Passage to Natchez

by Cameron Judd

  She watched Clardy packing his saddlebags and struggled to find some new argument to stop him from going. All the urgings she had made so far had not had any effect and had reduced her to mere pleading. That hadn’t worked, either. With great mental struggle, she finally found a new tack.

  “Clardy, where will you go? Thias has gone off. You can’t possibly know where to look for him. He could be anywhere in the nation, and probably using a different name.”

  “Jubal said that Thias told the preacher he was a counterfeiter. It ain’t much of a clue, but it’s the best I’ve got.”

  “So he’s a counterfeiter. Counterfeiters work in secret. That’s not going to help you find him.”

  “It might. You know as well as I and everybody else that most of the counterfeit coins seen in these parts come from somewhere along the river. The law folks have been able to trace it down that far. That means Thias is most likely living somewhere north of here. Maybe right in Kentucky, or up beyond in the territories.”

  “So you’ll search the entire state, and the territories, too?”

  “No, Faith. I know I’d never find him that way. What I’ll do is go up to the river and lodge myself in an inn. I’ll find the sort of folk who know the kind of things the law don’t, and put out the word that Clardy Tyler wants to find his brother. I’ll spread around a bit of money to help prime the motivation to help me find him. If Thias is there, word will reach him that I’m looking for him. I believe he’ll come to me, then. He must want to find me, down inside himself. Otherwise he never would have come as nigh to me as he did. He was right here, close by us, Faith! Right here nigh to spitting distance, and I didn’t have any notion!”

  “Clardy, this is dangerous. I don’t like to think of you up in some inn where all kinds of deviltry happens, showing money and talking to criminals. You could be killed that way.”

  Clardy put down his saddlebags and faced his wife squarely. “Faith, I have to do this. It’s as important to me as if one of our own children was lost and I had the chance to find her. Dangerous it might be, but I’ve been in danger before, and I can take care of myself. I have to try my best to find Thias. Otherwise I could never live content again. Can’t you see that?”

  She sighed. “Yes. I can. But I’ll worry about you until you’re home. How long will you be gone?”

  “I can’t say. It may take some time.”

  “Can’t you take someone with you?”

  “This is something I need to do alone, Faith. Thias might never show himself if I had someone with me. And besides, if there is any danger, it wouldn’t be right for me to put somebody else in it, would it?”

  “Clardy, I don’t feel good about this. I understand it—but I don’t feel good about it.”

  “Don’t you worry, Faith. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back safe and sound, and I’ll have Thias with me.”

  Faith replied. “Yes, maybe you will. And that worries me as much as anything else. He’s a bad man, Clardy.”

  He turned on her an expression so fierce it stung. “Don’t say that. He’s my brother. Maybe he’s done bad things, but he ain’t bad, not down inside. All through the years growing up, he was the ‘good’ Tyler. That’s his nature. If he’s done bad, it’s because he’s been forced into it.”

  “Clardy, what value can there be in a ‘good’ nature ‘down inside’ somebody when that somebody has spent years choosing to do wicked things? It’s the choices a person makes, the things they do, that decides what kind of person they are, good or bad.”

  He seemed ready to shout at her in anger, but he clamped his mouth shut, struggled visibly with his feelings for a couple of moments, then said as quietly but firmly as he could: “I’m going to look for Thias, Faith. There will be no more talk about this. Is that clear?”

  After that she had nothing more to say, because she knew it would make no difference.

  The inn, which stood near the Ohio River shore a few miles below the famous landmark of Cave-in-Rock, was poorly built and starting to lean. Clardy, lodged in a tiny upper room that reminded him of his dismal quarters back in the Natchez days, found himself feeling the entire world was askew when he was in his room. The floor was tilted slightly, causing coins and so on to roll down the slope whenever he dropped one, and after a few days he began to think one leg was growing longer than the other to compensate for the angle of the floor.

  He had to admit that Faith was right: this was a dangerous business he had undertaken. He had deliberately chosen an inn with the lowest of reputations, run by a rough, crude bruiser of a man called Smiling Jake, whose forehead sloped even more than his floors. Smiling Jake was reputed to have been a river pirate in his younger days, and now that he was growing older and somewhat crippled with arthritis, had taken up the less strenuous work of innkeeping. Stories had it that some who came to his inn with sizable amounts of money didn’t come out again, so Clardy made a point of paying Smiling Jake a substantial extra payment—“in compensation for the excellence of your inn and to make sure I’m safe while here”—and then plied him with drinks and other gifts, such as a watch and a good Siler rifle lock, to make it possible for Jake to feel he was receiving his worth from him without having to go to the trouble of doing him in. Clardy wasn’t really sure such a ploy would work—maybe it would even have the opposite effect than was desired—but it seemed worth trying. But just in case, he slept with two loaded pistols at his bedside and another beside his pillow.

  Within a week Clardy, using money liberally, had successfully spread word through what seemed some promising underworld channels that Clardy Tyler, the well-known stockman and planter from the Danville area, was at the inn and hoping for a visit from his brother. After that it was a matter of waiting and hoping—and keeping a pistol and dirk always within easy rich.

  Clardy was asleep one night in his sagging, rope-slat bed when a knock on the door of his room awakened him. He sat up and reached for his pistol. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Jake, Mr. Tyler.”

  Clardy picked up a second pistol when he heard that. Perhaps his luck was about to run out and Smiling Jake was going to see if he couldn’t gain more from Clardy Tyler dead than alive. “What can I do for you, Jake?”

  “There’s a man here calling for you.”

  Thias? Clardy’s throat grew tight. “Who is he?”

  “He says his name is Willie Jones. Says he can tell you somewhat about your brother.”

  Because of his sleepiness, Clardy’s mind was slightly beclouded, and he didn’t realize until a couple of seconds later where he had heard the name of Willie Jones before. That realization sent him bolting up and toward the door, still retaining one of his pistols in case there was trickery involved here. He opened the door slightly and peered out. Jake was there, holding a lamp whose golden light illuminated his face from below, making him even more of a demon countenance than he normally possessed. It also revealed a second man behind him, a stranger, forty years old or more, with a low hairline and shocks of once-dark hair that had gone salt and pepper.

  “You’re Willie Jones?”

  “Aye, I am.”

  “You’re the man who was jailed in New Orleans with James Hiram … with Thias Tyler?”

  “I am.”

  “You escaped?”

  “I was freed.”

  “I’ll leave you two be,” Jake cut in. Yet he didn’t move away at once, and eyed Clardy as if waiting for something.

  Clardy understood. “Wait a moment.” He went back into his room and returned with a coin that he placed in the innkeeper’s hand. Smiling Jake bit it, nodded, and withdrew.

  “Come in, Mr. Jones,” Clardy said. “You’re a man I very much want to talk to. You have news of my brother?”

  “I do indeed.”

  “Then I’ll say up front that I’ll pay you well if you can lead me to him.”

  “I ain’t looking for money from you. I’m doing this for the sake of doing it.”

  Clardy hadn’t e
xpected to hear anything like that. “Come in. There’s a stool yonder you can sit on, and I’ll fill you a pipe if you want to smoke. I’ve got no food here, nor nothing to offer you to drink.”

  “I don’t drink, I’ve put it aside. It’s an evil thing, drinking. I’m a man who has put evil behind him.”

  Willie Jones came into the room, ducking under the too-low doorway, and pulled up the stool while Clardy cranked up the lamp he kept burning all night beside the bed, another of his precautions. Jones perched himself on the short stool, long legs crooked and knees sticking up on either side of him. In that posture he reminded Clardy of a dead, crooked-legged spider.

  “If you don’t drink, do you smoke?”

  “Yes. I see no wickedness in tobacco. But if I did, I’d put it aside, too.”

  Clardy filled the clay pipe bowl from his own pouch, broke off the stem an inch or so, so Jones would have a clean end upon which to pull, peeled a splinter off the unpainted wall, lit it in the lamp, and held it out for the other to use in lighting up his pipe. Then he sat down on the side of the bed, keeping within reach of the pistols he had laid aside to deal with the pipe. He was thinking of how Willie Jones seemed to be an odd sort of man. He certainly had much to say about wickedness.

  Jones eyed the pistols. “You won’t need those with me. I won’t hurt you. I’ve put hurting folks behind me.”

  “You seem to have put a lot of things behind you, sir. Mr. Jones, can you tell me where my brother is?”

  “Not for certain. I can tell you where I feel right sure he is, though, and for total certain where he’s been the last few months. Me and him, we’ve been working together. We stole church gold together in New Orleans, and there I believed, and the law believed, that your brother lost his life in Lake Pontchartrain. But he lived through it, and after I was freed I chanced to find him again. I had just shook off a sickness that nigh killed me when I was in irons. Ain’t nobody never been more surprised than when I seen Thias was still alive. Meeting him was like a sign to me that we should work together again. We commenced to being partners once more. Most recent we was counterfeiters of gold coin, working out of a cave up north of the river. It was a sinful business. I’ve put it behind me.”

  “Did you tell Thias how Deerfield and me had come looking for him in New Orleans?”

  “I told him. It moved him deep, sir. But he said it was best that you didn’t find him. He believes he ain’t worthy of being nobody’s brother no more.”

  “Then he believes nonsense. Is Thias still making coin at that cave?”

  “Not no more. He’s gone.”

  Clardy felt great disappointment. “Do you know where he went?”

  “If I was a gambling man—which I once was, before I put it behind me—I’d bet he was heading for New Orleans. There’s a woman there he cares for. She’s a good woman, divorced from a bad man, and he declares he loves her and wants to marry her. I believe he would have married her long ago if he didn’t think he wasn’t good enough for her and her baby.”

  “So the woman has a child already.”

  “Aye. A little girl, I believe. Fathered by the man who divorced her. I happen to know a bit about that man, too, and it’s probably for the best he left her. He’s a dangerous sort of fellow. He threatened his own wife’s life a time or two, or so Thias told me.”

  “Tell me more about Thias.”

  “You got to know that Thias, he’s been down on himself for his bad ways for years. Last I talked to him, he was saying he wants to lay aside his wrong ways and make himself worthy of that woman. And he’s wise to do that. It’s a time for all of us to be putting our wrong ways behind us, and getting ready. That’s why I’ve quit my own wickedness. No more counterfeiting, no more stealing and cheating, like I’ve done before. Now I’m going about, seeking to do good instead of bad. I’m getting ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “For the pock-lips.”

  “The what?”

  “The pock-lips. The great day of judgment. The end of the world. It’s right upon us, Mr. Tyler. It won’t be long at all until this world comes to an end and we all stand in judgment.”

  Clardy was growing dismayed. It appeared likely that Willie Jones was not merely odd, but maybe a little deranged. The apocalypse? The end of the world? His mind flashed back to the odd preacher he had seen in Natchez-under-the-Hill years ago. That man had talked of the end of the world, too.

  “How do you know the end of the world is coming?” Clardy asked.

  “It has been revealed to me in a dream,” Jones replied. “There’ll be a great shaking of the land, an opening of the earth, and then it will all come to an end. It will be a great and dreadful day.”

  So that was it. A dream believer. Clardy had doubts about that kind of thing, being an instinctive skeptic where oneiromancy was concerned. “Well … I suppose we’ll see. End of the world or not, I want to find my brother. This woman in New Orleans … you could take me to her?”

  “Aye, I could. If there’s time before the pock-lips comes.”

  “Mr. Jones, have you ever thought that maybe that dream was nothing more than a dream?”

  “Oh, it’s more than that. It’s rev’lation. My mother—she understood mysteries and such—she had dreams of rev’lation from time to time, and they come true every time. Now I’ve got the same gift. When you have a dream of rev’lation, you can tell it. You wake up all in a sweat, and you know.”

  Clardy wasn’t sure what to make of this man. Jones’s jabber about the end of the world and dreams of “rev’lation” sounded inane, casting great doubt on his general reliability. Could he rely on the veracity of anything such a man had to say, even on a nonapocalyptic topic like the whereabouts of Thias Tyler? Clardy had little choice. No more promising sources of information had come forward.

  So he would just have to take Jones at his word and hope for the best. “I want you to guide me to this woman,” Clardy said. “If we can find her, maybe we’ll find Thias, too.”

  “I think along those very same lines, sir. But this is no small journey. You’re willing to go clear to New Orleans on just the chance of finding your brother? I mean, there’s no assurance he’d be there.”

  “I know that. But yes, I’m ready to go. You don’t know it, but there’s actually some convenience for me in all this. It happens I would have been going to New Orleans soon, anyway. There’s an old and good friend of mine who passed away and was laid to rest down there years and years ago. I’ve been planning a journey there to fetch back his remains and bury them in Kentucky, like he wanted. God willing, now I can come back not only with his bones in tow, but my brother at my side, too—if what you tell me is right. But I have to be full honest with you, Mr. Jones. When a full stranger comes to me, saying he wants to do something good on my behalf without any kind of pay for it, my suspicions spark up like fresh tinder. What is it to you whether I find my brother or not? Why do you care?”

  “I already told you, Mr. Tyler. I’m doing it because the judgment is coming. I’ve spent my life doing wrong. Not much time left to do good and make up for it.”

  “For some reason, sir, I find it hard to believe that’s your only reason. Most men I’ve known who’ve spent their lives in wrongdoing wouldn’t shrug it off because of a dream.”

  “Mr. Tyler, there’s things about me that you don’t know. You’re looking at a man with no hope of glory once this world ends. That door was closed to me long ago, and there ain’t a blessed thing I can do about it. All I can do is try to cool down the hellfires that are waiting for me as much as I can, by doing good with what time I have left.” Suddenly the man’s eyes went red and he choked up in tears, rousing new and stronger doubts in Clardy about his mental stability. “And there’s another reason, too. I want to do good for somebody because I know what it means to have good done for me. You might think that sounds like something to scoff at, but I mean every bit of it.”

  “What do you mean? What good thing was do
ne for you?”

  “I was freed from that prison because of the goodness of a man who filed a petition for my release. And for the life of me, I don’t know to this day why he did it. I can’t figure it out at all.…” Jones wiped a tear that had sneaked down his left cheek. “All I know is, I was locked up, and through the goodness of a man I was set free. A man who had no cause at all to help me, none at all.” He looked at Clardy in an odd way. “You ever been haunted, Mr. Tyler? I have been. Haunted by goodness. The memory of the kindness that was done me, it’s haunted me ever since it happened. Always over my shoulder, always there, like a ghost. A good kind of ghost. I tell you, sir, that lawyer changed me when he got me freed from that prison. Why would a man do that for another? Why would that man do such a thing for me?”

  Clardy asked, “Might that lawyer’s name have been Japheth Deerfield?”

  “It was. It was indeed.”

  “I was with Japheth Deerfield in New Orleans, probably right at that same time. We had learned from another of your partners, a fellow named Timothy—”

  Jones nodded. “Yes. He told me. You was looking for Thias even then.”

  “I was. Timothy gave me the strongest clue I had received until then about what had become of Thias. He was hiding out in Natchez-under-the-Hill when I met him. Living with an old harlot and fearing that soldiers were going to get him. He told me Thias was in jail, along with you, in New Orleans.”

  “Yes … and then the lawyer Deerfield came to me and I told him Thias had drownded. I didn’t know he had come out of that lake alive. It was a miracle he did, sure as the world is ending.”

  Clardy was struck at that moment with a guilty but intriguing realization: even though he had not had anything to do with the freeing of Willie Jones, he was in a position to shift the truth around a bit and thereby claim some of the credit for himself. That would play on Jones’s sense of gratitude, and maybe make him even more desirous of being helpful. It was a manipulative thing to do, certainly wrong … but Clardy decided this was a temptation he would not resist. His desperation to find Thias was stronger than his sense of morality. He was glad the Preacher Coffman wasn’t privy to what he was about to do. It would shame him clear to the soul.