Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

On May 4, Attorney Cone won the release of John L. Porter, establishing that he had been seized unlawfully without a warrant and held unlawfully without a formal charge. Persuading Judge Call that one Tolen case might prejudice the other, Cone got Sam’s case held over till the summer term when the climate in the county might have cooled a little. Last but not least, he won that crucial change of venue for defendants E. J. Watson and F. Reese.

We were tried next in Jasper, in Hamilton County, where we traveled from Jacksonville on a warm Tuesday of late July. Eddie and Kate Edna and my sister Minnie with Julian and Willie came there to testify, also Jim Delaney Lowe, old Calvin Banks, and others.

Peering around for a place to spit his chaw, Deputy R. T. Radford related the heroic saga of how he had stumbled over the defendant’s revolver in the woods. Next, Dr. Nance described with due pomposity how Watson’s shotgun, “primed for mayhem,” had been “craftily concealed” in the furrow being plowed by “that hard-faced negro.” Here Nance pointed a bony finger at defendant Reese, who sat at the farther end of the defense table, hunched into himself like some gnarled woodland growth. Finally, my nervous nephews and their friend revealed how the accused, arriving in their farmyard less than half an hour after the victim’s demise, had lingered just long enough to solicit their support of a false alibi.

Neither Julian nor Willie cared to meet my eye. True, their daddy had never been fond of the defendant, but Billy Collins would have horse-whipped his two sons before permitting them to stand up in court and betray their own blood uncle in this manner. Knowing this, my fragile sister went sniffling to pieces upon hearing her sons give evidence against her brother. Almost inaudible on the stand, Minnie attested in tremulous tones that their kindly uncle Edgar, “ever generous with his time and means since Mr. Collins passed away,” had arrived at the Collins house well before eight to teach her fatherless boys how to dress a hog and had not left until close to noon, when he went home to get his dinner.

When Prosecutor Larabee, loud and sarcastic, demanded to know why she was weeping- Are you perjuring yourself, ma’am, as it appears? Objection, Your Honor! Sustained! -I feared Ninny would blurt something that might get me hung; instead, she murmured that she wept because it broke her heart to see her family torn in two. Plainly the jury was affected-hurrah for Ninny! But when she shuffled back to her seat like a sick old woman, nobody in the Collins row could look at anybody else, and as for me, I was truly upset to see further damage to my poor sister’s low opinion of herself. Here she was, a faithful Christian, not only lying under oath but making liars of her sons, though they spoke the truth. This ordeal might finish her.

Prosecutor Larabee did not call my wife or son lest they support my sister’s story but he made a bad mistake when he excused my mother. Granny Ellen Addison would banish me to Hell before she contradicted her precious grandsons and lied to save me.

In the recess, the prisoners were taken to the latrine. (Frank was marched to colored only.) I stepped right up behind Jim Delaney Lowe and slapped his shoulder with my chains like some old dungeon ghost. That boy jumped a mile, I hope he wet himself. I whispered, “Jim, the day they turn me loose, I aim to take care of those who did me wrong. So keep a real sharp eye out, boy, you hear?” Jim would pass that message to my nephews, give ’em something to pray about in church. I would never harm my sister’s sons but they didn’t know that, and truth be told, there were nights in those hot smelly cells in that long Florida summer when their uncle Edgar wasn’t so sure about it, either.

Throughout our trials, Frank Reese remained inert. He was there as “Watson’s nigger,” nothing more. If I was guilty, he was, too, and if I was innocent, the same, and so he waited for these white folks to decide my fate. Sometimes after the court cleared for a recess, he remained in his place like a sagging sack of turnips in a field; they had to prod him to stand up. The prosecutor forgot him, so did the defense, and there were days when I forgot him, too. Because it made me feel bad when I thought about him, I mostly didn’t. Reese didn’t count-the common fate of Injuns and nigras in our great democracy. But this man and I had ridden a long road, he had stood by me.

Frank understood that I could not swear to a soul, not even our attorney, that my codefendant was innocent: how would I know any such thing if I were innocent, too? However, I gave him my solemn promise that if we were found guilty and Cone lost on the appeal, I would notify the court that Defendant Reese had never been an accomplice in the crime and could not have known that a loaded weapon would be dropped where he was plowing. I guess Frank appreciated my good intentions, but he also knew-I knew it, too-that even if my statement was believed, the state would not go to the expense of a new trial for a black man. Having already convicted him, it would simply be much too much trouble not to hang him.

The one way Frank Reese could save himself was to turn state’s evidence against his codefendant. In order to spare me any inconvenient pang of conscience, our attorney forbade me to let him know that. What use was it to the senator’s career to get the black man off and lose the white one?

Never once did my lawyer ask if I had killed Mike Tolen. He didn’t want to know. I could have said I had not done so, which was true, but I did not care to read in his expression that he thought I was lying so I never bothered.

I felt worse and worse about dumping off my shotgun: why hadn’t I thought of a better way? Could Cone get Reese’s case severed, then dismissed, as he had with Porter? The attorney shook his head. It was true that aside from that shotgun, the prosecution had no evidence that Reese knew anything whatever about this killing, but getting his case severed and dismissed so deep into the trial might leave an impression with the jury that the remaining suspect, against whom evidence was plentiful, must surely be guilty.

Cone’s arguments weren’t as clear to me as I had thought, nor my own feelings, either, and trying to justify this line of thought to Reese got me all snarled up in my own words. “So it looks like you’re fucked,” I finished roughly, giving up. Frank shrugged that off. All these months of waiting to be unjustly hung had turned him cynical. “Nigger Frank don’t count for nothin, no more’n he did that bad mornin when Mist’ Jack dropped his shootin iron in his furrow, rode on by.”

In the backcountry, field hands in rough homespun have a way of vanishing into the land like earthen men. As a boy in Carolina, I would see brown shapes drift along against far woods or disintegrate into the ground mist, a shift and shadow in the broken cornstalks, an isolated figure paused to hear the distant whoop of others in the broomstraw yonder in the oldfields. Some whites will fight and screw and even kill in front of niggers, knowing it won’t be talked about because nobody saw it-those black folks just aren’t there. Not till Calvin Banks was on the witness stand did I recall that sun glint on his wagon spokes, so far away that the creak of wooden wheels could not be heard. Way down that white clay lane under tall trees, in the fractured light of sun and shadow, I had seen this black man without ever seeing him.

When he heard those two shots, Calvin testified, he was on his way to Herlong Junction with a load of cross-ties. Far ahead down the white lane stood the wood post boxes by the Junction, and a man on foot-Mist’ Mike Tolen-was walking toward them. As the first shot echoed, he saw Mist’ Tolen fall and another white man stepped out of the wood edge. Though distracted by the shrieks from the Tolen cabin, Calvin thought he heard another shot before a second man jumped down from that big oak. Mis Sally Tolen, barefoot, shrieking, was already outside, “little chil’ren follerin behin’ dere mama like a line o’ ducklins.” Seeing the two figures and the body, she stopped short, clutching her hair, as her children caught up with her, shrieking, too.