Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Mister Watson gathered himself up and come right out with it. “Children, this is your baby sister. Her name is Minnie, after your aunt Minnie Collins.” He made a small bow to Mrs. Watson, who acted unsurprised. She took out a lace handkerchief and dabbed her lips, even smiled at Henrietta just a little. But after my mother scooted back inside, she told her husband, “Too bad the place wasn’t swept out before we got here.”

I run my mother to Caxambas the next morning.

Mrs. Watson was already poorly when she got to Chatham Bend, and within the year her husband had to carry her outside into the sun. He’d set her down real gentle in her wicker chair under them red poincianas where the breeze come fresh upriver from the Gulf and she’d sit real still in her faded blue cotton dress so’s not to stir the heat, her head bent just a little, watching the mullet jump and the tarpon roll and the herons flap across the river. Sometimes she might see big gators hauled out on the far bank that come down out of the Glades with the summer rains. I always wondered what sweet kind of thought was going on behind her smile.

One day when I called her “Mrs. Watson” she beckoned me in close and said, “Since Little Min is your half sister, Erskine, we’re family in a way, isn’t that true?” And when I nodded, she said, “If you like, then, you may call me Aunt Jane.” When she seen the tears come to my eyes, she took me in her arms and give me a quick hug so both of us could pretend she never noticed ’em.

Aunt Jane always had her books beside her, but after a while she looked at them no more. Mister Watson read to her from the Good Book every day and brung God’s word to the rest of us on Sundays under the boat shed roof. Pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the earth! Might keep us on our knees for an hour at a time with his preachings of hellfire and damnation. And the sea became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea! He’d work himself into red-faced wrath, looming over us booming and spitting, a regular Jehovah-either that or he was making fun of God. That’s the way Rob seen it and I reckon Rob was right. For refusing to love the Lord, Rob got the strap; his daddy beat him something pitiful most every Sunday. He never called Rob by his rightful name no more, it was always Sonborn. A joke, I figured, but I could see that Aunt Jane disliked it and Rob hated it.

As for Tant, he carried on somewhat more holy than was wanted, rolling his eyes up to the Lord and warbling the hymns until Mister Watson had to frown to keep his face straight. Pretend to love God same way Tant does, I advised Rob. He only said, If I did what Tant does, Stupid, he’d beat me for that, too.

Tant had a sassy way with Mister Watson, having learned real quick that he ran no risk at all. Just by making that man laugh, he got by in a way I could never even hope for. And the thing of it was-this ate my heart-Tant never cared a hoot about them warm grins I would have given my right eye for and Rob, too. All he seen was another way to get out of his chores and have his fun.

Mister Watson read to us one time from a story called Two Years Before the Mast. Captain Thompson is flogging a poor sailor. The sailor shrieks, Oh Jesus Christ, Oh Jesus Christ! And the captain yells, Call on Captain Thompson, he’s the man! Jesus Christ can’t help you now! We was all shocked when that part was read out, not the words so much as the heartfelt way he read it, looking at me.

Aunt Jane did not like him drinking on a Sunday, she told us not to pay him no attention. To her husband she said in a low voice, “You do them harm.” But he would only tease Aunt Jane by telling how all the finest hymns was wrote by slavers who never repented till after they got rich. She tried to smile but looked unhappy and ashamed, lowering her eyes when he lifted his strong voice like an offering:

Through many dangers, toils, and snares

I have already come.

’Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

Mister Watson never had no interest in such hymns before his family come and he never had none after they was gone. Me neither. One time I asked him, Sir, do you believe in God Almighty? And he said, God Almighty? You think He believes in you? I never found out what he meant. Time he was done with me, I believed in nothing in the world but what I seen in front of my own nose.

• • •

One early morning we was woke by a man hollering. “E. J. Watson, this here is a citizen’s arrest!” When I run downstairs, Mister Watson was already at the window with his rifle. Three armed men was in a boat out on the river, and one of ’em was that crazy old Frenchman.

Mrs. Watson was all trembly, in tears. She said, “Oh, please, Edgar!” She didn’t want trouble, not with little children in the house. So what he done, he took a bead and clipped the tip of the handlebar mustache off of the ringleader, Tom Brewer, who howled and ducked down quick. In a half minute, that boat was gone. With one bullet. Mister Watson had run them citizens right off his river.

Next day, Bill House come by to tell about the citizens’ posse. What excited him was Mister Watson’s marksmanship-had he really clipped Brewer’s mustache on purpose? Bill told that story all his life. The truth was, Mister Watson skinned him by mistake. All he aimed to do, he said, was pass his bullet so close under Brewer’s nose that he could smell it.

I worked for Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties and run his boats for him from time to time in later years, so if he done all the things laid at his door I would of knowed about it. Plenty of men worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another and plenty more had dealings with him; if you could take and dig ’em up, they’d say the same. He drove him a hard bargain when that mood was on him, but the only one claimed that Mister Watson done him harm was Adolphus Santini, who got his throat slit a little in that scrape down to Key West. There’s men will tell you Santini had it coming. I don’t know nothin about that cause I wasn’t there. I do know Mister Watson got a mule that year and named him Dolphus.

Not long after Captain Eben Carey joined the Frenchman on Possum Key, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and moonshiner from Lemon City on the Miami River. Crossed the Glades, then paddled north from Harney River, brought quite a smell into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on at the table, never cared about spillin food on his greasy shirt. Claimed beard and grease was all that stood between him and the miskeeters. Had a big chaw of Brown Mule stuck in his face and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor.

Rumor was that this Tom Brewer would spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye to fire up his heathen clientele so’s they couldn’t think straight, then trade ’em the dregs for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut-what Injuns called wy-omee -killed more redskins than the soldiers ever done, give traders a bad name all across the country. Had him a squaw girl, couldn’t been more than nine-ten years of age; lay her down right in his boat and had his way, then rented her out to any man might want her. No harm in that, he said, on account her band had throwed her out for fooling with a white man, namely him.

Tom Brewer were a sleepy and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth, but even when his hands lay quiet, them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Tom Brewer than what was happening around our table. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair down past the collar. Claimed to be the first and only white man who ever crossed the Glades in both directions so Mister Watson nicknamed him the Double-Crosser. The law on both coasts was after this feller for peddling wy-omee to the Injuns, taking away good business from the traders, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind.