Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

An impatient sideways gesture of the revolver barrel persuaded him to drop the shovel. He looked me over, nodding. “Never come to much, I see, no more’n I did.” His old pants snapped in the wind, his wheeze was rapid, his eyes darted. He could not fathom why I remained silent. “Your mother and sister,” he pled next. “They’re getting by all right?”

I waved the revolver toward the open grave. “Do it,” I repeated.

“Come to kill me, Edgar? In cold blood?” Sneering, he lifted his filthy coat, pulled out his empty pockets. The sneer was for his own rags, not just mine. He hiked his pants, exposing begrimed shins and broken boots-he had no stockings-to show me how paltry my revenge would be. Then he dropped his pant legs and stood straight, took a deep breath, and composed himself, looking around the little cemetery at the poor monuments to our departed kin before sinking to his knees at the grave edge. “Still need revenge, boy? After twenty years?” His grin was brief, more like a wince, but it was genuine enough. “Might be the one way I’ll get into this damn place.” Frowning, he brushed dirt off his dirty knees before climbing in. Looking around him one last time, seeing no hope, he lay down in the fresh grave with a desultory groan, folding big liver-marked hands upon his chest. “Give that sainted bitch, your mother, my respects,” he sighed, “and shoot straight like I taught you.” His voice was a little shaky. Though he would not beg, he could not stop talking, eyes clenched tight.

Ring-Eye Lige was not a steadfast man and in a moment would be choking on his terror. “Cold-eyed son of a cold-hearted bitch!” he yelled, to keep his nerve up. “Finish it!” But standing there over his grave, I no longer cared whether this man lived or died. My mortal vow of twenty years had blown away like a bad smell. I’d come all the way across America for nothing.

His eyes were still clenched as I backed away. He thought I was still there. From the damp hole his voice rose in despair. “Shoot straight, damn you!” When he dared open his eyes, in two minutes or ten, all he would see was the grave mouth, a rectangular window on the void of the gray firmament, broken only by the clouds out of the north and the dark wind-borne autumn birds, leaving no trace of their passage down the sky.

At the Artemas Plantation, the black ruin, bound in creeper vine, seemed smaller, all drawn in upon itself. My fields, descending to Clouds Creek, had been hacked into ragged plots by transient sharecroppers and gullied in long scars of raw red clay. Disheartened, I did not dismount but rode directly to Colonel Robert’s house. What could I hope for after twenty years? I hoped that I hoped for nothing.

At the racket of his dogs, he came outside before I reached the steps, drove the dogs off me. A quiet in the house that drifted out the door behind him told me that his wife had passed away.

Robert Briggs Watson looked heavier and grayer. Unlike my father, he knew me at once despite my heavy beard and begrimed appearance, which told him everything the Watson clan might care to know about how the Bad Elijah’s son had fared in the great world. He would even know that my fine horse must be stolen. His expression was unsurprised, neither cold nor warm.

“Sir, I shall always be grateful you had faith in me,” I whispered. “I named my firstborn in your honor.” Awkwardly, I offered my hand, as one day long ago in this same place he had offered his. He did not refuse it, simply would not see it. Edgar Watson, like his father, was a shadow cousin. Gazing past me toward the road was his way of saying he had never seen this fugitive and that if I left at once and kept on going, he would not betray me. In a moment he would return inside and close the door.

I remounted and rode away, bruised to the heart. Yet Colonel Robert had rekindled a small hope. Without once meeting my gaze, he had uttered two words before turning back inside. “Not yet,” he said. Had I imagined this?

On my way west to Edgefield Court House and the road to Georgia, seeking some sort of empty absolution, I rode into the old carriageway at Deepwood. The old house had fallen. All but vanished, it lay beneath a blanket of wisteria and creeper and dark ivy. The ancient sheds leaned away into the weeds, seeking the earth. I sat my horse, not daring to dismount, in dread of spirits. Since the Owl-Man’s death, I had dreamt of Deepwood many times, a nightmare involving a buried body sure to be discovered. The grave, too shallow, quaked underfoot, as if the cadaver was on the point of emerging from the earth. Unable to flee, I was often awakened by my own sharp cry.

Riding hard, I arrived toward dark at Hamburg on the Savannah River. A few years after Selden Tilghman’s torture in this small, sad, sorry town, half of it had been burned to the ground as a “nest of Radical Republicans” and the rest rechristened North Augusta, Georgia.

An old hostler who shared his bad cold food confirmed the story that Hamburg was the place where a war hero turned traitor had been tarred and feathered as a lesson to the Republican inhabitants and their detachment of black militia. “Them Regulators whipped that feller to strips ! He was just a-beggin ’em to kill him!” He also related the details of the celebrated massacre, just four days after Independence Day of 1876, when the unarmed black militiamen had been taught their lesson. The old man had seen both events with his own eyes. When I asked if a big rufous man with a red ring around his eye had taken part, the man gave me a queer look. “Damn!” he said. “Know something? He sure did!”

For all their talk, the Northerners never knew black people and never really liked ’em. Our home nigras learned that truth real quick when they were sold out by the Yankees, who turned their backs overnight on their black friends. The quiet ones were living along as best they could but many were treated no better than those smart-mouths who were paid off for their swagger with the rope and bullet. Slavery was gone according to the law, but with the Black Codes and the KKK and then Jim Crow, life hadn’t changed much for the black man. A hell of a lot more burning and lynching was still going on than anybody could remember back before the War.

In this great depression year of 1893, Cousin Selden’s cousin Ben Tillman and his rabble-rousers would found their own Populist Party, which jeered at other parties (and the press) for their shameful subservience to the industrialists and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. The Populists joined with factory workers and the small black vote to go after the capitalists, who hogged all the profits and bribed the police to pound on any who protested while permitting the poor to starve in the cause of progress. Pitchfork Ben would go on to win election to the U.S. Senate, taking his safe seat away from Calbraith Butler. But very soon, Ben would revert to the know-nothing nigger-baiting of his snag-toothed faithful, who had barely scraped acquaintance with the English language. Maht not know nuthin but Ah sho’ knows whut Ah know! By that time, he had lost his black supporters. “The negro has been infected with the virus of equality,” he complained.

Pitchfork Ben would go far in life with his foaming at the mouth about black rapists out to sully the sacred honor of our Southern womanhood. As my fellow fugitive Frank Reese had once observed, only white rapists could be found in prison because black ones never got that far alive.

Next morning, crossing the Savannah on the ferry, I headed south to Waycross, over east of the Okefenokee. There I hunted in vain for Lemuel Collins, being curious to hear my erstwhile friend explain why he’d shifted the blame for the John Hayes killing onto Edgar Watson. However, I was able to locate that Mr. Smith who had kindly befriended me on my first journey south back in 1870. We went to a tavern for some talk. Remembering my name, he cocked his head to look at me more carefully. Finally he told me that a young feller named Watson had got himself lynched here in this district just a few years back. “Kind of looked like you, is why I mentioned it. Jack Watson. Ever hear of him?”