Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Calvin had pulled up at the shots, but when the two men went back into the woods, he overtook Mis Tolen, entreating her to shut her children in the cabin. She did so, he said, but a moment later she came shrieking out again and ran right past him.

“And did you get a look at those two men?”

“Yassuh.”

“And can you identify them for this court?”

“Yassuh. Mist’ Edguh Watson-”

“Objection, Your Honor!”

“Sustained.”

Nearing the body, Calvin said, he wondered why no one had come to investigate from the Cox cabin. (Here our attorney jumped up with another objection, also sustained.) By the time the old man reached the Junction, the postman Mills Winn was already approaching from the other direction. After Mills Winn had coaxed and pried the hysterical young woman off her husband’s body, they had hoisted the victim onto Calvin’s cart and brought him home.

“Well now, Calvin,” said Attorney Cone in a baited, patronizing voice that was a sign to the jury to pay close attention, “you have acknowledged your poor eyesight, have you not? So please explain to these gentlemen of the jury how an old darkie with failing eyesight can be so certain that the man he identified from a quarter mile away was this defendant?” And Calvin said, “I knowed Mist’ Edguh since a boy, knowed the shape and size of him, knowed the way he walk. In clear mornin sun, I b’lieve I would know him from a quarter mile, maybe half a mile away, cause the sun shines up the color in his hair, and nobody around dem woods exceptin only him had dat dark red hair look like dry blood.”

Looking up for the first time, leaning around behind our attorneys’ broadclothed backs, Frank Reese sought my eye. His expression said, Mist’ Jack? Looks like you’re fucked. There was no way to read his feelings in the matter, no time, either, because Old Man Calvin, looking straight at Reese, kept right on talking.

“I never seed no sign of no cullud man,” Calvin stated flatly. He volunteered this of his own accord in the startled silence in the courtroom that followed his identification of Ed Watson, and I was glad, because Frank needed all the help that he could get. But neither judge nor prosecutor nor his own attorney took the least notice of this critical point, far less pursued it.

A last-minute witness was Cone’s former client Mr. Leslie Cox, whose indictment for the murder of Sam Tolen had recently been dismissed without a trial by the circuit court: Attorney Cone had been much pleased, since Cox’s acquittal was a fine precedent for The State of Florida v. E. J. Watson and Frank Reese. He was happy to pay Cox’s railway fare to Jasper out of E. J. Watson’s pocket and his faith was justified: invoking the Almighty as his witness, Les Cox lifted his palm and swore to the complete innocence of Mr. Watson. Since he himself had shot D. M. Tolen dead, he knew what he was talking about and spoke with commendable conviction. The jury was very favorably impressed by the evident sincerity of this young man and I understood much better now why Cone had cut off Calvin Banks so sharply before he could identify the second man he’d seen beside Tolen’s body.

Cone told us later that the seven Jasper jurors who voted for conviction could not dislodge the other five, who might have been bought off by Cone’s assistants, for all I know. Though my attorneys never specified where all their client’s money had been spent, one thing was certain, money was no object-these paper rattlers spent every cent I had. Fred P. Cone, who had never lost a case, did not intend to lose one now for puny financial considerations, not on his ascent in a brilliant career that would one day land him in the statehouse.

Faced with a hung jury, Judge Palmer declared a mistrial and ordered the case held over until the next term of the circuit court. Later that month, in Lake City, he threw out the lawsuit of the Myers nephews against the executors of Tabitha Watson’s will. While I festered in the Jasper jail, unable to do a single thing about it, Jim Tolen resumed his fire sale of our family property.

Leslie got word to me that if I were convicted, he would assist in my escape, and I believed him-not that I trusted him. The man whose word I trusted was his father.

Outside my bars, on a fine morning in Jasper, a redbird chortled loud and clear, recalling lost springtime woodland days with Charlie Collins-“a day of new lilies and pale haze of dogwood in the April wood,” as she had written in a love note. But instead of that redbird, I was doomed to listen to my fine-feathered son-in-law, who said things like, I’m afraid your record is against you, Mr. Watson. Though Walter and his friend Jim Cole had twisted every arm in Tallahassee, they didn’t think I had a chance in hell. Cole still wanted me to like him because it made him nervous that I didn’t: I would have respected him much more if he’d told the truth, that he would have been highly gratified to see me hung.

When I first knew Walt Langford back in ’95, he was a cow hunter out in the Cypress, snot-flying drunk on rotgut moonshine from one day to the next. This morning he was dead sober in a three-piece black serge suit. “Who the hell are you, the undertaker?” I said. “Come to take my measure for my coffin?” Walter mustered a grin and passed me Carrie’s note:

Oh Daddy, please! Walter says you must throw yourself on the mercy of the court. Tell them you had to defend yourself against that man because he threatened you, tell them you regret it deeply but you had no choice. Walter and his business friends will testify what a fine hardworking planter and good businessman you are, and surely our side can convince the jury what a good provider and good husband-and wonderful kind jolly father!-our dear, dearest daddy has always been! If you’ll just cooperate and plead guilty and accept a reduced sentence, Walter says, everything is bound to turn out fine!

“The family has decided I am guilty, is that correct?”

“Nosir, it’s not that, exactly-”

“Walter,” I told him, “it is that. It’s that exactly, Walter.” I sent a message back to Carrie that her dear, dearest daddy had done no wrong even if he’d shot Mike Tolen, which he hadn’t, and therefore he would not plead guilty under any circumstances.

Walter told me I had better think that over because after the hanging it would be too late. Walt didn’t even know he was being funny. Said he’d “heard on excellent authority that the State was prepared to negotiate”-that’s the constipated way Walt talks since he became a banker. And he had Eddie, who trailed in here behind him, talking that same way, the pair of them sitting upright on my bunk, ever so prim and mealy-mouthed, like they wouldn’t mind a second helping of nice mashed potato. “I’m afraid your record is against you, Dad,” my offspring said.

Walter’s “good authority,” of course, was State’s Attorney Cory Larabee, with whom my family were clearly in cahoots. And who should happen by an hour later to inquire if “Ed” was comfortable? The state’s attorney himself stepped into my cell talking too loudly in the grand flatulent manner of politicians. He slapped my back and sat his ass down, made himself at home. “Now don’t stand on your manners, Ed, just call me Cory!” Here I was, entirely at the mercy of Call-me-Cory and my kinfolks, who seemed to think they had some special dispensation to squeeze right into my small cell beside me.

“Spit it out,” I said. How had this happened? Where the hell was Cone?

Because Friend Ed had support from influential friends-Call-me-Cory meant the governor-he might be paroled in three years’ time if he pled guilty. Cory raised his eyebrows high on that pale dome of his while his good news penetrated my dull criminal brain. “Because otherwise, Ed,” said he when I was silent, “we’ll do our very best to hang you, boy!”