Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“Go get her,” Papa ordered me. “Trot her out here.”

I shook my head. “Please, Papa, I can’t do that-”

“Oh for Christ’s sake. Keep him covered, then,” Papa said, disgusted. He tossed me the shotgun. Hungover and exhausted, he was jumpy, on the point of rage. He drew his revolver and limped toward the shack. Wally whispered, “Please, Rob. Don’t let him harm Bet.” I sensed a distraction and backed off a step, yelling, “Don’t try it, Wally!” but he had lunged and grasped the barrels. The morning exploded in red haze. In the same moment that I shrieked, your father shouted with great violence. “SHIT!” Fucking Sonborn! Hadn’t he told me not to come? Now we were ruined -all that was included in that one furious word.

Having spun toward Wally, he had not seen Bet rush outside, clutching a pot. At the sight of her man’s body twisting on the sand she moaned and staggered, but she kept her head; she did not run to him but dropped her pot and fled for the shore wood. I see her still, round with child in her white shift, sailing away like a child’s balloon over the sand.

I believe murder might have been his intention when he left Chatham Bend, but after he’d sobered during the long hours of the river journey-who can say? Perhaps he never knew himself. He looked bewildered, unimaginably weary. He did not rage at my inattention, only said dully, “Damn fool tried to kill us.” He eased himself down like an old man on that same limb on which the dying man twitching on the sand had bent to his mending moments earlier, as if considering how we might start over and relive this sunrise scene in a sane way; he sat with his hands square on his knees, boot toes not five feet from the body, which he didn’t look at. Only then did he recall Bet Tucker; he turned in time to glimpse her before she disappeared. Realizing I must have seen her flight-seen it and not warned him-he said nothing, simply handed me the revolver. Still in shock, I dropped it. He picked it up, thrust it at me again. Imagining that out of his remorse he was inviting me to kill him, I raised and pointed it at his unblinking eyes. “No, Rob,” he said. I lowered the weapon. Would I have shot him? I don’t know. In the expression on his face, this man enthroned on the silver tree seemed stranger than any stranger. He had called me Rob.

“He attacked us, you said!”

“Yes, he did. The gun went off by accident. Who will believe that?”

The families on Lost Man’s Beach, his voice said urgently, might come to investigate the shot; we could not stay long enough to make a search, we had to catch her quick; if she got too deep into that scrub, we just might lose her. I stared after her, unable to take this in. Then his voice broke through. “You hear me, Rob? We have to finish what we started.”

I could not look at Wally’s death throes without retching. My agony burst through. “What you started, Papa!”

“I can’t catch her,” he said calmly, after getting to his feet, testing his ankle. “I’m too fat and too lame. I’m sorry, boy.”

Swallowing and shivering, teeth chattering, I protested wildly. To shoot Bet Tucker in cold blood would be terrible and crazy, we would burn in Hell! He folded his arms upon his chest, saying, “Well, boy, that is possible. But meanwhile, she is the only witness and if she gets away, we are going to hang.”

All was unbearable, every breath. To run that girl down, put this hard heavy weapon to her head and pull the trigger-I wept helplessly. “Don’t make me do that, Papa. I can’t do it.”

He was losing patience, though still calm. “Why, sure you can, son,” he told me then, “and you best jump to it. It’s her life or ours.” That exhausted look returned into his face. “You are innocent in all this, boy, no matter what becomes of us. But will that save you?” He turned away, looking toward the wood edge. “Too late for tears,” he said.

I was running, I was wailing. Unless it was only in my heart, my wail could be heard as far off as South Lost Man’s.

Bet had not run far. In the thick tangle, she had no place to go. Small footprints, prints where she had fallen to her knees, hand prints-some animal on all fours-then the whiteness of her shift in the cave of vines where she had crawled, trying to hide. She lay panting on her side in tears of shock, her wet cheek stuck with sand.

Somewhere Papa’s voice was calling, coming closer. I sank to my knees beside her, fighting for breath. “Please, Bet, don’t look.” She gasped, “Oh Rob, we never done you harm.”

I crept forward. Her eye was fixed on the root and sand inches away, her lips parted by whimper, the soft skin pulsing at the temple, the life blood pink in the transparent ear-the new life in her…

At the sound of sand crushed by oncoming steps, that eye flew wider and her whole body trembled. I bent to her, whispering, “Please, Bet. Forgive me.” Forcing my will- oh Christ be quick! -I grasped my wrist to steady my hand, touched the muzzle to her temple, sucked a breath deep to lock my nerve in place, and squeezed the trigger.

A crimson spatter in my eyes as all went black.

Round sea grape leaves in a sunrise dance of shadows on the sand. I lay suspended, praying that this dream of bright water might not end. It was too late. Before squeezing my eyes shut again, I’d seen those boot prints where the girl had lain, the darkened sand kicked over that blood shadow, the stained face of earth. Rob Watson was dead from that day forward and forever. What had taken place was drawn over my corpse like a leaden shroud. I could not move.

The boots returned. He leaned and shook my shoulder. “Time to go.” I struggled away from him, struggled to stand and run. I could not. I was too weak. Get away from me! Were those the last words I ever spoke to him?

He bent then and with one hand under my armpit lifted my weight without effort, stood me on my feet. With the other hand, he used sea grape leaves to scrape the worst of the red bits and vomit from my shirt and pants. Never before had he taken care of me in this way. But his guilt or remorse, if that is what it was, had come too late. I had no heart left for anything but hate.

He had already fetched the sailing skiff and dragged both bodies off the sand into the channel. As he waded me past Bet’s shape toward the skiff, I wondered if the baby in her womb might still pulse with no foreboding of its end.

In the boat, he ordered me to curl up on the bilge boards at his feet. His coat lay folded on the stern seat within reach; the revolver butt protruded from its inside pocket. At the oars, facing astern, he had to turn repeatedly to check his bearing; I touched the weapon twice. On the fourth try I slid it free and slipped it under my shirt. In my great hate, I mourned that I had not shot him when he first gave me the gun.

All New Year’s Day afternoon, curled like a fetus, I observed the murderous drunkard at the oars, the blue eyes squinted in the sun, the ginger beard and the black hat, the shoulders hurled forward and back, forward and back against the passing treetops-all I could see while lying in the bilges except the far towers of Glades cumulus off to the east.

Chatham Bend was empty. Perhaps Tant had returned from hunting, heard Josie’s tale, and taken his sister and Pearl back to Caxambas. Nerved up and overtired, your father could not sleep. He resumed drinking, shouting threats against imagined enemies, then ran out and torched the cane, which made no sense. He was still out there running like a madman when Erskine Thompson came in on the Gladiator. When they went indoors to find something to eat, I boarded his ship and slipped her lines, drifted downriver.