Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“He is dead, then?”

“I pray that he is dead.” Even if the man survived, he would be hunted down and killed should he return to Edgefield District, not because his punishment had been insufficient but because of the bad conscience of his neighbors, to whom he remained a specter of reproach.

Colonel Robert’s repudiation of the martyrdom inflicted on a Confederate hero by “that half-mad Coulter and his gang” had been evident since the day he’d fired Claxton. (Again he avoided mention of my father.) “They cannot dignify unlawful violence by calling themselves ‘Regulators.’ ‘Regulation’ occurred a century ago when your great-great-grandfather led the citizens’ militia. These night riders of today are not patriots but vigilantes, and the cruelties they perpetrate would be villainous even in time of war.” He had agreed with Selden Tilghman that renegade violence kept the old wounds open, and that such actions would isolate the South as a polluted backwater of the republic.

While not in sympathy with Tilghman’s New Light heresies, Colonel Robert respected the integrity and courage of that God-stunned man. “Your mother’s cousin was abominated because he warned the public-publicly-about what had become monstrous in all of us.” He flushed. “To enrich ourselves, we Christians sanctioned human bondage, so what can we say now in our own defense? My God! The enslavement of our fellow men even after they were redeemed as our fellow Christians! How did our churchmen defend this for so long?” He shook his head. “My father owned a thousand slaves, Uncle Tillman, too, and Aunt Sophia, Uncle Artemas-all the siblings. We were large slaveholders until the end, saw nothing wrong with it. We went to war for it. And many thousands of our best young men would lose their lives for this great sin and grievous wound to the republic that made a travesty and lie of our Constitution.”

I was astonished by these heartbroken words from a Southern officer, wounded at Fraser’s Farm and Gettysburg and decorated for gallantry in the Great Lost Cause.

While they were small, my frisky shoats kept me company inside my empty house. I constructed a snug pen in a side room which I bedded with dry straw and mucked out faithfully. Rejoicing in their progress, I hauled slops and mash and gallons of fresh water to this roisterous bunch, talking back to them in their squeal language, with suitable chuffs and a few explosive harfs of false alarm. I even moved my bedding to a place beside the pen where I could share in their well-fed contentment. They nudged my boots in greeting, seeking treats out of my pocket or a good rub of the bristle tuft between those pale blue eyes. Listening to this gang of mine, in their eartwitching sleep, I would find myself smiling in the dark, even laughing quietly, drawing forth sweet giggles of pig mirth.

When spring came, I built an outside pen, and on Sunday afternoons, I led my sturdy band across the country. They would hurtle off in all directions, farther and farther in their forays, until they tired and came trotting in, heeding my call and following close behind all the way home. SooEEEEEEE! Pig, pig, pig! I sang across the meadows to celebrate my calling as a pig man. Colonel Robert warned me that hearing young Cousin Edgar in the distance and taking his mournful calls for cries of solitude was sorely troubling to certain Watsons on the lands around, and perhaps this good man, despite my reassurances, was the most troubled of all.

Sunday dinners at the Colonel’s house were gradually reduced to one each month, until finally Aunt Lucy dispensed with my company entirely. So inhospitable did she become that I had to wonder if she was excluding the son out of her bitter disapproval of the father. In wretched loneliness, I longed to whine that my father had hurled me headfirst against a log butt, how I had lain unconscious for hours, how I had suffered headaches ever since. But I refused to solicit sympathy at the cost of such disloyalty, knowing also that betraying weakness before these Clouds Creek Watsons would only convince them that the son was made of the same poor stuff as the father and cause Colonel Robert to lose faith in my resolve.

The final pronouncement on my character was reserved for Great-Aunt Sophia Boatright, who made regular rounds of the Watson households in her buggy. As monitor of the Old Squire’s heritage and high standards, Aunt Sophia saw to it that services and prayer meetings were duly attended and family deportment rigorously maintained. One day, careless of the fact that “Elijah D’s boy” was reading outside the window in the Indian summer sun (borrowing books having become my poor excuse for hanging around the outskirts of those family Sundays), she held forth to Aunt Lucy on “the fatal weakness” of poor dear Artemas that had led straight to the dissolution of his son. In no uncertain terms she blamed “that spoiled Addison girl” whom Elijah D. had married for the unwashed aspect of that “somber hard-faced boy.” As for “that Minnie or whatever they call her,” she was dismissed as “rather a pretty thing for a near-halfwit.” Aunt Lucy assured Aunt Sophia that poor peaked Minnie was not half-witted, merely scared out of her wits. She confessed, however, that the girl’s brother could no longer be tolerated in her house due to his odor, which no doubt emanated from his hogs. Her voice died as she realized that that somber hard-faced boy might be somewhere within earshot.

Young Edgar-the voice of Colonel Robert, who had just come in-had toiled like a wretched slave since early childhood: he had been deprived of education and even decent clothes, as the ladies knew. What did the family expect of him, then? And who had extended a hand since his arrival? How many of his kinsmen knew or cared that Edgar, condemned to spend his evenings all alone, was probably better read already than any Watson in Clouds Creek?

“Well, that’s not saying much,” Aunt Sophia snorted. “Poor old Tillman can scarcely write his name, let alone read it! Anyway, all this reading is bad for that boy’s brain. He talks like a book, which is all the fault of Ellen’s cousin, the one who spelled Tillman the old Tory way.” Such a pity, she exclaimed, that the boy had not been orphaned; dear old Tillman, with no heirs, might have adopted such a promising young man. Reminded that Tillman had a spry young wife, she nodded grimly. “Yes. A barren wife. Who will inherit everything.”

Colonel Robert respectfully rebuked her. “Amelia has been good to him, Aunt.” With affection, he quoted my great-uncle, who favored rural accents: “I never had but the one wife and she done me all my life.”

Young Edgar was bright, industrious, and very able, the Colonel concluded. With any luck, he would restore the Artemas plantation. “That is doubtless to his credit,” the old lady retorted, “but I don’t like the look of him and that is that.”

“Very likely the boy is aware of your opinion, Aunt Sophia, but you might lower your voice in case he’s not.” Colonel Robert must have pointed toward the window for there was a stiff silence in that room.

“Oh? An eavesdropper, you mean?” Aunt Sophia’s voice flew out into the sunlight as I ducked down to slink away around the house. “Speak up, boy! Are you out there?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, yes, ma’am.” The fire of humiliation, the dread of banishment. I hadn’t known how I had offended them, nor that my great-aunt disliked my looks, nor that I stunk. The knowing scared me. When they went into the dining room, I slipped through the front door and peered into the hall mirror. What I saw was a common boy, husky for fourteen and roughly dressed, a freckled blueeyed boy, straight nose, strong chin, hair a dark red auburn. Nothing out of the way except, perhaps, the set cast of the expression, ingrown, solitary-yes, a hard and somber face, just as she’d said, moss-toothed and dirt-streaked. I liked it no better than she did. And I was shocked by my strong smell indoors.