Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Even his friends knew Watson’s time had come, that’s why them Lost Man’s fellers stood back there by the store and watched him killed. From the way he brought his boat ashore in the face of all them guns, I got to believe Ed Watson knew it, too.

The men agreed there would be no burial on Chokoloskee. Even dead, that body scared the women. At sun-up, we would take him out to Rabbit Key. But leaving a man I knew most of my life lay out all night alone by the cold water, that bothered me. I couldn’t sleep. Toward dawn I went back over there to pay respect or something. Dogs had snatched that bloody flag and one-eyed Ed lay staring at the stars, arms wide. One boot was stripped off, the other shot away, and those dead feet with cracked old toenails looked like lumps of dough.

I never sucked up to Watson and I never had no regrets, that day or later. We done what we had to do. But I will admit I was ashamed of how some kept shooting after he was dead, like they was trying to wipe him off the face of the good earth and their own guilt with him. Some shot until their guns was empty, and more’n one reloaded, shot some more. One wild boy Crockett Daniels run in afterwards, put his.22 to the back of the dead man’s head. I believe it was them boys robbed the corpse for souvenirs, cause his tooled big-buckled cowhide belt was missing, also his black felt hat from Arkansas. Watson weren’t often caught out in the sun without that hat on, and now that white skin under his hairline made him look naked.

In the lantern shine, the one bald eye glared out through the black tracks of dry blood down across his forehead, but the dust-caked bloodied mouth in them stiff whiskers was the worst of it: front teeth all busted out, lips tore and stretched, but still a little twist to ’em, a little grin. He sure looked like he could use a glass of water. Well, Mister Ed, I whispered, hoarse, I come to say good-bye. It ain’t that I’m sorry about what was done but only that your neighbors had to do it, men like me that weren’t never cut out to be killers.

• • •

By the time we went for him at sunrise, to run him out to Rabbit Key in his own boat, Watson had lost his good eye to some night varmint, maybe a poked stick. His clothes was mostly rags, black-caked with blood. Shirt ripped, hairy belly button. Them mean red spots was pellets deep under the skin. In the hard light of day it was plain he was shot to pieces, mostly buckshot rash but plenty of bullet holes, too, and flies already humming. A few men scared themselves all over again, telling how Watson, grinning like a skull, come after the posse through that hail of fire. (They was calling theirselves a “posse”; nobody cared to be a member of no “mob.”) I warned Mamie what the dead man looked like and she headed off his widow before she went down to visit with the deceased. “Give us a hand,” I told the men, and Tant Jenkins who had took no part was first to step forward and grab the ankles. Straining to hoist, Tant puffed out the opinion that dead men are unnatural heavy cause their bodies pull down like dowsing sticks, yearning for eternal rest under in the ground. “Well, that could be,” I told him, “but being full of lead might make a difference.”

“It ain’t no joking proposition, Bill,” sighed Tant, who most days would joke his way right through a funeral. Tant was tearful, might of had some drink, but there ain’t no doubt that except for Tuckers he truly loved Ed Watson. Later he told me my remark upset him because it was just what Watson might have said with a straight face about his own damn death. Watson loved them sour kind of jokes, which I enjoyed myself. I mean, ain’t life some kind of a sour joke? Might’s well laugh, that’s the way him and me seen it, whether nice folks seen the joke or not. One time when Watson caught me grinning along with him, he give a wink and lifted up his hat.

A angry moan come from the burial party when we swung that bloody carcass onto the transom. A couple of men flat refused to help us lay him in the cockpit, nor even touch him, as if even one drop of this devil’s blood was curtains. We had to listen to this horseshit right while we was struggling to heft him, and sure enough he got away from us, slid off the transom, flopped into the shallers. I was outraged and I spoke too rough and later some would use that anger to show how Houses always hated E. J. Watson.

“Come on!” I yelled. “Stop screwing around! Let’s get it over with!” I grabbed some line, bound up his ankles, run a hitch under the arms and worked it snug, then rigged a bridle off the stern cleats. Went aboard, cranked up his motor while them others clambered in, and snaked him off that shore like a dead gator, as yelling kids run out into the shallows, kicking water splashes after the body. Might been Billy Brown or Raleigh Wiggins who was wearing Watson’s hat, or maybe that tough Caxambas kid he nicknamed “Speck.”

“Get away!” My own voice sounded cracked, half kind of crazy. Where were their families, who claimed to be Watson’s friends? How come they let their kids behave no better than camp dogs? Were they too scared of us ones who done the shooting? But when I calmed down, I was angry at myself for hauling him off the shore as rough as that, which only encouraged the other men to act rough, too.

We towed him all the way to Rabbit Key. Sometimes he come twisting to the surface, causing a yell of fear; other times that grisly head was thumping on the bottom, I could feel the thrumming when I took in on the bridle- damn! It turned my guts. In the main channel, he towed pretty good, but a boat motor in them days had more pop than power, and his dead weight dragged as bad as a sea anchor. In one place he got drawed across a orster bar, got tore up worse, and by the time we pulled him out on Rabbit Key, his clothes was all but gone, ears and nose, too. With limbs bound tight and no face to speak of, he looked less like a human man than some deep ocean monster thrown up by that storm.

They buried him face down-“Give that red devil a good look at Hell!” yelled Isaac-then toppled two big coral slabs on top, one across the legs and the other across the back, to make sure he would not rise at dusk and come hunting in the night for thems that slew him. One feller hitched a noose around the neck, run the bitter end to a big old wind-twist mangrove on the point, the only tree left standing by the storm.

By the water, Tant Jenkins was weepin about how good he was treated all them years by Mister Ed but even when he seen ’em lead that hanging rope out of the grave he just stayed out of it. That’s Tant. I stomped over there, got hot about it, told ’em to take that noose off his damn neck cause he were as dead as the law allowed already.

“Ain’t no sense gettin lathered, Bill. We rigged that rope so’s them cattle kings can find the body case they send for it.”

“Around the neck ?” I said.

Them others backed that feller, feeling ugly, they was spoiling for a fight. Mister Watson didn’t scare ’em, not no more. They felt free to punish that sorry red carcass for all the fear they felt when this thing was alive. I walked away. I was relieved that he was dead, the same as they were, but I have buried my share of men that had a lot less spine than Ed J. Watson.

Sheriff Tippins was there with the Monroe County law when we got back to Smallwood’s about noon. The men had agreed not to mention Henry Short because around Frank Tippins, things went hard with nigras. We never did learn what become of Watson’s black man that Tippins handed over to this Monroe sheriff. Can’t even recall his name if they ever give him one.

The men notified the law that nobody lynched nor murdered E. J. Watson, it was self-defense. “This death don’t smell like self-defense,” Tippins advised. “Smells more like lynching.” Right from the start, the sheriff seemed crisscrossed about this case, he couldn’t stand still for a minute, he was fuming. “You men all claiming he shot first?” he says, rough and suspicious. They scratched their heads, looking around for somebody who might recall something.