The Boy Orator (32 page)

He was locked away in the West Virginia state pen, and later in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

Kate O'Hare was incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, where she befriended the anarchist Emma Goldman. Goldman said O'Hare had been imprisoned for trying to feed her fellow citizens, the way a child throws bread to needy birds.

One day, O'Hare refused her weekly bath; the woman who'd preceded her into the communal tub suffered open syphilitic sores. O'Hare demanded a sanitary cell block, better care. Her fellow prisoners began to rely on her for reforms; soon, she was beloved even by the prison guards.

Harry kept a newspaper picture of her and Oscar Ameringer tacked to an oak pole near a woodstove in the back of his father's store, when he came to work at the Emporium after the war. Andrew put him in charge of the outdoor equipment: fishing poles, catfish bait, waders, and lanterns. He watched over each of these items as though it were a bar of gold. Occasionally, he gave a kid lemonade from Avram's old cooler.

Sometimes an Indian couple would pass on the street in front of the clear, sturdy windows; copper-colored kids would scurry up the walk, laughing and chasing each other, and Harry thought of Mollie. Once or twice, he considered strolling over toward the river, trying to find her just to say hello, but he never did. Like his mother, like the movement, his first love was gone. He concentrated on the tasks at hand.

According to the papers, Bob Cochran turned out to be a pretty fair representative of his county, paving several roads and lowering taxes for the elderly: his record was the only political news Harry bothered to note.

Now and then, though, a customer would follow him to the back of the store while he searched for a particular fishing lure, or a new cork handle for a pole, and ask him who were the people in the pictures. In those moments, Harry felt his face flush with pride. “Oscar Ameringer,” he'd say. “A saint.” And the woman? “The woman.” He'd reach up to straighten the curled edges of the slowly yellowing photo, crusty, rough: a farmer's calloused hand, stretching high above a crowd, yearning for salvation; a ragged meeting hall table, poorly hewn at the corners; a splintery patch on a makeshift stage; a papery cornstalk sheath, peeling back like the pages of the
Southern Mercury
, or a call for justice in an old
Appeal to Reason
, or a story by Upton Sinclair, or the edge of a tattered fan waved, with lagging energy, by a malnourished woman or man straining to hear. “A good, loud speaker,” he'd say.

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