Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“They aim to hang Les Cox?” Cox was incredulous. “Supposin I tell ’em how Ed Watson was behind it?”

“Did you tell Reese I wanted you to kill those harvest hands? That why he turned on me?”

“No! Before he run off, he ast me real suspicious, ‘Mist’ Jack tell you, kill them field hands? Them four young fellas that’s locked in the bunkroom?’ I told him, ‘Boy, that ain’t your business. Wait till the Boss hears how you been runnin your damn mouth!’ ” Cox stared at me, eager. “I was plannin on shuttin him up for good soon’s we got them people in the river. I hate that nigger!”

Everything was puling out. He seemed relieved to be confessing, putting responsibility for his fate into my hands.

“You have finished me, boy.” I could only whisper in weak lassitude, as a man who has opened his veins in a tub feels the last heat in the water running out.

He was already elsewhere. “Nosir, I ain’t never goin back, not on no chain gang.” He asserted this without energy, eyes averted. After so many days of hallucination, what flame was left in Leslie Cox was guttering out down to the stub, even as his eyes still searched for some rat hole of escape. “You ain’t takin me to Chokoloskee, Unc. You’ll have to shoot your niece’s darlin first. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Not if I don’t have to.”

The tear shine of self-pity in his eyes had a hard glisten like the brine in clams. “If you’re so fuckin smart,” he jeered, “how come you never noticed what your wife was up to when you wasn’t lookin?” There was plenty more to tell about Les Cox and Kate Edna, that leer said. And I was vulnerable. My wife and I had been apart most of this year; we had scarcely touched in months. Anyway, I wasn’t the man I was. Good enough to bring Josie along most of the time but Josie never needed too much help.

Cox waited for his insinuation to work its rot. When I said nothing, showed no expression, it occurred to him that I might shoot him in a jealous rage. “Just funnin with you, Unc.”

“You don’t know how,” I said, waving him outside. “Reese went to Pavilion and told what happened and they found those bodies in the river and you are going to hang. Just funnin with you, son,” I added coldly.

“Supposin I won’t go?” he said, testing my resolve.

“Rather stay here, wait for those Injuns?”

I was ready when he lunged for the gun, so weak and dizzy from his days of drink that when I stepped back, he fell forward onto his hands. “Don’t shoot!” he screeched. Scrabbling to his feet, he pitched and banged his way onto the porch and half fell down the steps.

The Indians were still there, watching from the wood edge not a hundred yards upriver as he went reeling down the path toward the dock.

To take him north alive, I would have to hogtie him; otherwise, he might jump me on the way. But even this drunk and dissolute, he would not be easily overpowered without knocking him out first, which might be difficult. When Leslie saw the Warrior, he stopped short. He did not turn but his voice came back over his shoulder. “Unc? You aimin to witness for me in the court like I done for you?”

“No, Les,” I said. “I aim to testify against you.”

In the shock of my betrayal, he sank onto his knees at the head of the dock. Then, incredibly, he gloated. “I reckon I’m the outlaw they want worst.”

More than any man I ever came across except possibly Quinn Bass, this boy deserved to die: I was his posse or his executioner as I wished, with my own survival as my fee. But when I saw my old friend’s son shrunk up to nothing, my finger backed off the trigger. Dammit, I was going soft just when my last hope of life demanded that I act fast without mercy. Get it over with! Shoot him as he steps into the boat, just topple him in and deliver the body as promised. The job could be over in a moment, and only Will and his Cornelia and maybe my fool niece would ever miss him. A public enemy so detested could be done away with at will, on the house, for free. Killed for free -was that why Bass’s execution had always troubled me? Because it was done for money, without risk or reckoning?

For taking a human life, one paid with one’s own soul. To extinguish the light in another’s eyes was the death of self: those eyes, reflected forever in your own, would never close. I had willed that curse to boys like Eddie Reed, who could cross my fence and move forward in the echo of his shot and with his boot toe overturn his mother in the road and damn her to Hell as the last glimmer dimmed in her staring mud-flecked eyes. Old cunt! I hope you’re satisfied -that’s what her boy told Maybelle Shirley Starr as her back arched in spasm and her jaws drew wide, baring her teeth.

Hard Eddie Reed had been hell-bent on his own mother’s life, with or without support from Edgar Watson. I was told by the postmaster at White-field that the day Belle whipped him for lathering her horse, her son vowed publicly that he would kill her, and having a badman reputation to keep up, he naturally felt honor bound to keep his word.

Really? That’s your story? Jack Watson had no part in it?

The truth about my shadow brother: Jack Watson never showed up anymore because we two had become one. Probably we were never different. Now I know that.

“Looks like I ain’t never goin home.” Leslie was pleading. “Ain’t never gone to see my ma and pa, ain’t never gone to pitch Major League ball. And I can hit good, too. Ask anybody, Unc. It ain’t only my fastball I am knowed for.”

“No indeed.”

“Got to go home,” he moaned. “Got to see Pa.”

He must have glimpsed those Mikasuki because just then he turned his head. Seeing my raised gun, he yelled in panic and leapt off the dock toward the shore. Because it was senseless, this leap for life surprised me, and when I fired, my gun hand jumped, unused to the six-gun’s weight. His body twisted in the air and his back thumped heavily on the steep bank. In a heavy thrash he bucked and rolled and lay face down in the edges of the current.

He was not shot clean and might be drowning. Drown then, I thought, but then No, wait. My life depended on him. I charged into the water, grabbing for his galluses, but the river had already taken hold. Just out of reach, a shoulder broke the surface, then a turn of hair and face, the mouth coughing swallowed water.

I dropped the revolver and ran downstream a little ways and shucked my boots. I was a poor swimmer and my fear was cutting off my wind and I got no farther than hip-deep, afraid not only of the current’s strength but the life grasp of a man drowning. I dreaded the touch of him and dreaded worse that crocodilian, turning silently toward the commotion. Right then I felt the push against my leg , a heavy mass. I plunged a hand, got hold of an arm, the underarm. I hurled my shoulders backwards, dragging the body to the bank, where with frantic strength, I rolled him onto his belly and pushed both hands hard into his upper back until he vomited out lungfuls of brown river.

Slowly he came to. Blood trickled from the wound above his temple, slidssssing down across his cheekbone, parting at the scar. He was scalp-creased, stunned, more or less unhurt. When I sat him up, his eyes started to focus, and I found myself grinning with relief before remembering: he must be bound at once while still half conscious or be shot again.

I could not shoot Will’s boy a second time if my life depended on it.

Something tossed from the bank above bounced off my neck. The Indians had picked up that spent cartridge by the dock as they came along. One kept me covered with his ancient flintlock while the other two jumped down. They seized Cox roughly, yanking his arms straight out in front of him and binding his wrists before hauling him groaning onto his feet, dazed and passive. Supporting him, the two Mikasuki pushed and propped and pulled him up the bank. Another line was run between his arms and hitched around the binding at the wrists, after which, with a hard jerk of his leash, he was led upriver.