Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

A shy new wench billed as “Sweet Miss SueBelle Parkins” seemed upset when she was chosen by the grieving widower, in fact insultingly upset: I warned her sharply that I was not so drunk and useless as I might appear, overcoming her reluctance by twisting her arm and pushing her upstairs, where she permitted me to complete my carnal dealings. Passive though she was, inert with terror, she got a hook deep into me, a sick addiction having something to do with the queer contrast between the lacquered whore’s mask and the firm young body and clean skin. But when I came there and selected her again, she burst into tears. She was still weeping when, upstairs, she whispered, “Lo’d fo’give me, Mist’ Edguh, suh! I has knowed you all my life!” Scarcely discernible beneath her brassy wig and crimson rouge and tear-caked powder lay my childhood neighbor, young Lulalie Watson, the sweet-potato daughter of Tap Watson and Aunt Cindy.

The day Mist’ Edguh had left Edgefield, Lalie wailed, her daddy was shot dead in the field by two white men on horseback. When I demanded to know who those riders were, she was too scared to tell me. Finally she confessed that they were known to black folks as Major Will and Overseer Claxton.

Lalie had had sense enough to flee, walking the wood edge all night and the next day to reach the Savannah River. Her mother had left a paper with the address in Florida, but having no kin along the way and finding no work in the winter fields, the girl was reduced to selling herself to pay for a journey hundreds of miles south. Two years passed before she reached Lake City. Being ashamed of what she had become, and fearful of the pain she would cause her churchly mother, she had never dared the last few miles to present herself at the plantation. (It had not occurred to the poor thing that Aunt Cindy’s joy at seeing her alive might outweigh her disappointment.) Instead, she took a position, so to speak, at our local cathouse. In tears, Lalie implored me to keep her awful secret. I promised on my honor I would do so, for which I was rewarded with warm tears and a complimentary crack at her sweet person.

I visited Lalie soon again and then again-homesickness, I suppose. And I needed that generous healing nature that had made her companionship so precious to my sister in our childhood. All true, all true, but it was also true that her mortal form did great honor to her Maker. The seed of hunger for Lulalie Watson, dormant since boyhood, needed small encouragement to sprout-not that it helped me to escape my grief. My groan of deliverance would turn in its very utterance to a moan of woe. I reviled the poor creature for knowing that I wept, for knowing that no matter what, I needed her tenderness as much as her brown person-for knowing, worse, that no matter what, her erstwhile young master was now her slave and would be back for more, no matter how often she begged me to forget the lost Lulalie. At the very least, oh please, sir, I must deal with her by her professional name and please, sir, fuck her under that name, too, is what she meant, as if to avoid additional damnation for some queer kind of incest. I felt slighted but agreed.

Banging through Sweet SueBelle’s door stupid with drink, needing to shame her because so ashamed myself, I sometimes hollered, Sooee-belle, Sooee-belle, in the voice I used back at Clouds Creek to call my hogs. Pitying me in my coarse grief, she smiled at my tomfoolery. And finally her good simple heart would get me smiling at my own self-pity-before the act, that is, but never after.

As SueBelle became less fearful, even fond of me, she called me “Wild Man.” You bes’ come on upstairs with yo’ sweet Sooee-belle, cause you my Wil’ Man. Undressed, she lay back like a banquet, breasts smooth and sweet as mangoes, thighs thick and warm and smoky as Virginia hams. But in my soiled grief, I wanted no eyes upon my deed, and would turn her over, hauling her up onto her knees in a surge of anger and taking her like an animal, just as before. She would not join in my abandon, simply endured it.

One night there came hard pounding on the walls. Shut up that crazy racket in there! Ain’t you got no manners? And another displeased customer across the hall, his door flung wide, hollered downstairs at the boss whore, Hear that? How come I ain’t gettin laid as good as that? Mirthful, I increased our uproar, rolling off the bed on purpose in a grand finale, dragging the underdog right down on top of me, until finally one plaintiff, provoked beyond endurance, knocked our door down. I jumped up buck naked and launched a surprise attack, as I had been taught to do at my father’s knee. Knocked down and kicked hard, still on his knees, the mauled intruder, as naked as myself and mopping dolefully at a bloody nose, agreed to apologize to Miss Parkins, that fine specimen of negritude swathed in pink sheets. “Beggin yer pardon, Miss Parkins,” he sniveled. “Doan mine if ah do,” said the demure Miss Parkins. I banged the door behind him and went back for more.

Hard drinking and hard fucking were my sole forgetting. For all its rewards, mounting Sooee from behind was a lonely business, and rolling off her, spent and sticky, was worse. Awaking vile-breathed, head pounding from bad rotgut, I felt plain rancorous, soul-poisoned. Dragging my stinking carcass into crumpled clothes and lurching toward the stairs, I was reviled by other lowlifes and their black Jezebels for making such a rumpus at that hour. Outside on a Sunday morning, I was struck sightless by the sun like a bear blundering out of a cave. Occasionally my uproar was assailed by slop jars flung from the upper windows by the religious element among the whorehouse clientele, and always, I was scourged in the street by the cold stares of churchgoers offended by my swinish defilement of the Sabbath morn. Filled with a deep slow-seeping rage, I cursed them vilely to offend them further.

Oh Charlie my Darling, Dearest Charlie, how do you like your filthy Mister now?

Billy C. Collins married our Mary Lucretia that same year and their first child was dubbed Julian Edgar Collins. The “Edgar” honored Billy’s father, but poor Minnie, frantic to please her wayward brother, tried to hint that her sprat was named for me. However, no Methodist Collins would name his firstborn after Edgar Watson, and anyway, her husband much disliked me. Hadn’t his vile brother-in-law sent poor Cousin Ann Mary to an early grave? Had he not insulted her memory by refusing to attend her funeral and letting her parents take responsibility for the child?

When Lem and Billy’s father died, I paid his estate fifty-five dollars for a beautiful gray filly, long-legged and delicate, with big dark eyes. I named her Charlie. For ten and a half dollars more, I acquired the old man’s.12-gauge double-barrel, which in those days was a fancy gun, not used by common farmers. The right barrel threw a broken pattern but I soon learned to compensate for that. I would use that old firearm all my life and without hearing one complaint.

That spring, still shaky, I gave up my night wanderings and made a good crop for Captain Getzen, who had been patient, liking the way I worked. With my debts paid, I tried to heal our family by inviting the Collins boys to celebrate. Entreated by my sister, Billy accepted. And so, one Saturday, we rode to the O’Brien tavern in Suwannee County, the only place for thirty miles around that would still serve me. I had promised Minnie I would pick no fights, even in fun, and that evening things went fine. For such good Methodists, Lem and Billy got uproarious, and Lem toasted me over and over, yelling, “See that, Bill? Ed ain’t near so bad as what you thought!” Made me feel so kindly toward my fellow men, even my brother-in-law, that I jumped up on a table to lead all my new friends in a grand old marching song of the Confederacy, to which every man present knew the rousing chorus: