Passage to Natchez

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Passage to Natchez Page 25

by Cameron Judd


  “There was no reason. It was the snow that drove me in. That’s all.”

  “Maybe so. Maybe not. Whatever, I did what I thought right. I judge folks by my instincts, Clardy. My instincts about you is that there’s something decent in you, down under the top of what you show. Your cream may not have riz to the top yet, but I’m betting it will in time.”

  “I still don’t know why you’ve been kind to me.”

  “I ain’t for sure myself, Clardy. But I’ll tell you this: you ain’t yet proved me wrong to have took a chance on you. You ain’t stole nothing from me, at least not that I know of. You ain’t hurt nor offenserized any of my family here. I believe that cream is beginning to rise.”

  Clardy lowered his head. “I feel ashamed of myself for what I tried to do, Mr. Ford. I’m sorry.”

  Ford’s one good eye glittered happily. “Well, now I know the cream is rising! Feeling sorry for bad steps done took is the first turn toward taking better ones.”

  “I don’t know how to take better steps. I ain’t a good man, Mr. Ford. I got a brother who’s good, but folks have always said I was good for nothing. They’ve been right, every time.”

  “Why, you ain’t bad. You’re free, that’s all, like every man. We’re all free to decide what our nature is going to be. A man’s nature ain’t no more than the choices he makes. The main trouble with all of us is that for most folks, at least, it seems easier to make the bad choices than the good ones. I’ve made plenty of bad ones myself. Now I try to do better. It’s all freedom, you see. Whatever you wind up to be, it’s in large measure because you make yourself that.”

  Clardy had not thought along those lines before. He was a very unphilosophical fellow and had not been seeking complicated answers. He shook his head.

  “All that is beyond me, Mr. Ford. Let me tell you, sir, I don’t know whether a man makes his nature or his nature makes him, but whichever, my nature ain’t never been worth half a heap of horse dung. You know what my ambition has been, since I was a boy? To be a robber. What do you think of that? I’ve always thought being a robber would be the finest thing a man could aspire to. That was what I thought of as good.”

  “Well, I can’t agree with that ambition. But the point is, I don’t believe you agree with it, either, not really. If you did, you wouldn’t be ashamed of what you tried to do.”

  Clardy puffed his pipe, thinking. This talk was intriguing, but he wondered if any of it really made any sense or any difference. He was what he was, and that was that.

  “What’s your ambition now, Clardy?” Ford asked. “You still wanting to turn robber?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t believe I’d make a good one.”

  “Not bum-stumbling around like you done with me, no sir, you wouldn’t.”

  “I reckon I’ll have to find honest work.”

  “Tell me, boy, why’d you leave your home to come to these parts?”

  “Didn’t want it to be my home anymore. It was always a hard and trying place to live. And finally, I was forced to leave because of some things that had happened. It’s a long story I don’t feel inclined to tell right now.”

  “Your business is your own.” Ford held silent, finishing his pipe. He knocked the dead ashes out on his heel. “Clardy, I need to let you know that I can’t keep you on here forever.”

  Clardy’s face flushed and grew hot. “I’ve stayed too long, I can see. I’ve imposed. I’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

  “Wait now, don’t read me the wrong way here. You can stay long as you want, as far as I’m concerned. Why, the help you’ve give me, the food you’ve put on my table, all that more than makes up for your keep. You’ve been a boon to me. What I’m saying is that I can’t give you enough recompense for your own good. I can’t give much anything to you more than a roof over your head and a table to feed you. And you need more than just room and board. You’re young. It’s time for you to start making a place for yourself in the world, and I ain’t talking about becoming a highway robber who’ll wind up shot dead or hung. Like you said, you need honest work that pays real money.”

  “I don’t know where to find it.”

  “I know of one job you might get. Don’t pay much, but it’s honest, and it would be a start.”

  “What is it?”

  “Helping guard jail in Danville. Thomas Pitt told me today that there’s a lot of worry in Danville that these Roberts folks will bust the jail. I always thought it a stout jail, but Thomas had talked to the jailer hisself, and even he is worried. He’s wanting to keep the place guarded night and day, ’specially because the women they had with them are going to birtherate babies. All three of them. There needs to be somebody keeping watch on them all the time, so that there’ll be someone to fetch help when the babes come.”

  “Two men … three pregnant women …” Clardy frowned, his mind flashing back to the Harpe cabin on Beaver Creek. The Harpe women were pregnant. “You sure these murderers are named Roberts?”

  “That’s what Thomas called them. Why?”

  “Oh … nothing.” He cleared his throat. “Work guarding the jail, you say?”

  “That’s right. I can’t assure you of it, but Thomas said that Biegler—that’s John Biegler, the jailer—hasn’t found him enough guards yet to keep watch. He’d probably be glad to have your help, and there’d be some pay for it.”

  Clardy knocked out his pipe. The prospect of guarding a jail held no appeal, but he could tell that Ford wanted him to try for the work, and he wanted to please him. “I may ride over to Danville tomorrow, Mr. Ford.”

  “Good luck to you there. If you don’t find work, just come on back. And if they can only put you to use part of the time, you can keep living here and working with me when you ain’t at the jail. Just consider this your home for now, until something better comes along for you.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Ford. I do appreciate your kindness.”

  “It ain’t nothing. God knows, lots of people have been kind to me. You just go and do likewise. It’ll give you a lot more joy in the end than being the best highway robber ever could, and you’ll never get hung for it.”

  Clardy had been sleeping on a pallet before the hearth, and though it made a hard bed, he slept very well every night. This night, though, it took longer to fall asleep. He was thinking about the jailed criminals Isaac Ford had talked about, and wondering.…

  It didn’t seem likely that these Roberts folks would actually be the Harpes. He had no reason to think they were anywhere but back on Beaver Creek, where he had last seen them. But the coincidence between numbers and genders, and the fact that the three jailed women were pregnant, just like the Harpe women, was remarkable.

  The possibility of common identity seemed strong enough to make him uncomfortable. Wouldn’t it be an unwelcome irony, taking a guard job only to find the Harpes on the other side of the jail door! He wouldn’t like that at all. Neither would they. Maybe the thing to do would be to ride to Danville, loiter about for a time, then return and tell Ford the job was already filled. Not a very honorable thing to do, maybe, but when had he worried about honor before? Maybe being around the Fords was bringing out good things in him, but he saw no sense in letting that process go too far, too fast. Moderation in all things, he told himself. Even virtue.

  He closed his eyes, basking in the heat of the banked fire close by him. Thoughts about himself, the Fords, Dulciana, and the Harpes mixed together in increasingly nonsensical ways until all of them faded into nothingness and he was asleep.

  CHAPTER 24

  Clardy was more impressed with Danville than he had expected to be. Like most frontier towns, the bulk of its houses and buildings were of log, though more finished, sawed-wood buildings were beginning to show up. The log courthouse, already about fifteen years old, was simple and typically styled, just large enough to cast an appropriate aura of sober, authoritative institutionality. The jail, also of logs, caught Clardy’s eye the most: a place as unappealing and bleak as a grave
.

  Last night he had been ready to make this day into one great pretense, but this morning the new and improving Clardy had carried more sway than the old, sneaky one. He had ridden all the way here with the full intention of actually inquiring about the job—and now the time had come.

  He gazed at the jail with his mind full of Harpe-inspired trepidation, then scoffed at himself for fearing phantoms. It was highly unlikely that the Roberts people lodged behind those nine-inch-thick log walls were the Harpes.

  A bowlegged man padded around from the back of the jail to the front, and Clardy wondered if this was the fellow he needed to see to ask about work. To his aggravation, he couldn’t remember the name Ford had attached to the jailer, so he went to the courthouse and asked a nicely suited man he found inside who the local jailer was and if that was him over by the jailhouse. The man looked at Clardy with undisguised suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

  “I understand there might be a need for guards to help keep watch over some prisoners in the jail yonder.”

  “Well … maybe so. If the man you saw is a shortish fellow with no hair on the top, probably wearing a black sailor’s coat, then that’s John Biegler, the jailer.”

  “Thank you.” Clardy turned to go.

  “Young man …”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you a hardy soul?”

  “Reckon I am.”

  “You’d best be if you want to guard that bunch. I’ve not seen so ugly and brutish a bunch as them in that jail in all my days.”

  Clardy saw an opportunity to gain advance information. “Let me ask you, sir: What is the name of the prisoners?”

  “Roberts, they informed the court. Apparently, though, their true name might be Harpe.”

  The blood drained from Clardy’s face. The man looked at him closely. “Are you well, young man?”

  “Yes, aye, yes. I’m fine. Thank you. Thank you for what you told me.”

  He left the courthouse, went to his horse, and rode—in the opposite direction from the jail. The Harpes after all! They must have left Tennessee approximately the same time he had. That was enough to chill his backbone. He had been riding alone on a road that also hosted a cruel pair who would have killed him in half a moment had he chanced to meet them.

  It made him afraid, then angry—and then to his utter surprise he felt a third emotion. He halted the horse, evaluating this new feeling, trying to identify it. He finally analyzed it as not one feeling but two: contempt for the Harpes and shame at himself.

  Contempt was a familiar feeling for Clardy, but shame?—that had afflicted him only rarely. A fellow who recognized no standards had no cause to feel bad about failing to meet them. Obviously that was different now. He shook his head sadly at this newest evidence of personal improvement—again undoubtedly because of the influence of the Fords. It was a deuced shame.

  He looked back toward the town. Why was he running away? Was he so cowardly that he feared men locked behind thick walls? Had he no pride?

  Well, no, he admitted. At least not before, and certainly not in private. He would bluster and strut before others, but shamelessly slip out the nearest back door as soon as eyes were off him. What had always mattered was the public perception, not the private reality.

  “Blast and flail you, Isaac Ford,” Clardy muttered. “All that high moral swill you pour down my throat is going to ruin me, sure as the world. Probably get me killed. You’ve rubbed off on me like a stain, you old one-eyed cuss.” He listened to the conflicting voices inside him, almost choosing to follow the one that spoke with Ford’s voice and to turn his course back to the town. He stopped himself with a desperate burst of self-preserving volition. “Uh-uh, no sir!” he declared. “Not me!” He heeled his horse back into motion and rode away from town.

  Ten minutes later he rode back through the same spot again, in the opposite direction, his expression very sad. It was the oddest thing that any kind of serious moral battle had been waged in the no-man’s-land of Clardy Tyler’s soul; odder still that the righteous side had actually won. Clardy was in despair. Keep up this course, and the next thing he knew he’d turn schoolmaster, or parson, or missionary to the heathen Indians! It was begrieving to see how the intrusion of even a smattering of pride and moral standards could impede on what had always been a carefree, shiftless life.

  He rode back into Danville and to the jail, which looked even more sobering up close. The thought of being locked up in a jail like that gave him a shudder, and he was glad he hadn’t succeeded in becoming an outlaw. Most outlaws found their way in the end to such miserable confinements as this.

  “What can I do for you, young man?”

  Clardy started, not having seen the speaker approach. It was the same bowlegged man he had spotted before. He touched his hat. “Hello, sir. My name’s Tyler. If you’re Mr. Biegler, you’re a man I want to speak with.”

  Caution swept across the man’s eyes like the subtle shadow of some flock passing overhead. “I’m Biegler. What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for guard work, sir. I’m told you might have need of such.”

  “I done hired a man for guard, ’bout an hour ago.”

  “Oh.” Clardy concealed the relief he felt behind a mask of disappointment. “Well, reckon I’ve come too late then. Thank you anyways.” He turned and began to walk away.

  Biegler said, “Hold up there. The man I hired can only work a portion of the time I need him. I could use another man for watching overnight a few nights a week. Especially them women. All three of them are ready to out with a baby here before long.”

  Clardy was disheartened, but he wouldn’t back out after having gone this far with it. “I’d like to offer myself for the job, sir.”

  “I’d be glad for the help, but I don’t know you. Ain’t sure I can trust you. A man must be trusty to guard a prison.”

  “I’m trusty.”

  “Anyone to speak for you?”

  “Do you know Isaac Ford?”

  “Know of him. Lives over above Stanford, I think? One-eyed man who says a lot of ten-pound words?”

  “Yes sir. I’m living there with him, helping him out at his place. It was him who told me about the guard work.”

  “Ford, eh?” Biegler rubbed his chin. “Well, you look decent enough, and if Ford speaks for you, I reckon that’s good enough. He’s a good man, I hear. This ain’t a pleasant job, though. Them folks in there, they’re murderers of the foulest kind. They been calling theirselves Roberts, but their real name is Harpe.”

  Clardy felt a twinge of uncertainty, but he masked it. “I reckon I can deal with them, long as they’re locked up safe.”

  “They are, or they will be. I’ve put in an order for a couple of new chains and horse locks to keep the men pinned to the ground, and there’ll be a new lock coming for that door there, too. I don’t trust them. Little one looks like a weasel. Big one’s more like a bear, but uglier.”

  “Where does the overnight guard keep post?”

  “There’s a little guard room in yonder.” He pointed. “Has a stool, cot, and table. Young man, you sure you want this kind of work? Ain’t much money in it.”

  Clardy didn’t want it, but to say so now would embarrass him. “I believe I would, Mr. Biegler, if you’ll have me.”

  “I will … and you can begin this evening.”

  Clardy nodded and smiled. “Thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll do a good job for you.”

  The thought that accompanied those confident words, however, was of a far different stripe. Clardy Tyler, he thought to himself, what the devil have you got yourself into here? That’s the Harpes in there! The very men who tried to make you a killer yourself, the very men who probably killed Abel Van Zandt—and here you are, putting yourself up to guard them, all to put a handful of coin in your pocket and a grin on the face of Isaac Ford! Has ever a bigger fool than yourself walked this earth?

  He hoped those horse locks Biegler had mentioned would arrive very soon.
>
  Clardy Tyler quickly became a young man who lived in two worlds. When he wasn’t on duty at the jail, he continued to live at the Ford cabin with its warmth and domestic cheer. When he was on duty, his home was the tiny guardroom at the jail, a dank, cold place bereft of color or comfort and any company a sane man would desire. Life at the jail had a definitely surreal quality and kept Clardy continually plagued with the same kind of vague unsettlement that trails in the wake of a nightmare whose content has been quickly forgotten but whose terror lingers.

  For their part, the Harpe brothers were initially furious to discover that none other than Clardy Tyler was one of their guards. They spit a continual string of verbal venom at him, snarling at him like beasts from a cage, but that didn’t last long. Their attitude toward him became mocking and scornful, until Clardy began to perceive the Harpes less like dangerous beasts and more like nagging, whining, persistent gnats in the ear. This was particularly so concerning Wiley Harpe, who sometimes remained awake the night through, mocking at Clardy through the closed door of his dark cell, whose only access to light and air was a single narrow window crossed with iron bars.

  Sometimes the mockery was meaningless, almost childish, designed merely to annoy. Other times it took on a far darker and more threatening quality, and Clardy was glad for the thick walls and the heavy chains that kept the brothers’ ankles shackled to the floor, even though the sound of those chains clinking and dragging as the Harpes moved about lent a sinister, almost ghostly aura to their unseen persons.

  It grew the most sinister yet on the evening in early February when Clardy arrived at the jail to begin his nighttime duty and found Biegler the jailer in a foul humor. “The little one is worked up today,” he said. “He’s cussed and cried and sung and laughed all day, moving from one right to the other. And he’s talked of you.”

 

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