Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Not long before, a cattle rustler in Hendry County had stung up Captain Cole with a few shotgun pellets. “Too bad that hombre didn’t know his business,” Papa said, with a very hard expression. That made him laugh and he calmed down then and apologized for all his cussing: it was too long, said he, since his knees had suffered the chastisement of a hard church floor.

  A moment later he removed my arm from his and turned me around to face him. In a tone cold and formal he said he’d consented to this marriage because it would be beneficial to our family. “I accepted their conditions only because I’m not in a position to dictate my own. Even so, I intend to protect my loved ones from the mistakes I have committed in this life.” He brooded a few moments. His expression hushed me when I tried to speak. He took my hands in his. “Your marriage has my blessing if you want it. You needn’t beg me to stay away; that won’t be necessary.” He squeezed my fingers urgently in his hard hands. “Please assure your mother I won’t shame the family with my presence.”

  “Papa, I’m the one who was disloyal! It was my weakness, too!”

  “Your mother is not weak.” He rebuked me sharply. “A weak woman would not stand by me as she has nor confront me as she did.”

  I wept. I was mourning his decision to stay away but my sudden tears only revived his hopes. For just a moment his eyes went wide, inquiring.

  But I said nothing so he simply nodded as if everything was for the best.

  How that stoic dignity twisted my heart!

  “And Rob?” I sniffled. “Will Rob come to my wedding, Papa?”

  “Sonborn? I’ll need him.”

  He released my hands and we walked back to his ship without a word.

  The old schooner drifted off, then swung downriver. I ran along the quayside, calling good-bye to my father and my brother, waving both arms trying to summon enough love to banish so much bewilderment and hurt.

  Rob was aloft clearing the boom, which had somehow got hung up. Being Rob, he probably assumed I waved only to Papa, not to him. I did not stop until, still hesitant, he raised his hand at last. Though they were a little distant now, I could hear Papa bellow from the helm. Rob stopped waving and returned to coiling up the lines.

  ERSKINE THOMPSON

  Aunt Jane and the family left, went to Fort Myers, and with them younger voices missing, the place fell quiet. Our house grew smelly, seemed to mope like a old dog off its feed. Me’n Rob was close to the same age but Rob was plain unsociable. When I asked him why he had not stayed in Fort Myers with Aunt Jane and his family, he spoke sarcastical. “That’s not my family. She’s not my mother and she’s not your ‘aunt Jane’ neither.”

  Round about 1899, his stepmother persuaded Rob to join them and attend Fort Myers school. He was older than any kid in class but done poor and give everybody trouble. Give his stepmother some trouble, too, from what the Boss let slip. Though she was kind and done her best, Rob stayed only one school season, so rude to everyone that his daddy took him back.

  Mister Watson had went sour, set inside a lot. Him and his son hardly spoke a word, they was like strangers come in off the river just to camp here, make a mess. It was real lonesome. After Bill House quit the Frenchman and the Frenchman died and them Hardens went to spend a year down to Flamingo, we scarcely seen a livin soul from one month to the next unless you’d count the drunks and niggers rounded up for the fall harvest.

  Miss Carrie was soon spoken for by Walter Langford who was kin to the Lee County sheriff, so her daddy knew he’d get no trouble in Fort Myers that he didn’t ask for. Mister Watson’s rowdy ways got him throwed in jail a time or two in Tampa and Key West but he always ducked bad trouble in Fort Myers. Sail up the Calusa Hatchee in the evening, tie up after dark. Never stayed long, never went to no saloons: we done our business first thing in the morning, went on home. In Fort Myers, Mister Watson dressed nice and talked quiet, never wore a gun where you could see it, but he always had a weapon on him and he kept his eye peeled.

  Aunt Jane begun to waste away but stayed real cheerful, so her husband told me. She was sick of her illness and did not want to keep Death waiting too much longer. When he said, “You’re not afraid of death, I see,” she smiled and said, “I guess I had it coming.” Telling me this, he smiled himself, though I never knew if he was smiling at her joke or smiling because she could joke about such things or smiling because this Island boy didn’t get poor Aunt Jane’s joke and don’t today.

  Once in a while, we’d visit Netta and our little Min, who was living these days at George Roe’s boardinghouse at Caxambas: Netta aimed to marry Mr. Roe and later done so. At Roe’s, the Boss made the acquaintance of Josephine Jenkins, my mother’s half sister. One day he invited my aunt Josie home to stay but not before asking Netta if she minded. Netta had some rum in her that evening and was feeling sassy. “Mister Ed,” said she, “I don’t mind a bit so long’s you keep that durn thing in the family.” Everybody laughed to beat the band and I did, too, cause it felt so good just to belong.

  Josie was small and flirty as a bird, switching her tail and tossing her black curls. Said she only come to Chatham to make sure the boys—her brother Tant and me and Rob—was treated decent by that old repperbait, but as Rob said, what she was there for was to look after Old Repperbait under the covers. At supper she just danced away when he reached out for her, but them two didn’t waste no time getting together after dark, and next day us boys was told to sleep down in the shed. “This place ain’t built for secrets!” Josie said.

  Josie had a baby while she lived there called Pearl Watson. What with Rob and Tant and Baby Pearl, along with Netta and Minnie at Caxambas, Mister Watson and me had us a real family like before.

  Tant was only a young feller then, not much older than me. His mother was my grandmother Mary Ann Daniels. There was Danielses all along this coast and big litters of their kin. The men was mostly straight black-haired and black-eyed, breed Injun in their appearance, and they moved around from one island to another. By the time they got finished—and they ain’t done yet—everybody in the Islands had some kind of a Daniels in the family.

  Tant was more Irish in his looks. Black hair but curly, had a little mustache and Josie’s small sharp nose. He was tall and scrawny. Never farmed nor fished if he could help it, had no truck with common labor. Times Mister Watson went away, he fooled around making moonshine from the cane or went out hunting, you never knew where Tant would be from one day to the next. Never married, never lived a day under his own roof, but he was a sprightly kind of feller who made people feel good and was always welcome. Played hell with the plume birds while they lasted, brought wildfowl, venison, and shine from one hearth to another all his life. “I’m livin off the land,” Tant liked to say, “and drinking off it, too.” He were mostly drunk even when working, nearly passed out into his dinner plate. One time he leaned over and mumbled into the Boss’s ear so all could hear him, “Planter Watson? Ain’t none of my damn business, Planter Watson, it sure ain’t, but it sure looks like some worthless rascal been drinking up all your profits.” How the Boss could grin at that I just don’t know.

  We hardly seen hide nor hair of Tant, come time for cutting cane. Tant hated stooping all day long amongst the bugs and snakes, muscles burning and brain half-cooked and the earth whirling. Nobody who ain’t done it knows how frazzled a man gets with weariness and thirst, whacking away in the wet heat at that sharp cane with them hard leaf tips that could poke your eye out. On top of half-killing you, the work was risky; them big damn cane knives, sharp as razors, could glance off any whichy-way when a man was tired. One swing from the man next to you could hack your arm or take your ear off, or your own blade might glance off stalks and slash an artery. So what he done, he persuaded the Boss how he’d save him money supplying fresh wild victuals for the harvest workers, venison and ducks and gator tail or gophers, whatever was wanted. A hunter as good as Stephen S. Jenkins would be plumb wasted in the cane field, is what he said. “That’s right, boy,” M
ister Watson would agree, “because you are bone lazy to start with and too weakened by cane spirits for a good day’s work.” And Tant would moan real doleful, saying, “Oh, sweet Jesus, if that ain’t the God’s truth!” Mister Watson would curse and threaten him, but in the end, he always laughed and let him go.

  • • •

  Mister Watson scraped his help at Port Tampa and Key West, lodged ’em in a bunkhouse in the back end of the boat shed. Told ’em the roof and cornshuck mattresses was free of charge but a half day’s pay would be deducted for their grub. Them field hands worked all that hot cane in bad old broken shoes, no boots, no gloves, nor leggins, not unless they rented ’em from Mister Watson.

  Like I say, most of our cutters was drinkers or drifters, wanted men, runaway niggers, maybe all them things at once. Anyplace else that sorry kind of help was here today and gone tomorrow but on Chatham Bend there weren’t nowhere to go to, nothin but mangrove tangle and deep-water rivers swarmin with sharks and gators. Them men was prisoners, couldn’t get away, and the Boss’s talk of Injuns and cottonmouths and giant crocodiles kept ’em too scared to try. Knowing how hard it was to train new help, Mister Watson made sure them men was always owin. He never let ’em off his plantation except they was dead sick or too loony to work or just beggin to give up all their back pay for a boat ride to most anywhere, county jail included.

  Aunt Jane was hearin rumors in Fort Myers, the Boss told me. Laughed about it but I seen that he was bothered. She said, “Do unto others, Edgar Watson, as you would have them do unto you.” And he asked her, “You think them scum wouldn’t do the same unto Ed Watson the first chance they got? That’s human nature.” “You’ve grown hard-hearted,” she would say, shaking her head. And he said, “No, Mandy, I am not hard-hearted but I am hard-headed, as a man must be who aims to run a business in this country and support his family.” He’d talk about that big hotel we seen at Punta Gorda and the Yankee railroad men who was investing in frontier Florida on both coasts. Them capitalists and tycoons and such used up whole gangs of niggers and immigrants, treated ’em any way they wanted and no interference from the law, having paid off all the bureaucrats and politicians—he’d go off on a regular tirade.

  As time went on, something changed there at the Bend. Mister Watson grew heavy and stayed dirty. The crew took to drinking up Tant’s moonshine, having got the idea they were free to let things go. When he shouted, they would all jump up, rattle things around, go right back to their drinking. Finally he went on a rampage, cleared that whole bunch out. Told ’em they had drunk up all their pay along with all his profits. He picked a day when Tant were gone, not wanting to fire Tant, who drank more than the rest of ’em put together.

  That day I come in from Key West, I hardly had the boat tied up when Josie and them others come quacking down the path like a line of ducks, with Mister Watson right behind kicking their bundles. Ought to be kicking their fat bee-hinds, he roared. Hollered at me to haul them whores and riffraff off his river before he blowed their brains out, them’s that had any. Take ’em out into the Gulf and feed ’em to the sharks. His own little thin Pearl looked scared to death.

  Nosir, they weren’t sassing him that afternoon! They had played with fire and they knowed it. Only after they was safe downriver did they start in bitchin and moanin about unpaid wages.

  CARRIE

  SEPTEMBER, 1898

  Frank Tippins thinks he loves the girl who married his friend Walter Langford!

  Mr. Tippins, who might run for sheriff, is in his early thirties, tall and lanky, black handlebar mustache. His black and bag-kneed Sunday suit, white shirt, string tie and waistcoat, cowboy hat and boots, remind the ladies of Wyatt Earp of the Wild West, a book much admired by our reading circle.

  Like his colleague, Mr. Earp, Frank Tippins seems calm, courteous, softspoken, though much more at ease with horses than with me. He confided that his broad Western hat, which provided shelter from the sun and rain in his cow hunter days, had also served as a water vessel for his bathing. (He might still bathe in it, for all I know.)

  From Mr. Jim Cole’s point of view, says Walter, Frank Tippins would make a mighty fine sheriff mainly because, as a onetime cow hunter for the Hendrys, he was bound to sympathize with the cattlemen in regard to disorderly conduct by the cowhands and undue enforcement of cattleroaming ordinances. Those men also like Frank Tippins because he is so amiable with Yankee visitors, making a virtue of the flies and cow dung and dirt streets that decent citizens perceive as the greatest of our fair city’s afflictions. (Walter says that honor falls to the disgraceful lack of a river bridge and a road north, far less a railroad, that might permit our isolated town to enter the Twentieth Century.)

  After his cow hunter days, Mr. Tippins worked at the newspaper. Being somewhat educated, he no doubt supposes that his education is the way to show a former schoolteacher how serious he is, how deserving of her daughter, never mind that this young flibberty-jibbet is already married. And so he speaks carefully, wishing to display his knowledge of local history (and good grammar) in a modest way.

  When he arrived here from Arcadia in the early eighties, the last Florida wolves still howled back in the pinelands and panthers killed stock at the very edge of town. Fort Myers had no newspaper, its school was poor, its churches unattended, and shipping was limited to small coastal schooners. “Even so, Mr. Tippins,” Mama assured him, “your city seems quite splendid to someone from the Ten Thousand Islands, not to mention the Indian Territory or even Columbia County in north Florida where Mr. Watson’s family is located—” She stopped right there. We both sensed this man’s craving to know anything we might reveal about her husband, and knowing he’d been found out, he became uneasy. “Yessir, ladies, this was a cattle town right from the start, the leading cow town in the secondlargest cattle state in our great nation. The only state that has us beat is Texas. Course cowboys are pretty much the same wherever you find ’em. Called us cow hunters around these parts because we had to hunt so many mavericks that would not stick with the others. Some of the older riders called ’em ‘hairy dicks’—”

  “Hairy dicks?” inquired the child bride.

  “Heretics, I believe Mr. Tippins said.” A rose-petal flush livened Mama’s pallid cheeks. Mr. Tippins glared down at his boots as if he had half a mind to chop his feet off. “Yes, ma’am! Hairy-ticks! Hid back in the hammocks. And some folks called us cracker cowboys because we cracked long hickory-handled whips to run the herd. Besides his whip, each man carried a rifle and pistol to take care of any two-legged or four-legged varmints he might have to deal with. A good cow hunter can whip-snap the head clean off a rattler and cut the fat out of a steak.”

  I watched him, eyes wide, biting my lip. He knew we were amused but could not stop talking, like a show-off boy bicycling downhill who gets going too fast and scares himself by risking an accident.

  “Between the wolf howl and the panthers screaming and the bull gators chugging in the spring, the nights were pretty noisy in the backcountry, and weekends here in town were even noisier. Saturdays the boys would ride in drunk and make a racket, but we didn’t have houses of ill fame like Arcadia.”

  At Mama’s little hymph! I giggled, and Mr. Tippins glared down at his boots again, convinced he had scandalized these genteel Watson ladies. He was probably reminding us of Walter’s youthful scrapes but Mama gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I pray you, please continue, Mr. Tippins.”

  “Well, the churches were pretty strong here. Which means good strong women,” he emphasized, to recapture some lost ground. “Maybe that’s why some of our boys had to let off steam. One time they rode their horses right into a restaurant, shot up the crockery. Course the fact that the new owner was a Yankee might had something to do with it. That restaurant closed down right then and there. The owner had to take work as a yard hand. A white man!”

  “Wasn’t your friend Walter one of those wild boys, Mr. Tippins?” He took quick cover by inquiring about Mama’s maiden
name, only to blush over his own loose talk of maidens.

  “Jane Susan Dyal.” Mama offered a sweet smile, spreading her fingers demurely on her shawl. “As a young girl in Deland I was known as Mandy but there is no one now who calls me that.”

  “Except for Papa.”

  “Except for Mr. Watson.”

  When Mr. Tippins suggested that a visit home to see her family might do her good, she shook her head. “I’d already escaped Deland when Mr. Watson found me teaching in the Fort White school.”

  “Before his association with Belle Starr?” His innocent expression didn’t fool us. Mama’s long pause was a rebuke.

  “Before we emigrated to the Oklahoma Territory, Mr. Tippins.” She looked up from her knitting to consider his expression. “You appear to be very interested in Carrie’s father, Mr. Tippins. He takes care of his family, helps his neighbors, pays his bills. Can all of our upright citizens who gossip and trade rumors say the same?”

  This feisty side of Jane S. Dyal of Deland always astonished me. I’d only seen it rise in defense of Papa. Ignoring the man’s stammered answer, she held out a tiny sleeve of pale blue knitting. “I’m starting this for your first boy, sweetheart. Papa’s first grandson.” I recall that little pale blue sleeve because his grandson was never to arrive.

  BILL HOUSE

  Isaac Yeomans liked to take a risk, see how far he could stretch his luck. One day at Everglade, Mister Watson was tyin up his boat when Isaac sings out, “Any truth to that there readin book about a feller name of Watson and the Outlaw Queen?” And Isaac’s friends grinned kind of nervous, makin it worse.

  Mister Watson finished off his hitch before turning around to look us over. “That same book says this Watson feller died breaking out of prison,” he said then. “Nobody asking nosy questions better count on that.”