Shadow Country (122 page)

In Arkansas Prison, I knew a backwoods murderer—scraggy feller with gat teeth and a long nose bursting with black hair. This man opined that a first killing was a first taste of manhood, along with that first naked rassle with mother or sister. Had 'em both, he'd cackle in that rooster voice, so I guess he knew what he was talking about.

FAMILY VISIT

In September we had a “family visit” when the mail boat brought young Joe Gunnin from Fort White whose sister Amelia was betrothed to Willie Collins, also his friend Bill Langford of Suwannee County, a kinsman of my son-in-law. Since I was unwelcome in a Langford house and probably any Collins house as well, I resented having to feed these two for a whole week until the mail boat returned.

One evening in passing Gunnin referred to my mother's death, the news of which Cox had not bothered to share. There had been no room for her in Aunt Tabitha's pinched, iron-girded plot and no money to pay for a small headstone in the Collins ground at Tustenuggee, where at present she lay in a shallow hole like an old cat. True, I had disliked my little mother. Even so it galled me that her elder child and only son had not been notified in time to contribute to her funeral expenses.

Asked why my sister had sent no word, Gunnin explained nervously that Mrs. Collins, who now resided with Willie and his bride, was no longer aware of very much that was going on around her. The past went storming through my heart and mind, grief hard behind it. I said heedlessly, “That is because she is a morphine addict. Lost such brain as she was born with long ago.”

Offended for my sister, Hannah banged her platter of sweet yams and venison down in front of me. Serving the plates in a silence jarred by the knock and scrape of crockery, I regretted that I'd spoken caustically about poor Minnie, whom I had done my best to protect when we were little. But even then—because she was a tattletale—I'd made her cry. Those big dark eyes had filled with tears at the first whisper of an unkind word.

In recent years, my sister passed most of her waking hours in the chimney corner, where until the evening she slipped safely into death, she might breathe unnoticed, like a moth. Since our days of terror under the roof of Ring-Eye Lige, passing unnoticed was all poor Ninny ever asked of life.

I questioned Gunnin, checking Leslie's stories. In the long year since Attorney Cone had got him off in the Sam Tolen case, Leslie had hung on at Fort White. He was much offended that his neighbors had not welcomed him, that there was no baseball team to star for, and that the ball clubs at Live Oak and High Springs had not invited him to try out as their pitcher. All over the south county, good folks shied from him. At first he sulked, Joe Gunnin said—that was Les all over—but before long he was making drunken threats against those who'd joined the lynch mob. Finally he was warned to leave the district, being in more danger from scared neighbors than he had ever been from the court of justice. Even his family, “hated out,” had been obliged to move away to Alachua County.

Over time, I gleaned the rest from Leslie himself. His plan had been to run off with May Collins and join a big-league baseball team so he needed a grubstake. Like everyone else, he had heard about Calvin Banks's hoarded-up money, and Calvin's son-in-law had mentioned where it might be found. That son-in-law had been no-account from birth, he'd pulled a muscle in his brain or something. Probably never occurred to him that those old folks might be harmed, so during the robbery, he waited for Leslie back along the road, expecting a share of the proceeds—a bad mistake, since finding no proceeds worth sharing, Leslie in ill humor shot him dead. Cox had come to Chatham Bend not to give me half the money but because he had no other place to hide.

I was now so broke that I agreed to sell the best of my Fort White farmland to Jim Delaney Lowe, even though he'd testified against me. Getting wind of that land sale, my lawyers threatened me with forcible arrest and extradition to Columbia County for nonpayment of their fees, hinting that I might be lynched upon arrival. So much for lawyers. After such a year, small wonder that my rages were recurring. These violent eruptions split my head and yanked my heart around so wildly that I scarcely dared breathe for fear of stroke. Breaking out in sudden chilling sweats, I could only sink down panting.

The mail boat brought news of Samuel Clemens's death: at least I would have smart company in Hell or Heaven. Somewhere Twain said,
I don't believe in Hell but I am afraid of it.
One day when I quoted those words, Lucius asked me my opinion, no doubt wondering if his Papa, too, might be afraid of Hell (being so unlikely to wind up in Heaven), I guess he meant I shrugged him off, saying I'd had no word from the “higher-ups” as to my fate.

I could have answered him more honestly. I could have said, I don't believe in God and never have. I could have said that on Judgment Day, when the true worth and meaning of one's life is weighed, the judge I feared most would be Edgar Watson.

At Chatham Bend nobody ate who did not earn his grub and I gave our guests every dirty job we had. Because Gunnin had recognized “John Smith” and was bound to tell the law where he was hiding, Leslie was very agitated by our visitors, thought it might be wise to knock these green-horns on the head and toss 'em in the river. I reminded him that their families knew where their boys had been headed and would show up here with the law if they failed to return.

Cox boiled over when Joe Gunnin slipped and called him “Les.” Cox snarled, “I reckon you mean ‘John.' That other feller you thought you might of saw? Well, you ain't never seen him, understand?” Les commenced his deadly nodding, glaring hard at one and then the other. He said, “Maybe I ought to shut your mouths right here this minute.”

Melville always said straight out what popped into his head. I never met such a carefree feller in my life. He slapped his knee and guffawed at Cox's threat. “He's aimin to go gunnin for a Gunnin!” He laughed in loud heartfelt delight at his own joke but his hoots soon turned into hard jeering, calculated to bait Cox into a showdown, though his guns were on the side-board, out of reach. “You rover boys got that? You ain't never seen this sonofabitch you thought you seen settin right here stinkin up the place under your nose.”

Leslie, gone white around the mouth, pointed at Dutchy's eyes in sign that he would pay for this sooner or later but Dutchy only pointed right back at him. “Tell that boy to stop that dretful squintin, Mister Ed! He's scarin these poor fellers half to death!” He whooped some more, informing the visitors that if he were to practice up on his mean squint as long and hard as that dumb hick across the table, he would probably end up with that same ugly face, tight-squinched as a bat's asshole. And he threw back his head and laughed so hard that he toppled his chair right over backwards.

Cox knew that Dutchy's guns were out of reach and his hand shot for his knife as he leapt forward. But Dutchy had toppled his chair on purpose, and being an acrobat, kept right on rolling and bounced back up onto his feet with something glinting in his hand. Those black eyes were glinting, too—even his teeth seemed to be glinting. I never saw that knife fly to his hand, but most likely he had it hid in his boot lining.

Cox was no knife fighter. He stopped his lunge by grabbing at the table, barging it noisily across the floor. He backed off then and shortly quit, dropping his knife like that hayseed Tommy Granger in Arcadia. Dutchy kicked it skittering against the wall. Taking his time, he sidled toward the door to cut off an escape. He had Cox where he wanted him, with more excuse to finish him in self-defense than he would ever need. He wrinkled his nose at the thin blade in his own hand, as if loath to defile its pristine edge. His cat eyes twitched in little shivers of the pupil.

Les could not look at him. He was staring at me, all but imploring his old partner to step in:
Ain't you told me you had swore to kill him
? Yet again, his predicament was Watson's fault. When I kept silent, folding my arms on my chest, he let out a small grunt of angry panic, and I let him twist. But after a moment, I lifted my cup of shine to Dutchy in signal that he'd won, that it was over.

Dutchy put his knife away too readily and his big grin of relief betrayed his weakness: he lacked the philosophy or the hard heart required to kill an undefended man, even this man who yearned to take his life. Frank Reese in the kitchen doorway saw this, too, and turned away disgusted. His stormy face as he glared past mine made it clear how much he was going to dislike the inevitable outcome of this feud, although he had known since the spoiled syrup episode that Melville had to pay.

Cox had sunk down on his chair edge, incensed by a humiliation made much worse by my toast to the victor, but in a moment he realized that my intervention on his behalf was a sign of where I stood, and this knowledge brought that curled edge to his mouth which Sam Tolen must have seen as he knelt in the white road on that spring morning—that curled edge caused, in my experience, by a metallic foretaste at the back corners of the tongue that comes as a signal of imminent, absolute power over life and death.

Dutchy Melville would be missed at Chatham Bend. This young gunman had done me a great harm, beyond forgiveness, but that was no longer why he had to go. My friend Will Cox's oldest boy had tried to stifle Calvin's tes-timony at my trial and had offered help in an escape, had that been necessary. Also, he had married my niece May. Leslie was kinfolks.

From that hour till the day the mail boat came, our Fort White visitors fell all over themselves to please Ed Watson and his outlaws, swearing to John Smith again and again that his presence on the Watson place was no business of theirs and would never be mentioned to a single soul. When the boat appeared, I did not quit work to walk over to the dock and say good-bye. Before boarding, Gunnin and young Langford confided to Hannah their shock at my indifference to the news of my mother's death and the great illness of my sister—small wonder, they said, that Mr. Watson had such a bad reputation in Fort White.

According to Green, Big Hannah bit their heads off. “Ain't that why you rover boys come gawkin around here in the first place? To visit a real live desperader in his hideout, then run back home to brag?”

Like my dear Mandy, Hannah Smith had a pretty good idea of who Ed Watson was. She did not approve of all his ways but neither would she see him criticized by anybody who had not earned that right. I had few true friends and this big woman was one so I reckon I should have taken better care of her.

Needing quick income to pacify my creditors, I drove everyone hard to get the crop in early, get our product to market ahead of the competition. With my outsized vat and boiler, I could turn out more and better syrup than all the local cane fields put together, but to stay ahead, I had to farm more land, and for that I needed new capital investment—this at a time when I was bankrupt and in debt and nowhere welcome in Fort Myers among businessmen.

Everyone on the place looked tired, less from the hard labor in the field than from the tension between Cox and Melville. “My trigger finger's itchin somethin pitiful,” Les would whisper—his way of complaining that he wouldn't mind encouragement and perhaps a little help from his uncle Ed. “After harvest”—my answer to every question—was unsatisfactory to all hands including me, obliging me to face two aspects of my own character I didn't care for: one, that I did not want Dutchy harmed before I got more work out of him, and two, that I lacked the guts to set him up for Cox and see him slaughtered.

BLACK OCTOBER

In early October, Kate came home from Chokoloskee. People were turning cold toward her, she said. By now it was common knowledge that Ed Watson was harboring two convicted killers and no doubt other criminals as well: according to rumor, the Watson Gang aimed to found an outlaw nation in the wilderness. Even Ted Smallwood, who still passed for a friend, was referring sardonically to “Emperor Watson.” I could no longer pretend to myself, far less to Kate, that our children were safe here on the Bend, and anyway, the time had come to confront those Bay folks and their stories before more damage could be done. I ordered Kate not to unpack, I was taking her back next morning. “Where will we stay?” she asked. “Nobody wants us.”

At his own request, Dutchy came with us. “I been needin a change of air,” he said, “after all them weeks cooped up with that yeller skunk you got for foreman.” The knowledge that Cox was laying for him and would kill him at first chance—and his growing uneasiness about where I stood—were wearing away at Dutchy's spirits; he had dark circles under his eyes from watching his back throughout the day and listening all night. As soon as we left the Bend, he said, “Excuse me, ma'am,” and lay down in the stern. He fell asleep flat out on the bare boards while the children stared at him and never woke up till the launch nudged Ted's dock at Chokoloskee.

Dutchy's Wanted poster was plastered on the porch of Smallwood's post office store so naturally the whole community lined up to take a gander at this armed and dangerous fugitive. Folks were elbowing and grinning, wondering aloud if those guns were real, so Dutchy performed a sudden back flip on the dock, coming up with six-guns blazing at the sky and scattering his thrilled audience into the trees. But when he strutted across the yard and banged his heels on the store porch, he was followed by a low and ugly groan. As Smallwood explained, folks felt humiliated by “Watson's hired gun” and they blamed me. “Dammit, E. J.,” Ted whispered, “we just don't want that kind of outlaw around here.”

“How about my kind, Ted?”

“Nor that Cox feller neither.” Smallwood was in no mood to be teased.

I gazed after Kate, who had gone off with Mamie to see Marie Alderman's new baby.

Ted looked alarmed. “Nosir, it weren't your missus, E. J.! It weren't Edna told us! Some feller was mentionin Smith's scar and another feller said, ‘That so-called preacher you are talkin about sounds mighty like a killer name of Leslie Cox.' ”