Shadow Country (56 page)

He waved from the rose gate. Carrie sang out, “She's a rich widow, don't forget! Maybe it's not too late!”

NELL SUMMERLIN

The Fort Myers cemetery lay in a fading neighborhood off the river road. By the iron gate, under dark limbs which extended out over the street, she awaited him in a blue roadster. Coming on foot up the sidewalk from behind, he coughed so as not to startle her.

“Good Lord, is that you?” On the telephone, her voice had faltered. “Can you meet me at the cemetery? It's high time I brought Mr. Summerlin fresh flowers.” Skillfully, she'd kept him at a distance, reminding him of that other reality that did not include him.

Nell emerged from the blue roadster with a loud creak of the door hinge. “My jalopy and I,” she said, feigning exasperation. “We're in this thing to the finish.” Not ready to look him full in the face, she went around to the far side and reached in for her flowers. Face half-hidden in blossoms, she paused a moment to regard him. She wore a simple linen dress of pale gray-green and a wheat-colored broad hat of soft Panama straw—all expensive and in good taste, yet all wrong and ruined by the eccentric indifference to her appearance that had led her to wear tennis shoes and cinch up her outfit with her old beaded Indian belt.

Inept and shy, he cleared his throat. “How are you, Nell?”

She laid her flowers on the hood and, still at arm's length, placed her small cool hands in his rough brown ones, her smile dissolving any semblance of restraint, far less enigma.

She picked up her skirt and moved lightly toward the gate. Passing through dark banyan shade, she reappeared in white stone sunlight—a cemetery sunlight, Lucius thought. He had become a frequenter of cemeteries. He passed under the banyan limbs and Nell's voice called, “On the right! Just off the path!”

A plain small white marble headstone with bare name and date:

E. J. WATSON

NOVEMBER 7, 1855–OCTOBER 24, 1910

How final, those small incisions in cut stone. No inscription—what would his siblings have chosen? What would a watchful society have permitted?
Rest in Peace
? Of course not.
Rest in Hell
? A Texas headstone Papa had admired would have suited him, too:
Here lies Bill Williams: He done his damndest.
Beside him lay his Mandy—Jane Dyal Watson, interred in 1901. No inscription either. Mama's request. Her dates brought an odd prickling to his temples. In a quarter century he had visited her just once, in a cold north wind on the November day of Papa's descent into the ground beside her.

With no river breeze to stir its dusty foliage, the burning banyan writhed and shimmered. Its thick leaves were black, the shell paths hot blinding white, no note of color anywhere, only the slim gray-green figure bent to a headstone. In the pitiless shine on the white monoliths, in a hot scent of wild lime and baked limestone, the air was cindered with black midges. He sank down in near vertigo, only dimly aware of the figure turning toward him.

Nell was there when he came clear again. “I'm fine, I'm fine.” He waved her away, disgusted. She hooked her arm in his to balance him erect and led him back into the shade and tugged him down onto a horizontal stone. “Won't bother 'em a bit,” she smiled, patting the marble. “I'm fine,” he repeated. She was taking his pulse at the wrist. “Of course you are,” she said.

Nell felt his brow as she sorted out just what she wished to say. “Be honest. Would you have phoned me if Carrie hadn't urged you?”

“I don't know. I think so.”

“Why? I mean, why should I believe that?”

Why do you care, Mrs. Summerlin?
He took her hand. “Oh, I think you know.”

Nell's nod was vague, her hand cool and inert. What did that nod mean? And the dead hand? In a moment she released him and sat straight again and probed into her linen bag. “Enough of that old stuff. I have your
History.
Will you sign it?” He was taken aback by her crisp manner. Yet she sat close as he inscribed her copy. “L. Watson Collins! I'm so proud of you.” She marveled at the printed book and his inscription,
For My Dear Miss N.
“I always hoped—” But she cut herself off.

“Hoped what, Nell?”

“Hoped you might return one day, that's all.”

“After that old man of yours was gone, you mean?”

She stared at him, sitting up straight again. “That's unworthy of you, Lucius.”

“Yes, it is. I hope it is. Unworthy of me, I mean. I'm sorry. But is it true?”

She nodded. Disarmed, he reached to touch her cheek.

“Don't.” She shook him off. Though her tears had risen, none had fallen. She did not trust him and why should she? He did not trust himself. What if, fecklessly, he led her on, opened her heart again, did her more harm? He feared his own weakness perhaps even more than she did.

Pressed like a leaf in Nell's copy of his
History
was a faded envelope addressed to Rob. Though the list was missing, his note was still inside.

Nell said, “He never received this letter, you know.”

“Nor the list. Which you misplaced. In the excitement of getting married, I believe you wrote.” Again, his tone was colder than he felt. “You never found it, I suppose.”

“I never lost it. You must have guessed that. Please, Lucius. We were all terrified you might be in danger, and that list was all the proof your family needed.”

“Oh, come on! I'd already abandoned all that nonsense, as this note makes clear.”

Nell shrugged, saying she'd never read it; she had no right. “But when I saw your list, I got frightened so I went to Carrie. Poor Carrie became frightened, too, and turned it over to Eddie, telling him he must go find you at once. But Eddie only said, ‘And then what? He won't listen to me. He's
never
listened to me!' Eddie took the list to Sheriff Tippins, who would not return it, claiming he needed it for evidence—can you imagine? In his mind, your father's death was an unsolved crime.”

“In my mind, too. Still is.”

“Evidently, the sheriff claimed your list had been taken from his desk. We worried so about who might have wanted it.” She gazed at him. “Your letter seemed so sad.”

“I believe you just told me you had never read this letter.”

“That's what I told you, all right. Another shameful lie.” Nell's hurt and anger were rising to meet his. “I told a white lie knowing you'd feel embarrassed because I had learned shameful secrets which of course I'd known for years—I was your lover, for goodness sake!—that you missed your long-lost brother and were incapable of killing for honor or revenge.”

Nell was peering at him. “Listen,” she murmured when he only stared, not quite present. “No more secrets, all right? I want to tell you something. A few days ago, I drove down to Caxambas to thank you for your book, get you to sign it—my excuse for seeing where this L. Watson Collins lived. You were gone, which was just as well. But someone was there, struggling to write something he'd promised you—”

“The long-lost brother. He's all right, then.”

“No, he's not all right. He seemed very discouraged, way out on that salt creek with no auto and no food to speak of and the place a mess. He looked just dreadful. I felt sorry for him. I told him that until you came back, there was plenty of room at Mr. Summerlin's. He could finish what he was writing there without having to bother about trying to feed himself.”

“He accepted?”

“Yes, he did. Why not?”

“You live there alone?”

“There's a house servant who comes in—”

“I see.”

“I wonder if you do.”

“Enlighten me, then. A few years ago, you were so concerned about appearances that you felt you had to marry that old man—”

“Not one word of that is fair. Be careful, Lucius.”

“Sorry.
Mr. Summerlin.
Anyway, I assume it was quite proper—”

“What right have you to assume
anything
? It's none of your darned business. Isn't it a little late for you to worry about my reputation?”

In Fort Myers, she resumed after a silence, Rob had been very uneasy, he would not go out. He finally confided he was wanted by the law. Though he tried to make a joke of that, he had a great fear of what he called “a half-lived life wasted in prison.”

They sat awhile. “He's afraid he might be traced here or someone might report him. He has to leave. He's just waiting in Fort Myers to see you before he goes. Wants to turn his paper in,” she added, a little meanly. “Wants to talk to you about it.”

“What else might he want to talk to me about?”

“You sound jealous. You needn't be. Please listen: your brother's desperate. He made me a little afraid. And he's scared you might think he told you Rob was dead to make a fool of you, when actually he was trying to protect you from getting in trouble for ‘harboring a fugitive'—his words, not mine. If I doubted his story, he said, I could find his name on the public enemy notice at the post office.” When he looked skeptical, she said, “Yes, I did. I wanted to be sure. He's been on the run for years. Did you suspect that?”

“It crossed my mind.” He could not concentrate. He didn't want to look at her.

“He's talking wildly. He didn't sound sorry for himself but he did say he'll shoot himself before he goes back to prison because the punishment for his escape would be added to a life sentence and he would die there. But he has no idea where to run anymore and no place to hide.” Irritated by his inattention, she said, “Listen to me! He has a pistol, Lucius. He might harm himself.”

“That's just Papa's old revolver,” Lucius said, as if that circumstance took care of everything. Then his fear for Rob caught up with him. “Where is he now? At your house?”

“I'll leave him a message that you might be at the hotel bar at five this afternoon, all right? What's the matter?” she asked when Lucius rose abruptly. He needed to get away from her, needed to quell this absurd jealousy before he could trust himself to speak with her any further.

Nell neatened her cuffs. “Running off again?” Never before had he heard disdain in her voice. “I've often wondered if the love of my life ever understood what true love is.” He feared—he had always feared—this might be true, that when it came to constancy, he was deficient, crippled.

“I
do
love you, Nell. I always have.”

“How do you tell?”

They longed to find each other but could not. They stared at the white stones. She said, “Lucius? Do you ever mourn the happy man you might have been?” Her words cast him back into his dread that he would miss the point of life, all the way down into the caverns of old age.

“Forgive me,” she whispered. “You had better go.”

He walked toward the gate. Under the banyan tree, he turned to watch her. Very slowly, arms opening and closing like the wings of a gray-green luna moth, she gathered up her things. In the heat shimmer on the stone, his lost love seemed to palpitate as if just alighted.

DESECRATION

At the Gasparilla, Lucius went directly to the Swashbuckler Bar, which overlooked the river. Bony hind end hitched to the farthest stool toward the window, the resurrected Rob had apparently provoked the bartender, who was banging bottles to let off steam while he reorganized the shelf behind him. Other than these two antagonists, the place was empty.

To give his feral brother room, Lucius sat down several stools away, still sorting through the tumult in his breast aroused by Nell, letting the charcoal fume and heat of a stiff bourbon well up through his sinuses into his brain,

“The Watson brothers,” Rob muttered finally, shaking his head at the sheer folly of it all. Lucius recognized the pallid sweaty glaze of that late stage of inebriation after which his brother managed to go right on drinking without seeming drunker. Eventually he might sag down for good but he would not stagger.

“Listen, Arb—”