by Speer Morgan
Tom stood in the single pool of light in the house, fascinated by the photograph album, paging through it. There was yellowed writing on the bottom of some of the photographs. On one page, halfway through the book, was scrawled
M. King’s daught.
Left b.
The photograph was a formally posed portrait of a little girl, perhaps six years old. She was a beautiful child, with long hair and very clearly defined and arresting eyes. The coincidence of the name . . . Hair rose on the back of his neck when he realized that the eyes were shaped like hers, indeed so was the face. Did a lot of little girls look like this?
Tom heard a creaking somewhere in the house. He turned and cleared his throat and said, “Mr. Dekker, are you here?” He got a candle from the mantel, lighted it by the gas lamp, and carried it around to the entrance hall, where a staircase led to the second floor. Near the bottom step was a piece of paper, and looking up, Tom saw things strewn all along the stairs. His pulse quickened.
Again he called out and waited. Nothing. He should probably leave, because if Mr. Dekker was asleep, or if he arrived now, he might think Tom was a thief. But curiosity drew him up to the second-floor landing, where he could feel air drafting through the house. A window rattled somewhere. Two doors were closed, one open. Through the open door, he saw a dark shape sitting in an easy chair by the bed, slumped forward. Tom went slowly into the room and knelt down on one knee, passing the candle under Ralph Dekker’s face. The forehead was crushed, a single messy hole at the bridge of his great flaring nose, and blood was spattered on the wall. Tom had smelled death before in the orphanage’s hasty funerals. I’m not afraid, he told himself, looking directly into the elusive gaze of the dead eyes. One of them was floating in blood, the other was clear, and in the whole expression of the face there was terrible grief.
Tom knew how to act in crisis. He knew what to do. You stood up and you walked out the door. You held the banister and took one step at a time down the stairs. You didn’t rush. You went to the back door and out, you walked at a regular pace to a different street, and you retreated through the black night.
One block at a time, you guided yourself back to the boarding house. You kept quiet, slipped in. You took off your shoes at the door and walked up to your room and lay down on the couch. You put all thoughts of telling someone what you had seen out of your mind. When you yearned for some relief, some comfort, you found it however you could—you got Jake’s pillow from the other room and held it tightly to your chest.
15
JAKE AND Leonard LaFarge met Monday night at the same table in the Golden Wall. By the flushed look on Leonard’s face, a significant portion of the ten dollars Jake had given him for expenses was in his stomach in liquid form. He stood up when he saw Jake, his curly grey hair winging backwards. “Come with me, my man. I tire of this mausoleum. We need a livelier locale.”
Leonard hurried through the streets with Jake following along, headed “downtown,” which in Guthrie was down a hill in the area around the tracks, called Sin Gulch, where cribs and barrel houses and sawdust dance halls occupied buildings that had managed to look worn out in less than five years. Downtown was rich with the smells of beer, ash and coal from the train track, the smell of five-cent cigars that poured out of open doors of bars, the sounds of tric-a-trac, faro, roulette. Heavy-eyed men stood listlessly in front of red curtains.
A tout at the door of a dance hall saw them coming. “Come INto the PROtest Saloon! See the GIRLS, foolish virGINias REcently IN from the COUNtry, ALL wearing transPARent GARments! SEE them here!”
“You devil,” Leonard said to the tout. “You assume that because this hair is grey I’m therefore a lecher. Well, you’ve got it backwards. Wait until you’re four hundred years old and a candidate for the old folks’ home!”
“Haven’t seen you in a while, Professor LaFarge. Where you been?”
“I’ve been seeking an honest man, you young devil. Go back to your flimflammery.”
“FAM’ly fun, OLD-time MUSic, SQUARE dancing . . .” the caller shouted, grinning after them.
They entered a crowded room with a sawdust dance floor at one end. It had to be the busiest place in town, but they found a rough table and barrels for seats at the other end of the room from the band. The train track ran in the gap just outside, perilously close to the back wall. A woman with a raw red face appeared. “Whatcha want?” She was chewing.
“Rye whiskey will do for me, from a bottle with a label, if you have it.”
With absolutely no expression, she switched her gaze to Jake.
He ordered a beer. The odor of urine and sweat and fetid breath filled the place. It was noisy—a three-piece string band at the other end, sawing out rough hill-country music. On the dance floor a wild mix of people whirled and stomped to the harsh rasp of the strings: an awkward, toothless old man slowly flapping his arms like wings; a young, stiff, pomaded cowboy dancing a severe box step with a tiny partner; women from thirteen to fifty dressed up in small ways with a feather, scarf, or a gingham dress. These were not saloon girls but civilians. Yet at the end of the long room where Jake and Leonard sat, a row of shadowy booths lined the wall, with strange noises coming out of them. People sat in each other’s laps, kissing and spooning, and occasionally a woman gave off a little yelp when the man went too far. A louder yelp caused a ornery-looking bouncer to bend down and peer into the booth with a threatening expression. The fiddle band went through “All I’ve Got Is Done and Gone” and “Broken-Legged Chicken,” then stopped for a break.
“Popular place,” Jake commented. The air was excited, combustible, crackling with energy.
Smiling across the table at Jake, Leonard said, “Here, my friend, you have the gayest among the butterfly chasers, frothiest of the land-rush refugees, human birds of passage on their way to the next imaginary crops. Tent camps have sprung up north of town now, have you seen them? People from Ohio, from Arkansas, Kansas, from Michigan and Minnesota. They saw the handbills put out by the Atcheson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, and certain other philanthropic institutions. They papered the walls of the United States with those handbills, describing the amazing, expanding, infinite Oklahoma Territory, its uninterrupted twelve-month growing season, pure coursing water on nearly every acre—I’ll bet you didn’t know these things, Jake—diamonds the size of nuts lying right on top of the ground, bottomland of unparalleled richness. And all of it free! Free for the asking! And so these people, who are poor, who’ve never made it through the debt cycle with all their legs and arms intact, never enough to catch up—quite understandably they heed the call. Strap their belongings onto the old wagon and make one more journey. Some of them have already lived in a dozen places, or fifteen, never able to sink roots, so why not! One more try.” He looked around the room and said wryly, “Clodhoppers of the world. Proletariat of the soil. They come here, spend their last dollar on beer, mix with our bootleggers, our con men, our highjackers and cowpunchers, a few light-skinned Indians who can pass the door, a few professional women—an unusual mix, ah yes, all enjoying the marv’lous mild depravity of the Protest Saloon and Dance Hall in the heart of Oklahoma Territory! Did you know, Jake, that the Congress of the United States has declared this territory to be the official trash depository of the nation, a kind of sinkhole located conveniently near the middle, into which Indians from east and west, landless peasants, outlaws, all can be swept together, thereby keeping the other parts as tidy as possible. I tell you, we are witnessing a mighty social experiment. This is the Australia of America.”
“What have you been drinking, Leonard?”
“Notice the barwomen, long of jaw and strident of voice. The grangers feel at home with them. Transparent garments, ha!”
“You oughta be a tout,” Jake declared.
“I have been a tout. A fine one. In Louisville, Kentucky. I was so successful that customers gathered round just to listen to me. I was a one-man show. The boss fired me for keeping the customers outside
listening to my golden rhetoric.”
“So did you find out anything about Samantha King today?”
Leonard put on a sly look. “I did. More than I expected to. In a single telegram from my trusty colleague in St. Louis.” For a moment, Leonard looked around the room. “All right. Your Samantha King is Marguerite King’s daughter out of wedlock.”
“Go on.”
“Samantha went to boarding schools in another city, where she apparently led a wild and carefree life until her mother died or was killed. Then she moved back to St. Louis.”
“What do you mean, ‘wild and carefree’?”
“Those are my informant’s exact words. He either didn’t know more or didn’t want to say more.”
“Her mother was killed?”
“She died under suspicious circumstances. Suffocated, something like that. There was some suspicion of murder, but that’s inevitable with a woman like Marguerite King.”
Jake thought about Samantha’s odd blend of secretiveness and brashness, her air of having both a past and a purpose.
“Her mother’d made a boatload of money, but I don’t know what condition her estate was in when she died. I’m afraid none of this will help you understand her daughter’s current interests, but the long and short of it is that the young lady may be telling you the truth, Jake. She may be that rarest of archangels, the kind with dinero to give away.” Leonard smiled evilly.
A train was coming into town on the tracks in the gap just beneath the saloon wall, brakes squealing. Right by their table two windows went up and a group of drunken, shouting men were lining up, to Jake’s surprise unbuttoning their trousers, whooping and laughing. The building shook like an earthquake when the train went by, the band scratching out “The Devil Take a Yaller Girl” and the crowd of men pushing and shoving each other for a chance to pee out one of the windows.
“There, you see!” Leonard shouted. “Piss on the mighty railroads. Oh, I am a true anarchist in my soul, but be careful how you aim those things, men! It’s coming back on us!”
Jake stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”
As they walked up the hill, Leonard was suddenly in a bad mood. “One of those mudheads got me broadside.”
“Did you look at those mortgage papers?”
“Yes.” Leonard took a copy of the mortgage transfer agreement out of his pocket and gave it back to Jake. He was wheezing. “Flimsy as it looks, this little document . . . it’s clever . . . Sit down a minute, I’m out of wind. My lungs . . . aren’t what they used to be. I fear I’m allergic to . . . being pissed on.” They sat down on a bench outside the newspaper office. The cold felt good to Jake after the saloon. There were several shadowy bundles around the land office. It looked like people were sleeping in the yard.
“I’ve got my breath,” Leonard said. “As to these mortgages, all I can tell you is that . . . normally . . . mortgages on land aren’t the most desirable way for a supplier to secure cash debt. Little hunks of real estate aren’t very liquid. However, things are different now. There’s a lot of scheming going on over real estate, what with all the remaining Indian land up for grabs and all these people pouring in.” His gaunt face turned severe in the dim light of the street. “There are interests, very large interests, turning a greedy eye to this region. Half the Indian domain is worth the attention of big capital, my friend. I assure you.”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“The Indians had a hundred and forty million acres, more or less, before allotment began. They figure that when the Dawes Commission is finished they’ll have kept about half that. It’s the last big grab, my friend. Seventy million acres is worth the attention of almost anyone.”
“Ernest is asking us to get these mortgages signed on land still owned by Indians, as well as land in the white territory. Is that legal?”
Leonard looked disgusted. “Oh, come now, Jake, don’t be naive.”
“What makes it so valuable all of a sudden?”
Leonard pointed back down the hill. “There’s your answer. There and in the tent cities. Tens of thousands have been lured here on promises that few of them found. Free land! The place is teeming with land-hungry wretches, ten for every one who gets a quarter section, lured by the publicity of the railroads and banks. If I were an economist, I’d write a treatise on it. Never has a market been created so fast and so unscrupulously. They’ve come here for free land and now they’re talking themselves into leasing it for two dollars an acre per year. This place will be paved by sharecroppers in ten years. I hear them at the land office every day. They’re here now, and they’re ready to lease at any price.” “One of my customers down south was talking about a syndicate—”
“Yes,” Leonard said darkly. “I’ve heard that word myself.”
Jake stood there. A picture seemed to be forming, but he still didn’t quite get it. “I need to find out more.”
“My best informant on the subject of land dealing has moved to Enid, along with everybody else.”
“Let’s go see him. I was going to Enid, anyway.”
“Honest work for honest pay—my lifelong . . . credo,” Leonard wheezed. “But I’ve heard they’re having a civil war up there.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” Jake said. “I was up there three or four weeks ago.”
“What exactly do you want to find out?”
“Whatever I can.”
16
TOM’S SURVIVAL INSTINCT told him to tell no one about finding Mr. Dekker, to do nothing, to disappear into the walls. A half-breed, a newcomer to this town, someone who worked for the store and who had gone to Mr. Dekker’s house at night—if he went to the authorities, they’d ask him questions and decide that he was a suspicious character, someone who knew more than he was telling. And in fact he did know more. He knew that Ernest Dekker had usurped his father (surely everyone knew this) and that Ernest was taking apart the store. He knew that Jake strongly supported Ralph Dekker and opposed his son, and that someone named Miller had tried to kill Jake. But for Tom to speak of these things would only make him more suspect. Lying low was the only thing he could do. He could not report the death. Someone else would have to find Ralph Dekker.
Jake would surely come when he heard. He hoped that would be soon.
All day Tuesday, he waited for the shock to run through the building: Ralph Dekker has been found dead! But it didn’t happen, and by the end of the day he was exhausted by the sheer burden of what he knew, and of waiting. He couldn’t tell Hack. He couldn’t even tell Edgar, because if he reported it, the authorities would wonder why Tom hadn’t. He was stuck with the bad news until somebody else uncovered it.
Late Tuesday afternoon, Jim, the carrot-haired man who’d brandished his knife at Tom the previous day, approached him in the shipping room with a lame smile. “It happened just like I fig-gered. They fired me. Done fired about everybody. I don’t give a hoot about this place anyway. I’m moving back to the hills. Decided to clear up my accounts.” He frowned, looking up at Tom with his chin jutted out. “Yessir, I don’t mean for you to take it bad, me jumpin you. It weren’t your fault.” This sounded like an apology for starting the fight, and Tom had the crazy impulse to tell him about Ralph Dekker. Go ahead, something inside him urged, tell him, tell someone, get rid of this secret; but common sense prevailed. He wished Jim good luck and left.
He ate supper at the boarding house that evening but was bad company at the table—he knew that he was—and the bachelors sensed his mood and treated him gingerly. He wondered if perhaps he could confess his secret to Mr. Haskell, who was a very decent man, but he didn’t think it would be wise. One way or another, Mr. Dekker would soon be found. He just had to keep his mouth shut.
Everything had become muddled, confused, dangerous. The mysterious firing of Joel, the clearing out of the merchandise, the fact that he was supposed to go to Enid but probably shouldn’t, since as soon as Jake heard about Mr. Dekker’s death he would surely come to town
. He was beginning to feel that he had never left his past. He had started a new life, but the past was catching up to him. Here again he had found the mood of Bokchito—secretive, hazardous, people driven by powerful hidden motives. When he heard the yelling from downstairs again, he leaned his head back against the brick wall and thought about the Reverend’s fits of temper, which had never seemed quite genuine to Tom. They were intentional displays, tools in his routine of tyranny. Ernest Dekker sounded more desperate.
Tom found newspapers and read them front to back, and they helped take his mind off all these things, and there were a few books in the parlor of the boarding house, which carried him to places far away.
The store emptied of salable goods, leaving less and less real work to do, and as the merchandise disappeared the stockroom men went along with it, fired two and three at a time. He found a hiding place on the fifth floor, near a gas lamp; on Wednesday he spent virtually all day there, reading. He had taken one of Mrs. Peltier’s books, a “novel,” which was a long made-up story about a little girl who lost her mother and spent her entire childhood looking for her, barely missing her many times, until page 350, near the book’s end, when she found her just in time for the mother to die. In his hiding place behind barrels, leaning against the gritty bricks with the yellow light around him, Tom almost cried at the book’s conclusion. It was the first time that he had ever felt this way over the loss of a parent, and it was a made-up story.