Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  “Ah! Another comes to hear the news! Welcome sir! You have come to the place of wisdom, where you’ll hear the great and terrible things that are soon to befall our doomed world here at the time of the end! You may have come to escape the storm, but there is a storm coming that no one will escape, though they beg the rocks and mountains to fall on them!”

  My lands, Clardy thought, I’ve found some sort of outlandish preacher, and danged if he ain’t talking about the end of the world, just like poor old Willie did.

  He sat down and tried not to evoke any further notice. As he listened, the preacher, if such he was, resumed his talk from the point when Clardy entered. Clardy soon ascertained that this indeed was no commonplace preacher, a suspicion he’d had when he saw the man’s bizarre mode of dress. This man spouted a mixture of biblical imagery, Indian lore, Creole and African legendry, and backwoods philosophy, all centering on the idea that the world was indeed on the verge of coming to its end. When the man began talking about a fork-tailed comet that had been seen in the sky earlier in the year—a clear portent of the end, he said—Clardy halfway hoped he was going to say that the end would come as a heavenly fireball or something similar, and not as an opening and shaking of the earth, as in Jim Horton’s version of the apocalypse.

  He was disappointed and chilled by a highly unwanted foreboding when the man said, “When the end comes, and it will come, before this year closes, it will be through a terrible, great shaking of the land. The mountains will tremble as if they are sinners before a holy God, and the rivers will run backward, grow red with mud so that they seem to be rivers of blood, and the earth will spew out its swallowing sands and open in great cracks, like hungry mouths, to devour the wicked. I tell you, my friends, it is all here in the Bible, and in the prophecies of the greatest and wise seers of the Indian and Negro races, and in the very sky itself. Doom! Destruction! It will come, and there will be no way to flee it!

  “Many will die, but some will live. They will go on to a new life and a better one. Out of the old world dying a new world arises! Out of the old world dying a new world arises!” He repeated the statement again and again until it became a kind of odd chant, picked up by some of the truer believers in the crowd.

  Clardy glanced back out the open door. The storm was raging hard now, lightning erupting every few seconds as if in authoritative seconding of the words of the supposed prophet. He was feeling so uncomfortable here that he was beginning to think it would be just as well to go out there and brave the storm. He looked around at the others and wondered if anyone else looked as ill at ease as he felt, but all he could see were a few profiles and backs of heads, and therefore could not read the faces. He grew more restless, and irritable for letting these words get to him. Normally he would have dismissed such a man as this speaker as an obvious buffoon, or maybe a money-hungry swindler with an offering plate that needed filling, but since he’d just traveled many long days and miles with a man advocating similar ideas, it was harder to discount it all, no matter how foolish it seemed. The storm continued apace, and Clardy remained where he was, wishing he weren’t.

  After another half hour, the prophet had gone on to more talk of coming doom and showed no sign of slacking, but the storm did. The lightning diminished, the rain slowed to a sprinkle, and Clardy Tyler rose to slip out.

  “You there!” the speaker bellowed.

  Clardy winced, looking back over his shoulder at the man. “You’re speaking to me, are you?”

  “Yes, sir. Do you seek to flee the truth?”

  “I seek to flee this barn.” He had hoped for a titter of laughter, but did not receive it. Apparently this barn was full of devoted believers of what had been said here.

  “The end is coming, my friend! Don’t scoff or mock those who come to give the warning. Seat yourself again and listen to the rest of my words!”

  “Best be going. Come see me, y’hear, if the world don’t open and swallow you before you can.” Again no laughter, and this time there were a few angry murmurs. Obviously this crowd didn’t appreciate the mocking of what it saw as a prophet. Clardy felt his face turning red.

  He got out of the barn as quickly as he could, the speaker railing after him. Clardy hitched up the horses and rolled out on the wagon. By now the man had gone back to his main line of talk and was ignoring the sheep that had fled the fold. Clardy was glad to have been forgotten. He rode away, listening to the fading drone of the prophet. Then he noticed that the volume rose and took on a scolding quality, as it had when he left. He grinned. Apparently somebody else had followed his lead and was getting out of the place. That made Clardy feel better. It was good to know there were others who hadn’t yet reached the point of true believing, either.

  It was all nonsense, of course. All this jabber about end-times and trembling mountains. And rivers running backward? It would never happen. Clardy spat off the side of the wagon, a show of the contempt he felt … or more truthfully, the contempt he wished he could feel.

  “I’m as big a fearful fool as some old granny with a pocket full of charms,” he said to the sky. “It seems that if you say something to a man long enough, he takes to halfway believing it, no matter what it is.”

  He rode on through the night, eager to put at least two miles behind him before making camp. Finally he stopped, found as dry and sheltered a spot as he could, and pitched his camp. He cooked a meal and ate, then lay down to sleep, his rifle at his side, within reach.

  He awakened sometime later without knowing why. His fire had died, but enough light lingered to reveal the form of the big man who stood beside his bedroll, so close that his booted toes almost touched Clardy. Clardy sat up with a hiss of fright and grabbed for his rifle, only to find it gone.

  “Here you are, Clardy,” the man said, handing the rifle to him. “Take it if you want. Though I’m sorry to see you seem to be so ready to shoot your own brother.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Clardy sat by the newly built-up fire, listening to his brother speak, feeling overwhelmed with awe and gratitude that the meeting he feared would never happen had come about as if of its own accord. He was manifestly glad he had been forced into the barn by the storm, glad the self-proclaimed prophet of the end had made such a show of calling attention to him. It was at that point, Thias said, that he’d turned from his own place among the crowd and seen the brother he had last laid eyes on the day he fled Tennessee and the Harpes back in 1798.

  “I had come into that barn to escape the storm,” Thias said, scratching at the scar marking his bearded face. “I was on my way up from New Orleans when the weather drove me in. I tell you, when I turned and seen you coming in, I like to have fell over dead then and there. I couldn’t believe it.”

  “I still can’t,” Clardy replied. “Thias, I came down this way looking for you.”

  “With a coffin in the back of your wagon? You thinking of taking me off dead?”

  “Of course not. The coffin is for the bones of a man named Isaac Ford. A fine man and old friend and business partner of mine, laid to rest in a New Orleans sepulchre for a lot of years now. But he always wanted to lay beside his wife and children in Kentucky, and I’m fulfilling an old promise to him. That’s the second reason I’ve come this way. You were the main one.”

  “Now you’ve found me, with the help of luck or the good Lord. But what you’ve found is a man not worth the finding, Clardy.”

  “I’ll make that judgment, not you,” Clardy replied. “Thias, it’s been a lot of years, and I’ve missed you every one of them. For a long spell now I’ve thought you were dead. It wasn’t until you came to Preacher Coffman that I found out the truth.”

  “A man can’t trust anybody to hold his tongue anymore,” Thias grumbled. “Not even a blind preacher.”

  “It wasn’t the preacher who told me. It was his manservant.”

  “But the preacher had to have told the servant, all the same.”

  “What does it matter now? We’re together. I only
wish you’d have gone ahead and come to me when you were in Kentucky.”

  “I was close, Clardy, so close I could have hit you with a stone. I watched you from the trees beside your house. And that’s a fine house, and finer family. You’ve done well for yourself, Clardy. I’m proud of you. You’ve held up the Tyler name real proud—a lot better than your older brother. You’ve become a well-known citizen, you know it? Well-known enough that I heard talk of you among the Kaintucks all the way down here. Clardy Tyler, the big planter. Clardy Tyler the Harpe hunter. It wasn’t hard to find out how to reach your farm, well-known as you are.”

  “You should have just showed yourself when you were there. I’d have been happier to see you than you could have guessed.”

  “I wanted to, Clardy, and intended to, but when the time came, I couldn’t. I was too ashamed of what I’ve turned into. I’m a criminal. A lawbreaker. I’ve stole and hurt folks. I’ve cut men with knives when I was so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing. There’s charges held against me almost every place I’ve been. Every time I see a constable or a jail or a courthouse, I break into a sweat. I’ve lived the kind of life I never would have thought I’d come to, and it all seemed to happen to me, you know, more than me choosing it. After you left home, and Grandpap died, I turned the farm into cash money and went off to find you, to give you your part of the inheritance. I lost that money, Clardy. It was stole from me. I reckon I wasn’t careful enough with it. And that’s haunted me ever since, and shamed me so bad, me losing that money that should have been yours.”

  “I don’t care about that money. I’ve made my own money. I’m a well-off man now, Thias.” He paused. “Not outright rich, but well-off enough to afford the best attorneys, men who could do a right smart to ease you out of whatever trouble you’ve gotten into.”

  “Attorneys? A man needs attorneys only when he’s facing a court of law. And that won’t happen to me. I’d die before I’d face down a judge in a courtroom.”

  Clardy began to see the relevance of the issue raised by Isaac Ford years ago when he was making that first downriver search for Thias. That issue was simply: What does a man do with a criminal brother once he finds him? How does one escape the shadow of the stigma, or evade the moral requirement of punishment that comes of having broken the law? Even though Clardy and Thias were together again, they were still cut off from one another. The life that both of them had lived had created a chasm that would not go away just because they wished it would.

  “Let’s talk of that another time,” Clardy said. “Thias, I was traveling with your old companion Willie Jones. He was taking me to find a woman he believed you had gone off after.”

  “Willie? Where is he now?”

  “He’s dead, sorry to tell you. Wounded by a robber. He died in the Natchez Hospital this very week.”

  “Willie’s dead? God! I liked old Willie, before he went crazy and started worrying about his life of sin and declaring his dreams had told him the world was coming to an end—same kind of nonsense that white Indian or whatever he is was babbling back yonder in the big barn.”

  “Do you know his name wasn’t really Willie Jones?”

  “I figured it wasn’t, though I never knew his true one. Most of the men I’ve known the last few years ain’t used their real names, me included.”

  “James Hiram—right?”

  “That’s right. From Grandpap’s name. But tell me, who was Willie, really?”

  “A man named Jim Horton. Nickname of Junebug.”

  “Junebug Horton? I’d heard that name. Never had a notion it was Willie.” He paused thoughtfully. “So old Willie’s dead. Hard to believe. But maybe there’s worse things than being dead. It’s harder being alive, when everything that’s good in your life has gone to squat and the only hope you got is that the woman you love will let you be hers.”

  “So Willie was right. You did come down this way looking for that woman he told me of. Have you asked for her hand yet?”

  “Not yet. Takes a bit of nerve, you know. I’m afraid she’ll tell me no. And there’s a problem with the man she was married to. They’re divorced now—some folks declare her a scandalous woman for that, but that divorce had to happen. He’s a bad man, treated her and her little one rough. He may get it into his head to treat me rough if I marry his woman. He still sees her as his, even though he left her.”

  “You be careful of him, Thias.”

  “I will be. I ain’t worried. I can handle myself. If there’s one thing the life I’ve lived has made me, it’s stout. And I’ve always been good with my fists. You remember that from when we was boys.”

  “You get that scar on your face from fighting?”

  “Yep. Good big old slash across the face with a butcher knife. The fellow who give it to me went away with worse.”

  “Sounds like life has been hard for you.”

  “Indeed. Indeed. But maybe it’ll be good for me, if Elizabeth will give me her hand. I want to be a husband to her. Want to care for her, and let her give me the kind of life a man needs. I even want to be father to that young’un of hers.”

  “What if she turns you down?”

  Thias lowered his head. “Don’t know. Maybe I’ll just put a pistol to my head and put an end to a life that wouldn’t be worth living without her.”

  Clardy stiffened, eyes flashing. “Don’t talk that way, Thias. I ain’t going to hear you talk about dying, not after you and me are finally back together again, like we ought to have been years ago. No death talk, no babble about things being too far gone to change—none of that! I heard such from your old partner ‘Willie’ as he lay dying, and I’ll not stand hearing it from you!”

  Thias’s face was cast in gold by the firelight. It smoothed his weathered features, softened the outline of the scar and the ragged texture of his untrimmed beard. For a few moments the face looking back at Clardy was, except for the whiskers, the face of the youthful Thias he had played beside and—when he couldn’t escape it—labored with in days of boyhood and young manhood. Seeing him that way fanned up a sudden wild hope in Clardy that things really could be as they had been, that the chasm he had sensed earlier wasn’t unbridgeable.

  “Thias, things are going to be right again. I can feel it in my bones. Your Elizabeth will say yes to you, and when she does, you bring her and the child back up to Kentucky. You can live right on my place until you get your own roots sunk. We’ll make up for all them years apart. We’ll—”

  “Hush that talk, Clardy. Ain’t you heard what I said? Nothing can be like it was before. I’m a lawbreaker. There’s trouble waiting for me anyplace I go. I can’t go to Kentucky. I can’t go anywhere.”

  “Then how the devil do you plan to live with a wife and child?”

  Thias reacted as if Clardy had jammed a needle into him, making Clardy realize that he had just struck a point that Thias did not want to think about. Clardy studied his tense brother, comprehending. Thias was a man without hope, a man who believed there was nothing good left in life for him—with one exception, that being the woman he loved. It must be a great and deep love, too, Clardy thought, because he’s not being sensible about it. If his life is so destroyed that he can’t live on his own, how can he expect that taking on the burden of a wife and child is going to change anything?

  Right then Clardy did something he would never have imagined doing: he burst into tears. Thias looked at him, astonished, but could have felt no more surprise than Clardy himself. The odd thing was that his tears were not tears of frustration or anger. They were tears of pure grief, the same grief felt when one loses a close loved one to death. The grief had come as quickly and unaccountably as that burst of hope only moments before, and now Clardy sat weeping, crying as if Thias were dead.

  Thias stared at him, rose, and walked away. Clardy feared his brother would leave, so he stood and went after him. “Thias, wait! Don’t go.”

  Thias was standing just outside the ring of light coming from the fire, his back towar
d Clardy. When Clardy grabbed his shoulder and made him turn, he was astonished to see by the dim reflected firelight that Thias, too, was crying, his rugged face streaked with tears.

  “Clardy, I’ve throwed my life away, and I don’t know how to get it back again,” Thias said, his voice shaking. He ducked his head and dabbed at his face with the heel of his fist. “Lord have mercy, I’m shaming myself here right before you! Crying like a bed-baby.”

  “I done it first. But what does that matter? We ain’t boys no more, Thias. It’s boys who are ashamed to shed tears.”

  Thias sucked in a great breath and forced himself to cease weeping. “I wish I was a boy again. I’d surely live my life different. But there’s no turning back. I can’t go the other way again any more than a river can turn and run backward, like that fool in the Indian clothes was prophesying about this evening. Maybe my whole idea of marrying Elizabeth is a fool’s notion. Maybe it really is all over for me. I don’t know if the whole world is coming to an end, but maybe mine is. Maybe mine is.”

  World coming to an end … Clardy thought back to the mystic in the barn. “‘Out of the old world dying a new world arises.’”

  “What?”

  “It’s what the man in the barn said, Thias: ‘Out of the old world dying a new world arises.’ Maybe it can really be that way, for you. Maybe there is a way out. A new world.”

  “I wish it could be. God, how I wish it!”

  “Then let’s don’t give up hope, Thias. We’re back together again, and it’s all come about in such a curious kind of way that I can’t help but think maybe there’s good things going to happen for us. Why, don’t you come with me to New Orleans? Help me fetch up the bones of Isaac Ford. Then we’ll go back to Kentucky together and do whatever we have to do to make things right. We’ll be brothers again, just like nothing that has happened ever happened at all.”

  “That can’t be, Clardy. God knows I wish it could. Things have happened. More than you know. I can’t wipe out my past.”