Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Needing quick income to pacify my creditors, I drove everyone hard to get the crop in early, get our product to market ahead of the competition. With my outsized vat and boiler, I could turn out more and better syrup than all the local cane fields put together, but to stay ahead, I had to farm more land, and for that I needed new capital investment-this at a time when I was bankrupt and in debt and nowhere welcome in Fort Myers among businessmen.

Everyone on the place looked tired, less from the hard labor in the field than from the tension between Cox and Melville. “My trigger finger’s itchin somethin pitiful,” Les would whisper-his way of complaining that he wouldn’t mind encouragement and perhaps a little help from his uncle Ed. “After harvest”-my answer to every question-was unsatisfactory to all hands including me, obliging me to face two aspects of my own character I didn’t care for: one, that I did not want Dutchy harmed before I got more work out of him, and two, that I lacked the guts to set him up for Cox and see him slaughtered.

In early October, Kate came home from Chokoloskee. People were turning cold toward her, she said. By now it was common knowledge that Ed Watson was harboring two convicted killers and no doubt other criminals as well: according to rumor, the Watson Gang aimed to found an outlaw nation in the wilderness. Even Ted Smallwood, who still passed for a friend, was referring sardonically to “Emperor Watson.” I could no longer pretend to myself, far less to Kate, that our children were safe here on the Bend, and anyway, the time had come to confront those Bay folks and their stories before more damage could be done. I ordered Kate not to unpack, I was taking her back next morning. “Where will we stay?” she asked. “Nobody wants us.”

At his own request, Dutchy came with us. “I been needin a change of air,” he said, “after all them weeks cooped up with that yeller skunk you got for foreman.” The knowledge that Cox was laying for him and would kill him at first chance-and his growing uneasiness about where I stood-were wearing away at Dutchy’s spirits; he had dark circles under his eyes from watching his back throughout the day and listening all night. As soon as we left the Bend, he said, “Excuse me, ma’am,” and lay down in the stern. He fell asleep flat out on the bare boards while the children stared at him and never woke up till the launch nudged Ted’s dock at Chokoloskee.

Dutchy’s Wanted poster was plastered on the porch of Smallwood’s post office store so naturally the whole community lined up to take a gander at this armed and dangerous fugitive. Folks were elbowing and grinning, wondering aloud if those guns were real, so Dutchy performed a sudden back flip on the dock, coming up with six-guns blazing at the sky and scattering his thrilled audience into the trees. But when he strutted across the yard and banged his heels on the store porch, he was followed by a low and ugly groan. As Smallwood explained, folks felt humiliated by “Watson’s hired gun” and they blamed me. “Dammit, E. J.,” Ted whispered, “we just don’t want that kind of outlaw around here.”

“How about my kind, Ted?”

“Nor that Cox feller neither.” Smallwood was in no mood to be teased.

I gazed after Kate, who had gone off with Mamie to see Marie Alderman’s new baby.

Ted looked alarmed. “Nosir, it weren’t your missus, E. J.! It weren’t Edna told us! Some feller was mentionin Smith’s scar and another feller said, ‘That so-called preacher you are talkin about sounds mighty like a killer name of Leslie Cox.’ ”

“Alderman,” I said.

“No, no, E. J.! I never said that! Can’t rightly recall who might of mentioned it, but it weren’t Wilson!” Just when I needed someone I could count on, Smallwood was lying to protect a neighbor.

From his porch steps, I announced to the small crowd that I never hired fugitives intentionally. Those men had turned up uninvited (Dutchy bowed, ironical: nobody laughed). At harvest time, as folks well knew, a cane planter had to take what he could get; those men would be sent away after the harvest. With my new family and my syrup industry, I was making a fresh start here in the Islands and hoped to remain on the best of terms with my old friends and neighbors. But nobody seemed reassured, and my drunk gunslinger didn’t help much when he cheered my speech by shooting off his weapons, making children screech.

Kate rejoined me, very close to tears. Like Smallwood, my wife was faltering just when I needed her. She dreaded going back to Chatham and she dreaded staying here where doors were closing. She no longer felt welcome at Marie Alderman’s house. “How about Mrs. Smallwood?” I asked in a low voice. “Oh no, I can’t! We’ve imposed on them so often!” Wigginses? McKinneys? She shook her head. Even here, she feared for our little children, who would not stop crying.

I went to Aldermans. “Wilson, come on out!” He cracked his door. I snapped, “You listen here, boy. It’s nearly two years since I came back, and I have never said one word to you about how you ran off from north Florida when your help was needed as a witness.” I let that sink in. “And now you’ve told John Smith’s real name to this community. Want me to tell him you did that, Wilson?”

Alderman tried to talk. Nothing came out. He dared not say what his wife had hinted to my Kate, that he’d fled south before my trials because he thought that I was guilty but was scared to testify against his boss.

“So I’d be much obliged if you and Marie could take in Kate Edna and the children while I finish up my harvest at the Bend.” Wilson said he’d be happy to have ’em and I said I’d be happy to pay their keep. That’s the way we left it.

I went back to the boat and told my wife that she and the children could expect a warm welcome at Aldermans. She moaned, in tears, which was not like her. I told her sharply to get hold of herself and not upset the children any further.

Dutchy helped me lug their stuff. Having no hand free to draw, he stepped along uneasily, turning halfway around every few steps, thrashing his head from side to side like a stepped-on snake.

Dutchy was sodden by the time we left and I drank with him most of the way home. He looked bewildered, sensing the darkness in my mood. Again and again he turned to look at me, as if to catch an expression on my face that might reveal what I was thinking. He knew I liked him despite everything and he wanted to count on my support in case of ambush. But not knowing what he wished to say and not wanting to beg, he lifted the jug, kind of shy and wistful, just to toast me. “Mister Ed,” he said.

I ran the boat down the autumn coast, thinking of nothing. Cloud re-flections sailed beneath the surface of the sea like sunken snowy mountains. Ascending Chatham River on a falling tide, the Warrior throbbed hard against the cold weight of the current. Toward dusk, we were in sight of Chatham Bend.

Splashing water on his face, sobering quickly, Dutchy loosened his guns in their holsters, studying the house and sheds as we drew near, not knowing if and where Cox might be hiding. For all his long sideburns and bravado, he looked like a young boy. He slapped a mosquito, rubbed his neck, touched his gun butts lightly over and over. The walls of silent mangrove, the oncoming night, ate at his nerve: I suppose he was still trying to persuade himself that as long as I was with him, he was safe.

I eased the boat in, letting the current slow her. Hopping off onto the dock, awaiting the tossed line, he peered about him. Instead of tossing him the line, I let the Warrior drift back clear of the dock, then turned her bow. Next time he looked, the distance was too great to leap.