Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

The train stopped at Columbia City to pick up two deputies and a third suspect, John Porter, arrested on suspicion due to some dispute with the late commissioner. Pushed aboard in handcuffs, Porter gasped and moaned. Over by the crossing stood John’s weeping wife blowing her nose and holding the hand of their poor dim-witted Duzzie, brightly garbed in a red Christmas dress.

Porter and I were cuffed together on one bench with Reese shackled to the bench leg opposite, forced to ride on the plank floor. The rough roadbed jolted his spine hard, until finally he groaned in torment. To comfort him, I pointed out how fortunate he was to ride with white men in the coach car in defiance of Florida law. “Praise de Lawd,” he said.

John Porter frowned in plaintive disapproval. “Mr. Watson? What’s this business all about?” Porter had his eye on the sheriff, and his tone was pompous as befitted an indignant citizen. Not being a stalwart sort of man, he saw no reason to be hung for being my friend. “I demand an answer, Mr. Watson!” he shouted into my face. I leaned away for his breath was worse than usual. “Nervous stomach,” he explained miserably, seeing my wince. “Ed, you have to explain to Sheriff Purvis! I had nothing to do with it, I wasn’t even there!”

“Nothing to do with what, John? And how would I know that you weren’t there when I don’t even know where there might be?”

Porter, growing frantic, yelled, “Sweet Jesus, Ed! How can you sit here cracking jokes when any minute they might drag us off this train? Hang an innocent man who has done no wrong?”

“No man is innocent,” I intoned. “Reflect upon that if you will.” I, too, was weary of my stupid jokes but even wearier of Porter: Frank Reese had much more cause to bitch and here he was, bracing desperately against the jolts, hitching his ass up onto his chained hands to save his spine. Finally he gave up exhausted and sank into a daze of pain, gazing blindly at the toes of his torn boots, taking his punishment.

Now that lynching was no longer imminent, I had time to wonder why this seasoned outlaw had not taken the pains to bury that gun a whole lot deeper. Had it never occurred to him that they might come hunting the only suspect arrested in the death of the victim’s brother? Or was he too angry to think clearly, with incriminating evidence dropped into his furrow after Cox had tried to implicate him in the first case? Frank must have known he’d be in fatal trouble if that gun was found anywhere near him, yet all he did was kick a little dirt over it and keep on plowing. Never emptied the shells out of the chambers, never buried it deeper, never walked forty yards to hide it in the woods. He never touched that gun, he told me later. Just didn’t want anything to do with it.

“You figured I dragged you into it, the same way Leslie did. You wouldn’t lift a hand to help, not even to save yourself from getting hung.”

“It weren’t me gettin me hung!” Frank Reese burst out, so violently that a deputy hollered at him to shut his nigger mouth. “I figured you knowed what you was up to,” he muttered. “Never took time to explain nothin to no dumb-ass nigger.”

“You’re even dumber than you think,” I said. The truth was, Frank was a more complicated man than I had thought.

Arrived in Lake City that Monday evening of March 23, 1909, we were lodged in the county jail. I would not have had much sleep anywhere else. Next morning the deputies passed word that the south end of the county was forming a huge mob. By Tuesday afternoon, rumors were swirling- The mob is on its way! Sure enough, we heard wild yells and restless gunfire. Poor Porter was beside himself with the injustice of it all, howling his innocence from his cell window to all who passed below-“You men know me and know I am no murderer!” Those unacquainted with John before sure knew him by the time he finished because he hollered out his tale of woe every few minutes and for many hours, in case the mob had spies out in the street and might take pity on him, and spare him any rough stuff when the time came.

Frank Reese, who had no part in the killing either, remained quiet. As a black man, he’d never expected anything from life and knew that no protest would save him. So far as Frank Reese was concerned, life was right on schedule.

Word of my predicament had been telegraphed to Governor Broward, who sent orders back to move the suspects out of town for their own safety. Later that night when Deputy Bill Sweat, who ran the jail, heard the train whistle at the crossing, he ordered us out in a big hurry, rushed us to the station. To devil John Porter, I complained that we didn’t care to be marched down the main street in chains like common felons when we hadn’t been found guilty of so much as loitering. Mopping his brow, Deputy Sweat explained that a well-lit thoroughfare might be safer than taking a back street and falling prey to unknown men who might be laying for us in the darkness. Sweat was the right name for ol’ Bill that night, cold as it was: he was nervous they might lynch him, too, while they were at it. Already some passerby had run off into the side streets to spread word; we heard faraway hollers of frustration as we boarded.

Next day, armed escort was provided to Jasper, in Hamilton County, then to the Leon County jail at Tallahassee. I sent word to Broward at the state capitol, inviting him to step downtown and visit his old friend in his piss-stink cell, but Governor Nap was a politician now and stayed away. A few days later we were moved to the Duval County jail at Jacksonville.

By now I had learned that my Collins nephews had presented my alibi so poorly that my own mother was persuaded of my guilt: Purvis informed me in his rural way that my so-called alibi had held up about as long as jail-house toilet paper. And on April 10, at the sheriff ’s instigation, the coroner’s jury charged my nephews as accessories after the fact, the better to coerce them to corroborate the sworn testimony of their friend Jim Delaney Lowe that E. J. Watson had solicited an alibi from all of them. Sure enough, Minnie’s boys caved in after a day or so, having been persuaded that said solicitation was tantamount to a confession. With the prime suspect’s dropped revolver and his buried shotgun, the state was building a strong case, my attorneys warned me, preparing the ground for charging fatter fees, and within the week, Reese and I were indicted for the murder of County Commissioner D. M. Tolen.

Meanwhile the real killer had gotten himself arrested for carrying an unlicensed pistol and disturbing the peace. In addition, after almost a year, Cox had finally been charged with the murder of Sam Tolen: Julian and Willie Collins and Jim Delaney Lowe, along with the Tolen nephew William Russ, had implicated Leslie on the evidence of his own boasting, overheard while he was showing off for May Collins and other local damsels. This time, even Sheriff Purvis could not ease him out of it.

When Leslie joined us in the Duval County jail, swearing dire vengeance on my nephews, Frank groaned dolefully and shook his woolly head, arm flung up in grief over his eyes. “Lo’d, Lo’d, what a pathetical sight! Nice young gen’leman like Mist’ Les Cox in de county jail !” Broken-hearted, Frank actually commenced to cough and blubber, and when I laughed, too, he just let go and whooped so hard that he had to lie down on the floor to get his breath back. Leslie said, “If they don’t kill you, nigger, I damn well will.” He meant that, too, and Frank knew he meant it, but that was not why Frank fell quiet nor why the tears ran down those scarred black cheeks. Someone would pay for the death of a county commissioner and Reese knew it would be him; he was weeping not because he was afraid but because, facing death, he was free at last, free to say anything he damn well wanted. And so he sat up and wiped his eyes and said in a cold deadly tone, “Not if I ketch you first, Mist’ Les, you fuckin po’ white moron.”