Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  One morning he heaved up from the table and kept right on going, headed south. Left some money but not much, waved good-bye like his life depended on it, that’s how afeared he was we might think poorly of him, which I guess we did, knowing this was the last old Jean would see of Eben Carey. His big cabin on Possum Key, that’s all thorned over now and windows broke. Varmints slinking in and stinkin up the corners, vines pushin through the chinks.

  Msyoo was old and poorly, rotting in his death bed, with just my boy John Owen and our young Liza to tend him. They would set him outside while they cleaned the cabin. “I am home sick,” he would tell my children, to explain his tears. “How you say it? Sick of home?” Called ’em his godchildren, kind of let on how he would leave ’em his property to repay their kindness. And my boy Owen was happy about that, cause Possum Key was our old home. But toward the end the old man never noticed ’em, showed no interest in his feed, just set there staring deep into the sun till it struck him blind. “Earth star,” he sighed. Never let them bath him any more, just waved ’em off so’s not to be interrupted while communing with that burning star in his own head.

  One day Owen took his brother Earl to Possum because Liza was putting up preserves with my old woman. Owen was maybe nine years at the time, Earl two years older. Going upriver with the tide, the boys passed the Watson place and never seen a soul but when they got to Possum Key, first thing they see was Mister Watson. Earl was all for turning tail and heading home but his brother said, Nosir, not till we give Msyoo Jean his fish and vegetables.

  Watson watched them beach the skiff. He never moved. They was kind of sidewinding to walk past him before he said, “Good morning, boys. You want something?” When Owen told him they had vittles for the Frenchman, Watson said, “He won’t be needin ’em. He has died off of old age.”

  My boys was speechless. One day old Jean was snapping like a mean old turtle and the next day he was gone! Finally Owen gets up his nerve. “Msyoo Jean never left no paper? About me’n Liza?” Watson shakes his head. Tells ’em he owns the quit-claim now and that is all he knows about it, period. Owen blurts out, “Msyoo Jean was lookin pretty good, day before yesterday!” Hearing his suspicion, Watson points at the fresh mound of earth where he has buried him. “Well, Msyoo don’t look so good today,” he said. Earl give a moan and lit out for the boat, his brother close behind.

  Not wanting to scare ’em, I had never told my kids too much about our neighbor. Owen knew that heartbroke old man would probably die sometime that week without no help from Mister Watson, and they admitted Ed never said nothing to fright ’em. Must of been shock that the old man was dead or maybe the mystery of how Watson come to be there. Anyways, they took off for home as fast as they could row.

  Naturally the Frenchman’s death was laid on the man from the West who was known to have his eye on Possum Key. Ed Watson was riled by the bad stories but we noticed he never quite denied them. His reputation as a fast gun and willing to use it kept invaders out of his territory and helped him lay claim to abandoned cabins, which was pretty common on the rivers by the time he finished.

  • • •

  When I seen E. J. Watson next, in McKinney’s trading post at Chokoloskee, I never asked that man a single question. Never asked how a dying man planned to spend the money Watson said he paid him for the quit-claim nor what become of that money after old Jean died. Nobody asked Watson questions such as that. Them men in the store trying to stay out of his way probably told themselves they never knew Chevelier, never liked him: he was some kind of a dirty foreigner who hated God and hobnobbed with the Devil and never cared who knowed it, so maybe it was the Devil come and took him. Maybe them Hardens done him in or maybe his Key Wester crony Eben Carey, who’s to say? Never trust a conch Key Wester, ain’t that right? Nobody suspected Watson, not out loud, that’s how scared they was that he might hear about it.

  I seen as quick as I come into the store that Watson was set for trouble. If I spoke up and he drew his knife never mind his pistol, none of these Chokoloskee men would jump in on the side of no damn brown man asking hard questions of a white man—that’s what they’d say before they would admit how much they feared him. The only one who would jump in was my boy John Owen, and I’d never risk Owen even if I felt like going up against Ed Watson, which I didn’t. I told my boy, Go back outside and stay there.

  Watson had on the frock coat he wore when he went anywhere on business. Seeing who was in the doorway, he took out his big watch and looked at it, which is as close as he ever come to a nervous habit. As I moved forward, he shifted his feet and set his canned goods back onto the counter to free his hands and give me warning, both. I could feel him coiling. His expression had no give to it at all, he was just waiting on me.

  “Morning, Ed,” I said.

  “Mm-hm.” His dead tone warned that there weren’t no way to ask my questions without insinuating that he knew more than he should, so Mr. Harden better back off while he had time. I did. I sure ain’t proud about it, not after my long friendship with Chevelier.

  To save my pride, he offered his hand first and a grin with it. “What news from the Choctaw Nation, Richard?” I was raised not far from where he’d lived in the Oklahoma Territory so this teasing was his way of letting me know bygones was bygones. But them men in the store took what he said as a joke on that darned mulatter and laughed real loud to flatter their friend Ed. I grinned, too. “Indins ain’t never got no news, you know that, Ed.” I taught myself long, long ago to slip right past and pay no mind to the mangy ways of white people.

  Trouble was, my oldest, Earl, just couldn’t let it go, kept telling folks he was a witness and how it sure looked like Watson killed the Frenchman. Earl was scared to death of Watson, claimed he hated him, but the rest of us had growed somewhat accustomed to a neighbor who had never failed to help when times was hard. In later years, Owen got friendly with him and Owen’s lively Sarah even more so. They knew who Ed was and liked him anyway. He’s who he is, who he appears to be, and that ain’t all bad by no means, they would say.

  Nothing wrong with him that a bullet wouldn’t cure, Earl would chime in. I reckon he’d heard that said in Chokoloskee, where some liked Earl because he was ashamed of his own blood.

  My opinion? Ed Watson never killed my friend and he never paid a penny for his quit-claim. He was the one who found Jean dead, that’s all. He wanted Possum for the high ground and good soil and that freshwater spring just off the shore so he just took it, and with only them Harden kids complaining, folks was content to let him get away with it. No one else would ever squat on Possum Key, not even when he disappeared at the turn of the century. Not till they believed he was never coming back did some say aloud it was Watson done away with that old foreigner and stole his claim along with his hoarded-up money.

  In a way that’s what Ed wanted people to believe, knowing we’d never do nothing about it. A lot less trouble to scare us off the last pieces of high ground than it was to shoot us, and for a time, he seemed to enjoy the stir he made every place he went. He never learned that cracker people was dangerous enough without scaring ’em, too.

  There’s a sad ending to that Jean Chevelier story. When the Indins learned what Bill Collier dug up at Marco, they didn’t like it. An old Indin burial place had been disturbed and angry spirits set loose because land and life was bleeding bad from the white man’s greed and general destruction. So the chief medicine man, Doctor Tommie, tracked a trader from Fort Shackleford hauling his wagonload of gator flats into Fort Myers and climbed up on that wagon bed and give white people fair warning that something bad was bound to happen if them sacred masks dug up on Marco Island were not returned to the mother earth where they belonged. Only thing, none of his listeners spoke Mikasuki.

  That was 1898 when they were cranking up the Spanish War and nobody had time to listen to no loco old savage in queer headgear and long skirt. Weren’t two weeks after that Indin come to town that Bill Collier’s schooner capsized in a
squall in the Marquesas. Two of his young sons drowned in the cabin along with a family of his passengers, and Captain Bill, who hardly got away with his own life, would be cursed forever by the sight of them little hands clawing the porthole glass as his ship slid under—Bill Collier, who never had nothing but good fortune all his life!

  That ain’t all. Mr. Hamilton Disston killed himself who paid for that whole Marco expedition and his archaeologist Frank Cushing died at less than fifty years of age, before he could enjoy his fame from his great discovery. Soon after his death, his house burned down and most everything he took from that sacred ground was returned into the earth by way of fire.

  Not bein Indin, you will say this is all funny coincidence. Indins don’t know nothing about coincidence. That’s just white-man talk.

  Toward the turn of the century, every creek and river was crawling with plume hunters and gator skinners, never mind the sports off them big yachts in the winter and gill netters all summer and moonshiners the whole damn year round. You’d see some stranger once a month where before you never seen a man but once every other year, and you’d be leery of that stranger, too. Never wave, just watch him out of sight so he don’t follow when you go your way.

  Anyways, wild creatures grew so wary that most hunters and trappers from the Bay went over to fishing. But fish was scarce, too, so some of ’em come south and set their trout nets right there on our grassy bank north of Mormon Key. Next, they was wanting our key for their camp. Anchor in too close, shout ashore at night: You mulatters got no damn claim! Took to crowding us so much we was fixing to wing one, give the rest something to think about, but Ed Watson warned they was just trying to provoke us, they wanted us to shoot. “Give ’em their excuse,” he said, “to run you off or worse.”

  Finally I sold my claim to Watson and moved another ten miles south to the Lost Man’s River country, as far away to Hell and gone as a man could get. Settled on Wood Key north of the river mouth, raised up board cabins, built a small dock, dried and salted fish for the Havana trade.

  Bay folks will tell you that Hardens cleared off from Mormon Key because we was scared to live so close to Mister Watson. Well, Hardens was always friends with Mister Watson, for the first thing, and even if we wasn’t, we was on this coast to stay and Watson knew it. All three boys, Earl, Webster, and John Owen, could shoot as good as me, and their mama and their sisters weren’t no slouches neither.

  OWEN HARDEN

  Daddy Richard Harden moved south to Wood Key because he’d lost his taste for local company, said his own family was as much human society as a man could handle. But squatters was roosted on every bump between Marco and Chokoloskee, and some was already pushin south toward Lost Man’s. Beyond Chatham River, the only settlers besides ourselves was the James Hamiltons at Lost Man’s Beach and Sheldon Atwells back up Rodgers River. Then Daddy let Gilbert Johnson perch on the far end of Wood Key because them two enjoyed squabblin, and us Harden boys was very happy because Mr. Gilbert brung along two pretty daughters.

  Sarah Johnson was a slim little thing without no secrets: skipped and laughed and danced and said most anything she wanted. One day—we was out running my coon traps—I walked a log and jumped to cross a swampy place, landed barefoot on a half-hid cottonmouth, a big one: I sprang away quick but felt the strike. When I looked down and seen that deathly white mouth waving, I turned so weak I had to lean against a tree.

  “What’s the matter?” Sarah hollers.

  “Think I’m snake-bit!”

  “Think? You snake-bit or ain’t you?”

  She comes across the creek, hikes up my britches. There ain’t a sign of nothing on my leg, only dried dirt.

  “Well,” I said, “I think I’m feelin somewhat better.”

  “Too much thinkin, boy.” She pokes that snake till it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.

  Sarah was calm but looked as pale as how I felt. Not until later did my deathly snakebite strike her as comical: Think I’m snake-bit! She was sitting on the sand, arms around her knees, and she whooped and laughed so hard rememberin my expression that she rolled straight over backwards, kicking them small brown feet up in the air in the pure joy of it. Bein strict brought up, she kept her skirt wrapped tight, and I weren’t lookin: even so, I seen the full round of her bottom, and it looked to me like a heart turned upside down. I loved that Sarah for the joy in her, and all that a young girl was, but I was drawn hard to her body, too. It weren’t only the wanting her. Her body was like some lost part of my own I had to fit back into place or I would die. That heart turned upside down was my heart, too.

  This frisky gal had a way with E. J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. It kind of surprised me how shy he seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. She was blunt! Aimed to winkle out the truth about his life and made no bones about it. He was happy that such a pretty girl cared to hear his sad life story, and it got so he confided in her, told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe what he told was truth, maybe it wasn’t.

  DIARY OF MISS C. WATSON

  MARCH 2, 1898

  What a glorious year, and scarcely started!

  On January 1, electric light came on for the first time at the new Fort Myers hotel and also in several business establishments, Langford & Hendry for one. Last year when Mr. Edison lit up his Seminole Lodge, that glorious blaze was the first electric lighting in the nation! (He had already offered street lights but the men refused them, claiming night light might disturb their cattle!)

  On February 16, the international telegraph station at Punta Rassa got America’s first word of the explosion of the battleship Maine while lying at anchor in Havana Harbor. 260 young Americans, killed in their sleep! The “dastardly Spaniards,” as our paper calls them, claim the ship’s own magazines blew up, but nobody believes this sinful lie.

  And here is the third piece of historic news! On 8 July, Miss Carrie Watson will marry Mr. Walter G. Langford of this city!

  But but but—yes, I respect Walter and admire him, truly, but no one can say any thought of this marriage was mine. I was simply informed how lucky I would be to make such a good match “under the circumstances” (Papa’s shadowed reputation); I was not to be silly about it because “grown-ups know best.” I’m not a grown-up, I suppose, just a child bride.

  Naturally the child is scared she’ll be found wanting. Thanks to dear Mama, I am educated by our local standards and can cook and sew. I have taken care of little brothers since the age of five so I might manage a household if I have good darkie help—is that enough? Am I a child? (I think about my tomboy days and snoopy Erskine, and how Papa promised he’d tie net weights to my skirt hems if I didn’t quit climbing trees.)

  In the evenings after school these days, Mama tutors me and my squirming little brothers. We are reading Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was just my age when Romeo “came to her,” as Mama puts it (once the boys are gone). She is trying to teach me about life while there is time, but the poor thing goes rose red at her own words, and as for me, I screech “Oh Mama!” pretending more embarrassment than I really feel. Is it sinful to be curious when a grown man nearly twice my age (and twice my weight) will clamber into my bed, climb right on top of me?

  Mama feels sure he is a decent young man. “What can be decent,” I protest, “about lying down on top of a young girl without his clothes on!” Saying this, I have a fit of giggles, because really, it’s so comical! Mama smiles, too, but feels obliged to say, “Well, Papa will talk to him.” And I cry out, “But what can Papa say? Don’t touch a hair on my daughter’s . . . head, young man, if you know what’s good for you?”

  I know, I know. It’s not funny in the least and yet I giggle idiotically. The whole town must be snickering.

  One day on a buggy ride with Walter, we saw a stallion covering a mare in a corral. Walter got flustered, wrenched the buggy reins and turned us right around. I won’t deny it, I wanted to look back: it was exciting! This body I drag around
is so inquisitive! Cantering along the river, a queer feeling in my “private parts” makes me wonder if that “fate worse than death” might not be bearable.

  Reverend Whidden has upsetting breath and no good answers to such questions: I know that much without even asking. “I daresay,” (he dares say) “things will work out in the end.” What I don’t dare say, least of all to him, is anything about this earthly flesh, this female vessel that yearns and fidgets and perspires in his face, pretending that her sweet virginal inquiries arise from some pure source.

  If anybody finds this diary, I will throw myself into the river.

  Walter is gentle and he tries to tell me that he will not hurt me, but he can’t find a way to say this that doesn’t embarrass both of us to death. He supposes I have no idea what he is getting at, and I can’t show I understand lest he think me wanton and so we nod and smile like ninnies, blushing with confusion and distress. He is so boyish, for all his reputation as a hell-and-high-water cowboy! His embarrassed moments are when I trust him most and love him best.

  After church, he courts me on the old wood bench beneath the banyan tree where our good shepherd, Mr. Whidden, can spy on the young lovers through his narrow window. Is this why Walter doesn’t kiss me?

  In the evening my shy beau walks me down to the hotel to see the new electric lights in the royal palms that line the street or attend the weekly concerts of the Fort Myers brass band at the new bandstand. The whole town turns out to hear patriotic marches in honor of “our brave boys in Cuba.” We’re shipping our cattle to Cuba again, not for those cruel Spanish anymore but for Col. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Who would have thought the Union banner would ever be cheered here in a southern town? The Stars and Stripes are everywhere! Remember the Maine! our cowboys yell, galloping through the streets, raising the dust.