by Cameron Judd
“Yes you can. Come to New Orleans with me,” Clardy urged again. “That’s where Elizabeth is anyhow, ain’t it? Ain’t you aiming on asking for her hand?”
“She ain’t there no more. I went there, looking, and found she had gone, left to get away from her troublesome old husband. She’s up about Greenville town now, I hear. And I hear the old satan she was married to has headed up after her.”
“Then go to Greenville. Find your Elizabeth and marry her. I’ll go on, fetch Isaac Ford’s bones, and meet you again, you and your new family. We’ll find a way then to make things right for you. We will, and don’t let yourself doubt it a minute. We are going to be together again, like brothers ought to be, and everything will be the same. I don’t know how just yet, but it will. You are going to come back with me to Kentucky, and we’ll begin to work it out from there. I know a good lawyer, a man named Deerfield, who can get us started toward finding some answers.”
“Deerfield … seems I recall having robbed a man by that name one time. The name was writ on a leather wallet he carried.”
“The same man. But don’t worry—he’ll still help; he’s just that kind of man. It was him who petitioned for Willie Jones to get free, purely out of having a kind heart. He and his wife and daughter are already set to move up to Kentucky from Natchez. I’ll be taking them aboard there. They’re good folk. You’ll like them.”
Thias scratched the back of his neck, a common gesture of his that Clardy had long forgotten but which now leaped back to his mind with utter familiarity, generating a new burst of love for a long-lost brother now found again. He knew Thias was thinking, weighing his proposition.…
“Well … I reckon I could try.”
“Yes sir, you can. You surely can. Now tell me where we can meet. Somewhere along the river, someplace safe for you to be, someplace you and your new family can make a warm camp and nobody, not the law, not jealous old husbands, not nobody, can find you. I’ll be coming back up in a sailing vessel once I’ve fetched up Isaac Ford’s bones.”
Thias thought some more for a few moments. “Have you heard of Cutbank Island?”
“No. Would a boatman know it?”
“Yes. Any of them would.”
“Well, I’ll be taking on a good boatman in New Orleans, so we’ll find this island, no fear.”
“Then that’s where you’ll find me, and God willing, Elizabeth and her little Deb. Nobody lives on Cutbank most of the time, but sometimes I’ve made a home there for myself, when I was in need of hiding away. I’ll go straight there from Greenville. I’ll wait for you … we’ll wait for you, and keep watch.”
“And then you’ll go to Kentucky with me?”
“Aye, brother, I will. Though I still don’t see how I can get out from under all the trouble I’ve—”
“Thias, shut up. Close your mouth. No more talk about trouble. We’re ending your old world and making you a new one, and I’ll not have you already messing it up with all your worrying.”
Thias smiled. “You’ve turned into quite a man, Clardy. Quite a man. I swear, you give me hope when there’s no grounds for it at all.”
“I reckon that makes me useful, then. Now let’s get back to the fire and cook up some of the victuals I’ve got. We’ll both feel better for having hot food under our belts, and there’s still a mighty lot of catching up we’ve got to do.”
“Sounds good, Clardy. Sounds good.”
They headed back to the fire, each feeling for the first time in a long time what it really was to have a brother.
Clardy found it terribly hard to part ways with Thias when the morning came. He recalled their last parting that long-ago day he and Thias had been working on expanding the Beaver Creek cabin. There had been no ceremony, no adequate good-byes, and certainly no anticipation that the two of them would not see each other after that day for more than a decade. What if it happened that way again? Clardy wondered. What if he reached Cutbank Island and Thias, for whatever reason, was not there?
He was ready to consider postponing his plans to disinter Isaac Ford, but he didn’t. He was close to New Orleans and the journey had been long and difficult. To turn back now with that long overdue job still undone would be foolish. All the legal clearances for the disinterment had been done in advance by mail, and would have to be reworked if he threw aside the task now. And besides, Isaac Ford had simply laid in rest too long apart from his family. So with a push of his will Clardy separated from Thias and headed on to New Orleans on his wagon, the covered coffin bouncing along in the bed and Thias vanishing into the dead winter landscape behind him, heading north to Greenville and Elizabeth and hope.
The rest of the travel and the carrying out of the disinterment went on with Clardy’s mind only half on what was happening. He thought constantly about Thias, wondering how far he had traveled now and whether he would be able to safely find refuge on his little island. He prayed frequently that nothing would go wrong and that he would find Thias waiting for him as he had promised. Mostly he prayed that Thias wouldn’t yield to the despair that obviously hung like a dark cloud around his shoulders, trying to overwhelm him.
When Isaac Ford’s remains were safely sealed inside the heavy, virtually airtight coffin, Clardy drove his wagon to the New Orleans docking area, this time hardly noticing the colorful activity of the eternally operating levee marketplace that had intrigued him on his first New Orleans visit. The scents and sounds of this remarkable Creole region hardly made an impact on his preoccupied mind. He was eager to get under way back up the river.
He made arrangements toward chartering a small but sturdy boat, equipped with a sail, to carry him and Isaac Ford’s coffin back up the river. For three frustrating days he struggled against some minor difficulties that came up, but at last the journey began.
When they reached Natchez, Clardy half wished he hadn’t offered to give passage to the Deerfields, simply because having to stop for them created delay, not to mention the possibility of losing some of the boatmen to the siren attractions of Natchez-under-the-Hill. But Clardy had made a promise, and furthermore needed Japheth’s counsel on dealing with Thias’s legal problems, and so the boat stopped as planned.
Clardy was relieved to find the Deerfields virtually ready to leave at once. He had sent a letter up from New Orleans before the boat’s departure, and the Deerfields had used the time well. They had sold most of their possessions, and what little remained occupied only meager space in the cargo hold of the boat. Within a day of arriving at Natchez the boat was off again, all the crew still in place, Clardy explaining in secret to Japheth how he had found Thias so unexpectedly and the difficult situation his brother was in. Japheth pledged to give what help he could.
“Do the boatmen know who Thias is and what his situation is?” Japheth asked.
“No,” said Clardy. “They know I have a brother waiting on Cutbank Island, but that’s all they know.”
On the journey continued, far too slowly and laboriously to suit Clardy, until finally, in mid-December, a small island came into view farther up the river, and one of the boatmen pointed it out to him.
“There’s Cutbank Island,” he said. “That’s where your brother be, you say?”
“It is,” Clardy replied. “Or so he should be. We arranged to meet here.”
The boat moved up toward the island, slower than ever, it seemed, until at last it tied up beneath the high, rocky bank that gave the island its name. Celinda looked at the island with an unusual expression, then tightened her hand on her husband’s wrist.
“Japheth! Do you know what island this is?”
“No. Should I?”
“Look at it, Japheth! Don’t you see?”
He examined it; his eyes widened in recognition. “Celinda! It’s the island where I first met you! The very island!”
“An island where a new world began for me, and for you, too,” she said.
Clardy overheard, and prayed: Let the same be true for Thias, Lord. And for me
. Let Thias’s old world end, and let a new and better world arise for him.
Japheth turned to Clardy. “I’d like to go onto the island with you. You shouldn’t go there alone, certainly. There might be others besides Thias here, you know.”
“I’m wondering why he ain’t showed himself yet,” Clardy said with a tone of worry. “I hope he’s there. I surely hope it.”
“He will be. I’m sure of it.”
Clardy and Japheth took a small skiff around to the farther and lower side. Mindful that Japheth suffered some with his heart, Clardy handled the rowing. They pulled the skiff up onto the bank.
“Thias!” Clardy called. “Thias! It’s Clardy—where are you?”
No answer came. Clardy called some more.
“We’d best go look for him,” Japheth said. “It’s not too large an island, and he may be hiding out to make sure of his safety. Maybe we could get help from some of the crew.”
“No,” Clardy said. “Too many strangers crawling this island might be spookish to Thias. It’s early. We’ll look alone. If he’s here, we’ll find him. We’ll meet back here in an hour.”
“Very well.”
They separated, Japheth bearing left, Clardy bearing right.
It was the afternoon of December 15, a Monday, and from somewhere high in the sky or deep in the earth, Japheth Deerfield sensed an odd, almost inaudible rumbling, and felt the most curious mental and physical sensations, impossible to put a finger on. Was it merely the rush of blood through his veins that he felt? He couldn’t tell.
He searched, beating his way through the barren brush and trees of the island, calling out for Thias Tyler and hearing Clardy’s steadily receding voice do the same.
CHAPTER 47
Fifteen minutes later Japheth Deerfield stopped and cocked his head. He had detected another unusual noise, different than before. This one continued longer and sounded very different. He listened, identified. It was unmistakably the cry of a child.
He was bewildered until he realized what it must mean. Clardy had told him his brother intended to seek the hand in marriage of a certain divorced woman with a baby daughter. Surely that crying child must be the daughter, hinting that Thias’s proposal had been accepted. Japheth smiled and continued on, following the sound.
At length he reached a clearing in the center of the island, and there found them. Clardy was already present, seated on the ground, facing a similarly seated man, the sight of whom initially sent a shiver through Japheth. He remembered that face well enough—the face of the outlaw who had once robbed him on the Boatman’s Trail. Thias Tyler turned to look at Japheth as he stepped into the clearing; their eyes locked. Then Japheth’s gaze lowered, taking in the child who sat on Thias Tyler’s lap, eating some sort of gruel from a cup. He glanced around, looking for the child’s mother, but saw no one else.
Clardy stood. “Japheth, come on over. Meet my brother Thias.”
Japheth approached, slapped on a grin, stuck out his hand. Thias didn’t rise because of the child in his lap, but put up his right hand and shook Japheth’s. “Pleased to see you, Mr. Deerfield. And let me say straight out that I’m sorry for the wrong I done you those years ago.”
“Forgiven and forgotten,” Japheth replied. “Mr. Tyler, you are indeed much the image of your brother.”
“So I’ve always been told. Call me Thias.”
“And you call me Japheth. Now tell me, who is this wee and pretty lady?”
Thias gave a tight, weary smile. “This is little Mary.”
“The daughter of … what is her name? Elizabeth?”
Thias lowered his head quickly. “Yes. Elizabeth.”
Before Japheth could say anything more, Clardy interrupted. “Japheth, Thias has given me some sorrowful news concerning Elizabeth.”
Growing solemn, Japheth squatted on the ground, weary from his hike. “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s wrong?”
“Elizabeth is dead,” Thias said, stroking the hair of the now-content child.
“Oh, no. Oh, my. Sickness?”
“She was killed,” Clardy said. “Thias has been telling me about it. She was killed by the man she used to be married to. Murdered out of jealousy when she married Thias.”
“No. Lord help us.” Japheth eyed Thias, who subtly wiped a tear from his downturned face. “The man … he was caught?”
“I caught him, yes sir,” Thias said, looking up with his face gone florid and fierce. “I caught him, and he paid the price.”
Japheth pondered, understood. “You killed him.”
“Yes, I killed him. And if ever I’ve done a righteous act, that was it.”
No one said anything more for several moments. Japheth stood and paced about. “I assume that you are wanted for the killing,” he said at length to Thias.
“Yes. I had to flee. But I brought Mary with me. I’ll not have Elizabeth’s child raised as some pauper orphan. No sir.”
Japheth glanced at Clardy, saw the despair in him, felt a pity almost as deep as that he had felt for Willie Jones in that stone cell in New Orleans. He knew how Clardy had awaited this moment of reunion. Now, as it had in almost every other dealing having to do with his brother, deep, disruptive trouble had intruded itself.
“Mr. Tyler … Thias … what will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
Japheth minded his words carefully. “To try to flee the law with such a young child … have you considered whether this is in her interest?”
“I have. And it ain’t. That’s why I brought her here. I’m giving Mary to Clardy.”
Clardy gaped. “Give her to me? But how … why …”
Japheth went to Thias and knelt before him, looking at the child. He smiled at her; she smiled back. Fortunate, he thought, that small children cannot comprehend the sorrowful situations into which adults stumble. Fortunate and merciful. If only they could retain such gentle ignorance forever.
“How old is she?” he asked.
“’Bout a year.”
“She is beautiful. Beautiful like my own little daughter would have been had she lived.”
“You lost a child?”
“Yes. Our youngest. We still have our older daughter, thank God.”
Thias looked deeply at Japheth, frowning in thought. He spoke to his brother. “Clardy … step aside with me a minute. I want to speak to you of something.”
He rose, leaving Mary with Japheth. He and Clardy stepped off to the edge of the clearing and into a rough tent pitched there. It blended so naturally into the surroundings that Japheth hadn’t even noticed it initially.
The brothers talked a long time. Japheth held the little girl, feeling a deep natural affection for the child and simultaneous sorrow at the thought of his own lost infant. He wondered what it would be like for Celinda when Clardy brought this child back to the boat. Would she grieve more deeply in the presence of such a living reminder of what she had lost?
It was almost completely dark when Clardy and Thias came out of the tent and approached him. Clardy spoke. “Japheth, Thias and I have been talking, and there’s a thing we must discuss with you.”
They sat down together as night fell, and it was an hour before they rose again, young Mary in Japheth’s arms and tears streaming down his smiling face.
“She is happy,” Clardy observed, standing on the deck of the boat and watching Celinda hold and caress Mary.
“Yes, she is,” Japheth said. He had finished with his crying on the island, but his voice still trembled with joy. “There is no greater gift that could have been given to her … and to me. It’s as if what we lost has been restored—thanks to your brother.” He waved his hand toward the island. “God bless this place! It has given me my most precious gifts—first Celinda, now Mary. It’s an island of gifts. A place of new beginnings.”
Clardy nodded, said nothing, looking broodingly past Celinda and toward the dark island where Thias still was. “I dearly hope that’s true.”
Japheth, gra
sping his meaning, nodded. “I hope so, too. But I wish Thias had come to the boat with us. Why would he want to stay behind, alone, on that island with all of us here on the boat?”
“He said he needed to be alone. To think about what he can do next. Maybe he’ll come on and join us later. He’s got a skiff hid in there, he says.”
“You know, Clardy, that it can’t be as you hoped now with Thias. Not with a murder charge hovering over him.”
“Japheth, might you be able to defend him? It seems clear to me that the killing he did was deserved.”
“What is deserved morally isn’t always acceptable in the eyes of the law,” Japheth answered. “I could defend him, but the odds of exoneration would be poor. Thias committed what could only be seen, through legalistic eyes, as a vengeance murder. He can’t expect not to have to face consequences … unless he follows the course you suggested.”
“There is another course open to him … and that’s the course I fear he is taking right now on that island.”
Japheth was puzzled a moment, but when understanding unfolded, he drew in his breath sharply. “You believe he may end his own life? Then why are we standing here, God help us! Let’s go find him, bring him back here kicking and screaming if we must!”
“No,” Clardy replied firmly. “Leave him be. We’ve got to leave Thias’s situation in his own hands now. It’s up to him to choose his options. He can die, or he can do the only other sensible thing. I’m standing here praying with all that’s in me that he’ll choose the latter.”
“Yes,” Japheth said. “But what a hard thing it is to have to wait. What a hard thing.” Then he meandered off to join his wife and the child that so suddenly and unexpectedly was theirs.
Clardy went to the prow of the boat, filled his pipe, and stood smoking in silence, eyes ever on the island. It seemed to him at the moment that his entire life, and Thias’s, had been following an inevitable course leading up to this night at this place. He knew now that he and Thias would never have the brotherly companionship they had in boyhood days. The years had driven them down divergent courses, put distance between them, made them unchangeably different men in unchangeably different life situations. Clardy was sorry it had to be that way, but he would accept it and go on. He had no other choice. He hoped Thias would accept it, too, and choose life over death, even if it was life that might seem momentarily poor in meaning and rich in pain. But it was life, and as long as a man lived, he could hope and try and make the best of what he was handed. Too often what came a man’s way was bad, but sometimes it was good. Like Mary coming into the bereaved lives of Japheth and Celinda. Like Isaac Ford coming into the life of a young and misguided Clardy Tyler, setting him right again and putting him on a course that had led to success, a happy home, a beautiful and loving family. Maybe something like that could yet come Thias’s way, if only he would give life another chance. Maybe sometimes a new world could rise from the ashes of an old and ruined one.