Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  “Best you could? I had a mite to do with this, too, you recollect.” Quickly they worked together and refilled the grave. Then Thias exhaled loudly and arched his back. “Well, now we’ll keep watch on Grandpap and see if he does better. And if he asks where we’ve been this evening, we’ll say we come down here to visit our folks’ graves.” Indeed, the parents of the brothers did lie buried nearby, Jacob Tyler having fallen victim to ague a month before Clardy was born, Mary Virginia Tyler having died of a combination of Clardy’s difficult childbirth and grief over her lost husband. “We’ll look sharp to make sure we don’t let him see the shovels. Now let’s get on.”

  They strode off together. A few paces on Clardy stopped suddenly. “What’s that yonder?”

  Thias was already looking. “Don’t know,” he said in a whisper. “Looks like a man … no, two men. Clardy, they’re over about Selma Van Zandt’s grave!”

  “You reckon—”

  “I do. The very ones Abel was talking about, bound to be! Wonder if we can get close enough to see who they are?”

  “And get ourselves shot doing it? No sir! Abel’s still watching, anyhow. This is his worry, not ours.”

  “We ain’t going to get shot. We’ll just get close in and get a look at their faces. I want to help Abel. I like him.”

  “Blast it, Thias, you like everybody.”

  Clardy knew he’d never be able to change Thias’s mind. He thought about coughing loudly to tell the intruders that there were others about. But he didn’t, for he was growing curious himself about who they were.

  “Come,” Thias said. “Let’s go. If we’re quiet, they won’t hear us.”

  They moved very slowly through the graves, keeping low and testing every step before putting their weight down. In the meantime they heard movement and whispers where the intruders were—and then ducked, frightened, when a beam of light suddenly shone out. Someone had opened the shutter of a lantern.

  “This is it,” a whispered voice said. A paused followed, then a burst of profane swearing, followed by: “They’ve filled in what we dug out before, and put rocks on it besides!”

  “That won’t stop us,” a second voice said. “Give me a little more light so I can see what I’m doing.”

  The shutter moved some more, the beam grew, and some of it reflected up onto the faces of the grave robbers. Clardy drew in a gasp.

  “You hear that?” one of the intruders whispered sharply.

  “I did.”

  A voice sounded from the road on the far side of the graveyard, just at the edge of the woods. “You in there! Stop where you are!” It was Abel Van Zandt.

  The lantern shutter fell; all light vanished. In a mad burst of running and swearing, the intruders scrambled away. Abel shouted at them and fired his rifle. The ball ripped through the leafless treetops.

  Clardy and Thias, crouched very low now, stayed where they were. Abel came running in, looking all around, then paused and examined his grandmother’s grave with his hands, it now being too dark to see well. He muttered exclamations of anger. The grave robbers were nowhere to be seen, though they couldn’t have gone far in so short a time.

  Clardy hoped that Thias wouldn’t hail Abel. It seemed just the kind of thing he would do. If he did, Abel might think it was they who had tried to rob the grave after all; or worse, the two real grave robbers, if hidden nearby, would realize they had been seen. That would be the worst thing that could happen, considering who they were—for Clardy had recognized the faces illuminated in the lantern light.

  To Clardy’s relief, Thias did not call out. In cramped and increasingly miserable postures the Tylers waited for Abel to leave. It took the longest time for him to do it, and then only after he had reloaded his rifle and poked about among the nearer gravestones. At one point he almost came to the place where the Tylers hid, but turned away just in time.

  When at last he was gone, the brothers turned and crept out of the burial ground. Keeping in the darkest places and saying nothing, they headed toward their cabin, about a mile away.

  Halfway there, Thias asked, “Clardy, I saw their faces in the lantern light.”

  “So did I.”

  “I didn’t know them. Did you?”

  Clardy was about to tell the truth, but then reconsidered. If Thias realized that he knew the robbers’ identities, he might insist that the information be given to the Van Zandts. And Clardy wasn’t about to do that. Word might get back to the robbers about who named them. He wasn’t about to turn those two against him.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t know them, either.”

  “You made a sound that made me think you did.”

  “I had a cramp in my side, that’s all.”

  They said nothing more the rest of the way home. There they were greeted by Hiram Tyler, who leaned on his crutch and cursed them both thoroughly for having missed their supper. The young men would have been surprised by any other greeting. Murmuring insincere apologies, they pushed past the old man and into the cabin, which reeked of scorched potatoes and pork meat burned to coal.

  CHAPTER 6

  Two days later, at the Tyler Farm

  Thias Tyler grunted in exertion as he lifted his heavy hammer and brought it down again. It rang loudly upon the flat head of a mortise axe he held in place atop a freshly hewn beam. The beam was Clardy’s product, created in a travail of suffering, complaining, sweating, and swearing. Now Clardy was taking a much desired rest, leaning on the sweat-sheened handle of his hewing axe, puffing a pipe while the muscles of his arms throbbed and his fingers felt like they could never be straightened again.

  Thias’s mortise axe bit deeper into the wood, creating a square hole. Thias cast the eye of a careful master on his work, then frowned as he scanned the rough and uneven hewing job Clardy had done. He restrained himself from voicing criticism. It would do no good. Clardy simply didn’t care about the quality of any work he did, even such important work as building a bigger house for them all.

  “I don’t see the need for all this work,” Clardy said around the stem of his pipe. “Our cabin’s small, but it’s stout, and all this labor is mighty wearying. I don’t see no call for it.”

  Thias gave the mortise axe a final strike, worked out the chisellike blade, and examined the four-sided hole. “I recollect you as being the one who’s fussed the most about being cramped up,” he replied.

  “Me? Why, I don’t mind being a mite cramped. Only time we’re in the cabin anyway is when we’re sleeping or eating. Other times we’re outside.”

  “Except in the dead of winter, or when the weather’s bad,” Thias reminded him.

  Clardy puffed a white smoke cloud and shifted postures. “What it comes down to is that for me this is a lot of work for nothing. I don’t aim to be around this winter. You and Grandpap will have this place all to yourselves—unless you change your mind and come with me, Thias. Then the old man could have the run of the place, nobody but himself to cuss at, and you and me could be free as wild crows.”

  “We’ve chewed that cud enough times already. I can’t leave here.”

  Clardy shrugged. “Suit yourself. Stay here forever and rot. Me, I’m going. Sooner than you know.”

  “Fine. Go. Just go ahead and leave, but whatever you do, shut up about it. Why do you keep trying to convince me you’re leaving, anyway? I think it’s your own self you’re really trying to persuade.”

  “Got me all ciphered out, have you?”

  “I’ll never cipher you, Clardy. God knows.”

  Clardy swore abruptly, beneath his breath. Thias saw the reason. Coming up the slope from the old cabin, swinging along on his hand-whittled crutches, the leg stump beneath him hanging like a loose sack of grain in its tied-up trouser leg, was their grandfather. Thias grimaced. The old man was so hard to abide that there was seldom a time his approach didn’t tie a hot knot in the center of Thias’s belly. It was worse for Clardy, who got on even more poorly with the old man.

  Thias glanced a
t Hiram’s face. At least Grandpap looks to be in a decent humor, he thought. Bound to be because that leg feels better. Looks like he’s worked up and eager over something, too.

  Even though he and Clardy had refrained from asking their grandfather outright about his phantom pains, they had detected that the pain was much lessened, maybe gone. They considered the odd medical advice they had been given in Knoxville to be fully vindicated.

  “Howdy, Grandpap,” Thias called out. “You’re moving good today.”

  “My ghost knee ain’t hurting me,” the old man said, and actually smiled—a rare sight indeed. His teeth, set in faded-out gums, were a worn-down line of yellow and brown. “I noted a couple of nights back that it was commencing to hurt less, and ever since it’s felt better and better. Since this morning I ain’t had even the first pang.”

  Thias glanced at Clardy and shared a secret, very small smile. “That’s good. Maybe it won’t hurt you no more at all.”

  “I surely hope it won’t. Hey, boys, you heard the news?”

  That phrase was Hiram Tyler’s standard introduction to whatever bit of gossip he had picked up from someone or another—in today’s case, the someone being Elijah March, a hog farmer who lived a couple of miles up the creek and who had come by earlier, asking if the Tylers had noticed any of their hogs or cattle going missing over the last month or so, as he had. They hadn’t, but March’s loss of swine was nothing unique. Several farmers for miles around had been complaining that they were losing stock. Speculation was there were thieves afoot.

  “We ain’t heard no news,” Clardy said. “Who the devil would we have heard news from? We’ve been out here working while you sat a-jabbering with Elijah March.”

  Thias sighed. It crossed his mind that maybe it would be best if Clardy really did go. Whenever he and Grandpap were together, it was evermore like this—fussing and cussing and general harshness. Often it made Thias want to head out with a hound and a rifle and stay gone for a month in the hills, where there was nothing but quietness and peace.

  Today Hiram didn’t pick back at Clardy. He was primed to share his news. “I’ll tell you, boys,” he said. “Seems somebody we know has gone missing all at once.”

  “Who?” Thias asked.

  “A gentleman we all know well, that’s who. And it all has a right queer and deathish smell to it, too.” He cocked back his head and looked down his nose. Thias sighed. As usual, the old man was going to let his information out slowly, so as to enjoy playing the role of tantalizer.

  Thias asked, “Who, Grandpap?”

  Clardy was poking at his pipe, pretending not to be interested so as not to add to the old man’s pleasure. But he jerked to full attention when Hiram said, “It was none other than old Abel Van Zandt himself.”

  Thias frowned. “Abel has gone missing?”

  “He has. Since a night or two back, Elijah said. He’d been guarding that burying ground, you know. You’ve heard about what they say was buried with Selma Van Zandt, I reckon?”

  “Everybody’s heard that jewel story, Grandpap,” Clardy replied irritably. “Tell us about Abel.” He fired a glance at Thias that was dark with worry. Thias knew just what he was thinking. Abel … missing. And from two nights back—the same night the intruders had tried to dig up Selma’s grave and Abel had run them off.

  Hiram continued: “Well, it seems old Abel was out there guarding, like always, and somebody dug into that grave. Abel run ’em off, then went back up to the house and told the other Van Zandts. Then he went back down to guard some more, even though the others, they told him not to. Anyway, he never come back that night, and when they went looking in the morning, he warn’t to be found.”

  “Oh, God,” Clardy whispered, turning pallid.

  “And there was something else, too,” Hiram said, then clamped his mouth shut. Up went the chin, the eyes narrowing as he held another piece of news hostage for the ransom of a begging. Thias, already fighting a gnawing, growing feeling of dread, could have knocked the old man down in frustration.

  “Grandpap, confound you, tell us!”

  “Calm down, Thias. I’ll tell you. When the Van Zandts got down there, that grave was full dug up. The old woman’s burying box was busted open. If there ever was a jewel in that grave, it warn’t there after that.”

  “There never was a jewel,” Thias said. Clardy fired him a warning glance: Don’t say anything that would let him know we talked to Abel. “Least, that’s what I hear that Abel was telling folks. He just didn’t want the old woman’s corpse bothered, that was why he was guarding it. Or so I’ve heard folks say.”

  “Maybe there really was a jewel, after all,” Clardy said hopefully. “Maybe Abel just dug it up himself and lit out with it.”

  “Don’t believe so,” Hiram said haughtily. “That don’t fit the balance of the facts.”

  “What facts?”

  “Just that there was tracks about the grave, Abel’s and a couple of other men besides.” He looked from Clardy to Thias and back again. His slow, toying manner made the hot place in Thias’s belly surge like someone was taking a bellows to it. “And there was blood on the ground, too. Fresh. Most likely Abel’s?”

  Clardy swore beneath his breath.

  “If there was tracks, couldn’t they have been followed?” Thias asked.

  “They was wiped out on the road. Whoever it was had covered their trail. And there was only tracks of two men leading out of the burying ground, ’cording to Elijah. Deep tracks, like them that made them was carrying something heavy.” He narrowed one eye knowingly. “Or somebody heavy.”

  “Carrying Abel,” Thias said. “Carrying Abel because he was hurt, or …”

  “Dead. That’s just what Elijah’s thinking is. Mine, too. Most likely it was Abel they was carrying, and if it was, mercy on him. I ’spect we’ll not lay eyes on Abel Van Zandt again,” Hiram said. “He’s been murdered, I’ll wager you.”

  “Wait, wait,” Clardy said, stepping forward, waving his hand dismissively, a forced smile on his face. “What’s all this murder talk? Maybe all this is a mistake, or a jest or such. Or maybe Abel was in with the other two, and pretended to guard the grave, and pretended to fight them, and let them carry him off, just so he could make it seem he wasn’t helping with the grave robbing himself. Maybe he …” And then he simply trailed off, his smile fading, the obvious absurdity of the scenario making it seem foolish to continue.

  “No, boy, I don’t think any such as that happened,” Hiram said, growing haughty again. “There’s yet one more fact I ain’t mentioned that would make me doubt Abel had aught to do with helping rob that grave. No sir, he loved that old woman too much to let her corpse be done the wickedness it was.”

  “What ‘wickedness’?” Thias asked.

  Faded blue eyes flashed. The chin went up, and Hiram Tyler dropped his final piece of information in a tone of delicious self-satisfaction. He had been building up to this part all along. “Her head was cut off, boys. Cut clean off her corpsey shoulders.”

  “Cut off!”

  “That’s right. Cut off and laid back in its place upside downward. Purely ghastly. Purely ghastly.”

  A pause. Clardy turned his back, his shoulders taking on the odd hunch that tension always gave them, and began puffing his pipe very hard, as if reviving the dying coal of tobacco was the most important task in the world.

  “Why would anybody cut on a poor old woman’s corpse, Grandpap?” Thias asked.

  “Why, to spite her! To spite her for not having fetched up the jewel they wanted off her. Yes sir, what happened in that burying ground was an ugly business, no lying. Somebody or other dug up that grave, killed poor old Abel for trying to stop ’em, and then put the knife to the corpse just ’cause they was mad at her for not rendering up no treasure. That’s what happened. I’d wager my last coin on it.”

  He turned on his crutch, his leg stump moving in tandem, as if in remembrance of the muscular executions it would have performed had it been
whole. “There’s wickedness come to this valley, boys. Pure wickedness. Something to think on. Well, boys, I’m going to go down to the spring for a little while. You keep working, you hear? And next log you hew, Clardy, it’d better come out a cussed sight more true than that one there.”

  Thias pulled Clardy aside as soon as Hiram was gone. “Clardy, Abel’s dead. Sure as the world, them two who we saw at the grave killed him. We’ve let a man be killed, me and you. We should have come out that night and helped Abel run down them two, whoever they was.”

  “We don’t know Abel’s dead,” Clardy shot back. “And don’t you go saying it’s our fault. It ain’t. If Abel got himself killed, it was his own doing for guarding that grave.”

  “Clardy, you answer me something straight out. When that lantern light hit the face of them grave robbers, you let out a gasp. Don’t deny it. I heard it, and it wasn’t because you had a cramp in your side, neither. You knew them men.”

  “I didn’t!”

  “I believe you did—and that means you know the likely murderers of Abel Van Zandt.”

  “I tell you, I didn’t know them!”

  Thias glared at his brother. “Look me in the eye, Clardy—if you can. That’s right—look at me.” He paused, deeply studying his brother’s oddly ashen face. “You are lying. I can see it in your look.”

  Some of Clardy’s color returned; anger was rising. “You can’t see nothing, Thias. Not one bloody thing. And I don’t like you calling me a liar.”

  “This ain’t no game, Clardy. There’s a man dead.”

  “You don’t know that. Abel may come stepping ’round yonder bend in the next minute. And why are you spitting all this in my face? If Abel is dead, it wasn’t me who killed him.”

  “No, but it’s you who know whose faces it was we saw in the lantern light.”

  Clardy swore and shoved his older brother back so hard that Thias nearly stumbled and fell. Clardy strode on past him, muttering beneath his breath.

  “Where you going?” Thias called after him. “We ain’t finished here—and you can’t run away from what’s happened.”