Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Well, it weren’t that simple. Eddie Watson had kept strictly to himself whatever he knew or thought or felt about his daddy’s trial in north Florida two years before, including his true opinion of his guilt or innocence. Since returning to Fort Myers, however, he had missed no chance to state or otherwise establish that he was E. E. Watson, not E. J. Watson Jr. so it seemed to me that this show of filial loyalty came somewhat late.

Ted Smallwood testified that he had not witnessed the shooting, only heard it, so he could not say that Bill House’s account was not true “far as it went.” House looked disgusted but remained silent. Smallwood and a couple of others signed their names and House and the rest took pains drawing their X s, to make sure that X would not be mistaken for somebody else’s. I told ’em they were free to go on home and wait for the grand jury to decide whether or when they were going to be indicted.

“Decide if we are criminals?” Bill House asked. “That what you mean?”

Walter Langford and Jim Cole had arrived in time to hear me mention the grand jury, and Cole was bitching even before I finished. How could a grand jury indict when the only eyewitnesses were the defendants? By law, these men could not be compelled to incriminate themselves so it made no sense to summon a grand jury-!

Langford raised both palms to slow Cole down. The new president of the Florida First National had a stiff collar and cravat to go with his new million-dollar smile, served up these days with everything he said. Ol’ Walt had the jowls of a drinker and banker both; the days were gone when those honest cowboy bones showed through the lard. His honey hair was slick and tight as a wild duck’s wing and his nails were pink and he reeked like a barbershop, but all that lotion couldn’t cover up the whiskey.

Langford spoke in a hushed voice “on behalf of the victim’s family,” glancing at Cole for approval every few seconds while forgetting the victim’s son a few feet away. He urged the sheriff to understand that the most merciful solution was to shelve the whole tragedy as soon as possible rather than “waste our public money dragging these men through the courts when there was no way justice could be done.”

The suspects were already upset by Eddie’s presence and Langford gave them the excuse they needed to get mad. House jumped to his feet. “ His death weren’t no tragedy! The tragedy was all them deaths at Chatham Bend!” Isaac Yeomans hollered out. “Justice was done, you stupid bastard, and I’m proud we done it!”

“Lordy!” Walt went red as beef. “Look, I’m only trying to help you people-”

“Go on home, then,” Charley Johnson said.

I advised the banker that by law, a violent death could never be ignored and that due process had to follow an indictment.

Taking me by the elbow in that way he has, Jim Cole eased me out into the corridor as if we were up to something sneaky. “Walt’s right, you know.” He was wheezing as he pleaded, and his breath smelled of old liver and onions. “Why not just drop it, Frank? Forget it.”

“Lee County can’t ‘just forget’ a murder.”

“It ain’t murder if you deputize ’em as a posse.”

“Little late,” I’d say, “to form a posse.”

“Is it? State’s attorney owes me a favor, and he won’t pester you for no damn dates. You got my word.”

“Your word.” I felt worn out. “How about justice?”

“How about it, Frank?” Cole snorted that fat laugh of his, slapping my biceps with the back of his thick hand to remind me I was in his debt because young Frank B. Tippins came into this office with Jim Cole’s support and had made a few mistakes that Jim Cole knew about.

Well, I came in honest. I never asked for his support, never understood at first why he was so eager to befriend me. Had to learn that the cowmen and their cronies owned this town and ran it any old way they wanted, laws be damned. To do my job, I had to work around that, learn to give and take. So, yes, I took a little finally, cut a few corners.

My worst mistake was leasing out buck niggers off my road gangs for labor at Deep Lake. Cole fixed it with Langford. They paid nine dollars per week per head, plus one dollar per week for the Injuns I had to hire to hunt those boys down when they ran away. Paying convicts directly for their labor was against the law but I always aimed to turn over that pay when their time was done. However, very few showed up to pester me, they just disappeared. Same old story: the cash box sat there month after month, and one day I borrowed out of it, forgot to put it back.

Cole got wind of this some way; he would wink and nudge each time he brought the money. “Don’t let me catch you giving one red cent to them bad niggers, Frank. Don’t want my sheriff doing nothing that ain’t legal.” My sheriff! And he’d slap my arm with the backs of his fat fingers in that same loose way he did it now, to remind me how deep he had me in his dirty pocket, along with all the crumbs and sticky nickels.

I went back into the courtroom in a fury and deputized every man but Smallwood. A mob of murder suspects got appointed as a posse to arrest the man they’d killed, a man already stone-cold dead under the sand. And nothing was done that day or later to establish responsibility because deputizing the shooters made the shooting legal. As a sheriff ’s posse my new deputies went home feeling much better about what they did that day at Chokoloskee, not as a mob but in the line of duty.

The only angry feller besides me was William House, who refused to be sworn in. He punched the wall, then came forward and denounced the sneaky way he and his neighbors had been implicated and then let off although no crime had been committed in the first place. Said he’d damn well go to trial by himself if that was the only way he could clear his name.

“Well? What do I do now, goddammit?” he demanded when I ignored him.

“Do anything you damn well want. None of my business any more.”

He nodded. “That nigra who risked his neck, broke the case open for you. What happens to him ain’t none of your business neither, ain’t that correct? You’ll turn him over to Monroe County and then you’re clear of it, correct?”

“Correct,” I said, not looking up from the court clerk’s desk where I pretended to sort through some papers. When he didn’t move, simply waited there, I cocked an eye in warning. “That nigger’s gonna see some justice, Bill. Same justice you gave Mr. Watson,” I added, “according to your Chokoloskee story.”

For a florid feller, House went a dangerous red. I expected a fight and an arrest and I was spoiling for it. I gave him a last warning.

“No loitering in the courthouse, Bill, unless you aim to loiter behind bars.”

He swore and wheeled and followed the rest outside into the sun.

Sheriff Jaycox said that whoever he was, Leslie Cox had closed the book on Dutchy Melville, the fugitive most wanted in Key West. Green Waller, if that was his real name, had been wanted in Fort Myers as a hog thief; I scratched that name off the books, too. As for Cox, most people believed he was still at large down in the Islands, and nobody could say when or if or where he might show up.

Trying to piece it all together, I came up with more questions than good answers. The only witness to those murders had fooled the men at Pavilion Key by acting the part of a scared coon after doing his best to implicate Ed Watson. No matter how much I cuffed him in the jailhouse, that hard nigger stuck to his doctored story like stink on a dog. Nosuh, nosuh, Mist’ Edguh nevuh knowed nuthin about it! Ah jes ’cused him cause Mist’ Les done promise he gone kill me if ah don’t!