Lost Man's River

by Peter Matthiessen

  He waved vaguely at the wasteland all around him. “These eyes can’t see what all that money went for, and I reckon that’s a mercy. Can’t even smell it. Ain’t nothin left alive out there to smell. But I can hear the deadness of it, night or day.” He rapped the thin wall of his house. “You ever need you a retirement estate, I reckon I know where you could get one pretty cheap.”

  Inside, the house was neat and comfortable, with all blinds drawn against the desolation. “This here is Colonel Watson, Sue.” House spoke in the general direction of the kitchen, where a pretty white-haired woman, wiping her hands upon her apron, peered out at their guest. “Don’t you make no false moves, Colonel,” the blind man whispered for his wife to hear, “cause that poor little lady in the kitchen is deathly afraid of Watsons. Scared you might of come out here to bump me off.” He shifted a chair in Lucius’s direction, then lowered himself with a heavy sigh onto the sofa. “Speaking about bumping off, you might be doing me a kindness,” he confided. “You make a nice clean job of it, don’t make no mess for poor Sue to clean up, I might throw this here retirement estate in on the deal.”

  “Andy, you just stop those kind of jokes!” his poor wife cried, and he said sheepishly, “Now, Sue, you know I’d never leave you out here all alone. Not with all them panthers!” Hearing Lucius laugh, Andy smiled for the first time, and his wife looked reproachfully at this stranger for encouraging her husband’s wry despair.

  “Never sat still in my whole life, now I sit all day,” Andy House said, still surprised. “Can’t get the hang of it. Nosir, God struck this sinner blind, and I don’t know why.” He waved a big hand toward the kitchen where his wife was preparing lemonade and cookies. “She hauls me off to church, y’know, morning, noon, and night, but I don’t think that’ll change His mind, do you?”

  Unsettled by House’s wide clear gaze, Lucius could find nothing comforting to say. And the blind man spared him, folding big gold-haired hands upon his lap. “So,” he said. “I remember that day many years ago when you come to Chatham Bend to speak with Houses.”

  Lucius nodded. “Your dad didn’t care to speak with me, remember?”

  “Colonel, my dad liked you fine. He felt real bad about what happened, as far as the Watson children was concerned. He weren’t naturally unfriendly, you know that—just the opposite. But I reckon he figured that if Watson’s son was out to take revenge, Bill House would probably serve as good as anybody.

  “W. W., known as Bill—my dad—looked just like me, remember? Big nose and ruddy, not what you’d call top of the line for looks. That second time you come, huntin for Henry, Dad weren’t so much unfriendly as plain frustrated. This was mostly because of his own brother-in-law—don’t you put this in your book!—who every year was growin to be more successful in his store while poor Dad endured one failure after another. He was still swallerin the fact that he had ended up in middle life as caretaker for the Chevelier Corporation on that half-overgrowed and godforsook plantation.

  “One time my dad went to see your brother Eddie. Had the money saved for some insurance, and he aimed to show him there weren’t no hard feelings, nothing personal. Told him he wanted to let bygones be bygones, and Eddie acted like he felt that same way. But I bet you won’t drop dead from surprise if I tell you your brother could be, well, kind of malicious. For all his friendly words and jokes, he talked bad about most everyone behind their back. Eddie was very polite that day, and he took Dad’s business, but after that insurance was all bought and paid for, he stood up from behind his desk and he let Dad know that E. E. Watson was a good Christian businessman who done his best to practice his Christian forgiveness, but still and all, Mr. House should of took his business someplace else. And Dad come out of there red in the face, never got over it! He said, ‘See that? Good Christian businessman, practicin forgiveness! Forgive me for just long enough to take my money!’ ”

  Andy House fell quiet, as if giving his visitor an opportunity to defend his brother. With his clear eyes, he seemed to measure not only the workings of Lucius’s brain but the world beyond. When Lucius remained silent, Andy shrugged. “Took you a good while to show up at the Bend to talk with Dad, as I recall. We wondered why. Saved Bill House for last, is what we figured, and that kind of spooked us. I wasn’t but a boy back then, but I can still see your blue cedar skiff coming down the river under sail, how she turned up-current, lost her headway, and touched at our little dock light as a butterfly. I don’t believe you ever used an oar!” He shook his head with pleasure in that memory.

  Hearing his wife fixing a tray, Andy included her in his account of Lucius Watson, knowing she had not missed a word. “Colonel sung out a hello, and he waited right there for an answer before coming any closer to the house—that was Island custom—and when he got it, he come up the path unarmed. All the same, Dad had his rifle loaded, not rightly knowing what Ed Watson’s son was after. Maybe Colonel didn’t know himself, is what my Dad thought. All we knew about this feller, he was keeping some kind of a list, and Dad was on it, maybe number one.

  “Dad told us to get out of the way, there might be trouble. He stood in the doorway, offered our visitor a seat on the screened porch. Colonel said ‘Thank you, much obliged,’ but never crossed the sill. He stood there in the sun on the porch steps, turning his straw hat in both hands, and inquired real quiet and polite if Dad would care to tell him exactly what led up to E. J. Watson’s death that day at Smallwood’s landing.”

  House turned toward his guest. “My dad did not care to talk to you, not really. Granddad House was dead, and Dad had the responsibility for the House family, and here was Watson’s son right on his doorstep. This was more’n fifteen years after the shooting, and by that time the Watson story was all turned around so that Ed Watson was a real fine feller who got murdered because them House people was jealous of his cane! Houses was the ringleaders in a darned ambush, they shot Watson in the back—that story was started up by our own kin!”

  Andy ruminated bitterly, almost as if—because he could not see him—Lucius were not there. “No, Dad never had no argument with Colonel Watson. He felt bad for you. But having heard about that list, he was leery, too.

  “See, Dad never took to Mr. Watson the way Smallwoods done, never pretended to. I believe he told you short and plain how he fired at your dad and probably hit him, and how that was all he aimed to say about it. He would not tell who else was present, let alone who fired the first shot. And he told you you were a damn fool to keep that list. Spoke pretty rough, as I recall, and you went redder’n a redbird. Next, you asked to speak with Henry Short, and I guess you did. That was twenty-five years ago, and now you’re back, wantin to speak with Henry Short again! Don’t look like we’re making too much progress!”

  “It’s just that I’d like to understand things better—”

  “That day Henry stayed out of the way until you asked to see him. When you went over to the boat shed and talked to him alone, Dad kept a close eye on you from the screened porch. Had his gun handy in case you lost your head, tried to shoot our nigra. I reckon Henry was uneasy, too.” The blind man thought awhile. “But you must of come to some kind of understanding, because Henry wouldn’t never tell what Colonel Watson asked nor how he answered. I reckon Henry had lived long enough to know that anything a nigra said could be turned against him.”

  Lucius told Andy that Henry had been tense, which had made his account cryptic and unsatisfactory. If he could locate him, he would like to try again. When the other remained silent, Lucius added, “I was told you might know where to find him.”

  “I might,” the blind man said, still noncommittal. He raised a big hand in a plea for silence while he considered this. Finally he said, “And I might not.” The blue eyes were unblinking, and the silence grew. Lucius knew that any effort to assure House about his good intentions would only make him appear more intent on Henry. Finally he stood up, saying thank you. He fully understood, he said, why Andy had to be careful, but reminded hi
m that if he’d wanted to harm Henry Short, “there were many years down in the rivers when it would have been easy to catch Henry alone. And nobody would have said a thing about it.”

  Andy raised thick colorless eyebrows. “I reckon that is correct,” he said. “Sit down, Colonel. I’ll tell you what I know.”

  ANDY HOUSE

  Henry Short was a very uncommon man. His mother was the daughter of a well-to-do planter from my granddad’s district, out of Spartansburg, South Carolina. She was a white girl but the father was brown—mostly Injun with some white and nigra, what country people used to call red-bone mulatta.

  Now this was in the early years after Reconstruction was got rid of and what they called Southern Redemption had come in, and Redemption was the worst of times for any nigra who still hung on to any notion he was free and equal. Henry’s father was one of that kind, very brave and foolish. He was a handsome kind of feller, and he had him a fine horse from his days out west as a buffalo soldier in the federal militia. Fought Comanches in Texas and the like. He got dead sick of killing Injuns, that’s what he told people, cause in his opinion, it weren’t the Injuns who deserved killing. Talk like that made folks uneasy, black folks, too, and this young feller never fit with neither. He would not learn that a colored man could no longer speak out in the same manner he had got away with during Reconstruction, even in the Indian Territory, where his breed was common.

  That buffalo soldier was not ashamed about his blood, and his pride cost him his life. He rode too hard and talked too much, he figured that was his bounden right as a cavalry soldier and new citizen. Henry’s daddy was just the kind them redshirts and night riders would come after, and when he got mixed up with a white girl—well, that finished him. The girl denied that he had raped her, but nobody paid that no attention. That baby was all the proof they needed that this nigger was too big for his damn britches. Folks never give a thought back then to a brown baby with a white daddy, but a white mother was another thing entirely, never mind that the baby might be the exact same shade, same sound, same smile and smell.

  Henry’s daddy would not repent or beg, and for that he was punished something terrible. A merciful death was about all of the Lord’s mercy he could hope or pray for, but them men tutored him about repentance first—whip, knife, and fire. Them good Christians was just plain “indignant,” that’s what their weekly newspaper reported. But after a while, the evening was gettin late so they give up on his education, just gelded and burned that poor young feller and went home to bed.

  The baby boy was give to a wet nurse and hid away on the next plantation. His mother would slip over there to visit, help as best she could. But Henry weren’t but four years old when that planter moved away and took his nigras with him. It must of broke the poor mother’s heart to see her firstborn carried off just like a slave child! That little boy was riding up behind the man and crying for his mama, so the man got tired of his yowling and threw him down and made him walk. When he couldn’t keep up, the man commenced to whipping him along, and right about then, Mr. D. D. House come down the road.

  My granddad Daniel David House was fiery and stubborn, no one jostled him or told him what to do. He was the black sheep of a well-to-do family, ran away to the War Between the States with his daddy’s favorite horse, went north and south with it. When the War was over, he returned that horse somewhat the worse for wear, and his father cared more about that horse than he did about his boy safe home from war. He was disowned.

  Granddad had two wives as a young man, lost ’em both in childbirth. Bein D. D. House, he figured the mothers must be faulty, so he dumped them children off on their maternal grandparents and hunted up another female that might suit him better. Granddad House was hard that way, though a good man in most respects. When he got married that third time, he headed south to the Florida frontier to change his luck.

  See that old photograph across the room? That fierce-lookin feller in the round black hat is D. D. House, and that scared young thing beside him is the former Miss Blanche Ida Borders, who knew everything there was to know about Christian worshiping. Mamie Ulala and my dad were already in the world when that was taken.

  Riding down to Florida, Granddad seen one of the many things he would not tolerate. This little brown boy on the high road was so scrawny and so weak, and here was this jackass whipping him along. So Granddad rode up, told the man to quit, and when he refused, he knocked him sprawling. Feller hollered, “That there pickaninny is lawful mine to do with what I please!” And Granddad said, “Nosir, not no more he ain’t.” He set that little boy up on his wagon and took him on south to Arcadia. Give him the last name of Short because he was so small and puny, and after that, he pretty much forgot about him. But that little boy never forgot. Far as Henry was concerned, Daniel David House was right up there with God.

  Now Granddad House fought Abolition in the War but he didn’t hold no more with common slavery. He never seen Henry as no slave, and I sure would hate to think we ever owned him. But Henry Short was with my family from the age of four years old, and people always spoke of him as “Houses’ nigger.”

  The family stopped off in Arcadia on the Peace River, homesteaded 160 acres, improved it up, had 5 good acres of bearing orange grove. In them days plenty of kids died off, got pin worms, got big bellies and went all yeller-looking, turned up their toes. But when they went with Granddad over to the coast, ate plenty of mullet, why, they would get well. So he decided to live near the sea, and he loaded ’em all into the wagon, went to Punta Gorda and took ship to Everglade, and farmed for a few years up Turner River. Had to board the hogs up every night, that’s how thick the panthers was in them days. And the kids got well, got meaner’n the devil, and Grandma raised Henry right along with ’em. Henry and my dad was the same age, them two come up together.

  D. D. House raised his boys up to be honest, and most of ’em stayed that way, least till he died, but there wasn’t a one of ’em except my dad was as dead honest as Henry grew to be. He was the most honest man I ever knew, never mind all the pretendin that nigras had to do back then just to stay healthy.

  So Henry started out in life a scared and puny little feller, but later on he grew into his own, six foot two and solid. Had the skull and features of a white man, and his skin stayed light. He had bushy eyebrows, too, and a mustache. He was very clean and neat, shaved every day—Henry Short wore out a lot of old straight razors!

  In his younger years, Henry was well-esteemed in Chokoloskee. Never had no trouble with white folks before Watson died. Ate apart and slept apart—that’s how he wanted it—because Granddad’s family back in Carolina always had nigras and knew how to treat ’em, so Henry Short was treated that same way. He was the only colored on Chokoloskee Island at that time, and there ain’t been one since, not so’s you’d notice. Even today, you can walk around that island for a month and never spot one.

  In Jim Crow days, right up into the thirties, good Christian men was terribly concerned, saying nigras was too primitive to handle their black animal natures around white women. Burnings and lynchings was still popular all around the country, to teach ’em a lesson for their own darn good. That’s what become of Henry’s daddy, and lynchings by fire was all the rage in Henry’s day. So Henry Short always made sure he was never alone with no white woman, no matter what. White woman might holler an order to come help her—even Grandma Ida!—and he’d go stone-deaf on her unless other folks was there to witness it. A woman wanted Henry Short to do something, she would have to get her man to tell him, that’s how very careful Henry was.

  One time our men was out huntin in the Glades, and Henry was hunting right beside ’em, so it bothered Dad to see Henry always eatin a ways off and by himself. So my dad said, “Henry, you just bring your plate on over here, you set with us.” Well, Henry went deaf on him, pretended he didn’t hear. So Dad said, “Come on, boy, dammit, ain’t nobody lookin, we’re out here by ourselves!” And Henry just shook his head, he would not do i
t, not until Dad got mad and ordered him to do it—then it was okay. Dad told him, “Boy, you best look out you don’t get yourself whipped for disobedience!”

  Later Dad felt sheepish and pretended he was joking, but Henry knew he wasn’t joking, not entirely. After that he would eat with the House men when they were out somewhere away from everybody, but always setting just a little bit off to one side, and not until he’d fixed our dinner first. Finally Dad give up on him, let him eat by himself if that was what he wanted.

  No, Henry Short never forgot what they done to his father. He was a man who knowed his place, and probably that’s what saved his life, more’n one time. Henry fished and farmed right alongside of us, but he wanted to be treated like a black man. Ate apart and slept apart and never talked to no one, hardly, cause there weren’t hardly nobody he could talk to. I reckon he figured that loneliness was his punishment in life for what his mama done, his punishment for being Henry. I don’t reckon he ever once looked up to ask his Merciful Redeemer if he himself done a blessed thing to deserve such a lonesome fate. Henry would figure he deserved a nigra’s life, so he just hunkered down and took it.

  In the year after Mr. Watson’s death, some of them men weren’t so proud no more about that killing and were looking around for somebody to blame. That was when that story started that Henry Short had fired the fatal shot, because being a nigger, he had naturally lost his head. Next, they wanted an explanation of how he got there in the first place, and why that black sonofabitch was armed, and what made him think he could get away with it—they were all for getting to the bottom of this thing right then and there.

  The only trouble was, Henry was gone. Being leery of the atmosphere around that place, he had left Chokoloskee quick and he never went back. He went to fish with the Hardens around Lost Man’s, and got himself hitched up to Libby Harden. Henry was lighter than his wife, but he was supposed to be mulatta and she was supposed to be a white, so there was talk. It tore up Henry, broke his heart, when she run off with another man. That feller was certified white, I guess, but that was about all.