Shadow Country (12 page)

She held me tight. Though I could not see her face, I could feel her stiffness. Finally she let me go and we sat quiet. My heart was still pounding so I knew it wasn't broken but an awful dread came over me all the same.

Mama said that Maybelle Starr was a generous woman in some ways, by no means stupid, yet very foolish in her hankering after a romantic Wild West that never was. Her father was Judge Shirley of Missouri, so Belle had a little education, played the piano fair to middling, and paid Mama to tutor her in this and that. She wanted above all to be a lady even though she consorted with outlaws and bad Indians.

The Oklahoma Territory Mama knew all too well was a wild border country, a primitive and violent place where life was rough and cheap; its inhabitants were mostly fugitives and savages and the most barbaric savages were white. Negroes had come early as Indian slaves, and after the war, many black folks drifted west into the Indian Nations, where the worst elements of all three races—Mama spoke with fervor—were mixed together in an accursed hinterland of mud and loneliness, race prejudice, rotgut liquor, blood, and terrible tornadoes where the civilization left behind was a dream of the far past, all but forgotten. There was little worship and no law, no culture, morals, nor good manners, and nothing the least bit romantic about any of it.

“Mama,” I said after a while, “did Papa kill Belle Starr or not?”

Taking me in her arms, the poor thing clung for dear life so as not to meet my gaze. In my ear, she murmured, “The case was dismissed because of insufficient evidence. Your father never went to trial.”

In the old days, Mama reflected, a man's whole honor might depend on his willingness to fight a duel over almost
anything.
I knew she was thinking about Papa, our fierce Scots Highlands hothead who sometimes drinks too much and gets in trouble, all the more so when he imagines that his Edgefield County honor has been slighted. Grandfather Elijah back in South Carolina whom Papa never mentions had also been too quick to take offense, as were many other Edgefield men, well-born or otherwise. When I asked if Papa was well-born, she said, “Yes, I believe so. Your granny Ellen in Fort White is an educated person of good family and the Watsons are still prosperous Carolina planters. Your father was taught manners but his education was woefully neglected.”

At the start of the Civil War, Papa's father had gone off as a soldier, and Papa had Granny Ellen and his sister to take care of when only a young boy. Though he'd never complained, she'd learned from Granny Ellen that his childhood had been hard and dark indeed. “You children have to be begged to do your lessons, and here is Papa, already in his forties, still trying to learn a little about Ancient Greece.” She points at Papa's battered schoolbook,
The History of Greece,
which resides on the table by his chair; it had traveled all the way to Oklahoma and she'd brought it back.

It is one thing to hear rumors about Papa's past and quite another to see them printed in a book. Captain Cole believes that
Hell on the Border
will cause a public scandal. “They's people snooping through this thing that couldn't read their own damn name, last time I heard,” he told Walter on the veranda. “Begging your pardon, miss!” He had glimpsed me inside and knew I was near enough to hear him cuss. A man like this is a born politician, always on the lookout for an audience; as Mama says, he never wastes his gaseous windbaggery by confining it to the person he is talking to.

Since that famous article appeared a few years ago about our refined and cultured life here in Fort Myers, all our gentry try hard to live up to it, and dime adventure novels from New York about the Wild West and the Outlaw Queen are a popular diversion among our
literati
(an Italian term, our paper tells us, for “people who can read”). Everybody in America today knows everything there is to know about Belle Starr, who is already immortalized in a book about eminent American females. “Women are on the march!” says Mama, waving a knitting needle like a baton. She smiles at me when Papa steps outside to spit, neglecting to come back to join the ladies.

Though Walter has not mentioned it, Captain Cole assures us that the Langfords know all about
Hell on the Border
and are “much perturbed.” (An unfailing sign of vulgar pretension is the choice of a long word or elaborate phrase when a short, clear, simple one will do, Mama fumed later, and anyway, who was it who perturbed them first by showing them that dratted book?) Captain Cole hints that it might be best if “Ed” did not attend the wedding—here Mama cuts him off. Our family will not be requiring your counsel in this matter, she informs him, bidding him a very cool good day.

But Mama knew Jim Cole was right and I did, too. Alone upstairs, I cried. I'd imagined a beautiful church service and dear Papa giving me away. How handsome and elegant he would look in black frock coat and silk shirt and cravat, how much more genteel than these “upper-crust crackers,” as Mama calls the cattlemen. And how ashamed I am for giving in to everybody's wishes, being terrified Papa might drink too much, insult our guests, or provoke some violent quarrel (as he does regularly in Port Tampa and Key West, Walter confirms). Heaven knows what might happen as a consequence. Walter might withdraw from our marriage—or be withdrawn, perhaps, for nobody knows how much choice the poor dear had about his own betrothal. Papa suspects that Captain Cole, “who can't keep his damned fat fingers out of
anything,
” had manipulated our peculiar match from the very start.

Dr. Langford has been ill, he hasn't long to live (we just hope he will be strong enough to attend the wedding), and Walter wonders if Mr. Hendry will give him a fair chance in the business after his father's death or just write him off as a young hellion. If that should happen, he will quit the partnership and start out on his own. Since the terrible freeze in '95, Walter has had his eye out for good land farther south, and Mr. John Roach, the Chicago railroad man who has taken such a liking to him, is excited by what Walter tells him about prospects for citrus farming out at Deep Lake Hammock, where the war chief Billy Bowlegs had his gardens in the Indian Wars.

There are still Indians out there but Papa says they are too few to stand in the way of planters who mean business. Walter rode that wild country a lot in his cow hunter days, and he claims those old Indian gardens have the richest soil south of the Calusa Hatchee. The main problem will be getting the produce to market. From Deep Lake it is a long hard distance west across the Cypress to Fort Myers but only thirteen miles south to the Storter docks at Everglade, so a small-gauge Deep Lake–Everglade rail line might be just the answer. And who does John Roach credit for this idea? Mr. E. J. Watson! The man who told Walter about Deep Lake in the first place!

Poor Papa has these sure-fire ideas that other men cash in on. He has earned a fine reputation as a planter and his “Island Pride” syrup is already famous, but he lacks the capital, Walter says, for a big agricultural development like Deep Lake. That's why he has confided in others who might be his partners.

Mr. Roach thinks it a great pity that E. J. Watson is confined to forty hard-won acres in the Islands, considering what such a progressive farmer could do with two hundred acres of black loam. But when I asked if there might not be some way Papa could join the Deep Lake Corporation, Walter shook his head. “The partners believe that Mr. Watson had better stay in Monroe County.” That was all he'd say. The Langfords and Papa used to get along just fine, but these days my in-laws have withdrawn from him. Everyone seems to know something that I do not.

Friday last, Papa stopped over on his way to Tampa with a consignment of his “Island Pride.” Picked up Mama and took her up the coast to a concert at the Tampa Theater. Mama did not really wish to go—she is feeling weak, with a yellow-gray cast to her skin—but she knew she would have him alone. In Tampa she finally murmured something about the difficulties that might be caused by his presence at the wedding.

“He refuses to be banished from his daughter's wedding,” Mama sighed when she came home. “He won't bow down to these people. And of course he is angered by his family's lack of confidence in his behavior.” She was very tense and upset and so was I; we hated to have Papa feel humiliated. For such a self-confident, strong man, says Mama, his feelings are easily hurt, although he hides that.

Before heading south, Papa took me for a promenade down Riverside Avenue, nodding in his courtly way to passersby. Such a vigorous mettlesome man, folks must have thought, with his adoring daughter on his arm; he is groomed as well as any man in town. If Papa has a past to be ashamed about, he doesn't show it. He looks the world right in the eye with that ironic smile, knowing just what our busybodies must be thinking.

I got up my nerve and finally asked if he knew about
Hell on the Border.
He twitched as if he had been spurred but walked along a little ways before he said, “The author imagines, I suppose, that having been reported dead, E. J. Watson will take these insults lying down.” When he makes such jokes, there is a bareness in his eyes, one has no idea at all what he is feeling, and my laugh came like a little shriek because that strange expression so unnerved me. He watched me laugh until, desperate to stop, I got the hiccups. We never spoke about that book again.

In silence, we walked downriver toward Whiskey Creek. Turning back, Papa confessed that, at the start, he'd been dead set against the wedding, not because he disapproved of Walter (he likes Walter well enough), but because he disliked all this meddling in our life by this damnable Jim Cole who had appointed himself spokesman for the Langfords (Papa made me giggle with his deadly imitation of that mud-thick drawl) and seemed to regard Ed Watson's daughter as negotiable property like some slave wench. Enraged, he stopped short on the sidewalk. “Is my lovely Carrie to be led to the altar like some sacrificial virgin in order to restore our family name?” And he set off on one of his tirades about how our forebears had been landed gentry even before the Revolution and how Rob's namesake, Colonel Robert Briggs Watson, was a decorated hero of the Confederacy, wounded at Gettysburg. The Watsons were planters in South Carolina when these crackers were still ridge runners!” he shouted, as I glanced up and down, afraid some passerby might overhear. “One day I'll grab that gut-sprung cracker by the seat of his pants and march him down this avenue and horsewhip him in front of this whole mealy-mouthed town!”

Not long before, a cattle rustler in Hendry County had stung up Captain Cole with a few shotgun pellets. “Too bad that hombre didn't know his business,” Papa said, with a very hard expression. That made him laugh and he calmed down then and apologized for all his cussing: it was too long, said he, since his knees had suffered the chastisement of a hard church floor.

A moment later he removed my arm from his and turned me around to face him. In a tone cold and formal he said he'd consented to this marriage because it would be beneficial to our family. “I accepted their conditions only because I'm not in a position to dictate my own. Even so, I intend to protect my loved ones from the mistakes I have committed in this life.” He brooded a few moments. His expression hushed me when I tried to speak. He took my hands in his. “Your marriage has my blessing if you want it. You needn't beg me to stay away; that won't be necessary.” He squeezed my fingers urgently in his hard hands. “Please assure your mother I won't shame the family with my presence.”

“Papa, I'm the one who was disloyal! It was my weakness, too!”

“Your mother is not weak.” He rebuked me sharply. “A weak woman would not stand by me as she has nor confront me as she did.”

I wept. I was mourning his decision to stay away but my sudden tears only revived his hopes. For just a moment his eyes went wide, inquiring.

But I said nothing so he simply nodded as if everything was for the best.

How that stoic dignity twisted my heart!

“And Rob?” I sniffled. “Will Rob come to my wedding, Papa?”

“Sonborn? I'll need him.”

He released my hands and we walked back to his ship without a word.

The old schooner drifted off, then swung downriver. I ran along the quayside, calling good-bye to my father and my brother, waving both arms trying to summon enough love to banish so much bewilderment and hurt.

Rob was aloft clearing the boom, which had somehow got hung up. Being Rob, he probably assumed I waved only to Papa, not to him. I did not stop until, still hesitant, he raised his hand at last. Though they were a little distant now, I could hear Papa bellow from the helm. Rob stopped waving and returned to coiling up the lines.

ERSKINE THOMPSON

Aunt Jane and the family left, went to Fort Myers, and with them younger voices missing, the place fell quiet. Our house grew smelly, seemed to mope like a old dog off its feed. Me'n Rob was close to the same age but Rob was plain unsociable. When I asked him why he had not stayed in Fort Myers with Aunt Jane and his family, he spoke sarcastical. “That's
not
my family. She's not my mother and she's not your ‘aunt Jane' neither.”

Round about 1899, his stepmother persuaded Rob to join them and attend Fort Myers school. He was older than any kid in class but done poor and give everybody trouble. Give his stepmother some trouble, too, from what the Boss let slip. Though she was kind and done her best, Rob stayed only one school season, so rude to everyone that his daddy took him back.

Mister Watson had went sour, set inside a lot. Him and his son hardly spoke a word, they was like strangers come in off the river just to camp here, make a mess. It was real lonesome. After Bill House quit the Frenchman and the Frenchman died and them Hardens went to spend a year down to Flamingo, we scarcely seen a livin soul from one month to the next unless you'd count the drunks and niggers rounded up for the fall harvest.

Miss Carrie was soon spoken for by Walter Langford who was kin to the Lee County sheriff, so her daddy knew he'd get no trouble in Fort Myers that he didn't ask for. Mister Watson's rowdy ways got him throwed in jail a time or two in Tampa and Key West but he always ducked bad trouble in Fort Myers. Sail up the Calusa Hatchee in the evening, tie up after dark. Never stayed long, never went to no saloons: we done our business first thing in the morning, went on home. In Fort Myers, Mister Watson dressed nice and talked quiet, never wore a gun where you could see it, but he always had a weapon on him and he kept his eye peeled.

Aunt Jane begun to waste away but stayed real cheerful, so her husband told me. She was sick of her illness and did not want to keep Death waiting too much longer. When he said, “You're not afraid of death, I see,” she smiled and said, “I guess I had it coming.” Telling me this, he smiled himself, though I never knew if he was smiling at her joke or smiling because she could joke about such things or smiling because this Island boy didn't get poor Aunt Jane's joke and don't today.

Once in a while, we'd visit Netta and our little Min, who was living these days at George Roe's boardinghouse at Caxambas: Netta aimed to marry Mr. Roe and later done so. At Roe's, the Boss made the acquaintance of Josephine Jenkins, my mother's half sister. One day he invited my aunt Josie home to stay but not before asking Netta if she minded. Netta had some rum in her that evening and was feeling sassy. “Mister Ed,” said she, “I don't mind a bit so long's you keep that durn thing in the family.” Everybody laughed to beat the band and I did, too, cause it felt so good just to belong.

Josie was small and flirty as a bird, switching her tail and tossing her black curls. Said she only come to Chatham to make sure the boys—her brother Tant and me and Rob—was treated decent by that old repperbait, but as Rob said, what she was there for was to look after Old Repperbait under the covers. At supper she just danced away when he reached out for her, but them two didn't waste no time getting together after dark, and next day us boys was told to sleep down in the shed. “This place ain't built for secrets!” Josie said.

Josie had a baby while she lived there called Pearl Watson. What with Rob and Tant and Baby Pearl, along with Netta and Minnie at Caxambas, Mister Watson and me had us a real family like before.

Tant was only a young feller then, not much older than me. His mother was my grandmother Mary Ann Daniels. There was Danielses all along this coast and big litters of their kin. The men was mostly straight black-haired and black-eyed, breed Injun in their appearance, and they moved around from one island to another. By the time they got finished—and they ain't done yet—everybody in the Islands had some kind of a Daniels in the family.

Tant was more Irish in his looks. Black hair but curly, had a little mustache and Josie's small sharp nose. He was tall and scrawny. Never farmed nor fished if he could help it, had no truck with common labor. Times Mister Watson went away, he fooled around making moonshine from the cane or went out hunting, you never knew where Tant would be from one day to the next. Never married, never lived a day under his own roof, but he was a sprightly kind of feller who made people feel good and was always welcome. Played hell with the plume birds while they lasted, brought wildfowl, venison, and shine from one hearth to another all his life. “I'm livin off the land,” Tant liked to say, “and drinking off it, too.” He were mostly drunk even when working, nearly passed out into his dinner plate. One time he leaned over and mumbled into the Boss's ear so all could hear him, “Planter Watson? Ain't none of my damn business, Planter Watson, it sure ain't, but it sure looks like some worthless rascal been drinking up all your profits.” How the Boss could grin at that I just don't know.

We hardly seen hide nor hair of Tant, come time for cutting cane. Tant hated stooping all day long amongst the bugs and snakes, muscles burning and brain half-cooked and the earth whirling. Nobody who ain't done it knows how frazzled a man gets with weariness and thirst, whacking away in the wet heat at that sharp cane with them hard leaf tips that could poke your eye out. On top of half-killing you, the work was risky; them big damn cane knives, sharp as razors, could glance off any whichy-way when a man was tired. One swing from the man next to you could hack your arm or take your ear off, or your own blade might glance off stalks and slash an artery. So what he done, he persuaded the Boss how he'd save him money supplying fresh wild victuals for the harvest workers, venison and ducks and gator tail or gophers, whatever was wanted. A hunter as good as Stephen S. Jenkins would be plumb wasted in the cane field, is what he said. “That's right, boy,” Mister Watson would agree, “because you are bone lazy to start with and too weakened by cane spirits for a good day's work.” And Tant would moan real doleful, saying, “Oh, sweet Jesus, if that ain't the God's truth!” Mister Watson would curse and threaten him, but in the end, he always laughed and let him go.

•                           •                           •

Mister Watson scraped his help at Port Tampa and Key West, lodged 'em in a bunkhouse in the back end of the boat shed. Told 'em the roof and cornshuck mattresses was free of charge but a half day's pay would be deducted for their grub. Them field hands worked all that hot cane in bad old broken shoes, no boots, no gloves, nor leggins, not unless they rented 'em from Mister Watson.

Like I say, most of our cutters was drinkers or drifters, wanted men, runaway niggers, maybe all them things at once. Anyplace else that sorry kind of help was here today and gone tomorrow but on Chatham Bend there weren't nowhere to go to, nothin but mangrove tangle and deep-water rivers swarmin with sharks and gators. Them men was prisoners, couldn't get away, and the Boss's talk of Injuns and cottonmouths and giant crocodiles kept 'em too scared to try. Knowing how hard it was to train new help, Mister Watson made sure them men was always owin. He never let 'em off his plantation except they was dead sick or too loony to work or just beggin to give up all their back pay for a boat ride to most anywhere, county jail included.

Aunt Jane was hearin rumors in Fort Myers, the Boss told me. Laughed about it but I seen that he was bothered. She said, “Do unto others, Edgar Watson, as you would have them do unto you.” And he asked her, “You think them scum wouldn't do the same unto Ed Watson the first chance they got? That's human nature.” “You've grown hard-hearted,” she would say, shaking her head. And he said, “No, Mandy, I am not hard-hearted but I am hard-headed, as a man must be who aims to run a business in this country and support his family.” He'd talk about that big hotel we seen at Punta Gorda and the Yankee railroad men who was investing in frontier Florida on both coasts. Them capitalists and tycoons and such used up whole gangs of niggers and immigrants, treated 'em any way they wanted and no interference from the law, having paid off all the bureaucrats and politicians—he'd go off on a regular tirade.

As time went on, something changed there at the Bend. Mister Watson grew heavy and stayed dirty. The crew took to drinking up Tant's moonshine, having got the idea they were free to let things go. When he shouted, they would all jump up, rattle things around, go right back to their drinking. Finally he went on a rampage, cleared that whole bunch out. Told 'em they had drunk up all their pay along with all his profits. He picked a day when Tant were gone, not wanting to fire Tant, who drank more than the rest of 'em put together.

That day I come in from Key West, I hardly had the boat tied up when Josie and them others come quacking down the path like a line of ducks, with Mister Watson right behind kicking their bundles. Ought to be kicking their fat
bee
-hinds, he roared. Hollered at me to haul them whores and riffraff off his river before he blowed their brains out, them's that had any. Take 'em out into the Gulf and feed 'em to the sharks. His own little thin Pearl looked scared to death.

Nosir, they weren't sassing him
that
afternoon! They had played with fire and they knowed it. Only after they was safe downriver did they start in bitchin and moanin about unpaid wages.