Shadow Country

Hoad hailed him cheerily and waved him to a seat. “Cap’n Lucius Watson, fish guide! Same old khakis and salt- rotted sneakers!” But Lucius was too restless to sit down, and seeing his exhaustion and the silence in it, Storter gave him time to collect himself while he finished describing to his son how he and Cap’n Watson netted pompano off the Gulf beaches, mostly at night, following the schools from Captiva Island south to the middle Keys. “Wasn’t that something, Lucius? To have your own boat at your own dock and go to work only when the tide was right?” Hoad whistled in amazement. “Mullet schools two miles across, not a mile out of Caxambas!” he told the boy, who was twisting in his seat.

The boy ran off and Hoad sat back, a little sad. “Way things are going, our children will never see a mullet school as big as that, poor little fellers.” He frowned. “Heck, I have nothing to complain about, I know that. It’s our own darn fault. Sold away our good old river home under the trees for a new house on a new street in Naples with no trees at all. My wife likes it, I guess, but a backyard don’t amount to much compared to riverfront.”

Hoad fell still, awaiting him. He jumped up when Lucius told him what had happened. “We’ll go look for him.” Hoad’s boat was hauled out upriver by the bridge, she only needed to be launched and refueled. They could leave for Chatham first thing in the morning.

They walked along under royal palms toward the village circle, then headed north toward the bridge to see to Hoad’s boat, then back along the river. At the far end of every street, the encircling green mangrove lay in wait, as if after dark it might infiltrate and smother the small settlement, reclaiming it as jungle. Already insolent hard weeds were pushing through big cracks in the broken sidewalk.

Hoping to cheer him, Hoad told him that according to the radio this morning, the E. J. Watson claim on Chatham Bend had been dismissed by the state court. “Looks like the new park is on the way,” Hoad chortled.

At the lodge, they sat outside gazing across the twilight channel where the sun falling to the Gulf out to the west still fired the highest leaves on the green wall. On other days these common miracles were healing, but this evening, the burning mangrove leaves, the dying light’s faint flashes in the current-the quiet beauty in that transience-stirred only loneliness. Arranging with Hoad to meet early next morning, he excused himself and, picking up his glass, went inside and crossed the lobby to the telephone.

GONE AND LOST FOREVER

Startled when he reached Nell at once, Lucius was shy and awkward, stammering remorse for the neglectful way he’d treated her over the years and his unhappiness about the happiness he’d thrown away. But since he’d lawman made this clear at their meeting in the cemetery, she remained silent, awaiting his explanation of why he had chosen this moment to call. finally, he told her about Rob.

“Oh Lucius, no!” she said. “Oh Rob! When I think how much you missed him all those years-oh Lucius, sweetheart, maybe he’s all right. Will you let me know?”

Overwhelmed by her warm concern, he said, “Nell? Will you marry me?”

Her silence scared him. “Nell?”

“Goodness,” she murmured. “What a strange time to propose.” She asked coolly if he had been drinking. He set his glass down, then denied this, but another silence made it evident that she knew better. He heard a soft clearing of the throat in preparation for some final rejection that would be unbearable. To head that off, he entreated her all in a rush, “I’ve always loved you, Nell, you know that. We could be so happy-”

Gently she cut him off. “Listen to me. Thank you. But since your father died, you’ve never permitted yourself happiness, so how could we be happy? It wouldn’t work.”

He said, “It’s quite impossible, I agree.” Then he said, “Come on, Nell. Marry me anyway.”

He heard her laugh a little as he’d intended. But after a moment, she said that while she was glad she’d seen him after so long and would always consider him her oldest and best friend, she did not think they should meet again anytime soon.

In panic, he pretended she was testing him although in his heart he knew that she was not. “Please, Nell, listen, don’t hang up. I mean it. I’m asking you to marry. Isn’t that what you wanted?” She had put the phone down.

Across the lobby, mounted tarpon leapt in painful arcs on the dark wood walls. The ocean pearliness on the Triassic scales of these huge armored herring had faded to a dirtied yellow and the rigid jaws, stretched forever in pursuit of that fatal lure, were shrouded in the ghostly grays of spiderwebs.

At Caxambas, exhausted, he lay awake most of the night. He thought about his clumsy proposal, his slurred voice, the hurtful stupidity of saying, Isn’t that what you wanted? He would call back and apologize in the morning. But when morning came, his resolve had unraveled. He sat on the cot edge a long while before coming to and dragging on the other sock. He decided that a discreet interval must pass before he courted his true love again. He must be patient, then draw near carefully so as not to spoil their romantic reunion. Sincerely moved by that prospect, he was also inadmissibly relieved, though he would not face this until weeks later when he realized she was truly gone and lost forever.

At daybreak he placed the brass urn in a box together with the humble collection of anonymous belt buckles and buttons. Before leaving, he added the manuscript of the biography. His decision to accept the loss of years of work had its seed in Rob’s confession, but only now did he behold it in the light, like a magic toad escaped from his own mouth. He felt no astonishment at his decision nor did he feel overwhelmed by failure-quite the contrary. Like the confrontation with the Daniels gang, it was oddly exhilarating.

HOMEGOING

The Cracker Belle was a small fishing boat, formerly white, now driftwood gray. They idled her downcurrent past the rusty fish houses and the leaning bulkhead stacked with sea-greened crab pots. Emerging from the mangrove wall into Chokoloskee Bay, they headed out the north channel to the Gulf and traveled south along the coast, passing Rabbit Key with its lone mangrove clump on the seaward point; it rose ahead, passed on the port side, and fell astern.

Though Lucius was silent, Hoad knew where his mind was. Hoad was the one friend with whom Lucius would discuss that black autumn evening. “Trouble was, nobody could rest easy with Mister Watson laying out there in the moonlight. That’s why they towed him way out here. I bet every darn kid on the Bay had bad dreams for a month about that cadaver bumping down Rabbit Key Pass on the flood tide.”

Hoad smiled apologetically at Lucius, who could not smile with him. The seeds of legend, he was thinking, sown in his father’s blood. It was not like Hoad to talk this way: had he forgotten he was talking about his friend’s father and his own father’s best friend? Was Papa in the public domain to be pawed over and patronized now that he was the legendary “Bloody Watson”?

Hoad had remembered to put a shovel in the boat. Was he uneasy about what might await them at the Bend? Hoad hated violence just as his father had (“Cap’n Bembo couldn’t kill a chicken; his wife had to do it,” Papa said).

“Course those Chok fellers ran that rope around his neck so the family could locate the body when they came for it,” Hoad was saying.

Lucius said, “Hoad, I saw no noose and I was there, remember? They probably got that tale about the hanging rope out of the magazines.”

Hoad apologized. “I’m sorry, Lucius. My point was-”

“I know what your point was. Let’s forget it.” In the next hour, they did not speak again.

The Cracker Belle was the lone boat on the empty coast. Far offshore to westward, a tiny freighter smudged the Gulf horizon.

Traversing the old clam beds east of Pavilion Key, Hoad mentioned that this shallow shelf was now so plagued with sharks that men disliked going overboard to wade for the few clams left, and nobody knew what drew the sharks from the deep water. Some folks said that that plague of sharks foretold that the old ways of Earth were near an end.