Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Winky glanced over at his brother, then fished out Watson’s envelope. “That ain’t the way we figure it here in the Islands,” he advised Tucker, “but we aim to be fair so we will split it with you.” Tucker snatched the wad and peeled off a few bills before handing it back. “Tell him he now owes you what he used to owe us in back pay.” He was writing his own note. “Tell him Bet and me ain’t getting off here till she has her baby.”

Alarmed, they warned him about Watson’s temper. Wally looked scared but bravely said, “Long as I don’t turn my back, I’ll be all right. Anyways, we got nowheres to go.”

The Atwells took his note to Watson the next day. Watson never told ’em what was in it, just tossed it on the table and went away into the field without a word. They never asked him for the money owed them. They set sail for Key West, left it all behind them.

A fisherman, Mac Sweeney, showed up on New Year’s Day. Mac was a drifter, lived on an old boat with a thatch shelter. Didn’t belong nowhere, took his living where he found it. Just at daybreak, headed north from Hamilton’s on Lost Man’s Beach, he had heard shots on Lost Man’s Key-one shot and in a little while another.

“Varmints, most likely,” Sarah said, gone pale as lard. That girl weren’t but twelve that year, another year went by before we married, but she was already the saucy kind that gets into the thick of the men’s business. Sarah said, “We better go right now.” “No,” Daddy Richard said, “the day is late. The boys will go there first thing in the morning.”

That same evening Henry Short come in. He was looking for Liza but was too shy to go to her straight off, though he could hear her singing by the cook shack. Henry knew that he was always welcome but Earl made sure he also knew how Earl Harden felt about a brown boy sniffing around our little sister, never mind that the sister was somewhat browner than what he was.

So Henry hunted hard for an excuse for having rowed all the way south from House Hammock, though it was true he’d forgot his pocketknife or some fool thing. We helped him off his hook as best we could but Earl was nervous, finding trouble every place he looked. Earl said, “Your knife ain’t waitin on you here, boy, and our sister neither.” Daddy Richard asked had Henry noticed anything at Watson’s on his way downriver? Henry said he seen no boat, no sign of anyone: the Bend was silent as he drifted by. Mac Sweeney moaned, “Oh Jesus, boys! It’s like I told you!”

We crossed to Lost Man’s first thing in the morning. We come too late. Winding in around the orster bars, Henry pointed at something laying over in the shallows.

“Oh Christ, what’s that?” Earl yelped.

“Shut up, Earl,” I said. I felt sick. I didn’t want to look.

Wally’s hair was lifting and his eyes ringed black with tiny mud snails were sunken back into his head. Scared of his touch, Webster reached deep for a boot, aiming to draw him alongside, but the boot leather was slick as grease from the salt water and it slipped away. I jumped over the side, took a deep breath, and seized him up under the arms. Walking backwards, hauling him out onto the sand, I seen the shadow of a shark move off the bar into the channel.

Dead blood was still leaking from a hole blowed in his chest. “Oh Christ!” Earl said again and begun coughing. Webster looked peculiar for a darkskinned feller, kind of a bad gray. Henry’s light skin had went a little green and I was fighting hard to keep my grits down. We hollered and swore to keep from crying, all but Henry, who was not free to join in, not with Earl watching.

Near the cabin was a silver driftwood tree and near the tree Wally’s net needle lay in the gill net we had lent him and blackish blood was caked thick in the mesh. His sloop rode peaceful on her mooring. No sign of Bet. We hoped she had run off and hid but no voice answered when we hollered, only the whistle of black orster birds out on the bar.

We rolled Wally in sail canvas, hoisted him into the boat. Hunting for Bet, we crisscrossed the island back and forth, even searched the end of Lost Man’s Beach, across the Channel. The long day passed. We called and called. Once a hoot owl answered, way back in the trees. Dusk was coming and dark overtook us before we reached Wood Key.

Sarah stared at the boots that stuck out from the canvas.

“How come you brought him back?”

“Didn’t want to leave him there alone, I reckon.”

“You left Bet alone.” First time I ever seen her cry.

It was Sarah’s idea we should take Wally back, bury him close to his little shack; that’s why he was still with us in the boat next morning. Crossing the flats, I seen a keel track in the marl. My heart give a skip just as Henry said, “Mist’ Watson.” Most Island men had learned that keel mark. Never knew when they might need to know he was around someplace.

I felt Bet near and pretty quick I seen her. Over the night she had surfaced in a backwater behind the point. Face down and all silted up ain’t no damned way to find a good young woman big with child whose smile you won’t never forget from the last time you seen it. Using an oar, Webster drew her toward the boat, but she got loose, rolled over very slow. Them little snails was pretty close to finished with Bet’s face. Without no lips, her white buck teeth made her look starved as a dead pony. Only mercy was, no eyes was left to stare.

This time we all jumped into the shallows, very angry. Earl grabbed an ankle, taking no time to get a proper hold under the arms. Earl is always in a rush, that’s the life itch in him. Not wanting a scrap with him that day, I took the other ankle, but when we hauled, her head went under and her shift hitched high on the oarlock coming in, laying bare her blue-white thighs and hair and swollen belly. The careless way we handled her made me ashamed. When I yanked that old rag of a shift back down, it tore half off her hips. “Show some respect!” Earl hollered. We almost capsized the damn boat, dragging her in.

Much too rough, Earl rolled Tucker out of his canvas, flung the canvas across to me, firing orders as usual. “Make her decent!” he yells. But what was indecent mostly come from his own hurry. To Henry, he says, “Don’t go lookin up her shift, you hear me, boy?”

Henry squints past him like he’s studyin the weather in the summer distance. No more expression on his face than on the dead man layin in the bilges. But Webster who is generally real quiet said to Earl, “We all hear you and we seen you lookin, too. White boys only, right?”

“This ain’t no time for this,” I said.

We hunted around till we come up with Wally’s shovel, dug two pits in the sea grape above tide line, stuck two stick crosses in the sand. We lowered Bet first, unborn babe and all. Earl hesitated to throw fill onto her face, he looked real shaky. When Webster cut the back out of his shirt, laid it across the head, Earl grumped, “Smelly damn ol’ shirt. That ain’t no good.” And Webster snapped, “Just shovel.”

Back at the boat, I took a deep breath, took the dead man underneath the arms. Webster and Henry took his ankles. His clothes had dried and warmed a little, but under that warmth he was cold, stiff, smelly meat, like a dead porpoise on the tide line after a storm.

A dead man totes a whole lot heavier than a live one, who knows why. I hoisted the shoulders so’s to clear the gunwales; his dank hair flopped over his face, his body sighed. I held a breath against the sudden heavy stink.

We laid him on the ground beside the hole. His eyes looked bruised and the lids sagged open like he didn’t trust us. I felt ashamed of humankind, myself included. I said, “We come too late, Wally. I sure am sorry.” Them words twisted right out of me, tears right behind ’em; I was ready to fight Earl if he noticed, but he was busy hawking up the taste of the dead man’s smell and spitting it away. Couldn’t hurt Wally’s feelings none but that hawking turned my stomach. I grabbed the shovel back from him and covered Wally as fast as I could swing it, covered that puffed face staring at the sky. With one shovelful, I closed them eyes, filled that dry mouth with sand, which shook me so bad that I let loose a groan. The next load I shot straight at Earl’s belly to wipe away his smirk and he knew better than to say one word.