Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

I have buried men since and buried children, but that young couple with their unborn child was the saddest sight I ever care to see. When the graves was banked, I jammed the shovel blade into the sand with all my might.

Webster growled a Webster kind of prayer: “God Almighty, here is two more meek that has inherited Your earth.” Webster spoke in his own peculiar way; we never did learn how to hear him. Sudden and loud, Earl heehawed at his brother’s prayer, shaking his head over something or other as Webster watched him.

Richard Harden always claimed that Watson could not help himself, being doomed by accursed fate. In later years that give Sarah her excuse for forgiving him a little bit for what he done here. Ain’t doom the same as fate? I ain’t sure what Daddy Richard meant, unless God put a curse on E. J. Watson. But if God done that, then who was we to blame for them dreadful murders?

One funny thing: along the shore we came across two sets of fresh prints. Who did them other prints belong to? Cause we knew Rob Watson was a friend to Tuckers, he even come here once to see how they was getting on, also to warn ’em.

Mac Sweeney had left for Key West and two deputies showed up a few days later with orders to deputize them Wood Key boys who found the bodies. Earl Harden advised the deputies that foul deeds had been done and that E. J. Watson was the only man suspected. He never told about the second set of tracks we found crossing the Key.

Webster went out the back door as the law come in the front, that was his answer. To me, they said, “How about you? Two dollars just to show us where he’s at?” I said, “Nosir, I sure won’t.” I felt sick angry at Ed Watson but I didn’t want no part of it. Daddy Richard told ’em nothing one way or the other. Cornerin Pap was like tryin to nail a orster to the floor. He give a kind of muddy groan, mumbling and carrying on about deputizin boys too young to die and such as that, but I believe what worried him the most was Hardens takin the law’s side against a neighbor.

Pap said, “You fellers might could deputize that female settin over there fixin them snap beans. She can shoot a knot out of wet rope and won’t settle for no ifs, ands, nor buts.” Mama banged her pot down, went outside, and the two deputies, who was scared of Watson and sufferin from ragged nerves, advised Pap that they was here to solve a case of cold-blood murder and had no time for no damn mulatta jokes.

I said, “Better look out who you go calling mulatta,” but Pap hushed me. “Now don’t you fellers get us wrong,” he said. “This family don’t hold with cold-blood murder of no race, color, nor creed.” Said young folks was bloody murdered, yep, they sure had that part right, but he ain’t seen no evidence it was Ed Watson. “Hell, Pap,” Earl yelled, “we seen his keel track! Ain’t that proof?” And Daddy said, “Might been proof, but like I say, I never seen it.”

Scoffing, Earl stepped forward and got deputized. Once he had his badge pinned on, he told his feller deputies, “Looks like my brothers might be scared of Watson.”

Pap grabbed my wrist before I went for him. “You said a mouthful that time, Earl,” Pap told him in a dead voice. “You might be correct, who is to know? But the law here ain’t got nothin on Ed Watson, and you will have to live with him after these fellers are gone.”

Come time to leave for Chatham River, their new deputy had already begun to sweat. Looked back over his shoulder, hoping his daddy would forbid his boy to go. Pap took no notice, just set there in the sun, whittling him a new net needle out of red mangrove. Rest of his life, Pap was civil to Earl but he was finished with him. That’s the way our daddy was. Never got angry, just dropped bad stuff behind him like he’d took a crap. Life was too short to waste time looking back, he said, or too far forward either.

When the law dropped him off on their way back south, Earl was raring to tell every last thing he seen. Evidence in the case was confidential, Deputy Earl advised us, but quick as a goose squirt, it come out: Watson and his son was gone, his house was empty. On the floor they found Wally Tucker’s crumped-up message, but not wishing to admit they could not read even big letters printed out with pencil, the deputies never bothered with it. “Handwrit note don’t count for nothin in no court of law”-that’s what they told Earl. Even so, Earl had the sense to save it.

Sarah read it out loud and got furious before she finished. “Might mean nothing to deputies but it sure is proof that Wally Tucker was the fool who got Bet murdered!”

MISTER WATSON WE WILL STAY

ON THIS HERE CAY TILL OUR CHILD IS BORN

COME HELL OR HIGH WATER

Hell showed up quicker than poor Wally expected, and high water, too.

First day of January, 1901, sailin north from Lost Man’s Beach, I seen the black smoke of a cane fire from way out in the Gulf, smelled that burned sweetness in the air like roasting corn. That fire was still going strong when I passed Mormon Key and tacked into the river.

At the Bend, the trees was just a-shimmering in that heat, and the hawks and buzzards comin in from as far away as cane smoke can be seen to feed on small varmints killed or flushed from cover.

What was burning was our thirty-acre field. This year we was too broke to hire outside labor for the harvest season, so there was only the Boss and me and Rob, and maybe Tant if we were lucky. The Boss must of gone crazy -that’s the way I figured. He was firing a cane field we could never harvest.

Tying up, I seen no sign of Rob, let alone Tant. All I seen was Mister Watson on the half run in his field setting fires like he’d heard a shout from Hell; he was drifting over the black ground in a ring of fire like a giant windswirled cinder. Had his shotgun in his other hand, and that made no sense neither, cause he hadn’t lit fires on three sides the way we done when we wanted a shot at any critters that might run before the flames. Something was on the prowl here in the hellish air and spooky light where the sun pierced the smoke shadow. I never hollered or went near the house, just waited on the dock.

Toward nightfall, with his fires dying down, he come in from the field, eyes darting everywhere. “Who’s aboard that boat?” He was coughing hard, fighting for breath. He went on past, then swung that gun around quick as a cottonmouth, like he meant to wipe me out. I yell out, “Hold on, Mister Ed! I come alone!” but he don’t lower the muzzle. Don’t like turnin his back to me but minds his back turned to the schooner even more. And damned if he don’t go aboard, checking on me over his shoulder, and poke that shotgun into every cranny on that boat, from stem to stern.

Coming out, he growls, “No harvest, boy. I’m broke.” He explains the fire: if the cane is left unharvested, with no burn-off, next year’s crop would be choked out. We walked up to the house, me in the front.

Tant and Josie were gone. Rob never come to supper. Me and Mister Watson ate Tant’s cold venison, left on the hearth. No bread baked, no greens. No life in that house, just us two men chewing old cold meat not smoked through proper because Tant never banked the cooking fire, just let it die, as usual; damned meat had a purply look and a rank smell to it. I never get none down, that’s how dry my mouth was. Mister Watson threw it to the dogs and we et grits. He gets the bottle out, then forgets about it, just sits there panting, staring out over the river. And right then I begun to know that our good old days at Chatham Bend was over and I’d better be thinking about moving on. I was near to twenty and had my eye on young Gert Hamilton at Lost Man’s Beach who was boarding at Roe’s up to Caxambas while she went to school.