The Whipping Boy (46 page)

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.

S
PEER
M
ORGAN
, 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.