Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Friday last, Papa stopped over on his way to Tampa with a consignment of his “Island Pride.” Picked up Mama and took her up the coast to a concert at the Tampa Theater. Mama did not really wish to go-she is feeling weak, with a yellow-gray cast to her skin-but she knew she would have him alone. In Tampa she finally murmured something about the difficulties that might be caused by his presence at the wedding.

“He refuses to be banished from his daughter’s wedding,” Mama sighed when she came home. “He won’t bow down to these people. And of course he is angered by his family’s lack of confidence in his behavior.” She was very tense and upset and so was I; we hated to have Papa feel humiliated. For such a self-confident, strong man, says Mama, his feelings are easily hurt, although he hides that.

Before heading south, Papa took me for a promenade down Riverside Avenue, nodding in his courtly way to passersby. Such a vigorous mettlesome man, folks must have thought, with his adoring daughter on his arm; he is groomed as well as any man in town. If Papa has a past to be ashamed about, he doesn’t show it. He looks the world right in the eye with that ironic smile, knowing just what our busybodies must be thinking.

I got up my nerve and finally asked if he knew about Hell on the Border. He twitched as if he had been spurred but walked along a little ways before he said, “The author imagines, I suppose, that having been reported dead, E. J. Watson will take these insults lying down.” When he makes such jokes, there is a bareness in his eyes, one has no idea at all what he is feeling, and my laugh came like a little shriek because that strange expression so unnerved me. He watched me laugh until, desperate to stop, I got the hiccups. We never spoke about that book again.

In silence, we walked downriver toward Whiskey Creek. Turning back, Papa confessed that, at the start, he’d been dead set against the wedding, not because he disapproved of Walter (he likes Walter well enough), but because he disliked all this meddling in our life by this damnable Jim Cole who had appointed himself spokesman for the Langfords (Papa made me giggle with his deadly imitation of that mud-thick drawl) and seemed to regard Ed Watson’s daughter as negotiable property like some slave wench. Enraged, he stopped short on the sidewalk. “Is my lovely Carrie to be led to the altar like some sacrificial virgin in order to restore our family name?” And he set off on one of his tirades about how our forebears had been landed gentry even before the Revolution and how Rob’s namesake, Colonel Robert Briggs Watson, was a decorated hero of the Confederacy, wounded at Gettysburg. The Watsons were planters in South Carolina when these crackers were still ridge runners!” he shouted, as I glanced up and down, afraid some passerby might overhear. “One day I’ll grab that gut-sprung cracker by the seat of his pants and march him down this avenue and horsewhip him in front of this whole mealy-mouthed town!”

Not long before, a cattle rustler in Hendry County had stung up Captain Cole with a few shotgun pellets. “Too bad that hombre didn’t know his business,” Papa said, with a very hard expression. That made him laugh and he calmed down then and apologized for all his cussing: it was too long, said he, since his knees had suffered the chastisement of a hard church floor.

A moment later he removed my arm from his and turned me around to face him. In a tone cold and formal he said he’d consented to this marriage because it would be beneficial to our family. “I accepted their conditions only because I’m not in a position to dictate my own. Even so, I intend to protect my loved ones from the mistakes I have committed in this life.” He brooded a few moments. His expression hushed me when I tried to speak. He took my hands in his. “Your marriage has my blessing if you want it. You needn’t beg me to stay away; that won’t be necessary.” He squeezed my fingers urgently in his hard hands. “Please assure your mother I won’t shame the family with my presence.”

“Papa, I’m the one who was disloyal! It was my weakness, too!”

“Your mother is not weak.” He rebuked me sharply. “A weak woman would not stand by me as she has nor confront me as she did.”

I wept. I was mourning his decision to stay away but my sudden tears only revived his hopes. For just a moment his eyes went wide, inquiring.

But I said nothing so he simply nodded as if everything was for the best.

How that stoic dignity twisted my heart!

“And Rob?” I sniffled. “Will Rob come to my wedding, Papa?”

“Sonborn? I’ll need him.”

He released my hands and we walked back to his ship without a word.

The old schooner drifted off, then swung downriver. I ran along the quayside, calling good-bye to my father and my brother, waving both arms trying to summon enough love to banish so much bewilderment and hurt.

Rob was aloft clearing the boom, which had somehow got hung up. Being Rob, he probably assumed I waved only to Papa, not to him. I did not stop until, still hesitant, he raised his hand at last. Though they were a little distant now, I could hear Papa bellow from the helm. Rob stopped waving and returned to coiling up the lines.

Aunt Jane and the family left, went to Fort Myers, and with them younger voices missing, the place fell quiet. Our house grew smelly, seemed to mope like a old dog off its feed. Me’n Rob was close to the same age but Rob was plain unsociable. When I asked him why he had not stayed in Fort Myers with Aunt Jane and his family, he spoke sarcastical. “That’s not my family. She’s not my mother and she’s not your ‘aunt Jane’ neither.”

Round about 1899, his stepmother persuaded Rob to join them and attend Fort Myers school. He was older than any kid in class but done poor and give everybody trouble. Give his stepmother some trouble, too, from what the Boss let slip. Though she was kind and done her best, Rob stayed only one school season, so rude to everyone that his daddy took him back.

Mister Watson had went sour, set inside a lot. Him and his son hardly spoke a word, they was like strangers come in off the river just to camp here, make a mess. It was real lonesome. After Bill House quit the Frenchman and the Frenchman died and them Hardens went to spend a year down to Flamingo, we scarcely seen a livin soul from one month to the next unless you’d count the drunks and niggers rounded up for the fall harvest.

Miss Carrie was soon spoken for by Walter Langford who was kin to the Lee County sheriff, so her daddy knew he’d get no trouble in Fort Myers that he didn’t ask for. Mister Watson’s rowdy ways got him throwed in jail a time or two in Tampa and Key West but he always ducked bad trouble in Fort Myers. Sail up the Calusa Hatchee in the evening, tie up after dark. Never stayed long, never went to no saloons: we done our business first thing in the morning, went on home. In Fort Myers, Mister Watson dressed nice and talked quiet, never wore a gun where you could see it, but he always had a weapon on him and he kept his eye peeled.

Aunt Jane begun to waste away but stayed real cheerful, so her husband told me. She was sick of her illness and did not want to keep Death waiting too much longer. When he said, “You’re not afraid of death, I see,” she smiled and said, “I guess I had it coming.” Telling me this, he smiled himself, though I never knew if he was smiling at her joke or smiling because she could joke about such things or smiling because this Island boy didn’t get poor Aunt Jane’s joke and don’t today.

Once in a while, we’d visit Netta and our little Min, who was living these days at George Roe’s boardinghouse at Caxambas: Netta aimed to marry Mr. Roe and later done so. At Roe’s, the Boss made the acquaintance of Josephine Jenkins, my mother’s half sister. One day he invited my aunt Josie home to stay but not before asking Netta if she minded. Netta had some rum in her that evening and was feeling sassy. “Mister Ed,” said she, “I don’t mind a bit so long’s you keep that durn thing in the family.” Everybody laughed to beat the band and I did, too, cause it felt so good just to belong.