Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Key West is and always was half-Yankee, and even back before the War, its attitudes were jumbled up when it came to coloreds. Many good people clung to old bad prejudice including my friend Gene Roberts and his brothers, who ran the old Estelle from Flamingo to Key West, carrying outbound mail and cargo and bringing back supplies.

Melch, Jim, and Gene-the Roberts boys-refused to tolerate blacks mixing with whites, they would not put up with it. They’d go over to Key West, have a drink or two, then walk arm-in-arm down the sidewalk, and any black man who failed to get out of their way, they’d knock him down. One time they went into a restaurant, sat down, ordered their breakfast, Gene was telling me, and the next thing they knew, a great big buck came walking in, sat down at the next table. When those boys reared back and glared at him and he didn’t leave, Melch got up without a word and took his chair and wrapped it over that man’s head. Hauled him up off of the floor, Gene said, and booted his black ass into the street.

Of course Key West had no use for these Mainlanders. On the way to jail, the sheriff would say, “Well, here ye are again! The Mainlanders!” And they’d say, “Yessir, we sure are, and proud to say so!”

Returned to office, the sheriff was as truculent as ever about E. J. Watson. One day he accosted me at Duval and First as I came out of W. D. Cash Provisions and Ship Chandlery. He’d heard that a fugitive killer might be hiding out at Chatham Bend, in which case I was flouting the law again by harboring a known criminal.

Young Herbie Melville, known as Dutchy, had been notorious at Key West for several years. Back in 1904, when my friend Deputy Till tried to arrest him for breaking into a coffee shop at White Street and Division, this young feller grabbed Clarence’s pistol, beat him to the floor with it, then drew his knife, apparently to scalp him. Bleeding, Clarence broke away and ran to borrow a weapon; he returned to that coffee shop without waiting for reinforcement and Melville shot and killed him.

Dutchy Melville was convicted and sentenced to be hung, but because his family had local influence, the charge was reduced to manslaughter and a one-year sentence. During his detention, the enterprising jailer rented Melville’s labor to the fire station, a part-time job which provided him the leisure to rob stores, covering his tracks by burning these places down. In destroying the Cortez Cigar Factory, however, he went too far. Murdering a law officer was bad enough but damaging rich men’s property was far more serious: the indignant judge sentenced the young arsonist to thirteen years at hard labor.

Recently young Dutchy had escaped the chain gang, but not before confiding to another convict (who had the ear of the authorities) that he hoped to hide out at the Watson place at Chatham Bend. And the reason for that, the sheriff said, looking me straight in the eye, was because this man Watson was notorious for hiring fugitives and other undesirables as low-paid field hands.

This was true. I sometimes recruited harvest workers at Key West, mostly blacks but some white drifters, too. These men were called Doc and Slim and Blackie and John Smith: I never asked if they were fugitives, that was a man’s own business. They accepted whatever pay was offered with no back talk and they never stayed long, field labor in the cane being hard and dangerous. That way everyone came out ahead-sound business practice.

I informed the sheriff that I knew no Dutchy and no Herbie either, and also that I did not care for his insinuation that E. J. Watson had no respect for law and order. The sheriff said, “Them words sound all right, Watson. But a man gets knowed by the company he keeps, ain’t that right, too?”

And I said, “Well, in that case, Sheriff, we’d best part company right now because I have my good name to think about,” whereupon I tipped my hat and kept on going.

Eddie’s Bar had a stylish sign-dining and dancing, nine to eleven, fighting from eleven to two-and the cost of a drink was all that was required to enjoy this lively social situation. With so many good fights to choose from, any man of healthy tastes could fit right in. Knives and pistols were frowned upon, of course, but that same night I had to wrench a brandished six-gun from a client who was dead drunk but still dancing, threatening to shoot. I gave this fool a taste of his own medicine. “Let’s see can I work this thing!” I hollered, waving it around the same way he had. It kept going off, made one hell of a racket, and with each shot I yelled to warn him lest he stagger and cross the half circle of holes his own six-gun was punching through the floor around his toes.

When the six cartridges ran out, he came up quick with a small revolver he had in his boot and made me dance in that same foolish fashion. I tried to grin, stay calm about it. “Not many men, let alone boys, would try this game on Ed Watson,” I warned him, but he only hooted and went right ahead. When his friends dragged him out of there, he was still laughing. It was only after he was gone that Dick Sawyer sidled up and said, “Ain’t that Dutchy a ripsnorter, Ed?”

I was disgusted. This ripsnorter had killed Clarence Till, a fair and well-liked lawman, and also robbed businessmen and committed wrongful arson, and yet he was a local hero whom folks talked about with shining eyes. To join his pals at Eddie’s Bar with a reward posted, then draw attention to himself, show off with weapons at the risk of being sent back to the chain gang? His arrogance was criminal, never mind the rest, but because he got away with stuff like that, he made it seem dashing and defiant. I laugh at your law. And what will you do about it? Nothing!

Headed home next day, I was somewhere off Shark River when the sky turned black and the Gladiator was caught in a hard squall. When I stuck my head into the forward cuddy to dig out my oilskins, I found myself looking straight into the muzzle of a six-gun. Naturally, I backed out and raised my hands. “What’s that cannon for? Piracy on the high seas?”

“If I was you, I wouldn’t talk so smart.” The man climbing out after me was green olive in his color from being pitched and rolled in that hot cuddy, but he looked like a pirate all the same-big nose, pocked skin, hard black wire hair, and a second pistol stuck into his belt. He also looked like the self-same sonofabitch who had danced me in Eddie’s Bar, so I knew better than to mess with him. These cocky greenhorn pistoleros out to prove themselves tend to shoot first and think afterward, if they think at all. Ever since Billy the Kid caught the nation’s fancy, the country had been plagued by boys like this, out to play and die as fast and hard as William Bonney.

“Maybe I’d better grab the helm before she yaws on a big sea and capsizes,” I warned him. A flicker of fear crossed that swart face: he waved me toward the stern. Starting aft, I felt a whole lot better. If this kid had spent even one day on the water, he’d have noticed that the helm was lashed, with no risk of yawing or capsizing.

I freed the tiller while he guarded me, standing up straight, and at the first chance, I swung her off the wind and let her jibe. In a rush of canvas, the boom swung back across the hull and knocked him flying; he’d heard that creak of wood behind him but not knowing he should duck, he spun right into it. If he hadn’t grabbed a shroud, he would have gone overboard and stayed that way because I sure had no plan to go back after him. As it was, he’d had to drop his gun to grab that line, and now he was dragging in the water, hanging on to a rope fender with both hands.

Very quick, he hauled himself halfway up and got one leg over the gunwale. I leaned over and yanked the second Colt out of his belt and whapped his fingers with the barrel. “Damn!” he said as he lost his hold and went back down. Clutching the fender in the wash along the hull, he was very pale, he thought he was a goner. Having emptied the chamber of the Colt and tossed it into the cockpit after the first one, I lit up a cigar and took the tiller, letting him drag while the Gladiator resumed her course.