Shadow Country (55 page)

I—well, I've been so busy doing a book about our father.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven. Those men killed Mr. E. J. Watson, blew him to Kingdom Come—did you know that?

Pearl, listen—

Did you know J. stood for Jack? Did you know my mother married up with E. Jack Watson? Had a daughter by Mister Jack and that was me so how come you forgot me?

Pearl? Don't cry—

When E. Jack Watson died my mother was still married to him, common-law. My mother loved him, too, all except his temper. He was a drinker but he loved his children dearly.

Pearl? Did your mother ever tell a story about a hired hand at Chatham Bend who insulted her nice peas?

No, I never heard about insulted peas. But if Jack Watson told you he would kill you, he would do it, Mama said, because being a man who kept his word, he expected the same integrity in others.
She was weeping
. Who are you anyway? Whoever you are, you must be a liar! Lucius would have called me long ago! I'm his baby sister!

Pearl, please don't be upset. I don't mean to upset you. I'll call another day, maybe next week.

They won't let me go home! They say I have no home to go to! I'm all alone and they won't let me go home! They say I have no home!

CARRIE LANGFORD

Carrie Langford lived in the shadow of her husband's bank in a small house off First Street. Turning the corner, he caught her in a dressing gown of faded blue with a frayed pink satin collar, fetching her newspaper at the picket gate.

At the sight of him, her hands flew to her hair. “You could have called first, Lucius. Or are you just on your way somewhere else?”

Fussing with her collar when he leaned to peck her cheek, she withdrew through the rose gate into an arbor of trellised wisteria and bougainvillea. He did not venture through the gate. “Carrie, I'm sorry—” She turned away to ward off any bluster. “Well, come in, then, darn it. You want me arrested for soliciting?”

He held the screen door as she preceded him into a small sitting room overfilled with big dark furniture from the house at the Edison Bridge. “From ‘the good old days,' ” she sniffed with a dismissive wave. In louvered shade, in the hum of fans, the room was dark and silent like a funeral parlor, as if somewhere within Banker Langford lay in state.

In a formal portrait, proud-bosomed Carrie in white evening gown made a handsome subject, and Walter in a suit of houndstooth tweed appeared portly and prosperous. His hairline, slicked back hard, was rapidly receding, but his eager amiability seemed undiminished. He did not look the least bit like a man whose liver would fail for good just three years later.

Lucius took a hard chair near the door in sign that his visit would be brief; to reassure her, he perched forward on the chair edge, poised for flight. On the sofa, hands folded on her lap, Carrie shrugged off his civilities as he struggled to explain what he'd been up to. “I thought you'd like to know that Papa's bad reputation was much exaggerated—”

“So you've always claimed. That why you've come?”

“That's my excuse. I wanted to see you—”

She checked him again.

“I wanted to see you,” he insisted when she closed her eyes. “Though I've never been sure how welcome I would be. I thought you and Eddie—”

“We don't consult about you, Lucius.” Changing the subject, she asked crossly if he'd had any news of their young stepmother and her children. “I must say I thought less of Edna for running away before the burial, then changing the children's names like that—”

She stopped, anticipating his frown of protest and accepting it; Carrie had no heart for unkindness. Then suddenly her defenses fell away. “You and Edna left. You never had to deal with those dreadful writers who pestered us year after year for yet another lurid article slapped together to make money with no regard for truth. And how often I thought”—here she looked up, close to tears—“if only I could talk with Lucius. I so hoped you'd come. You never did. The baby brother I adored lived only a few miles down the coast and never even came to Walter's funeral, never bothered to inquire how his sister might be getting on.”

“Carrie? I came. I arrived late—”

“Of course you did. I hardly saw you.” She paused to compose herself. “I got almost no help from Walter's partners and would not accept it from others—not even my own brothers, had they offered it, which they did not. For different reasons, of course. You, at least, were generous when you had anything, which was almost never.” She was teasing now, yet unready to be mollified.

With parents and husband dead, with Rob and Lucius vanished from her life and her two girls married, Eddie was all she had left in the way of family. Fortunately, she added with a little smile, Eddie adored her.

“Kindred spirits,” Lucius suggested.

Carrie cocked her head, elevating her eyebrows. “Let's just say,” she reproved him gently, “that dear Eddie feels a bit more kindred to his sister's spirit than she feels to his.

“Though Eddie can be very courtly, don't forget,” she added dutifully when Lucius smiled. “Mama taught him manners and he has his own peculiar charm, at least he used to. But because of Papa, the poor stick is always out to prove something, make a good impression. You suppose that's why he never dared to drink?” She shrugged, not much interested. “You were the opposite, of course—quiet, a bit pensive, but when you grinned, you really grinned, and your eyes sparkled.” That memory made her smile herself and he was smiling with her. “See?” she laughed gaily, pointing at his eyes. “As a boy, you were very handsome, Lucius. You still are. And you drank too much. All the Watsons were handsome”—she took a deep hard breath—“and they all drank too much. Myself included. And I married another handsome drunk while I was at it.”

“Carrie—”

“Well, I've made my own way and the girls have married well so we came out all right. But last year I was pretty ill, and I thought, Damn it, I'm not going, not before I see my little brother. I wanted you to come for Christmas, a real visit, but Eddie reported that you were drinking and all you wanted was to rot on your old boat. He said you stayed away because you thought your Fort Myers family was ashamed of you. That broke my heart.”

Though Lucius had never said any such thing to Eddie, he knew that, in the past, he might have intimated that idea to others; he did not defend himself. He rose, saying, “I'm sorry, Carrie.”

“Oh, don't go, sweetheart, please don't go. I won't make you feel guilty anymore, I promise.” With a warm smile, she patted the cushion beside her, but when he sat down, both felt so shy that she jumped up and brought him family photographs. “My wild cracker cowboy became so darned
dignified
. Our little girls asked if their daddy's pajamas had starched collars!”

Carrie read aloud from a school report that little Faith had written about her grandpa the year after he died:
“ ‘I remember Grandpa's ginger brows: he looked like he was filled with fire. He always had a nice warm smell of wisky . . .' ”
Carrie smiled fondly at her brother. “Papa would perch one child on each knee and tell them about the big old owl who lived on Chatham Bend. Then he would pop his eyes open like . . . THIS!” She popped her eyes at Lucius and her clear peal of delight brought childhood back and with it something of their old affection for their father and each other.

ROB'S VISIT

Lucius asked her to describe Rob's visit of a few years before. Did she recall just when it was? When she figured out the approximate date, he realized that Rob's return corresponded closely with the arrival at the Hardens of the stranger who had called himself “John Tucker.”

“One day Eddie turned up with a bearded man in worn-out clothes, a merchant seaman. Eddie called him ‘our half brother Robert,' right in front of him. Not having laid eyes on Rob in almost thirty years—since before my wedding—I might not have believed that this was him except for those feverish red points on his cheeks, remember? The dark hollow eyes? With that beard, he looked like some poor martyr out of those old paintings. ‘Calls himself Collins these days,' Eddie announced, rolling his eyes the way he does. ‘I use my mother's maiden name,' Rob explained for my sake.

“I said, ‘Rob? Is that really you behind that beard? Oh, Rob, for goodness sake!' And I grabbed him and hugged him hard, though he didn't want that. For a man who supposedly lived at sea, he was so pale that I thought he must be ill.

“ ‘He's looking for Lucius,' Eddie said, to hurry us. Eddie was sulky. I confessed to Rob that I'd scarcely laid eyes on you since your return from the Great War. I felt ashamed. I told him how much it worried me that you were living at the mercy of those people. ‘He was safer in the War than he is down there,' Rob said. ‘That's why I'm here.' Eddie snapped, ‘Sure took you long enough,' and Rob said he was unable to come sooner. He did not say why and we did not dare ask him: he was just as prickly as the Rob of old but had turned a little hard, a little scary. He refused a drink. ‘I can't handle it,' he said.

“Eddie was still sulking so I led Rob outside. I took his arm and we walked a little ways along the river. I said, ‘It's your first visit in thirty years, Rob. Can't you stay for supper? Stay the night?' No, he said, he had to catch the ship that was sailing that evening to the Islands. Said good-bye and turned and walked away. I never learned if he had a family or even where he'd lived since I'd last seen him.”

“He's back,” said Lucius. He told his sister the whole story of Arbie Collins.

“Oh Lord, we have to help him,” Carrie said. At a loss, they sat quiet a while. “We'll think of something, won't we, Lucius?” She did not seem hopeful and soon relapsed into resentment. “Have you called on Nell? That girl adored you, Lucius. To go off to war without a word then run away to the Islands after she'd sacrificed her reputation? Did you care? Were you even aware of the guts it took to live on in a small nosy town after you disappeared? Of how much she was willing to give up for you against all advice? Including mine?”

Carrie's indignation on Nell's behalf was tinged by her own hurt. “Knowing how sensitive you are, I'll bet you felt injured when she finally gave up on you and accepted that old man. She's
poor,
you idiot! She has no family worthy of the name and no security. Women
need
security. Are you really so damn blind?”

He sat quiet. Made unhappy by her own remarks, she said, “We did our best to forgive you, Lucius, because after Papa died, you weren't yourself. Where was our old easygoing Lucius? You were
fun,
remember?” She took his hand. “Nell loved talking about you. She still does! Your ‘shy bent smile,' she called it—came straight from Mama, by the way—your ‘deep-shadowed wistful eyes.' ” Mocking Nell gently, Carrie squinted to verify those eyes. “And Chatham Bend. It seems you protected her from her awful brother, she imagined that Lucius Watson was some sort of angel. She told me how quick and merciful you were around your otter traps and even killing chickens for the table—that made a great impression. The pains you took to remove your fish hook gently:
more than he ever did for this poor fish!
Nell can laugh at herself even when she's sad, and she never complains—I love that about her.”

Carrie stopped smiling when her brother said, “Is that Nell's joke or yours? About the fish hook?” Although he tried to say this lightly, his lungs were heavy with remorse for his utter failure to protect the eager feelings of sister and lover who had cherished him so much more faithfully than he'd deserved.

Watching his face, his sister grew alarmed. “Lucius? What is it? Are you all right? Listen—it's important that you know—Nell never spoke out against you this way—the way I do, I mean.” She was silent a moment before whispering, “I'm truly sorry. I didn't want to do this.”

He sat down again. “Don't apologize. I've neglected you both shamefully, and Pearl, too.”

Though Carrie resisted the mention of Pearl, she was anxious to mend things before he went away again. Before Nell's marriage, that girl had called on Nell. Nell brought her here. It was Pearl who told them that Lucius lived in a driftwood shack at Lost Man's River: she sought their help in persuading him to leave the Islands before he was harmed. A little miffed, she parodied Pearl's accent:
“ ‘He'll surely lissen to yew, Miz Nell! Ah seen how much he pahns fer yew, Miz Nell!'
No mention of Miz Carrie, you notice.”

Nell had sent no message back with Pearl. What good would it do to plead with Lucius once he'd learned that his true love and dearest friend had given up on him and was marrying another? Slightly shopworn, a bit “dog-eared,” as she described herself to Carrie, Nell had accepted the spavined hand of Mr. Summerlin, an elderly gentleman with a kind heart and a secure place in society and also an indomitable itch to stroke his young bride's person. About all he ever did, Carrie suspected, though Nell was too loyal to confirm this. “Nothing much to be jealous about, anyway,” she assured her brother.

Why, he thought, had Carrie mentioned jealousy if not to make him jealous?

“That girl knew you well, you know.”

“Too well for her own good,” he answered glumly.

“Stop that! What a fool you are! Go call her up!”

He did. He arranged to go meet her. He came back smiling.

At the door, he turned and they hugged at last. “You must never forsake your silly old sister again,” she said. “No,” Lucius said. She knew he meant this for she went up on tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Like the bossy older sister he remembered, she nagged after him, “Don't you
ever
come to town again, Mr. Lucius Watson, without letting us know.”