by Speer Morgan
“No. But I couldn’t imagine him losing the store to his son. And I couldn’t imagine Samantha King being his daughter, either.”
After Jake washed his face in the bowl, Leonard added, “Samantha visited him that night.”
“You must have talked to her since we’ve been back.”
“I went by the hospital yesterday.” Leonard looked puzzled. “She really didn’t act as if she was trying to hide anything.”
Jake dried off his face and found a hat. “Want to go visit her again?”
“I have one more thing to tell you. Parker asked me—and Tom—to come to his office this afternoon at two-thirty. I got the message less than an hour ago.”
“Does Tom know?”
“Not yet.”
“And you think he’s going to ask whether Tom was involved in this thing at the academy?”
Leonard sighed. “Seems a good possibility.”
“Why didn’t he ask him when he gave over the packet?”
“He was too interested in the letter itself.”
Jake finished getting himself together, and the two of them went looking for Tom. The horse lot and stable Jake used was unusual in that there was seldom anyone there tending it, and the people who patronized it occasionally used each other’s rigs without asking, so Jake wasn’t alarmed at the absence of the mules and wagon. Leonard couldn’t saddle a horse with one arm in a sling, so Jake did them both, although certain muscles in his shoulder and neck severely objected.
Belle Grove neighborhood was the fashionable section of town, with two- and three-story Victorian and Baroque houses, but Eldon’s lying-in hospital was an older, modest, one-story cottage behind a wrought-iron fence. Jake found the doctor, a friendly, unbusy-acting man, in exactly the same place he’d found him the last time he’d seen him—sitting on the front steps smoking a pipe.
“She scabbed up pretty nice. I think she ducked the lockjaw.”
“Lockjaw?” Jake was alarmed.
“I was watching for it. That whip had steel studs on it. She’ll have some scars. She doesn’t have her color back yet. I don’t know whether she ought to be leaving so early.”
“She left?”
“She and the young man tore out of here a few minutes ago.”
“Did they say where?”
“I believe they headed toward the avenue.”
Jake made it onto his horse in a fury of shoulder pain and galloped toward the avenue. The horse was a good saddler, but Leonard was on a snuffy little plowhorse that didn’t like hurrying, and he was going all over the street behind, his injured arm flapping like a helpless wing. He was trying to say something to Jake, but Jake couldn’t hear it.
At the avenue, Jake looked both ways. It was busy with wagons and people, but no sign of the mule wagon. Leonard rode up beside him, yelling, “Take it easy! Fall from that horse and your head might just decide it’s time to cash in the chips.”
With his horse snorting and whirling around, Jake surveyed every direction and galloped across to the store, and all the way around it, with Leonard following along, scolding him the whole way. Dekker Hardware was silent and abandoned. He rode back to the base of the avenue. There he saw them, on the long bridge to the Indian Nation, just past the midpoint. As he rode up to them, he saw that the wagon was stopped. Sam sat quietly next to Tom, her green eyes wet with tears.
“What’s going on? You two going fishing?” Jake said to Tom.
Neither of them was quite able to muster a smile.
“You doing better, Sam?”
Still no answer.
Tom glanced at Jake. “I was going to send you a letter and money for the mules,” he said stiffly.
“I don’t care about that. Where’re you two going?”
They glanced at each other, as if both of them were confused.
“Just gonna leave without a word?”
Tom stared ahead. Sam looked at Jake sorrowfully.
“Talk to me, for pete’s sake!”
Sam finally answered, “I’m not going anywhere, Jake. I’m making a stand here. I’m serious about going into business. Tom says he won’t be stopped. He came to the hospital to say goodbye and I couldn’t let him go. I rode with him this far. Now we’re just talking. He says he has to move on.”
Jake saw how bleak they both were. He leaned on his saddle horn and tried to collect himself. “Okay,” he said, holding up both hands. “I’m not trying to interfere with anybody. All I’m trying to do is find out the deal.” He could see that Tom wanted to talk but couldn’t, or didn’t know how.
Leonard rode up behind him, puffing and wheezing as badly as the plowhorse he was riding. He took in the situation, threw Jake a look, and rode back twenty yards, out of hearing.
Sam abruptly got down from the wagon and went over and leaned on the railing, and Tom got off but remained by the wagon. Below them the river shone in the midday sun. Jake got down from his horse. Sam’s cuts had been dressed with something that smelled like turpentine, and her unpinned hair came down all the way to her elbows. Tom was wearing the buckskin Jake had bought him, along with a wide headband. They were a wild-looking two.
Sam blinked at Jake through tears.
“The doctor doesn’t think you—”
“Oh, don’t say it. I can’t stand another minute of you caring for me.” She put a hand over her eyes. “Both of you! All my life, I couldn’t find a decent man and suddenly two of the bastards show up at once!” She flung her hand disgustedly in the direction of Leonard. “Hell, they’re coming out of the woodwork!”
Tom gave Jake another worried glance, and Jake now understood that she hadn’t told him everything. Sam looked at Jake and seemed to read his expression.
Jake decided to sit down. He leaned against the bridge railing.
Sam composed herself. She stared out on the silent river for a full minute. It was very quiet out here, and cold, with only one other cart on the bridge, headed toward them from the Indian side. The mules were already half asleep, their nostrils gently steaming. Sam finally spoke. “I thought I wanted to get back the thirty thousand dollars that he owed her. I planned it. But when I went to see him, it all went wrong. I intended just to get the money from him.”
“What happened?”
“He offered me five hundred dollars.” She looked away in shame.
Jake could just see it. The sly old man trying to buy his way out at the cheapest price.
She shook her head. “I hated him when he did that, Jake. I hated him bad.”
“How’d you get him upstairs.”
“I didn’t get him upstairs. He got himself upstairs.”
“You shot him, though?”
“I didn’t shoot him. Oh, I was ready to. I would have if he hadn’t given me the money. That’s why he changed his mind and suddenly remembered where it was. It was in his basement. He knew I was dead serious. I made him get his money and stand there and watch while I burned it. I didn’t have to kill him. I did something worse. I showed him what he was worth and left him with it.”
“So he did kill himself,” Jake said—a statement rather than a question. He was thinking of the horror the old man must have felt, knowing that this was the daughter he wouldn’t claim. What he was worth. . .
Jake got up. He gently took Sam’s hand. “Sam, it was his doing. He made his own bed.” He gestured at Leonard to come over.
Leonard did so, with one hand on his stomach and a wary look.
“Leonard, I’m asking you to do something that might be a little difficult.”
“Yes?”
“Can you talk Judge Parker out of this thing? Can you convince him that it’s unnecessary to talk to Tom?” He looked at him pleadingly. Come on, Leonard, I know you can.
Leonard thought aloud: “Well, Tom and I went to Judge Parker twice on our own accounts. We handed him the evidence. And he does know that Tom lost his job. I think it would seem normal enough for a young man out of work to move on . . .” Leonard’s un
certain look became a grin, and he glanced at all of them. “They don’t call me the man with the golden tongue for nothing.”
Jake walked around the wagon and stood beside Tom. “Son, you go on. Trade those damn mules in and get yourself some decent horses. You got any money?”
Tom looked at Jake, shaking his head, a stormy look to his expression. Neither of them spoke. Jake held out his hand and Tom looked at it a minute, and instead came over and put his arms around Jake uncertainly. The two of them stood that way, stiffly, only for a moment.
“Do you know where you’re headed?” Jake asked.
“I’ll send you a letter.”
“Well, don’t get a job as a miner or a cowboy. Get a town job somewhere. And for God’s sake, Tom,” Jake said, reaching up and touching the side of his head, “get a damn hat. That band won’t keep you warm.”
Leonard held up a hand in goodbye. “If you ever decide to apprentice yourself to the law, Tom Freshour, call on me. I know a thing or two.”
Tom walked over to Sam and whispered something in her ear that Jake did not hear. She turned half toward him and stopped. He climbed back up on the wagon and looked at them all one last time, as if drinking them in. Then he put his eyes ahead and started for the other side.
***
Tom wasn’t sure where he was going, but on the Indian side he turned in the direction he knew best—southwest.
He had whispered to Sam, “Even if we never see each other again, I won’t leave you.”
Over the last two and a half days he had gone to sit with Sam in the hospital as often as the doctor would let him, and with each visit he grew more certain that he had to pull out. He and Sam had talked very little about what had happened. They didn’t ask each other for any explanations. Tom did not know—and suspected that he never would know—whether in fact Sam had killed Mr. Dekker, whether on the bridge she had told Jake a lie as brazen as he was prepared to tell about Bokchito. But he did know that he could not stay in Fort Smith, since doing so would require that he build his whole life on a lie—that, or receive the full punishment of the law—and he had had enough of both lies and punishment.
On his visits to see Sam at the hospital, Tom had realized how ambitious she was. It fairly burned in her eyes. She reminded him of the fierce young Ralph Dekker of the photograph. Even when she clearly did not want to, she could not help but ask questions: What had Tom heard about the store? What was Jake doing now? Tom would be surprised if she didn’t talk Jake into going partners, either to buy the remains of Dekker Hardware or to start some other business.
For now, Tom did not share her ambitiousness. He was not interested in making something of himself. He wanted only to live free in the world and discover what he could about it. He wanted to choose his own path.
In less than two hours, he had made Skullyville. Past a substantial-sized graveyard on a hill, he stopped at a place where three women were filling jugs with spring water coming from a pipe. After waiting his turn, he went to the pipe and made a cup with his hands and drank the sweet water. When he straightened up, the two younger women were standing there side by side, quite close by, silently contemplating him. He contemplated them back, and the two eventually looked at each other with conspiratorial smiles and retreated.
He got in the wagon and rode a little farther, to a store with the name TANDY WALKER painted on the side. As he approached it, a half-dozen multicolored hounds burst out from under the building, barking wildly but staying clear of the steaming mules. A man came out the door and yelled at the dogs. He took a couple of steps toward them, and they stopped their racket, circled among themselves, and slunk back under the building.
“Don’t pay them damn worthless dogs any mind. They think they’re doin me a favor chasing customers away.”
“I wanted to inquire about directions,” Tom said.
“How can I help you?”
“Have you heard of a place called Osi Tamaha?”
“That’d be Eagletown, down toward the Texas line. They changed the name of it a couple of years ago. Just keep to the old Fort Towson road, straight south.” He pointed in the direction Tom was already traveling. “You’ll hit switchbacks around Backbone Mountain, and it starts getting pretty rough. Way that old road’s rutted up, it’ll take you a day to get there.”
“Is it a good place?” Tom asked.
The man smiled. “Well, it’s on the Mountain Fork River. They’ve got some good fishing down there. I used to go there in the spring. They claim to have the oldest tree in the Nation. It’s a cypress, a hundred fifty foot tall. I’ve seen it . . . Come on in and warm yourself, if you like.”
“No thanks,” Tom said, looking down the road. He had no good reason to go to Osi Tamaha, except that he’d heard of the place—he knew the name from the file on him at Bokchito. The file also had said that as an infant he had been found at “Big Tree,” and he wondered if it could be the same place. Whatever the truth, it was probably the closest to a birthplace that he could ever know, and he was drawn to go where the circle began, if only to walk away from it on his own two feet.
“Take care,” said the storekeeper.
After the man turned and went inside, Tom sat there for a minute listening to small-town noises—the squeak of a gate, and from somewhere a quiet murmur of voices carried by the wind.
“Aiya!”
Grant and Lee moved out.
About the Author
SPEER MORGAN, who received an NEA grant to support the writing of this novel, is also the author of Belle Starr, The Assemblers, and Brother Enemy. Born and raised in Arkansas, he now teaches writing at the University of Missouri at Columbia and is the editor of The Missouri Review.