Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“And what’s in that for you?”

“Well, me’n Chicken, we go back a ways.” He spat. “Course my boys was grumbling. Said they’re real busy movin cargos out before park rangers come snoopin around so if Chicken give ’em any trouble, they aimed to take care of him in a big hurry.”

“What are you saying? That’s just crazy!”

“Might not look crazy to wild boys that’s riskin a long stretch in the pen for this, that, and the other. Last thing they need is to get caught harborin some despert fugitive.”

“They’re willing to kill him? Is that what they’re talking about?”

“They’re through talkin, Colonel. Ain’t like you.”

Daniels folded his arms upon his chest, observing him. He said, “Life without parole? You think that’s better? Chicken sure don’t.” He searched Lucius’s eyes for doubt and nodded when he found it. “While they had him in the auto, he told them boys how he pissed ten years away doin hard time. Said he weren’t never goin back. He meant it, too, cause he told me the same thing. I warned him the boys might have to shoot him if he got in the way; he just laughed at me. Said he would take that as a kindness. Said he was scared to death of dying but slow death in a cage without no hope was worse.”

“He’s better off dead. Is that really what you’re saying?”

“That’s what he’s sayin.” He held Lucius’s eye. “How about you?”

“He’s my brother, for God’s sake!” He felt sick and dizzy, hating what Speck chose to infer.

Speck was starting to enjoy this. “Be honest, Colonel. You ain’t been thinkin death might be the best way out? For every body?”

“I never said anything like that.”

“Not in words you didn’t.” Speck poured two drinks. “Speakin about truths, let’s see what you make of this one: your daddy’s shotgun weren’t loaded. They shot him to pieces for nothin.”

“Christ, what a liar you are-”

“That’s what they say, all right- ‘that goddamn Speck ain’t nothin but a liar.’ But who fished that shotgun out of the bilges of his boat where Isaac Yeomans flung it? Who cleaned the salt water out the breech and oiled her up? I was first man to see them chambers, Colonel. They was empty.”

“Oh, come on. Men saw the pellets rolling out-”

“Weren’t no pellets rollin out because there weren’t no shells. But when I tried to tell them men, they felt so stupid about fillin him with lead that they shouted me down, real angry, so I just shut up. Must of imagined up them pellets cause they couldn’t handle the plain truth.”

“That makes no sense. Why would he challenge that crowd with an unloaded weapon?” Speck shrugged, bored by the question. Lucius said, “Anyway, you have no right to that gun. It belongs to our family.”

“Well, you ain’t gettin it. One these days, that old shootin iron’s bound to bring me hard cash money.”

When Speck said his boys might be back later this evening, Lucius said he’d wait. “Not in here you won’t,” Speck said.

Lucius walked all day in search of his own feelings. He went east on the narrow swamp road, mile after mile, all the way to the Forty-Mile Bend where the Loop Road met the Trail. By the time he returned, it was near dusk. Old autos had appeared out of the woods and the Gator Hook Bar fairly bulged with raucous sound. He climbed the stairs. A drunken Speck pointed at a big pan of wild hog ribs on the stove but otherwise left him alone. Eventually the regulars went back into the woods and Lucius lay down in Chicken Collins’s mildewed blankets under the bar, leaving Speck alone out on the landing shouting his jeering parody of the developers fighting the new park.

“Yessir, friends, ten thousand fuckin islands layin out there dead ! No use to no- body! Don’t them dumb-ass taxpayers realize how much coast gone to be wasted in this fuckin park? When we could pump white coral sand out of the Gulf where it don’t do one single bit of good, make tourist beaches same as the east coast? Run concrete yacht canals smack through them mis’rable ol’ mangroves, throw up deluxe waterfront condoms just like Miam-uh? Sky’s no limit, folks! Condoms a-risin in a thrillin silver line, all the way south around Cape Sable! Sunset on the Golden Gulf, just a-glistenin off them condoms, turnin ’em from silver into gold! If that ain’t God bless America, I don’t know what!”

All night he twisted like an insect on a pin.

Even if Rob survived and were set free, he would still be on the run. Where could he hide? A hopeless drunkard, unemployable, without money, prospects, or profession, he would inevitably be dependent on his brother, who would be obliged to give up his own life in order to hide and feed this derelict human being. Who else in Rob Watson’s narrow world would risk federal prison? Who else would look after him? Next week? The week after? For how long? Five years? Ten? The remainder of their lives?

And yet his mind fought Daniels’s insinuation that in the end it might be best for everyone if “Chicken” were to disappear. How had that crooked bastard dared imagine, let alone suggest, that Rob’s own brother might see it that same way-

Lucius? Why had the man’s inferences upset him so unless his shock and indignation weren’t quite honest? Would Daniels have implied any such thing without scenting ambivalence? Had a hypocrite named Lucius Watson actually persuaded himself that death would come as a mercy to his brother, setting him free from a badly broken life once and for all? Had L. Watson Collins been warped by the knowledge that Rob’s death might spare him the professional obligation to discard the biography and those years of hard work? Was that work dead at the heart anyway because dishonest? Daniels, in his sly insinuations, had forced his nose into unclean seams of his own nature and forced him to acknowledge, to himself at least, a twinge of regret that Daniels’s men had failed to deal summarily with “Chicken Collins” when they first caught him with the list and the revolver.

The terrible knowing and not knowing. He observed his mind’s struggle to gain a firm foundation from which it might persuade itself of Speck’s cold truth that a merciful end was not merely the simplest solution but the best for all concerned. For Rob Watson, any fate would be better than recapture. On the other hand, to accept Rob’s death as merciful, far less as a solution, would be unforgivable, even if he could live with himself thereafter.

The misty swampland lay in darkness, its frogs mute. From across the road a night heron gave its strangled quock to unknown purpose. The harsh cry started him from ragged sleep and his first breath was an inhalation of cold fear that he had betrayed his brother. He wandered outside to stare sightless at the moon, wandered inside to be tossed and twisted on the cot, pursued by nightmare.

At first light, he heard tin on iron. Hunched over the woodstove in the corner, a barefoot man naked to the waist was making coffee. Cobwebbed and groggy, not sure which limb might work, Lucius lay inert. Finally he rose unsteadily and made his way toward the open door where the clear aura of the coming dawn to eastward might help him remember how things had been left the night before. He dredged his brain for the worst implications of what he’d said to Daniels, and the way he’d said it, down to the last inflection, although none of this mattered anymore. His brother’s fate was in the hands of others.

Stirring his coffee, Crockett Daniels followed him outside onto the landing. “The boys come in last night,” he said, getting it over with. He pointed at the marsh boat nudging the bank across the road. “Don’t look like things worked out so good down there.” Scowling, he went back inside, turning suddenly on Lucius, who had pursued him. “Look!” he yelled, pumping up anger. “Your brother was drinking with ’em, got to raging about them old stains on the floor- only way to get that black blood out is to burn it out! And damn if he don’t try that whilst they was down loadin the boat.”