The Boy Orator (7 page)

“Really?” Pleased and embarrassed, he twisted the flask in his hands. They'd arrived at a blacksmith's shop. Avram dropped the wheel. “Here we are,” he said. “I hope I haven't overstepped my bounds. Thank you again for your help.”

“You're welcome.”

“Will you pardon an old man's concerns?”

Harry smiled and looked away. How old
was
he? Who could tell?

“My people,” Avram said, scratching his beard, “have been chased and silenced all over the world. But still we persist.” He offered his hand again, then disappeared inside the shop, which smelled of ashes and lye, a hot, stabbing odor, and clattered with the chilly
pings
of hammers.

Avram was probably a decent sort, after all, Harry decided, but still he felt relieved to get away from the peculiar eyes and wiry beard. His distrust of the man shamed him.

As he turned to go, he noticed a poster tacked to the blacksmith's door. Kate O'Hare was speaking tomorrow in Waurika. His heart jumped. Kate O'Hare!

Recently, his father had told him about this woman. She'd come from Kansas, the daughter of a farmer who'd lost his savings in the drought of ‘87. A former machinist, trade unionist, and now a committed Socialist, she was praised as one of the finest speakers of the cause. Harry longed to hear her, to learn her inflections and gestures. He could almost taste the road again, in the sweetness of the lemonade, the dust on his lips from the street.

He stuffed Avram's flask in a back pocket and ran for the barbershop where his dad said he'd find Warren Stargell. His mother said he had a gift!—the thought made him smile (she was so hard to read) but then he felt sorry, running off like this without her okay. All week he'd schemed without her knowing, practicing remarks in Patrick Nagle's pen: “Sir, we need your help on a mission of mercy.” “Could I trouble you, sir, with an urgent request?” His mother thought he was doing his chores. His belly hurt when he imagined her face; maybe he should cancel his secret task.

Just then, though, Warren Stargell glimpsed him through the barbershop window. “Well lookee here, if it ain't the Boy Orator,” he yelled, stepping into the open doorway. He held a blank brown domino. “How's your pappy, Harry?”

Harry was startled. He'd forgotten the lines he'd perfected. “He needs …” He remembered his father's words. “He needs a touch of medicine. From Zeke Cash.”

Warren Stargell roared. His belly, big as a coal sack, swayed above his belt. “Good. Sounds like he's getting his dander back up. You tell him no problem. I'm riding to Lawton on Monday. I'll stop by early next week with the cure.” He ruffled Harry's hair.

The barber shook a bottle of tonic; it hiccuped. The man in the chair, waiting for a shave, chuckled over something. Dark curls sailed in the air. On the wall, the razor strap, twisting in a breeze from the door, bumped a coppery mirror. Harry felt bad about his mother again, standing here in this world of men. Like the boys at school who mocked his speeches, the brewers in the hills who kidded him when he drank, the men who beat his father, these fellows, trading sly-confidences over dominoes, were full of secrets that had nothing to do with home. Since Anadarko, Harry understood that awful laughter and danger often accompanied circles of men. Dark looks. Jokes. He wanted out of here, but Warren Stargell held his arm. “You see where Kate O'Hare's testifying in Waurika?”

“I just saw the poster,” Harry said.

“When're
you
gonna speak again? What does Andrew say?”
“My ma doesn't want me to.”

“Your ma—hell, we need you, Harry, you're good for business. Who can resist that baby face, eh?” He squeezed Harry's cheeks. “The league's arranging a circuit, three or four of our best speakers, make a little tour next month. What do you say?”

“I don't know.”

“All right, we'll work on her when I come out next week. Take care of your pappy, you hear? He's a good man.”

“I will.” My mother's good too, he thought.

‘“Ataboy.”

On the road home, remorseful, Harry passed the electric wires, hooked now to all the poles. He saw in a nice house a warm, orange glow, just visible in the midafternoon sunlight; the silhouette of a woman sweeping a kitchen.

His mother wouldn't let him see Kate O'Hare. “Once and for all, I want you to get this politicking out of your system. It's no business for a little boy. Besides, you've got plenty to do around here.” He didn't argue. He still felt guilty about his trip into town, and tried to atone with his chores. In the evenings, though, when all his work was done, he sat on the gate of the mule pen and raised both his arms. “You ask me why I'm a Socialist!” he shouted, choosing one of his father's fervent themes, extemporizing on it, paraphrasing Oscar Ameringer.

Patrick Nagle's ears bobbed. He kicked up dirt. Halley panted, wagged his tail. “I'll tell you, friends. Money-love and the two-party system are the roots of all evil, strangling the uninformed voter. The national banking system is the tree. The trusts are its branches, bearing poisoned fruit. Brothers!” Patrick Nagle raised his head and let out a squeal. “The sunlight of liberty is setting behind mountains of sin!” Halley ran deliriously around the pen, yapping, chasing bugs.

Harry had forgotten his boredom on the road, his classmates' taunts. All he remembered now was the excitement of the crowds. The applause. “Turkey in the Straw,” “The Arkansas Traveler”—songs of the fiddlers who sometimes played before he talked. He pictured skinny women dancing—“malnourished,” his father had said—stooped farmers shouting affirmation. The combination of music, stews on open fires, the beat of his own rushing words made him dizzy. Giddy with delight. How could he give up so much fun?

Avram, Kate O'Hare, and Warren Stargell had turned him, like a weather vane, in the right direction again.

His impromptu speeches restored Andrew a little, even as they worried Annie Mae. “That's my boy,” Andrew mumbled, sitting on the porch. “God, don't he make you want to lay down your life?”

Annie Mae covered his shoulders with a heavy patchwork quilt. “I'm glad you're home,” she whispered in his ear.

He patted her hand. For the first time in days his gaze settled on her face. “Yes. It's a nice home, isn't it?”

In spite of everything
, she almost answered, aware of her daily chores in each gripping twinge in her back. “It ought to be. We crossed a mighty rough river to get here.”

“Only because I made you. I was right, now wasn't I?”

She smiled. “I'll never admit it.”

“Things haven't turned out so bad, have they?”

“Not so bad.” She kissed his cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“Better this evening,” Andrew said. “You? You look tired.”

“A bit.”

“Take a rest tonight, Annie.”

“There's a few more bills to pay before bed.” Her back screamed. She stood up straight.

“Annie?”

“It'll pass.” Fiercely, she pressed her palms into her hips. Each week, she prayed for the torment to cease—the same misery she'd felt after Harry was born, recurring now month after month. She knew she shouldn't pray selfishly; there were much bigger favors to ask of the Lord, said Father McCartney, than one's own personal comfort. “Catholics are under attack here, daily,” he often reminded his congregation, “so it's incumbent upon us to put the community first,” and she knew this was true.

In ‘98, right after she and Andrew had crossed the river, a Baptist preacher stumped the countryside with seven “rescued nuns.” The incident proved to Annie Mae how welcome her faith was locally. The women testified to being tortured by evil priests in the convent, forced to learn “devil's words” and curses. The preacher damned Rome's growing influence. A day or two later, an enterprising journalist exposed the “nuns” as Oklahoma City prostitutes, and a mob with lighted torches ran the revivalists into Texas. Still, most folks here were willing to believe the worst of Irish immigrants. They carried a “European virus,” according to some of the papers, “harmful to our homegrown way of life.” Father McCartney said Catholic merchants frequently changed their names and hid their beliefs so sales wouldn't suffer.

Annie Mae wasn't about to worship in secret. She proudly joined a Catholic temperance league, and was one of the few women who attended town meetings of the Friends of Irish Freedom. Each week she cheered speakers who disdained the British Empire. “Sinn Fein!” she shouted with her fellows, celebrating a hopeful new movement in Belfast. “Rehabilitate Ireland from within!”

She liked her new life, her Indian friends, and the church. She liked sitting with her family in the sanctuary. Her only regret these days was letting Andrew take Harry on the road. Irish politics, an ocean away, was one thing. Local wrangles, seething with high tern pers and swift retribution, were a different matter entirely. Just last month, a Socialist organizer had been hanged in Panther Run, south of Walters. She hadn't slept for days after that.

Her men were home now, though, regaining their strength. She kissed Andrew's cheek, adjusted the quilt on his arms. “I'm so happy to see you improving,” she said.

He held her hand. “Maybe tomorrow I can ride into town, talk to the fellows from the Osage mines, set up a sale.”

“Let's not rush things,” she said, but she felt the stress in her back unwind for the first time in weeks. She watched Harry gesture and declaim in the shadows of the mule pen. Usually he was her shy little boy, quiet and polite, she thought, but when it came to politics he'd talk to any waking creature. Durn him, she told herself. Along with his father's ideas, he'd inherited Andrew's sentimental streak. Both her men thought the planet was theirs for the changing. “Harry, time to wash up for bed!”

Later, as she blew out the lamps, raising a drifting, dusky smell in the house, she heard him whisper through his window to the yard, “Good night, brothers! Stay brave!”

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
Harry's trip into Walters, Warren Stargell showed up with Zeke Cash and a case of corn liquor.

Before Annie Mae could object to anything, Zeke told Harry, “Run get your mama's Bible. Psalms 104—”

“The Good Book says nothing about mash whiskey, Mr. Cash.”

“If Jesus was born in Oklahoma, Miz Shaughnessy, his daddy would've been a bootlegger ‘stead of a carpenter, and that's a natural fact.”

Warren Stargell shook Andrew's hand. “I promised your boy here I'd rescue you.”

Annie Mae frowned at Harry. He blushed. She turned to go inside; Andrew, from his seat on the porch, grasped her arm. “A few drops, honey. For fortitude. I know it'll help.”

“You know how I feel about that stuff.”

“Honestly—”

“Annie Mae, I hear you want to retire the Boy Orator here,” Warren Stargell said. He patted Harry's back. “I'm afraid we can't let you do that. We need him on the circuit, starting next month. School'll be out—”

“Please excuse me,” said Annie Mae. She strode into her house, slammed the door behind her. Zeke laughed. Warren Stargell popped the cork on a dark, smoky bottle. “Zeke's best,” he said. “Hops, tobacco, fishberries, barley…”

Harry ran inside. His mother was feeding the chicks in their pen. “I'm sorry,” he murmured.

“You should be.” She wouldn't look at him. “I take it you've not only become a whiskey distributor, you've planned your summer as well.”

“Mama—”

“Go outside, Harry.” Her cheeks had flared a spotty red, the color of late-season raspberries, Harry thought. “I want to be alone now.”

Her tears made him shiver. Her kitchen was the warmest room in the house; she'd never let him in it again. He rushed into the yard, toward Patrick Nagle's pen. His father and his friends were shouting with laughter. He heard a cork pop. Yesterday he'd buried Bob Cochran's yellow kerchief and Avram's lemonade flask in a bed of straw just inside the barn; he went to them now as to a treasure, a life of his own apart from his mother and father, the worlds of women and men. Sunbeams filled the holes in the barn's split slats; he inhaled the straw's damp smell, a scent that would always, after this day—as it did to him now—bring a wistful sting of sorrow to his eyes.

The kerchief and the flask, souvenirs of the road, made him ache again for travel. Their textures, much smoother than the ragged hoe he held every day, the splintery spine of the rake, sailed his thoughts to the east, the west, the north, leagues away from the farm, Andrew's injury, Annie Mae's anger.

But his mother's face wouldn't leave him in peace. It followed him now in his mind. He hadn't meant to hurt her. His father had needed him. He'd tried to do his best for them both.

He secured his treasures again in a little hill of hay, then went to find a spring and a chain, in a bin in the back of the barn. He'd make a gopher trap. Yes, that was the thing to do. He remembered Annie Mae complaining about her ravaged garden just this morning: tomato vines shredded, radish plants crushed. If he could catch one of the critters, she might forgive him.

Gonna get you, gonna get you.

For the rest of the day he whittled blunt notches in a pine stake to fit into the lip of a wooden pan. It was always best to set a trap after a good hard rain, Andrew had told him once: gophers dug fresh mounds then, plugging their burrows with dirt to equalize the barometric pressure. Harry wondered how they knew about barometric pressure. Anyway, he couldn't control the weather, but he could follow the rest of his father's advice. The plan was to slide the pan with its spring lid inside the narrow entrance to a gopher's hole; when the animal wriggled in, the lid would close, and you'd pull the whole thing out with the chain.

Town Hall in Walters paid a penny apiece for gopher paws, to encourage the pests' capture.