Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

But Elijah Watson was not to be deterred. The caning of Senator Sumner had occurred on May 22 of 1856, six months after my birth, and once again Papa invoked that event to imbue his son with the fierce and forthright spirit of the South. He went on to extol John C. Calhoun, grandson of Squire Calhoun of Long Cane Creek, whose family lost twenty-three members to Indian massacres in a single year.

“One day I saw the great Calhoun right here in Edgefield. Same lean leather face and deep hawk eyes as Andy Jackson, Old Hickory himself. Same breed of fearless Carolinian, unrelenting.”

“Cruelty and vengeance. Are these the virtues you would inspire in your son?”

Papa, in full cry, paid her no heed. Before the War, said he, our patriots had served in the Patrol, and in these dark days of Yankee Reconstruction, the Patrol’s place had been taken by that honorable company of men known as the Regulators amongst whom he was very proud to ride.

“Honorable company!” Mama rolled her eyes over her knitting. Her needle points sped with a clicking noise like feeding beetles. She slapped her knitting down. “Is it considered honorable in this company of yours to harm defenseless darkies?” Braving his glare, she quoted Cousin Selden’s opinion that the vigilantes who terrorized the freedmen were mostly “those weak vessels cracked by war.” And she dared to cite Papa’s “socalled” superior officer, Major William Coulter, who-

“Will Coulter rode with General Nathan Bedford Forrest!”

– who keeps the cropped ears of lynched black men in his saddlebags. “No outrage perpetrated by that man, however barbarous and vile, seems to shake your father’s high opinion of him,” Mama sighed, implying that her husband, not being warped or cracked like Major Coulter, had been weak to start with. She would even hint that Papa had joined the vigilantes less out of conviction than because he knew no better place for a man with battlefield demotions.

The Regulators made most of their patrols on nights of the full moon. Major Will Coulter, Captain Lige Watson, Sergeant Z. P. Claxton, and two younger men, Toney and Lott, were the five regulars. Others would come along when needed and a black man on a mule tended the horses.

Lige Watson rode with a rifle in a saddle scabbard, a revolver in his belt, a hidden Bowie knife. From time to time, he would teach his son those arts of which Mama so disapproved: how to race horses, how to shoot, how to wield a knife. Sometimes he let me taste his whiskey, and when he was drinking, he might show me “just for fun” how to cheat at cards. But as I would learn, Papa was barely competent in most of these attainments, which he confused with manhood. Because I was only twelve, I confused them, too.

One happy day, he swung me up behind on his big roan. “Come along, boy, I’ll show you something,” he promised, grinning. We rode toward Edgefield. At Deepwood, Cousin Selden stepped forth onto the highroad in linen shirtsleeves, stretching his arms wide to bar our progress as the horse danced and whinnied, backing around in its own stomped-up dust.

“Not one word,” Papa growled over his shoulder.

Our slender kinsman murmured to the roan, slipping his hand onto the bridle so that Papa could not wheel into him, knock him away. The easy movement was so sure of horse and rider that the muscles stiffened in my father’s back. “Stand back, sir,” he snarled, shifting his quirt to his right hand as if set to strike Tilghman on the face.

With his long fair hair and shy expression and high tenor voice, Cousin Selden looked less like a brave cavalry officer than a young clergyman. Because he had never married, Papa called him a “sissy” out of Mama’s hearing. However, that high voice of his was calm and very cold. “There’s three young nigras back up yonder in the branch. Wrists bound, shot like dogs. Since today is the Sabbath, Private Watson, I hoped you might assist me with a Christian burial.”

To call a man “Private” who was known as “Captain” to the Regulators was proof enough of Selden Tilghman’s madness. “Dumped there last night,” he persisted. “These murder gangs ride at night, isn’t that true?” He had a fever in his eyes. His quiet fury and contempt seemed just as scary as Papa’s red eruptive rage. “Since you claim him as a kinsman, Private Watson, you cannot have forgotten the immortal words of Jefferson of Virginia.” Here he shouted, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just!”

Papa had raised his quirt but that shout stopped him; he could not bring himself to strike a Confederate officer. “We have no business with traitors, damn you! Stand aside!” Yanking his reins, digging his spurs, he fought violently to ride free, his son clinging like a tree frog to his sweaty back. Tilghman braced against the horse’s neck, letting it lift him. Hand clenching the reins under the bit, talking it down, he brought the wheeling roan under control.

Heavy in the saddle, shoulders slumped, Papa, too, appeared subdued. So close to my nose, his smell was bitter, rank. “Damned road walkers,” he muttered.

“Road walkers. And how do you know that, Private? How would you happen to know so much about those murdered boys?”

“Because if they were home niggers, sir, a Radical Scalawag and traitor like yourself would know his nigger friends by name! Now stand aside!” Whistling like a pigeon’s wing, his quirt struck Tilghman on the temple, knocking him off balance, and still our cousin gripped the reins as the big roan reared and snorted, dancing sideways. A moment later, struck violently again, he fell away. Papa shouted, “Your honorable record in the War is all that stands between you and execution as a traitor!”

Cousin Selden rose unhurriedly, brushed himself off. His pale face was bleeding. “My honorable record. What would Private Watson know about such matters?” he inquired, looking straight at Watson’s son.

“Are you challenging my honor?” Papa demanded. “I served four years, Edgefield to Appomattox!” But when I hollered, “Nigger-loving traitor!” at our cousin, my father shot an elbow back, bloodied my nose. “Show respect for an officer of the Confederacy, even this one!” I was astonished by his need to prove to Sissy Selden that Elijah Watson was a guardian of Southern honor.

Cousin Selden and I wiped bloody noses. When Selden noticed our peculiar bond, he grinned; I had to scowl at him lest I grin back. “Send her cousin’s fond respects to your dear mother, Edgar,” he said quietly, as Papa wheeled, booting his horse into a canter. Hand on the hard-haired dusty rump, I turned for a last look at the figure in the road, and Cousin Selden raised his hand in half salute. “God keep you, Cousin Edgar!”

“Face around, damn you!” Papa shouted, cocking his elbow. “Face around, I say!” I hugged up close, out of harm’s way. He galloped homeward.

Desperate to please Papa, I once referred to Cousin Selden as “a sissy.” Mama boxed my ears, reminding me that he was a decorated hero and that he had given me those books on ancient Greece to compensate for my woeful lack of schooling. To be so ungrateful to a benefactor was a sin! Hearing how concerned he’d been on my behalf upset and shamed me but I could not admit this. “Who cares about those darned old Greeks?” I said.

“One day, Edgar, you will care,” she retorted. “You are still an ignorant boy but you are not stupid.”

The day after our ride to Deepwood, the Traitor (as my father now referred to him) appeared at our door in full uniform, hands and face charred like a minstrel’s, gray tunic rent by black and ragged holes. Having long since sold his horse, he had come on foot. On the sill he set down a heavy sack containing the rest of his volumes of Greek literature, saved from his burning house. “For your boy,” he told Mama, who ignored her husband’s edict and implored him to come in. He accepted a cup of water but would not enter the house nor even linger, lest his presence bring trouble down upon us.