Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Jane and I got along just fine, I let her tease me and I made her laugh. Since my first wife Charlie had been close kin to her daddy, I told her we were “kissin cousins” and maybe she should call me Cousin Edgar. Instead of intriguing her as I had hoped, this made her nervous. After that, she hid when I was drinking, partly because my gawky carpenter, John Russ, away from his worn-out wife, was plotting day and night to get her into bed and had filled her pretty ear with Tolen slander.

John’s two boys, who might have tattled to their mother, had gone off with Erskine Thompson to Key West, so this rawboned Russ was living in some damn-fool paradise. When he was drinking, he dropped hammer-like hints about my deadly past right at my table, then came out with that heron squawk of his while the rest studied their turnips for fear of what ol’ Desperader might decide to do. Restraining my temper, I warned him that if E. J. Watson were the dreadful criminal that Mr. John Russ claimed, it might be unwise to blacken the man’s name to his face, he’d better stick to doing it behind his back. But John was so crazy with the rut that he just hee-hawed louder, out of his loose-cocked donkey lust and twitching nerves. The sonofabitch couldn’t take his rheumy eyes off her.

Being plagued by Jane myself, I couldn’t blame him all that much and anyway his dirty tactics never did him the least good when it came to women.

Forgetting he was hitched up to Gert Hamilton, Erskine Thompson never missed a chance for a long gloomy look at Miss Jane Straughter. As for Bill House, he got hot and bothered every time he happened by and so did Henry Short, though he dared not show it.

Henry Short was a lot lighter in his skin than Henry Daniels, Henry Smith, and a couple other Henrys I could name, but we called him “Black Henry” to avoid social confusion. You sure wouldn’t confuse ’em if you watched ’em work. Short was handy with boats and gun and gill net, handy with any implement he put his hand to. He was steady and painstaking, honest as wood, one of the most able men on the whole coast. Knew his place and always courteous and quiet. Hard to tell what he was thinking, but watching him, I could see he didn’t miss much.

There’s folks will tell you nigras don’t fall in love, not the way we do. Well, I believe that Henry Short fell in love with our Jane Straughter-it was all that white in ’em, most folks would say. The rest of us might want to rut her half to death in grand old-fashioned drunken Southern style but Henry loved her.

Jane saw the difference right away, and very soon, she loved him dearly, too, she couldn’t hide it. John Russ started abusing him, nigger this and nigger that, until I told him to save that kind of white-trash talk for his Tolen kin. I knew just how he felt, of course, because Widower Watson was very jealous, too, and finally I had to tell Black Henry to stay away from Chatham Bend because I didn’t trust him not to run off with my cook. Because I liked him, I made a joke of it to make him feel better.

Not smiling when a white man cracked a joke was as close to insolence as a black man dared to come, but I don’t believe Short was insolent so much as astonished. He never squinted skeptically the way Frank Reese did, never hesitated to obey-in fact, that day I ran him off, he never even tried to tell my cook good-bye. He nodded, touched his hat, and turned away. Even when Jane ran out and waved, he did not look back. But being in love, he had eyes in the back of his head and knew that his sweetheart was in sight and not only that but exactly where she stood, the sacred spot, because he lifted his straw hat, held that arm high in a lost and desperate wave, and kept on walking down toward the dock.

Only the stiff set of his shoulders told me how upset he was. Like Reese, this feller had guessed that the Boss wanted Jane Straughter for himself, but unlike Reese, this man knew better than to show his anger or make stupid mistakes.

Thanks to the carpenter’s calumnies, our cook stayed leery of me. Also, she was sulky over Henry Short. She hadn’t minded when I’d warned off Reese but now she came and tried to plead with me, eyes full of tears: Mr. Short had told her in all earnestness that he wished to marry and she had accepted. When I shook my head, she cried out piteously and ran away around the house.

What happened not long after that, Mr. John Russ choked to death. Having supper with me and my noted hog authority, Mr. Waller, he was eating too fast and got a sweet potato in his lung or some damned place. Turned a bad gray-blue, jumped up, and fell down heart-struck before anyone thought to whack him on the back. One minute he was packing in the grub like Judas Priest at the Last Supper and the next he was felled like a stockyard beef, that’s how quick Death had him, his mouth oozing sweet potato like the hind end of a turkey packed with stuffing.

Jane ran in from the kitchen, raised her hand up to her mouth, and whispered, “Poisoned!” Hearing that, my hog man panicked, “Anyone who says Green Waller poisoned him is a damn liar!” Looking quite unwell himself, he sidled bandy-legged toward the door, keeping a wall-eye on Ed Watson while his hand groped for the way out. “Dammit, Green,” I said, “give us a hand here.”

Jane said, “How come you don’t take him to a doctor?” There was a challenge in her tone I didn’t care for. “Well, first of all,” I snapped, “because he’s dead-he has no pulse. Second, because by the time I got him to the nearest doctor-” I stopped, suddenly incensed-“Second, because whether I take him to a doctor or I don’t is none of your nigger business.” I was defending myself too fast from their insinuations, which upset me even more. “Good thing he never crawled into your bed,” I said. “He might have had that heart attack on top of you.”

Upset, Jane offered the late Mr. Russ a look more fond than any she had bestowed on him in life. “Poor Mist’ John would died happy, then,” wept this saucy wench, to gall me. She had overheard our raw disputes over the back pay Russ had coming-disputes fired by common horniness over her own person-and might actually believe that E. J. Watson had poisoned his late carpenter, so I warned her that she’d better mind what she told people at Fort White. “Or you’ll kill me?” Her words came out in a squeak of angry fear. After that she kept her mouth shut. But a girl who can make you jealous of a corpse is probably not too worried you will kill your old friend J. C. Robarts’s beloved daughter, and anyway, no matter what she told them, the Russ clan would assume my guilt and most of my neighbors would too.

Mercifully, John Russ’s boys did not show up for another day or two, by which time their daddy was safe underground. With no family present, we saw no need to build a coffin, and by the time we laid him in his hole, enough river water had seeped in to almost float him. Resting on his spade, Waller opined, “Good thing them boys seen their dad in better days. They sure don’t need to see this blue-faced fright layin without no box in mud and water.” Still sweating out his drink of the night previous, the hog man himself was a poor color. They didn’t call that feller Green for nothing.

The burial done, we trooped back to the house to toast the dead man with a cup of moonshine. Waller sidled up to speak to me in confidence as I sat quiet in my place in the corner. “Please, Ed, Mr. Watson, sir,” he begged. “I surely never did believe them things that carpenter told about you. I never even listened to them dretful stories!”

When his boss leapt up and punched the wall, he sprang back, scaring everybody. I took a deep breath and sat down again and devoted myself to my jug, in ugly humor. After so many years of trials and tribulations, I decided, even the Almighty would concede that his sometime servant Edgar Watson deserved a little solace-young Jane, for instance. But the girl had guessed my line of thought and fled, and though I searched the house, I found neither hide nor hair of her.