Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“Deepwood?” she inquired, turning from the door. “Is that where-”

“No,” I said. “He’ll go first to Major Coulter.”

“Of course. Where else?” With Papa gone, her eyes had softened and she tried to smile. “How are you, Edgar? How are you getting on?”

Still standing, I was wolfing Papa’s soup. She told me to sit down while I was eating. I ignored this. A moment later, she chastised me for wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I belched loudly just to see her shudder. Because she did not really care, I did not answer when she asked again how I was faring at Clouds Creek. She feared me a little now, I saw, which gave me no satisfaction, only made me feel more lonesome than before.

Mama and Minnie and Aunt Cindy were ready to leave for Florida at the first opportunity. Had I changed my mind? When I said I had not, and wished them well, she took my hands across the table and held my gaze long enough to make quite certain that her son had been full witness to a mother’s sorrow. I withdrew my hands. She saw the coldness in my face and straightened up, blew her nose smartly. “Never mind,” she said. “We’ll do just fine.”

Toward midnight, Papa came home long enough to wrap his musket in the sacking and return it to the rafters. He appeared clumsy and shaken, his red brow glistening with sickly sweat, red ring-eye pulsing. At the door, he turned, pointing a finger at Mama’s face. “I was home all evening. I slept here. Don’t forget that.” He lurched into the night and rode away.

Retrieving the musket, I set off at daylight with the vague idea of driving the Owl-Man off what was left of my precious rabbit. But turning into Deepwood’s narrow lane, I was racked by dread of what might have taken place the night before and what I might stumble into.

At the edge of the greening carriage circle, a trail of dark stains led to an old boxwood where something had lain bleeding. Later it had crawled toward the ruin, moving along a shaded wall under an old lilac choked by vines. From the dung and hoof prints, I pieced the rest together. Blowing horses, torches, and wild shots had flushed the surrounded quarry from the ruin. In the dark, they could not track the blood, having rushed here without dogs. When their quarry crawled into the dense boxwood, they had lost him. They had not persisted, being superstitious and afraid.

The blood trail led around the corner toward the hole in the fallen wall. Creeping forward, picking my way through the winter briars, I struggled to keep the musket barrel disentangled.

The wounded creature was alive inside its hole, that much I knew. I checked my load, I cleared my throat, I took a mighty breath. “Come out,” I croaked. From behind the wall came the slight scrape of something shifting, followed by a dry ratcheting cough like a raccoon. I forced myself to lean and peer inside.

On a charred board by the dead fire lay my hoarfrost rabbit, stiff as furred wood. Behind it, taking shape in the cold shadows, stretched a man’s ragged legs and broken boots. The crusted head, tufts twisted askew, and a swollen black hand more like a talon clutched the heavy bloodstain on the stomach, and there was a sinuous dark stain where blood had probed and found a passage back into burned earth. A road walker, I thought-either that or the skin between patches of crust was black with firesmoke and filth. Black or white, the Owl-Man was surely on the point of death. A broken voice grated something like, “The Coward… Watson.”

The Owl-Man watched me through raw slits in a mask. A rude scar showed where the head had been half-scalped, then sealed with boiling tar, then crowned with feathers. The mask had no expression. Nostrils and lips scarcely emerged from the leprous stubble. Then the mouth hole opened slowly, stretching dry strings of slime between dry broken teeth. A choked gasp: “Finish it.”

The creature’s agony was horrifying, it was unbearable- not bearable! Eons of human agony in millions of cruel acts over the ages had been distilled here in this being, with no hope of relief but the swift mercy of annihilation. But when I raised the musket, put my finger to the trigger, I could not do it. I was blind with tears and only sagged down weakly, trying not to be sick.

In one thrash, the Owl-Man seized the barrel, twisting it in his black claw with the force of spasm and yanking the muzzle to his throat as I fought to pull away. My wrist was clasped in a hornlike hand, and my yell as I pulled back was obliterated by explosion. Because the gun came free with the recoil, I was thrown backwards through the hole in a roil of smoke. The echo died and the thinning smoke wandered away into the deafened woods.

Muffled footfalls-inside my head?-pursuing me down the lane toward the highroad were my first memory of jumping up and running. You git away from me! You git away! I heard my boots ring on the frozen earth, echoing off the rigid trees like rifle shots. What did you -I cried, Why did you -I never- never what? Even years later I did not know what my question might have meant, nor if there had been an answer anywhere. Had I cried out to the Owl-Man or to Cousin Selden? Or to the lost life I would never find again?

Who would come after me? Reloading the musket to defend myself, I stood howling on the county road. To drive the present from my brain, to sink away into the past, into before, I howled to highest heaven but, still deafened by my own musket fire, I could not hear myself.

Yesterday Edgar Artemas Watson, a promising young farmer, had turned into that lane and wandered from his life into dark dreaming. Awakened, he must hurry to Clouds Creek to feed his hogs, let his lost life return, fall into place. Whatever had just happened-had it happened?-must be banished. What could hallucination mean to young pigs starved for slops? With grunting and harfing?

Alone on the highroad in the leaden light, I knew my life had lost its purchase. Like a dark bird disappearing over distant woods, the future had flown away into the past. I hurried onward. I longed to run, and run and run and run, all the way home, but burdened with my father’s heavy musket, I soon slowed, unable to run further.

A hard wind searched through roadside trees, cracking cold limbs. Over the rushing of blown leaves, fragments of voice commanded me to halt. When I whirled to defend myself, the rifle’s weight swung me off balance. I fell hard on the frozen road.

A hard-veined black hand set down a water bucket and retrieved the fallen musket as I groped for it. When I clambered to my knees, Tap Watson backed away a little, brushing earth off the barrel, checking the load. “What you doin wit yo’ daddy’s shootin arn? What you runnin from? What’s dem tears fo’?” The old man squinted in the direction of the ruin. “You knowin somethin ’bout dat shootin over yonder? Las’ evenin, and again dis mornin?”

I shook my head, reaching out to take the gun. “None of your business, Tap.”

“Oh Lawd, Mist’ Edguh.” He took his hat off, bent his head, but would not return the gun. “O Lawdy Lawdy!” Tears shone on his cheekbones, which looked like dark wet wood in the cold sunrise. “Been leavin dese few greens in dat place over yonder. You folks needin any?” He tossed his nearlimp croker sack against my chest. Astonished, I made no attempt to catch it. It flopped onto the frozen dust between us.

Tap raised the musket, waving the muzzle in the direction of the ruin. “We’s goin back up yonder. Got to look.”

“You threatening me, Tap?” I picked up the sack he had dared toss at my chest.

“Nosuh. I b’lieve you is threatin me, Mist’ Edguh.” He waved the gun again. “Get on now. I gots to tell dem at de Co’t House. Gunfire late last evenin, den another shot dis mornin. Gots to tell ’em how I seen dis boy Mist’ Edguh Watson runnin off from dere just now totin his daddy’s shootin iron, which his daddy ain’t allowed to haves back in de firs’ place.”