Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“Watch out for Leslie,” I said gruffly and I walked away.

Frank Reese appeared. He could not go home to Fort White, either. Even if Cox weren’t running around loose, he was not safe there and probably never would be, which meant he would lose Jane. Frank looked as beaten as a man can look who is cold and hungry on a winter night at Christmas, without friends, family, future, or one dime in his pocket, and no place to sleep.

“Frank,” I said, “you come on south with us.”

On the first day of 1909, on the new railway, E. J. Watson and family crossed the Alva Bridge over the Calusa Hatchee and rumbled downriver into Fort Myers Station. I sent Frank over to Niggertown-Safety Hill, as it was called, because black folks felt safe there after evening curfew-to round up a few hands while bags and baggage were transferred to Ireland’s Dock to be loaded aboard Captain Bill Collier’s Falcon.

Since the arrival of the railroad, the WCTU had sent Miss Carrie Nation, and a circus had also paid a call, complete with elephant. The first stock-roaming ordinance, fought by the cattlemen for years, now protected the public thoroughfares and gardens. Indian mounds up and downriver were being leveled for white shell for cement streets and Thomas Edison had leased Cole’s steamer to bring in royal palms from the Island coasts to ornament his Seminole Lodge and decorate Riverside Avenue for the tourists.

When Henry Ford came to visit Mr. Edison, Walter and Carrie were invited there to dinner, and not long after that, Cole and Langford bought Ford motorcars and went tooting and farting north and south the entire quarter mile from one end of our manure-strewn metropolis to the other. Jim Cole’s self-esteem was geared to ownership of the newest, best, and biggest-this year, the most expensive automobile in town. Quick turnover of everything from real estate to cattle had been the secret of his success, and he soon replaced his Model T with a bright red Reo.

On Riverside Avenue, I stepped right up and rapped the banker’s new brass knocker. In a moment little Faith was tugging the lace back at the window. Carrie’s daughters were only slightly older than Ruth Ellen and Addison, and I thought our girls might play and get acquainted while Kate washed up and rested for our voyage. When I waggled my fingers, Faith’s pretty face flew open like a flower and then vanished; she was running to the door. I heard Eddie’s voice and after that a silence; her face at the window was the last we were to see of my sweet granddaughter.

No one else appeared. We stared stupidly at the closed door. Begrimed and hot and cranky from the train, my poor rumpled family waited dumbly in the street while Papa wrestled with his rage. I rapped again, three good hard knocks, and this time the door cracked and a black maidservant stared out as if the Antichrist himself had come to call.

“Tell your Missus,” I said, “that Mr. Watson-”

The girl disappeared and Carrie stood there instead. “Well, I do declare!” my daughter cried. Her smile was terrible. She did not come forward and did not invite us in. “Papa,” she whispered. “Walter…” She could not finish and she didn’t need to. We had been preceded from north Florida by my son and son-in-law, doubtless bearing word that Mr. E. J. Watson had gotten away with murder.

“Since when does Walter wear the pants around your house?” I started away before I uttered something worse.

“Papa? Please, Papa,” Carrie begged.

I turned on her. “If your husband and brother thought me guilty, why did they testify in my defense?”

“Oh Papa, what choice-”

“I’ll have them indicted for perjury.” But my sour joke only frightened my bewildered family. Kate Edna stared wide-eyed from father to daughter, as if discovering for the first time how these Watsons worked.

The servant girl came down the steps with a tray of milk and cookies, which she held out fearfully toward my children as if feeding wild monkeys through bars. I recognized the rosewood tray I’d given Mandy as a wedding present. Without my say-so, nobody would touch a cookie, and the darkie was so rattled by the children’s hungry staring that she banged the tray down on the stoop before them like a bowl of dog food and ran back inside.

Carrie stooped, picked up the tray, and offered it again, eyes brimmed with tears. Addison reached first but my eye stopped him. “We came as kin, not beggars. We’ll be going.” I tried in vain to put some warmth into my voice because Carrie was at least trying to be nice, unlike her brother who had not come out to greet us, a discourtesy I was never to forgive.

“Thank your kind sister for her hospitality,” I told Ruth Ellen, who curtsied. Little Ad did, too. “No, Ad,” I told him. “Gentlemen pay their respects like this.” I put one hand behind my back, lifted my black hat with the other, and bowed to my beautiful Carrie, who burst into tears, knowing her rejection of her father would ensure that in all likelihood, we would never meet again.

“Oh Papa!” she cried. But we went away with resolution, leaving Carrie in the public street with her tray of milk and cookies. Addison fretted, looking back, but did not say one word.

“I love you, Papa!” Carrie called, glancing around for neighbors. For that small courage, I almost forgave her.

I lifted my hat but did not turn. “My daughter loves me,” I told Kate, ironic. My unhappy wife struggled to smile but her dry upper lip had caught on her front teeth so she looked away.

Poor Kate had had a dismal year, with her husband languishing in county jails under threat of hanging and her Fort White neighbors hostile, all but her faithful Herkimer Burdett, who had come around often, it appeared, to see how his childhood sweetheart might be faring-a little more often (according to the leering Cox) than her husband might have cared for. When I mentioned this, my wife burst out that Herkie had been very kind and that the only one who had hung around “in the wrong way” was Leslie himself. “If I should die, would you go straight to Herkie?” I inquired. Kate colored as if slapped, having no idea how to answer that, much less dissemble.

At Dancy’s stand at the head of Ireland’s Dock, I consoled my doleful tribe with candy, fruit, and peanuts we could not afford. The last of my money lined the pockets of my attorneys and once again I was faced with gnawing debt.

Lucius turned up on the run before we sailed. Announcing he was coming with us, he hefted a satchel to show me he meant business.

“Chatham is my home, Papa, and you’ll find work for me, I know.”

I nodded slowly. “This young feller is your brother Addison,” I said. Lucius, who had now turned twenty, shook the hand of little Ad, who sat astride my shoulders: at Addison’s age, in Arkansas, Lucius had no memory of his father nor any idea what he might look like. When Lucius said, “How do you do?” the little boy thrust out a half peanut, which his brother was polite enough to eat from his sticky fingers. “An excellent peanut,” Lucius assured Ad, wishing he hadn’t when Ad unstuck another. I felt a great wave of affection for these boys, all the more poignant because Rob and Eddie were my sons no longer.

Because Frank Reese still had a record and might be subject to arrest, I introduced him to Lucius by his prison nickname, which was “Joe” or “Little Joe.” No one knew his last name.

We arrived at the Bend on a winter norther and that wind was cold, with iron seas churning the Gulf and swift gray skies. A sweet reek of pig manure was everywhere, even inside the house, which we found in woeful condition. Green Waller mostly emulated the habits of his hogs, which seemed to have the run of Chatham Bend. Since Green was a rough carpenter at best, his rickety hog shed swayed in the faintest breeze, and in recent weeks two prime shoats had been lost to a marauding panther. In his uneasiness Green demanded in the fierce tones of the drunkard that their worth be deducted from his salary-an empty offer in my present straits. Green had gone more or less unpaid for years. He had so little use for money that he had purposely lost count of what I owed him, fearing that if I paid him off, I might get rid of him. This poor old reiver was five years my junior, but due to a sadly misspent life, had overtaken me in our race to the grave and now appeared to be my elder. Green Waller saw the Bend as Paradise, with all the hogs and moonshine a man could ask for.