The Whipping Boy (21 page)

Tom fell into a reverie about Samantha, but soon his mind drifted to something that had happened three or four years ago. It was during summer, when heat waves were boiling up from the ragged dirt, and he was clearing bottomland for new planting the following year, struggling along with a sulky plow through brush and debris, avoiding stumps, when he noticed one of the boys coming down from the building across the field. It was Benjamin Bunch, one of the Reverend's spies, one of the saved, a boy who had chosen total compliance. He sidled alongside Tom with an ominous look of self-satisfaction, announcing over the rattle of chains, “You're in bad trouble. Supposed to go to the office now.” As he watched Benjamin Bunch retreat across the field, it occurred to Tom that he could leave, just stop what he was doing and disappear into the woods, and maybe he could even stay alive out there, he really probably could. But he didn't do it. Instead, he unhooked the plow and rode the mule across the field, took her to the pasture, and walked dutifully, head bowed, into the office to receive his punishment for whatever transgressions he had lately performed against Reverend Schoot's rules.

That day the Reverend assigned him the punishment “reserved for the truest wickedness,” of being locked away in the windowless cellar of the old building with its baleful smells of the past, where Choctaw Confederate soldiers and children had been buried under the house, according to what the Reverend called “the superstitions of ignorant Indians.”

In the cellar you got one bucket of water and a bucket for slops. During part of the day, light would briefly enter through cracks in the floorboards, and Tom found things to do, exploring the gloomy room, making spears of old hoe handles and throwing them at targets, anything he could think of. Too quickly the feeble light would dim, and there came an endless passage of darkness during which he wasn't able to see his hand in front of his face. Fleas and spiders crawled over him, and he climbed to the top of the brick steps in an effort to get away. When he finally was let out of the basement, he'd be well covered by bites and temporarily blind, and sometimes have to go from there to the dusty, sagging “sick wing,” where boys always lay ill with slow fever or flux, tended by the saved, the good ones—the “little reverends,” as the unsaved secretly called them. In that place, your exemplary life could end in joyful death.

Tom looked at the greenish black, gummy tobacco in his hand. It was dawning on him how terrible the stuff was: of all the leaves he'd ever eaten, this was the worst. It kept him busy awhile, nearly getting sick, going back to the water closet and spitting it all out and realizing he had left the money and papers, then rushing back to his seat where the big envelope lay undisturbed.

***

For the rest of the journey he concentrated on staying awake, clamping his jaw shut, grinding his teeth, avoiding sleep at all costs. Traveling was comforting to him—the swaying of the car was soothing; it made him unreachable, safe . . .
Awake thou that sleep
. The wall of sleep pushed inexorably against him.
Love not sleep
. . . The man across the aisle continued to play cards and occasionally talk, but Tom was scarcely aware of what he said.

The station platform in Fort Smith was quiet. The night was windless, bracing, cool. Jake had suggested that he hire a ride to the boarding house, but he was glad for the chance to walk. His legs badly wanted to walk. Up the hill, the Parker jail loomed against a moonlit sky, and climbing toward it he heard the forlorn sound of someone singing in the jail.

“
Oh, I know a girl who's a gonna leave her mother
. . .”

The song soon died out. It was coming from the far side of the building. As he walked by it, Tom smelled fried pork and urine. Edgar Wyatt, the elevator man at Dekker's, had told him about the Parker jail. “Use to keep em down there in the basement like barrows in the slaughter pen—one big room, nothin there but a bucket of water and bad company. Be in that place awhile and you'd just as soon march up them thirteen steps and git it done.” The cellar jail was now vacant in favor of the new jail, a large brick addition on the building's other side consisting of one giant room with a three-story cage in it.

Going by the defunct cellar prison, he could almost see the old despair leaking up through the bars of the tiny window. Again he thought of the Reverend, and of his basement hell hole.

At the top of the hill, across the street from the jail, Tom saw flickering lights and moving shadows coming from the office of Dekker Hardware. He walked over to a corner of the open lot alongside the building. Men were in the big office, standing in a circle around one of the tables. Tom took a few steps closer to the window and saw that they were all stripped to their vests, with loosened ties, smoking, a single lantern on the table illuminating their faces. A couple of bottles sat on a small table off to the side. Mr. McMurphy, the fox-faced treasurer, wearing his usual green clerk's cap, was holding down a big unfolded paper, while Ernest Dekker, in a stiff collar and red tie, was talking, pointing his burning cigarette at places on the paper. The window was shut and Tom couldn't hear what he said. When one of the men turned and looked out the window, he slipped into the shadows and hightailed it up the street.

Within twenty minutes he had climbed up the stairs at Mrs. Peltier's and hid the packet of money and papers under the mattress in Jake's bedroom. He paced around the sitting room, thinking of the faces in the lantern light at the store, wondering why they were meeting so late at night.

He was now wide awake. He slipped into Mrs. Peltier's kitchen, took an apple from the barrel. It was a fine thing, being able to take food from the pantry at night! He decided to go for another walk, and slipped out. A little way down the street he passed an old sleepy-eyed black mule in the harness of a cane mill, still working. The furnace beneath the evaporator glowed red, and a smell of cane was in the air. The old man who was tending it went inside a shed to get another bind of cane, and the mule stood breathing a slow cloud of steam, resting from his endless circular path. Tom thought about Grant and Lee, and tears almost came to his eyes. Walking up to the mule and holding out the core of the apple, Tom was abruptly struck by the thought that he was free, and it was like a ball of energy flashing up his spine and hitting the roof of his skull. Free. It was the first time he'd felt it, alone, by itself, the pure feeling: free. The old mule lipped in the apple, and Tom backed away and hurried on to the avenue.

He felt like he could fly, racing down the wide board sidewalk. He was his own master, he could read a newspaper or a book,
any
book he could get his hands on. He could wander this town all night if he wanted to. Could drop everything and go off to find Sam. Oh, he missed her! Every time he thought about her, he knew that he had to see her again, soon.

He'd walked almost to the bridge before he knew where he wanted to visit. Edgar Wyatt's house, of course. Hack and Joel were staying there. Edgar would forgive a late night visit. And he could ask Edgar whether Mr. Dekker was back in town.

The elevator man's house was pretty far out Riverfront Street, beyond the edge of town—Joel had described it well enough that Tom was confident of finding it. A couple of the notorious row hotels on Riverfront appeared to have been flooded out. None of them seemed very busy late on Sunday night, although a woman stood in soft light in one doorway, calling out, “Hey cowboy, come talk to me.” He hurried on past, thinking yes!

He found Edgar's house on a little rise, near a grain elevator and warehouse. Behind his house were sheds and an outhouse and a tiny field of dry cornstalks. There were no lamps lit, and Tom lingered awhile outside, but then built up his courage and walked up and rapped on the door. Edgar eventually appeared with a rifle over his arm and a worried, sleepy face, pulling up suspenders with one hand.

“Tom? What you doin out this time of night? I thought you and Mistah Jake out in the territories.”

“He sent me back on the train. Are Joel and Hack here?”

“Little one's gone. They let him go a couple of days ago.”

“Let him go?”

“Fired. That's what I heard, anyway.”

“Fired Joel? Why?”

“Don't know.” Edgar lowered his voice and looked away. “Say he had whiskey on his breath.”

Tom didn't believe it.

“That's what the mens in the stockroom say. Course, you can't believe most of them. They been lying to me long as I can remember. Come on in. Too cold to stand in the door.” Tom went in and stood by the stove. The room had a cozy, sooty smell. The ceiling was low, and hooks on the wall dangled with wraps. A small bathtub stood near the stove, and a mattress lay on the floor. Edgar came up beside him at the stove. “Mr. Jake okay?”

“Y-yes.” For some reason Tom felt an unexpected chill now that he was beside the warm stove. A cold wind came up outside, fingering its way through the walls. His jaw went tense. His elation of a few moments ago had disappeared. Joel gone? Tom moved a half step closer to the stove. “Is Mr. Dekker back in town?”

“Mr. Ralph? I ain't seen him. Last week, you know, he was up on the fifth, watching out the window every day. Maybe he got tired of the scenery, decide to stay home.”

“He went to St. Louis.”

“Well, see, you one step ahead of me. I didn't even know that. They don't talk to me, Tom. I'm just back there puttin up with the mens in the stockroom. Much trouble as they give me, I oughta be paid once for my job and once for wranglin with them fools. Every new white boy think he gotta mess around with me, and every one I got to set straight. Been puttin up with that long as I been there, and it's only because I'm black, too. Got so I can smell it comin. They get to scrutinizin me . . .” Edgar sniffed and held out his big hands to the fire. “You lucky you can pass for white, I'll say that.”

“Where is Hack tonight?”

“I wouldn't know. Hack has done moved. He come around here a couple of times, but I ain't been seeing him very much.”

“Where's he staying?”

“Don't know for sure. Seemed like I heard something about the Paris Hotel. Don't you be going to that place.”

Tom hung around a few minutes longer before leaving. Mist rose up off the river as he brooded down Riverfront. Back in Jake's parlor at Mrs. Peltier's he paced quietly, looked out the window, and eventually lay down, unable to turn off his mind. Without getting on his knees, he said the prayer.

***

Monday morning, before the sun was quite up, Tom hurried to the store with the delivery envelope. One of the in-store salesmen sat behind the long front desk with a big catalogue in front of him, chewing a straw and reading a newspaper. He looked at Tom without saying hello. The room was strangely empty, with most of the displays gone or partly disassembled. In the big office, a tall bespectacled man called Loop sat working snuff in his lower lip and pounding the keys of a typing machine, as if unaware of anybody else in the room,
clap, clap, clap, ting, thwap
. Mr. McMurphy glanced up at Tom from beneath his eyeshade, held out a hand, and took the packet from him, quickly counting the money. He looked at the mortgages and began writing them into a ledger. Tom turned to leave, and McMurphy asked, without looking at him, “Where's Jake?”

“He's still in the territory.”

“Is?” McMurphy looked skeptical.

“Yes sir.”

“Wait here a minute.”

McMurphy returned with the salesman called Jack Peters, who right off asked, “Say Jake's still out?”

Tom nodded warily.

“What'd he bring in?” Peters asked.

McMurphy showed Peters the ledger. “Couple of mortgages, little over three hundred dollars.”

Peters looked at the treasurer knowingly. “Where's the boss?”

“Ain't here yet. Maybe at the bank.” McMurphy gave Tom a hooded glance. “What's your name again?”

“Tom Freshour.”

“Go to the stockroom, tell Edgar to put you to work. Mr. Dekker'll have some questions for you.”

Tom walked back through the wide, dark room and up the half-flight to the shipping floor, which was completely jammed with boxes and crates, stacked higher than he could believe. The entire room was filled with stock. The huge curtain door on the bay of the shipping floor was open, and three boxcars stood beside the platform. There was no fire in the stove, probably because of the danger of things being this close around it. Three of the stockroom men were playing cards on barrel tops, with a fourth acting as lookout. They looked up when Tom came in, and one of them muttered, “Just one of the Indin boys. Nobody folds.”

“Hey, boy. Where you been?” one of the card players asked with a sneer. He was a young, carrot-haired man named Jim.

Tom didn't answer him. During the flood he'd learned that Jim was among the stockroom men he had to ignore. He'd taunted Tom for the way he spoke. “Where'd you learn that fancy talk—they teach you that in the teepee?” he'd say.

As the elevator descended, Tom stood by waiting.

“I'm talkin to you.”

“Play cards, Jim,” another muttered.

“One of your little buddies got the boot. Little black one. Little buttercup nigger Indin. His own buddy got him fired.”

“Shut up, Jim,” said another card player.

Tom walked over and stood directly across from Jim. “Who got him fired?”

“Why, his bunkmate. The little chorus boy who hangs around the front office. They must teach you Indin boys real good.”

Tom was normally slow to anger, but he wasn't completely unschooled in fighting. What Jim said incensed him, and he pulled him up, dragging him over the bench, and when Jim tried to take a swing at him, Tom pushed him against the pillar by the elevator shaft. Jim was stunned for a second, then he got a pocketknife out and opened a six-inch blade. “Well, well. I always did want to cut me an Indin.”