The Whipping Boy (33 page)

“who's Crilley?”

“Have no idea.” Quickly, Hack raised the pistol at the cockroach. “
Pchou!
”

“Did Deacon Miller teach you how to shoot?”

“Taught me what I need to know,” Hack said cryptically. He suddenly looked glum. “What do you know about the Deacon?” “I know he tried to kill Jake.”

“I warned you about Jake. He's out.”

“Did Miller teach you how to kill people?”

Hack peered at him through the gloom, head back, eyelids partly closed. “So you won't go with me? Are you yellow?” He slowly raised the gun and aimed it at him. “
Pchou!
”

He was trying to make Tom mad, trying to stir him up, but Tom wasn't going to play his game. “You could get yourself killed, Hack. The Reverend sleeps lightly. He keeps a gun by his bedside. You remember him hunting birds during picking.” His own memory was vivid: at harvest time, the Reverend in the popcorn field making quick, twisting shots with his double-barrel shotgun, dragging two doves at once out of the sky, so close together that they hit the ground almost at the same moment. Every bird season he liked to show off to the boys that way.

Hack sat there fiddling with the gun, looking at him with the ringed, sleepy eyes. Tom was beginning to wonder whether he should even remain here with him. He got the feeling that Hack was trying to get used to handling the gun, but also Tom felt that he was part of what Hack had on his mind—the gun and him together. He didn't understand the looks Hack was giving him.

“I feel wild sometimes at night,” Hack said suddenly. He twirled the pistol's cylinder and snapped it shut. “Hey, listen to me. My blood is boilin.”

Tom looked away, uneasy.

“Girls!” Hack said sarcastically, taking off his shirt. He had already taken off his pants. “They're good for making money. That's all. Girls,
pfft
. The Deacon doesn't waste his time with girls.”

“Does Deacon Miller work for that hotel where you're staying?”

“Sometimes.”

“Does he work for the store?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“You're asking me to help you kill somebody. Come on. Talk to me.”

“Why are you askin about the Deacon?” Hack looked at him intently, his face trembling with a ferment of emotions—shame, fear, pride, anger, bitterness, everything bubbling up at once. “The Deacon belongs to no one. He
takes
what he wants! It's that simple. He has
power
, man!” Hack picked the gun up again and held it out. “Here! You want to know what power is? Let me show you something. Take it. Go on. Take it!”

Tom looked at the gun a moment and finally took it.

“Aim it at me. Aim it at my heart.”

Tom hesitated.

“Go on,” Hack said sharply, eyes flashing. “Aim it at me!”

Tom aimed hesitantly, from the waist.

“Now feel it in your hands. It's loaded. Feel the trigger with your finger. Feel the handle underneath your palm. You can snuff me out for good, Tom, it's up to you. That's God. Not some man walking around in a dress two thousand years ago.”

Tom lowered the gun. “Did Miller teach you that?”

Tom could see that his refusal to act impressed bothered Hack. He looked wounded. They talked more, Hack assertive but unconvincing. Their conversation kept ending in bruised perplexity.

When they were readying to go to sleep, Hack started acting agitated again. He had taken off everything but his undershirt. He turned down the wick and got into bed, and immediately rolled over and said, “You know, there's a way to get satisfaction without girls. I can show you.”

At Bokchito some of the older boys did things to each other at night, but as far as Tom knew, Hack hadn't been among them. “No,” Tom said quietly. “I'm going to sleep.”

Hack started trying to tickle him and play with his chest. Tom didn't like this at all and pushed him away. “You're acting crazy.” Hack jerked up from the bed, snatched the gun from the table, and lay down on his back on top of the blanket. Tom watched as he licked its barrel, slowly, all around. Tom almost laughed, but Hack put the barrel into his mouth, just the tip at first, and to Tom's amazement, he cocked the pistol and plunged it clear into his throat. Hack's penis had risen up tight across his belly.

Tom was frozen.

Hack took the gun out. “I can show you something.” He was like a coiled spring. “Look. Hey, you know how that
sinti
used to beat us? He did it because he liked the way it made him feel. Just to get hot. You want to see? It's better if you take your clothes off. Hurry.” He waved the gun threateningly toward Tom, eyes dancing crazily. He took the belt from his own pants. “Take em off. Go on!”

Tom was really afraid now, but he knew that he'd better not act that way.

“Come on, man,” Hack taunted. “I'll shoot you.”

“What is all this with the gun?”

Hack again looked vulnerable and afraid. “Come on,” he pleaded, and held out the belt to Tom.

Tom, sitting on the edge of the bed, took it. “What do you want?”

“You do it to me,” he said. “You'll see. You don't have to take off your clothes if you don't want to.” Hack got down on his knees by the bed and took off his undershirt and, now stark naked, knelt there in the light of the lantern, still with an erection so tight that Tom could almost feel it himself. Across his scarred back were fresh red and purple stripes. Somebody had beaten him recently.

In the lantern light in the dank little room, looking into Hack's upturned, beseeching eyes, Tom understood something now: Hack wanted to turn white into black, east into west, pain into pleasure, men into women; he wanted to escape his past by returning to it with a vengeance. Tom dropped the belt onto the floor in front of him. “I just want to know what happened to Joel.”

Hack smiled with the bitter twist at the edge of his mouth. “Will you go with me to Bokchito if I tell you?”

Tom leaned forward and put his face close to his old friend's and said quietly, “We're different now, Hack.”

“I'm going back to Bokchito,
Chalak
, that's how we're different. You can go with me or not.”

“Is Joel dead?”

Hack's new, worldly smartness leaked out of his expression. He looked away. Eventually he sat down on his haunches and crossed his hands over his nakedness. A train was coming into town from the south, and as it went by they didn't talk. When the clattering and squealing brakes had subsided into silence, Hack said, “He gave out information. Somebody got him to talk, maybe the same person who killed old man Dekker. Somebody killed the old man and stole something from him, some paper, money, I don't know. Now they're tearing up the damn store looking for whatever was stolen. They started Thursday night turning it upside down.” “What do you mean, Joel gave out information?”

“A courier can't give out information, man. He broke the rule. He knew what he was doing. These men don't play around. What they're doing is a lot bigger than a barrel of nails and a roll of barbed wire, man. A lot bigger. They're going to own half of the Indian Territory.”

“Did they kill Joel, that's what I'm asking you.”

“It was none of my business, man. I don't know.”

“Did Deacon Miller do it?”

“Look, I'm his boy. I belong to him. I'm learning from him. I'm learning what I have to. You better learn something, too. Because you didn't learn
nothin
from Reverend Schoot,” he added vehemently. “Nothin! How to eat
pig
food. Sit on your butt all day reading Latin verbs. Latin! How to be some kind of useless, fake white man, which is worse than a nigger. Take that to the bank and see what you get for it.”

With black anger in his heart, Tom rose, went over to the window, and stared into the night. “Joel only used to be a friend of yours. Is that it?”

When he turned back, Hack was standing up, putting his pants back on. “You think you're so righteous. Well, you're dead if you go back to Fort Smith. You were dumb enough to have that telegram in your pocket at the hotel. They took it to the Deacon. I was there when they gave it to him.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Your salesman friend is
out
, man, he's gone, he's scheming against the boss. And since you had that telegram in your pocket, so are you. You can't go back.”

“So they're going to do him like they did Joel?”

Hack looked weary, but he opened his eyes wide at Tom, flashing anger. “Joel was weak! He was dead anyway. He was already crazy. He was shaking all the time, he was having bad dreams, he was seeing things. He talked all the time about Bokchito. Man, he was dead!”

“Who'd he give information to?”

“Whatever happened, he did it to
himself
. I've had enough of this.”

They had little else to say to each other. Hack sank onto the bed and curled into a ball. After a while Tom, completely exhausted, lay down beside him, back turned, and silently said the Lord's Prayer over and over, waiting for sleep to come.

T
ULSA HADN'T BEEN
quite as bad as Leonard feared. During the night, they heard only a few shots, at some distance from the hotel, although the sound of bawling cattle was loud from every direction. Large herds had been driven to all nearby railheads to clear out the Outlet before the land run, so the town was temporarily bustling. Exhausted from his lack of sleep the previous night and from driving all day Friday, Jake did sleep that night. It was Leonard's turn to suffer. At breakfast he looked pallid.

“I'm not long for this world, my friend.”

“Life of sin, Leonard.”

“And I suppose you're going to finish me off by driving the way you did yesterday.”

“Have some breakfast. You'll feel better.”

Leonard surveyed the ham, potatoes, bread, eggs, and pumpkin pie before him. “A good solid shot of brown whiskey is my only hope.”

Jake changed the subject. “I wonder if they've got rock oil around here. This is one of the places on the map that Ernest wanted us to get mortgages signed.”

“I'm sure we can find out if we stop at a friendly saloon,” Leonard said hopefully.

The boy who was waiting their table came around to pick up dishes, and Jake asked him, “Could you give me about a quart of coffee, please—in two bowls. I'll bring em back.”

It was Saturday, and when they went to the stable their wagon and team were standing outside the yard, lined up with four or five others, ready to go. That was a good sign. Market day was already heating up, the air all dust and excitement. The stableman had cleared out last night's wagons and was using the yard for a temporary cattle-holding pen. Jake gave Grant and Lee the coffee, which they sucked up with gusto. Jake had gotten so he kind of liked these old worthless mules.

A half-dozen cowboys who'd received their wages for the week were racing up and down popping off six-guns, scattering a group of Indian girls, in town from one of the schools. Cattle were putting up a racket. Along the street, men leaned against posts, hats down over their eyes, talking livestock. A lot of “lost” cattle from Indian operations were shipped out of Tulsa. Tulsa was in the Creek Nation, but in fact the local whites controlled the town, and it was generally known that a number of them were rustlers and thieves who avoided prosecution by stealing only from Indians. This was Dandy Pruitt's territory, and Jake had heard many a tale from him.

The mules were unperturbed by the noise and bustle. Picking their way through town, Jake and Leonard passed a hunter peddling game off his wagon: turkeys, quail, rabbits, and small deer carcasses hung on a line. Some beautifully dressed buckskin suits of the type made by Creek Indians lay across the boards he'd propped up for his table. The hunter's name was McCann, and Jake had seen him all around the eastern part of the Nation for these many years. He pulled up. “How do, Mr. McCann.”

McCann smiled through sooty teeth and nodded. He had a sinewy, dark, clean-shaven face.

“Been doin okay?” Jake asked.

McCann shook his head. “Game's done fell off, what with so many folks scratchin around. Got the place about cleaned out. I been doin a little wolfing up here for the ranchers. Keeps me busy.” “What are they offering for wolf pelts now?”

“Like I say, that's one thing that's holdin up. They're running so many cattle these days, makes it damn easy on the old wolves. Smack Henderson over to Bar BQ's lost a dozen calves. He's offerin twenty dollar for a full-grown loafer caught on his place. Seven-Up's offerin about eighteen.”

“That is good money,” Jake said.

“How's the hardware trade?”

“Like everything else.” Jake felt a twinge in his stomach at the mention of it. “You still selling game to the big cities?”

“Not here lately. Old boy that was shipping it said they quit eatin deer in New York City. Said it wasn't in fashion no more, whatever that means.”

“He was buyin things besides deer, wasn't he?”

“Yeah, but he was only givin me fifteen cent for prairie chicken, a dollar fifty for a brace of quail. I had to be selling him deer for it to be worth my while.”

“Maybe deer'll come back in fashion,” Jake said with a grin.

McCann shook his head. “Won't be enough of em left, time that happens. With so many white settlers moving in here, they're killin em back. It's got so I'm lucky to put up one deer. Time was, I'd put up half a dozen in a slack day. Take me a line of mules into the Winding Stair and make em earn their oats comin down. Them days is done, and I ain't young enough to learn a new trade, unless it be somethin like working in the slaughter pen. I don't relish that.” He smiled wanly, as if he was embarrassed at talking about his troubles.