Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

Lucius went down on one knee and shook his shoulder gently. “Mr. Collins? It’s Lucius Watson. You sent for me.”

From beneath the blanket came more coughing. “Hell, no. Get on home, boy.”

“Come with me, then. We have to talk.”

With his big hand jammed under his armpit, Crockett Junior hoisted Lucius to his feet. “That man’s sick!” Lucius protested. “I’ll take him with me!” But Junior impelled him toward the screen door where Braman, entering, got in the way. Placing his palm against Mud’s face with fingers on both sides of his nose, Dummy shoved hard with one thrust like a punch, sending the man out through the loose screen door and down the outside stair. A scaring whump rose from the bottom of the steps. Stepping outside onto the landing, looking down, Speck shook his head. “That fool has flew down them damn steps so many times you’d think he’d get the hang of it but he just don’t.”

On hands and knees, panting with shock, Mud wiped the blood from his gashed brow with the back of a grimy hand. “See how they done?” he complained to Lucius, who had jumped down the stair to help him. Braman waved him off, crawling away through the weeds to the pink auto and dragging himself into the backseat. He tried to shut the door behind him but the rusted hinges and rank weeds kept it from closing. “Any man,” Mud hollered from within, “thinks Mud R. Braman gone to take any more shit off them dirty skunks better think again!”

Lucius walked toward his old Ford as Speck called from the landing. “ Looshus Watson! Ain’t nowhere near the man his daddy was.”

Speck stood rocking on his heels, hands in hip pockets, grinning. “Don’t aim to tell us how that ol’ list of yours is comin?” Getting no answer, he rasped angrily, “What I hear, Nigger Short ain’t on your list, and he ain’t never died off that I heard about. Or don’t a nigger count, the way you look at it?”

Lucius turned his old car around and cranked the window down so he could hear better. Over the roof peak, a turkey vulture circled, the red skin of its naked head like a blood spot on the blue.

Speck said in a low voice, “You and me ain’t the same breed, I am proud to say. If I believed a man helped kill my daddy, I sure wouldn’t go to drinkin with that feller like you done this mornin and I sure wouldn’t need no damn ol’ list to tell me what to do about it, neither. That man would of come up missin a long time ago.”

“Crockett Daniels.” Lucius pronounced the name slowly, as if to lock it in his memory. “I do believe that is the last name on the list.”

Wobbling the clutch into gear, he exulted at the flicker in Speck’s grin, but as he drew away, his heart was pounding. A man as wary as Crockett Daniels would hear those words as a threat, and a threatened man, as Papa used to say, was not a man to turn your back on in the backcountry.

One day at the Marco store where he picked up his mail, Lucius received a formal letter from Attorney Watson Dyer, in Miami. Attorney Dyer urged the family to refile the late Mr. Watson’s claim on Chatham Bend before the U.S. government condemned the property, which lay within the boundaries of the proposed Everglades park. In closing, he offered his own services and a phone number. Oddly, the letter made no mention of the fact that he was Nell’s brother, or that Lucius might remember him from years ago.

Lucius went straight to the pay telephone. When Dyer answered, they barely exchanged greetings, far less spoke of Nell, before Watt got busy explaining that should the new park go through, any property under pending claim would revert to the federal government. Furthermore-pursuant to federal policy that a new park be returned to its natural condition as a wilderness-the last signs of man’s presence would be eradicated, not only the ramshackle habitations but docks, rain cisterns, crops, and trees. Even the well-built Watson house would not be spared unless it was established that a claim had been pending in advance of the first park proposals, in which case it might be approved as an in-holding within the park for which life tenure, at least, might be negotiated-

“What do they mean by ‘natural condition’?” Lucius inquired. “Before Indian settlement or after? Because if they want Chatham Bend the way it was, they will have to shovel the whole forty acres into the river. It’s nothing but shell mound, don’t they realize that? One huge Indian midden. To eradicate all the shell mounds and Calusa canals in the western Everglades would cost millions, and anyway, it couldn’t be done without gouging out far more man-made scars than they were eliminating.”

Like an unseen presence in the dark, the lawyer’s silence commanded him to be still. Then Dyer said, “Indians don’t count.” His tone was less cynical than flat, indifferent. He went on to say that his specialty was real estate law and large-scale land development and that in this field, his extensive political contacts would prove useful. Would the family authorize him to pursue this matter?

Lucius suggested that the Watson family might waive its claim if the new park would restore the house and take good care of it-perhaps make it a historic monument to pioneer days? Dyer sighed. An offer of waiver before the claim had been reinstated could only undermine its legal standing.

“I’m afraid I can’t afford a lawyer-”

“Pro bono. Sentimental reasons, you might say.” The lawyer forced a snort of mirthless laughter. He finally reminded Lucius that Fred Dyer was caretaker at Chatham Bend just after the turn of the century and that he himself had visited in summers as a schoolboy. “You don’t recall Wattie Dyer?” Another disconcerting snort. Lucius tried to picture the boy Wattie, wondering what the man at the far end of this phone line might look like. He hesitated. His sister had mentioned that Nell and her brother had never been in touch, not even after their mother died during the War. Small wonder, he thought, recalling now how Watt had bullied her as a little girl. Parting Nell’s hair to crack his hard-boiled egg upon her pate then exhaling his hated egg breath into her squinched face was a favorite diversion. Occasionally, Lucius had felt obliged to intervene. For this the boy had hated him as much as he loathed everyone else. From an early age, Watt Dyer had made himself disliked by everybody on the Bend. He was especially unlucky, Lucius reflected, because he had always known this without really knowing what he knew.

All he required for the moment, Dyer was saying, was power of attorney in order to file for a court injunction against any attempt by park proponents to burn down the house before approval of the park charter became final. In Dyer’s opinion, the Watson claim could not be summarily vacated or dismissed if E. J. Watson’s heirs renewed the claim in time. Well, said Lucius, Rob was unavailable and Carrie and Eddie would want no part of any action that might stir up old scandal. As for the children of the second family, they had been given their new stepfather’s name and might not even know that they were Watsons.

“Looks like it’s up to you, then,” Dyer interrupted. “You’ll be hearing from me.” He hung up abruptly before anything had been decided, leaving Lucius frustrated and annoyed.

Completing his research for the biography of E. J. Watson, Lucius had placed notices in local newspapers requesting information. These notices attracted the anticipated motley of old Watson anecdotes, but astonishingly, they also produced a copy of the affadavit given by Bill House in the Lee County Courthouse after his father’s death-the document that his brother Eddie had refused to show him.