Shadow Country (96 page)

Walter was licked. In a hushed voice, he swore that he loved his bride-to-be with all his heart and he vowed to be very gentle. Since my first grandchild would not be born until five years later, the young man may have been gentle to a fault.

Despite the cautionary spite of thin-mouthed old Aunt Etta, whose very breath carried a hint of constipation, the Langfords welcomed our lively Carrie and her parents, too, at least at first: once our little frontier family had been fitted with uncomfortable town clothes, we became fashionable by Fort Myers standards, thanks to Mandy's elegance and quiet manners, and were often included in the Langfords' social gatherings. One evening we were introduced to “America's Electrical Wizard,” Thomas Edison, who had built his grand Seminole Lodge on land overlooking the river and would later invite his friend Henry Ford to admire the property. Though her parents never had that privilege, my daughter would meet the great automaker when he visited the Edisons, who also expected a visit any year now from their friend Sam Clemens. “Mark Twain, dear!” Aunt Etta instructed Mandy, who had probably read more of Twain's damned books than the total of those read by every Langford in the state of Florida. Mandy dearly hoped that she might live long enough to behold her hero, if only from afar, but that was our secret. She forbade me to say any such thing to
any
body.

Back in '93, Tom Edison's General Electric Company had failed in the Great Depression, which had also propelled Edgefield's one-eyed Ben Tillman into the Senate seat of my father's old nemesis, General Calbraith Butler. Pitchfork Ben would rage that Mr. Edison had been bailed out by the bankers, and that, unlike his hungry workers, he had been inconvenienced not at all in his rich way of life, to judge from his opulent winter retreat in sunny Florida.

That a great American industry might be bankrupted and a great American spat upon by agitators had alarmed our self-styled “cattle capitalists,” who denounced Senator Tillman as the devil incarnate. Because I could speak knowledgeably of the Edgefield County Tillmans, the Langfords and Jim Cole introduced me at a meeting of their business club, to which I held forth over coffee and cigars. From Walter, Carrie would gather and report that her daddy was considered “very smart, humoristical, and lively.”

As for me, I enjoyed being included in discussions of the epochal economic changes taking place in America at the approach of the new century, especially since all these men might be so useful in my future plans. I addressed them, of course, as a stern supporter of the capitalist system, since I aimed to become a capitalist myself, but privately I had to agree with Mandy—who was better educated and a good deal brighter than anybody in our business circle—that Tillman, for all his opportunism and ugly speech, led the one political party as yet uncorrupted by the corporations. “Give him time,” I sighed.

In the winter of 1898—officially, at least—the Spaniards sank the battleship
Maine
in Havana Harbor. (Broward, back from Cuba, confided that our government was quite aware that our battleship had exploded by mistake, without Spanish assistance, but as a businessman I knew much better than to be the bearer of unpatriotic news.) The war with Spain was quickly under way as Admiral Dewey steamed halfway around the world to destroy the rickety Spanish fleet in Manila Bay and was just as quickly finished four months later—in short, a “splendid little war” as it was called by our splendid little secretary of state, who like most patriotic politicians sending young soldiers off to battle had never in his life seen red blood spilled nor heard a terrified young human being scream in agony.

In Mandy's view, Mr. T. Roosevelt, the myopic Yankee in charge of our Cuba expedition, might be making up for a sickly childhood with his noisy brandishing of flags and guns and cavalry charges up San Juan Hill; she detested his vision of Americans as a “masterful” people whose God-given duty was to bring our superior civilization to the darker breeds. In fact, our nation's imperial ambitions distressed my failing wife so sorely that I dared not confess to her how right and sensible they seemed to me. After all—as the newspapers kept reminding us—the nations of Europe were establishing huge colonies in Africa and Asia and the U.S.A. would do well to grab its share of colonial territories and resources while the grabbing was good, wasn't that true? (As it turned out, all our far-sighted leaders were grabbing was hind tit and Spanish thorns.)

In early June, a month before Carrie's wedding, the U.S. troops—66,000 restless men, including black conscripts and the pudgy Mr. Roosevelt's Rough Riders—disembarked right up the coast at Tampa Bay. Already the black soldiers were offending the good citizens, complained the Tampa
Tribune,
in an editorial I read out loud to amuse my wife. “A number of disturbances resulted, the most serious when black troops objected to white soldiers from Ohio target-shooting at a black youngster. A riot ensued, injuring twenty-seven persons. . . . It is indeed very humiliating to American citizens and especially to the people of Tampa to be compelled to submit to the insults and mendacity perpetrated by the colored troops.”

“Oh, do stop! Please, Edgar.” Pins in her mouth, Mandy was basting Carrie's wedding dress. The editorial had upset her so that she pricked her finger and a round red dot had blossomed on the creamy satin, and because she had not noticed the red dot, no cold water was quickly applied to remove the stain. “I don't know which is worse,” she fussed, “those Ohio soldiers shooting at that child or that cruel, hypocritical editorial.” She looked up. “Or my own husband finding that story amusing—”

“No, no, I was smiling at what follows!” I lied, in need of my ill wife's good opinion. Hastily I read to her a feverish account of the hordes of soldiers rampaging through Tampa's bars and brothels, the drinking and wreckage and the shooting at the ceiling that had punctured the left but-tock of an unlucky prostitute as she plied her trade upstairs. “First casualty of our splendid little war, I reckon.” I frowned hard to hide my chuckle in a fit of coughing, ashamed because the mention of whores' buttocks had reminded me of how long it had been since we'd made love.

“It can't have been funny for that young woman, Edgar Watson!” Mandy cried, with more vigor than she'd shown in months. “What the heck's the matter with us, anyway? Maybe we should all be shot in our white buttocks, give us something to think about besides blood profit and our own darn meanness!” Sucking her pricked finger, she had taken up the newspaper to make sure I wasn't joking. Mandy was by no means humor-less but she detested human cruelty in small matters as well as large, including this whole business of imperial ambitions and race prejudice, which in talking to Lucius she had said “still casts its shadow on the face of our new country.”

The Spanish War was a great boon to our Lee County patriots, in particular the ranchers, whose cow hunters were out beating the scrub for every head of beef they could lay a rope on. These scrags were herded to Jake Summerlin's corrals at Punta Rassa and shipped off to the U.S. troops in Cuba for what our small-bore capitalists might call “a tidy profit” and what more honest folks would call a goddamn hog killing.

Naturally I felt patriotic, too, since in its modest way my syrup industry was prospering. Mostly I traded at Tampa Bay, which had been dredged for coastal shipping and was soon to be accessible by railroad, and mostly I stayed at the Tampa Bay Hotel under curlicue arches and birthday-cake minarets that made the place look like a five-hundred-room whorehouse near the Pearly Gates. I wanted to take Mandy to Tampa to see the sights and attend a concert and do some fancy shopping, but by the time I finally got her there, she was too weak to enjoy it and I brought her home.

To the nation's astonishment, the people of the Philippines rebelled against the Yankee invasion that freed them from the Spanish yoke, but we dealt smartly with such base ingratitude, spilling a lot of Filipino blood for their own damned good. Now that we'd realized how far behind we were in bringing Christ and capitalism to benighted lands around the globe, our American red blood was fired up, and plans were afoot for annexing every territory we could lay our hands on.

Aside from Ben Tillman (who would protest that fooling with these Fillypeenos was bound to inject the inferior blood of a “debased and ignorant people into the body politic of the U.S.A.”), the one notable American who denounced our glorious triumphs over small brown countries was Mandy's revered author, Mr. Clemens. A turncoat Southerner who had dared to blame the War of Northern Aggression on the South, Mark Twain declared that our nation's bold new spirit of conquest was based on nothing more nor less than greed. In our business circle, I had strongly disapproved of Twain's radical tendencies, but privately I had to own that he was sharpwitted and comical, and that even his traitorous opinions rang true except where my own interests were at stake.

HELL ON THE BORDER

Not very long before the wedding, a book entitled
Hell on the Border
arrived in southern Florida and turned up at the Thursday Reading Club in town. Among its bloody tales of the Wild West was the author's version of the life and death of Mrs. Maybelle Shirley Starr, in which “a man named Watson” was identified as her slayer. It was soon confirmed by Sheriff Tippins at Fort Myers (who had learned of it from the sheriff at Key West) that this same Watson, an escaped felon from Arkansas State Prison, was none other than Mr. E. J. Watson of Chatham River.

Word spread quickly and pretty soon all sorts of stories had sprung up, a few of which, to my regret, Carrie brought to her mother's attention. I went to Carrie and commanded her to relate the mean things being said, but all she knew was the gossip overheard at Miss Flossie's Notions Shop by Walter's aunt Etta and aunt Poke.

The story was that Edgar Watson, born to wealthy plantation owners in South Carolina, was the black sheep of a fine family, causing so much trouble that he had to flee. He opened a gambling joint someplace on the Georgia frontier (there were fallen women, too, one lady whispered) with the Outlaw Queen Belle Starr. Belle's method was to have “big winners” followed, killed, and robbed, with Belle herself handling this end of the business if no henchman was handy. “Oh, Edgar and Belle were bad as bad can be!” Carrie mimicked Aunt Etta, smiling to show me how ridiculous all this stuff was, but it was plain that my gallant daughter was truly disturbed.

“There's more, Papa. The Langfords—” She was unable to continue. I turned to Mandy, who told me the rest of it, trying bravely to amuse me.

It seems that Mr. Desperado Watson had a telescope in a lookout high up under the eaves of his white house from where he kept close watch on Chatham River. Desperado spent most of his day scanning the Gulf in case men came after him or “his past caught up with him,” as some would have it. One day he shifted the channel marker at Shark River (actually a drift timber stuck into a sandbar) and on a night of storm, he shone a light to attract a Spanish ship that was on her way north to Punta Rassa to pick up a cargo of cattle for South America. Since she could not continue up the coast and round the shoals of Cape Romaine in such high seas, she took shelter in the river mouth, missed the channel, and went hard aground just as Desperado had planned. Ever so courteous, Desperado rowed over and worked hard to help get her off and afterward they invited him aboard to drink some rum. As soon as those Spaniards got drunk (as was their wont as “Romans”) he slew every last man and took the gold they'd brought to buy the cattle, then towed the ship out to deep water and chopped a hole in her and sank her, having locked the cabin so that no telltale bodies would float to the surface.

“Telltale bodies.” I nodded with approval. “Looks like Mr. Desperado knew his work.”

“Mr. Desperado's Island neighbors revealed that story to somebody's lawyer's sister,” Mandy assured me, “so it must be true.” We were both nodding now. “However, everyone is mystified since all agree that Mr. Despersado is unfailingly considerate and kind to his grateful wife. Unfailingly.” Here she batted her eyes primly, doing her best to smile away her tears. “Also, it turns out that Belle was not killed after all, her death was just a trick Belle and Edgar played to get her out of trouble. Belle even came east and helped him nurse his invalid wife while she wasted away down there in those awful Islands.” When Carrie left the room, Mandy looked up. “Do you suppose these ladies have confused Maybelle with that woman you had living there when I arrived?”

This teasing was as close to a reproach about Netta Daniels as she ever came. Mild though it was, it changed her mood: she chose this day almost a decade later to ask me quietly if I had been Belle's slayer. “I answered that question back in Oklahoma,” I said shortly. “I know you did,” she said, gaze unrelenting. I only huffed as if too offended to answer. She nodded carefully, closing her eyes as if content, which she was not.

One evening at the Bend, Mandy had reminded me that the man she married was a Mr. E. A. Watson and inquired politely what that new middle initial might stand for. I resented this question for some reason. “How about Jesus?” I suggested rudely, going right on with what I was doing, which was molding bullets at the table. A moment later, I looked up, defiant. She was awaiting me as I knew she would be, a born poker player gauging me over her cards. Eyebrows raised a little in that way she had, pale brow as clear as porcelain even in that heat, she held my gaze. Her fixed expression gave me the feeling she was looking straight through my pupils at Jack Watson, who had dropped his gaze in shame, for Mandy had an unmuddied soul and could outstare Jack Watson without even trying.

Arranging a bank loan on good terms, I had bought my wife a little house. “It's small,” I told her, “but I reckon it will hold both cats.” Mandy smiled in a soft burst of joy, so happy was she at the prospect of living privately under her own roof while she was dying.