Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Next day, he acted out Sam’s death for May Collins and her brothers and young Jim Delaney Lowe, telling them he’d got the story from “that nigger was mixed up in it.” The Collins boys, though not mourning Sam Tolen, were horrified by the queer pleasure Leslie took in every detail and realized at once that he must have been involved. Their testimony would help get him indicted a year later.

Naturally Les claimed I had put him up to the bad deed he was so proud of. When it came to killing, he confided in his cousin Oscar Sanford, Les Cox sure went to the right teacher. “Mister Ed, you damn near got me hung!”-he’d shout that at me as a joke. But Leslie wasn’t good at jokes and his eyes never fit his smile. If a June bug flew into his eye, you would hear the smack of it; those eyes were hard as shiny stones.

Will and Cornelia spoiled their oldest boy because he had good looks and stood up for his family; the community overlooked his arrogance and spite because of his exploits on the baseball diamond. All his life he had gone un-punished for his fits of meanness-killed by kindness, as my mother used to say-and maybe his friend Mister Ed had indulged him, too. True, the killing could be seen as self-defense, for he’d been threatened, and it was a public service, too: Sam had pissed on everybody. But by agreeing to stand by this boy, I might have let him think that his act was justified, and I guess I knew better even if he didn’t.

“Double-crossing Frank wasn’t too smart,” I told him. “What if he talks? Better tell the sheriff it was a case of mistaken identity. Maybe remind him that most nigras look alike.”

I warned Reese, too, in the course of a jail visit. “Frank, you can’t implicate him without implicating yourself. You will get lynched.” He only grunted cynically, looking away. Frank assumed he had no chance whatever. “Instead of being hung lawfully,” I added, sad to see such bitterness in a negro person. However, he was in no mood for my jokes.

I made Cox back off his Reese story for his own good. Manfully, he told Sheriff Purvis, “I might could been mistook there, Shurf Dick. I been thinkin I would surely hate to see a innocent man hung, nor a nigger neither.” Although Purvis had been quite content to make Frank Reese the scapegoat, he had nothing to show to a grand jury, not even a lynch mob in the street demanding justice, since most folks figured that, with Sam’s death, justice had been served about as well as anyone could reasonably expect. To hell with it, said the judge, and sent Reese home, doubtless assuming that the Tolens and the Russ boys would attend to him.

Frank and I sat back against my barn and celebrated his triumph over bigotry with a jug of moonshine. Impressed by how sensibly and well my old partner had behaved, I sent for Jane Straughter and reminded her that she owed me a big favor, having caused me so much unjust aggravation over John Russ’s death. Winking, I said I would not hold it against her anymore if she let Frank Reese hold it there instead. Marry him common-law or any way she wanted.

Jane Straughter did not smile. She liked Frank well enough, I guess, but moving in with him was quite another matter. The Robarts-Collins clan would not like it either, she reminded me, and anyway I had no right to coerce her. By the end of it, she was spitting mad. “You’re done with me so you’re handin me along to your coal-black nigger!”

Meanwhile, Kate Edna, scared by her own persistence, was plaguing me for my opinion on who killed Sam Tolen.

“I did not kill Sam Tolen, Kate. How often must I tell you that?”

“Not often,” she said, ambiguous. “Just reassure me.” She crept over in the bed. “Tell me you love me.” “Love!” I exclaimed, pretending astonishment that she would speak of such a thing when discussing murder. “You suspect your husband of coldblooded murder, and then you say, ‘Tell me you love me’?” Frightened, she burst into tears, and I relented and took her in my arms. I have never figured out how women work but I do know that their skin color has no significance. Black or white, every last one is pretty pink on the inside and they are all impossible.

Jane Straughter still helped around the house but would scarcely look at me. Seeing Jane and Frank together, I wondered if she ever thought about Henry Short, and one day, drinking in my corner, I asked just for the fun of it if she still missed him. Jane came around on me so fast that I threw my hand up, thinking she might fly straight for my eyes. In her distress, she had gone so pale that the tiny freckles in that delicate skin beneath her eyes stood out in points.

When I give in to that urge to stir up trouble, there comes an even stronger urge to drink more and behave worse. Jane’s fiery ways, so different from Kate Edna’s, hit me almost as hard as in the past, and before I knew it, I had grasped her wrist and told her fervently how pretty she looked and how very much I needed her. Still in my grasp, she gazed out the window at my wife, sailing across the sunshined yard, pinning up washing. “Supposin I was to tell Mis Kate what was done to a young virgin girl at Chatham Bend?” she whispered. “Supposin I told your black man what his boss was up to?”

Releasing her, I banged my chair down hard. “Missy,” I said, “I don’t like threats, remember?”

Jane retreated into nigger talk as quick as our house lizard changes from leaf green to dry stick brown. “I’se sorry, Mist’ Edguh, I sho’ doan mean to go threatnin nothin, nosuh.” And she ran out, sobbing. After that, she stayed mostly out of sight.

A few weeks later, I was cleaning up for supper when Kate Edna sent Jane out to the well with some hot water and a towel. When I asked how she was enjoying married life, she splashed hot water roughly into my blue basin. “Long time ago, back yonder in the Islands, you ast me how a light-skinned gal might feel, passin for white. You kin ast me now how that same gal feels, passin for black.”

When our paths crossed, Mike Tolen looked right past me. Even when I greeted him, he never spoke. Mike understood why others might have wished to kill his brother, and perhaps by now he had lost some of his lust for justice, but sooner or later, Cox’s big mouth would force him toward revenge. In this very dangerous situation, I warned Leslie to shut up. It was too late.

One day in Fort White, in the Terry store, Mike burst out, yes, he knew who had killed his brother, and no, he did not aim to let the matter die. But in truth, what could he do? He knew better than to challenge me in a fair fight and could not pick me off through those high windows of my house even if he got past my dogs. Mike’s only choice was to waylay his suspects, one at a time. And knowing how unlikely it was that those suspects would wait for that to happen, he would have to act as soon as possible, for his own safety, before someone repeated what he’d said in Terry’s store. But of course we had heard already and he knew that, too.

I felt sorry for Mike because he had no way out. He had no experience or skill with arms and was therefore no match for Cox and Watson, separately or together.

Leaving the commissary, I took Mike’s elbow. I had no quarrel with him, I murmured, but because he had made threats, I had to warn him of the consequences of talking dangerously. He said, “I am not talking dangerously. Who gave you that idea?” And I said, “Just about everybody, Mike. You are talking too much and you are painting us into a corner.” “Is that a threat?” he demanded. “You know exactly what it is,” I told him. But he had nowhere to turn, I didn’t either, we were trapped. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you’d best leave this county and go home to Georgia.”