Shadow Country

these affect the lives of those living too close to the bone and way out on the edge, with no voice in the economic and environmental attrition that erode the foundation of their hopes and nothing with which to confront their own irrelevance but grit and rage. The ills of our great republic as perceived through the eyes of backcountry Americans might seem inconsequential, yet people who must deal with real hardship in the pursuit of happiness, not mere neurosis, can be bitterly eloquent and darkly funny, which is why I have always enjoyed their voices and enjoyed writing about them. In the end, however outlandish such characters may seem, their stories, too, are born of the human heart-in this case, the wild heart of a shadow cousin and so-called desperado.

In regard to Watson, reviewers of the original three books have cited D. H. Lawrence’s idea that “the essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.” To a degree, this may be true of Watson, but he is more mysterious than that. As best I understand him after all these years, he was neither a “natural-born killer” nor a man of stunted criminal mentality-such men aren’t interesting. On the other hand, he was obsessed, and obsession that isn’t crazed or criminal is enthralling; in thirty years, I have learned a lot about obsession from too much time spent in the mind of E. J. Watson.

– Peter Matthiessen

Spring 2008

***

E. J. WATSON

HIS ANCESTORS:

John and William, sons of Lucius Watson of Virginia, moved to Edgefield District, South Carolina, in the middle of the eighteenth century. John’s son Michael, who became a renowned Indian fighter and hero of the Revolutionary War, married William’s daughter Martha, his first cousin. Their only son was Elijah Julian (1775-1850), who consolidated the large family holdings and left a plantation at Clouds Creek at Ridge, north of Edgefield Court House, to every one of his eleven children, including Artemas.

HIS PATERNAL GRANDPARENTS:

Artemas Watson (1800-1841) and Mary Lucretia (Daniel) Watson (1807-1838)

HIS PARENTS:

Elijah Daniel Watson (“Ring-Eye Lige”)

b. Clouds Creek, S.C., 1834

d. Columbia, S.C., 1895

Ellen Catherine (Addison) Watson

b. Edgefield Court House, S.C., 1832

d. Fort White, Fla., 1910

EDGAR ARTEMAS* WATSON:

b. Clouds Creek, S.C., November 11, 1855

d. Chokoloskee, Fla., October 24, 1910

1st wife (1878): Ann Mary “Charlie” (Collins) Watson, 1862-1879

Robert Briggs “Rob” Watson, b. Fort White, Fla., 1879-?

2nd wife (1884): Jane S. “Mandy” (Dyal) Watson, 1864-1901

Carrie Watson Langford, b. Fort White, Fla., 1885-?

Edward Elijah “Eddie” Watson, b. Fort White, Fla., 1887-?

Lucius Hampton Watson, b. Oklahoma Territory, 1889-?

3rd wife (1904): Catherine Edna “Kate” (Bethea) Watson, 1889-?

Ruth Ellen Watson, b. Fort White, Fla., 1905-?

Addison Tilghman Watson, b. Fort White, Fla., 1907-?

Amy May Watson, b. Key West, Fla., 1910-?

Common-law wife: Henrietta “Netta” Daniels, ca. 1875-?

Minnie Daniels, ca. 1895-?

Common-law wife: Mary Josephine “Josie” Jenkins, ca. 1879-?

Pearl Watson, ca. 1900-? Infant male, b. May 1910: perished in Great Hurricane of October 1910

EJW’S SISTER:

Mary Lucretia “Minnie” Watson, b. Clouds Creek, S.C., 1857, d. Ft.

White, Fla., 1912

Married William “Billy” Collins of Fort White, Fla., ca. 1880

Billy Collins died in 1907 at Fort White

The Collins children:

Julian Edgar, 1880-?

William Henry “Willie,” 1886-?

Maria Antoinett “May,” 1892-?

ALSO:

EJW’s great-aunt Tabitha (Wyches) Watson (1813-1905), 3rd wife and widow of Artemas Watson’s brother Michael: instrumental in marriage of Elijah D. Watson and Ellen Addison, d. Fort White, Fla. 1905

Her daughter Laura (1830-1894), childhood friend of Ellen Addison.

Married William Myers ca. 1867

Married Samuel Tolen ca. 1890

BOOK ONE

Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.

– JACOB RIIS

PROLOGUE: OCTOBER 24, 1910

Sea birds are aloft again, a tattered few. The white terns look dirtied in the somber light and they fly stiffly, feeling out an element they no longer trust. Unable to locate the storm-lost minnows, they wander the thick waters with sad muted cries, hunting seamarks that might return them to the order of the world.

In the wake of hurricane, the coast lies broken, stunned. Day after day, a brooding wind nags at the mangroves, hurrying the unruly tides that hunt through the flooded islands and dark labyrinthine creeks of the Ten Thousand Islands. Brown spume and matted salt grass, driftwood; a far gray sun picks up dead glints from the windrows of rotted mullet at highwater line.