key West. There’s men will tell you Santini had it coming. I don’t know nothin about that cause I wasn’t there. I do know Mister Watson got a mule that year and named him Dolphus.

  BILL HOUSE

  Not long after Captain Eben Carey joined the Frenchman on Possum Key, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and moonshiner from Lemon City on the Miami River. Crossed the Glades, then paddled north from Harney River, brought quite a smell into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on at the table, never cared about spillin food on his greasy shirt. Claimed beard and grease was all that stood between him and the miskeeters. Had a big chaw of Brown Mule stuck in his face and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor.

  Rumor was that this Tom Brewer would spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye to fire up his heathen clientele so’s they couldn’t think straight, then trade ’em the dregs for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut—what Injuns called wy-omee—killed more redskins than the soldiers ever done, give traders a bad name all across the country. Had him a squaw girl, couldn’t been more than nine-ten years of age; lay her down right in his boat and had his way, then rented her out to any man might want her. No harm in that, he said, on account her band had throwed her out for fooling with a white man, namely him.

  Tom Brewer were a sleepy and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth, but even when his hands lay quiet, them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Tom Brewer than what was happening around our table. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair down past the collar. Claimed to be the first and only white man who ever crossed the Glades in both directions so Mister Watson nicknamed him the Double-Crosser. The law on both coasts was after this feller for peddling wy-omee to the Injuns, taking away good business from the traders, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind. />
  “From what I heard,” Tom Brewer said, handing around his deluxe jug that had no lye in it, “that ol’ Injun mound at Chatham Bend might be just the place I’m looking for.” Cap’n Carey, a big pinkish feller, took him a snort of Brewer’s hospitality that made his eyes pop. He banged down the jug and give a sigh like some old doleful porpoise in the channel. “Whoa!” he says. “Count me out! Man already on there, Tom!”

  “I heard,” Tom Brewer said. Them other two looked like they expected him to explain hisself. He didn’t.

  Whilst we was pondering, the Frenchman sniffed his cup of shine, one eyebrow cocked and bony nose a-twitching with disgust. That nose was sayin, This here shit sure’n hell ain’t up to what your quality is served back in the Old World! But it was plenty good enough for Cap’n Ebe, who grabbed the jug and hoisted it frontier-style on his elbow. Next time he come up for air, he coughed out a Key West rumor: the man who had let on to the sheriff where he could apprehend the late Will Raymond was none other than this selfsame feller Ed J. Watson.

  “We heard about that clear across to Lemon City,” Brewer said. “Any sumbitch would snitch on a feller human bean ain’t got no right to private property if you take my meanin.”

  “In a manner of speaking, Mr. Brewer, sir, you are correct,” says Captain Ebe. “But he paid off the widow for the claim, so he has rights according to the law.”

  “Law!” the Frenchman scoffed, disgusted. “Satan foo! In la belle Frawnce, we cut off fokink head! La geeyo-teen!” And off he went on one of his tirades, quoting Detockveel and Laffyett and some other Frenchified fellers that could tell us dumb Americans a thing or two about America. (Erskine Thompson told me Mister Watson called Chevelier the Small Frog in the Big Pond. Erskine never did know why I laughed, him not being too much of a help when it come to jokes.)