Lost Man's River by Peter Matthiessen

Author:Peter Matthiessen [Matthiessen, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-81965-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

In the phone booth on the empty mall, Lucius studied the toe of his own shoe amongst the flattened soda bottle caps and cigarette butts. Outside the booth, a shining grackle waddled on the pavement, bright cruel eye cocked for a scrap to toss and pick apart and gobble.

“You mean Colonel Watson?”

“That’s right.”

His explanation to Bill House’s son—that he was writing a biography of E. J. Watson and wished to ask about his late father’s conclusions about Watson’s death—was met by silence. Lucius breathed deeply, trying to stay calm. A meeting with Andy House was critical, not only because his clan had been the spine of the Watson posse but because only the Houses might know the truth about the man rumored to have fired first.

Among the members of the posse (all of whom he had identified and tried in vain to question years before), only a few such as the House men had readily acknowledged taking part—not that they had talked to him about it. As for the rest, anger and guilt, fear and special pleading, had muddied their “eyewitness” accounts. A few of these men, out of pride in their inside information on the most vivid event in the region’s history—or even the need of a better story with which to repay young Watson for their drink—had affirmed the rumor about Henry Short. Lucius himself thought it inconceivable that Henry Short had fired at his father, yet what had once been a stray rumor had become so commonplace that he needed the House clan to put it to rest once and for all.

Years ago he had confronted Henry—uselessly, since the man had had no choice but to deny any participation in the shooting. In those days Henry’s life was still in danger, whereas now he had moved away somewhere, and many years had passed, and those who had been out to punish him were old or gone. If he was still alive and could be located, he might dare to tell the truth, and even wish to do so, to be done with it.

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