I hung the doe to cool. Toward dusk I tried to carve her. The cold cave smell of her meat, still fresh, was sickening. I consigned her to the river. What would Lucius say about such a waste? Where was he tonight when his father needed him? I sat in darkness in the boat, listening to unknown cries from the black walls of river forest.
GOODBYE TO CHATHAM BEND
Monday, October twenty-fourth. Kate’s birthday. At dawn, I committed my fate to Chokoloskee. Hadn’t I promised my wife I would be with her and given my word to my neighbors that I would return? I would offer Cox’s weapons and his hat as evidence that the murderer was dead. Could they doubt the word of a man returning of his own free will when he could have fled? In Key West, large ships weighed anchor every day, I would exclaim. The east coast railroad had already reached Long Key. With these alterna-tives, only an honest man would put himself at a crowd’s mercy.
They would not believe the truth. As for the lie, that bullet-holed hat would never be enough.
In that last noon, I torched my fields, running like a madman down the wind. The cane ignited quickly with a low thunderous booming, creating a column of thick oily smoke. I did this only for my own sense of completion. There was no crew to harvest the blackened stalks.
Flames still leapt and darted, rekindled by the wind, when in late afternoon I left the Bend and went away downriver. In this way, in the light of fire, I forsook my white house in the wilderness and the voices of those generous spirits who had lived here with me, all those souls so sadly bruised by my headlong passage on this earth, every life changed and not one for the better. In the smoke shadow, as the house withdrew into the forest, the cinder spirits vanished skyward and were gone. Then the Watson place was gone, the Bend, the future, lost and gone. Ahead was the falling of the river to the sea and the lone green islets in the salt estuary and the horizon where dark high clouds of drought prowled the battered coast.
Clear of the delta, I drifted for a time in a gray mist, awaiting some last sign; I heard faint fish slap and soft blow of porpoise, parting the sea with cryptic fins in their soft breathings. “No!” I shouted, startling myself. What I was about to do was lunacy. Sell the Warrior at Long Key, board the train, find a new frontier: hell, yes! I turned her bow, fled south toward the Keys.
The Warrior plowed the leaden Gulf. I howled, cursed foully, ground my teeth. As the pale strand of Lost Man’s Beach formed in the mist, I howled one last time, spun the helm, and headed north again in the direction of Kate Edna and the children. What was left of my life could have no other destination.
Off Wood Key, I suffered a sentimental urge to pay a final visit to the Hardens, but when I slowed and turned inshore, a choking fuel exhaust swept forward on the following wind, and my plan was obliterated by a sudden metallic clatter, then a faltering of the pop-pop of the motor. If I truly wished to reach Chokoloskee before dark, I was already late. I resumed my course, shouting at my ricocheting wits to clear my careening brain, make room for reason. To die half mad with fear and doubt—my God!
All of us must die. Why make a fuss about it? Achilles to Hector.
You die in your own arms, as the old people say.
I roared at the world all the way north along that coast. When this purge was over, I was cold-soaked in evil-smelling sweat but I was clear. I let the boat glide to a stop. I stripped, leaned overboard, and splashed my body, gasping in the cool October air. Cleaned at last, perched naked on the stern to dry, I tried to imagine what awaited me.
The men would hear Watson’s motor twenty minutes in advance, they would be ready. Unless they planned an ambush, shooting in a volley as the boat came within range, they would try to take me into custody.
If you are captured, having failed to prove that Cox is dead, will they lynch you in front of your young wife and kids? This I could not permit.
Stuffed in my pocket was that hat with the fresh bullet hole burned through. I also had Leslie’s .22 revolver and the matched Colts he had stripped from Dutchy’s body. I loaded the shotgun, peeling the outer paper off Smallwood’s swollen shells and jamming them into the chambers of both barrels, just in case—just in case what? Are you prepared to shoot? I checked the rounds in my own revolver, returned the weapon to my inside coat pocket, then laid the loaded six-guns under a rope coil near the helm, keeping them handy, just in case—just in case what? Old habit. Even with these weapons added to my own, I could never shoot it out with twelve or twenty nervous men: the moment I raised a weapon, I would be gunned down all in a volley.
Shooting one or two men would be pointless. Things would only go harder for my family, and anyway, taking another life was out of the question. I could argue and harangue, try to bully my way free, but I would not kill for it. Why did you load up, then? Or I might fire these guns to scatter the crowd once I got my family safely aboard. No boat on the Bay could catch the Warrior, which carried two oil drums of spare fuel, enough to take her to Long Key and the railroad—too late now, Mister Watson.
Would a bluff work? I bluffed them last time and the time before. These men were truck farmers and fishermen, unlikely to challenge a well-armed desperado grown strangely indifferent to whether he lived or died.
You men must know that Leslie Cox would never have given up these weapons of his own accord.
All true. Would the truth satisfy my neighbors? It would not. In a time of fear, my so-called evidence would not have satisfied me, either. Something more was needed. If they won’t believe the truth, I thought, they will damn well believe blood.
Where white terns dove on sprays of bait near Rabbit Key, I slowed the boat and circled the breaking fish, trolling two handlines. The tin spoons gleamed in the white lace of the wake. Almost at once they were struck hard by a Spanish mackerel, then a crevalle. I hauled the big fish in hand over hand and knocked them off the hooks with hard smacks of my fish club—not on the crown, which makes a nice clean job of it, but on the gill covers, to send blood flying as they slapped and skittered in the stern. When the fish lay quiet on the bloodied deck, gill covers lifting and closing, I went aft and dropped them overboard. Too late I noticed the small boat in an open channel between islands. That boy might have seen me dealing with those fish but by the time he brought his catch in after dark, it wouldn’t matter.
In Rabbit Key Pass when out of nerves I slowed the Warrior to check the weapons a last time, her overtaking wake, lifting her stern and running on, slapped into the stilt roots all along the channel. In a little while she cleared the Pass and turned north up the Bay toward Chokoloskee, which rose dead ahead like a black fortress as the western sky withdrew its light from the iron water. In this twilight of late October, all my days had gathered.
I slowed the boat and unloaded every weapon.
Gurgling softly at low speed along the oyster bars, the engine sounded much too loud, unbearable. They would be waiting yonder in the shadows of the trees, the rifles pointed at my heart. As the boat neared, the helmsman’s silhouette would offer a target that even men quaking with buck fever could not miss. I might see but I would never hear that burst of fire. All was too late, there was no sanctuary and nothing left undone. The War-rior rounded the last bar into the anchorage and slipped between the moored and anchored boats, coasting toward shore, as what had looked like vegetation in the dusk emerged as a misshapen mass of human figures.
I was now well within rifle range. I was afraid again. Fear seeped into my lungs, gave me the shivers. I longed to crouch down out of view but that instinct was the wrong one. I stood rigid.
In the last light, the wind had backed around into the east. There it was, my darkling star, fleeing the sharp point of the quarter moon. In the days past, I had imagined I’d experienced the innermost despair, the utmost loneliness. I was mistaken.
DARKNESS
Since Smallwood’s docks had been stripped away by storm, my rough plan was to idle close to shore until any and all arguments were settled: this would permit me to back out in a hurry. But in that
last moment of choice, I realized that the least sign of wariness or hesitation must be avoided: in the absence of a dock, E. J. Watson would damn well coast right in and beach her near the boatways. I took a deep breath and yanked the spark plug wire.
The ringing silence when the engine quit seemed louder than the engine: crossing the water to the foreshore, it broke that mass of humankind into clusters, moving shapes. Behind these figures, others crossed the yellow lamplight in the doorway of the store. Fearing that any sudden shout might turn this hydra-headed thing into a death mob, I stifled a desperate impulse to cry out, Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!, and raise my hands as high as possible.
The Warrior had come within shotgun range on her final glide to shore. I forced myself to turn my back on all those guns and toss out a stern anchor, but this harmless maneuver caused a groan that swelled in the next moment when the boat’s stem, colliding with the bottom, went aground on the shelly sand with a loud harsh scrape.
I had my bow line coiled and ready at the helm. I tossed its loops onto the shore for some willing boy to hitch around a tree. Throughout I kept my movements slow and easy, counting on the stir and shift caused by my arrival to provide the distraction I would need just to survive the next few moments.
Smiling to show how much their friend E. J. appreciated this fine welcome party, waving and calling in the direction of the store—“I’m here, Mrs. Watson! Happy Birthday!”—I picked up the shotgun and, as the crowd surged back, stepped quickly up onto the bow and leapt, forcing my breath hard against my chest to meet the burning whack of lead on its way to strike me dead in the next moment. On shore, I straightened, the shotgun resting harmlessly on my left arm; for a moment, I felt dizzy, all went black. No voice spoke. The moment passed.
“Evening, boys,” I said.
Willie Brown’s screech came from way back by the store. “E. J.? Lay that gun down!” I grinned as if Willie were joking.
Old Man House was right up front, flanked by his older boys, Bill and Dan Junior. Counting Houses, they were close to twenty, every one of them aiming a weapon, with a few squinting over their raised barrels. I smelled moonshine.
Willie again: “You hear me, Ed? Lay down that shootin iron!”
Waving in Willie’s direction, I declared how darned tickled I was to see such a fine turnout of my friends taking the evening air.
“Never mind that, Watson. Where’s he at?”
“Shot and drowned, both, Mr. House. In Chatham River.”
Bill House said, “You was supposed to bring him in or bring his head.”
The crowd groaned and backed up when I reached into my coat, drew out that hat. I poked my finger through the new bullet hole and held it high. “Got kind of ventilated,” I said. A few men tried to laugh.
There were faces I was sorry to see—Wilson Alderman, for one, also Jim Howell, Andrew Wiggins, looking sheepish. The Lost Man’s refugees, my nearest neighbors except Hardens, were back up by the store and none came forward or spoke up to support me, not even Erskine Thompson. At the back of the crowd, young Crockett Daniels stood on a fish crate, craning for a better look.
Little Addison ran toward me from the store as women’s voices called him. Kate Edna, weeping with relief, came hurrying behind with Mamie Smallwood. On his store steps stood my friend Ted. Seeing me look his way, he shook his head, stepped back inside.
The women stopped short when D. D. House raised his big hand up like a prophet. A bad silence fell. “That hat ain’t good enough,” he growled. With those words came a sudden shift of atmosphere, like that waft of cold air across open water that precedes a squall. Mamie tugged Kate back toward the store. I longed to call out after them, No, don’t go! Wait!
“Not good enough?” I feigned astonishment. “Putting a bullet through the head of my niece’s husband? Hell, look at my damn boat! Got blood all over it!”
Isaac Yeomans waded out and peered into the cockpit at the blood.
“All the same, you best hand over your weapons,” Bill House said. “We’ll go to the Bend first thing in the mornin, have a look.”
“Have a look? What do you think I’ve been doing for the last three days?”
“Well, we been kind of wonderin about that, too,” Bill House said calmly. “We thought maybe you had lit out for the Keys.” The crowd muttered agreement, seeming resentful that I had not done so.
Isaac Yeomans stuck his finger in a blood smear. “Smells like fresh fish,” he said.
“You calling me a liar, Isaac?”
“Nobody ain’t callin you no liar, Mister Watson,” Bill House said. “We’re just askin you to put that gun down.”
“Asking me? Or telling me?”
D. D. House raised his gun a little. “We aim to hold you for the sheriff. Dead or alive is up to you.”
In the corner of my eye, I saw a man slip forward from the trees and wade a little ways into the water, holding a rifle down along his leg. In the dusk, the face was obscured; he seemed to gaze downward as if meditating on night water.
I said, “He has no business here.” To Henry Short I said, “They’ll lynch you, Henry, when they’re done with you. You get on home.” Bill House said, “He ain’t none of your concern.”
“Who the hell are you to tell me that?”
Up and down the line, the weapons jumped. My head throbbed, that’s how fast that anger took me, just when I had to stay calm and think quick; if I raised my gun now, some would break and run but more would shoot.
I looked past the House clan, appealing to the others. I had not come back looking for trouble, I said earnestly. I came back to notify my neighbors that the killer Cox was dead. I had kept my promise. Knowing I was innocent, it was not right to ask me for my gun, try to take me prisoner.
“What’s more,” I said, “today is my wife’s birthday. I made my wife a promise.” The more I pleaded, the more humiliated I felt and the more enraged. “I came here to pick up my family. We’ll leave right now for Ever-glade, go north tomorrow. You won’t see us again.” And I shouted out for Kate to hear, “Come quickly, Mrs. Watson! Bring the children!”
That old man said, “Nosir, you ain’t leavin.”
“We’re done talkin, Watson.” Bill House hitched his gun. “Drop your weapon on the count of three or take the consequences.”
“One,” the old man barked, raising his rifle.
The others backed and filled. The guns came up a little. I turned toward Henry Short, holding his eye. “Finish it,” I whispered.
“Two,” the old man said.
I took a deep breath and threw my shoulders back. “You boys want Watson’s gun that bad, you will have to take it.” And I swung the gun up in the face of D. D. House as if to fire.
finish it? that what he said?
good godamighty
well, he sure is finished
godamighty
star
moon masks
a mouth
eyes come eyes go
in the star shadow
how the world hurts hurts
a star
this world is painted on a wild dark metal
About the Author
PETER MATTHIESSEN was born in New York City in 1927 and had already begun his writing career by the time he graduated from Yale University in 1950. The following year, he was a founder of The Paris Review. Besides At Play in the Fields of the Lord, which was nominated for the National Book Award, he has published six other works of fiction, including Far Tortuga and a book of short stories, On the River Styx. Mr. Matthiessen’s parallel career as a naturalist and explorer has resulted in numerous widely acclaimed books of nonfiction, among them The Tree Where Man Was Born, which was nominated for the National Book Award, and The Snow Leopard, which won it.
ALSO BY PETER MATTHIESSEN
FICTION
Race Rock
Partisans
Raditzer
At Play in the Fields of the Lord
Far Tortuga
&nbs
p; On the River Styx and Other Stories
Killing Mister Watson
Lost Man’s River
Bone by Bone
NONFICTION
Wildlife in America
The Cloud Forest
Under the Mountain Wall
Sal Si Puedes
The Wind Birds
Blue Meridian
The Trees Where Man Was Born
The Snow Leopard
Sand Rivers
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
Indian Country
Nine-Headed Dragon River
Men’s Lives
African Silences
East of Lo Monthang
African Shadows
Tigers in the Snow
The Birds of Heaven
End of the Earth
Footnotes
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E. J. WATSON
* Changed his second initial to J in later life.
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DEAD RECKONING
* From the author’s foreword to The Undiscovered Country: A Life of Edgar Watson by L. Watson Collins.
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2008 Modern Library Edition
Copyright © 2008 by Peter Matthiessen
Map copyright © 1990, 1997, 1999, 2008 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp
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