Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Daddy Richard Harden moved south to Wood Key because he’d lost his taste for local company, said his own family was as much human society as a man could handle. But squatters was roosted on every bump between Marco and Chokoloskee, and some was already pushin south toward Lost Man’s. Beyond Chatham River, the only settlers besides ourselves was the James Hamiltons at Lost Man’s Beach and Sheldon Atwells back up Rodgers River. Then Daddy let Gilbert Johnson perch on the far end of Wood Key because them two enjoyed squabblin, and us Harden boys was very happy because Mr. Gilbert brung along two pretty daughters.

Sarah Johnson was a slim little thing without no secrets: skipped and laughed and danced and said most anything she wanted. One day-we was out running my coon traps-I walked a log and jumped to cross a swampy place, landed barefoot on a half-hid cottonmouth, a big one: I sprang away quick but felt the strike. When I looked down and seen that deathly white mouth waving, I turned so weak I had to lean against a tree.

“What’s the matter?” Sarah hollers.

“Think I’m snake-bit!”

“ Think ? You snake-bit or ain’t you?”

She comes across the creek, hikes up my britches. There ain’t a sign of nothing on my leg, only dried dirt.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’m feelin somewhat better.”

“Too much thinkin, boy.” She pokes that snake till it raises up its head and whacks it dead with one cut of her stick.

Sarah was calm but looked as pale as how I felt. Not until later did my deathly snakebite strike her as comical: Think I’m snake-bit! She was sitting on the sand, arms around her knees, and she whooped and laughed so hard rememberin my expression that she rolled straight over backwards, kicking them small brown feet up in the air in the pure joy of it. Bein strict brought up, she kept her skirt wrapped tight, and I weren’t lookin: even so, I seen the full round of her bottom, and it looked to me like a heart turned upside down. I loved that Sarah for the joy in her, and all that a young girl was, but I was drawn hard to her body, too. It weren’t only the wanting her. Her body was like some lost part of my own I had to fit back into place or I would die. That heart turned upside down was my heart, too.

This frisky gal had a way with E. J. Watson, knew how to smooth him down. It kind of surprised me how shy he seemed around her, almost like he needed her approval. She was blunt! Aimed to winkle out the truth about his life and made no bones about it. He was happy that such a pretty girl cared to hear his sad life story, and it got so he confided in her, told her things he would never say to no one else. Maybe what he told was truth, maybe it wasn’t.

What a glorious year, and scarcely started!

On January 1, electric light came on for the first time at the new Fort Myers hotel and also in several business establishments, Langford & Hendry for one. Last year when Mr. Edison lit up his Seminole Lodge, that glorious blaze was the first electric lighting in the nation! (He had already offered street lights but the men refused them, claiming night light might disturb their cattle!)

On February 16, the international telegraph station at Punta Rassa got America’s first word of the explosion of the battleship Maine while lying at anchor in Havana Harbor. 260 young Americans, killed in their sleep! The “dastardly Spaniards,” as our paper calls them, claim the ship’s own magazines blew up, but nobody believes this sinful lie.

And here is the third piece of historic news! On 8 July, Miss Carrie Watson will marry Mr. Walter G. Langford of this city!

But but but-yes, I respect Walter and admire him, truly, but no one can say any thought of this marriage was mine. I was simply informed how lucky I would be to make such a good match “under the circumstances” (Papa’s shadowed reputation); I was not to be silly about it because “grown-ups know best.” I’m not a grown-up, I suppose, just a child bride.

Naturally the child is scared she’ll be found wanting. Thanks to dear Mama, I am educated by our local standards and can cook and sew. I have taken care of little brothers since the age of five so I might manage a household if I have good darkie help-is that enough? Am I a child? (I think about my tomboy days and snoopy Erskine, and how Papa promised he’d tie net weights to my skirt hems if I didn’t quit climbing trees.)

In the evenings after school these days, Mama tutors me and my squirming little brothers. We are reading Romeo and Juliet. Juliet was just my age when Romeo “came to her,” as Mama puts it (once the boys are gone). She is trying to teach me about life while there is time, but the poor thing goes rose red at her own words, and as for me, I screech “Oh Mama! ” pretending more embarrassment than I really feel. Is it sinful to be curious when a grown man nearly twice my age (and twice my weight) will clamber into my bed, climb right on top of me?

Mama feels sure he is a decent young man. “What can be decent,” I protest, “about lying down on top of a young girl without his clothes on!” Saying this, I have a fit of giggles, because really, it’s so comical ! Mama smiles, too, but feels obliged to say, “Well, Papa will talk to him.” And I cry out, “But what can Papa say? Don’t touch a hair on my daughter’s… head, young man, if you know what’s good for you ?”

I know, I know. It’s not funny in the least and yet I giggle idiotically. The whole town must be snickering.

One day on a buggy ride with Walter, we saw a stallion covering a mare in a corral. Walter got flustered, wrenched the buggy reins and turned us right around. I won’t deny it, I wanted to look back: it was exciting ! This body I drag around is so inquisitive! Cantering along the river, a queer feeling in my “private parts” makes me wonder if that “fate worse than death” might not be bearable.

Reverend Whidden has upsetting breath and no good answers to such questions: I know that much without even asking. “I daresay,” (he dares say) “things will work out in the end.” What I don’t dare say, least of all to him, is anything about this earthly flesh, this female vessel that yearns and fidgets and perspires in his face, pretending that her sweet virginal inquiries arise from some pure source.

If anybody finds this diary, I will throw myself into the river.

Walter is gentle and he tries to tell me that he will not hurt me, but he can’t find a way to say this that doesn’t embarrass both of us to death. He supposes I have no idea what he is getting at, and I can’t show I understand lest he think me wanton and so we nod and smile like ninnies, blushing with confusion and distress. He is so boyish, for all his reputation as a hell-and-high-water cowboy! His embarrassed moments are when I trust him most and love him best.

After church, he courts me on the old wood bench beneath the banyan tree where our good shepherd, Mr. Whidden, can spy on the young lovers through his narrow window. Is this why Walter doesn’t kiss me?

In the evening my shy beau walks me down to the hotel to see the new electric lights in the royal palms that line the street or attend the weekly concerts of the Fort Myers brass band at the new bandstand. The whole town turns out to hear patriotic marches in honor of “our brave boys in Cuba.” We’re shipping our cattle to Cuba again, not for those cruel Spanish anymore but for Col. Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Who would have thought the Union banner would ever be cheered here in a southern town? The Stars and Stripes are everywhere! Remember the Maine ! our cowboys yell, galloping through the streets, raising the dust.