The Boy Orator (10 page)

Their bitterness snuffed the good feelings from before. They worked glumly, dropping deeper into the hole. Harry lost track of time but the miners knew how long they'd spent even without checking their watches. Toward evening the tunnels cooled off, less a chill of the air than of the spirit. Harry couldn't shake it, even when he emerged into the heat of the shaft house and felt the setting sun on his skin.

He washed off with lye soap and a bucket of water behind the boardinghouse. His shoulder was bruised. He helped his father bathe; Andrew's leg had stiffened up on him.

They walked next door for supper. In the waning light Harry noticed shacks and tents behind the hall he hadn't seen last night. Men scrubbed coal dust from their bodies over boiling pots of water; babies grabbed at their legs, women hung clothes out to dry. A dozen men and a pregnant girl stood in line in front of an outhouse.

Inside the hall the miners were somber, whispering, heads bent. Harry heard something about a “shot in the hole” and “firedamp.” He was about to salt his eggs when the door swung open. Four men carried a stretcher into the hall. On it, a filthy young man with a bloody, bandaged leg and his arm in a cast. He was raving drunk. Dried spittle webbed the corners of his mouth. He shouted, “Boys, I'm a lucky son of a bitch!”

The miners all rose and toasted him. Andrew and Harry got the story from a fellow at the bar: an explosion in Number Four, south of here. A new kid, hired by Fawkes, had broken the rules and set up a shot while men were still in the mine. In his haste he hadn't run a gas check; the shot ignited coal dust and firedamp—a mixture of methane and oxygen—sending a wing of flame through the busiest drift. Kit, the guy on the stretcher, was knocked down and slightly burned. No one else was hurt. “Fucking miracle,” the fellow told Andrew. “I've seen a blast like that shatter heads.”

“Smelled like a field of violets,” Kit said, waving a bottle.

“That's the carbon monoxide—white damp. It's thick after a blow,” a buddy of his said. “If the impact don't kill you, the air usually will. You
are
a lucky son of a bitch.”

“Greenhorn kid,” said another man. “Where'd Fawkes find him?”

“Probably an Eye-talian.”

“Hey, watch-a you mouth!”

“What the hell does Fawkes know about shot-firing?”

“What the hell does he
care
, long's he gets his tonnage?”

“Shit, this'd never happen if they'd let us hose down the drifts so stray sparks wouldn't catch.”

Andrew interrupted them. “Have you asked—?”

The men all laughed. “Oh yeah,” said one. “It's not a ‘productive use of company funds.'”

“In other words, our lives ain't worth protecting.”

“For God's sakes, you're entitled to basic safety. If not, it's a violation—”

“Of what? Company policy?”

“State law.”

“Shit, Andrew, the company
is
the state. You know that.”

“And it can't move without you. I've told you all before, if you sit down and say we're not working till things change, they've got no choice but to listen. Roberto over there's the only one who was with me, right, Roberto?”

Kit sat up on his stretcher. “Mister, you wasn't here last year when the Wobblies come through, blabbing eight-hour workdays—”

“You don't need the IWW to—”

“We did what they said. Went out on strike. Asked for decent wages, eight-hour shifts, an age limit for working the drifts. This was before the company store was up and running.”

“I know,” Andrew said. “I
was
here.”

Kit groaned and seized his swollen knee.

“Then you remember what happened,” another man said. “Osage threatened the grocers, and good old Frank, so they wouldn't trade with us regular. That's how they got us all on company scrip in the first place. End of sit-down.”

Andrew rubbed his eyes. “All I'm saying is—”

“Fuck it. Here's to Kit!”

“Hear, hear!”

Someone blew into a harmonica with what sounded like his last good breath, and the singer, in the same red dress as before, hugged herself and hummed. A man danced up to her, whispered in her ear. “Scrip's no good,” she said. “Cash only.”

“Company
took
my cash!”

“And your passion with it, sugar.”

His mouth dropped. She put her arms around him and swayed. “That's nothing,” she said. “See what the bastards've done to me? Since Billy died in the Number Three I've …well, I've
got
to have cash. I have two little girls to raise.”

The man lowered his head on her shoulder and they danced.

Harry watched them instead of his plate. He was sick of eggs. He could still taste the musty air of the mine; he couldn't swallow enough water to quell the dust-itch in his throat.

Dugan appeared in the doorway in a pressed green suit. Same bowler hat he'd worn last night. “Anderson!” he yelled.

Kit looked up from his stretcher, on the floor by the bar. “Yo!”

People stopped talking. Someone dropped a bottle. It rolled several feet across the grainy wooden floor, a lonely, imperfect sound from a flaw in the glass. Everyone, including Dugan, Harry saw, pretended not to hear it. To acknowledge it, he realized, would be to snap a delicate understanding between management and labor—words he'd learned studying the speeches of Oscar Ameringer.

“Collect your pay in the morning and go,” Dugan ordered.

“Why?” Kit said.

“The company can't afford incompetence.” He stressed the word “company” the way some preachers said “God” as if it were the only sound in the language. Harry, still thinking of Ameringer, heard other words in it:
companions
working for a
common
good. That wasn't what he'd seen today in the mine.

“Damn right! So fire that kid Fawkes brought in,” Kit said. “He's the one who—”

“Ewing's fine. Fawkes has confidence in him.”

“Fawkes doesn't know his ass from a wet powder charge.”

“You shouldn't have been down there.”

“The hole boss said our shift wasn't over!”

“It's over now, boy. Your check'll be waiting—four weeks' worth minus eighteen bucks for the equipment you lost.”

“
I
lost?” The shock on Kit's face shook Harry; his throat tightened and he started to cough. Like the soiled men around him, he was full of the earth.

The singer said to Dugan, “I'll bet it excites you so much to kick a man, you don't have nothing left for a woman.”

“Shut up, Sherrie,” Dugan said. “What's a whore know about the drifts?” He looked angry enough to hit her. Andrew waved his cane to get his attention. “Mr. Dugan, your safety codes—”

“Shaughnessy, we had this talk last night, didn't we? I thought we'd reached an agreement.”

Andrew stood there, silenced by the man's pointing finger. Harry coughed again; his chest heaved. Everyone turned to see if he was all right. Adrenaline shot through his body. His instinct, honed by years of practice, was to hold the attention he'd grabbed, to cast a net of words across the crowd. It was a feeling akin to the danger and excitement he'd experienced in the mine. He swallowed his cough. “Sir, you say this man's shift was done.” He walked over and placed his hand like a blessing on Kit's tousled hair. His father had always taught him the value of “specific examples to make a point—use people from the crowd if you can.” “Yet your company has failed to define shifts, legally speaking. Last year the workers asked for an eight-hour day. They were denied.”

“Shaughnessy, is this your kid?” Dugan said, tapping his foot. “You tell him to can it.”

Andrew didn't move.

“Therefore, this man cannot be held responsible for any infraction. He was simply doing his job,” Harry said. “Your contention that his shift was up, when in fact shifts
do not officially exist
, would be laughed out of every court in this state.”

“That's right!” Kit said. “Hell yes!”

“The way to prevent future misunderstandings, of course, is to set a daily work limit. Say, eight hours?”

The miners erupted in laughter and shouts. “Go get him!” someone said. His father's smile encouraged him. He felt again an intense physical intimacy with the men around him—a far cry from the embarrassment he'd known with Zeke Cash and his friends in the hills, from the humiliation that surrounded him at school, from the shame he felt at home whenever he let his mother down. He felt right, and in control—speaking, he could shape the world
his
way. “I was in the hole today,” Harry said, raising his voice. “I saw, myself, the dangerous and unsanitary conditions.” The words flooded past the tickle in his throat. “To be blunt, Mr. Dugan, I witnessed a shameless operation. A farmer treats his mules better than Osage handles its men.” He squeezed Kit's shoulder. “I think the local newspapers would be very interested in that fact.”

Dugan shook his hat in Harry's face. “I better not hear any more talk like this,” he said. He looked around the room. “Nor any union talk, either! As for you, little man …I've seen you before …”

“In the papers,” Harry said. “They dote on me.” This wasn't true, but it had the intended effect. Dugan's knuckles turned white around the brim of his hat. He glared at Harry but didn't say another word. When he left, the miners cheered. Sherrie put her arm on Harry's shoulder. “You
are
old enough,” she said. “For anything you want.
Twice
the man these others are.” She kissed his cheek. “Don't weaken.”

Roberto and the other Italians doused him with beer. They stood in a line and saluted him. “A song!” Roberto said. “We'll sing you a song. What would you like?”

Harry glanced at his father, who smiled and shrugged.

“A love melody?” Roberto teased. “An Irish lullaby?”

“How about ‘Happy Birthday'?” Harry said. Weeks had passed without a proper celebration; Andrew's wounds had demanded the family's full attention. He glanced at his father again. Andrew's head was bowed.

“Is this your birthday?” Roberto asked.

“No,” Harry admitted.

“A
real
song, then!” Roberto led his friends in an up-tempo drinking number. The Italians whirled Harry around the room. He remembered his father telling him one night, not long ago, that “character” always mattered more than a fellow's background or age.

Later in the boardinghouse he couldn't sleep. He felt he'd just run a race. His heart rushed; he shook with pride. He'd delivered these men from their worries, at least for tonight, and he'd done it with no set speeches, no memorized lines, just his breath and his mind and the need of the moment. The faces of the miners! The fear and the hope! The thrill of
seizing
the room! Now he knew more than ever what his words, words with the force of a freight train, meant.

“I'm glad you came,” Andrew said, propping his cane against the wall. All day Harry had been aware that his father didn't actually need him here. The young miners who'd gone with them into the hole could easily have managed Harry's tasks. Warren Stargell or one of Andrew's other friends could have driven the wagon for him.

His gift to me, Harry thought, is the world around us.

“Me too,” he said. In the field behind the dining hall the married miners stoked fires beneath small pots, bathed their kids with rough cloth rags. Their wives' dresses were faded and torn at the seams. The pregnant girl he'd seen earlier stood in line again in front of the outhouse, behind nine or ten dirty men. She cupped her belly with her arms, bit her lip. As he watched through the window, Harry felt his stomach drop. He hadn't delivered these people from anything. He sagged against the wall. Even if the company agreed to an eight-hour shift, this girl would still be pregnant, still be waiting in line. She'd probably end up like Sherrie, in a bar, he thought.

Songs and beer could give a single man a kind of courage, but parents didn't have any choice. They had to feed their kids. How could you ask them to join a union? Telling them to sacrifice their pay and defy the company, even for a day or a week, was like telling them to kill their babies.

This thought kept him tossing all night. He heard his father snore. To his left a man trembled with fever. Another was sick in the corner—too much whiskey. The building creaked in a chilly wind, like a battered old barge in a river-gale.

He'd just begun to doze when a hot light scared him awake. Someone had shoved a lantern at his face. A boot poked his ribs. “Get up, damn it!”

“Who—? What time is it?” Andrew mumbled.

“Never mind,” Dugan said. “Just get your ass up.”

Andrew couldn't find his cane in the blinding spot of light. The rest of the room was dark. Men groaned awake, then hushed when they saw what was happening. Harry helped his father stand.

“I'm Lester Fawkes. I hear you caused quite a stir this evening,” said a man next to Dugan. He wore a heavy gray coat and a tie. His mouth was lost inside a bristling white mustache.

“No, Lester, this one,” Dugan said. He jabbed Harry's chest. “He's the one who made the speech.”

“Him? He's just a kid.”

Dugan fished inside his coat for a torn piece of paper. When he unfolded it Harry saw his own round face. “I was there in Anadarko that day,” Dugan said. “I knew I'd seen you somewhere before. It finally struck me. He was soapboxing, Lester, cursing the mines—”

Harry shook his head. “That's a bald lie,” he said. “I had an audience of farmers. No respectable speaker would talk mines to a bunch of farmers.”

Fawkes chuckled, raised the lantern in a swelter of moths. Harry heard whispers all around him in the dark. “Hell, Dugan, I'm not afraid of kids. Are you afraid of kids?”