“LOOKS LIKE SOMETHING COMING UP,” TOM SAID, SQUINTING into the golden late afternoon sun. From their perch on the upper deck of the steamboat Chesapeake, he and Warren could see a chunk of land bulging out into the river several hundred yards ahead. Even from that distance, gliding easily along in the center of the Ohio, they could tell it was a beehive of activity.
“Sure as shootin',” Warren nodded, grabbing his haversack. “Let's tell the captain this is where we get off.”
Like other such outposts, Hamilton's Point did not prove to offer the fortunes promised on Warren's fading notice. As the boys disembarked and walked the hard dirt paths that passed for thoroughfares, Tom saw numerous frontier peddlers, a respectable merchant or two, an occasional family of settlers, and a scruffy mélange of speculators, adventurers, and swindlers. Of course, the youngster did not recognize these latter men as members of those particular persuasions, nor that many of them also followed the siren call of “Fortunes available for those men willing to work for them.” He did quickly note, though, that no one seemed to have much use for him or Warren. Most of the passing steamboats either had their own crews cutting wood for them or were well stocked with kindling at their point of origin. This posed no obstacle for Warren, however. The boys would follow the rumors—and the fortunes—west to the mighty Mississippi.
“That's better anyway, Tommy,” the older brother said, hope springing anew after the disappointments of the Ohio. “It'll mean more virgin territory no one else has covered.”
“Sure,” Tom smiled, “but isn't the Mississippi pretty far west?”
“Nah,” Warren said with a nonchalant wave of his hand. Then he laughed. “Not much farther than we already come, anyhows. Why, the Ohio runs right into the Mississippi just yonder up the road a piece.”
It still seemed to Tom a long time since they had left Cincinnati, though.
The torn, crumpled sheet the younger boy kept tucked in his pocket appeared yellower and grimier each time he pulled it out to look at it. As the days passed on the river, Tom frequently noticed a tattered line printed near the bottom of the sheet. It read: “Only the strong of heart and brave of soul should apply.” Tom wondered almost every day if he fit those requirements. Looking back on the years of his young life, and the many fears and doubts attending them, as well as the mean thoughts he had held toward Uncle Brake and others—including God sometimes, though he would never tell that to anyone and, in fact, often apologized to God for it—he concluded he did not. Plus, he had certainly been frightened a number of times on this very trip, and for no good reason he could think of.
At least Warren was with him. Warren was surely strong of heart and brave of soul. If he could become more like Warren, he knew everything would work out in his life, and he might even be able to accomplish some fine feats and make Mama proud of him. He sometimes still wished he could see Mama, if just for a moment, though he never admitted this thought to Warren or anyone else. If he could see her, he would want her to give him a long, good hug like she used to give him. Although his memory of Mama was fading, he still remembered her hugs and how they melted his fears and hurts. It had been a long time since anybody had hugged him. The only exception he could remember since Mama was Granny Nancy, but even that was not the same. How much he missed Mama.
When the boys reached the Mississippi, the steamboats became rickety old barges and the rustic river towns, destitute hovels. The women disappeared and the men were more menacing.
Several days and a few hundred miles later, the Jacksons' current craft—old, weather-beaten, and waterworn—pulled into a landing known as Cherokee Strip. By now, cold, wetness, hunger, fatigue, and a state of near poverty had the boys immensely ready to secure information about the whereabouts of fortunes.
Within a few steps of disembarking, Warren and Tom recognized Cherokee Strip, to their dismay, as a smaller, rougher, seedier version of Hamilton's Point. The first man they saw sat atop an empty wooden barrel, whittling a piece of wood. The boys looked at one another, speaking in that silent pithy language of brothers who have traveled some of life's most important moments together.
Should we?
Got to start somewheres.
Let's go.
As they approached the man, he arced a potent amber charge of tobacco-laden spittle onto the muddy ground in front of the Jacksons. The brothers paused, shot each other a glance, then moved more slowly toward the grizzled, mud-caked whittler.
“Friend, could you direct us to where we might could find work cutting wood for the riverboats?” Warren asked. It seemed to Tom his brother's voice sounded a note or two higher than normal.
The whittler looked askance at the weary boys, then answered Warren's question by planting an amber missile onto the young man's dirty left boot. The brothers looked at one another again, then back at the man—his whittling, briefly interrupted, now resumed with aplomb.
“What was that you boys wanted to know about cutting wood?”
Warren and Tom whirled around to find a towering man possessed of a massive, gnarled mountain of red beard, glowering over them. Tom gasped at the sight of the giant's left arm, or what should have been his arm. It ended at the elbow. The right arm was more foreboding. It ended at the point of a huge, martial-appearing bowie knife.
The dumbstruck brothers looked away from the hulking red frontiersman as if ducking from a powerful blinding light. In unison, they backed slowly off as the huge man advanced menacingly toward them.
“Children oughtn't be this far west nohows,” the hulk growled as he plodded ahead.
Ashen-faced and near shock, Warren and Tom continued their terrified, halting retreat. Just as they turned to break into a run, a thunderous “Boo!” boomed into their ears. Stunned, they half-turned and saw the grizzled whittler standing maybe two feet away.
The brothers broke into a frantic full run toward the heart (such as it was) of Cherokee Strip. Had their paralyzed vocal chords been capable, they would have been screaming as they ran. Their ears still aching from the whittler's withering yell, the sound of roaring laughter registered somewhere in the backs of their frazzled minds. It seemed to drift from the direction of the spot they had hastily left.
The fleeting thought struck Tom that some type of warm liquid was trickling down the back of his neck.
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!”
Warren and Tom turned in midstride and saw a darkly handsome, clean-shaven man of about thirty-five calling them. His fresh, smooth buckskin coat and appearance contrasted sharply with the unkempt, shambling visages the boys had frequently witnessed on their Mississippi barge and at Cherokee Strip.
Pierre Lafayette “Lafe” Gremillion approached the panting brothers. Even on this dull winter day, his uncovered jet-black hair gleamed, and merry blue eyes and a wide ivory smile illumined his broad olive face. A polished corncob pipe protruded jauntily from his smile; it was the pièce de résistance for this intriguing character.
“Gentlemen, what happened back there?” Gremillion asked with concern in a rich, but fully American, brogue.
Warren and Tom looked at one another, then at the ground. Still shaking, at least on the inside, they were not sure what happened, much less what to say.
“Well, a fellow pulled a big, double-edged knife on us, biggest I ever saw,” Warren mumbled sheepishly.
Gremillion shook his head and shot a look of disgust back toward the boys' antagonists.
“Scurrilous river vermin,” the man groused.
Then the appealing face turned back to Warren and Tom and brightened. A strong hand reached toward the boys. “Lafe Gremillion.” He spoke the surname with the silent-I, silent-L, two-syllable French pronunciation, emphasis on the latter syllable: Grimyon.
“May I treat you to some supper?”
Warren and Tom jumped at his invitation. Accompanying him to a nearby kitchen, the boys sat down to a feast of venison stew, sweetbread, and red beans. As they ate, Warren explained why they were heading westward. A knowing look joined Gremillion's chuckle.
“The west is yet a rough and untamed land,” he said, smiling. “Boys like you can be easy prey.”
Gremillion wiped his mouth and pushed his three-quarters empty plate aside. “But I have good news, boys. I am headed for an island ten miles farther down the river where fortunes are indeed available for those men willing to work for them.”
The boys could scarcely believe their ears. In the weeks they had been traveling, they had gotten only colder, dirtier, broker, and hungrier. They had not so much as sunk an axe into wood.
“B-but,” Warren stammered, “how do you know?”
“Why, I've only just come from there for supplies, of course! Now you boys look a little weather-beaten, but from sturdy stock, nonetheless.” He paused for a moment to fire up his corncob pipe.
“I'll pay you boys twenty-five cents a day to come cut wood for me.” Warren winked at Tom. “That's every day, so you will see it add up. As you get better, I might raise it some—maybe. And when you're finished and ready to move on, I'll let you take one trunk apiece with you of your own making.”
Sporting their broadest grins since the trip began, Warren and Tom shook Gremillion's hand and thanked him for the opportunity—and their twenty-five cents apiece advance—as he left in haste to attend to other business.
“I told you, Tommy,” Warren said as the brothers bedded down that night in a large room, stodgy with the aroma of smoke and whiskey. Against the wheezes, rasps, and snores of thirty or so men crowded onto the dirt floor of Cherokee Strip's best “boarding house,” the elder Jackson smiled at something Tom could not see. When he spoke, his words conveyed a sense of awe and magic, as though he had stumbled upon a shining revelation, suspected but heretofore hidden. “Don't ever let anybody tell you that fortunes aren't available for the taking out West.”
Tom reveled in the moment and in being with Warren. How strange this life is, he marveled. Just when you think things are a certain way, they turn around on you. That can be good, but… what is therefor a man to lean on when he needs more than what he has?
“Do you really believe there's heaven after this world, Warren?”
“For the Christian, not for the infidel.”
Tom watched his older brother pull his weather-beaten hat down over his eyes as he stretched out on the hard dirt. As usual, the boys used their bedrolls as pillows.
So sure he is. It never takes him more than a minute to fall asleep, no matter how bad the day has been or how uncertain the next one is. Tom knew that for a fact because he often watched, then sometimes took hours to go to sleep himself, so active and questioning was his own mind.
Fear rarely clutched Warren. And when it did he seemed to possess an audacious boldness even in the midst of it. Tom sometimes possessed the same, but he always knew bad things could happen without any notice or warning, bad things that could irrevocably change the world, no matter what anyone said or did in an attempt to change it back. Still, he didn't think about that as much as he used to. Warren and Granny Nancy had both helped him learn to face the future without fear because God had his whole life planned, and nothing would happen unless God intended or permitted it for good. Granny Nancy's favorite verse in the Good Book was Romans 8:28: “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” That was what she always said in response to something she did not understand.
“So you think we'll all be together up in heaven someday, Warren—Mama and the rest of us?”
From behind his hat, Warren answered, “I'll be the first one to shake your hand and welcome you aboard, little brother.”
Tom smiled and laid his dirty head atop his bedroll, then pulled his grimy hat over his face. No one knew things the way Warren did.
Lafe Gremillion seemed in the process of making a fortune with a vigorous woodcutting operation spanning a chain of small river islands ten miles south of Cherokee Strip. The January, Deep South climate proved mild, and Warren and Tom rejoiced in finally getting their stiff muscles working toward the prize they had long desired. With barely an interruption, they worked from sunup to sundown. Fortunately, pesky mosquitoes and other insects endemic to the region were in short supply due to brief, intermittent blasts of frigid air.
The work was exciting and vigorous, but it demanded a degree of bodily commitment the boys had never experienced, even in their rugged mountain upbringing. Searing pain stabbed at their every muscle. Some days—even as they cut and carried wood and even as men around them cursed and blasphemed and sometimes quit—Tom and Warren spat desperate, pithy prayers to God for the strength just to survive until the next break. Then, after those few precious moments of water and rest, involuntary groans escaped from the boys' lips as they struggled to their feet to face the work again.
But the resilience of arduous young bodies stands as one of God's wonders. Tom began to realize that as long as he was allowed occasional brief rests, his body could handle far more than he thought it could. And the result was a staggering amount of completed work. Not only that, but his performance would continue to improve beyond what he would have thought possible. And he noticed the various irritating ailments that plagued him during the normal times of less robust physical exertion would vanish.
Within a few days, despite the humidity and frequent runs of disease in the filthy camps, Warren's and Tom's sinewy physiques were already growing harder. And the relentless work ethic and hearty frontier constitutions of the strapping young Virginians caught the shrewd, learned eye of Gremillion. After a couple of weeks, he upped their wages to thirty cents per day. A few days later he named Warren supervisor over a log-cutting crew, which meant reporting directly to the camp foreman.
Despite the demanding work, the sturdy breed of Americans sweating for their fortunes on those remote Mississippi River islands were not the sort to curl up and sleep through the evening. No, the pleasures and benefits accruing from attaining one's riches did not need to be totally delayed when cards, whiskey, music, and tall tales were readily available.
As Warren and Tom washed up in the river after one vigorous workday, they saw a couple of the more adventuresome men in the camp preparing to squeeze in a logroll before the sun found its early winter way behind the horizon.
“Come on, Jacksons,” a man on their crew hollered as he rushed past. “Them two big boats just left loaded with all the wood we cut so far, and someone will be back tomorrow with our first month's pay, so it's time for a hoedown!”
“Funny,” Warren remarked to Tom as he wiped the water from his face and head, then combed back his thick dark hair, “I always thought you celebrated on the day you got paid, not the day before.”
“So how much will we be getting, Warren?” Tom asked, bright-eyed.
“Well, I reckon we worked four full weeks, to the day. Two weeks of that, we got paid twenty-five cents a day apiece, and two weeks—”
“Hey Warren, come on, we been challenged!”
The brothers looked around to see Paul Cornell, an affable fellow Virginian shouting from the bank near the logroll where one man had just tumbled into the water.
Warren and the twenty-year-old Cornell had become card and wrestling partners, and now they intended to broaden their success to the logrolling competitions that rarely saw either of the competing two-man teams stay atop their wood for more than a few seconds.
The elder Jackson's steel gray eyes narrowed a fraction as he spotted the competition—the DeLozier brothers, a spunky pair of Cajuns from New Orleans. Davy and Danny DeLozier were short on build, long on élan, and powered most of the time by Louisiana Lightning rotgut. With the DeLoziers involved, whether the game be logrolling or tiddlywinks, excitement, if not trouble, could usually be expected.
“Maybe you can win some more money, Warren,” Tom said.
The older brother shook his head. “Don't think so. Hardly any left in camp. Everyone's been paying it to Gremillion to buy food and supplies.”
“How much do we have left?”
“Well, let's just say payday won't be coming any too soon, little brother,” Warren smiled, tousling the fifteen-year-old's unruly shock of brown hair.
A boisterous throng of rugged, unshaved, and mostly unwashed men awaited Warren and Tom when they reached the logrolling area. Many of the men gulped whiskey from jars or jugs.
“The DeLoziers say they'll wager two dollars to one if we'll bet hard cash money and let them bet on credit against their tomorrow's wages,” Cornell explained to Warren. “That's what most of the other men are doing.”
Warren bit his lower lip and glanced around. The crowd was growing larger and rowdier as the light of day faded. A couple of campfires already popped and crackled. This will be quite a night for the boys, the Virginian mused.
“Where's Lafe Gremillion?” he asked Cornell.
“He left on one of the boats. Told everyone to yuck it up tonight because we won't have to start work again till he gets back midafternoon tomorrow. Then he's bringing back more free whiskey for everyone along with our wages.”
Warren scanned the scene again. A fistfight broke out between an Irish Catholic and a Scottish Presbyterian, neither of whom took literally the scriptural admonitions against drunkenness and pugnacity. Queer for a hard driver like Gremillion to leave camp, especially queer on a night like this. Queer to give us most of a day off. It's all queer. Be a good night to sack a ways out from camp.
Warren now searched for Gremillion's camp ramrod, Rob Kubion.
“He went with Gremillion,” Cornell said.
A jug crashed against a nearby rock.
Warren, half-smiling, shook his head at the folderol.
“You boys gonna have tea, or you gonna give us a chance to take your money?” Danny DeLozier chided, his high voice dripping with Cajun inflection.
“Yeah, start the match!” shouted another voice from the increasingly restive crowd.
“We'll take you all on, but I won't be a party to betting on credit,” Warren said firmly.
“Aw, come on kid, everybody else is doing it!”
“Yeah, what's the matter, afraid your mama's gonna spank your bottom!”
Tom winced at that.
Davy DeLozier strutted like a peacock up to Warren. Barrel-chested and several years older, he still gave away four or five inches to the six-foot Virginian. The raucous crowd hushed. DeLozier stood so close to Warren, the latter could feel the sting of the Cajun's whiskey-soaked breath permeating his nostrils.
“Now you listen to me, you pretty, prissy urchin,” DeLozier growled, “you put up that bet in hard American dollars or I'll take it offen you, and a hunk of bark out of your hide too.”
Before Warren could respond, Tom barreled headlong into the startled DeLozier, taking him straight to the ground. The Cajun's pained moan and the thud of his body connecting with the mushy brown earth sounded in unison. Tom slugged away at the man's head and face with every ounce of strength in his being, his mouth silent but his blue eyes afire like hot anthracite.
Danny DeLozier grabbed a fistful of Tom's hair to pull him off Davy, but Warren tackled Danny and rolled over the spongy turf with him. The wave of men surrounding them broke into frenzied cheers and shouted bets—against the next day's wages—for the opposing teams of battling brothers.
As the brawl began to spread, Tom—still wailing away on top of Davy, who in a semi-drunken stupor merely tried to protect his face from the furious pounding—felt himself lifted straight up off his foe, then pitched through the air and into the river.
This drew a wild round of cheers from the euphoric crowd.
Tom came up sputtering and saw “Big Swede” Carlssen, a normally genial, blond mountain of a man, lift Davy DeLozier up by his collar and shake him.
“If you're a-gonna have a contest, then have the contest, but no bullying.” With this, he shook DeLozier like a limp washrag. “And no forcing a man to bet, iffen he's not a-wanting to do so. Understand?”
“Y-yes, s-sir,” DeLozier stammered.
Carlssen dropped Davy, then turned toward Warren and Danny, locked in a stalemate on the ground. The Nordic bull grabbed the neck of one combatant in each hand and jerked them both to their feet. Both were bruised, bloodied, and livid with anger.
“Now see here,” the Swede barked, “we're a-gonna have a logroll now, fair and square, understand? Now, I want you boys to shake hands and start the match.”
Warren and Danny glared at Carlssen, then at one another. The Swede tightened his grip on each neck, bringing reluctant handshakes from both combatants.
“Now,” Carlssen smiled, gently releasing Warren and Danny, and glancing at the cowed crowd, “no more bets, please. Begin the match.”
The whole camp roared. This was proving a far better show than any of them could have foreseen.
The teeming mass of men followed Warren as he started for the water. Then, a slashing pain shot through his leg from waist to toes. My knee, he grimaced.
“You get a gimp in that fracas?” Cornell asked.
“Blast, I think I wrenched it,” Warren frowned, touching his knee tenderly.
“Can you go?”
Warren tried to walk, then sank dejectedly to the ground on his bottom. “I don't think so.”
As a slip of muted sunlight peeked out of the low, heavy western horizon and the lumberjacks called for Warren to get up, he watched Tom clamber out of the water, soaked, winded, and coughing hoarsely. The DeLoziers slogged past the younger Jackson and into the water, laughing and cursing and forgetting their wounds. Then one of them elbowed Tom hard in the ribs and swore at him to get out of the way. Warren's steely eyes flashed and the solid square jaw firmed like flint. “Wrap it, Paul.”
“Huh?”
“I said wrap it,” Warren repeated, looking Cornell straight in the eye. “Tight.”
“Hey, let's just forget it, Warren,” Cornell shrugged. “If your knee's hurt, you can't work, and if you can't work, Gremillion will have you out of here on the next boat and someone else in your place, supervisor or not. And Tom too. Don't risk it.”
Warren stared at him for a moment, then back at the dripping, shivering Tom, who hacked phlegm onto the ground as he approached.
“Sorry, Warren,” Tom said, bowing his head in shame, “I sure fixed that one for you good.”
“Come on, pretty boy!” Davy DeLozier yelled from the water, where he and Danny cockily handled the log they had chosen to use in the competition.
Warren placed his hand gently on Tom's shoulder. “Never apologize for defending a friend who's being attacked, Tommy. Mama and Pa would have been proud of you. And the Lord would not be displeased.”
Tom looked up, eyes alight and his entire countenance transformed. Warren, he thought, my captain!
“Now, Tommy, will you wrap this here knee for me so I can put those DeLoziers in their place?”
“Sure, Warren!”
This befuddled Cornell. “You Jacksons amaze me. Come all the way from Virginia, through wind and cold and rain, nearly get yourselves killed, or at least maimed a couple of times, and now you're willing to risk it all on a silly logroll. I just can't figure it.” He shook his head as the shoving, screaming crowd pressed around him, then smiled at Warren. “I don't understand it, but I like it—let's go teach those Cajun lizards a lesson.”
The DeLoziers needed no prodding. Eager and seemingly sobered, they barely restrained themselves from lunging into Warren and Cornell as the latter pair strode into the waist-deep water.
“Pretty boy and his Virginia friend,” Danny sneered. “We'll whip you a couple of different ways before the night's out.”
Warren, who felt a strange shudder run through him that felt at once hot and cold and nearly caused him to swoon, ignored DeLozier, then flinched at the loud crack of a gun shot sounding over the noisy camp.
“He's lit out! Gremillion's lit plum out!” shouted “Gentleman Jim” Chandler, a Tennessean who was a poor attorney, a good bareknuckled boxer, and one of the few professional men in the camp.
A shocked hush gripped the entire camp.
Chandler, breathing heavily, shouted so all could hear. “I thought I recognized the skunk from a work crew back on the Ohio in ‘34. He worked us to the nub, then left us with two days’ worth of rotgut while he departed with the cut timber. At wage-paying time a couple of days later, instead of receiving our several weeks' pay, we possessed only king-sized hangovers. Well, I just couldn't remember him for sure until now.” (Quantities of mash whiskey in excess of one gallon per day for long periods of time have a tendency to cloud the memory of even the most astute mind.)
“What are you saying, dandy?” a rough voice shouted.
“I'm saying I followed Gremillion back to Cherokee Strip and watched him get paid for the wood we cut, then head upriver with that Kubion on a steamer. When I tried to stop them, someone gave me this knot on my bean from behind. I guess the lowlife charlatan has at least two friends, though I find that difficult to fathom.”
The throng of dirty, drunken men assembled around Chandler comprehended little except that the Frenchman had evidently left with the wood they had cut and the money they had earned.
Tom heard only a hawk calling in the distance and the water lapping around him. Whew! This water is freezing! he noticed for the first time.
What followed still confused the boy years later when he would briefly think on it. One mighty, guttural roar rose up from the bowels of the enraged group. Tom felt the ground beneath him, though buffered by three feet of Mississippi River, shake more than he felt the pain in his ears. Then an unearthly scene unfolded which he would often remember. Men began to scream, curse, drink, fight, smash things, leap into the river, run into the woods nearby, fall and beat upon the ground, weep, and in some cases jump up and down where they stood, bawling like babies. It was a display of fierce, unharnessed energy unlike any Tom had ever seen or imagined.
Those men are dangerous now, he thought. How fearsome they should be if their efforts were coordinated. He suspected other large groups of crazed, potentially murderous men had similarly failed to direct their efforts with wisdom and shrewdness toward curtailing Mr. Pierre Lafayette “Lafe” Gremillion. Had they done so, he would not now be headed back up the mighty Mississippi much richer and with more jokes to tell his laughing confederates about the ignorant unwashed rabble left drunk and broke and lawless down on a cold, muddy, and now dark Louisiana riverbank.
As the mob spun into a hundred swirling, flailing knots, and one or two larger waves bowled over those before them, Tom thought, What could I do with such men and energy who were disciplined and organized!
A piercing scream nearby broke his train of thought. He turned to see cursing, sputtering Davy DeLozier scrapping to get his head above water, while a furious Danny, his hands wrenched around his brother's neck, did his best to hold it under.
And ole Lafe? Well, more than one river cut through the burgeoning frontier, and a slick, handsome Frenchman and his corncob pipe could take lots of time moving to the next. In fact, a trip to Europe could usually be worked in between projects, while things cooled down a bit.
Warren and Tom returned to Virginia in early spring. Tom had reacquired his various infirmities, along with a beautiful wooden trunk he himself had made for Laura. Warren toted a handsome collection of Indian beads and jewelry and a case of malaria, though that was not yet apparent. The boys were closer to one another than they had ever been.
Tom would often think back to the months he spent going down the Ohio and the mighty Mississippi, cutting wood with handsome, fair-haired Warren. But they made no fortunes, and the malaria would take Warren before his twentieth birthday.