Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

On the twenty-first, Starr returned to Fort Smith with Belle’s two offspring and ten other witnesses; the hearing commenced on February 22 and ended the next day. Some of my neighbors gave depositions, mentioned a quarrel, said Watson lived close by the murder scene. But Farmer Watson, who had a good reputation with the merchants as a man who paid his bills, made a better impression than Horse Thief Starr. The Argus de-scribed the accused as a man of “fair complexion, light sunburnt whiskers, and blue eyes” who was “decidedly good-looking and talked well.” Furthermore, he appeared to be “the very opposite of a man who would be supposed to commit such a crime.”

Jim Starr’s socalled evidence being deemed circumstantial, he was granted an extension while he sought more witnesses, but very little new evidence was forthcoming. On March 4, the plaintiff ’s case was judged too weak to merit the indictment of an honest white American-“a quiet, hard-working man whose local reputation is good,” said the Fort Smith Era next day. Even so, I had spent two weeks in jail before the Hanging Judge threw out the case.

Furious, Jim Starr rode away to join an outlaw band. He died less than a year later, shot down in the Chickasaw Nation by a sheriff ’s deputy who reported that the dying Starr confessed to killing his own wife with Watson’s gun. By that time, it was widely rumored that Old Tom Starr had killed her to avenge the death of his beloved son Sam, whom she had led into bad company. Pony Starr declared that a white rancher had hired a cowhand to dispose of her and others suspected an outlaw named John Middleton. Ed Watson was the only suspect ever brought to court for the murder of Belle Starr but many others would be nominated for that honor.

With her death, Maybelle was transformed by the newspapers from the ill-favored consort of robbers to the beautiful Civil War spy, border hellion, and Queen of the Outlaws whose lovers were the terror of the West. Her legend got off to a flying start on the day of her funeral in a brief news flash in the Press-Argus, which made four errors in its single sentence: It is reported that the notorious Indian (sic) woman Bell (sic) Starr was shot dead on Monday (sic) at Eufaula (sic), Indian Territory. The “woman” part was accurate but only barely. Next, a Fort Smith editor filed the following dispatch, duly printed on the front page of the New York Times:

Word has been received from Eufala, Indian Territory, that Belle Starr was killed there Sunday night. Belle was the wife of Cole Younger [and]the most desperate woman that ever figured on the borders. She married Cole Younger directly after the war, but left him and joined a band of outlaws that operated in the Indian Territory. She had been arrested for murder and robbery a score of times, but always managed to escape.

After the first sentence, this report is inaccurate in every last detail.

Since Belle’s son Eddie had sworn publicly that he would “slaughter that old sow,” it seemed rather curious that no one wondered if young Reed might not have been the killer, or even if Reed and Mr. Watson, who were neighbors at Jack Rowe’s, had not collaborated in the killing, all the more likely since on that fatal Sunday, Reed had left those premises not long before his mother’s arrival, just as I had. Called by the prosecution in the hope he would testify against me, Eddie never once mentioned my name.

Dr. Jesse Mooney, who had tended Eddie after a savage beating from his mother, concluded that her son had been her killer, having been told this in so many words by Rosie Lee Reed, alias Pearl Younger, who had covered for her brother by throwing suspicion on me. Rosie Lee related to Dr. Mooney that when she found Belle dying in the road, she lifted her head from the bloody puddle and held her in her arms, at which point Belle opened her eyes and whispered, “Baby, your darned brother done this. I seen him across the fence before he cracked down on me.” Mercifully Pearl seemed unaware that her brother climbed the fence and walked over to his mother and fired a second shot into her face. Otherwise, her account was pretty accurate. I know that because I saw him do it. I was there.

Unwelcome now in Tom Starr country, I leased a farm in Crawford County, Arkansas. Having lost a month in jail, I got my seed in late and had to watch the weak sprouts wither in that summer’s drought. By winter I was in serious debt, with three hungry kids and a new baby. Sonborn was ten now and helped some with the chores, but Carrie and Eddie were still toddlers who helped most when they stayed out of the way.

We called our newborn Lucius Hampton Watson, after the family patriarch Luke Watson of Virginia and General Wade Hampton, our great Carolina hero. In ’76, General Hampton was elected governor; later, he became a U.S. senator. People voted for him even though he spoke out against segregation on the railroads. I couldn’t go along with that, not altogether, but I had to admire this rare public man who stood up for his principles, which was why I named my youngest after him. I considered “Lucius Selden Watson,” but with my lifelong nightmares about Deepwood, I thought that name might curse my little boy with evil luck.

I had not welcomed this little feller, who looked like he had come into this world only to pule and die. Once winter set in, there were times I felt that little Lucius would be far better off dead. He brought no joy to our meager hearth but only plagued us down those cold dark days with his starved fret and yawling. Mandy was shocked when I spoke this way, and reproved me for my “brutal way of talking.” I told her that the world was brutal, man’s lot, too, so if there really was a God, she had better face God’s will. “That is your God’s will, not my God’s, Mr. Watson,” my wife said.

We had no Christmas that year, none, no friends nor relatives nor even neighbors. Huddling with our offspring in a damp and dirty shack, doing our utmost to forget our stomachs and stay warm, we passed that winter in the nightmare sleep that famine brings, a kind of fitful hibernation. The dull cold misery of dark days without end-dark winter days all but inseparable from night-was worse than Edgefield District in the War, as if somehow I had fallen back into that hellish period. I was tormented by the children’s hollow eyes, the coughing and mute suffering, as those pinched and staring faces shrank against the bone. In my helplessness, I lay there stunned, breath cold and slow as the toad’s breath in winter mud. Poor Mandy did her gallant best to poke up my dead ashes: “Don’t lay too long without breathing, Mr. Watson. Wouldn’t want rigor mortis to set in.” But Mandy’s eyes had gone dull, too, and in the dim light from the single bleary pane, her face looked haunted.

Was it Plato who said, Life is terrible, but it isn’t serious? Did he mean that man is a hostage to his life while held captive by death, so why take such a life seriously? Fuck it, I thought. Fuck God, fuck everything.

One frozen day three riders with stiff faces brought a string of ponies, offering twenty dollars in advance if I would tend them for the rest of the winter. Two did the talking while the third stayed to one side. If nobody came to claim ’em by the spring, they said, then I could sell ’em. That told me these animals were probably stolen, but I was in no place to ask hard questions.

While those two put their heads together, counting out the coins, the third man, who’d dismounted to piss, eased alongside. He was a halfbreed man in half-uniform, a deserter from the buffalo soldiers from his looks. Says, “Watson? Any kin to a Jacob Watson?” “Reckon so,” I said. He had no time to discuss how he knew my name. “These boys are friends of Belle,” he warned under his breath. “They won’t be back. You better run this string into the Nations, sell ’em quick-either that or chase ’em off your place soon as we’re gone.” He moved away.