Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“I was still prayin I would not have to shoot but when his gun come up in a snap swing, mine come up with it. I seen his eyes go wide out of his surprise. Happened so fast,” he lamented. “That noise crackin my head as if earth exploded. Mist’ Watson’s face gone redder’n red, looked like a busted tomato.

“ Somebody shot Mist’ Edgar Watson! -that was the first thought come into my head, seein him fallin. All I could think was, Henry Sho’t, these men gone lynch you here today. And right about then my hands told me I had raised that rifle.” He gazed bleakly at Lucius. “The feel of ’em. Told me I fired.” Henry spoke as if sorry that E. J. Watson had not killed him.

“You figured he might shoot you so you fired first-”

The wrapped mitts jerked on the coarse coverlet. “Tha’s what some said later. ‘The nigger panicked!’ ” Henry shook his head. “Weren’t no time to panic. No time for nothing. I just done it.” His brow was clenched in a deep frown. In its concave shadow, his temple pulsed.

“Bill House?”

“Mist’ Bill shot right behind me. All them Houses was good shots, prob’ly hit Mist’ Edguh befo’ he hit the ground, but he was fallin by the time they fired.”

“You know you shot first and you know you didn’t miss.” Lucius paused. “Your bullet killed him.”

The dying man set his bound hand square on the Bible. “Help me God,” he said.

Lucius sat back. That old rumor was true, then, inconceivable and true. In the worst days of Jim Crow, a black man had killed Papa.

As if in terror of his own confession, Short frowned as hard as his scabbed face would permit. A blackish blood spot rose into the corner of his eye. When Lucius put a wet rag to his lips, Henry whispered, “Hell is waitin on me, Mist’ Lucius. After all my prayin.”

“You had no choice. And my father would have died in the next seconds anyway.” He said, “Henry, I’m sorry. You must think I’ve been hunting you all my life.”

“Ain’t Henry you been huntin, Mist’ Lucius.” He closed his eyes and, as if practicing, he lay as still as the corpse of Henry Short. “No mo’ secrets, Mist’ Lucius,” he whispered. “No mo’ lyin.”

Saying good-bye, Lucius recalled Jane Straughter’s message, entrusted to him at Fort White the week before. Hearing it, Henry showed no response- too late, his stillness seemed to say. Lucius leaned forward to repeat it softly: Please tell Mr. Short that Miss Jane Straughter was asking after him. Tell him Miss Jane said to please come visit one day soon. Henry’s eyes flew wide. “ Miss Jane.” Tears glimmered. “Soon,” he whispered.

Bill House and the Grahams rushed to Henry’s cot when his heart faltered and hard spasms yanked his body. When he fell back, he lay as if transfixed, mouth stretched in a famished yawn. Then, in a twitch, as the room moaned, his heart restored blood to the grayed skin, and the mouth eased, and the glaring eyes, returned from darker realms, softened and dampened.

House lingered at the bedside as if awaiting the burned man’s permission to depart with a clear conscience; he seemed unwilling to accept that Henry Short was dying. (In a note from the Grahams a fortnight later, Lucius would learn that Henry never spoke again but sank away and died a few days later.)

On the way south, House said, “You get the truth from Henry you was after, Colonel?”

“Yes, I think so. Which is more than I ever got from you, Bill. You always gave me the impression you shot first.”

“Me or Dan Junior, one. Dan always claimed it.” Bill House grinned. “I ain’t generally a liar, Colonel. But my dad made us promise never to admit that Henry fired.

“See, no two guns sounds just alike, not to a man that has hunted many years with both of ’em. That man was Mr. D. D. House, and that first whipcrack shot came from his old Winchester that he passed along to his colored boy one year when he was too broke to pay him.

“Daddy he never let on what he had heard till he was on his deathbed, 1917. Summoned his three sons that was down there at the landing, made us swear that what he was about to say would never leave that room. Even then, he was extra careful. He did not tell us in so many words that Henry fired, only informed us that he heard the crack of his old Winnie if he weren’t mistaken -said that part twice. But he did add kind of ironical that if Henry fired, he must of been aimin at a bat or something. What he meant: from fifty feet, let alone fifteen, Henry Short were not a man well-knowed to miss.

“Course bein a nigra back when lynchin nigras didn’t hardly make the papers, Henry would never admit he pulled his trigger, not even to me, who was raised up with him and standin right beside him when he done it. Not one man in the crowd that evenin would of raised his hand to stop him: they was very glad to have that nigra’s rifle in the line, because him just bein there was bound to distract Watson and might keep some of ’em from gettin shot. Trouble was, they never let on to their sons how scared they was-so scared they forgot the color of a man because he could outshoot the man who scared ’em. And bein ashamed, they never talked about it or discussed it in the family.

“So it weren’t the fathers but the sons who got hard with Henry. Hated to think that a black man might of took care of Watson and their scared daddies only finished off the job. That’s why some of ’em went to hollerin about Nigger Henry, Nigger Short; ‘Who in hell give that nigger the idea he could get away with that?’ Pretty soon they was sayin that maybe Short’s bad attitude come from the way them Houses spoiled him. Next, some liar spread a story, ‘That dang nigger bragged on killin a white man’ -say that real sweet and soft, you know, which is the sign amongst that coward kind that some poor nigra is headed for perdition. Pretty soon they was tellin how the whole thing was Henry’s doin. ‘Why hell, that nigger lost his head, the way they do! Committed heenious murder! We gone to stand for some hare-brain nigger shootin down a white man in cold blood? We just gone to stand here chawin about it? Ain’t we men enough to go learn that boy his lesson?’ But Henry Short had our House clan behind him, seven men and boys, so nobody would lay a hand on him that weren’t lookin for more feud than they might have wanted. And their daddies kind of nodded along and shrugged and kept their mouths shut. It never come to much and finally died down, because most of them boys was not so much bad fellers as big talkers, and on top of that, in them first years, they couldn’t find him.

“Anyways, I believe today that Henry and me fired shots so close that every man but Daddy House heard just the one, and I don’t believe no other shots was ever needed. In them days, I passed for a expert with a rifle, some would say I was right up there with your daddy, but from all our years huntin together, I knew our colored man was better and shot faster. So when Daddy said he heard two shots, I was scared at first it was Henry’s bullet killed Ed Watson. Well, it weren’t. He never aimed at him, y’see. I did.”

Lucius said flatly, “Henry killed him, Bill. Killed him first, anyway.”

“He tell you that?” House raised his eyebrows. “Well, if Henry told you, Colonel, that is good enough for me.” House stared out the window, digesting his mixed feelings. “In the back of my mind, maybe I knew the truth of it. That hole smack in the forehead-that bullet weren’t mine. I aimed for the heart and I don’t believe I missed. Only thing, he was still on his feet when I fired. Already dead, I reckon.”