Shadow Country

“That’s correct. Fell headfirst onto the transom, bleeding like hell, thrashed off the stern into the current before I could grab hold of him.”

Isaac waded out to inspect the cockpit. “There’s blood all right,” he said. He put his finger to the blood, then sniffed it. “Smells like fresh fish,” he said. “It sure ain’t three days old.”

That’s when Pap said quietly, “Might be a good idea to hand over your weapons, Watson.”

Slow and growly, Watson said, “Nosir, Mr. House. That ain’t a good idea at all.” When he hitched his gun onto his arm, there come a gasp and shuffle, and I never had to look behind to know which ones was getting set to scatter. Why was his neighbors acting so suspicious, Watson inquired kind of grieved. He could not figure for the life of him why his friends and neighbors would treat him like some kind of a criminal when they knew Cox was the guilty man and Cox was dead.

But he wasn’t really arguing no more, he was gathering himself for his next move. Pap must of seen it that same way cause he warned him hoarse and urgent, “Better drop that gun.” But Watson only gazed over his head toward the store where Mrs. Watson had come outside with my sister and was starting down to meet him. Maybe he seen her. Maybe he seen his Lost Man’s friends, just watching. Maybe he wondered why none of them friends such as Erskine ever tried to warn him, wave him away from shore, never even hollered at him now to drop his weapons. Not one man came down to meet him. They were keeping a safe distance, out of shotgun range.

He looked lost-the only time I ever seen Ed Watson seem unsure what to do next. For one second there, I might have felt a little sorry for him. That feeling passed quick. In the shift of an eye, he had a ears-back look, real hard and mean, like he would take your life and not think twice about it. Of course that look might of been put on to bluff and scare us.

“Mister Watson, you are under arrest,” I warned, to back Pap up. “Citizen’s arrest,” said Isaac Yeomans.

“Citizen’s arrest?” Watson spat out his contempt and ground the spit into the ground, hard, with his boot toe. “You boys are full of shit,” he grated, shifting his feet a little, shifting his weapon. “You have a warrant?”

Hearing that anger, so sudden and so cold, beyond all reach, the line of men went wobbly, and some of ’em, I ain’t saying which ones, begun to whine: If there ain’t no warrant, it ain’t legal, ain’t that right, boys? Ed ain’t all wrong on that, y’know… Well, I mean, to heck with it, we best go on home till we think this over. But D. D. House had to finish what he started, sons or no sons, he never really knew no other way. When he growled, “Watson, lay that gun down by the count of three,” his sons stiffened, set to fire at the first wrong move.

We was all bad scared, which makes men skittish, very dangerous. We was tense and all bunched up; he could do some heavy damage with a shotgun. But after so many close calls on so many frontiers, the man might have seen in them stiff weary faces that this time his neighbors meant business, that maybe his luck was running out, that the day had come when he might not talk his way into the clear.

When D. D. House stepped forward to take his gun, Ed Watson raised his palm up high like some kind of old- time prophet in the Bible. At first I thought he was about to say, Okay, I quit. You win. Later I realized he had stopped us at good shotgun range if killing and crippling more than two was what was wanted. Maybe that were not his plan but that’s the way it looked. Two charges of buckshot would knock down the leaders, scatter the rest, and he might keep ’em ducking with his revolver while he pushed his boat back off the beach, crouched to reload, shot his way out of there. At that range, with a panicked crowd, he might have got away with it; the trouble was-so’s to keep his gun handy when he jumped instead of fooling with a bow line- he’d run his boat aground on a falling tide to where he’d never push her off without some help.

A bad mistake, some said. I don’t think so. I don’t think Watson made mistakes like that. I doubt if he ever considered shooting his way out. His chances were poor and anyway, a man so proud would not leave his family behind.

When Watson swung that shotgun up, my guts clenched tight to meet the burning lead. I knew we was done for, Pap did, too, because we was looking down both barrels and we seen them jump, that’s how hard Watson pulled his triggers. To fit storm-swollen shells into the breech, he’d peeled ’em down too much, the paper didn’t hold, that was the theory: when them barrels tipped, the buckshot rolled right out the muzzles. I ain’t saying I seen them pellets but some claim they did.

I don’t recall swinging my rifle up or squeezing the trigger but I do know I fired. After that, all them guns let go together.

Ed Watson was spun half around but didn’t fall. I reckon he died before his shotgun hit the ground, but his legs kicked back some way and drove his body on, pitching him forward against that roar and fire. His coat and shirt jumped, whacked by lead, the sound of his hard life being whacked out of him. Some say they seen his gun stock splinter, seen his revolver spin away. Me, I seen his mouth yank, seen blood jump where his left eye burst. Christ. And still he came.

Hell, we all seen it, ain’t one man won’t say the same: with all that lead in him, Ed Watson kept on coming, that’s how headstrong that man was even in death-that was the demon in him, Mama Ida House would say for long years after, cause only a demon could scare folks as bad as that after they exercised him. He never crumpled but fell slow as a felled tree.

Seeing him come ahead that way, the men yelled and crowded backward. Then the evening broke apart, the line surged forward, near to knocked me down. It was purely uproar, hollering and cussing. They were a damn mob now for sure, with young boys running up and down snapping their slingshots at the body, yapping like dogs, and every dog on that dark island howling.

Our neighbor lay face down on the bloody ground like he wanted to peer into the darkness all the way down to the center of the earth. The broad back in the black coat had no breath to swell it. Never jerked nor spasmed, never groaned nor gargled. Them fire-colored curls on his sun-creased neck was all that twitched even a little in the evening wind.

Fallen angel, Mama Ida said, and it was true. Laying so still at our feet, Mister Watson looked like he had fell all the way from Heaven. You never seen a man so dead in all your life.

HOAD STORTER

In Everglade the cisterns were four-five feet below the ground, two above, and the water generally stayed cool and clear, but after the Great Hurricane they were flooded out with brine and mud and after that we had more’n a month of wind and a hard drought. The heavens were gray as old torn rags wrung dry.

On October 24, late afternoon, my brother and I had rowed across to Chokoloskee, hunting fresh water. We were rounding the point west of Smallwood’s store when a loud racketing of guns broke out; it was just dark enough to see the muzzle fire. For a few moments, silence fell over that island like a blow, and out of that silence for just one brief moment rose the voice of a night bird, over and over, so loud and clear I had to wonder if that bird had sung right through the shooting and continued on through the dog and human outcry we heard next.

Mister Watson had run his Warrior right up on shore. His body lay on the bank just off her bow, circled by sniffing dogs. No man stood near him. We went ashore with our water jugs, trying to keep out of the way. Watching from a little distance we could see that while some men were yelling angrily, others were crowing in relief, passing a jug. Some seemed to wander around shocked, avoiding talk with anyone at all; other ones could not stop talking-not listening, you know, just talking, the way crazy people do-and these ones swore it was nobody’s fault, the dead man tried to attack the crowd, kept coming after he was shot to death three or four times over. And all this while, over the excited voices, that night bird came and went, over and over and over, wip, wip, WEE-too!

BILL HOUSE