Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

• • •

I first met Mr. Lucius Hampton Watson around 1903 or 1904 at Chatham Bend, where my father Fred Dyer had been hired as the foreman and my mother was the seamstress and my older brother Watt showed up on school vacations to pester and bully his little sister. What I loved about Lucius was the way he protected me from Wattie and also his gentle way with all young animals, including a certain bucktoothed little fool who imagined him to be some sort of knight.

Lucius paid me no more mind than my ma’s knee patch on his britches but he only spoke sharply to me once, to shoo me out from underfoot. The addled child had strayed too close to the cane syrup boiler and the fire he was tending. Too young to understand that he was more frightened than furious, I ran off weeping. From that day on, utterly crushed, I gave him a little room, but my dirt-streaked face was poking around corners everywhere he went. All I could think about was this lean graceful boy-he was sixteen that year-whom I loved with all my heart.

In the late summer of 1905, my father packed his family onto the mail boat in a great hurry while his boss was absent in Key West. Wattie was glad to go back to Fort Myers but I was inconsolable, and fondly hoped that our sudden departure upset Lucius, too. Though I imagined I must be the cause, I realize now that his concern was for my parents, whose contracts read that if they quit their jobs before the harvest, they would forfeit every cent of that year’s pay. Having no idea why my father was so frightened, Lucius was urging him to reconsider. I urged, too, in my shrill silly way-not that I cared a hoot about their pay. Staying close where he couldn’t miss me, I wailed over the tragedy of our parting but could not get his attention; he was too busy scribbling a note to be given to his sister Carrie, recommending Mrs. Sybil Dyer as a seamstress. Thanks to this kind act, my mother would become established as a dressmaker to Fort Myers ladies, not only Miss Carrie and her friends but the Summerlins and Hendrys and in the winter season Mrs. Edison, upon whose bust she would make finery to be sent north in the summer to New Jersey.

I never saw my hero again until the day of Mr. Watson’s burial five years later. My mother wanted to attend but my father forbade it. I disobeyed him because I knew how awful it all was for the Watson children, not only the horror of their father’s death but as Mama said-she was grieving wildly, too, which was why my father got so angry-the dreadful scandal in our small provincial town.

On that cold sad November day, hoping to glimpse Lucius, I went to the cemetery by myself, looking as respectable as I knew how by hiding my horrible Sunday dress under my green sweater. Lucius spotted me and raised his hand, though not quite sure he recognized me. Once the grave was filled, however, he drifted away from the departing mourners and came toward me. He looked exhausted. “Nell?” When his pale face broke in a warm smile, I lost my head and ran and jumped and threw my arms around his neck, crying, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” He had to detach me like a big green tick and set me down. While the mourners paused to wonder who that rude child might be, he answered gently. “I know you are, Nell, I know that. Thank you.” Courteous as ever, he asked after my family while making me feel he was glad to see an old friend from Chatham days even if that friend was only twelve.

A norther blew on the day we buried Papa, and a cold hard winter light glanced off the river. The mourners gathered under the great banyan tree inside the gate. The Langfords turned up not to mourn but to be mannerly, that is, not so much courteous as proper: they wished to appear steadfast, correct, and faintly disapproving.

The old cemetery had sunk under hard brush and thorn since Mama’s burial ten years before, but Lucius had worked like a madman for days to clear off enough ground for Papa to be laid in there beside her (Walter had paid darkies to do this hot, mean job but Lucius was so desperate to do something that he sent them away). It’s comforting to think that Papa-though “somewhat the worse for wear,” as he might say-is reunited with dear Mama. When I whispered this to Eddie, he retorted too loudly, “Nonsense, Sister! How can they be united? Our father is in Hell!”

The gravediggers stepped back, doffing their hats. Perhaps the two who went to the Islands with Lucius and Frank Tippins had passed the word, for these men knew all about the frightful corpse inside that casket. I’m not being oversensitive. They knew something!

The sheriff ordered them to finish quickly, his voice rough and loud: he seems to dislike nigras. Looking severe in his black suit, he stood guard over Papa’s casket as if to defend him from a vengeful Lord. It was kind of Frank to come, and goodness knows, our dreary little party needed all the support that it could get. When I thanked him, he exclaimed, “Mr. Watson had my respect, Miss Carrie, ma’am, no matter what!” He was very embarrassed, as if he’d said something crude and tactless rather than kind; his mustache, overlong and droopy, gives him a hangdog air. I wonder if he still imagines that he loves me.

After Papa’s trial in north Florida, Walter and Eddie hinted that he would not have been acquitted without political connections. A month later, a drifter at the jail had been condemned to hang for slaying some local lout in self-defense, and Walter remarked that if the defendant had had local friends or influence, he would surely have gone free: for the crime of being a stranger, he would hang. I asked Frank Tippins if this was just. The sheriff said, “He was found guilty by a jury of his peers and condemned to death. That may not be just but it sure is justice. Justice under the law.”

At Papa’s burial I whispered, “Was justice done here, too?” Knowing what I referred to, Frank said, “No, ma’am! No due process! This was murder!” He had spoken loudly; turning red, he stood gulping like a turkey. Then he whispered, “This was murder, Miss Carrie. But some would say that this was justice, too.”

Four of Papa’s friends came from the Islands. Stiff and shy, they stood apart in threadbare Sunday suits and white shirts without collars buttoned up tight. Lucius introduced them to Eddie and me: Captain Bembery Storter and his son Hoad, Mr. Gene Roberts from Flamingo, Mr. Willie Brown. The men paid their respects and offered a few words of formal regret. Where, I wondered, was Postmaster Smallwood? Or Erskine Thompson or Tant Jenkins, who had known us since childhood?

When Lucius moved away, the Island men, very uncomfortable and nervous, urged us to prevail on our younger brother not to return to Chokoloskee Bay asking hard questions; for Ed Watson’s son, it would simply be too dangerous. s “He won’t listen,” Eddie grumped and moved away.

A little woman stood with Lucius, very bright dark eyes and long black hair-cheaply dressed but pretty, I suppose, in a common way. She had a girl with her, a ten-year-old or thereabouts, eyes hollowed out by weeping, rather plain. When the child caught me staring, she smiled a small shy smile, then dropped her eyes.

Lucius had embraced these females a bit freely, so it seemed to me. When I asked him who they were, he said, “Tant’s sister from Caxambas and her daughter Pearl.”

“The one who kept house for Papa? Lost her baby in the hurricane?” Lucius nodded. “Is that the one that he called Netta?” He shook his head. “Aunt Netta’s half sister.” I kept after him, jealous because he knew an intimate side of Papa’s life that I did not. I said meanly, “And did this female betray Mama with Papa, too, like your ‘aunt Netta’? Why is she sniffling so hard? She have a cold?” Lucius gazed at me, not sure how much I knew. “She loved him, I think.” His mild tone chastised me.