Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

In the end Preacher Bethea was forced to deal with E. J. Watson’s reputation but it never changed his plans even a little. In a last-minute precaution as the day drew near, he found some excuse not to perform our wedding, after which, with his daughter safely off his hands, he assured his neighbors that he had strongly disapproved her match right from the start. Kate Edna was hurt, having done what she thought he wanted; she was learning the hard way who her father was. She said, “If Daddy disapproves of you, you see, he won’t feel obliged to provide a dowry”-the one bitter remark I ever heard this loyal daughter make. She was shocked when it turned out that she was correct.

Neither the bride’s father nor the groom’s mother was invited when we were married in a civil ceremony at Lake City by County Judge W. M. Ives, with whom I would have less amicable dealings a few years later. As a wedding present, Kate gave me a white shaving mug in floral porcelain with gold trim, the first elegant object I had ever owned. I was so proud that I grew a mustache to inset into its mustache cup, which kept my fine new growth out of the lather.

The wedding was celebrated on a two-day honeymoon at the Hotel Blanche, where Kate tasted her first champagne and oysters. For a girl who had grown up around farm animals, she set out on her erotic life distinctly nervous-not jumpy really but inert and damp, like suet, breaking out in sudden little sweats. Gently I stroked her back and rump, murmured her down and murmured her down, same way you might calm a foal, and pretty quick, with more champagne, she got taken by surprise by her own free nature. Her knees went back and her mouth opened wide and her farm girl body turned sweet pink all over, which got me cranked up, too. God’s so-called Creation, I decided a few minutes later, might be nothing more than the cumulative energy of all animal ecstasies, human and otherwise, exploding out into the universe in one mighty revelation.

We spent most of the next day in bed. Lying spent, I recalled that epitaph I saw somewhere in Texas: here lies bill williams: he done his damndest. I gave it hell but the next time around I was hard put to keep up with her. Even so, we raised such a rumpus in our squeaky bed that poor Kate felt too giggly to dress in front of me next morning.

In the Islands, my foreman had been hearing Tucker rumors, his wife told me when I returned to Chatham in late autumn. Dyer came reeling to the dock, advising me without so much as a greeting that he wanted to be paid off right now since he aimed to quit. I looked him over up and down and sideways. When he could no longer meet my eye, I reminded him that this Chatham Bend plantation had always required a year’s notice from a foreman. If he left before the harvest, he would have to forfeit this year’s pay. No word escaped his frightened face, but with Sybil’s help, he sobered up and changed his mind.

In November, when Mis Sybil was near term, her husband had been off at Tampa on a bender. Having no time to summon Richard Harden, she delivered her child with only the help of our Indian woman, who told her to get out of bed and squat. This ill-smelling old aborigine disdained the boiling water and hot towels fetched to the cabin door, just hacked and coughed and spat that out before closing it again. Having broken in her own tough twat long since, she could not imagine what the fuss was all about: giving birth for her was more like yawning. When the child arrived stillborn, the squaw indicated in sign language that when that weepy white woman got her breath back, she could walk down to the river and wash off if that was what she wanted.

Hurt by her husband’s absence-and confused when I told her that he had remarried-Sybil tried to feel grateful for my concern. She never reproved me for forcing her door, saying I had warned her: hadn’t I given her that pistol to protect herself? It was scarcely my fault, she said with a weak smile, that she could not bring herself to pull the trigger.

The following year I was away when Fred showed up, red-blotched, shaky, and ashamed, according to Lucius; he had been frightened by a story at Key West that E. J. Watson had murdered the plume bird warden Guy Bradley at Flamingo a few weeks earlier. By the time I got back to the Bend, the Dyers were gone. Lucius said they had departed on the mail boat, leaving only a scrawled address where the five hundred dollars that Dyer claimed was due him should be sent. All things considered, their departure was for the best. I certainly felt no obligation to send money.

Young Lucius, who was now living at the Bend, told me Mis Sybil had urged her husband to await my return and not leave till he was paid. Dyer was too frightened, however, telling his wife that he was leaving and that if she did not come with him, she and the children would never see him again. By now he had persuaded himself that I would send his salary anyway after the harvest. “Mis Sybil knew better,” Lucius said in a wry tone, sounding skeptical of his daddy’s business practices.

Sybil’s small Nell, who adored Lucius just as much as her mother adored me, had left in a flood of grief, and Lucius confessed that he was going to miss that lively little Nell, though he was sixteen and the girl was only seven.

A few weeks before she died, Great-Aunt Tabitha had summoned me to her bedside, where the smell of decay already rose from her yellowed linen. She seized my wrist in a birdy grip and whispered in weak sulfurous gasps that she wanted her silver to remain in the Watson family and that therefore it should go to my new bride.

Possibly her son-in-law had hurried her along before she could get that last wish down on paper, because on a soft hazy day that spring, she suddenly gave up the ghost. Her mortal coil was boxed and trundled up the highroad to Lake City, where she was laid in next to Cousin Laura under that tall haughty stone that she had ordered for herself right after her daughter’s death ten years before. We have parted-whom could she have meant with that inscription? Surely not her son-in-law, Mr. S. Tolen, who did not attend the funeral, being drunk in celebration of his strengthened claim to our plantation.

Paying a call on the bereaved, I mentioned the Watson silver that kind Aunt Tab had left to my new bride. Sam chuckled, “I wouldn’t know nothin about that, Ed. That new bride that you are speakin about has got to be the one who died on you a few years back down at Fort Myers cause there ain’t one word about old silver and new brides in the last will.” Comfortably, he contemplated his big house, as if to say, I reckon I got it all now, ain’t I, Ed?

I spoke each word carefully to make sure he heard. “That silver, like this property, belongs in the Watson family.”

“That a warning, Ed? Or is that a threat? Cause a feud ain’t goin to help you Watsons none. Even if you was crazy enough to shoot me, my brothers are in line for the whole thing. I know the law on this real good cause I done the papers with the lawyers. And next in line after Tolens come them Myers nephews. So you Watsons are way into the back, suckin hind tit.”

In 1903, the two Myers nephews, contesting Sam Tolen’s flouting of their uncle’s will, had acquired by tax deed nearly half of the mismanaged plantation and had filed a suit to claim the rest. Incredibly, that suit had been invalidated by the last will and testament of Tabitha Watson, who had bequeathed everything to Samuel Tolen. Since her act was incomprehensible, our family had assumed that, all alone and undefended in her house, at the mercy of this son-in-law who stood leering at me now, the old lady had been starved, terrorized, and otherwise coerced to do his bidding.