Shadow Country

sovereign state of Florida where she’s at today! Yessir, old-timers all over the state, reading this stuff, will repent all their mean tales about Bloody Ed. So maybe Ed was a little rough around the edges, but so was Ol’ Hickory Andy Jackson, right? First U.S. president to hail from the backcountry! First of our good ol’ redneck breed that made this country great!”

They spent that evening at a tourist camp on the Withlacoochee. While Arbie slept off his long day, Lucius drank his bourbon in the shadow of the porch, contemplating the reflections of the giant cypress in the still moon water of the swamp. The gallinule’s eerie whistling, the ancient hootings of barred owls in duet, the horn notes of limpkins and far sandhill cranes from beyond the moss-draped walls, were primordial rumorings as quintessentially in place as the lichens and shelf fungi fastened to the hoary bark of the great trees. And he considered how the Watson children, and especially the sons, had been bent by the great weight of the dead father-pale saplings yearning for the light twisting up and around the fallen tree, drawing last minerals from the punky wood and straining toward the sun even as the huge log crumbles in a feast for beetles.

From bare spring twilight came the ringing call of a Carolina wren, and the urgency of its existence on the earth filled him with restlessness. He could not dispel, or not entirely, Arbie’s denunciations of his father nor his dread that if those charges were correct, he had wandered far from his own life in a useless search for vindication of a man whose reputation was beyond redemption.

“Morbidly obsessive”-that’s what Eddie called him. Was it obsession because his father’s life enthralled him far more than his own? The ongoing search for the “truth” of E. J. Watson that provided a dim purpose to his days-was that to be his recompense for a life of solitude and slow diminishment? With the death last year of Mr. Summerlin, he had thought with longing about young Widow Nell: would she ever be open to him again? Would he always be too late?

The scent of charcoal in his whiskey evoked the warm and woody smells of Papa’s fine cigars. Rueful, he toasted the great emptiness and silence all around. Papa? I miss you,

Startled by those words spoken aloud, feeling himself observed, Lucius turned to confront the scowling visage in the cabin window. Arbie Collins had watched him talking to himself, watched him raise his empty glass to the black moon mirrors.

IN COLUMBIA COUNTY

In the early days of the Florida frontier, what was now Lake City was a piney-woods outpost known as Alligator Town, after the “Alligator Chieftain,” Halpatter Tustenuggee, Lucius told Arbie, and Tustenuggee was the name of the old Methodist community founded by their Collins kin, who had fought the Indians as pioneers. “And?” Arbie said. After a long road journey of three days, Arbie had grown so irritable that Lucius was sorry he’d encouraged him to come. They took a room at a traveler’s inn at the edge of town.

Over the telephone, a wary Julian Collins welcomed “Cousin Lucius” back to Columbia County, but when Lucius mentioned the purpose of his visit, his kinsman informed him that Uncle Edgar remained a forbidden topic in the family. Trying to soften his own stiffness with a nervous laugh, Julian added, “I guess he’s what the old folks call a ‘shadow cousin.’ ”

“A shadow cousin? Julian, I’m his son-”

“So’s Cousin Ed. You’ve never discussed this with your brother?”

“Eddie was living here back then. Went along with your family on that vow of silence. Wouldn’t talk about Papa even to me or to my sister.”

“Best for everybody.”

“But there’s so much I need to know. My father lived and farmed here, met all three of his wives and had four of his six children in this county. Can’t we discuss his domestic life, at least? His farm? I want his biography to be accurate-”

“Our family can’t help you, I’m afraid.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Lucius said, exasperated.

“Good day, Cousin Lucius. Enjoy your stay.”

“Wait, Julian. Listen-” But Julian Collins had hung up.

Arriving early at the library next morning, they peered into the empty rooms through bare windows that skewed their reflection: a lanky figure in the worn green corduroy jacket of the old-fashioned academic and a bearded drifter in faded red baseball cap and olive army coat much too heavy for this warming day.

Inside, they waited at a shiny maple table while the librarian fetched the documents requested. Mr. A. Collins, archivist, impatient at the delay, reared around like an inchworm every few moments to stare after her, such was his zeal to begin a rigorous inspection of the material. As it turned out, the librarian had tarried to ring up her friend the features editor at the newspaper, who came speedily to meet the southwest Florida historian, Professor Collins. Together, these ladies managed to persuade him that a newspaper interview might unearth one or two informants. Still irked by Julian Collins’s attitude (and ignoring the eye-rolling of his colleague), Lucius emphasized that Planter Watson had been a pioneer entrepreneur and beloved family man-“I beg your pardon? No, ma’am! He was acquitted! He was not some common criminal!”-upon which Arbie snorted, kicked his chair back, rose, and left.

Lucius spent that soft spring morning ransacking the census records for the names mentioned by Herlong. Edgar Watson was missing from the 1900 census for Columbia County, having returned here from south Florida in early 1901: the rest of the Watson-Collins clan were present as were two households of Tolens, the clan detested by his father. However, the several Cox households listed no Leslie, or not under that name-very disappointing, since the solution of the mystery around this man was critical to the biography. If Cox was alive, had he ever returned to this county? Was he a shadow cousin, too?

In the afternoon, at the librarian’s suggestion, he wandered down old grass-grown sidewalks to the ends of narrow lanes where the giant oaks had not been cleared nor the street paved, where the last of the old houses greened and sagged beneath sad Southern trees, arriving at last at Oak Lawn Cemetery. Here on thin and weary grass amidst black-lichened stones tended by somnolent gravediggers and faded robins stood a memorial to those brave boys of the Confederacy who died at Olustee, to the east, in a long-forgotten victory over Union troops.

Near the war memorial, an iron fence enclosed three tombstones tilted by the oak roots:

TABITHA WATSON, 1813-1905

LAURA WATSON TOLEN, 1830-1894

SAMUEL TOLEN, 1858-1907

The Watson headstones were tall, narrow, and austere, as Lucius imagined these Episcopalian women might have been. Great-Aunt Tabitha had survived her daughter by a decade, tussling along into her nineties: her haughty monument held no cautionary message for those left behind. Her daughter’s stone bore the terse inscription We Have Parted, while Tolen’s marker, squatted low in attendance on the ladies, read Gone But Not Forgotten-not forgotten by whom, Lucius wondered, since to judge from the 1900 census, his wife had been barren and both women had preceded him into this earth. Samuel Tolen had been born almost thirty years after his bride, and Lucius wondered if this discrepancy in age had not been a catalyst in the fatal family feud: had Greedy Sam infuriated Dangerous Edgar by marrying Aging Laura for her Watson property? Had the Tolens ordered Sam’s inscription as a warning to his killer that this business wasn’t finished? In this silent place, he could envision Sam Tolen’s embittered brothers in stiff ill-fitting black suits: did they already suspect blue-eyed Edgar Watson, standing there expressionless among the mourners?

At the newspaper, his classified notice requesting information on E. J. Watson had failed to smoke out a response from the Collins family. However, there was a small note in smudged pencil:

Sir: I suppose I am one of the few people still living in this area that knew Edgar Watson, having been raised in the same community near Fort White. I was too small to play on the old Tolen Team our country baseball club. I thought Leslie Cox was the greatest pitcher in the world. My brother Brooks was the catcher. They played such teams as Fort White and High Springs and most always won if Leslie was pitching. The Coxs were our friends until the trouble started.