Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

I was very frightened. I saw his jug of moonshine on the table. I jolted a big snort to nerve myself, then opened the storm shutters to let in air and light. Your father lay snoring on his bed with muddy boots on. When I shook him awake, he opened one eyelid, raw bright red as the slit throat of a chicken. Then he rolled over, dragging a pillow over his head; he couldn’t take the light or stand the sight of me.

I told him what had happened. His voice growled from beneath the pillow that he knew nothing about it. Then he said that Mr. Wally Tucker better be damned careful about spreading slander against E. J. Watson. This reminded him that they’d left him short-handed; he reared up with a roar, rolled off the bed, but blacked out again and crashed against the wall.

At these times, “hair of the dog” was all that helped him. By the time I fetched the jug, he was sitting up holding his head, wheezing for breath. His skin was blotchy and his breath came out of Hell. He opened his eyes and glared at me, then looked away. He did not bother to lie. “How could I pay ’em, Sonborn?” he said quietly. “Nothing to pay ’em with.”

Sick as he was, he went with me after dark. This time I puked and so did he: maybe the first thing we ever did together! We heaped and scraped those remains onto some burlap, made a big sack of it, filled the pits and scattered brush, lugged that sack between us to the river downstream from the boat sheds, and let it go into the current. All that while, we never spoke a word. He was sober now and trying to suggest that Ted and Zachariah had been thieves as well as troublemakers and maybe the other hands had killed them. I wanted badly to believe that. Anyhow, he said, there was nothing to be done about it, and for the sake of our plantation’s good name, I must forget what I had seen. Being too needy, too eager to please him, I agreed. He was very worried that the Tuckers might spread lies.

With the Tuckers gone and Tant off hunting, there was no one to talk to but the harvest crew and Josie. I was all alone in my awful knowledge. I don’t believe Josie ever learned about those hog-chewed cadavers, but even if she’d known, she would have claimed that no matter who did ’em in, they probably had it coming. Her “Mister Jack” paid no attention to what Josie overheard, knowing this little woman was so crazy for him that no secret that might do him harm would pass her lips.

Unpaid and penniless after their long year of hard work, the Tuckers were taken in by Richard Harden at Lost Man’s River. Because they risked jail at Key West, he suggested they camp on Lost Man’s Key, which was quit-claimed by the Atwell family up in Rodgers River but uninhabited. Lived aboard their sloop and subsisted mostly on palm tops and on shellfish while they built a driftwood shack, having borrowed tools, gill net, and seed corn from the Hardens. They planted a piece of ground across the river mouth, near the spring at the north end of Lost Man’s Beach.

Toward the end of 1900, your father bought that quit-claim from the Atwells, who took back his rough note warning Tucker to remove himself in three days’ time. With his vegetables still green and his wife near term, Tucker was outraged: he sent word back reminding Watson that “as was well known or soon would be,” he and his wife were still owed a year’s wages, and until these were paid, they would not leave Lost Man’s Key “come Hell or High Water.” My heart sank when I saw that message, knowing your father would take it as a usurpation of his quit-claim and a threat.

On the last night of the old century, your father broke out a new jug of Tant’s moonshine and sat down heavily at the table. Aunt Josie came in with Baby Pearl in hopes of New Year’s cheer but took one look at his closed face and went right out again. She knew better than to break his mood and she didn’t need to warn me to keep my mouth shut. We sat in the dark kitchen in deep gloom.

Josie warmed up beans but we hardly ate. Your father read Tucker’s note over and over; he drank and brooded until nearly midnight. Finally he took a last big slug and shoved the jug across the table, commanding me (as he often did) to hide it from him. I put it on that ledge under the cistern cover-you remember, Luke?-where I placed the buckets when I fetched in water.

In a while he staggered out onto the riverbank to check the tide. We knew where he was going. When he came back in, he took his shotgun off the wall but dropped it on the floor. I picked it up for him, astonished to see him drop a weapon, drunk or otherwise.

Praying he might sag down and sleep, I complained that I was weary-“Sleep, then, damn you!” Maybe we should wait till daylight to depart. “ We? You’re staying here!” In the doorway, Aunt Josie put a finger to her lips. But desperate to save him from some terrible mistake, I slipped ahead of him into the sailing skiff, which he nearly capsized when he crashed aboard. By that time, he’d forgotten that he’d ordered me to stay behind. Glaring balefully at the full moon, he muttered, “Row then.”

There was no wind. I rowed upriver on the rising tide. Drunk though he was, he had planned for that tide, staying our departure until after midnight. Leaving Possum Key to starboard, I rowed south down Chevelier Bay, and all that hour, silhouetted on the moonlit water, he sat motionless, jutted up in the stern like an old stump. Sometime later, we went ashore on Onion Key. It was still dark when he woke me. Exhausted, I protested: it was not yet daybreak. His silence warned me not to speak again. He had sobered some by now but his mood was ugly.

We descended Lost Man’s River on the falling tide as he had planned. I rowed hard anyway just to keep warm. Soon there was breeze. He pointed at the mast and I raised her small canvas. With the dark bulk of him hunched at the tiller, the old skiff whispered through cold mists across broad discs of current, westward over the gray reach of Lost Man’s Bay.

At daybreak, we slid the skiff into the mangroves on the inland shore of Lost Man’s Key. Telling me to wait there, he set off at once, rounding the point to the Gulf beach. I followed. My teeth chattered in the damp and my voice shook when I nagged him: Why were we sneaking up in darkness? Why not just run them off our claim? Distracted by my pestering, he stepped into a hole and twisted his ankle and cursed violently in pain.

Where Tucker’s small sloop on her mooring could be glimpsed through the big sea grape leaves, he dropped two shells into the chambers of his double-barrel. On the beach ridge, a small thatch roof had come in view. One last time, I begged him not to harm them. He fixed me with a look I could not read. Was it contempt? I don’t think so. Then he limped forward.

The Tuckers had no lamps; they lay down at dark and rose at daybreak. Wally was already outside, perched on a big driftwood tree mending his cast net. His rifle leaned against the silver trunk beside him. It was too late to warn him: if he laid one finger on that gun he would be killed.

Favoring his bad ankle, your father moved out of the sea grape in stiff short steps like a bristled-up dog. I heard no sound though I was close behind him but Tucker picked up some tiny pinching of the sand. His hand dropped the net needle and flew for his rifle, only to stop short in midair and sink back slowly as he raised his hands.

“You people get the hell off of my claim,” your father said-something like that. He tossed his head toward the shack. “Tell your bitch to clear her trash out before I burn that pigsty to the ground.” Wally Tucker went all pale and blotched like someone slapped, but sensing perhaps that this man had spoken brutally to provoke an attack he only blinked back tears of rage and fear.