Shadow Country

  By then there were no weights left for Dutchy, who was buzzing with green flies in the thick heat. Cox said, “To hell with him, let them gators have him.” Cox stripped off Melville’s fancy holster belt and they rolled him in, too. He made no mention of that Injun girl in the shed behind him, acted like she weren’t even there and never had been.

  Since the night before they had never ate a bite but they weren’t hungry. Cox ordered Frank to mop that blood that nastied up the floor, “get everything tidied up real nice for Edna.” Cox laughed when he said that. He was putting down a lot more shine, and pretty quick he forgot about the blood. Made the nigra sit down in Mist’ Green’s chair, pushed Green’s glass across the table, said, Let’s don’t go wasting this good likker, boy. Go ahead, drink, maybe try out some of your nigger conversation, cause we’re in this thing together, ain’t that right? Just like old times, right? Telling this, Frank glanced at me to see if I had noticed that him and Cox must of knowed each other good from someplace else.

  Cox made him promise he’d back up his story, tell Mister Ed how his foreman weren’t at fault. Tell him how them two drunken fools was abusing him for no damn reason. How Green had his shotgun hid under the table (a lie, Frank said) and Hannah had her big ax ready so his foreman had to shoot in self-defense.

  After that, Cox didn’t hardly talk no more. Frank was very nervous, sitting across that table from a dead drunk killer with a revolver by his hand who might take and blow his head off any moment. He kept quiet, kept his eyes down so as not to trigger him. He recalled staring at a file of ants, crossing the table to the late Green Waller’s spilled pea soup.

  Early afternoon, Cox finally dozed but his hand was still on the revolver, and he caught the black man when he tried to slip outside. This time Frank was sure the man would kill him. Instead he locked him in with the four hands again and went back to his drinking and ranting. Went on for three days and all that while those men in the shed had no food nor water.

  Cox scarcely went back into the house, just darted in to grab something, came right back out again. Cox seemed to have no plan, no need for sleep. Reese thought the man must have gone crazy.

  Nights passed and days. The prisoners, starved, thirsty, and half bit to death, were crying out for mercy. All this while Frank was chiseling out the hinge screws with a broke-blade clasp knife. He finally got the door loose enough to pull it back and slip on through, then waited until dark. He just whispered good luck and went. He did not tell the hands about the skiff, knowing the old boat was unseaworthy and anyway too small to carry all five. Too terrified of Cox to follow, they just watched him go, thinking he meant to escape inland through the scrub, Frank ran down past Hannah’s cabin to the growed-over boat and got away downriver, bailing all the way. Passing through the mangrove delta into the open Gulf, he thought he heard distant shots but could not be sure.

  • • •

  When he finished his awful story we lay quiet. The night passed very slow and very fast. Toward dawn he got up, glancing out the porthole like he might die and go to Hell at the first light. “You reckon they’ll believe me?” he said suddenly. “Sheriff and them?”

  “Might ask how come you never mentioned them four field hands when you told your story over on the shore.”

  He looked surprised. “Never thought about it,” he confessed. “You really think them white people would of cared about them fellers?”

  “No, I don’t,” I said, “but they might try to test your story.”

  “Maybe them boys come out okay,” he said. “Go fuck yourself,” he said, resentful. “How do I know what happened to them poor damn bastards? All I know is, I couldn’t take ’em with me.” I believed that and was sorry—sorry for Frank, too. Those four young men would always be his lonely secret.

  Next morning when they let me out, I turned in the cabin doorway to tell him something but I found no words. He come forward and said quietly, “I didn’t kill nobody, Henry. You believe that?” When I nodded, he nodded, too. Said, “Tell them white people my story, then. Remind ’em how this nigger come here on his own and never had no reason to tell lies.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I promised.

  He said calmly, “Nothing you can tell ’em gone to save my black hide, I understand that good as you do, Henry. But knowin that the real truth has been heard, that makes it better. Not okay, just better.”

  He stuck his hand out, cracked a little grin. “So long, nigger,” he said. I could not find a smile to give him back. I said, “Good luck, then, Frank,” and went away very sad and angry. Might have been wanted, like I say, but he weren’t all bad and he weren’t sorry for himself. It was me was sorry. Sorry a brave man had to die so bitter.

  HOAD STORTER

  The men were troubled by the wind shifts and nobody liked the looks of that hard sky. Folks took those murders at the Watson place for an evil sign like that white swath of light across the heavens in the spring, so far away in deepest night, beyond all knowing.

  Saturday morning a report came in over Cap’n Thad’s ship radio that the strong offshore storm coming up the Gulf had sheered off westward. Thad didn’t trust that and by midafternoon had everyone aboard that hadn’t already taken off in their own boats. The only person who refused to leave was Mrs. Josie Jenkins. She came down to the shore, put her young daughter on board, and stayed to call good-bye, waving her baby son’s fat little arm. Mother and babe would brave the storm alone, she cried, because even her own brother had forsaken them. That was more guilt than poor old Tant could handle, so he left Pearl in the care of Josie’s latest husband and returned ashore to reason with her. Got nowhere because both of ’em were drunk. When Tant’s friends went to moderate and failed to return, Cap’n Thad got fed up. It was too damned late to sail today, he would sail without fail at daybreak Sunday, and any fools that weren’t on board would be left behind.

  Sunday dawned with light winds and fair weather, all but that cold purple off to westward like a deep bruise in a pale sky.

  I and Claude and Henry Short went north in our own boat. I told Henry I was sorry about locking him up the night before with that black prisoner. He said the man’s real name was Frank and reminded us that Frank was the one witness to what really happened, because even if Leslie Cox was caught, he would surely lie. Then he told the story. Claude asked Henry if he believed that story and Henry said yessir, he did. That man had took too big a risk to go making up lies for just another nigger, Henry added.

  I had never heard Henry speak in that hard way. Henry knew how he had sounded, too, and tried to smooth it over. Said he believed this man had implicated Mister Watson because Watson had betrayed Melville to Cox.

  Henry caught our quick exchange of looks. “Frank and Dutchy were friends some way,” Henry explained. “Feller fugitives,” he said, ironical again.

  Claude ignored this new Henry, being worried about what would become of that tough black man. “Think they’ll hang him?” he asked me. When I nodded, Claude looked kind of sorry.

  SARAH HARDEN

  Soon after word come about them murders at the Bend—this was mid-October—Mister Watson turned up out of nowhere. We heard that motor from a long ways off, come across the wind like muffled rifle shots but steady. Then that popping stopped, leaving a hollow in the silence, and the Warrior came drifting down around the point. He poled her over to our dock, took his coat off, and begun to tinker with his engine. Hardens had no quarrel with him, nothing to be afraid of, but I had to wonder why his boat just happened to break down so close to our place.

  Owen was back in Lost Man’s River seining mullet with his brothers. My mother-in-law said, “I sure do hope them boys heard his darned motor.” They heard it all right and came quick as they could but that weren’t quick enough.

  We always went down to the shore to welcome visitors or run ’em off, that was the custom amongst Island neighbors. But this day Daddy Richard stayed back in the cabin, sore as a darned beetle blister cause what he c
alled his arthur-ritis had flared up on him. What with the life pains he was feeling, he was very quick to cock his rifle and draw a bead on Mister Watson’s heart as soon as that man shut his motor down and straightened. When me’n Ma Mary started outside to go to meet him, Daddy Richard growled, “Mind you women stay well clear of my line of fire.” His wife was disgusted, told him to stop scaring his own womenfolk for nothing. He snapped back that he knew what he knew, and I reckon he still did, most of the time.

  Ed Watson seen straight off he was unwelcome. Never left his boat, just tinkered, closed the hatch again. The onshore wind held her snug against the dock, though with that chop, she lifted and thumped against the pilings. “Good day, Mister Watson!” Mary Harden’s work-red hands was white, that’s how hard she clenched ’em, but I believe she was more upset about not offering our neighbor a bite to eat than fearful that this man might do us harm.

  Though he doffed his hat, Mister Watson did not answer. He was holloweyed and grizzle-chinned, his clothes looked slept in. Seeing Daddy Richard’s boat moored off the dock, he must of wondered if his old friend was in the cabin and why he never came out nor even called hello. He studied all around a while, the better to listen to the silence in that clearing, which any moment was going to explode. Out of the corner of his eye, he kept the cabin window covered, never lost sight of it, as if he knew that though that hole in them gray boards looked black and empty, our old man was crouching down behind it, fingering his trigger. When Mary Harden moved a step, put her big body between him and the window, he pretended he never noticed, but now he knew for sure. “And a good day to you, Mis Mary,” he said finally. “Richard around?”

  As he watched Ma Mary struggle with her lie, his smile was quizzical. Told us he was on his way north from Key West where he’d spent some days on business, told us he was calling in to see if there was anything we needed in Fort Myers, where he would be headed in the next few days. I thanked him, said we lacked for nothing.

  Ma Mary blurted, “The men’s just over yonder!”—a bad mistake, because hearing they were nearby might make him stay. To get his mind off that, I squawked, “How’s Topsy? She still doing tricks?” Mister Watson shook his head. Topsy had et up all her shoats so he had a mind to slit her bristled throat, eat her: might teach her not to try that trick again. When he winked, I giggled out of nerves.

  (Later, Ma Mary exclaimed, “A man who could joke about his sow eating her shoats had killing on his mind, for sure!” Daddy Richard said, “A female who could say such a fool thing as that don’t know the first thing about killers!” He never talked to her so sharp before; his nerves was wound tight, too.)

  Mary Harden stood twisting her hands, never offered our neighbor so much as a cup of water, and still he acted like he never noticed. And all the while she was shifting to stay in Daddy Richard’s line of fire, in case our visitor went for his pocket handkerchief, thinking to blow his nose, and our jumpy old man hauled back on the trigger. Mister Watson watched her peculiar movements and he watched her eyes. I believe he knew his old friend had a bead on him.

  A restless wind out of the northeast was racketing the sea grape and palmettas. The wind had held in that quarter for two days, with squalls and rain. This was Saturday, October the fifteenth, when the radio was already reporting that a strong offshore storm was sheering off toward the west, through the Yucatan Passage, but we never had no radio back then, we went by the winds and sky; the men was troubled by that wind and didn’t like the look of the horizon.

  Mister Watson said kind of matter-of-fact that he believed a hurricane was coming. Said he’d like nothing better than to set awhile but had to get back to take care of his people. When he stooped half out of sight to spin his flywheel, Ma Mary screened him, spreading the wings of her big brown dress like a broody hen. He saw this, too, because when he straightened—knowing she’d never hear his thanks over the motor—he put one hand behind his back and made that kind of fancy bow men do for queens and such; that bow startled my mother-in-law so bad that she tried to bow back in a kind of a gawky curtsy. Smiling, he tipped his hat toward the empty window and shouted out over the motor, “My respects to Mr. Harden and the boys!”

  We watched him head his boat offshore and turn toward the north. His outline at the helm was hunched and black against a narrow band of light out to the west where that wall of weather was slowly moving in off the Gulf of Mexico.

  MAMIE SMALLWOOD

  In early October when E. J. Watson brought his family, he told us all signs pointed to a hurricane. “Something bad is coming down on us”—those were his very words. I don’t know how he knew about the hurricane but he sure did, though it held off for another fortnight. You reckon that man felt it in his bones? Inkling of his own dark fate or something? Said he trusted his house on Chatham Bend to stay put in any storm, but with Baby Amy only five months old, he was taking no chances on a flooded cistern and bad water, and Chokoloskee was the highest ground south of Caxambas. Later he told Sheriff Tippins he’d brought his family here to Chok because “John Smith” was a killer, but he never said anything like that to us. By this time it was well known that John Smith’s real name was Leslie Cox.

  E. J. Watson came back here alone on October 16th, a Sunday. Late that same day, young Claude Storter came in from Pavilion Key with word of dreadful murders. Claude’s news caused a hubbub of excited talk about arresting E. J. Watson, talk that was still going on when Watson came into the store and took a seat with its back into the corner. When no one could look him in the eye, he eased onto his feet again and straightened his coat, gazing around the room. Maybe he didn’t growl the way Charlie Boggess told it, but he sure smelled trouble, and he picked out the Storter boy right away. “Something the matter, Claude?” Seeing E. J.’s burning face, the poor boy whispered as soft as he knew how what some nigger said Cox had perpetrated at the Bend.

  “By God,” Watson swore, “that skunk will pay for this!” He was off to Fort Myers to fetch the sheriff before “that murdering sonofabitch—if you’ll forgive me, Miss Mamie—can make his getaway!” Well, it was E. J.

  Watson made the getaway, right from under the men’s noses. His determination to seek justice was so darn sincere that it put ’em off the scent, or so they told each other after he was gone.

  Was I the only one suspected that E. J.’s outrage was put on to fool us? You never saw an upset man with eyes so calm and clear. Runs upstairs, hugs his wife and children, comes down again with that double-barrel shotgun, shouting out how he had to rush to catch Captain Thad at Marco and question that black man. He was out the door before anybody thought to stop him, they were falling all over themselves to clear his way.

  Our men weren’t cowards—well, not most of ’em. My brothers were all strong young fellers who enjoyed a scrap and most folks would speak up for a few others. But that day the men were upset and confused and they had no leader. Mr. Smallwood was across the island on some business with Mr. McKinney and my dad and Bill were harvesting down at House Hammock.

  E. J. Watson took our island by surprise.

  HOAD STORTER

  Sunday evening in strong southeast wind with the barometer falling fast, Mister Watson crossed over to Everglade. His Warrior was low on fuel and anyhow too small to weather a bad storm on the open Gulf. It was urgent that he confer with the sheriff, he said, and he offered good money to my dad to carry him as far as Marco first thing next morning.

  Captain Bembery said he sure was sorry but even for his friend, he would not risk his ship and crew in such black weather. His crew was his two boys. Mister Watson kept after him, he was a hard man to say no to. Mother was frightened for her men but also for her house in rising waters, because Everglade was little more than a mudbank on a tide creek, with no high Indian mounds like Chokoloskee. Also, we had brought the news of the murders at the Bend, so she feared that Dad’s old friend might do away with him, being a desperate man who might try anything.

  By daybreak the wind had backed a
round to the northeast. It was gusting to forty knots and more by the time we came out through Fakahatchee Pass into the Gulf; our little schooner was banging hard and shipping water. We didn’t like the strange cast of the dawn light nor the ugly way those purple clouds off to the west were churning up the sky. Off Caxambas at the south end of Marco Island, the wind veered back to the southeast, then around to the southwest in a whole gale, sixty knots or better. Worried about home, my dad notified Mister Watson that we could not take him as far as the Marco settlement but would drop him at Caxambas before heading back.

  Mister Watson went all wooden in the face, knowing he’d have to walk across the island to Bill Collier’s store at the north end, then find someone else to carry him to the mainland. When he jammed his hand into his pocket, I was scared he would pull a weapon and force us to keep going, or maybe shoot us, dump us overboard, and take the helm. Cussed a blue streak but gave that up when he saw it would do no good; he must have figured he had trouble enough without killing his old friend. When we set him ashore in the lee of the clam factory dock, he thanked us warmly, got all wet shoving us off—that man was strong!—and wished us a safe voyage home before striding off toward the north, rain slicker flying.

  MAMIE SMALLWOOD

  That Sunday night in our Smallwood store, our menfolk got real busy spreading blame. No sooner was E. J. Watson gone than some started arguing how he should have been arrested; others said it must have been Cox who made that nigger put the blame on E. J. Watson. Well, now, I said, no nigger with the brains to get away to Pavilion Key would be fool enough to accuse a white man and implicate himself while he was at it.