Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Our southwest coast was next in line for the blessings of modern progress, with the governor’s good friend Watson taking the lead. My invitation to the statehouse in Tallahassee could show up in the mail almost any day. Meanwhile, I had months to wait for income on my harvest. Being in debt again, with little cash left for supplies and none for wages, I fired all hands except Sip Linsey and the hog fancier G. Waller; the rest were told to get their stuff and board the boat. At Fort Myers, with a loan from Hendrys, I paid half their wages and gave IOUs for the balance, which I hoped they would never dare come ask for.

On the way home, I stopped off at Pavilion Key to visit Netta’s Minnie and Josie’s little Pearl, which I did every chance I got, but brief visits were never enough for those two girls. “Daddy, how come you go away again each time you come back?” my red-haired Minnie said. I was happy she had forgiven me for that mistake two years before when I got drunk and took her home with me because I felt so lonesome. She never stopped wailing for her mama so I brought her back.

That summer, we took Sundays off to give our folks some rest. I near went mad waiting for Monday but kept myself busy with repairs, mended some tools. Lucius showed Kate and Laura how to fish for blue crabs off the dock, using a scoop net and old chicken necks rigged to a string. These spiky creatures with quick claws scared sweet little Ruth Ellen, who would turn to me, screeching, “Dada!” in delighted terror. Sometimes Jane Straughter would join in, and those three young females would spend hours at it; every crab caused a great shriek and commotion. Crabbing was done on laundry day. The bushel basketful was emptied into the big boiling cauldron after the clean clothes were fished out.

Lucius was delighted to show off the attractions of the Bend to our new family: it thrilled him as much as it did them when he pointed out our giant crocodile. Unlike Eddie, he had no use for Fort Myers and little interest in the Fort White farm. Lucius loved boats and the water, fresh and salt, river and sea. How it tickled me to see him grown so strong, this quiet boy who had started out in life so sickly that he very nearly died in the Indian Nations.

My son was reading all about old Florida history and the Calusa relics that Bill Collier had dug up at Marco. He was out to explore every piece of high ground in the Islands: he already knew he would like to be a historian or naturalist. Though he hunted and fished for the table, he refused to shoot the scattered plume birds or trap otter, no matter how often it was pointed out that others would take them if he did not. But raccoons were common and in cooler weather he would hunt them at night the way Tant taught him, using his new Bullseye headlamp for his torch.

Lucius was still dueling with Old Fighter, the giant snook Rob had hooked but lost in an oxbow up toward Possum Key. Out of loyalty, Lucius would claim that Old Fighter was still waiting for Rob back in the shadows, tending to the small fishes in the current that swept along under the mangroves. One day his bait would come drifting past, turning and glistening in that amber light, and- whop! In some way he felt that the triumph over Old Fighter would be Rob’s vindication.

Sometimes at evening, sitting in the dark watching the moonlight on the river, we sang grand old songs-“Old Folks at Home” and “Massa’s in de Cold, Cold Ground,” also “Lorena” and “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Because everyone else thought it too gloomy, I would wait until all had gone to bed before I sang “Streets of Laredo.” What I lamented all alone, I did not know. I had learned that old dirge in the Indian Nations, is what I told anybody who inquired, though the truth was I had picked it up in prison. Once it came into my head, I might be stuck with it for weeks.

One evening Kate asked if that old Texas song reminded me of my “cow-boy days” out West. Knowing I had never been a cowboy, Lucius flushed and looked away, aware that his Papa had told a few tall tales to enhance his courtship of this girl of his own age. Even white lies made my son uncomfortable. He did not judge me, but his forbearance was a judgment, even so.

For the moment, Kate seemed happy at the Bend, forever giggling with her dear Laura, heads bent over some discovery or other. Yet she was so raddled and exhausted by the child that she had lost interest in our loving, falling asleep before I was half started-not that that stopped me. Manfully I would clamber on and toil away, feeling grotesque and lonely in my struggle. Sometimes her old fire got poked up and she came with me but more often not.

Nephew Julian had promised a year’s work on the plantation, but after his experience at sea, he never really trusted me again. Perhaps he had heard some local stories, though I can’t be sure, and perhaps he had alarmed his wife, for Laura would miscarry her first baby three months into term. In the midnight hours just before that happened, I sat up with her while Kate and Julian got some rest. There was high wind that night, the whole house sighed and rattled.

Not wishing to impose on this young woman (who had railed at me only a few weeks before), I asked if she might not prefer to be left alone. Too exhausted to spit up anything but the plain truth, she shook her head. “Mr. Watson, I’m ever so grateful for your company,” she said. “Why I’m so afraid of darkness I cannot imagine. But I’m less afraid on these windy nights than on the still ones when everything seems suffocated and the only sound is the mosquitoes whining at the screens. That’s when I fear there is something else out there, something that’s waiting.” She paused. “Something that will come for us, sooner or later.”

“Well, my dear, something will come for us one day, that is quite true.”

“Is it only death I fear? Because of my baby?” She seemed desperate. “I don’t really know what I’m afraid of. I’m just scared.”

“Not of me, I hope.” I was doing my best to seem benign and reassuring.

Laura studied me, a little feverish. “Uncle Edgar, you make everyone feel lively, that’s the ginger in you. But when you laugh, you sometimes seem to be laughing at our expense.” She waited. “Does everything strike you as absurd?”

“Not everything.”

Afraid she’d gone too far, she closed her eyes, perhaps to recoup her strength. I went to the window and peered out at the reflections of cold moonlight shattered by small wind waves on the river.

From behind me her voice came in a rush, “I’m frightened of a man who wears a gun under his coat in his own house out in the wilderness.” When I said nothing, she continued bravely, “I come down sometimes when I can’t sleep and there you are, still sitting in your corner on the porch, and all I can see is the glow of your cigar. Who are you waiting for?”

I returned to the bedside. I could have said I feared Wally Tucker’s brother, who had sworn vengeance in Key West saloons, or one of the Bass clan from Kissimmee, or that dirty bounty-hunting Brewer who came here with the Frenchman years ago. But of course it was none of these I feared and I had no idea who I was waiting for. I only knew that one day he would come-the Man from the North, as I had always thought of him. Since Chatham River was so far away in the wild south, in a brackish labyrinth of swamp and muddy river at the farthest end of the American frontier, the one I awaited could scarcely come from any other direction. Anyway, it was no known man with a name.

To Laura this would make no sense so I said, “Jack Watson, maybe.” I wanted to end this conversation since Kate, come to relieve my vigil, was in the door. “Long-lost brother,” I added, when they looked confused. I said good night and went away.