The Whipping Boy (11 page)

She told Jake that she wanted to travel on with them instead of being stuck here. Jake looked neutral. “I have a little money,” she said. “I'll help rent a buggy.”

“George Marston has stopped renting,” Jake said. “Aren't a lot of other places to choose from.”

Grant consisted of a mud-packed street and eight or ten buildings, half of which looked unoccupied.

“Then we should buy one,” she said.

“Cost more than I've got,” Jake said irritably.

“I'm glad to help. I do have a little money.”

Jake's heavy gaze stayed on her a while longer, and Tom got the distinct impression that he wanted to say something to her, but he sighed and looked away. “Guess we don't have any choice unless we want to stay in this friendly place.”

They walked eastward, knocking on the doors of farmhouses, inquiring whether someone would rent or sell them a rig. Tom's heels were blistered by the time they found a prospect a mile out of the village—a wily-looking older man sitting in a latticeback chair against the front of his shack, wearing an enormous turban, several handkerchiefs knotted loosely around his neck, a thick layering of brightly colored shirts, and a knee-length robe.

Despite the fact that Tom was by race an Indian, or part Indian, he didn't know much about the tribes of the Nation, his education having been limited to such things as English grammar, the Bible, and white Dissenter history, but he'd seen these turbaned men before—Seminoles, they were called—on grocery day when they got to ride from Bokchito into Durant. This man was as tall as Jake, and drinking from a crockery jug something that smelled like coal oil. He and Jake were soon talking, and he offered them a plain flatbed farm wagon with missing wheel spokes, patched-together harness (laid out in the dirt), and two grey-faced, ratty-coated old mules who were indignant at being taken out of the pasture this time of the afternoon and made to stand together for harnessing. They bucked and twitched and rolled their eyes as the man struggled to get them both into collars. Tom had spent enough hours behind mules in the academy's corn field to not like the look of these two.

Finally having done it, the man stood back and wiped his brow, sweating despite the cool wind. Children had been coming out of the house, first two, then three, then another, and another—the older ones dressed in robes not unlike those of their stately, mildly inebriated father, except their robes were not as thick with underlayers as his. Apparently the very youngest got no clothes at all, because among the gaggle of children were two little girls, utterly naked, and Tom couldn't keep his eyes from brushing down their bellies to the strange, decisive cleft below.

Jake and the man squatted down to bargain on the ground, which especially interested the older boys, as Jake twice put money down and both times was rejected. Eventually he got up and went over to check the mules' teeth. The farmer sat back on his haunches, looking peacefully into the distance, with the pile of money before him. “God almighty,” Jake said, scowling into one of the mules' mouths. The other one refused to allow his mouth to be opened. Caught by the nose, he snapped viciously, and Jake gave up and walked around the rig, examining the underside. Then he ambled over to Tom and Miss King. “That one's got piano keys for teeth. I'd walk to Guthrie before I'd give him more than I've put down.”

Without a word, Miss King turned her back, unbuttoned the top of her dress, withdrew something—several bills—and went straight over and laid them down with Jake's offer.

The old man looked fleetingly at it, scooped it all up, and quickly sprang into action, grabbing suitcases and loading them up. In the blink of an eye they were ready, and the man ambled into his house to put his money up.

“Boy, you sure primed his pump,” Jake said. “How much did you give him?”

She smiled and gave no answer.

“I don't mind making a fool of myself in a horse trade, but I like to know how much of a fool.”

“Twenty dollars,” she said innocently, climbing onto the seat.

“Now I know.”

“Call me the fool if you want. It's my money.”

Tom got into the back, and Jake got up next to Miss King and took the reins. “Hey-up, hey! Get on! Hey!”

The mules didn't move, didn't so much as raise their ears. Jake pushed back his hat and sat there for a moment. “Let's go!” He popped the reins on their backs.

They stayed put.

The Seminole came out of his cabin carrying a large coffeepot, and said, “Hafta talk Indian.”

“Well, you might have told us that,” Jake said disgustedly, getting back down from the seat. “Tom, see if you can make these durn mules move. If you can't, we'll take our money back.”

Tom didn't talk Indian much better than Jake did. It wasn't allowed at the academy, although some of the boys spoke a little pidgin Choctaw on the sly, the “trade language,” and he'd learned a few phrases from the washing lady. But he was more than happy to sit by Miss King, hip to hip, on the small driver's seat.

“
Kanima!
”

No luck. The Seminole stepped off his porch, poured coffee into a cracked dog's bowl, and brought it over to the mules who, first one and then the other, unhesitatingly sucked it up.

“
Aiya!
” the farmer yelled, whacking one of them on the nose with his open palm, and both mules raised their old fuzzy ears halfway up and inched out. Tom rattled the traces and scolded them along. For a while, Jake walked alongside them like an ox driver, and all of the children, including the naked ones, followed, making a ragtag parade, the father bringing up the rear, holding the bowl. “Cold coffee, good for mules,” he said.

Jake climbed into the back of the wagon, muttering, “I've seen it all.”

Down the road the children eventually fell away. The mules became more reticent and twitchy, and Tom had to keep snapping the reins and yelling. The animals were not only half deaf, or pretending it, but they worked against each other, one slowing while the other pulled, raking out sideways in the traces, nipping at each other and carrying on. The road was a slippery, potholed, muddy ribbon through the grassland, and the only time the mules hurried was at the roughest spots. They trotted smartly through holes and mud puddles and over rocks, throwing Tom and Miss King back and forth against each other like marbles in a can.

The countryside was flat and low here, surprisingly different from the hilly country around Bokchito, which probably wasn't more than thirty miles away. When Tom thought of how close they were, and that they were actually getting closer, it made him uneasy. Jake situated himself in the back of the wagon as they slipped and slid through the village, scattering dogs out of the way, and finally headed out the road toward Durant. Going through the sleepy little town, Tom caught a glimpse of only one man, leaning against the wall of Marston & Sons.

Jake was propped against the suitcases. “So you're going to Guthrie?” he shouted above the rattle.

“Yes,” she said indifferently.

“I've got a lot of calls between here and there. You'll want to be taking the first train you can get.”

“I'd like to travel with you the whole distance,” she said. “I won't get in your way.”

After a moment Jake said, “You interested in this kind of thing?

“What's that?

“Hardware business.”

“I'm interested in business, in general. Whoops.” Thrown against Tom, she pushed on his leg to right herself.

It was hard for them to talk above the noise of the wagon, even when going slowly, and Jake said nothing else. Trudging into the red sunset down an increasingly thin road, the mules made several stands at going no farther, and when Tom got off and tried to lead them, they reared their heads, snapped at him, and pulled backwards, thumping against the wagon and threatening to tear up the old harness lines, so he followed the example of the farmer and popped one of them on the nose. He was soon back on the seat, squeezed against Miss King. It was sweet torture, her thighs against his.

By dusk they had traveled all of six or seven miles. Miss King's feathered hat flew off twice, and when she gave up wearing it, strands of her hair blew in the chilly wind, tickling the side of Tom's face. In the fading light they stopped so she could get out a wrap, and Tom noticed how Jake glanced at her as she opened the suitcase.

By nightfall, the mules had gone through whatever mysterious process of mule thinking necessary to reconcile themselves to their immediate fate, and they were actually moving along at a good walking pace. They had made it through the Muddy Boggy Creek and climbed into low hills of blackjack oak and meadowland. A deer crossed in front of them, its white rosette tail floating off into the dark woods. Blackbirds fussed from nearby. The road was a dim track in places, and Tom was not always sure he was sticking to it. He might take a wrong turn at some branch and get them lost in the woods or even end up at Bokchito, a possibility he didn't relish. Being this close to the academy made him anxious in the extreme.

“Shouldn't we stop?” Miss King asked. “How can you see the road?”

Jake spoke up from the back. “Long as these mules are still walking, I figure we should take advantage of it. They'll be dying their natural deaths anytime.”

The clouds had slowly cleared and stars appeared in a thick canopy of light. Jake was dozing in the back, and it was almost as if Tom and Miss King were riding through the darkness alone.

“I'm hungry,” she said.

“I am, too,” Tom quickly agreed. The night made him feel even closer to her, but he couldn't think of how to keep the conversation going. They rode on in silence.

After another hour of bumping and rattling down the dark trail, the mules were back to their earlier tricks, and when they came upon a large abandoned house, Jake roused and said they should stop for the night. The house, built of home-fired brick, had large porches on both sides. The front door was hanging open, but the musty smells of animals and wood rot didn't invite them to go inside. They coaxed the mules into a meadow, and Tom set about tethering them while Jake and Miss King made a fire. One of the animals nipped Tom on the shoulder while he was trying to get off the harness, and he was tempted to leave them in it. By the time he had finished, the fire was going in a little culvert protected from the wind.

“Quite a house,” Miss King said.

“Old plantation place,” Jake said.

She looked off toward the dark shape against the night sky. “When I see an old house like that, I always wonder where the family is, whether they're as dead and forgotten as the house they used to live in.”

“I reckon more than one family lived there. Choctaws settled down here over fifty years ago.”

“What do you think happened to the people?”

“Price of cotton probably drove em off,” Jake said. “Them and everybody else. There were plantations all up and down here in the old days. Full-blood Choctaws riding around in fancy carriages with drivers and footmen.”

“Indians had slaves?” Miss King asked.

Jake fired up a small cigar. Tom sat back quietly listening. “Ones around here did. They were big cotton farmers. After the war, a lot of freedmen stayed in the area—freedmen and poor Indians—staking out little farms where plantations used to be. Most of em didn't make it. By the time I started covering this territory, they were starting to drift off. They grow cotton cheaper in India or someplace.” He sighed and looked out as if trying to see beyond the firelight. One of the mules brayed at the night. “Those are the oldest, ugliest animals I've ever seen this side of the rendering plant.”

“So you traveled this territory?” Miss King asked.

“I didn't travel too much down in this corner, even when it was in my territory.”

“Why?”

“Good times were gone in the cotton country. Wasn't anybody down here with any money. Nobody building. Not many blacksmiths, even. Most of the business fell into the eastern part of the Choctaw country. Now, just west and north of here you get to the Fringe. There are some customers out there, but you can't count on em staying put and staying alive.”

“What's the Fringe?”

“Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole. Crisscross of different boundaries, each one with different courts and police—lighthorse, they call em. And the white whiskey towns. You get a lot of lowlifes hidin out there where the law can't reach them. Pretty good place to get killed. Hell's Fringe, they call it.”

She looked away into the night and said quietly, “Why are you here if there's no business?”

Jake puffed vigorously on the little cigar. “You know, I shouldn't do all the talking. I still don't hardly know a thing about you.”

Jake's tone toward Miss King was even and neutral, but Tom heard something of a challenge.

She held her hands out to the fire. “What would you like to know?”

“Well . . . where are you from? Where's your family?”

“St. Louis. I don't have any remaining family.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It doesn't matter,” she said. A puzzled frown went across her face, not a conspicuous expression except for the fact that Tom hadn't seen her make it before now. They all gazed somberly into the fire a moment, before she looked back up and said, “Please call me Sam.”

“So. Do you plan to settle in Guthrie?” Jake asked. Tom was getting the impression that Jake was being cool toward her.

“I want to take a look at Guthrie. I'm thinking about starting a hotel.”

Jake showed surprise. “Buying or building?”

“I don't know yet. I'm still just thinking about it.”

“Better get flood insurance,” Jake said.

She laughed. A surge went through Tom, so powerful that he had to look off at the stars.

“Reckon it'd be kind of chancy, way things are,” Jake added.