Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

“Nobody else? You sure? You were right there, Erskine.”

Over the years, Thompson had soured in the way of lazy men, and Lucius’s incredulity turned him peevish. He was soon insinuating that no son of Ed Watson should go around Chokoloskee Bay asking nosy questions: that whole business was better left alone, less said the better. Instead of asking his fool questions, Thompson called back, starting away, the son should settle up all those back wages that the father had never paid his schooner captain.

“Speaking of schooners,” Lucius shot back, “whatever happened to the Gladiator ? Isn’t her captain the man who should know best?” Thompson cupped his ear, feigning deafness, before waving Lucius away with disgust and finality and walking on.

Though even his father’s friends concealed the identities of the posse members, these families made sure that Watson’s son heard rumors that “Nigger Short” had participated in the shooting. Lucius dismissed these stories as absurd until Hoad Storter told him that he, too, had heard this. Hoad said unhappily, “Well, he might have been there, Lucius. People say they saw him. That doesn’t mean that he participated: don’t let ’em tell you that. Henry’s colored and he’s not suicidal. He’s got very good sense.”

He asked the Hardens. After a long pause, Owen said flatly, “Sure. He might of been there. Houses’ orders, probably.” He shrugged it off as insignificant but it was clear that, for Henry’s sake, he didn’t want to talk about it.

In the interests of objectivity, Lucius felt obliged to seek Short out, hear him deny any participation in his own words, but Short had not been easy to track down. He no longer visited the Hardens, who had no idea (they said) where he might be found. Probably this was more or less true, but it was also true, as Owen and Sarah admitted, that though they trusted Lucius, they could not count on what he might do as Watson’s son. Did they doubt his sanity or his intentions? Lucius wondered. And why were they so protective of Henry if he had not been involved?

It was Henry Short, as it turned out, who had dismantled the Frenchman’s shack on Possum Key (an act that for years had been attributed to Leslie Cox). In his sailing skiff he had moved it piece by piece all the way south to West Cape Sable and lugged the boards three miles or more inland to a desolate area of scrub and brackish water where nobody would come looking for him, let alone find him. “That whole cabin traveled on that one man’s shoulders,” Sarah marveled.

“Henry Short come straight to Lost Man’s after your daddy was killed. ‘Wait and see,’ Henry said. ‘They’ll try to hang it on the nigger.’ But Daddy Richard had taught that man the Bible. Henry was a fine strong Christian, swore by the First Commandment so we knew he could never line a man up in his rifle sights and pull the trigger.”

“And anyway, he had nothing against my father,” said Lucius.

“I ain’t so sure. Remember Jane? Light mulatta gal that come down from Fort White to cook for your daddy at the Bend?”

Lucius smiled. “Jane Straughter? Sure. I thought I was kind of in love with her.”

“Me, too. That’s how I learned I could love two girls at once.” Owen glanced at his young wife in comic fear. “Well, Henry confided he had loved Jane dearly and believed she loved him, too, but your daddy found out and sent Henry away. When she went back to Fort White, that poor feller was heart-broke. Took him years to get over her. Finally married my sister Liza, got tore up again.

“Course Hardens had nothing against mixed blood, so when Henry started courtin Liza, nobody objected ’ceptin Earl, although Liza was coffee and Henry the pale color of new wheat.”

“Henry has a lot more white than most of those po’ whites who call him ‘Nigger,’ ” Sarah said.

“I guess Henry never talked enough to suit my sister. As the only colored in a cracker community, he never had much practice. Liza complained that Henry never talked, never gave her more than the bare facts even when he talked about the weather. Our Liza dearly loved a conversation, and she couldn’t bear that. So pretty soon that girl run off with a white man who told her he had money which he didn’t.”

Sarah said, “Liza announced her marriage to Henry was annulled because it was performed outside the Church and therefore didn’t count in the Pope’s eyes, but she never could remember who annulled it. Being strong-minded like her mother, she most likely annulled it herself.

“Our ma admired Henry Short, no matter what,” he reflected after a while. “She never had much use for her daughter after she run off with that cracker, who had a bad habit of pickin up anything loose he could lay his hands on, my sister included. Liza bein Henry’s consolation for a lonely life, he never got over it. Followed our family to Flamingo, fished around Cape Sable, but when he returned to Lost Man’s River, who should he find living there but Liza and her man; they were not real friendly but made him drink with them to let bygones be bygones. That was Henry’s first liquor and he couldn’t handle it, and that night he was heard to mutter how somebody might take and shoot that thievin redneck. We knew he was just easin his torment but that kind of wild talk could of got him killed.”

“Even before Liza took up with Henry,” Sarah said, “some of them Bay women called her ‘white trash,’ not because she done wrong but only because their menfolk-every man along that coast-would have sold his soul for what Henry had and those ladies knew it. So they were happy thinking she’d humiliated her family by marrying ‘Nigger Short’ and overjoyed when she run out on him: it did their hearts good to see God Almighty humble that mulatta who dared to marry that supposed-to-be-white woman after raising up his gun to a white man.”

“Ma said Henry was a high type of man who had a low opinion of himself. White people had robbed him of his chance for a home and family and now they had took his self-respect as well. But I believe that losing Liza might have saved his life. The young fellers let off steam crackin mean jokes and shootin off their mouths instead of gettin drunk and comin after him. Because when there’s too much lynch talk in the air, it’s bound to happen.”

One day Owen Harden said, “Henry’s at the Bend.”

To avoid scaring Henry Short back into the scrub, Lucius slipped up Chatham River on a night tide and was at the dock at daybreak. Calling out softly to calm the dogs and announce his presence, he walked unarmed toward the house.

Bill House, already outside in the porch shadows, stood in his nightshirt like a ghost. Perhaps to warn Henry, he sang out, “That a Watson? You lookin for me?”

“Looking for Henry. Heard you might know where to find him.”

“We ain’t seen him. What you want with him? Next time-oh Christamighty!”

To House’s annoyance, Short had appeared at the corner of the boat shed. When Lucius said good morning, Henry lifted his hat politely but did not come forward. Instead he retreated behind the shed, possibly to escape the cool breeze off the river but more likely, Lucius guessed, to make sure they were out of earshot from the porch. Was this precaution for his visitor’s sake or for his own?

“We heard some man been huntin him,” House said. “That you?”

“Nosir,” Lucius said, “it’s not.”

Short awaited him, standing not stiffly but very straight, as if to accept any punishment his hard life had in store including its own immediate relinquishment. His ancient Winchester, leaned against the shed, had been left or placed well out of his reach, though Short must have heard the Warrior coming upriver and could have kept the weapon handy if he’d wished. If I were to put a revolver to his head, Lucius supposed, this man might flinch but he would remain silent, less out of fortitude than a profound fatalism and possibly relief that all his trials, Lord, would soon be over.