Shadow Country (59 page)

In the car, Rob was subdued. “Lucius? Listen. I'm not going back.”

“To prison? You might have no choice.”

The rain came harder. They passed through a wiper-washed phantasmagoria of dissolving shapes and glimmerings of gold-red liquid light, as if they were newcomers to Hell, he thought, coming in on the highway from the airport.

Nearing a roadhouse, Rob yelled
Stop!
into his ear and Lucius pulled off the road. Grabbing his satchel, Rob clambered out and slammed the door. He bent to the window, blinking away the rain. “They'll come hunting me and drag you into this,” he said. “Go on home, nail down your alibi.” He waved off his brother's protests, finally persuading Lucius that it might be best to separate. “Let's have that gun before you're caught with it,” Lucius said.

Rob fished the revolver from his satchel, but after holding it a moment, put it back. “Family heirloom. I'd better hang on to this. As the oldest son, you know.”

“Where did you get this damn thing anyway?” Lucius said irritably.

“Long story. Read all about it.” Rob tapped the manuscript envelope. “Sure you want this? I wrote it for our archives like you asked but if you're smart, you'll never read it.” When his brother took it, Rob straightened up to peer around him before leaning in again. He said, “Luke? I'm no killer. Remember that, no matter what.” Stepping back, he spread his arms to the night rain as if summoning the gods of the night highways of America to come bear him away home.

In the refracted neon light, his wet stubble glistened. “Maybe I'll show up at Naples for your ‘New Look at Ed Watson' show, throw rotten eggs.

“That's
really
crazy, Rob! Don't do that!” Lucius yelled after him. “They'll be looking for you!”

Rob's silhouette crossed the gleaming mirrors of the puddles in a reeling run toward the roadhouse. The door opened in a crack of light, venting a wail of country music and a waft of deep-fried food. Then the light closed on the silhouette and Robert Briggs Watson was gone.

PANTHER ACRES

From Caxambas next morning, sleepless, at a loss as to what to do, Lucius drove to the nearest telephone at Rusty's and called Bill House. “Mr. House? This is Lucius Watson.”

“
Colonel
Watson?”

“Yessir.” He explained that he had never interviewed a House for his Watson biography and would be grateful for his opinions and conclusions in regard to his father's death. He tried to remain calm as Bill House measured his sincerity in silence, as if awaiting a more persuasive reason for this call.

Lucius studied his scarred boot toe among the cigarette butts and soda bottle caps in the phone booth. A shining grackle waddled past in gawky grackle gait, its cruel eye cocked for a likely scrap to pick apart and gobble.

House's voice was there again. “Just so we're clear about this, Mr. Watson: me and my dad and my brothers Dan and Lloyd, we was all in on it and we ain't never denied it.” The voice paused a moment to let that settle. “I ain't real proud about the way it finished but I don't aim to tell you I'm sorry cause I ain't. Want to come all the way out here just to hear that news in person? You sure you ain't got nothin else in mind?”

“I hoped you might discuss your deposition in Lee County Court. And Henry Short.”

Another pause. “Wife here wants to know if I'm still on your list.”

“I imagine so. I haven't looked at it in years.”

“Maybe I can help you, maybe I can't,” House said. “Depends.” Then the voice growled, “Long as you ain't this sonofabitch that's after Henry with a sniper rifle.” When Lucius exclaimed, “No! I know nothing about that!” House said shortly, “Come ahead, then.” The telephone was fumbled while being hung up and the man's voice continued through the bump and clatter. “It's all right, Betty, all right, sweetheart. No need to be scared just cause he's a Watson.”

Bill House lived northeast of Naples at the edge of Big Cypress, in a new development where the stumps and burned snags and scrub jungle had been pushed back in muddy barriers and broken tangle by the steam shovels left behind by road construction on the Trail. Everywhere brush fires smoldered, the smoke rising to a thick whitish sky. In the distance, the tall cypress, shrouded in graybeard lichen, drew back affrighted from the steel machines at rest among the pale clay pools and the litter of mud-stuck pipe and rusting cable. The makeshift outhouse had a monkey stink and a warped door which banged on its loose hinges in the humid wind.

Bill House had said over the phone that his place was the only inhabited “estate” on Panther Acres. Lucius soon spotted the big florid man in khaki shirt and trousers who filled the doorway of his naked house, peering outward at the desolation. “See any panthers?” House inquired as Lucius got out of his car and walked toward him. Neither offered to shake hands. “Chose Panther Acres on account of all the panthers,” House continued wryly. “Hoped I might hear one screamin in the night.”

House contemplated the battered landscape as if to fathom the mystery of its great ugliness. “They're clearin these ‘retirement estates' way out in the swamp-and-overflowed, sellin most of 'em by mail order. Florida boom! Dredge out ditches, call 'em bayous and canals, build up some high ground with the fill, call that prime waterfront property. All you need is some old swamp and you're in business.”

He waved vaguely at the wasteland. “I kind of looked forward to them musky smells and swamp cries in the night. Owls, y'know, bull gators roarin in the springtime. I reckon you heard that sound up Chatham River.” House turned back into his doorway. “We won't be hearin no bull gators, let alone panthers, cause these developers ain't never goin to stop dredgin and drainin, strippin off cypress to make way for all them Yankees, God-a-mighty! Smashed this forest flat, never put aside no money to clean up. And now the boom is dyin down and hard times startin up so they can't find no more fools to buy more swamp; they run out of money and before I could back out of the whole deal, I run out, too.” He rapped the thin wall of his new house. “You ever need a retirement estate, I know where you could buy one pretty cheap.”

Indoors, the small house was neat, with all blinds drawn against the desolation. “Here's Lucius Watson, honey.” In the kitchen door, a pretty woman wiped her hands on her apron, peeping out fearfully at the guest. “Don't make no false moves, Colonel,” House said for her benefit, pointing Lucius to a chair at the table, “cause that little lady you see there is deathly afraid of Watsons. Scared you might of come out here to bump me off.”

When Lucius grinned, House smiled guardedly for the first time. “You might recall Miss Betty Howell from your school days,” he said when his wife reappeared. “Her dad Jim Howell worked a year at Chatham.”

The two waved shyly at each other as Bill House nodded, bemused by his own memories. “E. J.'s son in the house of a dang House. Now ain't that something?” He folded his big fair-haired hands upon the table. “You recollect that day you come to Chatham lookin for Henry? And snuck in so quiet? I still see that blue cedar skiff, how she tacked up-current, lost her headway, kissed that dock light as a butterfly. Never touched an oar nor cranked his motor,” he told his wife as she set down the tray. He shook his head in admiration. “Colonel sung out a hello but waited where he was cause that was Island custom. Good thing, too, cause I had my shootin iron leaned inside the door.”

House turned serious. “Let's go back a ways. My dad never took to your'n the way Ted Smallwood done. Never pretended to be his friend like some. I weren't no different. I always said straight out and plain that I fired at E. J. Watson, probably hit him, and that was about all I aimed to say about it.”

Betty House, who had perched nervously on a chair at his behest, shifted her feet like a bird about to fly.

“Sure, I felt bad about what happened, far as his widow and her kids, but when D. D. House died off, 1917, I was the oldest, I had the responsibility. And in the twenties, here come Watson's son askin his questions. By then I'd heard about that list so I was leery, knowin Houses was bound to be first ones that son might come a-huntin; I also heard how good that son could shoot. So I reckon I weren't so friendly when you showed up at our dock—your daddy's dock, I mean. I spoke rough and you went redder'n a redbird!

“By then, the Watson story was all skewed around: the House men had waylaid Ed Watson cause we was jealous of his cane crop and big syrup boiler. Houses was the masterminds in a lowdown dirty ambush, Houses shot him in the back.” Considering Lucius, House set down his glass of lemonade. “I never had nothin personal against you, Colonel. I was leery, yes, but mostly I was worried somethin bad might happen and we'd have us another Watson layin dead and some more ugly stories.” Bill House grunted. “I thought you was crazy to come back to the Islands, I admit it, but some way I respected that kind of crazy. Took some guts.”

“No guts at all. I made that list just to be
doing
something before I realized I did not have what it took to act on it—go gunning for revenge, I mean, eye for an eye. I'm glad I didn't but I wasn't glad back then. I was ashamed.”

“Well, you're honest. That's what I heard, too.” House changed the subject. “Ain't like your brother. Couple years ago, I was in Fort Myers so I went in and bought some insurance off of him to show there weren't no hard feelings on our House side. E. E. Watson acted like he felt that same way, he was real polite. But after my insurance was all bought and paid for, he let me know that he was a good Christian who done his best to practice Christian forgiveness but Mr. House should of took his business someplace else. Boy, I come out of there just steamin. That darned Christian forgive me for just long enough to take my money.”

Mrs. House gasped and stood up before Lucius could object. House flushed. “Sorry, Colonel. Eddie's all right, I reckon. Never killed nobody as I know of.” He blushed deeper still as his wife fled back into her kitchen. “But like I was sayin, with my family on the Bend, I couldn't take no chances—not that I ever thought you was real dangerous. I mean, you weren't nothin like your daddy, you just weren't that kind.”

For some reason, this remark made Lucius cross. “But as you say, you couldn't count on that. You could never be quite certain.”

“Nosir. You was Ed Watson's boy. I could never be one hundred percent certain, and I ain't today.” Irritated in return, House snapped, “That what you're up to after all these years? Trying to scare folks?” His wife's small cry from the kitchen was a plea to soften his harsh tone, but her stolid husband wore a dogged look, unable to refrain from telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help him God. “I'm speakin my mind plain, Betty,” he told her, “same way I done last time.”

House was watching Lucius as if appraising him. “Might have some grit but you sure ain't got good sense. You keep snoopin around this backcountry askin damfool questions, keepin lists, how's them boys s'posed to know you ain't a fed?”

“The men on that damned list are mostly dead—”

“I ain't dead far as I know and Speck Daniels ain't neither, not lest he went yesterday.”

“Oh hell, if I'd wanted revenge—” But still unsure what he'd wanted, he fell silent.

“That a fact? If you was Speck, would you take a Watson's word for that?”

Lucius drank off his lemonade, discouraged. “Anyway, that's why I wanted to see Henry. Wanted to hear his account of it firsthand—”

Bill House interrupted him. “You come after Henry and now you're back; don't look like you're makin too much progress, Colonel.” Briefly, ruefully, they both grinned, to ease matters.

The silence returned. House's clear gaze was a question. Lucius knew that the more he insisted on his peaceable intentions, the more sinister his pursuit of Henry might appear. Finally he rose to go. He understood, he said, why his host had to be careful, but if he'd wanted to harm Henry, he'd had plenty of chances in years past to catch him alone down in the rivers and nobody would have said a word about it.

“You might of had trouble from Houses but mainly that's correct. Folks wanted to put that whole business behind 'em, and if a black man had to pay the price, too bad. Some has tried to blame him anyway, as I guess you've heard.”

Lucius nodded. “Later that week of October twenty-fourth, you gave that deposition in Lee County Court. Seemed like you were trying to defend somebody against rumors. Was that Henry?”

House measured him. “Yes, it was. Poor feller been hidin out from rumors ever since.”

“The story that Henry was present, that was one thing, but the other rumor—that he was the first man to shoot, that he fired the fatal bullet—doesn't make much sense.”

“No sense at all. Them Jim Crow years, Pitchfork Ben and all, was the worst of times for any nigra crazy enough to stick his head up out of the mud, and Henry Short weren't the least little bit crazy. All his life, he's been dead wary around white men and for damned good reason.”

“No sense at all,” Lucius agreed. “Was there any truth to it?”

“Why don't you consult your goddamned list, see if he's on there?” Quite suddenly, House turned a dangerous red, and his angry voice brought his wife to the kitchen doorway. “What are you after? What d'you think I been tryin to tell you here?”

“I'm not quite sure. I only know that in your testimony two days after the shooting, you already sounded defensive about rumors. So I guess I need to know why that was so.”

Bill House sat back exasperated, slapping his big hands down on his knees. “
Why
do you need to know? All that happened long ago. High time you lived your own life, Colonel.” But when Lucius simply awaited him, he nodded. “Reckon I'd feel the same. Sit down then. You ain't touched your cookies.”