Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“Naw!” Jim howled. He was clawing at that tear like he’d been scalded. “That’s my new shirt!” I cackled just to rub it in, reeling back and rolling off my wall, making the most of it. But life is peculiar and the truth is I felt bad about Tolen’s cheap shirt. I wanted to tear his rodent head off but tearing a poor man’s Sunday shirt was something else.

Then it hit me like a mule kick: Jim Tolen was not a poor man, not anymore. His dirty pockets were stuffed with money that rightfully belonged to Watsons and he was still selling off our land. The blood rush to my temples nearly felled me. “You and your brothers stole our plantation and you will pay for that the same way they did.” Those words escaped my tongue beyond recapture and my desperate laugh to divert attention clattered like an empty bean can on the concrete floor.

I pressed my forehead hard to the cold steel. My foe stood dim and ghostly, making no sound. The prosecutor’s shadow neared, the guard behind like Death’s attendant, as if all listened to the echo of those dire words, as if the People of the State of Florida stood in judgment on this caged human being. I felt not lonely but cut off from humankind.

Then time resumed, the morning fell back into place, the redbird sang anew outside my cell window, the prosecutor smiled thinly. “ The same way they did ? Guard? You heard what the prisoner said, correct?”

“I ain’t deaf.” Buddy gave me a reproachful look, shrugging his shoulders.

“Remember his words carefully, Guard. You’ll be called to testify.”

“How about me ?” Tolen complained. “I sure ain’t likely to forget them devil’s words!” When Buddy grumbled, “Can’t write nothin except only my X, ” Tolen instantly produced a scrap of paper and a pencil stub and started scrawling, to prove that he suffered no such limitation.

The prosecutor tipped his hat. “Three witnesses to an unsolicited admission of a deadly motive. I am confident, Ed, that the jury will see it that way, too. I advise you to accept the State’s generous offer-”

“Generous offer?” Jim shrilled in alarm. “Goin to turn that killer loose? He’ll hunt me down and shoot me in cold blood like he done my brothers!” But thin Jim wasn’t afraid of that, not really. When the guard dragged him away, he wore a twisty grin, hard as a quirt.

Bad as it looked, I concluded that Ed Watson would not hang. For all his bluster, this state’s attorney was a stupid man. His political career was the carrot rigged in front of the donkey, it was all he saw. In his effort to cajole me, he had lunged after that carrot, scared of losing.

I got a whiff of what was in the wind from Carrie’s note as well as from Walter and Eddie: better a jailed father than a hanged one. They were dead scared of the scandal of a public execution. The guilty plea they wanted me to make would cut their losses, get the black sheep locked away. I could make the mistake of pleading guilty only if I was so greedy for survival that I would accept a life of being caged and fed and watered behind bars like a wild animal. I was not that greedy, or at least not yet. If I kept my head, I was going to be acquitted, because none of my family had the guts to see me hung.

Ladies sometimes ask why such an amiable man so often finds himself in so much trouble. And I say, “Ma’am, I never look for trouble”-here I let my voice go soft, lower my eyes a little, tragic and mysterious-“but when trouble comes to me, why, I take care of it.”

Les Cox loves that kind of guff as much as my Kate fears and despises it. It’s not entirely nonsense, and even when it is, it can be useful. But behind bars in that torrid summer of 1908, I faced the fact that I had not always taken care of trouble the right way. I had never admitted, for example, that a lot of it was of my own manufacture.

Grandfather Artemas’s gentleness and weakness had undermined our Carolina plantation; the bad character and weakness of his ring-eyed son had completed the loss and driven the grandson into exile. But was I weak too, in some other way? Plainly my ruinous start in life had forced me to desperate measures in my struggle to restore our Clouds Creek name-all in vain, it seemed, for here I was, past fifty years of age, jailed and disgraced, with my neighbors howling to see me hung and all my savings pissed away to pay the lawyers.

“Darn it, Ed,” as Bembery once said, “this ain’t the first time and it ain’t the second, neither, so you better think about mending your ways.” Hell, all my life I have tried to mend my ways and I always believed that next time I would make it and I still believe that.

Some would say that Edgar Watson is a bad man by nature. Ed Watson is the man I was created. If I was created evil, somebody better hustle off to church, take it up with God. I don’t believe a man is born with a bad nature. I enjoy folks, most of ’em. But it’s true I drink too much in my black moods, see only threats and enmity on every side. And in that darkness I strike too fast, and by the time I come clear, trouble has caught up with me again.

I have taken life. For that, I can only be sorry. But excepting that one time in Arcadia, I have never done it for financial gain. Starting way back with those shipowners and merchants who trade in human beings and destroyed thousands of lives, how many founders of our great industries and family fortunes can say the same?

For my edification while in jail, Carrie sent along her mother’s Twain books-a do-gooder I could not abide and yet read furiously.

The new trial started on July 10 and testimony concluded on August 3 when the hung jury, unable to agree upon a verdict, was dismissed. In September, Cone won another change of venue and in October Judge Palmer moved the trial to Madison County. If I lost at Madison, I decided, I would break out of jail, run for the Islands.

(When I told Reese about my plan, he whispered gleefully, “We is fixin to ex-cape, just like old times!” Remembering how we crossed the Arkansas, a lilt came into Black Frank’s voice, almost as if he hoped we would be convicted. Only once and only briefly had this man reproached me for dumping that shotgun in his furrow, even though that heedless act might cost his life. For his forbearance, I sincerely thanked him, assuring him he was a credit to his people whether white folks strung him up or not.)

Our third round took place in Madison County in mid-December. Getting nerved up three separate times for the same trial was like building up three times for the same act of love. Naturally there was a letdown, but the defense was off to a promising start in the local paper: “The defendant Watson is a man of fine appearance, and his face betokens intelligence in an unusual degree. That a determined fight will be made to establish the innocence of the defendants is evidenced in the imposing array of lawyers employed in their behalf.”

That array, in fact, was so imposing that we had to sell off some Fort White land to pay their fees. I was deeply in debt to my son-in-law and Kate was warning me that we were broke: we could not afford to have the bread-winner go to prison (although having him hung, as I told Frank, might be somewhat worse).

Jim Cole bent every ear in the state capital, cajoling them to talk sense to the judge. After that, he came to Madison, helped pick the jury. By trial time, Fred Cone had six assistants who kept themselves busy running up my bills in heroic efforts to suborn witnesses. Meanwhile, the prosecution’s “jailhouse confession by Defendant Watson” was not panning out as Larabee had hoped, the defense having led the jury without difficulty to mistrust Jim Tolen.

Nonetheless, this trial might go badly. I asked Kate to get word to Leslie. Being afraid of him, she was upset, but I hushed her protests. Cox came in and looked over the jail and we soon agreed on the details. Shaking hands on it, he squinted man to man, and I squinted right back for old times’ sake-the frontier code. I owed him that much.