Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  “I knew you’d like him, Micajah.” Johnson said. He looked troubled, though, and Clardy knew he was wondering what he and Micajah had been whispering about.

  “Off with you now, both of you,” Micajah said. “Me and Wiley got talking to do.”

  Clardy and Johnson rode out together into the night. For the first half minute in the saddle, Clardy didn’t breathe at all, and then his breath began coming in hard, stinging gasps and he felt hot and tight in his belly. As soon as they were well out of view of the Harpe cabin and out in the woods, Clardy halted his horse, dismounted, and became sick.

  “What’s wrong with you, Clardy?”

  He turned to Johnson, who was still mounted. It was dark here. He could scarcely make out the outline of his form and face. “He wants me to kill you, Cale.”

  “Wants you to what?”

  “Big Harpe, he wants me to kill you, and go back by morning to tell him where he can find your corpse. Wiley knows that you want his wife, and he don’t like it. I’m supposed to prove my worth to them by killing you.”

  “Clardy … you ain’t going to do it, are you?”

  “No, Cale, no. But me and you, we’ve both got to leave here, now. Leave these parts completely, or else they’ll be after both of us.”

  “Leave? Hell, I’m doing well for myself here. Me and the Harpes, we’re doing fine! I don’t want to go nowhere else.”

  “Ain’t you hearing what I say, Cale? Have you lost your ears? They want you dead! And when I don’t do what I said I would, they’ll want me dead, too. Harpe said as much. We’ve got to leave here, both of us. You understand?”

  Johnson was silent. He seemed confused. “I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t afraid of them.”

  “I am. I’m more afraid of them than I’ve been of any men I’ve ever run across. I was a fool to even go with you tonight, and if I hadn’t been drunk, I wouldn’t have done it. Now I am leaving, going as far away as I can, and if you care about your life, you’ll do the same.”

  “I figure I can take care of myself.”

  “I reckon you’ll get the chance to prove that, right soon. They’ll kill you, Cale. They will.” Clardy mounted again. “I’m leaving. If you’re a wise man, you’ll leave with me.”

  But when he rode away, Cale Johnson remained where he was. Clardy called for him once, not too loudly, but Johnson didn’t respond or move. After that Clardy didn’t look back or call anymore. There was no place tonight for the toleration of fools, and such Johnson was proving himself to be. Clardy rode harder than he should, branches slapping at him, scratching his face, until he was out on the road again. After that he rode even harder, and felt like devils were nipping at the flanks of his horse and prickling the back of his neck and shoulders with long and clawed fingers.

  CHAPTER 9

  Thias yawned and combed his fingers through his hair. The dim light of a cold new dawn was intruding into the cabin through every crack in the chinking and around the edges of the closed shutters. Thias paused by Clardy’s empty bed, frowning thoughtfully, then walked to the door and threw it open, looking out across the slowly illuminating land.

  I wonder if he really has gone this time. The thought brought sadness. Clardy … gone. What would life here be without him?

  “Close that door, Thias,” Hiram’s voice said behind him. “The cold air is making my knee hurt more.”

  Thias closed the door and turned to his grandfather. “Your real knee?”

  “No. The ghost knee. Hurting again this morning. Hurting fierce.”

  So straightening the leg hadn’t worked after all. Thias felt his already somber mood lower one more notch. He decided to tell Hiram what he and Clardy had done. “You know, Grandpap, a few nights back, Clardy and me dug up your cutoff leg and laid it out straight again. A man in Knoxville had told us that would take away the pain.”

  Hiram blinked in surprise. “Dug up my leg …”

  “That’s right. And for a time it appeared it had done the job. You said the pains had gone away.”

  “So they had, for a spell.” Hiram hopped over to a stool and sat down clumsily, almost tipping himself over. “You boys dug up my leg … just so you could try to stop me from hurting?”

  Thias wondered why his grandfather seemed to find it so astonishing that they would have tried to do something kind for him. But then that was Hiram Tyler. He had never been able to fit much human kindness into his own life, and it apparently seemed novel to him to consider that someone else would bother to do so. “That’s right. I did the digging. Clardy did the straightening.”

  Hiram scratched his beard and looked uncomfortable. “Well, Thias, I reckon I owe you boys some thanks for trying.” The words were mumbled, obviously hard for the old man to get out.

  “I’m just sorry it didn’t work,” Thias replied.

  Only then did Hiram notice that Clardy’s bed hadn’t been slept in. “Thias, did your brother not come in at all last night?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  Hiram swore loudly, with enthusiasm. Thias grinned sadly to himself. The old man was ill at ease dealing with soft feelings such as gratitude, obviously eager to get back into more harsh but familiar emotional territory. “I’ll kick that boy’s arse! Staying gone all night, drinking and gambling and God only knows what … I’ll teach him a thing or two!”

  “I don’t think you’ll get the chance. I don’t believe Clardy is coming back.”

  A frown. “What? Why not?”

  “He’s been wanting to leave here a long time. He’s talked to me about it maybe a year or more. I believe this time he’s really gone.”

  Hiram took a few moments to absorb the idea. “Gone,” he said. “Clardy’s gone?”

  “That’s right.”

  The old man was lost in thought for a while. His eyes lost their typical flintiness and grew soft. During that interlude Thias noticed how elderly Hiram was getting to be. Bathed in the white morning light, he looked downright decrepit. Then, abruptly, his cheeks burned red and his eyes became flint again. He stood up, hopped over to the near wall, and got one of his crutches, which he stuck under his arm.

  “Run off, has he? Well, let him run, if that’s what he wants. God knows I’ve never been able to do a thing with that boy anyhow. Let him go! I don’t need him around here! Never could get a day’s worth of work out of him!”

  Hiram moved around the cabin, mumbling beneath his breath about Clardy, about his empty belly and the lack of anything worth eating for breakfast, about the unfairness of a world that would take a man’s knee but leave him the pains, then about Clardy some more. Thias listened, hollow and lonely, wishing Clardy would come back home where he belonged. As aggravating as Clardy could be, Thias missed him badly right now—and he had been gone since only yesterday.

  Abruptly Hiram turned, his crutch making a screaking noise on the puncheon floor. “When did you say you and Clardy was at the burying ground?”

  “Two nights ago … no, three.”

  “That was the same night that Abel Van Zandt went missing!”

  Thias cringed inwardly. He hadn’t meant to let Hiram know he and Clardy had been at the graveyard that particular night. Distraction had made him careless. “Is that right? Well, I suppose it is, now that I think on it.”

  “Did you see Abel that night? The story I hear was that he was there, guarding that grave.”

  Thias was about to lie, but changed his mind. Was there any reason not to tell the truth now? “Matter of fact, Grandpap, we did see him.”

  “Why didn’t you say so when I was telling you about him going missing?”

  “Truth is, Clardy and me didn’t want you to know that we had straightened your leg out. We figured you’d just cuss us for having buried it crooked to begin with.”

  “Pshaw! Sometimes I think you boys are ’fraid of me. Sometimes I believe you think of me as Old Scratch hisself.”

  “That’s because sometimes you act like Old Scratch hisself. You ain’t easy to
live with, Grandpap.”

  Hiram seemed taken aback by such a forthright statement. “Well … maybe I ain’t, but shut up about that. I want to hear about Abel at the burying ground. You know, you boys was probably the last to see him alive, except for whoever it was that killed him. Did you see anybody else—” Hiram cut off. His voice changed. “Thias, I hate even to say what I’m about to say, but with Clardy running off like he did, I got no choice. I want you to answer me straight out. Did you or Clardy have any kind of trouble or such with Abel, and maybe by accident sort of—”

  “I know what you’re trying to say, Grandpap. No, we didn’t have trouble with Abel, and it wasn’t us who killed him. You can rest your mind on that.”

  “I’m mighty glad to hear it. Did you talk to Abel at all that night?”

  “Aye. And it was all friendly. He wanted to know what we was doing, and we told him, and he went off. We finished our task and came on home.” He hesitated. “And that was all.”

  Hiram squinted and glared piercingly at his grandson. “That ain’t all. I can tell when you’re lying to me, boy.”

  Thias, his mind filled with the memories of lantern light on the faces of strangers, of Abel’s rifle firing and voice calling, faltered only a moment before going on. “There is more. Grandpap, Clardy and me saw somebody at Selma Van Zandt’s grave. They had a lantern and shovels and were talking about digging up the hole. Abel showed up again and ran them off, and then me and Clardy sneaked out and came on home.”

  “Did you see who they was?”

  “We saw the faces of them when one of them opened a lantern shutter. I didn’t know them. But I believe that maybe Clardy did.”

  “He said so?”

  “He denied it. But I heard him give a gasp when the lantern light lit their faces. He knew them. I know he did.”

  Hiram put it together. “And as soon as Clardy found out that Abel was gone and most likely dead, he lit out. Left home.”

  “Aye. And that troubles me, Grandpap. Clardy’s running scared.”

  Hiram shook his head and cussed at Clardy beneath his breath. He moved about the cabin, crutch clunking, stump swinging, white brows lowered. Thias could tell he was thinking, and that this was not a good time to disturb him. Oddly, Thias actually felt a little less depressed now that he had been honest with his grandfather. He had been burdened about Clardy, and it felt good to be sharing the load.

  Finally Hiram swung around and faced him. “Any notion where he might have gone?”

  “He said he was going to stop at the Hughes tavern, then leave. He didn’t say where … no, wait. He talked about the Boone road.” Thias weighed one more decision, and again opted to be open even though he was betraying One of Clardy’s confidences in so doing. “Grandpap, Clardy wants to be a thief. He wants to make his living robbing folks on roads out in the wilderness.”

  Hiram’s eyes flashed cold lightning. “Christmas! I hate to think I’ve raised such a fool!”

  “I know, Grandpap, I know. But you can’t talk sense into Clardy.”

  “Oh, I know that! How many a night have I laid awake, just thinking and fretting and …” The anger drained away from Hiram’s face, replaced by a look of sorrow, and Thias found himself marveling over a revelation: Hiram Tyler was worried about Clardy. He cared what happened to him. Even with all the cursings and shouts and, in boyhood days, the physical blows, the old man cared about his grandsons.

  “Thias, I want you to go after Clardy. Get yourself some food in your belly and go to Knoxville. If he’s still about, find him. Tell him to come home. Tell him we’ll fix whatever is wrong, whatever it is he’s afraid of.”

  Thias felt a meager but authentic quiver of affection, the first he had known for the old fellow in many a year. He didn’t let it show, though; Hiram Tyler wouldn’t like that. “Yes, Grandpap,” he said. “If he’s to be found, I’ll find him.”

  It felt good to be riding, to be searching for Clardy, even though he wasn’t sure he could talk Clardy into coming home if he did manage to find him. He hoped Clardy hadn’t already headed off toward Kentucky or some other distant place.

  Knoxville was a remarkably ugly town, viewed objectively, but in Thias’s view it had a lot of appeal for the mere fact of being a town. Built with little pattern as an outgrowth of older White’s Fort, it was filled with crude log buildings. Being a river town, usually haunted by a strong contingent of even cruder human beings, Knoxville represented fun, music, and spirits of both the high and liquid varieties. Thias never set foot in the dirt streets without feeling a heightening of the pulse and a desire to lay aside any serious view of life and duty at least long enough to rest his bones and dampen his throat in one of the tippling houses. And if he had a coin or two to spare—which was seldom—to try his hand at one of the generally ongoing games of chance underway here. It crossed his mind today that if Knoxville held such an appeal to a man not given much to vice, it could surely represent virtually irresistible temptation to Clardy, who had never met a vice he didn’t embrace like an old friend.

  Thias hitched his horse to a dead tree in front of a log tavern before which sat two men, one an ancient, bearded fellow bearing the interesting name of Peabody Swett, the other an even more ancient fellow, a black man known to all only as Toad. He was a former slave, freed by a master on his deathbed years before, who was since seldom seen outside the company of Swett. Toad was famous throughout the region as an outstanding flailer of the banjo, an instrument of African roots that produced a droning sound Thias loved to hear. This time, however, the banjo was in Swett’s hands, and he was managing to knock only noise, not music, out of the fretless, hand-carved instrument. The look of pain on Toad’s face spoke more than words ever could. Swett mercifully laid aside the instrument as Thias stepped up.

  “Howdy do, Mr. Swett. Howdy do, Toad.”

  The pair nodded greetings. “How you faring, Clardy?” Swett asked.

  “That ain’t Clardy. That’s Thias,” Toad corrected.

  “Oh? I never could keep you boys straight, which one is which. You look so much the same.”

  “There’s a lot of folks get us confused,” Thias said. “Matter of fact, it’s Clardy I’ve come looking for. I believe he might be in town here, or maybe was here yesterday. Have you chanced to see him?”

  Swett squinted, shook his head. “No. I ain’t.”

  “I seen him,” Toad said. “Sometime yesterday. But it wasn’t right here in town. Him and—what’s that freckle-faced man’s name, Peabody? The one with the wide ears?”

  “That’s Cale Johnson.”

  “Yes sir, Cale Johnson. Him and Cale Johnson was going into Hughes’s tavern together. Seen them myself while I was passing by and waved howdy at them, but they didn’t see me.”

  Thias had hoped to hear that Clardy was right here in town. Hughes’s tavern stood a few miles north of town. A long ride loomed, with little promise of results at the end, since Clardy might have gone anywhere after the place closed last night … except that he probably would have been drunk. And if he was drinking with Cale Johnson—a varmit of a man whom Thias barely knew but greatly distrusted—he might have gone home with him to sleep it off. Thias decided to press his quest in that direction.

  “You ain’t heard mention of Clardy here in town since, have you?”

  “I ain’t, sir,” Toad replied.

  “What about Cale Johnson?”

  Swett said, “Him we have seen, not more than an hour ago. He was eating squirrel meat and ’taters, setting right on that doorstep yonder. Don’t know where he is now.”

  Thias had just opened his mouth to speak again when the door of the tavern behind the seated men burst open and a man staggered out backward, flailing his arms wildly to keep his balance. In his left hand was a knife, waving dangerously because of his motions. It sliced the air so close to Thias that he jumped away with a yell of alarm. Swett stood, exclaiming loudly. The banjo clattered to the ground. Toad pushed up as quickly as his age would
let him and stepped out of the way, pausing only to pick up the banjo.

  Thias recognized the man who had almost sliced him as one John Bowman. Thias knew nothing about him except his name and the fact that Clardy had mentioned him as one more of his collection of drinking companions. “Take care with that knife!” Thias yelled, growing angry.

  Bowman glanced at him but said nothing. He didn’t have time. Out of the door emerged a howling figure of a man, moving so fast that Thias couldn’t make out his features clearly. Even so, he believed he knew the man, or had seen him before somewhere.

  Whoever he was, he was armed with a hatchet that he swung with abandon at the head of Bowman, who ducked with great dexterity. Thias was still backing out of the way, and fearing his horse might be struck by the swinging hatchet, when Bowman lunged forward like a duelist with a sword and thrust the tip of the blade into the hatchet swinger’s chest. The man let out a howl and ran to the side, away from Thias.

  Just then Thias realized where he had seen the man before.

  He expected to see the injured man strike back with the hatchet and maybe take Bowman’s head off his shoulders, but an odd thing occurred. The puncture, which was bleeding at a good rate but obviously wasn’t deep or life-threatening, seemed to deflate the man, as if his spirit to fight was draining with his blood. He lowered the hatchet and dabbed at his chest with his free hand. “I’m bleeding,” he said. He lifted his hand and showed the blood on his fingers to all around. “Look at that. I’m bleeding.” Then his eyes came to rest on Thias, widened in surprise, then quickly narrowed. “You, by hell! You!”

  “You know me?” Thias asked. “I don’t know you.”

  “The hell you don’t, you damned betraying Judas! You was at my house yesterday evening, and—” He stopped and looked more closely. “But it ain’t you! You ain’t Clardy! Who are you, boy?”

  “My name’s Tyler. Thias Tyler.”

  “Thias … not Clardy.”

  Thias stepped forward. “Wait a minute. You know my brother?”