Lost Man's River (96 page)

“I loved that sweet Miss Sally Daniels right from school days, she was the prettiest girl I ever seen and she still is. When I asked her to marry, she said no but I kept at it, and Finally she took a real deep breath and told me what happened about Crockett Junior. For a while, I was pretty jealous over Junior, bein as how I seen him every day, worked alongside him. But I told her I could handle that, and asked her again to be my wife. She said Nosir, not unless you leave off workin for a certain sonofabitch name of Crockett Senior, and I said, No, Sal, I can't just quit on him, and Sally said, ‘You will, just wait and see.' Then she leaned over to whisper in my ear, said, ‘That means “Yes, I'll marry you,” case you don't know it!' ”

Whidden smiled with pleasure at this memory. “So I went to Speck and I said, ‘Well, Old-Timer, I aim to marry your fine daughter if you give her to me.' I was aimin to marry his fine daughter whether he give her to me or he didn't, but I never told him about that part.

“Speck Daniels was in Everglade that day, whilin away the afternoon drinkin beer in his bunk on his old boat upriver by the bridge. Looked me over for quite a while there with just one red eye, gettin his brain together. Liked a Harden better as his moonshine partner than his son-in-law, I seen that straight off. Sat up finally and finished up his beer and spat most of his
chewin tobacco through that little slot into the can. Then he squints at it and says, ‘This here looks like some kind of a dang twat. What's your opinion, boy?'—them was the first words from that man's mouth, hearin the news that his sweet daughter aimed to marry. Then he looks up and he says, ‘Our family don't tolerate mixed people, Whidden, you know that.'

“ ‘What's that got to do with me?' I says.

“Speck looks me over for a minute. ‘Heck if I know,' he says. Next, he says, ‘You're a bad drinker, Whidden, I been watchin you. Old days now, a man that spent up all he made on spirits and weren't loyal to his family might get him a whippin. What's your views on that?'

“ ‘Who's gonna give me that whippin, Speck?' says I.

“ ‘Heck if I know,' Speck says again, and he cracks us both a beer. ‘I got no say about it anyways, so you are welcome to her. Don't even know where she is livin at. Her and me been lookin crossways at the other from the first time she opened up her eyes in her layette. Weren't for me, that gal would of married her own brother, so I reckon she can't be too much worse off hitched up to you.' Rolled over then and closed his eyes, wavin me the hell out of his cabin. ‘Just mind she don't go gettin you so pussy-whipped that you can't work nights, that is all I'm askin.'

“That was Speck Daniels's way of saying, Let's you 'n' me forget it, son, cause I don't give a shit.”

Whidden tried to laugh at his father-in-law's low-down ways, but he didn't have his heart in it, and stopped.

“Course Sally herself ain't got it all doped out yet. But in my opinion, this grudge of hers, this refusin to forgive what was done to Hardens—well, that ain't only just her kindly nature.” Whidden lifted his gaze from the night water and held Lucius's eye. “She turned her back on her own family, and not only her own family but her own kind. She blames this on their bad attitudes, but she's too honest to pretend that's all it is.”

Whidden sighed. “She can't abide her daddy. Even before she got mixed up with Crockett Junior, she could not tolerate Speck Daniels, and that goes way back to the time she heard how Speck and his brother-in-law helped lynch that nigra man at Marco. Course he done that as a young feller in the Depression—”

“That made it all right?”

“No, but he's changed some. Might not do nothin such as that today.” Whidden cast again, hard, with a light whipping sound. “I ain't goin to criticize Speck Daniels, Mister Colonel. I knowed all about that Marco business when I went to work for him, and it never kept me from feelin proud about my job with the number one moonshiner and gator poacher in South
Florida. I never thought too much about the right and wrong of it. Never thought much at all, and that's the truth, not till Sally come along and woke me up.” He considered Lucius with a rueful gaze.

“But why does Sally—”

“The Hardens are her family now cause she ain't got one of her own, so she's bein fierce, she tries to take on all the pain our family suffered. She can't make these people say they're sorry, or apologize, though she's sure try in—you seen her in Naples!

“In her heart, Sally wants me to be white, wants our kids to be white, not only because that is right but because our kids will have a better chance that way. But she is ashamed of wanting that so bad, cause it makes her feel disloyal some way to those old-time Hardens that were so discriminated. That's why she's so ready to scrap with folks like Andy who might still think that the Hardens were … mixed.

“What I'm learning is—real slow but deep—it just don't matter.
It don't matter!
There's a
lot
of families on this coast got a little color that they ain't owned up to. Well, that ain't nothin to be ashamed of! It comes from the wild nature of our Florida history. You take them Muskogee and Mikasuki Creeks, some were mixed-blood when they first come down here out of Georgia, and the early pioneers had children with 'em, and with runaway slaves, too.
In thees meex blood ees foking gee-nee-us of America!
That's what old Chevelier used to holler at my granddad. Claimed there weren't one white man on this earth who didn't have some black or brown in him, because all mankind got started out in Africa!

“You got a million drops of white, one drop of black, and you're supposed to be a nigra, accordin to that old redneck arithmetic. Well, in a century, that one drop can travel a long ways, and these local families are so much intermarried that whatever is true of one is true for all. That one little drop is just a-spreadin all the time, but it stays hid, like a molasses drop in milk. Most of the time you never notice, and then you might get a glimpse of it, one little trace, or one person that's too dark in a fair-haired family, or might be bad hair. Most likely that family never knew that it was there, so they don't even recognize it when they see it. Depends how strong your family is in your community. If you are strong enough, it just don't count. Nobody sees it.

“Our pastor and his wife was narrow-minded. They would not accept a boy from Marco that their daughter wanted because he weren't raised up Pentecostal Church of God. Weren't one thing wrong with that young devil that a bullet wouldn't cure, it was only he was runnin kind of wild. So that girl done what Abbie Harden done, she run off with a young black feller, to spite 'em. And now them poor worshipful folks got to smile until it hurts,
cause that black son-in-law is just as God-lovin as they are, and not only that but a decorated American hero, a veteran of the United States Marines!” Whidden laughed quietly. “If that preacher had a second chance, he'd take and hogtie that wild Marco heathen to his daughter, never mind if they took their vows in jail. But bein a good Christian, he must stand up and be proud that she married this patriotic soldier boy from the black community, this fine upstandin young American that risked his life for freedom and democracy. They
got
to be happy about that boy—ain't that a terrible thing? They
got
to be happy! Whether they like bein happy or they don't!”

But in a moment, his jaw set again. “Yep,” he said. “Miss Sally Brown is still burnt up over the old days, and she's over there at the Historical Society every year, fighting her heart out for our family name. And everyone wishes—Hardens especially—that that pretty little gal would just shut up, because all she is doing is stirring up old gossip.

“Today Hardens are doin fine all over southwest Florida, ranch homes and new pickups and fair-haired kiddies everywhere you look. They have left most of them old Baptists who looked down on 'em back in the dust. These new Hardens have forgot all that old bitterness, if they even knew about it. Wouldn't of never doubted they was white people if that darned female Cousin Whidden married didn't stir up so much sand tryin to prove it.”

Whidden smiled faintly. “Got this big fight goin against herself, and they ain't no way she can win, poor little sweetheart. She wants it both ways, same as the rest of us, but can't admit to it. That's why you see her strugglin so hard.”

“And that's hard on Whidden,” Lucius said.

“I wanted to think we could heal things some between our families by bein together, bein who we was. Sally agreed with that idea but she don't cooperate. She's been to college, takes it real hard about race prejudice, she just despises people for despisin nigras. Sally says over and over that the color of your skin don't matter, it's your heart and mind that count. Trouble is, at the same time she is sayin skin don't matter, she is out to make them old-timers admit that the Hardens weren't mulattas, but only had some Injun in their blood. She even wants 'em to admit that Henry Short was probably Injun, to show the world that Libby Harden never run off with a colored man.

“Well, them old-timers ain't going to admit no such a thing. That generation got their idea about the old-time Hardens and they ain't goin to change it. And with the world they knew changin so fast, you can't hardly blame 'em.”

“You don't blame them?”

“Aunt Libby married a brown man, Henry Short, then Aunt Abbie run off with a black one. Can you blame folks for thinking the way they do?”

“Blame,” Lucius said shortly, tasting that word.

“I been talking about Sally, ain't I. But it looks like I am fightin that hook, too.”

Lucius Watson had helped raise Roark Harden. He knew Wilson, too, since these cousins had been inseparable. Because of Earl's hostility, he had never been quite comfortable with Wilson, but had always very felt close to Roark, who was nine when they first met, and who, even as a boy, had been generous and dead honest like his father. However, Lucius was also fond of Walker Carr's son Alden, who had remained friendly throughout that period in the twenties when almost everyone except the Hardens was avoiding him.

When the Johnson boy brought word from Tavernier that Alden Carr had made a drunk confession in a bar, the Harden men had loaded up their guns. Even Earl, who took such pride in his Bay friends, was raging around about a raid on Chatham Bend. Lucius went to Lee and offered to go instead. He would talk with Alden, make sure they had the story straight before steps were taken that might get the wrong ones killed. Suspicious, Lee had studied Lucius's eyes before he nodded.

By the time Lucius turned up at the Bend, poor Alden was more frightened of his brothers than he was of Hardens, but he took responsibility for what he'd said at Tavernier and did not try to contradict that story. When Lucius confronted the others, both denied it, saying that when Alden was drunk, he sometimes made up crazy stories to get attention to himself, which, alas, was true. Then Old Man Walker, who had been listening behind the door, blew up and came bursting in, yelling at the visitor to ease his nerves. Before his boys could hush him, he hollered out that those damned Hardens had stolen five hundred dollars' worth of pelts, then threatened his boys when they went to get them back. One of their guns must have gone off, and his sons, afraid they were being shot at, had no choice but to return their fire, “not intendin to
hit
nobody! It was self-defense!” After firing that one wild volley in the dark, his boys had hurried back to their own camp. So far as they knew, the Harden boys had left Shark Point early the next morning, for their skiff was gone.

When their father started hollering, Owen and Turner slipped away, but Alden trailed Lucius to the dock. He asked whose side Lucius was on, and Lucius asked how he could take sides without knowing the truth. Alden
squinted at him. “What Pa told may not be the God's truth, Lucius,” Alden said coldly and carefully. “But it's our Carr truth. This year, anyways.”

Lucius was already cast off when Old Man Walker roared down to the dock and cuffed poor Alden out of the way and bellowed at Watson's son across the water. “I was very old friends with your dad! You know it, too! Done my best that day to stop that crowd. So if it comes down to some kind of a showdown, Lucius, are you on your old friends' side or ain't you?” Next, he hollered, “Lucius, boy, for ten years now you been wanderin around these islands askin a whole hell of a lot of stupid questions, and it sure looks like you're doin that again! If it weren't for me tellin the men you was only a heartbroke poor damn fool that meant no harm, it's
you
who might of come up missin, boy, not no damn Hardens!” Red and sweating, Walker Carr turned his back on him and stumped away. Within a day, the Carr family was gone from Chatham River.