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

go get Netta to stick on a plaster.
    Henrietta was caterwauling in the kitchen. “I bore his
child
!” she howled, jouncing poor Min, kicking hens, and banging a tin pot of sweet potatoes on the stove. When my mother seen my bloody face, she gasped straight off, “He done that a-purpose!” That scoundrel was out to murder her poor boy, she concluded, having heard tell that he had killed in other parts. She was taking me straight back to Caxambas was what she yelled as he come up on the back porch. “Don’t
never
turn your back on that red devil!” Folks might say that Netta Daniels was short on good sense as well as morals but no one ever said she lacked for spirit.
    Mister Watson paid her no mind whatsoever. He washed his head at our new hand pump from the cistern—the only pump down in the Islands at that time, we was pretty proud about it. But when he straightened up to mop his face, them blue eyes sparking like flints over the towel, he caught me gawking at the dark place under his arm where the sweat outlined his weapon. He held the towel there under his eyes until Henrietta stopped her sputtering, started to whimper. Then he snapped it down, gleeful cause he’d scared her. He got out his private jug of our cane liquor and sat down to it at a table in the other room, keeping his back into the corner same as always.
    For once, she was too scared to nag him for tilting chairs back and weakening the legs—her way of showing what good care she took.
Home Is Where the Heart Is At
was needlework hung on our parlor wall to make things cozy and hint what a good wife she would make a man of taste who could appreciate the fine points.
    Mister Watson took him a long pull and sighed like that old manatee when Tant shot her baby calf for sea pork. Finally he whispered, “Mind that loose tongue, Netta. Even a red devil gets hurt feelings.”
    She pulled me out onto the porch. “I ain’t leaving you alone with that man, Erskine!” She was whispering loud in case he might be deaf, and he made a funny bear growl for his answer; he was laughing at us. “You’re coming home with me, young man, and that is
that
!”—the very first time since I was born that Henrietta ever planned to take me anyplace. She never even brought me here, it was me brought
her,
and she didn’t have no home no more’n I did.
    â€œHome,” I scoffed, rolling my eyes. “Where’s home at? Where the heart is?” I felt meaner’n piss.
    â€œThat nice needlework come down in our own family!”
    â€œ
What
family?”
    â€œ
Our
family! Your grandma married Mr. Ludis Jenkins that pioneered on Chokoloskee twenty years ago! Jenkinses and Weekses and Santinis!”
    Old Man Ludis never come to nothing, I knew that much, Jenkinses neither. Had enough of it one day and blew his brain out. I said, “Tant’s daddy weren’t no kin to me at all.”
    Tears come to my young mother’s eyes, made me feel wishful. All the same I whispered, “I ain’t leavin, Netta.” And she said, “Don’t you dare to disobey, you are my child!” And I said, “Since when?” That hurt her feelings, too. Anyway—I am still whispering—“I ain’t no kid no more, I am the new captain of that schooner.” “Since when?” she said, rubbing the blood off my hair too rough, like she was scraping vegetables. “Look out!” I yell, “I ain’t no sweet potato!” “Since
when
?” she said. We break out giggling like kids, our nerves, I guess. She hugs me then and cries some more, wondering where her and Little Min would go to starve to death.
    I went all soft and lonesome then and hugged her, too. I missed somebody real bad but didn’t rightly know who it could be. I ain’t so sure I found out to this day but it sure ain’t Jesus. Mister Watson was the one cured me of
that.
    â€œCalled