Shadow Country (109 page)

Henry, too, kept missing, barely. It was only after it drifted out of sight and he claimed I'd sunk it that it came to me how he'd missed each time in exactly the same spot.

“Maybe your sight is out of line,” I said. “You're always two inches to the right.”

“Yassuh, dass 'bout it. Two inches.”

But even if his sight was out of line, a sharpshooter would compensate after a round or two. If that spot just to the right had been a bull's-eye, Henry Short would have drilled it every time.

He had outshot me and I knew he knew it. I muttered some excuse about too much liquor, which only made me angrier. “Who taught you to shoot?” I said after a while.

“Ol' Massuh Dan House now, he gib Henry dis ol' shootin arn, and Mist' Bill, he slip me a few ca'tridges, lemme use his mold so's to make mah own. Taughts mah own se'f but nevuh learnt too good, doan look like, cuz heah I gone and los' my wages on account I couldn't hit dat bottle—”

“HENRY!”

He peered about at the black trees as if uncertain where that shout had come from. “Dammit, boy! Don't you try to flimflam me with nigger talk!” But when I turned to point a warning finger at his face, the man was gone.

He must have had me in his rifle sights, against the firelight. I turned back slowly, saying, “Shoot, then. Or come out where I can see you.”

Blackness surrounding. Tree frogs shrilling. A chunking thrash across the channel—tarpon or gator. The water was dead still. On its silver skin was a single small dark mole—that Christly bottle.

“Miss Jane!” I roared. “You
want
her,
Mis
-ter Short? You
want
her?” I waited. “She ever tell you about me,
Mis
-ter Short? How I had her all that summer?”

I could feel his finger on the trigger. I was in his sights. Exhilarated, I forced my breath against the inside of my chest to steel my hide against the burning fire of his bullet. When nothing happened, I gasped, “Come on! Finish it!'

Not a whisper. The black jungle masses all around had fallen still. Behind me, staring upward through the black shell dirt of his garden, the Frenchman's skull was a witness for the dead.

“FINISH IT!” I roared.

At the shot, the floating bottle popped and vanished from the surface. In its place a small circle blossomed for one moment only to vanish, too.

I awoke with a deep headache. He was there, making the fire. Moving stiffly in the iron calm of profound anger, we did not speak. An hour later when I let him off on the narrow walkway through the flooded forest guarding House Hammock, I wondered what I had asked of him, last night under the moon. What I had awaited. What I had wanted finished.

“Next time I tell you,
finish it
! You damn well finish it,” I said. Neither of us knew what the hell I meant. He only nodded.

Near the walkway, a mangrove water snake, leaving no trace on the surface, crossed the sunlit ambers of the dead leaves on the creek bottom. Under red stilt roots blotched with white where coons had pried off oysters, the noses of feeding mullet pushed the surface. Henry touched his hat, I raised my hand halfway, but we remained silent, knowing we would never speak of this again.

GOVERNOR BROWARD

In the Glades, the drought of 1906 crowded the gators into the last pools and the slaughter was awful. “We have killed out that whole country back in there”—that's what Tant told Lucius at Caxambas. But in the spring rains, when the water level was unusually high, Bembery Storter's brother George accompanied some Yankees and their Indian guide on a three-week expedition, traveling by dugout from the headwaters of Shark River east to the Miami River, lugging along a two-thousand-pound manatee in a pine box. What they wanted with that huge dismal creature and whatever became of it I never learned, but that expedition was probably the last to cross the Florida peninsula on the old Indian water trails through Pa-hay-okee, which means “grassy river.”

Napoleon Broward was the new governor, and his plan to conquer the Everglades for the future of Florida agriculture and development got under way with the christening of two dredges for the New River Canal, which would drain the lands south and east of Lake Okeechobee and extend the Calusa Hatchee ship canal to the east coast. With the band music, flags, and patriotic oratory so dear to the simple hearts of politicians, canal construction was begun on Independence Day, which Broward dedicated to the creation of rich farmland where only sawgrass swamp had lain before, including the auspicious planting of an Australian gum tree guaranteed to spread with miraculous speed across the swamps, sucking up water and transpiring it back into the air.

Our southwest coast was next in line for the blessings of modern progress, with the governor's good friend Watson taking the lead. My invitation to the statehouse in Tallahassee could show up in the mail almost any day. Meanwhile, I had months to wait for income on my harvest. Being in debt again, with little cash left for supplies and none for wages, I fired all hands except Sip Linsey and the hog fancier G. Waller; the rest were told to get their stuff and board the boat. At Fort Myers, with a loan from Hendrys, I paid half their wages and gave IOUs for the balance, which I hoped they would never dare come ask for.

On the way home, I stopped off at Pavilion Key to visit Netta's Minnie and Josie's little Pearl, which I did every chance I got, but brief visits were never enough for those two girls. “Daddy, how come you go away again each time you come back?” my red-haired Minnie said. I was happy she had forgiven me for that mistake two years before when I got drunk and took her home with me because I felt so lonesome. She never stopped wailing for her mama so I brought her back.

That summer, we took Sundays off to give our folks some rest. I near went mad waiting for Monday but kept myself busy with repairs, mended some tools. Lucius showed Kate and Laura how to fish for blue crabs off the dock, using a scoop net and old chicken necks rigged to a string. These spiky creatures with quick claws scared sweet little Ruth Ellen, who would turn to me, screeching, “Dada!” in delighted terror. Sometimes Jane Straughter would join in, and those three young females would spend hours at it; every crab caused a great shriek and commotion. Crabbing was done on laundry day. The bushel basketful was emptied into the big boiling cauldron after the clean clothes were fished out.

Lucius was delighted to show off the attractions of the Bend to our new family: it thrilled him as much as it did them when he pointed out our giant crocodile. Unlike Eddie, he had no use for Fort Myers and little interest in the Fort White farm. Lucius loved boats and the water, fresh and salt, river and sea. How it tickled me to see him grown so strong, this quiet boy who had started out in life so sickly that he very nearly died in the Indian Nations.

My son was reading all about old Florida history and the Calusa relics that Bill Collier had dug up at Marco. He was out to explore every piece of high ground in the Islands: he already knew he would like to be a historian or naturalist. Though he hunted and fished for the table, he refused to shoot the scattered plume birds or trap otter, no matter how often it was pointed out that others would take them if he did not. But raccoons were common and in cooler weather he would hunt them at night the way Tant taught him, using his new Bullseye headlamp for his torch.

Lucius was still dueling with Old Fighter, the giant snook Rob had hooked but lost in an oxbow up toward Possum Key. Out of loyalty, Lucius would claim that Old Fighter was still waiting for Rob back in the shadows, tending to the small fishes in the current that swept along under the mangroves. One day his bait would come drifting past, turning and glistening in that amber light, and—
whop!
In some way he felt that the triumph over Old Fighter would be Rob's vindication.

Sometimes at evening, sitting in the dark watching the moonlight on the river, we sang grand old songs—“Old Folks at Home” and “Massa's in de Cold, Cold Ground,” also “Lorena” and “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Because everyone else thought it too gloomy, I would wait until all had gone to bed before I sang “Streets of Laredo.” What I lamented all alone, I did not know. I had learned that old dirge in the Indian Nations, is what I told anybody who inquired, though the truth was I had picked it up in prison. Once it came into my head, I might be stuck with it for weeks.

One evening Kate asked if that old Texas song reminded me of my “cow-boy days” out West. Knowing I had never been a cowboy, Lucius flushed and looked away, aware that his Papa had told a few tall tales to enhance his courtship of this girl of his own age. Even white lies made my son uncomfortable. He did not judge me, but his forbearance was a judgment, even so.

For the moment, Kate seemed happy at the Bend, forever giggling with her dear Laura, heads bent over some discovery or other. Yet she was so raddled and exhausted by the child that she had lost interest in our loving, falling asleep before I was half started—not that that stopped me. Manfully I would clamber on and toil away, feeling grotesque and lonely in my struggle. Sometimes her old fire got poked up and she came with me but more often not.

STILLBORN BABY

Nephew Julian had promised a year's work on the plantation, but after his experience at sea, he never really trusted me again. Perhaps he had heard some local stories, though I can't be sure, and perhaps he had alarmed his wife, for Laura would miscarry her first baby three months into term. In the midnight hours just before that happened, I sat up with her while Kate and Julian got some rest. There was high wind that night, the whole house sighed and rattled.

Not wishing to impose on this young woman (who had railed at me only a few weeks before), I asked if she might not prefer to be left alone. Too exhausted to spit up anything but the plain truth, she shook her head. “Mr. Watson, I'm ever so grateful for your company,” she said. “Why I'm so afraid of darkness I cannot imagine. But I'm less afraid on these windy nights than on the still ones when everything seems suffocated and the only sound is the mosquitoes whining at the screens. That's when I fear there is something else out there, something that's waiting.” She paused. “Something that will come for us, sooner or later.”

“Well, my dear, something will come for us one day, that is quite true.”

“Is it only death I fear? Because of my baby?” She seemed desperate. “I don't really know what I'm afraid of. I'm just scared.”

“Not of me, I hope.” I was doing my best to seem benign and reassuring.

Laura studied me, a little feverish. “Uncle Edgar, you make everyone feel lively, that's the ginger in you. But when you laugh, you sometimes seem to be laughing at our expense.” She waited. “Does everything strike you as absurd?”

“Not everything.”

Afraid she'd gone too far, she closed her eyes, perhaps to recoup her strength. I went to the window and peered out at the reflections of cold moonlight shattered by small wind waves on the river.

From behind me her voice came in a rush, “I'm frightened of a man who wears a gun under his coat in his own house out in the wilderness.” When I said nothing, she continued bravely, “I come down sometimes when I can't sleep and there you are, still sitting in your corner on the porch, and all I can see is the glow of your cigar. Who are you waiting for?”

I returned to the bedside. I could have said I feared Wally Tucker's brother, who had sworn vengeance in Key West saloons, or one of the Bass clan from Kissimmee, or that dirty bounty-hunting Brewer who came here with the Frenchman years ago. But of course it was none of these I feared and I had no idea who I was waiting for. I only knew that one day he would come—the Man from the North, as I had always thought of him. Since Chatham River was so far away in the wild south, in a brackish labyrinth of swamp and muddy river at the farthest end of the American frontier, the one I awaited could scarcely come from any other direction. Anyway, it was no known man with a name.

To Laura this would make no sense so I said, “Jack Watson, maybe.” I wanted to end this conversation since Kate, come to relieve my vigil, was in the door. “Long-lost brother,” I added, when they looked confused. I said good night and went away.

At daybreak, weeping, Kate brought Laura's dead child, wrapped in fresh muslin. The young parents, shattered, thought he was a miscarriage, too early and too small for Christian rites, it seems Laura wanted me to handle it. I took the child from Kate and went outside. Upriver, I dug a little grave and kneeled and laid the bundle in and buried it, haunted by an image of that unborn babe at Lost Man's Key gasping for life in its mother's corpse under the current. Still kneeling, I exhumed the bundle, took it up. Lightly brushing off the dirt, I held it a few minutes before finding the resolve to part the muslin and confront the small blind shrunken face. Was this what Bet Tucker's unborn had looked like? Still on my knees, I lifted him toward daybreak in the eastern sky over the Glades, then bent and kissed the tiny cold blue brow, greeting and parting.

ADDISON TILGHMAN WATSON

In the winter of 1907, suddenly, Billy Collins died and our guests had to leave. To Kate's relief—she feared the thought of Chatham Bend without her Laura—we returned to Fort White with them and stayed on for the spring planting.

Laura dreaded moving in with Julian's family and who could blame her? Granny Ellen was sharp-tongued as ever, and as for my sister, she had shut herself away even before her husband's death, drifting deeper and deeper into shadow realms, leaving her younger children to Aunt Cindy's care. Offered a roof at my house, even that tight-wound nephew of mine appeared relieved. Dear Laura hugged me with fond gratitude. “Please try to forgive those awful things I said at Chatham, Uncle Edgar. Please watch out for that Jack Watson,” she whispered. “Oh yes,” I said. “My shadow brother.” I tried to laugh at such a strange idea.