The Whipping Boy Read Free Page B

The stores were tighter than he’d ever seen them. Business was in hibernation. The store owners were operating on bank debt and faith that the Panic would end.
    And why had Ernest taken over the meeting?
    MacGinnis came back in the office pushing three rangy-looking half-breeds. They were shivery and green around the gills. MacGinnis looked like he’d seen a ghost. “The man they’re hanging over there ain’t dead yet!” he said breathlessly. “He’s been alive since twelve noon. Goddamnit, he’s up there walkin, like . . . like he can’t get up a flight of stairs!”
    â€œMaybe he’s going the wrong way,” Ernest said. “He ought to turn around and try the other direction. Where’d you find these boys?”
    â€œThey’re from the Choctaw orphanage near Durant. Principal’s out there waiting to talk to you.”
    â€œAre you young men Christians?” Ernest asked.
    â€œYes sir,” two of them barked, skinny boys blinking their eyes and squinting through the gloom, as if they had no idea where they were. The third, who was taller and stouter, a well-featured young man, said nothing at all. He looked around the room with what appeared to be defiant silence.
    The boys stood dripping before the scowling, chewing, tense salesmen.
    â€œChoctaws, huh?” said Ernest Dekker. “Good. You can generally trust them for courier work better’n white boys.”
    Peters wheezed a little laugh, and an awkward silence followed.
    â€œWe use couriers in town,” Ernest said. “Now I want some of you men—the ones with the most money to collect—to have your own personal couriers. We can’t count on the express or the post offices in the Nations. I want you men out there working the customers, and I want these couriers to make continuous delivery of everything over a hundred dollars. We have to show the bank, every day, that we’re on the right track.”
    Marvin bobbed his head down and spat.
    Then Jake cleared his throat and spoke. Unconsciously, he turned to the old man. “Our customers are behind, but there aren’t many holding out on us. About the only kind of paper anybody’s got right now are customer IOUs and mortgages. We start hittin em hard now and we’ll have a lot of closings.”
    Ernest flourished his cigarette. “You men have been complaining so long that you sound like a flock of old soldiers at the courthouse. You ain’t collecting debts because you’ve gotten lazy. You’re so spoiled by the boom that you don’t know how to take a little slowdown. Mr. Dekker, sitting before you now, sold hardware off the back of a buggy when the only other white peddlers on the road were the kind with kegs in their wagons. He was out there with a buggy full of pots and pans, and not just sellin, he was collecting his debts.”
    The old man looked uneasy at being the object of Ernest’s oration, but still he said nothing. Jake wished he’d at least speak. Had the bank knocked the wind out of him?
    â€œYou, Jaycox. Eighteen months ago you were probably moving stock by the carload down in the Choctaw Nation—”
    â€œI haven’t traveled the south route for seven years—”
    â€œYou’re used to fat times, that’s the plain fact! This is your first taste of hardscrabblin, gentlemen, and I don’t know whether you’re real salesmen or not. We’ll just have to see.”
    Jake wanted to reply that he was a “real salesman” when Ernest Dekker was still wearing knee britches, and furthermore, Ernest had never been any kind of salesman, so how’d he get to be such an expert? But Mr. Dekker Senior was looking at him with an expression that suggested he stay quiet.
    ***
    On the night train headed over the Kiamichi Mountains, Jake was in a dark mood. His newly hired “courier” sat beside him. After the meeting, Ernest