The Whipping Boy (18 page)

She lifted up his hat like the lid of a can. He only gave her the evil eye. He was too frazzled to keep up this conversation.

“You provide the know-how and I provide the capital.”

Jake slid back up in the seat.

“I'm serious as sin.”

“Okay, Sam. I'll take you seriously, but you answer me a question first.”

“Ask it.”

“If you've got a stake, what in the world brought you out here to invest it?”

“Because it's a place where the doors are still open. It isn't all sewed up. Even a woman can make money if she can find out how things work.”

Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out the piece of paper that he'd found in her suitcase. “Is that what this is—people who know how things work?”

She didn't reach for it. “You've been in my suitcase?”

“I opened it in Tuskahoma to see if it was yours.” She was smiling, which annoyed him. “So you came down here to round up a few people, find out how things work, and then just go after it?”

She raised her eyebrows. “How should I do it, Jake?”

“‘How things work,' as you call it, isn't worth knowing. It's changing too fast. Sam, did you ever make money yourself?”

“Not a lot. My family did. It's in the blood.”

“I don't doubt that,” Jake said. “I do appreciate the offer, but I can't take it. Ralph has asked me to stay on.”

“But he's not running the place anymore.”

When he didn't respond, she went on, mildly, “You trust your old boss, don't you?”

“Why are you always asking me about the people I work for?” Jake didn't hide his irritation.

She turned away from him. “I guess you don't take propositions from women.”

He felt a flash of anger, but then for some reason he relented and laughed. “Look. Ralph is hoping to pay back the debt on the store and take over again.” He didn't add that Mr. Dekker had offered him the position of boss.

“How'll he do that?”

“Borrow some money, I guess. He's already gone to St. Louis to do it.”

She looked out the window. The train was slowing. “So you feel bound to Mr. Dekker?”

“I reckon so.”

“Why?”

“Ralph and I always got along.”

“Do you know him very well?” she asked.

“Well enough.” Jake wanted this conversation to end. “Anyway, I'm obliged to wait and see.” He scooted back down again.

“So you're getting rid of me,” she said.

“I'm not getting rid of anybody,” Jake said. “I think we'd better stick together tonight. But you ought not hang around Guthrie. Deacon Miller is a bad son of a bitch, if you'll excuse the language, and now he's a mad son of a bitch because I killed his horse. He gets his job done however he can.”

As if thinking aloud she said, “I do have to go to St. Louis. Maybe I'll go back to Fort Smith in a week or two and make you one more offer.”

He opened one eye. “You do that.”

“Boy, you take the cake. You are cold to the touch, mister.”

He pretended to nap, but actually Jake couldn't anywhere near sleep. His nerves felt like they'd been sandpapered. He'd have given a dollar for a jigger of whiskey. Deacon Jim Miller. He couldn't stop wondering why somebody like that was after him.

When they pulled into Guthrie, he still hadn't napped and was in a tired, foul mood. He woke Tom up to help him get out the team.

The mules, having apparently not ridden on a train since the Battle of Chickamauga, had decided that the world was too jiggly and nervous a place, and neither of them would move off the stock car. After they'd at last been pushed down the ramp, they planted themselves, as fixed and firm as marble statues. Tom yelled Indian at them and that didn't work, Jake pushed them and cussed and popped them on the nose, all with the same lack of results. Tom went looking for some coffee and couldn't find any at this hour, and finally Jake, thinking that he should have sent these two worthless relics to mule hell where they belonged, pushed Lee half a block before he got the idea and started walking. Grant, with Tom's help, eventually did likewise.

Samantha stood around watching all these activities with little interest, brooding, apparently put out with Jake. After getting everything squared away at the stable, they went looking for a place to stay.

T
OM HAD BEEN SO
asleep on the train that what had happened only that day felt as if it happened a month ago. He had fallen off the edge of the earth into a sounder sleep than he had ever known in his life—sleeping and speeding away from what was, what used to be.

As they walked through Guthrie looking for a hotel, Tom watched Sam, wondering how long she would stay with them. She was supposed to leave them now, but Tom kept thinking that somehow that was impossible.

They ended up in a room on the second floor of the Christian Boarding Hotel, a quiet place on a hill at some distance from downtown.

 

WE RENT TO ALL OF GOD'S CHILDREN

AS LONG AS THEY PAY IN ADVANCE
.

 

The clerk, a prissy man, acted worried about giving them a room. He kept asking questions, until Jake, tired and frazzled, demanded the key and turned heel and climbed the stairs, leaving Sam and Tom standing there. “So is it Mr. and Mrs.?” the clerk asked for the second time, glancing after Jake. Sam gave him a big smile and said, “Why yes, and this is our dear son.” She wrapped an arm around Tom's shoulder. “Isn't he a handsome boy?” she said. Tom felt his face go hot.

The clerk's smile was as thin as a clothesline. “Oh, then he must be your
stepson?
”

“Oh, by no means,” Sam said, almost maliciously. “This is our own
dear
boy.”

Going up the stairs, Sam gave Tom a look, as if to say that it was their joke. After they'd all settled into the room, Jake stood at the window looking into the dark street. “I don't know if our friend Miller made it to Guthrie or not, but I think we ought to keep a watch. Are you good and awake?” he asked Tom.

“Yes sir,” said Tom. “I slept on the train.”

“Okay. Let me have a couple of hours, and I'll watch the rest of the night.” Jake pulled off his boots, lay down on the bed, and was asleep before he could pull a blanket over himself.

Sam poured water from the pitcher into the washpan and quickly bathed her hands, arms, and face. To Tom's amazement, she then came right up to him, took off his shirt, and with a wet towel bathed his hands, his arms, and his face. Her left hand took his arm, then held his chin, while she washed him. Her face seemed to glow, so close to him in the lantern light.

The room was eerily peaceful. They kept silent because of Jake, who had turned his back to them and was snoring lightly. After she'd finished washing Tom, they just sat for a while, she in a rocking chair and he on the floor beside a steam radiator with his shirt still off. She'd loosed the top buttons of her dress in the warm room and taken off her shoes, and her eyes were playing over his shoulders and neck. Their eyes met. Sam scared him in a way, with her shocking decisiveness.

The room was luxuriant with steam heat, reminding him of the bathhouse in Durant. Sam glanced over at Jake and got up and paced across the room as if to test his wakefulness. She quietly left the room, and Tom remained where he was. After a few minutes, she returned, went to the window and looked out, then gestured to him to come with her. He followed her through an unlocked door into a room similar to theirs, with one bed and no light. Not knowing whether Miller was out there, Tom felt like they shouldn't leave Jake asleep and unguarded, and after she sat down on the edge of the bed in front of him, he was still thinking about returning to the other room. But then she took hold of the back of his left thigh. He reached over and touched her cheek and she pulled him unceremoniously onto the bed. Soon his pants were off, and she moved about taking off things, achieving successive incarnations of nakedness in the dark.

He continued to worry about leaving Jake, even when he was sitting on his knees in the bed and she was lying beside him, propped on her elbow, and her hands moved lazily over his thighs to his hard penis. He touched her breasts, even the nipples, which felt marvelous and soft and tight.

“Don't you know what to do?”

“Sure.”

But he was bluffing, and she laughed. “What does this feel like?”

“Extremely good,” he admitted.

“Stand up on your knees.” He straightened up, causing his penis to stand out more prominently. “I like this,” she said. “Mmm. I like it so much I think I'd like to eat it.”

He was closing his eyes, although the room was so dark it didn't make any difference. “Eat it . . . ?” His voice fell away. She took her hand away and left him kneeling there with an achingly hard dick reaching for the heavens. “Don't.”

“I can't eat it?” she said.

“Well . . . that doesn't sound practical . . .”

She laughed and took her hand away. “Then you tell me what to do. Here I am. I'm lying here on this bed beside you. Naked as the moon. What will you do with me?” She reached out and briefly touched it again.

“I think I know,” he said.

“I'm waiting. You tell me.”

“All right.” But he couldn't think what to say next.

“You want to do it? From the back?”

“Yes ma'am,” he said huskily.

“You sure you know where to put that hard thing?” she teased him.

“I think so.”

“Let me get you off one time first. Otherwise you won't be much good for me.”

“Okay,” he said uncertainly.

To his surprise, he felt not her hands on his penis but something soft and round and wet, coming over the rim of it and sliding down, and it was a long couple of seconds before he realized that the thing around him was her mouth and she was doing what she'd said—or she was about to do it, and he dreaded her biting down on him but couldn't quite make up his mind to push her away. In fact she did bite down gently with her teeth, but he was by then launched beyond the rational, floating somewhere where having his penis chewed on was not so impossible a thing. She was standing up on her hands in the bed, with her mouth traveling slowly down the shaft of it, her hair against his belly, and he wouldn't have thought of pushing her away.

Tom heard a noise in the hall, steps approaching the door. To his horror, there was a fumbling at the door and it immediately opened, and there stood two men with a lantern. All he could think to do was jump from the bed and grab his pants and try to put them on, while the men stood there looking amazed.

Sam was the first to speak. “Get out of our room!”

The clerk's eyes were white orbs in the lantern light. “Oh, my
Lord!
” he said.

“Whooee,” said the customer, looking at Sam.

Sam tried to get them to leave, but the clerk became dogged in his insistence on fully finding out what was going on. He went down to their other room and noisily opened the door without knocking, startling awake Jake, who took up the pistol and almost shot him.

“I have lived to see it all!” the clerk exclaimed, oblivious of the pistol.

The conversation that followed was so embarrassing that Tom's ears turned off. All he heard was the nasal tone of the clerk, insisting on telling Jake details that Jake didn't want to hear, once he'd gotten the general idea. Others in the boarding house came out of their rooms to see what was going on. Tom just sat there, his conscience secreting shame, although even from the depths of his humiliation, he could see how annoying this man was. Sam offered to end it by paying for the other room, but the clerk wouldn't talk to her at all, and Jake concluded the matter by telling the man to please get out of the room, they'd solve it tomorrow. Finally the three of them were again alone, Tom with only his pants on, she with her clothes askew and her hair streaming down.

Jake didn't look happy. “What time is it? Oh, the heck with it, I'll be staying up the rest of the night. Tom, you can sleep on the floor. Sam, you sleep on the bed if you want to.” He gave them both a dark look, as if he were about to say something. But then he just shook his head and added quietly, “Tomorrow, we'll have to be going about our business.”

***

Sam was gone early the next morning.

Jake said nothing else to Tom about the incident, that night or on Sunday, and the very lack of a rebuke made Tom feel worse. He appreciated Jake not saying anything about it, yet at the same time almost wished that he
would
say something. He was painfully ashamed. He had betrayed Jake by leaving the hotel room unguarded. He slept only briefly the rest of the night, and all the next day he would be slowly realizing—not thinking in words but nevertheless realizing—that he could no longer afford to be so careless and ignorant of the world. He had to navigate better. He had to make himself more aware, gain better control of his own behavior. Life was different now, time itself had become different, rolling along more quickly beneath his feet, and he had to catch up and stay up. That was all there was to it. Without a word from Jake, he understood these things.

Waking to Sam's absence, though, was like waking from a turbulent, marvelous dream. He longed for her immediately. Jake and he went down to the dining room for breakfast, where a couple with a child, seeing them, furiously whispered to each other and left the room. Sitting at the table, Tom screwed up his courage to ask about Sam. Jake said that she'd apparently gone back to St. Louis. “She didn't say goodbye to me,” he said flatly. “Tom, I don't know whether our friend the Deacon is going to show up in Guthrie or not, but when we go out there today, I want you to keep your eye out. If you see him, get out of the way fast. Understand me?”

“Yes sir.”