Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  Clardy heard movement inside, then the sound of a latch being opened. “Mrs. Sullivan? Is that you?”

  “Yes, my boy. It’s me. I’ve brought a friend to see you.”

  Silence for a moment, and no more movement of the latch. “Who is it?”

  “A gentleman. He won’t hurt you, Timothy. He is a kind young man, and you know his brother, we believe.”

  The door opened slowly and a pale, dirty face looked out. Clardy smiled and nodded, not showing his shock at the looks of the young man at the door, who even by the standards of Natchez-under-the-Hill looked bedraggled and wasted. “Thias!” the young man exclaimed. “The very image of Thias Tyler, you are!”

  Clardy’s heart began thumping loudly. “Thias is my brother.”

  “Brother … then you are—what was that name he said? Clardy! You are Clardy Tyler!”

  “Yes! Yes I am! You know Thias?”

  “Aye, I know him. Come in.” Suddenly he froze; his eyes narrowed. “You ain’t going to hurt me, are you? You ain’t going to take me back to them?”

  “No, no. I won’t hurt you. I won’t take you to anyone. All I want is to find my brother.”

  Timothy let them in. Clardy had to fight against the impulse to hold his nose. The room stank of sweat and filth, worse even than the Harpe cabin back on Beaver Creek.

  At Timothy’s gestured invitation, Clardy sat down on a barrel that served as a chair. The only real chair in the room, a battered imitation of a Hepplewhite, became Mrs. Sullivan’s perch, and she sat in it in regal style, looking haughty despite her humble and ragged mode of dress. For the first time, Clardy noticed that the tatters she wore had at one time been good garments. Probably she had worn these same clothes since her husband abandoned her.

  “You promise me you won’t take me to them?” Timothy asked again.

  “I don’t even know who ‘them’ are,” Clardy replied.

  “Soldiers! Who else would you think?” Timothy said it very angrily, his face twisting suddenly in fury.

  Clardy realized he was dealing with an unstable man. He would have to choose his words carefully.

  “I should have known who you meant,” he said softly. “No, sir, I won’t take you to the soldiers. You have my vow.”

  Timothy nodded. His anger vanished and he sat down on a side of a sagging, stinking rope-slat bed. “Good. I’m mighty afraid of them. They do hard things to folks who don’t please them.”

  “Timothy hides here from soldiers,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “He was once beaten by soldiers when he was younger, and his father was shot as a deserter.”

  Clardy could not restrain himself from asking the burning question. “Sir, where is my brother?”

  “In prison.”

  “What?”

  “He is imprisoned. He and Willie Jones, both of them.”

  Clardy asked, “Who is Willie Jones?”

  “Willie Jones is Willie Jones. What kind of fool question is that?” He seemed angry again.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just eager to know all I can, so I can find my brother. Where is he imprisoned?”

  “New Orleans.”

  “Why?”

  “We stole gold. From a Spanish church. Crosses and such.”

  “Thias stole gold from a church?”

  “Yes. We all did. Stole it together. They caught Willie and Thias. Except he don’t call himself Thias now. He goes by James Hiram.”

  And there he had it: firsthand confirmation that James Hiram was indeed his brother. Despite the horror of learning of his brother’s imprisonment, he was filled with relief to at last truly know what before had been only strong suspicion. “How long ago was James put in prison?” he asked.

  “More than a year. It’s hard to remember.”

  Mrs. Sullivan said, “Timothy came here after he escaped them. Now he never leaves our room. I care for him and bring him food. I think of him as my son. He is very kind to me.”

  “I see.” Clardy was pulsing with excitement he dared not show out of fear it might set off some other angry reaction on Timothy’s part. “Timothy—may I call you by your name? Thank you—could you tell me exactly where I could find Thias? What prison he is in?”

  “I don’t know the name of it. I was gone before they were put away.”

  “Yes, of course. Timothy, have you known I was in Natchez, looking for my brother?”

  “Known it for a little while. I seen you once out my window. I thought you was Thias. You look so much like him. But no scar. You got no scar.”

  “We’ve been took for each other many a time.”

  “Mrs. Sullivan, she told me you weren’t him. She said you were Tyler, the Harpe hunter, and that you were asking people about James Hiram. I told her, ‘I know where James Hiram is! And I know his true name!’”

  “That is how I knew I could help you, Mr. Tyler,” Mrs. Sullivan contributed proudly.

  “I’m grateful,” Clardy said. He stood and put out his hand toward Timothy. Timothy did not take it; he looked at Clardy with fear, like he was being threatened. Clardy lowered his hand.

  Timothy looked at Mrs. Sullivan. “Did you bring me food?”

  “I have nothing at the moment, Timothy. But I believe that tonight Mr. Sullivan may return, and if so, he will bring many good things for us to eat.”

  Timothy balled up his fist and pounded the wall. “I’m hungry! Curse you, hag, I want food!”

  Clardy stood quickly. “I can bring you food,” he said. “I’d be pleased to.”

  Mrs. Sullivan’s brows arched. “Mr. Tyler, we do not accept charity, Timothy and I!”

  “It won’t be charity. You can repay me for it later … when Mr. Sullivan comes back.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Very well, sir. I will do that.”

  Clardy left, bought bread and meat, vegetables, whiskey. As an afterthought he purchased flour, sugar, cornmeal. With all of it laden in a box, he carried it back up to the little room and knocked on the door. Timothy opened it and snatched the box from Clardy’s hands without a word. Before he slammed the door shut, Clardy saw Mrs. Sullivan lying on the bed, still fully dressed, snoring loudly.

  Clardy turned away from the closed door and descended the stairs, feeling both pity and great gratitude for the two rejected human beings he had met tonight. He hoped that Timothy’s information, limited as it was, would prove true. He had chased so many false clues that he was afraid to be too hopeful.

  But he did hope. Timothy had known things he couldn’t have if he hadn’t really been with Thias.

  The door opened behind him as he began to descend. Timothy’s wan face, looking belligerent, appeared again. “Give me money, too,” he said. “I give you help, and you can pay me for it.”

  Clardy brought out a couple of old continental dollars and handed them to Timothy. He took them, inspected them closely in a way that suggested his eyes were weak, grunted, and accepted them. The door slammed again. Clardy sighed and shook his head. It was astonishing how much like an animal a man could become.

  Clardy went down to the street. He knew what he had to do now: reach New Orleans as quickly as possible, find Thias’s place of confinement, and do whatever was necessary to get him out.

  He had no idea what that would involve or how he would go about it. It could be complicated, trying to get a man out of prison. He would need help and legal expertise—and he knew just the man to provide it. So despite the late hour and the fact he would probably receive a cold reception from a certain lady he would encounter at his destination, Clardy loped through Natchez-under-the-Hill and up toward the finer portion of town and the home of Japheth Deerfield.

  Three days later

  Celinda Deerfield put on her finest smile as she said the final good-bye to her New Orleans–bound husband. She had known for months that he would be making this journey, and had not looked forward to his absence. Now, thanks to Clardy Tyler, her vaguely negative feelings about the journey had progressed to the point of full dread. When Tyler
had shown up at the Deerfield doorstep well after midnight, breathlessly eager to tell her husband of a new and significant clue about the whereabouts of his brother, he had chanced to arrive right on the threshold of Japheth’s own long-planned New Orleans voyage. And Japheth, of course, not only invited him to come along, but offered him his legal help as well. Celinda was highly displeased. When her husband was out of earshot, Clardy apologized to her for breaking his pledge to involve her husband no further in his affairs. “I felt I had to do it,” he explained. “Your husband is the best man I know to give me the aid I’ll have to have to get my brother free.”

  She had not argued, knowing it would be pointless. Just as it would be pointless now to show her displeasure over this situation to Japheth. He already knew of her instinctive disaffection for Tyler; nothing would be gained by voicing the same to him all over again. Japheth was a man with a mind that was as logical as it was enthusiastic, and he gave little credence to a mere feeling, which was all her negativity toward Clardy Tyler amounted to. Celinda could give no good, logical reasons for her notion that Tyler was somehow going to bring harm to Japheth, and thus Japheth considered her feeling irrational and not worthy of heed. Celinda, having a logical bent herself, knew he was right—and therein lay her greatest frustration, because irrational though it might be, she still didn’t like the idea of Clardy Tyler entwining his business with her husband’s. She still couldn’t shake off her feeling that ill would come of it all—particularly if her husband followed a certain other trait he had, of letting his ingrained enthusiasm override his common sense. Life with Japheth Deerfield had taught Celinda that a logical mind didn’t necessarily equal a sensible one.

  Frustrations and doubts notwithstanding, she smiled, adjusted Japheth’s cravat, and give him a firm hug and kiss. “I’ll miss you,” she said. “Come back as quickly as you can.”

  “So I will. Don’t worry about me, dear. It’s a simple business I have to attend to, and it shouldn’t occupy me long.”

  Celinda said, “It’s not your business that I’m concerned about.”

  “Ah, Mr. Tyler again, is it? Don’t worry about that, either. If his brother is in prison there, it should take only a brief time to find him … though his use of the James Hiram alias could complicate the matter just a mite. But I’m very optimistic that we’ll be able to obtain his freedom, now that the big territorial transaction is complete.”

  The transaction to which he referred was the recent purchase by the United States of the massive Louisiana Territory. All through the prior year, the machinations of intergovernmental diplomacy, wheedling, threats, and intrigue had been churning away full-force, culminating in the official transfer of the massive territory near the end of December, at a cost of about fifteen million dollars. In New Orleans shortly before Christmas, Mississippi territorial governor William Claiborne and Army commander in chief James Wilkinson had gone through transfer-of-control ceremonies, bringing a vast new region into the domain of the United States, almost doubling the nation’s size.

  Japheth went on: “I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to find Thias Tyler safe and sound, at which point I’ll petition the governor for his release on Clardy Tyler’s behalf. Given the change of governmental authority and the fact that he will have served a year or so of imprisonment already, I’m near certain I can obtain his freedom.”

  And then what? Celinda felt like asking the question but did not. Like her bad intuitions about Clardy Tyler, it had all been voiced before. What would Japheth do? Would he seek to have Thias Tyler tried and punished for the crimes he had committed in the Mississippi Territory, one of those being against Japheth himself? Or would his seemingly blind fondness for Clardy Tyler and tremendous personal and professional intrigue with his quest cause him to leave Thias Tyler untouched by the forces of the law he had scorned? Would that be right, professionally, ethically, personally? Had Japheth considered that obtaining the freedom of a known highway bandit might not be in the best interest of the public? As far as Celinda was concerned, a New Orleans prison was a perfectly suitable place for the man who had robbed her husband at gunpoint. Celinda was honestly concerned that this time her husband might do something he would regret.

  She helped Japheth on with his coat. “Just how did Mr. Tyler hear this rumor that his brother is in jail?” The night Clardy had shown up at their door to share the news, she was too disgusted to linger and hear the story from him.

  “Some poor lost soul down under the hill told him,” Japheth replied. “A nervous kind of fellow named Timothy, who hides out in his room out of some inane fear of soldiers.”

  “And he trusts the word of someone like that?”

  “Well, this fellow seemed to know details he wouldn’t had he not been associated with Thias Tyler. He was apparently involved in the same crime and was almost captured along with Thias Tyler.” Japheth paused and chuckled. “Funny thing, in a way—this Timothy fellow, who seems a bit touched in the mind, according to Mr. Tyler, is living with an old woman who has delusions of her own. Some sad old hag named Sullivan, waiting in ragged old clothes for the return of a husband who abandoned her here a decade ago. Mrs. Beatrice Sullivan. Quite a pitiful story, isn’t it?” No answer. “Celinda? Is something wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  But later, after Japheth had met Clardy at the levee, boarding a New Orleans–bound boat and set off, Celinda held her daughter and thought about Beatrice Sullivan. Japheth hadn’t had any idea that the “sad old hag” he was talking about was the sister of Celinda’s old protector Queen Fine. Having her brought up in such an unexpected and unknowing way had given Celinda an odd jolt.

  It reminded her of something she had tucked out of the way deep in her mind for a long time now: a lingering sense of having failed Queen by having ignored her sister. Celinda had turned away from Beatrice Sullivan, never telling her that she had known Queen, never having offered to bolster her situation, justifying this negligence to herself with the idea that learning of Queen’s death would only bring more sadness to an already sad life. Celinda knew that was an excuse, especially now that she had a settled life and enough material means to make a real difference in the woman’s life. It could be done secretly, if she chose. It could be done openly, but without telling Beatrice Sullivan of Queen’s tragic fate. There was nothing Celinda could do for Queen now, but she could do something for her sister.

  Celinda sang to her daughter, but her mind was busy. It wasn’t too late for her to make up for her failure. She decided that in memory of Queen Fine, she would find some way to improve the desolate situation of Beatrice Sullivan. It was her duty, and she would no longer shirk it.

  Tomorrow, she decided. With Japheth out of town she would not have to sneak about to do it. She would go find Beatrice Sullivan, maybe take her a gift or some money. Exactly how she would go about it and how much about herself she would tell Mrs. Sullivan was something she could decide later.

  The decision made her feel better. She hugged Beulahland close and sang gentle words into her ear.

  CHAPTER 38

  Celinda’s noble intentions, born in the unstable emotional atmosphere of separation from her husband, withered in the brightness of the next morning’s sunshine. The idea of going to Natchez-under-the-Hill and dropping the manna of benevolence on Queen’s sister didn’t seem very appealing now that the time to do it had come. It was easy for Celinda to find a dozen reasons not to follow through, chief among them that it would be irresponsible to take little Beulahland into such a slovenly and dangerous area of town. Beatrice Sullivan’s welfare would simply have to wait.

  But with the evening came a revival of moral impulse. It had been that way with her since girlhood: the daylight turning weighty concerns as moral duties into nearly invisible, easily overlooked phantoms; the darkness giving those phantoms weight and solidity again, and putting somber and reproving expressions on them besides. She tucked her baby into bed and idly picked up a copy of the B
ible as her thoughts drifted down to the Under-the-Hill section of town and the sad old woman who surely was there even now. When her eye chanced to fall on a verse in Deuteronomy: “… thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in thy land,” she promptly put the Bible aside and wished she had picked something to read that said nothing about charity to the downtrodden. By now she wasn’t in the mood to read at all, and went to bed early, thinking to herself that tomorrow she would leave Beulahland with Mrs. Mulhaney down the street and go see if she could find Beatrice Fine Sullivan. She would take her some of the money she had saved up out of the allowance Japheth provided her, and tell her that she’d once she met her sister, Queen, and now wanted to help her in Queen’s memory … no, in her honor. Beatrice Sullivan need not even know her sister was dead. That would only add more sadness to a life surely sad already.

  The next day, Celinda fought away another bout of hesitance and went ahead with her plan. She pretended to be pleased when Mrs. Mulhaney accepted her request to watch Beulahland. Secretly she had hoped Mrs. Mulhaney would be too busy, relieving her of her self-imposed mission without the price of guilt.

  But with her daughter in safe keeping, there was no reason not to go ahead. Celinda descended to Natchez-under-the-Hill as an increasingly bad case of nerves plagued her. This was a world she had grown accustomed to pretending did not exist. The ramshackle structures of the section seemed ugly and foreboding, their windows like peering eyes. Celinda felt the years fall away from her as she moved farther down, further in, and soon she felt not like the adult she was, but the girl she had been when she was thrown into the vile world of river pirates and confidence men. It had felt just this way that first time she came to Natchez-under-the-Hill. She began to struggle against the desire to flee back the way she’d come, and wondered if she looked as frightened as she felt.

  At least I’ve come by morning. The light is bright and the street is as safe as it ever is, and the worst folk here are still sleeping. Maybe Beatrice Sullivan is sleeping, too. Maybe I shouldn’t disturb her. Maybe I should just leave, and tell Japheth about what I want to do when he gets back. He can come with me, and maybe help her more than I can alone.…