Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“You’re still one week older than I am,” he said, trying to lighten things; she scarcely heard him. “Before your father left Chokoloskee that last time, I begged him not to risk his life by coming back for us. I knew the evil feeling on that island. He must get away to Key West while he had the chance, I told him, and send for us later if he wished. But he was a bold and willful man, and he just smiled and kissed me, saying, ‘A twenty-first birthday is important, Kate, and a promise is a promise.’ Your father was killed because he kept his promise, did you know that?”

“She still forbids any celebration of her birthday,” Addison complained.

Widow and children had traveled to Neamathla to stay with her sister Lola. “Mr. Burdett came to visit. He stayed on and we married. He gave my children his name.”

“We felt lost,” Addison muttered, avoiding Lucius’s gaze. “I said, ‘Well, Mama, who are we, then?’ We felt like nobody at all. Then kids in school found out our real name.”

Lucius nodded. “Someone always finds a way to let you know what you don’t need to hear.”

“For years after we left Chokoloskee, I exchanged letters with Mamie Smallwood, who took us in that day and was so kind. A few years ago my Ruth Ellen went there for a visit. Wilma Smallwood-she never married-was running the store by then. Wilma showed that poor girl these dreadful clippings-terrible things that had been written about her father. She didn’t ask to see them, Wilma just showed them. Ruth Ellen was horrified. When she came home, she asked if it was true that Papa had murdered our dear Hannah and those men, and I said, ‘No, honey, it was his foreman.’ ”

Upset by her own reference to Leslie Cox, Edna rose abruptly, then busied herself at the piano, straightening the photos.

Because “John Smith” was not only a fugitive but a kinsman by marriage to whom he was indebted, his father had instructed Edna to keep his real name secret. Lucius himself had never been told much more about John Smith than he had picked up in the first five minutes. He could have used a friend of his own age to hunt and fish with but Leslie Cox had no idea how to be a friend, let alone have fun. All he cared about was killing more game than anybody else and getting the credit for bringing back more meat. He stayed mostly half drunk, he terrorized the workers, he made mean remarks, poking up trouble.

Edna looked around as if hearing someone slip into the house, then lowered her voice to a near whisper, confessing that Leslie slipped in close every time her husband turned his back. Complaining that “a man needed a woman,” he would whisper that her husband was betraying her with those Daniels sisters on Pavilion Key. But after all the trouble at Fort White, she was so scared of more violence that she dared not tell her husband she was being harassed. In those last weeks of that long hot summer, afraid for her children in the deadly atmosphere at Chatham Bend, she had mostly stayed with friends in Chokoloskee.

Lucius nodded. “I left, too. And three weeks later, all hell broke loose, just as you feared.” He turned to Addison. “Your mother is right, Ad. Those killings were Cox’s doing and so were the killings at Fort White. Your dad was not to blame.” But saying this, he felt obliged to add, “As far as I know.”

“Or want to know, right?” Ad said unpleasantly.

“Lucius? Remember when your father hitched our dog Beans to a little red wagon and trained him to pull Addison? And the wagon tipped over, rolling our little boy down the riverbank, and Little Ad so scared of that awful crocodile that he could not stop crying? I can still hear him, across all these years!” She gazed fondly at her son, who was glaring at the wall. “ ‘Little Ad’ is what Mr. Burdett called him before Ad got so big! And Ad was the first one who went south to seek the truth about what happened to your father.”

Lucius smiled at Ad. “ Our father,” he said.

“Time off between jobs, that’s all,” Ad grumped. “I never really cared about this Watson stuff.”

“Addison? You took your whole vacation! Went all the way down there by yourself!”

“That’s none of his damned business!” Burdett lurched to his feet, his big face so menacing that Lucius stood up, too. “Don’t put that in your book! I’ll sue! How do we know what you’re going to write? Why should we trust you?”

“Please stop shouting. This is Lucius .”

“ ‘It’s a closed chapter in my life’-that’s what you said, Mother! So for God’s sake, leave it closed!”

Edna flinched but let his swearing pass. “Lucius is a historian, Ad. And he’s found out your father was not so bad as people made him out. You’re not glad to hear that?”

“What do I care if the man was bad or good, or what was said about him? I care what people say about our family.” To Lucius he said, “Just leave us out of your damned book, okay?” He was deep dull red in the face, his breathing heavy. “I’m not a Watson, I’m a Burdett. I have a good name and I want to keep it.”

“Those dark things happened a long time ago,” his mother mourned. “Maybe folks reading Lucius’s book will understand your father in a different way and we won’t have to be so nervous about who we are.”

“It’s important to establish the truth,” Lucius added quietly, less and less sure of this.

“ The truth! Ruth Ellen was toddling around with the Smallwood kid back in the store, she never saw it. But I ran down to the landing hollering ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ ” Ad gasped up a few breaths before resuming in a stunned low voice. “I fell down in the mud. That crashing of those guns, oh God, I thought the sky was falling down. And dogs! Those dogs were mean and scary, they bit children! They never quit howling and fighting all night long.” His lip was trembling. “I was three years old! Know what I saw? I saw my father fall. I saw the blood. That the kind of truth you’re after here? Professor? ”

“I’m still your brother, Ad. I’m asking you to trust me.”

Burdett shook him off, frantic to go. Lucius followed him toward the door. “Listen,” he said. “Since you feel this way, why did you let me come?”

“I was against it. I still am. But she wanted you and I knew from your letter you would find the way sooner or later.” He went out.

For a little while they sat in silence, giving the house a chance to get its breath. Finally Edna cleared her throat. Ad had gone south a second time but had never said a word about it; she had learned of it in a Christmas letter from the Smallwoods. “And I never questioned him, that’s how scared I was that he’d found out something worse than what we already knew.”

This explained a nagging mystery, Lucius told her. A few years before, someone had gone to Chatham Bend and given the wind-weathered house a fresh coat of white paint.

“That’s him. I’m so glad you mentioned it. Oh, he’s a fine housepainter, Lucius! But even as a little boy, he always seemed… you know. Troubled.” Edna tried to explain that Ad’s abrupt and hostile manner stemmed from confused feelings. “He even considered changing his name to Watson-”

“His name is Watson.” Despite his sympathy, Ad had made him cross.

She shook her head. “Not legally.” She hurried on. “Ad grows lovely vegetables, you know. Spends all his spare time out in his garden.” She stared at the clenched hands in her lap. “He is very very upset today. He will go and drink. His father was a dangerous drinker, as you know.” She looked up. “Lucius? Do you have a good life? Do you have children?” When he shook his head, she flushed and hurried on. “Addison has few friends left: he’s become a loner. He won’t even come to family gatherings. He can’t take a drink but he drinks anyway. He gets aggressive, very very angry. We worry that this violent anger might be dangerous to other people.”