Shadow Country

The silence burst. A woman shrilled, “I knew it! I just knew it!” A man’s voice hailed him, “Hey there, Colonel. How you been doin, Colonel? I been tellin the wife how much you looked like you.” At this, Hoad Storter in the front row shared a smile with Lucius. In his bright yellow sweater, Hoad looked like a seated lemon.

A lady near the back held up his history. “If you are Lucius Watson, how come you’re ashamed to use your rightful name on your own book?”

The hall hummed with excitement. Old Brown tried to recapture the floor. “He’s just makin it up about that older brother! It was Eddie!”

“Tell that cock-eyed old idjit to sit down and shut up!”

Rob’s shout had come from the doorway behind Crockett Junior and the others, who ran out after him. Excusing himself, Lucius jumped down from the stage, ran up the aisle, but by the time he made his way outside, they were all gone. He returned frustrated, making his way back toward the front.

In his absence, voices had arisen.

“Well, what we heard when we was comin up, Killer Cox snuck back into the Glades, lived with the Injuns, him bein part of a Injun hisself.”

“Might be in there yet! No tellin who’s skulkin around back in them rivers, and they ain’t many has went in there to find out.”

“-so Colonel says, ‘If you dang feds set fire to this Watson house to clear the way for your dang park, you will have to set fire to a Watson.’ We sure don’t want ol’ Colonel going up in smoke!”

“Nosir, it weren’t nobody but Henry Short killed Watson, way I heard it. Put his bullets in so close you could lay a dollar bill acrost the holes-”

“Thing of it is, Short were a colored man. Still is, far as I ever heard about it. Nigger Short-”

“Henry Short,” called Lucius, reclaiming his place at the podium.

Old Brown was still standing, fingers working the back of the folding chair in front of him, life fluids all aglimmer in his eyes; he would not sit down, as if afraid that his decrepit corpus might never again propel him to his feet. Raising his hand, he cleared his old throat thoroughly by way of commanding audience attention to an oft-told tale about Ed Watson and the sheriff ’s deputy. This time Lucius cut him off, reminding the audience that, as a historian, he had to discard undocumented anecdotes, however intriguing.

When Old Man Brown, his tale discounted, suddenly sat down, the faces pinched closed like frost-killed buds and chairs creaked loudly in disapproval. By questioning an elder’s recollections, the speaker had undermined local tradition, and now his audience made it plain that any diminishment of the Bloody Watson legend, even by his son, would not be tolerated. In twos and threes and then in rows, the audience rose with a loud barging of chairs and moved off toward the exits.

Lucius hailed their backs: “Good night!” His E. J. Watson evening had spun into a shambles. To avoid confrontations, he remained at the podium, pretending to shuffle notes into some sort of order as Hoad came forward to confirm their plan to dine at the new fishing lodge in Everglade in the next day or two.

Last to depart was Nell’s father, who limped past in syphilitic shuffle, evading the speaker’s eye. When Lucius followed him up the aisle and touched his elbow, he swung around, alarmed, then backed like a crayfish into the space between two rows of chairs.

“I’m surprised you recalled me, Mr. Dyer,” Lucius said. “I wasn’t much more than fifteen when you left the Bend.” Scowling, the man emerged from the row and continued on his way with Lucius in attendance. “Your son’s not here?” Lucius inquired. “I kind of expected him.”

“He’s your damned kin, not mine.” Fred Dyer looked him in the eye for the first time. “What’s he up to anyways? Cold-hearted sonofabitch! Couple months ago, he tracks me down where I’m drinkin, orders me a round while he sits there suckin on his sarsaparilla. Says you still telling people I’m Ed Watson’s son? Hell, yes! You willing to make that statement in a affidavit? Hell, yes! Next thing I know, there’s a legal paper slapped down on the bar. ‘It is the opinion and sincere belief of the undersigned Frederick O. Dyer that the infant male christened Watson Dyer, born December 4 of 1894, at Fort Myers Florida, is the natural son of the planter E. J. Watson of Chatham River.’ ” He shook his greasy head. “Them words on that legal paper burned into my brain, what I got left of it, although I been saying the same damned thing for years. And now this feller who threatened to sue anybody who even hinted such a thing has turned around, got me to certify he’s Watson’s bastard. Made it official.”

Fred Dyer seemed bewildered, even a little hurt. “I said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Wattie, what’s this all about? Ain’t this here a little late in life?’ And he puts his arm across my shoulders where I’m settin on my stool, says, ‘Fred, I’m tired of living a damn lie and I bet you feel the same.’ First time he ever touched me, let alone called me Fred. Looked real lost and pathetical, so I felt sad, too, and signed his paper. When I look up again, my ex-son is grinning like a alligator. Tucked away that paper quick and disappeared. Never paid my whiskey nor said thanks, never give me so much as a wave good-bye.”

At the door of the hall, Fred Dyer yanked his bent straw down on a head of yellowed silver hair that straggled over his soiled collar. “You was always a nice young feller, Lucius, but from what I heard, you never done right by my daughter.”

Lucius said, “I aim to do right by her from now on, sir, if she’ll have me…”

“Ever try askin her?” With a sour look, Fred O. Dyer moved away under the streetlights.

ATTORNEY WATSON WATSON

Outside, Crockett Junior loomed at his elbow. “Where’s my brother?” Lucius demanded. The big man seized his arm and yanked him toward the street where a black car waited with its motor running. The front passenger door swung open. Crockett pushed him in and, careless of his ankles, slammed the door behind him.

“Your crazy brother tried to kill me,” Watson Dyer said, easing his car forward.

“That’s nonsense. All he did was shoot out your rear tires.”

“We’ll see,” Dyer said. He drove his black car to the oceanfront, stopping just short of the beach edge and leaving the motor running. Beyond the sparkle of small breakers, a moon-spun silver swath of sea extended westward to the lowest stars above the Gulf horizon. Gazing straight into the earth galaxy for minute after minute, Watt Dyer saw nothing but his windshield, Lucius guessed: he looked sealed off, impervious to wonder, his window rolled tight against the fresh sea air. “Brother Lucius knows all about my shot-out tires. Brother Lucius was a witness.” Dyer turned to look at him. In the bad light of an old-fashioned street lamp, his moon face was moon- colored. “Brother Lucius could go to federal prison as an aider and abettor because he knew Robert B. Watson was armed and dangerous and he did not stop him.”

“I hadn’t realized he was armed and I don’t believe he’s dangerous. Reckless, maybe. Otherwise quite harmless.”

“Escaped convict? Attemped murder? No court will ever call that ‘harmless.’ ” Dyer’s bloodless hands clenched the wheel tighter and his eyes closed in that slow tortoise blink. He said, “We have him. If he is delivered to the authorities, he’ll be returned to prison and resentenced with due consideration of his prior conviction and escape. He will die in federal custody. Whereas if his brother cooperates, the law might settle for that black lunatic with the carving knife. Teach that kind of smart-mouth nigger a good lesson. Nice tight case. Plenty of witnesses saw him storming out and can testify to his aggressive state of mind.” He watched Lucius’s face.

Lucius said, “But another eyewitness in the parking lot spotted a white man shooting at the victim’s car from a hotel window; saw him plenty well enough to testify that it wasn’t some big black man in a white cook’s outfit who got loose some way on the sixth floor.” He turned to meet Dyer’s eye. “Anyway, you don’t know Rob. He’ll never let that black man go to jail for him. He feels bad enough that we got him fired.”

“That your testimony?” Dyer glared in disbelief. “You’d let your long-lost brother get locked up for the rest of his life just to save some black maniac who assaulted a white man with a carving knife? Slit his stomach?” He drew his power-of-attorney form out of his briefcase. “We both know you’re not going to sacrifice Robert so why don’t you just sign this and shut up.”

“What’s missing here? Why is it suddenly so important to you to be E. J. Watson’s bastard? I’m talking about that affidavit you extracted from your former father.”