The Whipping Boy

by Speer Morgan

  “What interests?”

  Wall turned from the window. “Let me ask you a question, Mr. Jaycox. Did your people at Dekker Hardware tell you to work hard in any particular areas getting these mortgages signed?”

  This time Jake was surprised. He hesitated but decided to go ahead. “Yes, they did.”

  “Where at?”

  Jake unfolded the piece of paper listing counties and areas that McMurphy had given him, and held it out. Wall put it on top of the newspaper on the table and studied it awhile. Eventually he looked up at Jake. “Anything about this seem peculiar to you?”

  “Well . . . those areas aren’t necessarily where the most debt is.”

  “Just say your boss don’t give a damn about which areas have more and less debt. He’s lookin to get certain land. Seems like he’d be lookin to get hold of good farmland, don’t it? But this here list ain’t where the most bottomland is. What do you reckon it might be?”

  “Minerals?”

  “Let me put it this way. I been hearing that some of the lawyer types over in Muskogee keeping up with the Dawes Commission are from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And I’ve also been hearing about some men been roaming around the territory out here, drawing maps about where they figure oil might be. I know for a fact that there’s already some land up here in the Outlet been bought or leased for that purpose.”

  “Yeah, and hasn’t one outfit gone broke trying to extract oil?” Jake said skeptically.

  Wall looked at Jake. “The question you’re asking me is why are your people so interested in getting mortgages on the land. I’m tellin you that there are reasons you might not have thought of, besides farming and coal. And rock oil is one of them. I hear it’s about played out in Pennsylvania, and there’s some old boys have made a bundle of money on it up there. Might like to find some more of it. Tell you something else about the company that went broke up here trying to dig for it. I got interested and found out a few things about them. The curious thing ain’t that they went broke.” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s how much money they had in their pocket before they did go broke. Gentlemen, we are lookin at a big bidness, and it ain’t doin nothin but gettin bigger. If it does get started, it could put coal to shame.”

  Sitting in the shack talking, Jake had become more uneasy than he had been before he came. The conversation seemed to be drawing to a close and he stood up. “I guess we better be getting back. Thanks, Mr. Wall.”

  Wall took another long look at McMurphy’s list and handed it back. “By the way, it’s too bad about your old boss there at Dekker.”

  “What do you mean?” Jake said.

  “Him being dead.”

  Jake’s heart leapt in his chest. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Wall squinted at him. “In the newspaper. Didn’t you know about it?” He picked the paper off his desk and handed it over. PIONEERING FORT SMITH WHOLESALER FOUND DEAD; police say suicide. Jake read quickly through the text: “. . . found this morning . . . single bullet wound in the head . . . son Ernest Dekker mourns his loss . . .”

  The news caught Jake completely unawares. He was stunned. He didn’t know what to do or say, except to get outside the shack. He thanked Wall and walked out into the windy night, under the stars, where he hit the path at a near run, Leonard struggling to keep up with him.

  “You all right? Where you going? Jake?”

  “Telegraph office. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  18

  ON FRIDAY, Tom woke up remembering that he had to go to the train station in case Jake arrived today.

  But here she was, on her side, breathing next to him, hair spread lushly across her shoulders, one breast peeking out from her folded arm.

  He wanted just to keep watching her breathe, but he also wanted to wake her up and talk. Round-faced and young in her sleep, she reminded him of the photograph he’d seen in the album in Mr. Dekker’s parlor. Her eyes briefly came open and she rolled onto her back, groaned, for a moment staring at the ceiling before closing them again. People were moving around the boarding house, and he worried about Mrs. Peltier coming in to clean the room. She would kick them both out if she caught them here together.

  “What are you looking at?” Sam said, eyes still closed.

  “You.”

  “Don’t.”

  His eyes fastened on her sleep-dried lips.

  She glanced at him with slight malevolence and turned onto her side, away from him.

  Waking up with her presented a new problem of decorum. There might be certain things you were supposed to do and not do. He wanted to talk to her, but after you slept with a woman, what did you talk about? She showed no signs of wanting to talk about anything at all, so he eventually stole away to the bathroom. He came out and put on his pants and walked around the room hoping to wake her. Still she slept, and he sat down on the edge of the bed and watched her for some time longer.

  She was frowning and making noises of fear, and he finally reached out and touched her shoulder. She flinched as if she’d been bitten by something, and her green eyes opened.

  “Were you having a bad dream?”

  “Ohh,” she said, rubbing her face.

  “I have those sometimes.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” she muttered.

  Tom stood up and walked over to the window while she staggered out of bed, went to the toilet closet, and shut the door. Then she came out and poured some water from Jake’s old pitcher with a rose on the side and desultorily washed her face. Drying it off with a frayed white towel, she gave him a little look. Tom couldn’t stop watching her. It was hard enough not watching her when she had clothes on. She glanced at her face in the cracked mirror. “God, I look like last year’s bird’s nest.”

  She poured the remaining water into a glass, drank it, and put down the glass. She opened her own eyes wide and stuck her chest out at him. “You just sitting there with your big eyes. Leave a lady some privacy.”

  “Tell me . . . Tell me about your past,” he said.

  “Oh, Tom.” She turned back and glanced at herself again in the mirror. “It’s too early in the morning.”

  “I want to know more about you,” he said.

  She picked up Jake’s hairbrush and ran it through her hair. “You think you want to know about me, Indian boy.”

  “Why do you call me that?” Unexpectedly, and for little reason, Tom found himself pitching headlong into a dismal mood. Ten minutes before, he had been in bliss just watching her sleep.

  She brushed her hair vigorously and turned around. “I have a lot on my mind. When will Jake be back in town?”

  “I’m going to try to meet him at the station, but I don’t know when he’s coming. Do you want to start a business with Jake?” “Maybe,” she said blandly.

  Although he tried not to show it, Tom felt desperate. What had changed her from last night? She was swerving away from him at just the moment when he was hungriest to know more about her.

  He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her and make her like she had been last night. He had to know about her. “Did you go to school?”

  “Oh, Tom!” She looked exasperated. “All right, you win. I don’t like prattling about the past, so listen fast.”

  Tom sat on the edge of the bed, and she talked while she moved around and quickly dressed. “My mother was a businesswoman. She started out with nothing and she worked up to owning a hotel in St. Louis. Her work kept her busy. She didn’t have much to do with me. She was a strong woman, and a lot of people counted on her, but her work kept her away from me.” She looked at Tom. “How is it they say it? She never much talked to me as a daughter.”

  “Who was your father?”

  “I don’t know. That’s one of the things she didn’t discuss.”

  With her underthings now on, she walked over to the window and stared out. “She sent me off to Chicago to school when I was seven years old. Mrs. Adams’ Ladies School,” she pronounced as if the words tasted b
ad. “After that there were other schools. I was a wicked child, but she paid them well enough to keep me, as long as I didn’t burn the place down. Which I did try to do once. Actually twice, at different places.” She walked over and picked up her dress. “You ever try to burn down that orphanage?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should have.” She put the dress on over her head. “Anyway, my mother wasn’t interested in my coming back home. A few times I visited, but she didn’t want me there. I almost forgot what she looked like. When I grew up . . .” She hesitated for a moment. “I wrote her a letter and condemned her. I ‘disowned’ her, if you can do that. I became an orphan by choice.”

  As Sam talked, she turned farther away until he couldn’t see her face. “She seemed to be satisfied with that. She never insisted that we meet, never tried again, and I was too young and conceited to give in, even when I felt like it. But she kept supporting me, sending money to an account, and I never had the strength to turn it down. There was a lawyer-guardian, a man I hated although I didn’t know him. There I was, taking money and hating her for it. Maybe if I had turned it down, I would have realized younger . . .”

  After a moment Tom prompted, “Realized—?”

  “I’m talking, you just listen.”

  He could hear the huskiness in her voice, but he couldn’t see her face. “I wanted to change my name, but I was too young to do it legally. I grew up, I got more reckless. I had wild friends, school friends—people who were mostly well off with money. We thought we were doing things that no one had ever done before. Drinking, hurrying around, using opium. We had seances. We became vegetarians, took the water cures, whatever new thing came along. I guess you don’t know about those things, do you, Indian boy?” She turned around and looked at him almost angrily. She made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, that’s about all.”

  “Did your mother’s first name begin with M?”

  She looked puzzled. “How’d you know that?”

  “I saw a photograph of a child who looked like you,” he said.

  “Really.”

  “In a family album.”

  She waited for him to explain.

  “At Mr. Dekker’s house I saw a photograph of a little girl who looked like you.”

  Her eyes fixed on him, unblinking.

  “I went there Monday night. Jake asked me to see if he was back in town from St. Louis.”

  As Tom told her the whole story, she looked increasingly puzzled. “It said what?”

  “It said ‘M. King’s daught.’ And then it said something like ‘Left b’—the letter b.”

  “Can you go over that one more time?”

  He repeated the details, start to finish, from the moment Ernest Dekker gave him the nickel and told him to deliver the telegram to Jake. As he retold it, she seemed to turn pale, lips slightly open, and she wandered into the other room and wandered back. He got up and started making the bed.

  “I’d like to see that photograph,” she said.

  Tom felt nervous and despondent. Someone walked down the hall outside the room. “That man who shot at us in Violet Springs is in town, Sam. Like I said, I saw him at the store. I’m worried about Jake arriving here without any warning.”

  “So Jake is on his way back here?” she said vaguely.

  “I’m sure he will be as soon as he learns about Mr. Dekker.”

  They talked some more as she helped him finish the bed, but they were both preoccupied. It was time for him to go to the train station. When the coast was clear, they hurried down the stairs and out the back door. “I’m staying at the Main Hotel,” she said. “Room three-oh-three. Come after dark. Don’t fail me, Tom.”

  ***

  The station still smelled of the flood, of dead fish and river silt. Because of its closeness to the store, Tom decided not to hang around there between trains. He checked the schedule, got the arrival times of the three trains that Jake could be on, and promptly left. With nothing to do but wait for the first arrival, he decided to walk down along the river.

  The air was cold and damp. New huts made of driftwood and scraps of tin had already been set up here and there along the Arkansas, amid the willow and scrub trees, and there were people fishing. Slowly walking upriver along the shoreline, looking through the fog across to the Choctaw Nation on the shore beyond, Tom felt unsettled. Last night was like a wonderful dream, another of many unbelievable events in his new life. In less than a month, he had seen a man hanged, a hotel float away in a torrent, and the land turn to water; he had seen a substantial business turn into a brooding empty hulk abuzz with rumors and secret dealings; he had read newspapers and a novel; he had found a dead man sitting in his house and been chased by a murderer in the company of a beautiful woman; he had bathed with this woman and made love with her and slept all night with her and talked with her about her life. There seemed to be no end to vivid and strange experiences, yet the curve of Tom’s memory kept leading him into his past, pulling him through the curtains back into his drab life before the flood, as if there was something important that he’d left behind in the backwoods of the Nation. Looking across the river, he imagined that he could almost see the building in the fog—improbably large, looming tall with its fifteen chimneys and two-story arched brick arcades in the front, porches on both the first and second floors, its high windows with broken shutters like rotten teeth.

  He didn’t just hate the academy. It wasn’t that simple. After all, it was a privilege to grow up doing something besides farm chores, a privilege to learn to read and have a chance to sharpen his mind. He knew that to be true. Yet staring across the river into the mirage, Tom could not forget that it was Friday, the day of his reckoning, the day that every other minute of every other day at the orphanage pointed to, when the implacable, austere, fixed mouth read his sins, large and small, and told him to take off his shirt and kneel at the post. Tom thought about what Sam had said about taking her mother’s money, about not being strong enough to turn it down. He had been the same way with Reverend Schoot’s sins and punishment. He did not believe in them, he did not accept them, but he took them even when he was smart enough and physically large enough not to take them. The Reverend had his unbending certainty and his cunning and his guns. When boys escaped Bokchito, they always ended up back there—either that or they would be reported dead. You will never get away. That’s what he had always told himself.

  He turned and walked along upriver. There was a surprising amount of activity in the strip of scrubland between the rows of tracks and the river. The shanties on Coke Hill had escaped the flood. He smelled coal and wood burning in open fires. A baby cried somewhere, a mother fussed at kids. There were little camps of hobos—men with the distant, disengaged eyes of perennial wanderers.

  An old man was fishing with a cane pole near a wrecked boat dock; a black woman, who looked nearly as old as he, stood nearby, also fishing. She baited his hook for him. The old man appeared to be blind, or nearly blind, and Tom was surprised when he turned toward him and said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Just walking,” Tom said.

  The old man blinked his clouded eyes and smiled a little. “Bet ye wonder why an old blind man still goes fishin this time of the year.”

  “No sir . . .”

  “Well, do ye or don’t ye?” He smiled again. “I’ll tell you why. Time you get this old, you don’t know whether you’ll see the spring. I’m the oldest white man on the frontier.”

  Tom almost believed it, by the look of the old man’s face, wrinkled and savaged by time, eyes with a blanked-over silvery haze.

  “I’m near a hundred year old,” he said.

  “Tellin the trut,” muttered the old black woman. “He de oldest white, I de oldest colored. We a pair.”

  “Ye a white man or a Indin?” the old man asked. When Tom didn’t answer him immediately, he turned to the black woman. “What is he?”

  She squinted at Tom. ‘Cain’ rightly say. He well favored, tho
ugh.”

  “So are ye a Indin or not?”

  “Part Indian,” Tom said.

  “Well, good,” the old man said. “We got that settled.” He stood there for a minute, sensing his pole, then pulled up his line. “I got any bait on here?”

  “Doin all right,” the old woman said.

  “Know where I sleep at night?” the old man asked Tom.

  “No sir,” Tom said.

  “In the fort.”

  “Which fort?”

  “Can’t ye see the fort behind you?”

  Tom turned around. “No . . .”

  The old man pointed up the hill. “Right there, see those twenty-five-foot rock walls? See those towers on the ends?”

  “Took de walls down,” the old woman muttered, as if she’d said it many times before.

  “Yes,” the old man said, “they sure did. They took the walls down. And I was here before they ever put em up! I was here when there was nothing but a timber fort. I lived through it. I was fifteen year old when they come through St. Louis roundin up boys to be in the army. My daddy sold me to the army for two dollars. This was before the War Between the States, before the Mexican War, before any goddamn war except the British. They brought us up here on barges, a hundred of us. Give us uniforms. Had to git up at four-thirty in the morning and stand in the parade ground, march around and do exercises accordin to this little Blue Book, they called it. Had to defend the frontier!”

  “You did?”

  “Did what?”

  “Have to defend the frontier.”

  The old man burst out laughing. “From what?”

  “I don’t know—Indians?”

  “I thought ye said you was a Indin?”

  “I’m part Indian,” Tom said again.

  “What type of Indin would you partly be?” the old man asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, come over here and I’ll tell you. I can read faces.”

  Tom didn’t move.