Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Sheriff Purvis in Lake City had been notified and a local crowd soon gathered at the Junction. When the law arrived that afternoon, bloodhounds were turned loose all around the mailbox. The early spring weather being cold and dry, the dogs lost my scent where I swung into the saddle, but Deputy R. T. Radford, fooling along a ways tracking the hoof prints, saw the glint on the woodland floor of what turned out to be a.38 revolver, fully loaded, not two hundred yards from the crime scene. Very few new Smith & Wessons had found their way into the backcountry, and it was known I had one. What Radford yelled back to the posse was, “I got Watson’s pistol!” So much for the presumption of innocence until found guilty.

“Where’s Watson’s nigger and the Cox boy?” others said. “Weren’t them two supposed to been in on it the last time?” So Purvis went to Sanfords’ place across the county line where the Coxes were now living with their kin, and Will Cox told him, “My boy Les been plowin yonder by them woods all day. We heard some shootin over east so Les reckoned he’d better go investigate.” Asked where Les might be right now, his father said he didn’t rightly know. And his old crony Sheriff Purvis said, “Don’t make no difference, Will, your word is good enough for me.” That being all the defense Les needed, he was never charged in the death of D. M. Tolen.

On the way to my place, the posse saw Reese working in the field and four of ’em rode over there to pick him up. This bunch was under Dr. Nance, who had always hung around the law and later took over Purvis’s job as sheriff. By pure bad luck, one of their horses stumbled in the furrows when its iron shoe struck metal, and the man dismounted and dug out the loaded gun. Nance ordered Frank to walk on over with his hands behind his head. Shown the shotgun, Frank said, “Please suh, us’ns got us a buck deer been usin in that field edge yonder-”

“That why you buried it?” Nance cuffed him. “Ain’t that Watson’s gun?” They marched him over to the road, hands high.

At my place, “Mr. Watson met them in good humor,” according to what I read next day in the Lake City paper. If that meant I was amiable, I guess I was, not knowing they already had both of my weapons. Kate and I stood on our porch as armed men lined up along my fence down on the road. Everything would be all right, I told her, hushing her questions.

Soon Josiah Burdett came up the hill, young Brooks Kinard behind him. Joe Burdett said, “Mornin, Edna,” but he never glanced her way, that’s how close he watched me. “Let’s go,” he said.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, Joe,” I said, holding my temper. The boy’s knuckles clenched white on his gun. However, Burdett meant business and would shoot me if he had to, though he’d never shot a man in all his life. As for the Kinard kid, he would do whatever Joe did, and he had good instincts. Without being told, he moved back and to the side where he had a clear shot in case I tried something.

The posse took me to the same back room in Terry’s store where the late Sam Tolen had invited me to meet so he could shoot me. Reese sat on the floor against the wall. Hands cuffed behind and a murderous expression.

The Terrys were among the few folks in this section who’d been friends with Tolens so I was hooted by that dogless family when the deputies stood me on my feet and handcuffed me to my field hand for the train ride. I spoke right up, declaring that our great republic was in mortal peril when our own lawmen became lawbreakers, arresting citizens without warrants. By God, I would file a formal protest with my friend Governor Broward! Also, Jim Crow law had been Florida law for at least three years now, so how could they ride me handcuffed to a nigger when our trains were segregated?

“Principle of the damn thing. Nothing personal,” I whispered to my companion, who was still brooding over my role in his arrest.

“Mus’ be dat ’Merican justice you was speakin about.”

“I have my good name to think about. Law’s the law, you know.”

“That’s what she is, okay. Leastways for white folks.” His sulk was easing by that time, he seemed resigned. I tried to cheer him: we had come through worse than this in Arkansas. But in truth the law worried me less than the cold attitudes of these neighbors. The men scarcely glanced at us-not a good sign, because when men decide to hang someone, they can be shy about looking the doomed man in the eye. This is not true of their females. The Fort White women peering in through Terry’s dirty windows looked inquisitive and mean as broody hens.

By the time we were shoved aboard the Lake City train, it was plain these local folks had their own plan. Even the deputies were irritable and nervous. Sure enough, a crowd awaited us at Herlong Junction. My window was just opposite those mailboxes where Mike Tolen died and people were walking all around the dark blot on the dusty road where he had lain. What my neighbors were after was a good old-fashioned hanging from that live oak limb where Leslie Cox had lain. To behold a mob thronged with the gargoyle faces of your erstwhile friends, brandishing weapons and crying for your head, is enough to sadden any man, give him indigestion, too. A metal taste coated my mouth and my guts quaked and loosened. I was able to hide my fear from Frank as long as I didn’t speak, but I didn’t feel like joking anymore. He didn’t, either. He had closed his eyes because like me he was praying every second for that train lurch that might carry us safe away.

None too soon, Sheriff Dick Will Purvis was backing up the steps: we heard him hollering, “Now come on, boys! Don’t go takin my prisoners here at the whistle stop, makin a damn monkey out of your sheriff! We’ll see you fellers up the track a little ways!” At that, my fear seized me so violently that I felt sick. The train creaked and jolted, stopped again for no good reason. Finally it overtook the crowd, which was streaming along the track, whooping and hollering, and click-clacked ahead a little ways to the wood rack there at Herlong, where the fireman would pile split logs on the caboose for the wood-burning engine. That was the wood stacked up by Calvin Banks, the same stack Cox had perched upon that day when Sam Tolen threatened to kill him-the very place where this whole business got started in the first place and was about to end.

We didn’t fool ourselves. “Dammit, Frank,” I said. “I did you a bad turn and I am sorry.” The black man nodded, saying quietly, “Yessuh. We got us some bad luck dis time, dass fo’ sure.”

But Purvis was yelling at the engineer to keep on going. With a long whistle and a lonesome wail like a falling angel, the train lurched forward. Dreadful howls arose, rocks whacked the cars, a deputy yanked me down away from the cracked window.

Once the train was in the clear, I managed a smile, congratulating Sheriff Purvis on reestablishing law and order and safeguarding the rights of prisoners by thwarting illegitimate mob rule. And the sheriff grinned right back. “We don’t need no mob,” he said, “cause we got all the evidence we need to hang you legal.” The sheriff confessed that his sympathies were with the crowd but he’d felt obliged to stick to his sworn duty because Will Cox was my friend and I was paid up in my taxes.

“Also, you just might have heard that E. J. Watson has a good friend in the statehouse.”

The sheriff nodded wisely. “That could be.”

Not a word was mentioned then or later about Leslie. Purvis never even brought him in for questioning.