Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“So Daddy Richard went upriver with him, seen for himself them molderin green bones in the dirt and leaves. Daddy Richard warned Henry that Lucius Watson might not know about them bones and even if he did, he would not want ’em dug up. Said, ‘Henry, let’s just you’n me fill in these holes, scatter some brush, never speak no more about it.’ ”

Owen looked up. “Henry went along with that, stuck by it, too. I believe I am the only one my daddy ever told and I never spoke of it except right now and never will.” He watched Lucius, concerned. “I sure hope that’s the kind of truth you wanted. I’m sure sorry.”

“You never saw those graves yourself.”

“Hunt through all that thorn that’s growed up now? With all them bad snakes that’s back in there?”

Lucius emptied his glass. “It’s quite a story,” he decided, “but without evidence, it’s just another story like the rest.”

Owen bridled. “Who you lookin to call a liar, Colonel? Me or Henry?” He jumped up and headed toward the back.

“Oh no, sorry, I don’t mean that, Owen!” Lucius called after him. “Somebody killed somebody, all right,” he concluded stupidly, as despair choked off his voice. Then Owen was back. On the table he placed a shoe box bound in tarred hemp line. He said, “We been keepin this for Henry.” Slowly Lucius opened it and removed the jar and forced himself to look at its rusted contents: four tin belt buckles, old buttons, three small one-blader pocket knives rusted solid, a few spent bullets, and three copper pennies.

“See them pennies?” Owen said quietly. “Abe Lincoln pennies, minted in 1909. Kept a new Lincoln penny in their pockets for good luck.”

Lucius closed the box and clumsily retied it. Who knows about this? Hardens. Nobody else? Owen looked impatient: Lucius could take his word or not, it was up to him. Either way, Owen wanted him to take the box away.

“Think it might of been Cox?” Owen said finally when his friend was silent.

“I’d sure like to believe that. Thank you.”

They went to bed without finding a way to ease things.

Lucius awoke at the sound of Owen’s truck. Through the thin wall, he could hear his friend’s wife in her bath. Unrested, restless, he was bedeviled by the rub of her firm buttock on the tub. He got up and dragged his clothes on. In his dark mood, weighed down by dread, he felt disgraced by lust for Sarah and growing exasperation with his brother: what could be done for a fugitive so self-destructive? Lone pursuit of the Daniels gang would be insane as well as useless and he could not notify the law. Even if Rob escaped them, where could he go? What was to become of him? How long would it be before he was in trouble again?

Steamy and fresh as a big pink shrimp in her white towel bathrobe, barefoot Sarah fixed his breakfast. Watching her hips shift at the stove, he cursed himself-here he was with his brother in mortal danger, still a damned hound dog.

Sarah could feel him. Over her shoulder, she murmured, “Please don’t look at me that way.” She said her life with Owen was going better: she was mainly cross because her husband had come to bed so drunk and was cranky with Lucius all the way to Naples. Still nagging him for seeking out Bill House instead of Hardens, she dropped him at his car, in no mood to understand his reasons. “You’re listening to people who raised Henry up to be their slave!” She was very upset. Later it occurred to him that Owen must have told her Henry was dying.

In his wild restlessness and worry, the need to act overcame the last of his good sense. From Naples, he followed the new highway east to Monroe Station and turned off on the spur track south to the Chevelier Road.

At Gator Hook, on the stair landing, warm sun had gathered in the coils of a big yellow rat snake; it whispered away down a rain-rotted split in the old greening boards. He pounded and called. Descending the stairs, he made his way around behind the building, where in mid-piss he sensed movement too late and was punched hard between the shoulder blades by what turned out to be the steel snout of an automatic. “Let’s see them hands,” said Crockett Senior Daniels.

“Wait, goddammit-” Startled, hurting, he had wet himself a little. He got things straightened out and finished buttoning, goaded by the weapon prodding his bruised back and also by a careless hacking cough that sprayed his neck. “Feeling jumpy, Speck?” He spoke with all the contempt he was able to muster with a hitch in his voice that betrayed his fear.

“Jumpy, yessir, which is why I am still goin pretty good after sixteen years in my same line of business.” For the second time in a fortnight, Daniels frisked him. “I have growed a nose for a certain breed of cockeyed sonofabitch that you give ’em any room at all it’s goin to cost you.”

Grasping Lucius’s shoulder, Daniels spun him roughly and slapped his front pockets with the back of his free hand.

“You fuckin Watsons just won’t quit! Dyer sent word yesti’day to grab this Robert Watson, said he might be hanging around the church hall. Warned ’em he was crazier ’n hell and dangerous. Turned out this Robert was ol’ Chicken so Junior and his morons never searched him. ‘Nosir, Speck’, they holler when they show up, ‘This fuckin Robert ain’t nobody in the world but your ol’ drinkin buddy!’

“Had a loaded weapon in his satchel, for Christ’s sake! You know about that? Had your damn list with my name on it-you know that, too? You put him up to this? And then you got the guts to tell me I am jumpy ! Jesus! I mean, who you Watsons gunnin for if it ain’t Speck Daniels? All the way east, them fools of mine had that spoilbank canal, deep black canal a-crawlin with big gators-my ‘ol’ drinkin buddy’ never should of got as far as Gator Hook.”

Daniels led him up the stairs and on inside. “Told me Chicken give ’em one hell of a scrap when them big boys grabbed him.” Snickering, he leaned back against the bar. “Know somethin? I always liked that feller. After he got done cussin us out, me’n him got along real good, considerin he had your fuckin list and a loaded gun, aimin to shoot me.

“This mornin I went up to town, got your attorney on the telephone. Said, ‘My boys picked up Robert Watson: what you want with him?’ And he says, ‘Mr. Daniels, that man tried to shoot me.’ Told me he’s a law-and-order man, respects the hell out of the law and don’t believe in coddlin no criminals; he’s out for justice without fear nor favor. Said this Robert has to be removed from our law-abidin society, so what do I think would be best for all concerned? And me, I’m thinkin, This man wants him dead.

Lucius nodded. “Lord. And you’re still working for him?”

“Not for long. The man won’t want no more to do with us once his park business is settled. If he’s goin into politics the way it looks, his dealins with the Daniels Gang might cost him. Very practical feller. Don’t go off halfcocked like some damn Watson.”

“And all his talk of preserving the Watson house as a pioneer monument-”

“Oh hell, Colonel, he never cared about that house. He ain’t set foot on Chatham Bend since he left there thirty years ago. Man like that, his old home don’t mean no more to him than the damn crap he took yesterday, it’s that forty acres of high ground that he is after. But while he’s dealin with the gov’ment, he don’t want to throw away no high card. Parks will be hot to burn that house cause it don’t fit in with their idea of wilderness. Dyer knows he could hold ’em up for years with legal diddlin and they know that, too. But it looks like he will step out of their way in some kind of a trade-off for prime real estate in Miami, leave you Watsons high and dry.” Speck emitted a low hard sound of derisive mirth. “Anyways, Junior and them bein on their way to Chatham, I told ’em to take Chicken along, let him lay low enjoyin his old home while I figure how to smuggle him out of south Florida.”