Lost Man's River (108 page)
Authors: Peter Matthiessen
still on his knees, staring down at the blood conduits and sinews of the two gnarled hands, affixed like dragon claws to the black earth
You all right, Mister Colonel?
What's the matter with him? What's the matter!
Faces. Whidden Thomas Harden. Andrew Wiggins House. Sally Daniels Brown Harden. Addison Watson Burdett.
What's the matter?
Lucius struggled to stand up. When the Hardens sought to support him under the arms, he shook them off, only to relapse onto hands and knees. Kneeled on all fours, letting the blackness fade, he watched a drop fall from his eyes to strike a tiny crater in the ash.
Ad whimpered. He had burned his leg. All stared at the red burn on the pale and hairy slab as he pulled aside his poor charred shreds of pant leg.
Brother, we cannot kiss your wound. We cannot make it well.
Lucius straightened slowly and sat back upon his heels, trying to clear his head, as Addison, in fits and starts, finished his storyâhow the helicopter had returned, how it came in low and hovered as he sank into the green water, fingers clinging to rough places in the cistern wall.
“Taking official pictures for their official damn report.” Whidden was still piecing it together. By now, he guessed, the helicopter crew must have noticed that the only boat at Chatham Bend was that empty skiff on the far bank.
“Seeing no boats, they probably assumed that nobody was in the house,” Lucius suggested, wondering why he needed to excuse them.
The helicopter had swung off toward the north and descended slowly until it disappeared behind the trees. Certain it had landed, Ad was terrified he had been seen, that these unknown enemies would come in on foot to hunt him down. Even when the thing rose again over the trees and headed back toward the east, and he crawled out into the hot sun, stinking with slime, he remained crouched beside the tarn until he heard the
Cracker Belle
, coming upriver.
Lucius wanted to stay long enough to retrieve his brother's body from the embers. Although they had no more food and little water, Whidden nodded. He did not have to say that as boat captain, he was responsible for their safety, and that the sooner they got away from here, the better. As the humid afternoon wore on, he became more and more restless, certain that the helicopter would return.
The housepainter, in choked fits and muffled starts, emptied out his fifty years of throttled feelings.
A week earlier in Neamathla, when he'd learned from Lucius that this house might be burned, Ad had rushed away from his sister's place feeling hugely angry and upset, though why or against whom he did not know. For the first time in years, he returned to heavy drinking, raging away at strangers and bar mirrors that E. J. Watson and the Watson Place had nothing
to do with Addison Burdett. Sobered by a rude arrest for disorderly conduct, he took his savings from the bank and left next day for the Ten Thousand Islands, telling nobody, not even Ruth Ellen. “Why? Who knows why?” Ad grumbled. “Because I'm some kind of a misfit and a crank, and always have been!” He struggled to pretend this was a joke, and Lucius chuckled as best he could to help him out, but the fraternal moment failed, and they plodded onward.
“All my vacation time and all my savings! For a beautiful paint job that didn't last two days! It was hardly dry!”
“Time, paint, food, and fuel,” Lucius commiserated. “And the boat rentalâ”
“Smallwood never charged me. Said I was crazy to waste all that good paint, but refused my money. Wouldn't explain why and went off grumpy.”
Contemplating the steaming embers, Ad regretted what he saw as his own foolishness and sentimentalityâhe regretted this worse than the waste of time and money. Recalling Lucius's offer at Neamathla to help pay his way if he would attend the Park meeting at the Bend, he said that after Lucius left, Ruth Ellen had offered the same thing. “I refused her, too!” He yanked up his big palm in angry warning lest any man imagine he sought help. “I wanted to pay for all of it out of my own pocket. Coming here to paint the house was what
I
could do, it was
my
idea, not
your
idea, not
her
idea. I wanted to settle Ad Burdett's account with Watsons.” He looked confused, not certain what he meant by this, and in confusion gave an odd, inchoate roar.
Without the revolver and the Tucker packet, Rob's old satchel weighed no more than a sun-dried bird skeleton high on the tide line. His estate was reduced to a change of sad grayed shorts and threadbare socks, a splayed toothbrush and plastic razor, loose among the ancient lint and crumbs. Otherwise, all it contained was a “last will and testament,” a letter to his younger brother which he had begun back in Lake City after fleeing his mother's grave at Bethel Churchyard, with emendations added here and there along the way. In fact, he had scratched down his last words this very morning.
To Whom It May Concern, namely Luke Watson:
My birth date and her day of death being the same, I wish to return and be buried near that girl who was my mother. You may recall the place and name: Ann Mary Collins, New Bethel Cemetery, Columbia County, Florida. (Our fine times traveling to old family places meant a lot to me. I
don't suppose I ever told you that and it's too late now but thank you anyway.)
I leave you a heirloom revolver that belonged to your father. It still works, as my remains can testify. You can probably sell it to some gun nut for enough to pay to have my carcass burned down to the bones and shook down small, so the deacon at New Bethel Church can slot me in beside my poor young mama. (I wound up kind of an old stillbirth anyway.) A man has got to come to rest someplace.
We are traveling far, we are traveling home
One by one, we are traveling home
.
Across death's river, our friends have gone
,
And we are following, one by one
.
That is the old Baptist hymn that your own kind mother loved. Say that for me at the graveside, Luke. Under your breath will do just fine. (If that old heathen Billie Jimmie wants to mumble some Injun ode back in the swamp someplace, that is all right, too.)
Well, two days have passed, and here I am, too drunk to organize my own demise. I will, I will. The above was written in Lake City, where I found your note. (Sure took you long enough to learn my rightful name!) Today I am on the bus south to Fort Myers.
I have carried this revolver all my life, same as my pecker, but never found much use for either one. The first and last woman I ever had was a big brown gal in that old cathouse on Black Betsy Key where E. J. took the first chip (off his old block) on his 19th birthday, September 13, 1898. (Carrie's marriage was just two months earlier, remember?) But after that morning at Lost Man's River, a woman could give me loving till the cows came home, and some of them did, bless their sweet hearts, but it never did me or them one bit of good. Wrath of God, do you suppose? Sins of the fathers? I'll have to discuss this with the higher-ups when I get to Heaven.
I have hung on to this “shootin iron,” I'm not sure why. Because it is my souvenir of “Papa”? I hate to think I might be sentimental, but who can know the curlicues of the human heart? This is the weapon which took the life of an innocent young woman and her unborn babe at Lost Man's Key. This humble paw that writes these wordsâmy mortal handâpulled this simple triggerâhow incredible it seems!âwhich is why it is fitting that I perish by this weaponâand this finger and this handâon this day I have known was coming all my life.
I stole this weapon when I left the Bend, to shoot my father down if he caught up with me (or blow out my own brains, if I so chose!). That day in early 1901, my life lay in a thousand pieces, like a precious heirloom which had come into my keeping andâbecause I did not pay attentionâwas smashed to shards of rubble in an instant. This gun muzzle touched E. J. Watson's temple while he lay sprawled across his table, snorting like a hog. But nothing came of itâthe story of my life! I was too broken, too hysterical, to muster up the resolve required to take another life on that same day, yet I think sometimes of the harm which might have been averted with one small forthright twitch of this forefinger! Would saving those lives atone for that life I took?
And yet I keep this weapon. I touch it now and then, as a reminder. This cold cold metal, this burnished hickory, fashioned somewhere in 19th century America, the simple precision of its partsâits very simplicity puts me in touch with sanity, it seems, or at least reality. For in some strange irony, that long ago day at Lost Man's River is the only real episode in a long and ghostly life. Does that make sense?
I have never learned much about life. Maybe you know something.
Another delay. I am a prisoner and no longer have the gun, though my keepers have promised to return it. I should have gotten out of this damned life while the getting was good, because now I'm in trouble and have brought you trouble, tooâ“a peck of trouble” as Mama used to say, do you remember, Luke? Your mama, not mine, of course (though she did her gentle best to love me, too). It's years since I thought about dear Mama's “peck of trouble”âeight whole quarts of trouble! That's enough!
Here I am on Chatham Bend, which I prayed I would never see again! How God rebukes us! What I can't get over is this shining house, which looks almost exactly as it did when we first arrived at Chatham back in '96 except for the screened porch and covered cistern, which came later. You were seven then so you might not rememberâthat big new house, fresh-painted white, way out in a vast wilderness all by itself, as if it had just dropped out of the sky! The boat sheds and the little cottage (which I only know from old photos sent me about 1909 by Julian Collins)ânone of those outbuildings were built when I first knew this place, and now they are all lost to flood and hurricane.
By now you have read the true story of the Tuckers. Can you forgive me for my part in that fatal deed even though I cannot forgive myself? (being quite unable to accept, therefore atone for the eternal fact that the man I see in the mirror is a killer). To this day, I howl to the highest heaven: I am
not a killer! I was never a killer! But I don't suppose it is Heaven where I'm headed, so I'm ranting instead at my poor dear brother Lucius Watson, because he is all I have left.
Luke? Do you hear me? Do you believe me? Do you forgive me?
If not you, then who?
Tonight Speck's kind clean-cut young fellows gave us moonshine and white ibis and fried gator tail. Life is grand! It's just that I never got the hang of it, I'm “tuckered out.”
If I don't stop talking, you will decide I am not serious about “taking my life.” I
am
serious, Luke, although not gloomy and downhearted. I am still in lively spirits!
Here Lies Rob Watson: Nothing Daunted
âthat's how I count on you to remember R. B. Watson, a.k.a. “Arbie Collins,” a.k.a. “Chicken.”
I have one last duty to performâthe house. I will not ask forgiveness, knowing you won't give it. As for my own oblivion, the prospect heals me. I have put it off for fifty years but now I'm ready. So long, ol' Luke! I miss you!
With warmest good wishes from your old pal Arbie, alias (signed) your loving brother,
Rob