Shadow Country

by Peter Matthiessen

  Leaving the Bay, we met squalls off Indian Key, and fearing for the smaller boat, the girls begged me to turn back. Knowing that Lucius, now seventeen, was an expert boatman already handy with marine motors, I shook my head, being anxious to get home, but during the worst of it, his skiff wallowed with the motor’s weight and took a following sea over the stern that swamped her. Our young women got a terrible fright when they looked back.

  I swung the Warrior around in a wide circle. Coming up astern, I heaved the boys a line as I went by, took them in tow: Julian, steering, tried to hold the skiff on course while Lucius tinkered with his motor. The wind was gaining all the time, with both boats taking a godawful pounding: there was such a surge that at moments the skiff dropped out of sight as the Gulf swallowed her and spat her up again. My towline parted off Pavilion Key and after that, there was nothing to do but carry the women and small children to safety in Chatham River and pray that my son got that motor started, because night was falling and the weather worsening.

  Learning my intention, Laura Collins spread her wings for balance, pitching forward to the helm, and yelped at me like a gull across the wind: we must not abandon those young men to a watery grave. “Turn back! Turn back! I beseech you!” I told her that if we attempted to turn back, the chances were that nobody would make it; the new bride went down onto her knees and prayed and begged, wailing that if her Julian had to drown, she wished to perish with him. When she threatened to hurl herself over-board, I seized her. “No,” I shouted, “you had better not, because if Lucius pulls your Julian through this, as I believe he will, you might feel foolish up in Heaven all alone.” I ordered Kate and Jane to hold her while I piloted the narrow channel into Chatham River.

  Kate was already weeping because her Ruth Ellen, losing her grip on Jane’s frock while Jane helped restrain Laura, had barely escaped going overboard. Exasperated by all the shrieking, I roared at Jane, “I sure hope you can swim, because if that child goes overboard, you’re going after her!” Jane met my glare while making up her mind if I was a cold-hearted rogue or just a coward. But my threat terrified poor Kate, who was weak with sea-sickness. Her one wish, she wept, was to set foot on dry land once more before she died, and when she saw mangrove shadows in the spume and mist, she thanked the Lord. Inland people dread unruly winds and huge, wild waves, when sea and sky rush together and collide in a roaring shapeless chaos without color: once in sight of shore, they feel much safer, not realizing that where sea meets land the danger is far greater. With that onshore wind, at dusk, in such poor light, the Warrior could strike an oyster bar and go aground, get pounded to pieces.

  With good timing and some luck, I rode the boat onto the back of a cresting wave that carried us between the mangrove clumps into the estusssary. I wanted to head straight back out to search for Lucius but there was no high ground in the flooded delta to put passengers ashore and the house was miles upriver. If I failed to return for my stranded passengers, they would surely die, unable to swim against the current or crawl for miles through the river jungle on the banks.

  Having been here before, Jane understood what I was trying to explain, but because I had threatened her, she was impassive, arms around Ruth Ellen. Her cool eyes mocked me. You sure you’re not forsaking them to save yourself? Desperate to stare the lost skiff into sight, I scanned the waters of the river mouth before the Gulf mists closed behind.

  We went upriver. Hearing the motor, Green Waller came down to the dock to take the lines. Somewhere along his rocky road, Green had scavenged some kind of fancy manners, and was raring to try ’em out on the young women. “Howdee do, ladies, and welcome!” he said. I cut off his palaver in a hurry. Lucius was adrift out toward Pavilion Key. I roared, “Light a big fire! Give ’em a beacon!” I gave that order mostly to calm Laura, because in such weather no boat offshore would see a glow over the jungle so far inland, not even if Green set the damn house on fire. He knew this, too, and at once commenced to say so, being insensitive to social subtleties except when in the company of hogs. I stopped him with a fearful glare and he jumped to it.

  I was very frightened I might lose my dearest son. I ranged up and down the bank like a caged panther. Toward daybreak, I sagged down on the porch steps. Laura had sat up, too, but stayed out of sight behind me. Even after I took notice of her, she would not speak.

  Slowly during that long night the storm had died. At sunrise, when I went down to the dock, she followed. I waved her away when she tried to come aboard, she would only be in the way.

  I went ashore at Pavilion Key, asking in vain if anyone knew anything. My daughter Minnie escorted me around, holding my hand. I searched the mainland shore, then the gray and sullen sea for a sign of death or life, knowing the drowned will sink for a few days before they rise again. Unless Lucius had found shelter someplace, those boys were lost.

  At noon, with my fuel almost gone, I headed back into the river, leaden-hearted. The day was dark and the roiled water pouring down out of the Glades looked thick as molten iron. Black cormorants like requiem birds swam down the raining river.

  Two figures, white and lavender, stood before the house, clutching their bonnets: on the Gulf wind their hat ribbons flew behind them. Seeing the Warrior coming upriver with a lone man at the helm, Laura turned and fled into the house.

  “She’s beside herself,” Kate warned as I tied up. “She doesn’t know what she is saying.” Laura ran outside again to scream at me. “Why are you here? Why aren’t you still searching?” When I only nodded, calling to Sip Linsey to refuel the boat, she burst into tears, too exhausted to apologize or protest further. Kate led her back inside.

  Lucius brought Julian back that afternoon. Sometime after midnight they had drifted inshore south of the river mouth, where a small point concealed them from the Chatham delta and the Gulf. At daybreak, they had heard my motor to the north, but her loud pop-pop-pop had drowned their yells. Lucius was still working to remove salt water from the carburetor, and toward noon he got the motor to kick over: they came up Chatham River less than a mile behind me. As the skiff came into view, I shouted toward the house. Laura did not dare come look until she heard Kate’s cry at the sight of two standing figures.

  I shook Lucius’s hand as he came ashore. “What kept you fellers?” I said jovially. My son gave me that bent smile, but they had come too close and his tired eyes warned me they were not ready to joke about it. Though he loved me dearly, Lucius knew me somewhat better than I might have wanted.

  Julian gazed at me over Laura’s quaking shoulders. Stroking her head, he would not meet my eye. His wet dark hair slicked close to his head so that his ears stuck out made him look slight and boyish despite that thin pointed beard; he trembled because he was cold and frightened through and through. On a day warm and humid with Gulf haze, Julian’s teeth chattered. Coddled by Laura, he would languish three days in bed complaining of the ague, and after his return to Fort White, he never spoke again of his Gulf adventure. It was his young wife who suffered most, However: Laura was to lose her baby. Unlike her husband, she forgave me.

  OFF CAPE SABLE

  Green Waller reported that Henry Short had left the Bend the day before bound for Key West in the Gladiator with a mixed cargo of six hogs, a milk cow, two hundred gallons of cane syrup, coconuts, eggs, guavas, and papayas. That storm had built all day after the schooner left, and when it broke, Short was caught somewhere southwest of Cape Sable, managing that sailing boat alone in ugly weather. Even a small schooner needed more sea experience than Henry had for an eighty-mile voyage over the shallow banks west of the Keys in time of storm. Hearing my angry shouting and the news that Short was missing, Jane Straughter wept as if it were my fault that her lost love was all alone out there—as if this danger had be-fallen him because I had driven him away from her out of my jealousy. Two days later, Henry turned up at the Bend. The Gladiator had sunk on the outer banks of Florida Bay and he had been picked right off the masts by my friend Gene Roberts, bound from Key West
for Chokoloskee. “Way them spars are stickin up, you can spot her two miles away,” Gene said. “Hull’s probably all right but you best get there quick before some Key West pirate comes across her.”

  The squall had come up fast out of the south, Henry related when I questioned him. Rather than fight it, he tried to run before the wind, but by the time he came about, the schooner, responding sluggishly with her heavy cargo, remained broadside too long and took a sea over her star-board beam. “I lacked sea knowledge, Mist’ Watson,” Henry whispered. “I sure am sorry.” The only thing Henry had saved was his old rifle.

  Kate took my arm to keep me calm but the fury was already abating. Short deserved credit for coming back at all, because ever since that Tucker business, this nigra had been deathly frightened of E. J. Watson. Even so, he made no excuses but took full responsibility, holding his straw hat to his chest, toeing the ground. I saw Jane watching from the doorway, frightened for him, too.

  With Lucius and Henry, I went south to Wood Key to pick up Owen and Webster Harden and their guns. At Lost Man’s Beach we left the Warrior in the cove at the north end and took Erskine Thompson’s little eight-ton schooner for our salvage expedition—never asked permission, we just took her. As we hauled anchor, Thompson came out—he was probably hanging back, knowing I was angry because he had entrusted my ship to someone else without permission. If my ship’s captain wanted to stay home from now on, I yelled across the water, that was fine by me.

  We kept on going that late afternoon, down toward Cape Sable. Lay to that night on the open Gulf off Sandy Key in a silver calm under the stars. At first light next morning we located her masts, and sure enough, a blue ketch was tied up to her that I recognized as the old Cleveland, Captain Walter Smith.

  Her crew was still asleep below. We reckoned Smith had sent back to Key West to get help with the salvage. We stood off a little ways, eased down the hook. In a while, a man came up on deck to piss. Seeing our boat, he made a move toward the hatch to wake the others, but Owen Harden waved him back at rifle point.

  A decade ago, when I first went to Key West, there were three hundred boats unloading sponges at the foot of Elizabeth Street but now the sponges were fished out in local waters, and now there was new competition from the Greeks at Tarpon Springs—unfair competition, Key Westers decided, because those damned immigrants were cheating, using diving helmets. Smith and others got the homegrown spongers fired up, and they went up the coast and slashed some air hoses, burned a few boats.

  That was Walt Smith’s reputation, quick to bite when anything got in his way. Come to a fight, I was happy it was Smiths, first because Walt Smith deserved to be shot and second because the Harden boys were the right men for the job: the Hardens had made good friends with Guy Bradley when they lived at Flamingo for a year at the turn of the century, and they wouldn’t need much provocation to straighten out Guy’s killer once and for all.

  Henry Short had his old Winchester along, and Henry shot even better than the Hardens—better’n any man along the coast, I’d heard, excepting me. All the same, I ordered him not to show his weapon if it came to any showdown with Key Westers. “Next time those conchs caught you alone,” I said, “they’d lynch you on general principles.” Henry nodded, knowing what I meant by general principles.

  Pretty soon there were three spongers up on deck: Cap’n Walt, small, mean, and quick, and his offspring Tom and that scraggy feller the Hardens called Coot Ethridge who had been belowdecks on this boat when Guy was murdered. And I said, “You know who I am. Cast off your lines.”

  Smith crossed over to the rail and took a leak in our direction to relieve his feelings. In that silver early-morning calm, in that dead silence, in that red sun rising from the fiery shimmer of the banks off to the east, that tinkle of his worn-out bladder would have woke a crocodile a half mile off. While he pissed at us, his glasses glinted and his brain buzzed as he figured out what he was going to do next. Finished, he shook the last acid drops in our direction, hawked, spat, and farted. If he could have mustered up a shit, he might have done that, too. Taking his time, he straightened up and stuffed his mean old prick back in his pants, all the while squinting toward the southward, as if confident that help would show up any second on that horizon.

  Seeing him being so obnoxious, his crew got nervous, and Coot’s voice broke as he called over, “Mr. Watson, we ain’t lookin for no trouble so there ain’t no call to go pointin them guns.” Hearing that, Smith whipped around so quick that he damn near tore off his own pecker. “This vessel was abandoned and we found her first. We are aboard of her right now. That’s the law of salvage. Law’s the law.”

  My temper came up quick as his. “How about Bradley? How about all the lies you told to put the blame on Watson? Law was the law, you sonofabitch, you would have hung!” When I raised my shotgun, his crew dove for cover. “Anyway, you’re not aboard my schooner and you’re not going aboard her, either, cause she’s on the bottom. So you cast off real quick, the way I told you, cause I don’t aim to explain it all again.”

  The Hardens had raised their rifles, too, and the oldest, Webster, interrupted Walt Smith’s thoughts before he could speak again. “You’re thinkin its your word against our’n, now ain’t that right? Only thing is, your word ain’t worth a shit no more on this whole coast nor your ass neither if you don’t get movin.”

  Smith did not like hearing such hard words, never mind looking down so many gun barrels, but he reckoned this was not the time to say so. He gave Webster a wink to let him know that accounts would be settled later. “We got witnesses,” he snarled, as the Smith boy and Coot had jumped to clear their lines, “and they will be showin up here any time now.”

  In the still air, Smith’s ketch moved hardly at all on the weak current. They had drifted clear but were still in gun range. Finally Smith called across the water, “You’ll need hands to raise her, Watson, let alone careen her. We can split the salvage.” I called back, “The damned cargo is spoiled. The ship is mine. No salvage. One day’s wage.”

  That’s how we settled it. Rigged a block and tackle amidships and more lines fore and aft, raised her inch by inch between the boats like a drowned whale. Took till noon before her gunwales surfaced, that’s how slow and hard that winching was. Then all hands bailed till her deck came up out of the water, and she wallowed.

  A ship rose on the horizon after midday, drew near in early afternoon. I sat back in the stern where I could cover all three boats with my gun sticking up where all could see it. I was well known at Key West. There wasn’t one man on that other boat who wanted trouble.

  By now a little breeze was picking up. At high tide, we towed the Gladiator eastward, ran her aground on a bar. We careened her six hours later when the tide was down, long about midnight. The hull came out undamaged but her cargo was a total loss, a mess of busted eggs and slimy vegetables, waterlogged chickens, a drowned milk cow, swollen hogs.

  The Smith crew refused to help us clean her out. “Where’s our money?” Walt Smith said. The sea salt crusted on his glasses made this old wharf rat look more vicious than before. I said he’d have to wait till the next time we sold a cargo in Key West. He cursed vilely. “Don’t go drinkin it all up before we get what’s owed us,” Walt Smith said.

  Six hours after that, the tide floated her again. She was riding as high as a white gull next morning when the sun came up like a fireball over the Keys.

  SHOOTING

  We dropped Thompson’s ketch at Lost Man’s and the Hardens at Wood Key and Lucius took the Gladiator home. I told Short to come with me on the Warrior, I would take him to House Hammock through the inland bays. Owen Harden said, “You come see us, Henry”—his way of warning me to be good to Short in case I was still upset over that cargo. Henry shook hands with Owen and Webster and got into my boat without a word and put away his rifle. At a sign from me, he took the helm and entered Lost Man’s River. Passing Lost Man’s Key, he did not glance over that way even once.

 
Where the river narrowed, Short peered around him at the mangrove walls as if seeing the darkness in them for the first time. More and more un-easy, he watched me sip my flask. He said again, “I sure am sorry, Mist’ Watson.” But knowing how the Gladiator yawed when she was overloaded, and knowing Thompson knew that, I had decided that the only man responsible was Erskine, who had turned her over to an inexperienced hand despite the signs of storm. I said, “Well, I know you are, Henry, but you did your best, so never mind about it.”

  After a time he gave a little cough, but not until I looked his way did he come out with it. “Sir? How might Miss Jane be gettin on?” I took a swallow of white lightning. “Miss Jane?” And he said, “Yessir.” “The mulatta gal?” He paused. “Yessir. The mulatta gal.”

  That was a pause I didn’t care for. I took another swallow, then a draw on my cigar, breathing the smoke into his face. I said, “She is aiming to get married off to a coal-black nigger by the name of Reese.” I saw the blood rise to his cheeks, which goes to show how light this feller was. “Something wrong, Henry?” I said.

  Another pause. Then he said, “Nosir. Nothing wrong with it. Please give Miss Jane the respects of Henry Short.”

  “Give Miss Jane the respects of Henry Short.”

  “Yessir,” he said, scared but stubborn. “Miss Jane Straughter.”

  “Give Miss Jane Straughter the respects of Mister Henry Short?”

  “Nosir.”

  We went inland up Lost Man’s River and north through Alligator Bay. Henry flinched when I swung my gun up kind of sudden to shoot a white ibis passing overhead. I took the helm and he went to the stern to pluck our supper as we went along, and I recall how those white feathers danced and disappeared as the boat turned through the corridors of dusk in those narrow channels. It was a dark evening, overcast, no moon to travel by and dead low water. Twice the Warrior went hard aground before I quit and ran ashore at Possum Key. “We’ll lay over here tonight,” I said.