Shadow Country (89 page)

I remounted and rode away, bruised to the heart. Yet Colonel Robert had rekindled a small hope. Without once meeting my gaze, he had uttered two words before turning back inside. “Not yet,” he said. Had I imagined this?

THE ROAD TO GEORGIA

On my way west to Edgefield Court House and the road to Georgia, seeking some sort of empty absolution, I rode into the old carriageway at Deepwood. The old house had fallen. All but vanished, it lay beneath a blanket of wisteria and creeper and dark ivy. The ancient sheds leaned away into the weeds, seeking the earth. I sat my horse, not daring to dismount, in dread of spirits. Since the Owl-Man's death, I had dreamt of Deepwood many times, a nightmare involving a buried body sure to be discovered. The grave, too shallow, quaked underfoot, as if the cadaver was on the point of emerging from the earth. Unable to flee, I was often awakened by my own sharp cry.

Riding hard, I arrived toward dark at Hamburg on the Savannah River. A few years after Selden Tilghman's torture in this small, sad, sorry town, half of it had been burned to the ground as a “nest of Radical Republicans” and the rest rechristened North Augusta, Georgia.

An old hostler who shared his bad cold food confirmed the story that Hamburg was the place where a war hero turned traitor had been tarred and feathered as a lesson to the Republican inhabitants and their detachment of black militia. “Them Regulators whipped that feller to
strips
! He was just a-beggin 'em to kill him!” He also related the details of the celebrated massacre, just four days after Independence Day of 1876, when the unarmed black militiamen had been taught their lesson. The old man had seen both events with his own eyes. When I asked if a big rufous man with a red ring around his eye had taken part, the man gave me a queer look. “Damn!” he said. “Know something? He sure did!”

For all their talk, the Northerners never knew black people and never really liked 'em. Our home nigras learned that truth real quick when they were sold out by the Yankees, who turned their backs overnight on their black friends. The quiet ones were living along as best they could but many were treated no better than those smart-mouths who were paid off for their swagger with the rope and bullet. Slavery was gone according to the law, but with the Black Codes and the KKK and then Jim Crow, life hadn't changed much for the black man. A hell of a lot more burning and lynching was still going on than anybody could remember back before the War.

In this great depression year of 1893, Cousin Selden's cousin Ben Tillman and his rabble-rousers would found their own Populist Party, which jeered at other parties (and the press) for their shameful subservience to the industrialists and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. The Populists joined with factory workers and the small black vote to go after the capitalists, who hogged all the profits and bribed the police to pound on any who protested while permitting the poor to starve in the cause of progress. Pitchfork Ben would go on to win election to the U.S. Senate, taking his safe seat away from Calbraith Butler. But very soon, Ben would revert to the know-nothing nigger-baiting of his snag-toothed faithful, who had barely scraped acquaintance with the English language.
Maht not know nuthin but Ah sho' knows whut Ah know!
By that time, he had lost his black supporters. “The negro has been infected with the virus of equality,” he complained.

Pitchfork Ben would go far in life with his foaming at the mouth about black rapists out to sully the sacred honor of our Southern womanhood. As my fellow fugitive Frank Reese had once observed, only white rapists could be found in prison because black ones never got that far alive.

Next morning, crossing the Savannah on the ferry, I headed south to Waycross, over east of the Okefenokee. There I hunted in vain for Lemuel Collins, being curious to hear my erstwhile friend explain why he'd shifted the blame for the John Hayes killing onto Edgar Watson. However, I was able to locate that Mr. Smith who had kindly befriended me on my first journey south back in 1870. We went to a tavern for some talk. Remembering my name, he cocked his head to look at me more carefully. Finally he told me that a young feller named Watson had got himself lynched here in this district just a few years back. “Kind of looked like you, is why I mentioned it. Jack Watson. Ever hear of him?”

“Nosir, I never did.”

“Ain't nobody forgot Jack Watson, not around here,” Mr. Smith was still disturbed. “White as you or me to look at but called himself a nigger.
‘Nigger to the bone!'
Had to be crazy as a shithouse rat but he showed plenty of sand there at the last of it.” Eager to relate the whole grim story, he was only restrained by my show of indifference. “Lynchings are all pretty much alike,” I said, “when you get right down to it.”

Mr. Smith invited me home to wash my feet and meet the daughters. There were four if I counted correctly, and every one a head taller than their guest, huge strong young females twice my weight who ate like stallions and drank me right under the table. Once their daddy had turned in with a loud snoring, those giant girls came down there after me and played hell with the clean duds their dad had lent me while mine got a wash. I never saw such love-starved critters in my life. The biggest lugged me over to her cornshuck mattress to finish up the job and I do believe the others had their way with me before the smoke cleared. I did my best but never got the hang of 'em some way, they just weren't built right. I was glad to make my getaway next morning, clawed and gnawed up pretty good but in one piece.

The daughter known as Little Hannah would loom into my life again years later, by which time, with no sisters around to steal her thunder, she was called Big Hannah. By then we couldn't quite recall just what had taken place under that table, but it made Hannah blush. “You had you a whole heap of young womanhood, for sure,” she giggled, “and done pretty good with it, too.”

MISS JANE STRAUGHTER

Crossing into Florida, I headed south along the river road on the west bank of the Suwannee.
All the world is sad and dreary everywhere I roam
—that's how that old song really feels to a man way down upon the Suwannee River in swamp forest in dark winter weather, all that Spanish moss like dead gray hair and doleful vultures hunched on the black snags. I sorely missed dear Mandy and the children and worried how they might be getting on. I didn't even know if Baby Lucius had made it through his first hard winter. For his sake, I kind of hoped he hadn't.

Cypress Creek, White Springs on the Suwannee. Next day I crossed the county line into Columbia but waited till night to ride down past Lake City. No one at Fort White was looking for me but I stayed close to the woods, taking no chances. On the books I was a dead man, drowned in the muddy Arkansas, and I meant to keep it that way, because being dead was the only way I'd ever found to stay out of trouble.

Determined to get things straight with Billy Collins, I went to his house first. Little Julian Edgar, close to my Eddie's age, was already a fine young feller, four years old, and we went hand-in-hand to find his mama. A second boy was toddling around the stove and an infant was toiling at my sister's breast, keeping an eye on me over the tit. With the baby fussing, Minnie did not notice our delegation in the cookhouse door, being pleasured in her nursing in a way that is rarely hidden by that innocent air of milky sweet selfsatisfaction peculiar to young mothers, who imagine themselves and their yowling stinky bundle on a golden cloud at the heart of all Creation. But standing back to consider my sister after these years away, I had to acknowledge that other men might admire this scared creature. With her alabaster skin and full red lips, Minnie was pretty, even beautiful, but to me her flesh looked spiritless as ever, with no more spring in it than suet.

“Company for supper, Nin,” I whispered.

She gasped, backing away. Deathly afraid for her dear Billy, her eyes implored me even as she babbled how overjoyed she was to see her long-lost brother. If she stayed out of the way while I finished up my business with him, everything would probably come out all right, I told her. Not knowing what “probably” might mean, she started crying.

When Collins came, I was sitting on his porch, in the exact same spot I had sat five years before. He stopped short at the gate. Seeing little Julian on my knee, he mustered up some courage, came ahead. “Well, Edgar,” he started, kind of gruff, “this sure is a pleasant surprise.”

“So I imagine.”

Minnie came rushing out to greet her husband before her brother had a chance to do away with him. She told us both how thrilled she was that I was making such good friends with little Julian. I waved her back inside, wishing to query her husband in peace about local attitudes toward Edgar Watson. Was it safe to come back here, send for my family? I demanded an honest answer, granting him a little time to think that over.

A lovely girl with a shadow in her skin brought a pail of milk, waved cheerily, and went away again. “Who's that?” I said. “Depends,” said Billy, “but she is called Jane Straughter.” Our eavesdropping Minnie giggled from inside, and Billy said, “Her daddy might be your old friend J. C. Robarts.” I thought about Jane Straughter all that evening. She had made me very, very restless. I wondered later if I knew right then that I meant to have her.

At supper I told most of my news, how a son Lucius had been born in Arkansas, how I had paid a call on our male parent. Minnie said, “O Lord, Edgar, you didn't—” She could not speak it and I did not explain. Minnie would never believe the truth, not even if I'd shot her father with six bullets and nailed him tight into his coffin, to end her dread that Ring-Eye Lige might one day track her south to Florida. She would be rapturous with re-lief at first, then flail herself because she hadn't grieved. My poor sister was condemned by her badly broken nature to find torment in every circumstance while seeking in all directions for forgiveness.

Having stolen Cousin Laura's foolish heart, Sam Frank Tolen was hot after her money and had already renamed our place Tolen Plantation. Sam had made such a mess of the family cabin that Auntie Tab had gone ahead with the construction of the two-story plantation house that William Myers had been planning when he died. Meanwhile dear Mama, Minnie said, had been made to feel unwelcome under the Tolen roof and was anxious to come live in this small house, help take care of her grandchildren. “Unless she brings Aunt Cindy, she'll be no help at all,” Minnie complained. “We'll be sure to give her your respects,” she added nervously as if I were just leaving.

I wasn't figuring on going anyplace, I said, I wanted to come home and settle down. I turned to Billy, who frowned deeply, weighing his words. “If I were you, Edgar, I would not come home just yet,” he said, all in a breath. This community still figured that somebody should pay for the Hayes killing. I was sure to be arrested. And even if I escaped conviction I was a

wanted man in Arkansas where I would be returned in chains.

“Wanted in Arkansas? And how do you know that?”

Billy was ready. “Sheriff 's office in Lake City was notified by telegraph to be on the lookout for an E. A. Watson.”

“That was the first news we had that you might be alive!” cried my pale sister, as her babe suckled, watching me sideways out of shining eyes.

“Also,” Billy continued, “Will Cox has been taking good care of your cabin so you won't have to worry about that.”

I sat silent, thinking my life over. Life was great and life was terrible and life could not be one without the other, that I knew, which don't mean I understood this or approved it.
Doesn't.
I was saddle sore and weary and begrimed by life, and mortally homesick for a home I had never had unless it was across these woods in my old cabin with Charlie. I couldn't go home to Clouds Creek and I couldn't come home to Fort White. I would have to start all over someplace else.

Seeing my grim expression, my kin were sick with dread, looking away like they'd been whipped across the mouth. The Collins clan, not to mention the Watson women at the plantation—the whole damned bunch, in short—would be greatly relieved if Edgar Watson would make himself scarce for a few more years if not the remainder of his life. Billy was too eager to tell me about the Smallwood and McKinney families who had moved south to Fort Ogden and Arcadia. “Man could do a heck of a lot worse than a fresh start down in that new country, that's what they wrote back to their kinfolks.” He frowned to show how much honest cogitation he'd put into this matter. “Yessir, Ed, a
hell
of a lot worse!” That was the first time I ever heard a Collins swear in the presence of a woman. I winced and shifted as if mortally offended, to see if Minnie would squeal
“Bill-lee!”
which of course she did.

Sprawled in the old rocker while Nin scurried to find bedding, I told him, “I will head on south, send for my family when I find a place.” Ninny fetched me Mandy's address at Broken Bow in the Indian Territory, so relieved I would be gone by daybreak that she promised the family would send to Arkansas for my wife and children and take good care of them until they could rejoin me. They also promised they would tell Will Cox to keep an eye out for a nigra named Frank Reese, give him some work despite his hard appearance.

Those Collinses were greatly relieved to see the dawn. “You haven't seen hide nor hair of me,” I reminded Billy, who came outside as I swung up into the saddle. The moon was going down behind the pinelands. “Last you heard, Ed Watson is dead in Arkansas.”

“Watson is dead,” he nodded earnestly.

ARCADIA

I forded the Santa Fe below Fort White and headed south across the Alachua Prairie where the early Indians and Spaniards ran their cattle. To the east that early morning, strange dashes of red color shone through the blowing tops of prairie sedges where the sun touched the crowns of sandhill cranes. Their wild horn and hollow rattle drifted back on a fresh wind as the big birds drifted over the savanna. That blood-red glint of life in the brown grasslands, that long calling—why should such fleeting moments pierce the heart? And yet they do. That was what Charlie my Darling made me see. They do.