On the River Styx: And Other Stories

by Peter Matthiessen

  “Who’s asking you to accuse anybody? Whose tape deck was it, anyway? Forget it!”

  “Maybe it was my fault, getting him drunk. Maybe he set it down someplace, forgot about it.”

  “Keep talking, pal. You know he took it, and you know you’re not going to report him, and he knows it, too. So let’s get out of here.”

  “Alice, we just can’t pretend it never happened, that’s all!”

  “Why not? Why the hell not?”

  He was surprised by her set, cold expression. She rolled over in bed and would not look at him. He wanted to shout at her, something like “Because we’re citizens!,” but he was wary of her tongue, and did not dare. “Look,” he said, “we’ll face him with it, tell him how crazy he is to try something like this. We’ll talk to him out in the boat.”

  “You talk to him. Talk to him man to man. Straight from the shoulder.” She shrugged him away when he reached down to her. “I’m staying here.”

  GIVING DICKIE AS MUCH ROOM as possible, he sat in the bow, and even from here he could smell the rum on him. He had only to look at the curled lip under the hat, the deep brow creases, the drinker’s simmering belligerence and crazed hauteur, to know that Dickie was awaiting him. The black man did not whistle, scarcely seemed to breathe, and his sculling oar probed so softly through the water that only the wan motions of the bottom life gave evidence of their gloomy voyage across the waste.

  In his anger at Alice, he had forgotten the sunburn cream, and the bright windy morning sun punished his sore places, but for once the guide worked hard to find a snook. In hidden channels Burkett cast where the long finger pointed. No fish rose. Then Dickie, speaking for the first time that morning, whispered, “Dat place. Try’m again,” and Burkett dropped his lure in a brown eddy where the mangrove branches, dragged by currents, bowed and beckoned.

  The earth responded with a hard thump on his line, which veered out sideways from the skiff, slitting the water, then shot back toward the channel. As Burkett hollered, a flashing brown-and-silver fish leapt from the tide, shaking sun-shined drops of water from its gills. It smacked the surface, bringing the water and green leaves to life.

  Dickie was already turning toward it, moving skillfully and fast, before Burkett yelped at him to swing the boat. The fish was stripping too much of the light line, and he worked it carefully. Minutes later, when the lean, strong thing lay gasping on the boards between them, he reached down gently and touched it. “Snook,” he marveled. “How about that? Snewk!” He burst out laughing. “Fisher Woman! Wait till she sees this!”

  Dickie produced a curdled smile of pride, and his eye held for the first time all day. When Burkett said, “Too bad we don’t have that rum along, to celebrate,” Dickie was ready.

  “Yassuh, we’s got it, suh.” Dickie whisked the bottle out from beneath the seat and thrust it at Burkett in a kind of challenge. “Got lef’ dere yest’day,” Dickie said, although most of it was gone.

  Burkett saw that Dickie knew that Burkett knew Dickie was lying. He grinned in exhilaration and relief, waiting for Dickie to produce the tape deck, too. Instead, Dickie offered a dirty plastic glass, and Burkett poured himself a drink, handing back the rum. The guide finished it with a loud gasp and hurled the bottle violently into the mangroves.

  “Dickie, I wonder …” But the man’s head was already shaking, as if loose on a broken neck. “The tape deck,” Burkett finished quickly, to make the premature denial less preposterous. The man hid behind a wild-eyed darkie mask, and rolled his eyes.

  “Nawsuh, nawsuh, ain’t seen nothin, nawsuh!”

  Dickie veered out over the water on his pole, turning the skiff, feet twisting on the worn green paint, black veins ropy beneath dull black hide strangely silvered by sun-dried salt water.

  “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Burkett said after a moment, striking match upon wet match and sucking foolishly on the damp cigarette. “I’d rather not report this to Mr. Whidden.”

  Dickie’s head only shook more violently, as if trying to escape the cords in his straining neck. “Nawsuh, doan go jitterin Judge Jim!” He started to say something else, then stopped.

  “You have to trust me,” Burkett said, awaiting him, but Dickie would not meet his eye. He muttered hopelessly, “Bes’ fish dat same spot, you gone get de next one.”

  Burkett shook his head. “We’re going in,” he said, with as much menace as he could muster. Dark rain clouds off the Gulf shrouded the sun, which had burned him badly. He turned his back and laid his rod down in the boat.

  The frightened guide was muttering to himself, and Burkett thought, I don’t know how to help him. Not until they arrived at the main channel, and the royal palms and roofs came into view, did he turn to confront Dickie a last time. Before he could speak, Dickie howled in anguish, “Why you come roun’ here causin trouble! Everythin goin good befo’ you come!”

  At opposite ends of the boat, they averted their faces and were silent. The last recourse was to threaten Dickie with a public accusation, but he doubted his own will to carry it through. At the expense of a small tape deck and some minor irritation, how much easier it would have been to forget the goddamned “principle of the thing.” He was defeated. Alice is right, he thought, we’ll go on home.

  Judge Jim Whidden awaited them on shore. With the wide-eyed calm of a prey creature, the guide observed the line of white people as he eased the skiff up to the dock. And the people, too, were calm, their collective visage withdrawn, noncommittal.

  “Git that boat on in here, Dickie,” the Judge ordered, although the prow already nudged the pilings. Dickie flipped the snook onto the dock, and Burkett followed.

  The Judge laid a heavy arm across his shoulders. “Tape toy, ain’t it? Well, you don’t wanta worry, Lawyer, I already got a purty good idea about it, a purty damn good idea. I got goin on it soon’s they told me your missus was huntin around the premises for somethin. But you oughta had reported it this mornin.”

  Burkett nodded submissively, and later he remembered this with shame. He longed to dismiss this big man coldly, but the man and the throng behind the man were overpowering. And after all, what harm had this “judge” done? Hadn’t he been friendly and solicitous? And wasn’t he sincere in his outrage now?

  Judge Jim told Dickie to go straight to his office, then led Burkett toward his cabin as if he were taking him behind the woodshed, a big bad boy in shorts caught with a snook. “I got a purty good idea,” he muttered, sucking his teeth by way of savoring his own deductive powers. “Not in my town! Not in my motel they don’t rob the tourists, no sir!”

  “They?” Burkett’s voice sounded too high to him. His red nose and forehead, the red knees and shins, were swollen dry, and he felt a little dizzy, and he heard the nervousness in his own laugh.

  Judge Jim laughed with him, very briefly. “That’s a hot one, ain’t it?” He chuckled without pleasure. “You’re keeping up your sense of humor, boy.” The voice had a new quality, as if the stranger had stumbled and exposed a weakness. There was no mistaking a proprietary tightening of the fingers above Burkett’s elbow.

  “There’s something we have to get straight—” Burkett stopped short, twisting his arm free. “I don’t want anyone accused of theft, it’s just not worth it!”

  “Now hold on, Lawyer!” Whidden reared back a little, squinted. “Nobody’s gonna accuse nobody, just ask ’em a few questions. That’s my bounden duty, ain’t it? I just can’t let ’em think, not for one damn minute—”

  “Let who think?”

  “There you go again, Lawyer!” Judge Jim shook his head and smiled. “I got my eye on the white trash, too, and we got our share of it, believe you me. Nobody’s sayin a man’s okay just cause he’s white, you know. I ain’t sayin that.” He paused for emphasis. “Now Johnny, that’s the yard man, and Aunt Tattie, that tidies up the cabins, and Dickie there, they all good niggers far as I know, and I knowed ’em all my life. But hell, boy, it just stands to reason! I mean,
how many white people you seen around your room?”

  “I’d just rather forget the whole business, if it’s all right with you.”

  For a moment, Judge Whidden considered Burkett’s pale legs, the baggy shorts, red shins, the torn wet sneakers.

  “It ain’t,” he said.

  Judge Jim took Burkett’s arm again, concerned, cajoling. “I mean, you’re down here to try out our fishin, ain’t that right, you and the missus, you want to have yourself a dandy time? And how can I show folks a dandy time when their personal propitty ain’t safe, even?” He patted the other’s shoulder, then swung away along the white shell path toward his office.

  “But you have no authority to make arrests—”

  Judge Jim turned to look him over. “Don’t think so, Lawyer? Sheriff ain’t no further than my phone, and he don’t ask questions. Not here he don’t.” He came back and thrust out a big hand, taking the fish away as Burkett flinched.

  “I’ll take care of that for you,” he said. “Just go on in and chew the fat with your little lady. You all just enjoy yourselves, y’hear? Got a vespers and bingo over to the church this evenin, everyone welcome. First Baptist Church.” He was smiling again, but the smile had jelled. “Bet you people never knowed today was Sunday.”

  Burkett watched him go. He told himself he was too old for shorts, he would never wear these stupid shorts again.

  Alice was watching through the window. “I went over to the café,” she whispered, close to tears. “I thought about what you said about not accusing people, and I wondered if maybe he left it there last night, when he was drunk. I didn’t mention him!” she added hastily, seeing his expression. “I asked if maybe you had left it there.”

  He said nothing. Going inside, he saw that she had packed their bags.

  BECAUSE HE WOULD NOT leave that afternoon (“You got your damned snipe, didn’t you!?”), they fought. At first she said she admired his attitude and was ashamed that she had lost her nerve, but when she realized he meant to see it through, she jeered at his stupid principles and stupid inability to mind his own business that had caused all the trouble in the first place. He got angry, too, dismissing her as the usual fair-weather liberal, the kind that always quit when the going got rough.

  In the dead aftermath, he had drunk most of the whiskey, and later, an indefinite time later, he lay sweating in bed, heart pounding from a dream about night creatures from the open sea drifting over the white flats like moon shadows. A frightened voice tore at the dream—Get out of here, goddamn you! Go away! He turned on his back and saw his wife’s silhouette against the window. A big voice came from across the yard:

  “Goddamnit, nigger, you sit tight till I git my pants on!”

  She leaned across and clenched his arm. “I heard someone outside fooling around, right by our porch! I yelled at him!” Outside the window, a few yards from the porch door, a black man stood still as a rabbit against the hot white moonlight of the yard, and a screen door banged.

  Burkett lay silent a long moment, listening. Then he sat up. “Goddamnit, Alice.” He brushed away her plea. His palms were wet. He got out of bed, stumbling a little. “Goddamnit, Alice.” He repeated it under his breath, then said it aloud again, stupidly, wiping his palms on his pajama legs, trying in vain to concentrate on his wife, who was weeping quietly. He thought, Now why can’t she shut up? He longed to strike away her voice, all the damned voices.

  The last shreds of the dream had blown away and still there was that moaning in the yard. He groped after his clothes, shaking her off. “Oh Christ!” she cried. “Let them fight it out! You just stay out of it!” When he stepped onto the screened porch, the moaning stopped.

  Demanding something, Whidden was cuffing the small black man, who was on his knees. The Judge still had him by the collar and was yanking him back and forth with short piston strokes of his thick arm, both bodies black against the sand.

  “Ain’t your business,” Whidden told Burkett without looking at him. “Go on back to bed.”

  Voices from the street drifted quietly into the yard.

  “Sound like a stuck hawg, don’t it? Hear him all the way down to the dock.”

  “What’s that nigger doin here, middle of the night?”

  “Better find out, ain’t we?”

  “That’s what I’m doin,” Whidden said. “You boys go home.”

  “Who’s that standin in the shadders? That the federal?”

  Burkett stepped into the yard.

  “That there’s my tourist, Speck. The one got stole off of.”

  No one moved. Burkett listened to the frightened moaning of the black man, who lay crumpled where Whidden had shoved him away, and the rasp of Whidden, breathing hard from his exertions, and the crazy ring of crickets, louder and louder.

  “Heard you was interested in shrimp boats, mister.” The voice was quiet. “Take you out night fishin in the Gulf, you so damn interested. Take your wife, too.”

  This slow hard voice spoke straight into his ear. On the soft sand, as silent as a ray, the man had eased up to a point just behind his shoulder.

  Burkett stood still. He did not turn to look. He said, “Thanks.” He said, “We have to leave tomorrow.” Later he recalled having glanced at Whidden, as if seeking protection from the law. Hands on hips, the Judge studied the ground, like a man thinking something through.

  Then Alice’s hand was tugging at his pajama top, and Burkett backed into the cabin as that slow voice said, “Gonna miss the lynchin, then,” and the others laughed. Alice clutched at him, and he put his hand over her mouth.

  Through thin curtains, he watched thin men convene around the Judge. Hands in hip pockets, all but Whidden were looking at the door where he had gone. They were laughing so quietly he could scarcely hear them. He saw the moon glint on a tooth and thought about a ring of panting dogs.

  Then someone spat on the white sand, and the crickets started up again, one by one around the moonlit yard. The Judge spat, too, and turned toward the café. “Lock him in the shed, there, Speck. I’ll get onto it first thing in the mornin.”

  The man in the white Sunday shirt prodded the yard man with his boot.

  “Let’s move it, Johnny.”

  Burkett could not sleep. Going over the sequence of events, he realized it could have been Johnny after all.

  At first light he got up and dressed, ignoring Alice, and crossed the dirty footprints in the sand to the rear door of the café. When nobody answered his soft knock, he sat on the porch steps in the dawn grayness, trying to clear his head.

  An ancient bus came down the street and several black people got out, Dickie among them. Dickie unlocked the café door, and Burkett entered behind him. Shoulders high, eyes glaring, Dickie looked puffed up with threat like a huge bird. “Judge Jim ain’ b’lievin nobody who go ’cusin Dickie! Jes’ cause de man white? You crazy, mistuh!”

  Burkett heard the Judge’s voice. He trailed it into a back room, where Whidden was drinking coffee with the man Speck. The Judge waved his guest to an empty seat, shouting at Dickie to hurry it up with the Lawyer’s coffee, then turned in his wood swivel chair and leaned back, grinning.

  “Rode my tourist here kinda hard last night, now di’nt you, Speck?”

  Speck returned Burkett’s gaze without expression. “Made him homesick, ah guess.”

  “Ol’ Speck never meant no harm, no harm at all!” Laughing, Judge Whidden slapped Burkett’s arm with the back of his hand. “See, Speck don’t rightly come from around here. Come up on them night fishin boats from Frigate Key. To hear ol’ Speck let on sometimes, they’s got better fishin down to Frigate Key than we do here!” Judge Jim leaned over and took a noisy swallow from his coffee.

  “Mr. Whidden, we’re not pressing any charges!”

  “Why, that’s all right. We’ll press ’em by ourselves.”

  When Whidden put his hands behind his head, still chuckling, Burkett struggled to control his voice. “Look,” he said, “you have no author
ity. I’m not leaving here without talking to the Sheriff—”

  “Why, sure you are!” In sudden anger, Judge Jim shouted, banging his chair down hard. “Sure you are, boy! That’s just what you’re going to do!” He folded his arms across his chest, nodding his head. Then he smiled again. “Soon’s you pay up, of course.” Burkett was still staring at him, and he said comfortably, “You told us last night you was leavin, so I give up your room.”

  “Between midnight and this morning?”

  “Yessir, between midnight and this mornin.” Whidden was trying not to laugh. “Yessir, I give that room up to ol’ Speck here. Speck been needin a room in the worst way, ain’t that right, Speck?”

  Dickie’s head appeared out of the corridor. Looking at the wall, he said, “How he want dat coffee?”

  “Lawyer likes it integrated, ain’t that right, Lawyer?” Judge Jim sighed. “Dickie, c’mere a minute.” Contemplating the Lawyer, the Judge placed his fingertips with light restraint on Dickie’s forearm.

  Dickie was staring blindly in the general direction of the splayed white woman on the girlie calendar over Whidden’s head, and noticing this, Speck sat up slowly, stiff as a bird dog. “Hey nigger,” he said in a flat voice. Dickie jerked his head so that it stared sideways, out the window, and Whidden’s grip tightened.

  “Lawyer Burkett don’t care none for no ‘Hey nigger,’ Speck. Round here, we’re integrated good. We say, ‘Hey Nigra!’ ”

  The Judge sighed, squinting up at his guest.

  “While back I told you I was gettin goin on this, right? So what I done, I got Dickie in here, and I told him I di’nt much care who done it, him or Johnny, but less I find out quick, it was gonna be hard time for both, and that’s the road gang. So Dickie been tellin me that Johnny got hisself some kind of a Injun woman out in the cypress, that right, Dickie?” The Judge cocked his head back, speaking to Dickie over his shoulder. “Been hard up for money, that right, Dickie?” Chuckling, he let Dickie go, and the black man fled the room.

  “So he says Johnny did it.”