Shadow Country

back to our peas.

As it turned out, this angry youth was already in danger from the Regulators, the Colonel said. Jack would have to be sent away for his own safety. “He’s too outspoken. Jack knows the Yankees will betray their own Reconstruction Act and the freedmen with it. He is angry and bitter. I have full rights as a citizen, he says, the law is the law. But the law is no longer the law, alas, in Edgefield District.”

“Jack?” I said. I could scarcely believe it.

“Jacob Watson. From Augusta. Hates the name Jacob because he hates the man who gave it to him.”

Stupidly jealous of the Colonel’s concern for this mongrel Watson, I felt threatened. “This Jack Watson doesn’t know his place, sir. That what you mean?”

“That’s what you mean, Edgar.” The Colonel measured me from beneath his heavy brows. “Sooner or later, they will come for him-those who judge that he does not know his place,” he said.

“The Regulators?” I stood up, hot. My heart was pounding. “I didn’t mean-”

Jacob’s mother, he explained, was a light-skinned slave girl who had worked in this house until she became pregnant. After she was sold away, it was put about by the ladies of the family that she had been raped by some white drifter, but the family knew that a young Watson was the father.

I nodded and got up and went away.

• • •

By 1870, when Elijah D. Watson and his son were listed in the census as “farm laborers,” my father had sold off everything he could lay hands on save his horse and rifle. A few bits of hidden jewelry were his wife’s last tokens of her family past. Mama was listed no longer as “Mrs.” but as plain Ellen Watson, which signified that she was no longer a gentlewoman in our community. For a Daughter of Edgefield, that humiliation confirmed the ruin of her husband’s reputation and the loss of our good name.

One Sunday, Tap rode to Clouds Creek on his mule, bringing word that Mama wished to see me. I rode the mule with the colored man up behind, grumbling about his crotch when the mule trotted. At Edgefield, Mama came running out to meet me, scarcely able to contain her happy news.

The previous year, Great-Aunt Tabitha Watson and her daughter Laura, who was Mama’s childhood friend, had journeyed to north Florida to see to the plantation of Laura’s deceased husband, William Myers. In a letter to Laura, Mama had revealed her unhappy marriage to Elijah Watson, which Aunt Tabitha had famously advocated and supported. Requesting shelter, Laura’s old friend mentioned that her strong and willing son was held in high esteem by Colonel R. B. Watson as a very promising farmer: surely this young man would be an asset on her Florida plantation.

Mama told no one what she’d done. A few months later, when her prayers were answered in a return letter sent in care of her brother, she began her preparations for departure. We were to leave in the next days on a cotton cart bound for Augusta, where we would join other pioneers in a wagon train on the old Woodpecker Trail south across Georgia. Asked how she would manage without Cindy, Mama looked surprised. “She will go, too, of course.” And Lulalie? And Tap? Mama waved away these complications. Her servant’s domestic arrangements were her own affair, Mama said blithely. No doubt Cindy’s people would follow when they could.

In her excitement, Mama had never considered my situation either but simply assumed that her son would abandon those dull Watsons to escort his family on this journey. I was silent awhile, not knowing what to say. I felt vaguely homesick for some reason, but whether for Mama’s household or Clouds Creek, I was not sure. I had been so excited by my plan to slaughter one of my young pigs and bring my first ham to Edgefield as a Christmas present.

When I told Mama I would not be going, she became exceptionally vexed. “But I promised them! They may not want us there if you don’t come!” When I stood unmoved, she pled. “This is a long perilous journey, Edgar. Who will protect us?” Next, she said, “You are my son! And your sister needs you!”

But Mama was ever practical, and seeing my expression, soon gave up. With or without me, she would make good her escape, there was no stopping her. She mustered a sort of smile. “Your heart lies at Clouds Creek, I see,” she said in a sincere manner. “I understand. We shall miss you, Edgar, of course we shall,” she continued briskly, attention already shifting as the next thing to be taken care of came to mind, “but no doubt we shall get on fine without you.”

I could not help wishing that she had entreated me. To stay was my choice and yet, ridiculously, I felt abandoned and even a bit hurt that my family would leave home forever without appreciating Edgar’s Christmas ham. I tried to laugh at my bruised feelings but could not. Yet walking home that afternoon and evening, I cheered up a good deal, as my disappointment turned to admiration. “Well, now, Aunt Sophia,” I could say to that old blunderbuss, “it looks like ‘that spoiled Addison girl’ has some grit and spirit!”

At Clouds Creek, Colonel Robert, too tactful to say I had made the right decision, awarded me a rare smile of fond pride: Cousin Edgar knew where Watson duty lay and had the character to make this sacrifice. The good man took me by both shoulders, saying, “I have full confidence in your abilities, Edgar; I have come to cherish the belief that one day you will indeed redeem your family property.” And he quoted that notable Edgefieldian, the former governor James Hammond: Sir, what is it that constitutes character, popularity, and power in the United States? Sir, it is property, and that only!

All my life, I would be guided by those ringing words.

DEEPWOOD

Still unsettled by my womenfolk’s escape to Florida, I needed to reach out some way, make them a parting present, and since I was penniless and my pigs too young to slaughter, I wanted to trap a rabbit or squirrel or possum for a pie. Avoided as a haunt of restless spirits, the old Tilghman place had always been my hunting ground; knowing the wild things’ passages through glades and hollows as a nesting bird knows every point throughout its territory, I ran a new trapline through its ancient forest.

One cold morning of late November, I arrived at the greening ring of the old carriage circle and immediately sensed something in the air. The Deepwood manor house, charred and hollowed out by vigilante fire, squatted half-hidden in a copse of oak and juniper. Over the black hole of the doorway, the high dormer was bound in creeper and wild grape, and the shingled roof peak, ragged now, sagged swaybacked in a failing line along the sky. The ruin had the mournful aspect of a harrow left to rust in an oldfield corner or an abandoned stack of dark rain-rotted hay, but on that day as I drew near, its aspect shifted. Though no smoke rose out of its chimney, the gutted habitation hid some form of life.

In those hungry years, any abandoned roof might shelter thieves or desperate black men without means or destination, and this day I sensed that imbalance in the air that is sign of being watched, even awaited. I passed the house, not breaking step, scanning casually for boot prints or fresh horse dung or anything untoward or out of place. I was prepared. Even so, what I now saw snapped my breath away.

I kept my head, let my gaze skip past, walking on a ways before slipping my jackknife from my pocket, letting it fall. Turning and stooping to retrieve it, I scanned that little porch under the peak, scanned further as I straightened and kept going. Beneath the wild bees’ nest under the dormer, behind the leafy rail, a dark shape crouched motionless, its eyes burning holes into my back as I walked on. That imbalance in the air was the with-held breath of a living thing too bulky for a human being but not dark enough for a black bear even if a bear would climb up in there. I moaned but seized hold of my panic and did not run and never once looked back, crossing the gullied oldfields over red iron earth where hard brambles and thin poverty grass choked the spent cotton.

When I returned to run my traps a few days later, the same gray weather lay upon the land, yet there was a lightness in the air, and a clear cold emptiness behind the frost-bronzed vine on that high balcony. The dark shape that had crouched there was gone. What had it been? The mystery frightened me.

Probably the thing had fled the region, knowing it was seen. But I had scarcely reassured myself when, at the wood edge, I came across a trail of dirtied feathers, not dove or quail killed by a hawk or bobcat but frayed feathers plucked from some old chicken, beckoning sadly from the thorns and twigs in the browning woodland air.

I stared about me, then moved into the forest, as trees fell in behind, all the while peering through skeins of