Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Over time, I gleaned the rest from Leslie himself. His plan had been to run off with May Collins and join a big-league baseball team so he needed a grubstake. Like everyone else, he had heard about Calvin Banks’s hoarded-up money, and Calvin’s son-in-law had mentioned where it might be found. That son-in-law had been no-account from birth, he’d pulled a muscle in his brain or something. Probably never occurred to him that those old folks might be harmed, so during the robbery, he waited for Leslie back along the road, expecting a share of the proceeds-a bad mistake, since finding no proceeds worth sharing, Leslie in ill humor shot him dead. Cox had come to Chatham Bend not to give me half the money but because he had no other place to hide.

I was now so broke that I agreed to sell the best of my Fort White farmland to Jim Delaney Lowe, even though he’d testified against me. Getting wind of that land sale, my lawyers threatened me with forcible arrest and extradition to Columbia County for nonpayment of their fees, hinting that I might be lynched upon arrival. So much for lawyers. After such a year, small wonder that my rages were recurring. These violent eruptions split my head and yanked my heart around so wildly that I scarcely dared breathe for fear of stroke. Breaking out in sudden chilling sweats, I could only sink down panting.

The mail boat brought news of Samuel Clemens’s death: at least I would have smart company in Hell or Heaven. Somewhere Twain said, I don’t believe in Hell but I am afraid of it. One day when I quoted those words, Lucius asked me my opinion, no doubt wondering if his Papa, too, might be afraid of Hell (being so unlikely to wind up in Heaven), I guess he meant I shrugged him off, saying I’d had no word from the “higher-ups” as to my fate.

I could have answered him more honestly. I could have said, I don’t believe in God and never have. I could have said that on Judgment Day, when the true worth and meaning of one’s life is weighed, the judge I feared most would be Edgar Watson.

At Chatham Bend nobody ate who did not earn his grub and I gave our guests every dirty job we had. Because Gunnin had recognized “John Smith” and was bound to tell the law where he was hiding, Leslie was very agitated by our visitors, thought it might be wise to knock these green-horns on the head and toss ’em in the river. I reminded him that their families knew where their boys had been headed and would show up here with the law if they failed to return.

Cox boiled over when Joe Gunnin slipped and called him “Les.” Cox snarled, “I reckon you mean ‘John.’ That other feller you thought you might of saw? Well, you ain’t never seen him, understand?” Les commenced his deadly nodding, glaring hard at one and then the other. He said, “Maybe I ought to shut your mouths right here this minute.”

Melville always said straight out what popped into his head. I never met such a carefree feller in my life. He slapped his knee and guffawed at Cox’s threat. “He’s aimin to go gunnin for a Gunnin!” He laughed in loud heartfelt delight at his own joke but his hoots soon turned into hard jeering, calculated to bait Cox into a showdown, though his guns were on the side-board, out of reach. “You rover boys got that? You ain’t never seen this sonofabitch you thought you seen settin right here stinkin up the place under your nose.”

Leslie, gone white around the mouth, pointed at Dutchy’s eyes in sign that he would pay for this sooner or later but Dutchy only pointed right back at him. “Tell that boy to stop that dretful squintin, Mister Ed! He’s scarin these poor fellers half to death!” He whooped some more, informing the visitors that if he were to practice up on his mean squint as long and hard as that dumb hick across the table, he would probably end up with that same ugly face, tight-squinched as a bat’s asshole. And he threw back his head and laughed so hard that he toppled his chair right over backwards.

Cox knew that Dutchy’s guns were out of reach and his hand shot for his knife as he leapt forward. But Dutchy had toppled his chair on purpose, and being an acrobat, kept right on rolling and bounced back up onto his feet with something glinting in his hand. Those black eyes were glinting, too-even his teeth seemed to be glinting. I never saw that knife fly to his hand, but most likely he had it hid in his boot lining.

Cox was no knife fighter. He stopped his lunge by grabbing at the table, barging it noisily across the floor. He backed off then and shortly quit, dropping his knife like that hayseed Tommy Granger in Arcadia. Dutchy kicked it skittering against the wall. Taking his time, he sidled toward the door to cut off an escape. He had Cox where he wanted him, with more excuse to finish him in self-defense than he would ever need. He wrinkled his nose at the thin blade in his own hand, as if loath to defile its pristine edge. His cat eyes twitched in little shivers of the pupil.

Les could not look at him. He was staring at me, all but imploring his old partner to step in: Ain’t you told me you had swore to kill him ? Yet again, his predicament was Watson’s fault. When I kept silent, folding my arms on my chest, he let out a small grunt of angry panic, and I let him twist. But after a moment, I lifted my cup of shine to Dutchy in signal that he’d won, that it was over.

Dutchy put his knife away too readily and his big grin of relief betrayed his weakness: he lacked the philosophy or the hard heart required to kill an undefended man, even this man who yearned to take his life. Frank Reese in the kitchen doorway saw this, too, and turned away disgusted. His stormy face as he glared past mine made it clear how much he was going to dislike the inevitable outcome of this feud, although he had known since the spoiled syrup episode that Melville had to pay.

Cox had sunk down on his chair edge, incensed by a humiliation made much worse by my toast to the victor, but in a moment he realized that my intervention on his behalf was a sign of where I stood, and this knowledge brought that curled edge to his mouth which Sam Tolen must have seen as he knelt in the white road on that spring morning-that curled edge caused, in my experience, by a metallic foretaste at the back corners of the tongue that comes as a signal of imminent, absolute power over life and death.

Dutchy Melville would be missed at Chatham Bend. This young gunman had done me a great harm, beyond forgiveness, but that was no longer why he had to go. My friend Will Cox’s oldest boy had tried to stifle Calvin’s tes-timony at my trial and had offered help in an escape, had that been necessary. Also, he had married my niece May. Leslie was kinfolks.

From that hour till the day the mail boat came, our Fort White visitors fell all over themselves to please Ed Watson and his outlaws, swearing to John Smith again and again that his presence on the Watson place was no business of theirs and would never be mentioned to a single soul. When the boat appeared, I did not quit work to walk over to the dock and say good-bye. Before boarding, Gunnin and young Langford confided to Hannah their shock at my indifference to the news of my mother’s death and the great illness of my sister-small wonder, they said, that Mr. Watson had such a bad reputation in Fort White.

According to Green, Big Hannah bit their heads off. “Ain’t that why you rover boys come gawkin around here in the first place? To visit a real live desperader in his hideout, then run back home to brag?”

Like my dear Mandy, Hannah Smith had a pretty good idea of who Ed Watson was. She did not approve of all his ways but neither would she see him criticized by anybody who had not earned that right. I had few true friends and this big woman was one so I reckon I should have taken better care of her.