Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Jim Tolen had cockeyed ears and a rodent mouth way up under high nostrils, and he had a sniffing manner to go with it, as if he were scenting some nice rotted food. Jim sniffed, then spat. “Pa ain’t gone to bother his head about no damn bullshit such as that.” Mikey tried spitting, too, and Fat Sam spat extra noisily to mock his brothers. “Your turn, Edgar,” he told me with a wink. I winked back, then cleared my throat and hawked the contents very near Jim’s boot. He jumped like a mink in slit-eyed fury, pointing at my eyes the way his daddy had; he scowled and left.

Fat Sam said, worried, “This mess ain’t none of my doin, Edgar. Got nothin in the world to do with Sam Frank Tolen.” Nosir, we were bosom friends so far as Sam Frank Tolen was concerned. But from the day I’d backed his daddy down, we could never be true friends and we both knew it.

Not long after that, Woodson’s wife moved out in order to move in with a widower, John Russ, who had four boys of his own. Old Man Woodson slunk on home to Georgia, so the tension around those woods eased up a little. Shifty Jim ran the plantation, making a worse job of it than his old man, and Sammy and I fooled around some as before. I enjoyed teasing him and he enjoyed being teased, that was about it. Never let me forget that the Tolen boys, not Edgar Watson, were running the plantation, and where they were running it, I advised him, was straight into the ground. But mostly I ignored Sam or just played along, convinced it was only a matter of time before Aunt Tab got fed up with these corn rats and begged me to take over. Before that happened, Jim Tolen left for Georgia, scooting out on a shotgun wedding. He left Fat Sammy as the overseer and Sam got drunk, to celebrate. “Too bad you ain’t smarter, Ed. Might get you a good job overseein, same as I got.” I grinned right back. “You never know, Sam, I may get there yet.” And he said, “Over my dead body!” and we both guffawed.

According to age, experience, and bone ability, not to mention the blood ties of kin, his job should have been mine, but on account of my “checkered reputation,” Aunt Tab would not lift her little finger.

One evening, Minnie was waiting in the road when I came home. She raised her arms and I swooped her up and sat her astride behind me on old Job; she held my shoulders. As we cantered home, she giggled with the rocking motion in that elation of young girls who don’t know what to do with their new juices, disguising her pleasure by simpering her news into my ear.

For some time now, she confided, that darned Sammy Tolen had overlooked no chance to tickle her. I explained that this was his loutish way of reconnoitering a young girl’s person. Well, she squeaked, Cousin Laura, though twenty-nine years Sam’s senior, had seemed very happy to be tickled, and at one point had become, well, overexcited. “Oh, you horrid boy!” she shrieked, rassling Sammy to the ground and seating herself on what would have been his lap if he’d sat up. Two nights later, Ninny said (daring this topic only because she rode behind me where I couldn’t see her face), investigating a racket in the barn, Aunt Tab had caught the Widow Laura seated astride Sammy with her nightshirt up and naked as a lily the rest of the way down, and this morning she had whipped those cringing sinners into the buggy and bounced them eight miles to Lake City, where they were united in “unholy wedlock,” as our mama called it.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” I burst out, incensed. Thrilled, my sister cried, “Edgar, that’s blasphemy!” I brooded the rest of the way home. “Shifty Jim’s plan,” I concluded finally. “Sammy had made a rumpus, got caught screwing that old simpleton, knowing Aunt Tab would act just as she did. Tolens want some kind of claim on our plantation, don’t you see that, Ninny?” Shocked by that angry language, the girl protested that Aunt Laura was not a simpleton, she loved dear sweet Aunt Laura very, very much and I was being vile as well as most unkind, and anyway, it wasn’t “our” plantation! Minnie had understood nothing, as usual. At the gate, I swung her roughly off the horse and she ran inside in tears.

Sammy had already moved in. He dined with us that evening, sitting beside that sweet coy fool too old to be his mother. His disgusting table manners made our ladies shrivel; they hardly knew where to look or what to say. “Well, nobody can’t call me no cradle robber!” he guffawed, spraying food. And damned if this manure-flecked feller didn’t wink at me, as if this outrage were the best joke in the world. I’m the Master of Ichetucknee, that wink said. And you? He even offered me a cheap cigar.

When the ladies protested our cigars, we went outside, where Sam let go a self-congratulatory belch. “Looks like you’re fucked pretty good now, don’t it, Edgar? You and my hot pantaloons old widow.” Sam always enjoyed that ugly way of talking.

From the Getzen place, the old Spanish Road led west through Ichetucknee Springs past the Collins trading post. Mr. Collins’s gristmill turned so slow that his boy Lem (Lem said) could top its hoppers full of grain and go home and eat dinner and get back to the mill in good time for a smoke before it finished grinding. Lem was my friend and his brother Billy was courting our Miss Minnie. What Billy Collins saw in that crushed girl I will never know. I suppose my sister was beautiful in her way, but this was said by women more than men because she had no spirit. All her life she would speak in a childlike voice, keeping her head flinched over to one side, her pale underchin pulsing with trepidation; she reminded me of that little tree frog we called “spring peeper” at Clouds Creek.

One April Sunday afternoon behind the store, Lem and I were hard at work on a half jug of moonshine when a girl I had never seen before happened by with Billy and Minnie. From the first, I could not take my eyes off that clear face. Fair skin, smooth and light and pretty as a petal, small nose, and small white teeth in a dancing smile. But what stole my breath were those large black eyes, like the wondering round eyes of some night creature.

Yes, I was pierced clean through the heart, love at first sight. So stricken was I that I reeled backwards, throwing my arms wide, crying out senselessly the name of the old song, “Charlie Is My Darling!” Having read so much, I was articulate enough, but my life had been so solitary, with so much silence, that I had no graces. I used that song to cover my confusion: all I really wanted to cry out was Miss, I love you. The girl went pink and turned haughty and Minnie cried, “Oh Edgar, honestly!”

I flushed but did not falter. I sprang forward on the wings of drink, striking both knees painfully into the dirt, and seized and kissed her hand, which was delicious, cool and warm at the same time. When she snatched it back, I bowed to her little boots, banging my forehead into the dust, astounded by my own oafish behavior. Clearly this Miss Collins thought me crude as well as rude, also swinishly inebriated, which I was. She reproved her cousin Lem for keeping such rough company-though in saying this, she caught my eye and almost smiled. She even tried to assist me off my hook, saying, “You guessed my secret, Mr. Watson, I hate the name Ann Mary. I’m not your darling but by all means call me Charlie if you like.” She thought me a bold idiot, she told me later. I was indeed rough company but also such an overjoyed poor fool that she forgave me.

I had known nothing of such exaltation! By some miracle-could it be true?-a dark-eyed angel loved this overjoyed poor fool to the same degree. We sat in the grass, leaning back against the sun-warmed slats of the old mill. I described my fine plantation at Clouds Creek to the sound of flowing water. From that first afternoon, we were delightedly in love, smiling and smiling for no reason, lost in each other’s smiling eyes, abiding in the other’s smiling heart. Nothing needed to be said, nothing regretted, all was perfect and complete just as it was.