The Boy Orator (3 page)

“While your sons and daughters labor in the fields, the children of the men who own you bask in the finest educational facilities this country has to offer,” Harry went on.
“You've
paid for these schools but can your family get near them?”

Farmers flocked together as Harry spoke; the men in suits had vanished. The fellows Andrew had noticed before—the unfriendly ones—stood by the platform and glowered.

The mask salesman had lost his audience. He shook his rubber headgear. “You won't even
have
any fields, don't you understand me? All will be destroyed. This wayward star is a divine plague from the Lord. Rescue yourselves!”

For a couple more minutes Harry, the salesman, the tradesmen competed—

“Two dollars a yard—”

“—angered the Lord Almighty—”

“—no farther than this town's steel vaults to discover the cause of your woes—”

“Two dollars my ass!”

—but Harry soon held sway. He paced the platform, shaking his fists. Sweat spread along his sleeves, his dark red hair sprang forth. With every other breath he swallowed a darting mosquito, but he'd learned to do this without choking or even pausing in his speech. “Gangs of parasites infest the towns of this county, and they fatten their hides at your expense, my friends, your expense! You do the work of the world yet nothing but crumbs come your way!”

Andrew stood behind his boy watching the streets. He'd taught Harry well, those days in the barn, whispering, “Louder. Okay, softer now, make them strain to hear you.” The listeners were rapt, but a bad pulse beat in this town—Andrew could feel it. He noticed keen eyes studying him like a sum, the harsh scrutiny of older, meaner men: solid citizens with much to lose and no intention of doing so. At the camp meetings, Harry spoke mostly to friends, liquored up and happy. These were impatient strangers at the end of an aching day. The event was not well-timed (he'd
told
the league!). He waited. Then it came.

“Lousy Reds,” said the man with the scars. He turned to size up the crowd. Waved his hat. “Rotten Reds!” he yelled. His voice seemed to die in the air. For a second, Harry lost the rhythm of his speech, became aware of his circumstances, conscious of his movements, and in that second he saw the mask salesman slap the Indian woman. She'd tried to lift the box, lost her grip and spilled the masks in the dust. The salesman whacked her head, stamped her feet with his boots. Harry looked away and saw in the sky a massive thunder-head, angry, cumulus plumes, yellow and green. A moment ago the land was still. Now, without warning, wind sucked dust from the road, shading the sky brick-red, ripping handbills and his very own posters from their nails, filling his nose with a dry rain-smell and stinging his skin ice-cold. The comet, he thought, it's here. He imagined bank roofs sailing off into fields, crushing empty wagons, dollars snowing into pockets, horses somersaulting over the town. He looked around. He wanted one of those masks. He wanted his birthday dinner; it might be his last.

The swift change in air pressure roused the mob even more. Men blinked grit from their eyes. Andrew felt the blood-rush rise. The scarred man hit the platform with his hat, raising a head-shaped ball of dust. “These Reds want women to vote!” he barked. “They want to give niggers your land!”

The crowd shook. Andrew, unthinking, shoved Harry aside. The boy nearly tripped off the platform. “You don't
have
any land, that's the point!” Andrew shouted. The wind seemed to flatten all sound, like a heavy iron lid clamped on the town.
“You're
the niggers here!” As soon as he said this he regretted it. Men swarmed the front of the platform. “It's the devil's work they do!” someone yelled. “Drag them down from there. This is a Christian town, with good Christian morals!”

Andrew grabbed Harry, smoothed the small, padded shoulders of his coat. “God,” he whispered—a signal for a different kind of speech. Harry lifted his right arm, magically stilling the crowd. “I pray for the Kingdom on Earth,” he said, his voice trembling with conviction. As he spoke, he kept an eye on the salesman, who was dragging the woman and the box down the street, past the bakery, the Good Luck Cafe, the Palmer Hotel. Horses reared in the stiffening breeze. “While men are underpaid, women overworked, and children underfed, the Kingdom of Heaven will never appear in Oklahoma. Socialism can remove these unhealthy conditions. Socialism can relieve you of your animal existence. Brothers, I pray we see Socialism
in our time!”

The clouds were frothing now. Harry's tie whipped his face. The listeners, stunned by this boy's endless breath, the great power rising from his belly like a pipe organ, shivered.

“Okay, that's it, let's get,” said Andrew, tugging Harry from the platform, down a gas-lighted alley smelling of orange rinds and coffee, rose perfume, piss, and the sweet cedar wood of nearby buildings. The crowd still hadn't moved. Harry choked on dust, wondered if the comet had poisoned him already. “Anadarko,” Andrew said, nearly breathless. “Fellow told me once it's Caddo for ‘People of the Bee.'” He wheezed. “Good place to get stung, all right. When we get back to the hotel, I want you to put your suit in the bag right away—”

“Aren't we staying for dinner?” Harry asked, torn between his terror of the sky and his hunger for ice cream and cobbler.

“No, I think we better get on back to your mother tonight.”

“But you promised—”

“Harry, hush up and do as I say now. We got a long ride ahead of us.” Andrew was always amazed at how quickly Harry slipped from the wise little adult who'd paced the stage into a nagging kid again. An only child, he was used to attention; Andrew was usually glad to give it—an extra helping of mashed potatoes and gravy at supper, one last game of checkers just before bed—but not when Harry acted stubborn like this against good advice. How many times had Andrew told his son, believing it, “You have to straighten up. The eyes of the world'll be on you.”

“I don't care,” Harry would reply, angling to stay up later than usual, or to wriggle out of his chores.

“You
will.
”

“Won't!” the boy used to shout—but lately, Harry hadn't protested quite so much, even when he was grumpy and exhausted, Andrew had noticed, grateful for this new sign of maturity.

A fat raindrop hit the ground like a bullet. “Hurry up, son. Maybe we can beat the storm.”

Back in their room Andrew pulled a wool sock from under the mattress, reached in and emptied the league's money. All there, still. Good. He'd settle up downstairs and they'd be on their way. Harry stuffed his coat and tie into the bag, around the smooth, hot bottle of beer.

By the time they left the lobby it was just after five. Lights were snuffing out in the stores, flaring up in noisy coffee shops and inns. The sky had a midnight pallor. “You don't suppose there's something to that comet nonsense, do you?” Andrew said.

Harry didn't hear. He was pouting. His father seemed to hate this town but he didn't see what was so bad about it. The crowd had turned a little sour but this wasn't the first time he'd faced a restless group. The women wore bright dresses and the food smelled good. Three years ago, when President Roosevelt signed Oklahoma into statehood, Andrew brought the family here for a fireworks celebration. Harry still remembered the egg-yolk bursts among the stars, the dying-flower smell of the gunpowder as it drifted past the cemetery they'd found with a marvelous view. He liked this place. He wanted sparklers for his birthday.

Andrew led him down back streets toward the smithy's barn where, this morning, they'd boarded their wagon and team. As they rounded a corner by a small barbershop they were blocked by five big men. “Oh shit,” Andrew whispered. Their arm hair, Harry saw, was as thick and matted as the sleeves of wool sweaters. They all wore overalls and veils on their heads—bandannas or soiled-looking pillowcases with needled edges. One man hid his features behind a dark green rubber mask. “Well well well,” he said, his voice as muffled and watery as a frog's.

“Wait now, gents, we don't want any trouble,” Andrew said, setting down the leather grip, raising his calloused hands.

“Then what'd you come here for, talking your devil talk, huh? Damn Reds.” The man lifted the bottom of his mask to spit. Harry saw hooked scars beneath his stubble.

“Say, boy.” A man in a pillowcase stung Harry's ear with a hard, muddy finger. His spooky eye-holes were the size of silver dollars. “You suck niggers' dicks? I'll bet you suck niggers' dicks, am I right?”

“Please. The boy doesn't know anything,” Andrew said. His voice shook. “I write his speeches. Honest. He doesn't understand a word of them. Whatever you're going to do, leave him out of it.”

A second hooded man knelt to inspect Harry's face. He smelled of onions, sweat, wet animal hair. “Your pappy doesn't think you're too smart, now does he? Are you a Red, boy? Do you know what that means?”

“Yessir.”

“Yes, you know what it means? Or yes, you are one?”

Harry steeled himself. “I believe in the noble tenets of Socialism, sir.”

Andrew shut his eyes.

“Tenets!” The man in the mask laughed with a low rumble like rolling marbles. “Well now, he sounds pretty smart to me.” He turned to Andrew. “Shaughnessy. That a mick name?”

“Sounds mick to me, Billy,” one of his buddies answered.

“Damn it, I've told you, don't identify me.” He tightened his rubber disguise. “So, not only are you Reds, you're goddam Irish Catholics. You want to take our land
and
Romanize our schools, that it? Enslave our kids to the Pope?”

“No,” Andrew said. “We want what you want. Honest, we're just like you.”

“Listen, mick, we got a nice town here. Folks work hard, go to
Protestant
churches, earn what they have. We don't need country scum coming ‘round telling us how to live. So you go on back to your nasty women and your niggers, you hear?”

“Lucky for him we're fresh out of hot tar, eh Billy?” The man cracked Andrew's nose with the flat of his palm. Andrew wobbled and fell to the ground. The group swarmed on him, kicking. Blood bloomed in a swell of dirt.

Harry hollered. He looked around for help, pounded one of the men. Someone grabbed him from behind and tossed him into a woodpile. A loose ax bit his side. Squatty logs, fat as little bulldogs, tumbled all around him. He tasted dirt and blood, the smoky tinge of oak.

T
HE NEXT THING HE
knew, rain was hammering his face and his feet were cold. He picked himself out of the rickety stack of wood, ripped his shirt on a splinter. The ax had left a big gash in his side just above his right hip. He'd landed at an angle so the wound wasn't worse. The rain pasted his hair to his face, washed blood down his thighs. Shivering, he stumbled toward his father who lay face up in a thin crater of mud. Andrew's eyes and lips were swollen, purple-green. He groaned when Harry touched his shoulder.

“I'll get a doctor,” Harry croaked. In the rain, bubbles formed on his lips. He remembered a pharmacy on Main Street. No one was around.

Andrew raised a bloody arm. “No,” he hissed. He tried to speak without moving his mouth. “Don't trust. … the bastards here. I'll be …fine, with rest. Did they take our money?”

Harry turned and found the half-open bag. He looked inside. The clothes were soaked. “I think everything's here,” he said.

“Good. Are you hurt?” Andrew tried to sit up, groaned again, sank deeper into shallow streams of muddy yellow rain.

“Not bad.”

“Thank God. If you can get me … to the hotel, check us in, same room. Rest. Rest the night…”

Twenty minutes later Harry had managed to pull his father to his feet. They traveled stiffly. In the lobby of the Palmer Hotel, Harry snapped at the startled clerk in his most effective tones, “No, we don't need a doctor. Just our room. Now!”

The clerk, a pasty man with a mole near the top of his head, persisted. “I think I should inform the manager there's a serious injury on the premises.”

“Please,” Andrew said. He dripped blood and water on the desk. “Listen to the boy. There's an extra buck in it for you. I'll be fine. You won't be liable for anything, I swear. Harry, give him the money.”

Harry opened the bag and did as he was told. As he helped his father up the stairs he glanced into the restaurant. Waiters with trays shot from the kitchen in their crisp red jackets, trailing feathers of pleasant smoke. There'd be no “blessing” tonight; no birthday, even.

The bedsprings squealed when Andrew flopped onto the sheets. Harry lit a white candle on the night table. Gingerly, he washed his father's face with a cool, wet rag. His own cut he cleaned without soap. He wrapped one of Andrew's suspenders around his waist to stop the bleeding.

Andrew motioned Harry to his side. “In the morning …you'll have to drive the wagon. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yessir.” Harry smeared tears from his eyes. He'd never seen his father so helpless. The sight of Andrew battered changed the world. The ground, the air around him, no longer seemed a sure bet.

“Son, it's important … you know why this happened.”

“I know why it happened,” Harry said. “Because we're right.”

“Yes. Those men are scared.” Andrew sighed so heavily it seemed his features would alter forever. “Make a good family, make a good life. There's no higher calling for a man—my own daddy used to tell me that. When you talk to people like you do, Harry, you're … doing that. Trying to make life good. Some people don't understand. They want to—” He rolled over in pain.

“It's all right, Dad,” Harry said, gripping his father's hand. “I know. You don't have to say any more. Rest now.”