Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

April grinned. “Hold everything they know so tight that nobody knows if they know anything at all!” Hettie and her daughter laughed with that affectionate malice reserved for family folly. They seemed quite willing to air out old closed rooms, since the Collins clan had nothing to be ashamed of, but for the moment, Ellie’s presence kept them in line. “Collins honor,” she reproved them, trying not to smile.

“ Watson honor!” April cried. “If it weren’t for darned old Cousin Ed, this family might have loosened up a little after all this time!”

The ladies recalled that Uncle Edgar’s four children had returned with their mother from Oklahoma to live in this community while their father was finishing his new house in the Everglades. When these cousins departed, all tears and smiles, they promised to come visit, but the only one who ever did was Eddie.

“Cousin Ed must have been fifteen when he came back here to help out on his father’s new farm. Like Rob and Carrie, he was born in that old cabin near the Junction but the place he called home was Uncle Edgar’s new house on the hill.

“Over the years, Cousin Ed never tired of talking about Carrie Langford and her banker and her fine riverside house. He rarely mentioned his brothers, so the Collins memory of Rob and Lucius more or less died out. Ed said he knew little about Robert and Lucius because he only heard from those two when they wanted money. As for Edna’s children, they weren’t Watsons anymore. His stepmother-Ed always said ‘my stepmother,’ although he was older than she was-had changed her name and cut off communication with the family.”

Hettie sighed. “Ed’s saying that doesn’t make it so, because much as we loved our dear cousin, he mostly saw things in a way that suited his idea of himself. We told him where to get in touch with Edna but he wasn’t really interested and never tried.

“When Ed got his first auto, he would come through on vacations twice a year and bring his children. They’d stop here coming and they’d stop here going, and every visit without fail, he would tell us about yesteryear, how he went to Fort White school and got beaten with peach switches when he failed his lessons, and all about the meat and biscuits in thick syrup that the kids brought to class in their big lunch pails, and the three brass cuspidors lined up for tobacco-spitting contests at the general store, and the town marshal with a club lashed to his wrist and a big pistol, and the saloon where passersby might see some poor fellow pitched through the swinging doors. There wasn’t one detail of the old days in Fort White that Ed forgot.”

April laughed. “Year after year, we hoped he would forget. He never did.”

“Well, Ed had a sincere attachment to these woods,” her mother reflected. “He’d drive into the yard and get out and look around at the oaks and hickories, hands on his hips, y’know, then heave a great big sigh and say, ‘I sure feel like I’ve come home when I come back here.’ We never could figure why these old woods meant so much to him, cause when he got here he hardly took a step outdoors.”

“After his first wife died, Ed thought nothing of bringing a female friend, might be a week,” Ellie said with disapproval. “One was the weirdest woman we ever saw. Before she sat down to her supper she would take her belt off, put it around her neck !”

“Didn’t want to constrict her stomach till she et up all our food. And Gussie! Tell about the one he married, Mama.”

“Augusta was too lady-like to sweat, you know, didn’t even perspire. All us poor country women were worn out and soaking wet from the damp summer heat, hair gone slack and beads of sweat on brow and lip. And here was Augusta perched on the edge of her chair, cool as a daffodil, even though she was buttoned up right to the chin. Him, too. Buttoned up tight.

“We never saw him without white shirt and tie even when cooking. Oh yes, Ed dearly loved to cook! Before Edna Bethea came into their life, Ed cooked for his daddy in the new house on the hill-Uncle Edgar wouldn’t pay a cook just for the two of them. Ed never tired of telling how hard his daddy worked him, how he raked the yard by moonlight after doing chores all day. And without fail his Gussie would pretend she’d never heard that story. ‘Raked the yard at night ?’ She’d turn real slow, hand to her mouth, and stare at him round-eyed, just a-marveling. And Cousin Ed chuckling along to let us know something pretty good was coming our way. Then he’d bust right out with it-‘Well, heck ! We never had free time during the day!’

“Then those two would hee-haw and carry on, just enjoy the heck out of that story right through supper. Couldn’t get over it, y’know. ‘Never had free time during the day!’ Year after year.”

The women whooped and gasped for breath, falling all over one another with the exploits of Cousin Ed. “Raking leaves by moonlight!” April cried. “They never let that grand old story die!”

Hettie smiled at her guest to assure him that this family irreverence was all in fun and was not meant unkindly. And though Lucius was laughing, too, he felt disloyal, knowing such stories would never have been told had his cousins known that he was Eddie’s brother. Sensing his discomfort, the ladies had stopped laughing. “As for his father,” Hettie sighed, “Cousin Ed approved the vow of silence, saying his sister Carrie felt the same: only Lucius was still living in the past, Ed used to say.”

A loud bang on the door announced Paul Edmunds, whose family had owned the local store. Mr. Edmunds wore a blue serge Sunday suit, white socks, and high black shoes; his denim shirt, buttoned to the top, pinched his jumpy gullet. Behind him, his long-limbed Letitia in dust-colored woolens much too hot for such warm weather crept in out of the sunlight like a large timorous moth.

“Your store’s still standing out there in the woods,” April Collins called by way of greeting. “I bet I could still find it for you, Mr. Edmunds.”

Sent word last evening that a real historian was coming to research Edgar Watson’s years here in Fort White, Mr. Edmunds was eager to get down to business, which signified men only. “Well, now, mister,” he began, “me’n Hettie here has talked for years with every last soul in these parts that might remember anything, and we think we’ve got the history down as good as you are going to get it.” Bending a bushy eyebrow on the interloper in sign that he would brook no opposition, he cleared his throat at exhaustive length to ensure himself ample speaking room.

“Colonel William Myers, who married Edgar’s cousin, came here with his slaves during the War for fear he might lose ’em to the Yankees. He left his bride and her mother in Athens, Georgia, because this Suwannee country was still wild and life uncertain. Sure enough, Myers was killed by lightning in 1869 and his widow and her mother came to see to the estate.”

“Colonel Myers willed that huge plantation to his mother-in-law, ” Ellie Collins informed Lucius, still indignant.

“Well,” Hettie said mildly, “Cousin Laura was very kind and generous but perhaps a bit simple-hearted, apt to give too much away-”

“Simple-minded, you mean. Probably retarded.”

“There’s no reason to assume that, April dear. That’s just your idea.”

“You have a better explanation, Mama? Why else would Colonel Myers leave the whole thing to her mother with instructions to pass it straight along to his Myers nephews?”

When Lucius said he understood that those Myers nephews were Watsons on their mother’s side, Ellie’s expression made it clear she resented the idea that an outsider should be privy to such information.