Read Online Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen - Free Book Online Page A

bone, that’s how intent he is on his bear business. Mister Watson had that bear-faced way which let you know he had said his piece and weren’t going to repeat it and didn’t aim to take no silence for no answer.
    I couldn’t look him in the eye. “You want me to tote this crate or what?” But my sassy voice come out all squeaky so I cleared my throat and spat again just to show who didn’t give a good goddamn. Mister Watson gazes at his boot, nodding his head, like inspecting another feller’s spit is common courtesy. Then he’s looking me over again, still waiting.
    â€œWell, heck now, Mister Watson, sir, ain’t you the daddy of that baby girl up in the house? Ain’t
we
your people, too?”
    He blinks for the first time, then turns his gaze away like he can’t stand the sight, same way that bear done when it give a
woof
and swung down to all fours and moved off into the bushes. He steps back over to the deck and swings me another crate, hard to the chest. “What I’ll do,” he says, “is train my oldest boy to do your job—”
    â€œI knew it! Gettin rid of us—”
    He raised his palm to still me. “And you and Tant can run the boat. I’ll need a full-time crew.”
    He seen the tears jump to my eyes before I could turn away. Know what he done? Mister Watson stepped over to the dock and took me by the shoulders, turned me around, looked at me straight. He seen right through me. “Erskine,” he says, “you are not my son but you are my partner and my friend. And Ed Watson needs every friend that he can find.” Then he roughed my hair and went off whistling to make his peace with Henrietta Daniels.
    I picked up a crate, set it down again, turning away to dab my eyes with my bandanna in case they was laughing at me from the house. At sixteen years of age, a man could not be seen to cry. For a long time I stood there, thumbs looped into my belt, frowning and nodding like I might be planning out ship’s work. My first plan was, I would be the captain. Tant might be four years older and a better hunter but he wouldn’t never want the responsibility.
    That afternoon, to get away from Henrietta, Mister Watson brung his hoe into the cane. Me and the niggers clearing weeds was near sunk by the heat and Mister Watson outworked everybody. Sang all about “the bonnie blue flag that flies the single star,” and straightened only long enough to sing the bugle part—
boopety-boopety-poo! tee-boopet, tee-boopet, tee-boopet, tee-poo!—
as he marched around us, hoe over his shoulder like a musket.
    Mister Watson usually wore a striped shirt with no collar that Henrietta sewed him from rough mattress ticking. Never took his shirt off, not even when it stuck to them broad shoulders, but no ticking weren’t thick enough to hide the shoulder holster that showed through when he got sweated. Even out there in the cane, he had that gun where he could lay his hand on it. Never hid it from the niggers, neither; they hoed harder. “Keeping your shirt on in the field is just good manners,” he said. “You never know when you might have a visitor.”
    Tant spoke up. “From the North?” Mister Watson turned and looked at him then said, “Don’t outsmart yourself,” which wiped the smile off that boy’s face almost till supper.
    That was the day that Mister Watson, chopping a tough root with his hoe, swung back hard and struck me up longside the head. Next thing, I was laying on the ground half-blind with blood, and them scared niggers backing off like I’d been murdered. Mister Watson went right ahead, finished off that root with one fierce chop—“
That
got her!”—then stepped over and picked me up, set me on my feet. Blood all over and my head hurt bad. “Got to give a man room, boy, that’s the secret.” Never said he was sorry, just told me to