Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  A woman named Myra Maybelle Reed lived with Tom Starr’s son. Mister Watson was there only a year when somebody put a load of buckshot into Maybelle, shot her out of the saddle on a raw cold day of February ’89 and give her another charge of turkey shot in the face and neck right where she was laying in the muddy road.

  At her funeral, Jim Starr accused Mister Watson of murdering his woman. They tied his hands and rode him over to federal court in Arkansas but after two weeks he was released for want of evidence. Went on home, got framed by friends of Belle, jailed for a horse thief but escaped from prison, headed back east. That’s how he wound up in southwest Florida, which was about the last place left where a man could farm in peace and quiet, and no questions asked. Only thing, going through Arcadia, a killer named Quinn Bass pulled a knife in a saloon. “Gave me no choice. I had to stop him.”

  Mister Watson cocked his head to see how I was taking his life story. He never said who killed Belle Starr nor what “stopped” meant for Bass.

  “Any questions, boy?” Them blue eyes dared me.

  “I was only wonderin if that Quinn Bass feller died.”

  “Well, death was the coroner’s conclusion.”

  Mister Watson never talked no more that evening. For a long while, he sat leaning forward with his hands on his knees like he aimed to jump right up and leave only couldn’t remember where he had to go. But what he’d told gave me plenty to think about while me n’ him set at his table in the lamplight, waiting for Rob to come and get his supper. He never come.

  I went outside for a moonlight leak, feeling small and lost under cold stars like I had awoke in that night country where I will go alone like Mister Watson, knowin him and me won’t get no help from God.

  I stared again. The schooner was gone, drifted away, like I had forgot to tie her up. I backed away, wanting to run, but there was nowhere but them blackened fields to run to. The earth was ringing in a silver light, the stars gone wild.

  FRANK B. TIPPINS

  In the first days of 1901, a young feller from the telegraph came by my office with a request from the Monroe County sheriff that Lee County detain an E. A. or E. J. Watson as the leading suspect in the murder of two Key West runaways at Lost Man’s River.

  In order to locate Mr. Watson, the first place I would have to go was his own house. To console myself after Carrie’s marriage—to pick the scab, said sly Jim Cole, who saw right through me—I’d continued paying calls on Mrs. Watson after she and the boys moved to Anderson Avenue because Carrie came to visit every day. Ashamed of myself, I observed young Mrs. Langford for signs of discontent with Walter while listening carefully for any stray word that might feed my nagging curiosity about her father. At that time, I had glimpsed that man just once and from behind, a broadbacked figure in a black Western hat and well-cut suit, walking down First Street to the dock one early morning.

  Ordinarily I walked unarmed around Fort Myers. That day I strapped a pistol underneath my coat. With Miss Carrie’s mother failing fast, it seemed wrong to intrude on that sad family, and halfway there, I decided it made more sense to find Walt Langford and see what information he could give me, accepting the risk that he might warn his father-in-law. Circling back toward Langford & Hendry, I wondered if I was afraid, then caught myself brooding yet again about how a bad drinker like Walt Langford might abuse a girl—a woman—who was no more than a child. This rumination made me shift my wad and spit my old regret into the dust, making old Mrs. Summerlin—Good morning, ma’am!—hop sideways on the boardwalk, pretending I was out to soil her shoe.

  Like all of our town’s small emporiums, Langford & Hendry down on First Street was a frame building, slapped up quick on a mud street in a weedy line of ramshackle storefronts, livery stables, and blacksmith sheds—downtown in a cow town, as Cole said. Outside the door which led to the upstairs offices hunched Billie Conapatchie, a Mikasuki Creek raised up and educated by the Hendry family. Billie wore a bowler hat instead of the traditional bright turban; his puff-sleeve calico Injun shirt with bright red and yellow ribbons had been stuffed into old britches which stopped well short of his scarred ankles and scuffed feet. Squatting at favored lookout points, he spied on white-man life while awaiting the next public meeting or church service, or funeral or theatrical or wedding. Despite faithful attendance at these functions, he understood scarcely a word—or so he pretended, having come close to execution by his people for learning his mite of English at Fort Myers School. What passed through Billie Conapatchie’s head was a great mystery, but I suspected that, even as an outcast, he served his people as sentinel crow, alert for some dangerous shift in course these white men might be making. At the same time, he had never lost his deep indifference to our ways and so he only grunted at my greeting, keeping an eye on the thickset curly man now crossing the mud street who was fixing us in place with a pointed finger.

  “Nailing down the Injun vote there, Sheriff?” In his dread of silence, hurrying from one encounter to another, this man would shout some jovial insult to get attention to himself, taking over every conversation even before he waddled in to join it. When I pretended not to notice the big pink hand already thrust in my direction, it fell to yanking at the crotch of his big trousers. Undaunted, Jim Cole yelled at Billie, “Who gets to vote first? Injuns or women?” Cole jeered his silence. “How’d that go, Chief? Don’t go talking our ear off, Chief!” He coughed up a short laugh at his own wit and followed me into the building, heaving himself up the narrow stair behind me.

  Like all our cattlemen, Cole had invested his war profits in a big new house, but unlike the Summerlins and Hendrys, and the Langfords, too, this man had no love for the land nor any feel for cattle. Despite all his coarse cowboy talk, as old Jake Summerlin used to say, Cole sat a horse with all the style of a big sack of horse shit.

  Banging open Langford’s door, he boomed, “Well, lookee who’s settin in his daddy’s seat, and poor ol’ Doc not cold yet!” He shouted his raucous laugh to the whole thin building. Grinning, Walt waved his guest into the one comfortable chair, where Cole sprawled back like an old whore and slapped his hands down on the leather arms. “How’s the child-wife, you damn cradle robber? How come we ain’t seen no sign of kiddies?”

  I ignored Cole’s wink, ashamed because I’d wondered the same thing, and sorry that poor Walt felt obliged to snicker. No longer ruddy from his years out in the pinelands, Langford was red-streaked near the nose from the whiskey he sipped to kill long hours in his father’s office.

  “Got some business with you, Walt,” I said. Cole grumped, “Well, spit it out then, we ain’t got all day,” and Langford said, “No use trying to keep a secret from Cap’n Jim, ain’t that right, Jim?”

  “Isn’t,” Cole said, mopping his neck. “Ain’t Carrie told you about isn’t? You ain’t out hunting cows no more, young feller, you’re a damn cattle king! If I’m putting you up for county commissioner, you got to talk good American, same as the rest of us iggerant sumbitches.”

  There was something shrewd and humorous about Jim Cole, something honest in his cynicism and lack of tact. All the same, I found it hard to smile. To Walt, I said, “I heard your father-in-law might be in town.”

  Langford moved behind his desk and waved me to a chair. “That so?” he said.

  I took my hat off but remained standing, gazing out the narrow window at the storefront gallery across the street where on election day a Tippins crowd had been scattered by gunfire and the whine of bullets from the general direction of the saloon owned by Taff O. Langford, the incumbent’s cousin. I stayed where I was until a few regathered, then spoke the lines that won me the election: They have the Winchesters, gentlemen. You have the votes. Sheriff Tom Langford was turned out of office the next day.

  “Goddammit, Frank, don’t stand there looming just cause you’re so tall.” Cole’s smile looked pinned onto his jowls. The eyes in his soft face were hard—the opposite of Langford, whose eyes were gentle in a face still more or less lean. Cole ha
d a long curlicue mouth and nostrils cocked a little high like pink and hairy holes, snuffling and yearning for ripe odors. “First you take ol’ T. W.’s job and now you’re doggin Carrie’s daddy who ain’t even in your jurisdiction. And here Walt’s daddy ain’t been dead a year and Carrie’s mama fadin down right before our eyes. That’s what Walt here has to tend to every morning, noon, and night. And even so, you come banging in here—”

  “Easy, Jim.” Langford was smiling, holding both hands high. “Frank and me rode together in the Cypress, we’re good friends. He’s always welcome.”

  Jim Cole had been hollering so loud that folks had stopped out on the street under the window. What Cole was really angriest about was my refusal to support his alibi when, three months earlier, a revenue cutter impounded his ship at Punta Rassa. On her regular run, the Lily White had delivered cattle to the Key West slaughterhouse, and rather than make the return run with her holds empty, she had met a Cuban vessel off the Marquesas to take on a rum cargo on which no duty had been paid. Cole testified that his rascally captain had taken on that contraband without his knowledge. No one believed this and some wondered at the greed that drove prosperous businessmen to skirt the laws of the democracy they claimed to be so proud of, steal from their own government by overcharging for their beef while paying their lawyers to cheat it of its taxes.

  I said to Langford, “Trouble in the Islands.”

  “I know that, Frank.”

  “He’s in town, then?”

  “No.” Walt raised his hands as if I’d said, This is a stickup. “I never saw him and I don’t know where he’s headed so don’t ask me.”

  “Dammit, Walt, he’s got no right to ask you!” Cole exploded. “Got no jurisdiction!”

  Langford accompanied me onto the landing. “He’s the only suspect, then?”

  “So far.” I shrugged. “No known witnesses, no good evidence, and not much doubt.” I started down the stairs.

  “Don’t upset Carrie, all right, Frank? She never saw him. He stopped only long enough to say his last good-byes to Mrs. Watson. Admitted there’d been trouble. She told Carrie.” Langford awaited me. “That’s the truth. He’s gone. Which don’t mean I will let you know if he comes back.”

  Jim Cole boomed out, “If he comes back, I’m running that man for sheriff!” Langford guffawed briefly. “Ol’ Jim,” Walt sighed, pumping out another laugh, as if unable to get over such a comical person. I shook my head over ol’ Jim, too, to help Walt out. That old Indian watched us.

  SARAH HARDEN

  Mister Watson snuck back from north Florida a few years later, and after that he was seen twice each year. Stayed just long enough to see to his plantation, disappear again. He got away with behaving like nothing happened because that’s the way his neighbors behaved, too. Never so much as a scowl or a cold word, not even from folks such as us who was friends with those poor young people and had to bury them. Nobody accused, far less arrested. Them Tuckers were just runaways, just conchs, Key Westers—those were the excuses. But the real reason—and Owen was the only one who would admit it—was our fear. Knowing how bold the killer was, we knew he might be back. And when he came and seen he’d got away with it, he showed up more often, until finally he came back for good.

  Not that Hardens were real warm to Mister Watson, the way we were before. But we weren’t as cold as I thought we should be neither, and he made it harder to be cold each time we seen him. He had eased up on his drinking and lost weight, he was cheerful and lively, and he got his plantation up and running in no time at all.

  By now, me’n Owen was married up, but times was hard. Plume birds gone, the fishing poor—it was all we could do to get enough to eat. Mister Watson brought canned goods, extra supplies to tide us over, always protesting how he couldn’t use it; having been so poor himself, he said, he never liked to see stuff go to waste. He done the same for the whole Harden clan, even two-faced Earl who had tried so hard to get him arrested.

  Me’n Owen done our best to repay him. Gave him fresh fish or turtle when we had some, manatee for stew, maybe palm hearts or wild limes, but we was always more beholden than a proud man like Owen knew how to live with, and his brother Webster felt the same. Only the older brother took advantage. Earl grabbed everything he could lay his hands on, then sniped at the man’s back as soon as his boat was out of sight. Jeered at Owen for not taking more while the taking was good, claimed Mister Watson was just paying in advance for Harden guns to back him up if it come to trouble over Tuckers. I hated Earl for saying that—hated him anyway for how mean he was to Henry Short, not to mention his own wife who was my sister Becky—but I couldn’t be so sure it wasn’t true. Earl’s ideas ate at Owen, too, until finally my man ordered me not to accept so much as a quart of syrup from Ed Watson.

  BILL HOUSE

  From the Frenchman I’d learned the names of his plume buyers and done my best to supply ’em. I even had neighbors helping out while the egrets lasted, cause people was dirt poor at Chokoloskee, all but Smallwoods. Storters still grew cane at Half Way Creek, Will Wiggins, too, but nobody lived there anymore. Mr. D. D. House had moved his cane field from Half Way Creek to the black soil of a shot-out rookery northeast of Chatham Bend that we called House Hammock. C. G. McKinney raised his garden produce on Injun mounds up Turner River and Charlie T. Boggess had a plot at Sandfly Key. Ted Smallwood had two hundred and fifty alligator pear trees on the old Santini claim, shipped pears by the barrel to Punta Gorda and on north by rail, five cents apiece. But most of ’em on Chokoloskee had give up their gardens. Too much rain or not enough for shell mound soil, which has no minerals to speak of: that soil got tuckered out in a few years, same as the women.

  Course the tame Injuns, Seminoles and such, was taking the last plume birds same as us, and them rookeries over by Lake Okeechobee was shot out first. By the turn of the century the east coast birds was gone and the west coast birds was going and the white plumes was bringing twice their weight in gold. Men would fight over egrets and shoot to kill. At Flamingo, the Roberts boys went partners with the Bradleys and for a few years they done all right back in Cuthbert Lake, but elsewhere them birds growed so scarce that hunters would set up at night guarding what small rookeries was left. Them Audibones was agitating harder’n ever, and in 1901, plume hunting was forbidden: our native state of Florida had passed a law against our good old native way of living.

  Most of us thought that law was meant to simmer down them birdlovers but all it ever done was put the price up. Only man who give a good goddamn about enforcement was Guy Bradley who got hisself hired the first Audibone warden in south Florida and took his job too serious for his own good.

  When Guy was shot dead off Flamingo, July 19-0-5, rumors blamed Watson. Then another warden got axed to death near Punta Gorda and that one was laid on Watson, too. Course every man at Flamingo and Punta Gorda knew the names of the real killers but no one turned ’em in. I ain’t saying that’s good, I got my doubts, but any local judge knows better than to mess with an old-time clan that is only taking the wild creaturs that is theirs by God-given right.

  When a third warden got wiped out in Carolina, somebody hollered, Well, E. J. Watson come from Carolina! Made no sense, but all the same, the man’s bad reputation come in handy for anybody in south Florida who was out to cover up a killing. And all this while, not one word said about those Tuckers.

  Before my daddy crippled hisself up with his own ax and I moved south to House Hammock to help out, I worked as guide for a Yankee sportsman, Mr. Dimock. Like most sports, Mr. A. W. Dimock shot at anything in sight, deer, birds, and gators, crocs, and even manatees. We harpooned big sawfish from Chatham River all the way south to Cape Sable, hacked off the saw to sell for tourist souvenirs, left the rest to rot. Them big ol’ fish from long ago is very scarce today.

  Mr. Dimock wrote up his adventures in a famous book called Florida Enchantments. Had his son along snapping pictures for his book that spent most of the day with his head in a black
bag. The photo of his guide was kind of murky but it might been me, cause the man from the east coast who took my place got pulled overboard by a sawfish, split his guts out. Weren’t familiar with the way we done things in the Islands.

  A. W. Dimock was very curious about Ed Watson, who was mostly what us local people talked about in them days. Mr. Dimock put our tales into his book. I couldn’t read but I was told about it good. Mr. Dimock called E. J. Watson “J. E. Wilson” cause his book claimed Wilson had killed seven in these parts and he didn’t want Ed to take him into court for heartburn.

  Sure, the men suspected Ed of maybe two or three, but I’m damned if I know who them seven might of been, unless they was black cane cutters on his plantation. And if his own neighbors never knowed about them seven, how did that old Yankee find it out? If Ed was killing all them people, seems funny their own families never mentioned it.

  Anyways, he weren’t the only feller in this section who had took a life, not by no means. Among plume hunters especially, there was murdering aplenty: rob the plumes, then slip away like otters through the creeks, hide out far back into the Glades. Sheriff never cared much who hid out back in the rivers. If a few went missing, the law seen it as good riddance and was probably right.

  ERSKINE THOMPSON

  In the early days, Mister Ed Watson was touchy about people tellin slander, but he always enjoyed the attention he got for knowing famous outlaws in the Territories and he made the most of them bad stories about himself. Didn’t encourage ’em so much as not quite deny ’em, cause his reputation as a fast gun and willing to use it kept other men from staking claims anywhere near him.

  Good dry ground was running out along the southwest coast but very few tried to settle what was left. People came and then they went: they never stayed long. After Tuckers, that country emptied out all the way south to Rodgers River. Used to be three plantations up that river, royal palms, date palms, too, and tamarinds. Well, quit-claims to all of ’em was up for sale and had no buyers. After all the hard years Atwells put in, their gardens was long gone, cabins sagging, cisterns lined with slime and rot from animals that fell in trying to get their water. Later years when the Storter boys went up in there seining for mullet, they seen crude-painted skull-and-crossbone signs stuck into the bank. Might of been a warning or it might of been a certain feller’s idea of joke, most likely both.