Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

All of us must die. Why make a fuss about it? Achilles to Hector.

You die in your own arms, as the old people say.

I roared at the world all the way north along that coast. When this purge was over, I was cold-soaked in evil-smelling sweat but I was clear. I let the boat glide to a stop. I stripped, leaned overboard, and splashed my body, gasping in the cool October air. Cleaned at last, perched naked on the stern to dry, I tried to imagine what awaited me.

The men would hear Watson’s motor twenty minutes in advance, they would be ready. Unless they planned an ambush, shooting in a volley as the boat came within range, they would try to take me into custody.

If you are captured, having failed to prove that Cox is dead, will they lynch you in front of your young wife and kids? This I could not permit.

Stuffed in my pocket was that hat with the fresh bullet hole burned through. I also had Leslie’s.22 revolver and the matched Colts he had stripped from Dutchy’s body. I loaded the shotgun, peeling the outer paper off Smallwood’s swollen shells and jamming them into the chambers of both barrels, just in case-just in case what ? Are you prepared to shoot? I checked the rounds in my own revolver, returned the weapon to my inside coat pocket, then laid the loaded six-guns under a rope coil near the helm, keeping them handy, just in case-just in case what ? Old habit. Even with these weapons added to my own, I could never shoot it out with twelve or twenty nervous men: the moment I raised a weapon, I would be gunned down all in a volley.

Shooting one or two men would be pointless. Things would only go harder for my family, and anyway, taking another life was out of the question. I could argue and harangue, try to bully my way free, but I would not kill for it. Why did you load up, then? Or I might fire these guns to scatter the crowd once I got my family safely aboard. No boat on the Bay could catch the Warrior, which carried two oil drums of spare fuel, enough to take her to Long Key and the railroad-too late now, Mister Watson.

Would a bluff work? I bluffed them last time and the time before. These men were truck farmers and fishermen, unlikely to challenge a well-armed desperado grown strangely indifferent to whether he lived or died.

You men must know that Leslie Cox would never have given up these weapons of his own accord.

All true. Would the truth satisfy my neighbors? It would not. In a time of fear, my so-called evidence would not have satisfied me, either. Something more was needed. If they won’t believe the truth, I thought, they will damn well believe blood.

Where white terns dove on sprays of bait near Rabbit Key, I slowed the boat and circled the breaking fish, trolling two handlines. The tin spoons gleamed in the white lace of the wake. Almost at once they were struck hard by a Spanish mackerel, then a crevalle. I hauled the big fish in hand over hand and knocked them off the hooks with hard smacks of my fish club-not on the crown, which makes a nice clean job of it, but on the gill covers, to send blood flying as they slapped and skittered in the stern. When the fish lay quiet on the bloodied deck, gill covers lifting and closing, I went aft and dropped them overboard. Too late I noticed the small boat in an open channel between islands. That boy might have seen me dealing with those fish but by the time he brought his catch in after dark, it wouldn’t matter.

In Rabbit Key Pass when out of nerves I slowed the Warrior to check the weapons a last time, her overtaking wake, lifting her stern and running on, slapped into the stilt roots all along the channel. In a little while she cleared the Pass and turned north up the Bay toward Chokoloskee, which rose dead ahead like a black fortress as the western sky withdrew its light from the iron water. In this twilight of late October, all my days had gathered.

I slowed the boat and unloaded every weapon.

Gurgling softly at low speed along the oyster bars, the engine sounded much too loud, unbearable. They would be waiting yonder in the shadows of the trees, the rifles pointed at my heart. As the boat neared, the helmsman’s silhouette would offer a target that even men quaking with buck fever could not miss. I might see but I would never hear that burst of fire. All was too late, there was no sanctuary and nothing left undone. The War-rior rounded the last bar into the anchorage and slipped between the moored and anchored boats, coasting toward shore, as what had looked like vegetation in the dusk emerged as a misshapen mass of human figures.

I was now well within rifle range. I was afraid again. Fear seeped into my lungs, gave me the shivers. I longed to crouch down out of view but that instinct was the wrong one. I stood rigid.

In the last light, the wind had backed around into the east. There it was, my darkling star, fleeing the sharp point of the quarter moon. In the days past, I had imagined I’d experienced the innermost despair, the utmost loneliness. I was mistaken.

Since Smallwood’s docks had been stripped away by storm, my rough plan was to idle close to shore until any and all arguments were settled: this would permit me to back out in a hurry. But in that last moment of choice, I realized that the least sign of wariness or hesitation must be avoided: in the absence of a dock, E. J. Watson would damn well coast right in and beach her near the boatways. I took a deep breath and yanked the spark plug wire.

The ringing silence when the engine quit seemed louder than the engine: crossing the water to the foreshore, it broke that mass of humankind into clusters, moving shapes. Behind these figures, others crossed the yellow lamplight in the doorway of the store. Fearing that any sudden shout might turn this hydra-headed thing into a death mob, I stifled a desperate impulse to cry out, Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!, and raise my hands as high as possible.

The Warrior had come within shotgun range on her final glide to shore. I forced myself to turn my back on all those guns and toss out a stern anchor, but this harmless maneuver caused a groan that swelled in the next moment when the boat’s stem, colliding with the bottom, went aground on the shelly sand with a loud harsh scrape.

I had my bow line coiled and ready at the helm. I tossed its loops onto the shore for some willing boy to hitch around a tree. Throughout I kept my movements slow and easy, counting on the stir and shift caused by my arrival to provide the distraction I would need just to survive the next few moments.

Smiling to show how much their friend E. J. appreciated this fine welcome party, waving and calling in the direction of the store-“I’m here, Mrs. Watson! Happy Birthday!”-I picked up the shotgun and, as the crowd surged back, stepped quickly up onto the bow and leapt, forcing my breath hard against my chest to meet the burning whack of lead on its way to strike me dead in the next moment. On shore, I straightened, the shotgun resting harmlessly on my left arm; for a moment, I felt dizzy, all went black. No voice spoke. The moment passed.

“Evening, boys,” I said.

Willie Brown’s screech came from way back by the store. “E. J.? Lay that gun down!” I grinned as if Willie were joking.

Old Man House was right up front, flanked by his older boys, Bill and Dan Junior. Counting Houses, they were close to twenty, every one of them aiming a weapon, with a few squinting over their raised barrels. I smelled moonshine.

Willie again: “You hear me, Ed? Lay down that shootin iron!”

Waving in Willie’s direction, I declared how darned tickled I was to see such a fine turnout of my friends taking the evening air.

“Never mind that, Watson. Where’s he at?”