The Boy Orator Read online

  “Tools should be used by those who know how to handle them.”

  Even God’s tools? Harry thought. Once again, he found himself retreating from her surprising aggressiveness. Were all Indians this blunt?

  “You didn’t bring your dog,” Molly said.

  “No.”

  “Lil’s lonely.”

  “Friends! Since Jee-sus stepped from His cloud of glory and took me by the hand, I’ve walked the paths of righteousness in His loving shadow, a brand-new man. That’s right, brothers and sisters, I stand before you today, chastened—”

  Harry and Mollie walked down the road, away from the arbor, in the direction of the sun. Lil chased butterflies from the shrubs’ stiff limbs. Harry’s body tingled, but not like it had with the fever; this was a liquid sensation, warm and smooth and pleasantly scary. He could feel Mollie without touching her: she was vibrant and warm. She set the air around her humming. She lived about a mile from here near Cookietown, she said, in a shotgun house her mother and father shared with seven other Kiowa families. She was two years older than Harry; she didn’t go to school. Her days were spent in the kitchen or the yard, stirring beans or baking bread for the men and younger children.

  Harry told her about the speeches he gave, Kate O’Hare and the upcoming circuit. “The other night,” he said. “You shouldn’t walk alone so late. It isn’t safe.”

  “Of course it is. What do you mean?”

  “There are men … the Klan … a pretty girl like you …”

  Mollie stopped and looked at him. “What did you mean when you said you believe in equality for Indians?” she asked.

  “I meant Indians shouldn’t be treated any differently than anyone else.” The words came easily, from old speeches he’d given, but he felt ashamed of his own doubts, his hesitation. He knew she saw him blush.

  “Does that mean you’d just as soon kiss an Indian as a white girl?”

  Harry stopped in the shade of a stately pecan tree. He didn’t know what he felt, or what to do. Sunlight made confusing patterns on the road, through the shadows of the leaves. He ground his toe in the dirt, flattening one of the flies stuck to his polish. “I guess so,” he said.

  Her stare was intense. “Well?”

  He looked around. A quail rose from a holly bush. A strip of cloud blew across the sun. No one. He bent forward and pressed his lips to the slight copper rise of her cheek.

  Mollie smiled. “Now,” she said. “When are we going to steal that thing?”

  HARRY HAD NEARLY OUTGROWN the latest suit his father had bought for his trips. Annie Mae, silent, let out the pant cuffs and sleeves, tightened a couple of loose buttons, mended some seams. Andrew lectured his boy. “Remember: make a good family, make a good life. Whatever else your topic is, that’s the basic theme. Keep it simple. Lord, I wish I was going with you.”

  Annie Mae frowned at him.

  When his chores were done of an evening Harry ran to the fields to meet Mollie. Halley and Lil romped through sprawling pink blooms of Heart’s Delight—the flowers dusted their coats, sweetly—and the leathery bells of scarlet clematis. Mollie let Harry kiss her cheek now and then but pulled away whenever he tried to hold her. “You’re so pretty,” he said.

  She laughed. “And what do Socialists think about girls? Do they believe girls should be shared?”

  In moments like this, her directness still stunned him, but the elation he felt with her now—a physical swirl and an ease, all at once—suppressed most of his doubts. “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No, Socialist. I think you’re sweet. Would you ever share me with anyone?”

  “Never.” He reached for her hand but she snatched it away.

  She made plans for kidnapping the Baptists’ podium. “We’ll have to act soon. The revival’s over this week and they’ll be locking it back in the church.”

  “No no no, I can’t take something that doesn’t belong—”

  “We’re sharing it.”

  “Mollie—”

  She placed a finger on his lips.

  Annie Mae saw them together one day. “Who was that little Indian girl you were walking with?” she asked him at supper.

  “Mollie Weryavah. I met her … on the road one afternoon.”

  “Weryavah, Weryavah …where have I heard that name?” Her brows furrowed but Harry wasn’t troubled. His mother had Indian friends; she couldn’t object to Mollie.

  Meanwhile, plans were jelling for the speakers’ circuit. Warren Stargell would call for Harry in his wagon a week from Friday and take him to Waurika, where they’d meet the rest of their group. The league was counting its money to see how many rallies and encampments it could arrange in a month’s time.

  Annie Mae laid handkerchiefs and extra pairs of socks on Harry’s dresser so he wouldn’t forget them; she told him how much tonic to take each day if he felt a fever or if his throat turned sore.

  “Weryavah,” Andrew said at supper the following evening. “You asked me if I’d heard the name. It just came to me …he’s that fella who manages the shooting range over there south of Walters. Big man. People call him ‘Butterball.’”

  “Oh Andrew, that’s right!” Annie Mae said. “That awful place by the creek where men go to … oh Harry. I think it’s best if you don’t have anything to do with that family.”

  Harry blinked. “Mama—”

  “They’re trouble, son. That’s all there is to it. Andrew, how many times has Sheriff Stephens been called out there to bust up a card game or a—you know what I mean—”

  “More’n a few times,” Andrew answered.

  Harry laughed. “Mollie doesn’t gamble,” he said.

  Annie Mae shook her head. “I’m sorry about your little friend. She may be very nice, but her family has a reputation, Harry, and you don’t want—”

  “You said you believed in equality.”

  “This isn’t about them being Indians. I’m talking about character. Andrew …?” She looked to him for help.

  “Oh, let him have his playmate,” Andrew said. “I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

  Annie Mae threw her napkin on the table. Her mouth was strained and her eyes looked sad. “If he’s going to go gallivanting all over the countryside telling folks how to live their lives, he’s got to be beyond reproach, Andrew. It matters, the company we keep!” She swept up all their plates, though they hadn’t finished the meal, and left the table.

  Later, Harry heard his parents in the kitchen. “I give and give and give, Andrew, and I don’t get anything in return. All I ask for is a little support with Harry…”

  “You’re holding him back, honey, he’s not a baby anymore.”

  “He never had a chance to be a baby. He was barely out of diapers when you had him on the road.”

  Harry was usually intrigued, as well as frightened, hearing his parents fight—the power of words!—but tonight he didn’t want to listen. Everywhere he went their voices followed. The house had become too small for him.

  That night he lay awake in his bed wondering if Mollie was trouble. The stirring in his stomach and groin—that was upsetting. But it was pleasurable too. He felt gripped by a power greater than he was, a force capable of unhinging his life, and that was part of its dark attraction.

  He didn’t sleep for another reason: he’d promised Mollie he’d meet her in the arbor at midnight. He waited until he heard his mother’s even breathing and his father’s snores (they’d finally kissed and made up, drying dishes. “Okay?” Harry had heard his father say. “Okay,” said Annie Mae wearily).

  Harry slipped out of bed, dressed quickly, and crawled through his window. Halley followed him, nuzzling his hand. Harry had forgotten his jacket. The summer nights were cool. He pulled his flannel shirt tight across his chest.

  Mollie in her white dress—was it the only one she owned?—stood behind the covered podium: the angel of all speech. Harry was so captivated he couldn’t swallow. He trembled. “Don’t be frightened,” Mol
lie said. She placed her hands on the collar of his shirt and pulled him toward her. Her right knee slipped between his legs and he felt the warmth of her thigh. She parted her lips, breathed sweetly in his face. “Are you ready?” she whispered. Harry nodded. She moved quickly away from him then and threw the tarp off the podium. Harry nearly swooned, as if Mollie had torn off her dress and stood before him naked. The red wood shone darkly in the moonlight like firm, ebony skin. “Hurry,” Mollie said.

  They grappled with the podium, each on one side. It was heavy and slick, hard to hold. They stumbled with it off the stage.

  Halley and Lil chased each other under the stars. Crickets made music in moist blackberry brambles in a far corner of the field. Mollie, laughing, slipped and fell. Harry dragged the podium through wet heavy grass, gouging a deep furrow in the earth. Mollie had said there was an abandoned farm shed about half a mile down the road where they could hide their prize, but it was clear to Harry that they couldn’t carry it that far. Mollie was laughing too hard to be of much help, and he was wondering why he’d let her talk him into this in the first place. He left the podium upright in a flat patch of rye grass; twigs and leaves clung to its base. He ran for the shelter of trees. Mollie followed with the dogs. “Wait!” she called. “Socialist! You can’t just leave it here. You need to practice—”

  He grabbed her around the waist and spun her until they fell to the ground, laughing and panting. The dogs licked their necks. Harry found her mouth with his, briefly, bumping noses with her, and started to kiss her the way he’d caught his parents kissing in the kitchen one morning, last year, when they thought he was doing his chores, but he didn’t know how to hold his face. How had they managed it? Giggling, Mollie tried to twist away. Beneath his hands her small breasts heaved up and down. “You’re trouble,” he said, smiling. He elbowed Halley out of the way, rubbed a smudge of dirt from Mollie’s cheek.

  “You haven’t had enough trouble in your life,” she said. She locked her hands around his neck. “Socialist?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you love me?”

  He couldn’t tell if she was playing or if she was seriously asking, and he couldn’t judge his own response when he answered, “Of course.”

  “There’s another boy who loves me. My cousin Anko.”

  “I’ll beat him up.” He didn’t know what he was saying anymore.

  “Have you ever been in a fight?”

  “I’ve battled men twice my size. Tell me, is your father a gambler?”

  She ignored his question. She kissed his eyebrows. “We can’t just leave that thing in the field,” she said. Just then they heard a car motor, close. Lil turned and barked. Headlights swung their way from the road, grazing the podium, which looked like a giant tombstone in the field. “What the hell—?” someone yelled from the car. Halley darted from the trees; a gunshot popped in the dark. Harry jumped up to see that his dog was okay, on the far side of the road. “What’s happening?” Mollie said, shaking.

  “Rabbit hunters,” Harry said. His father had told him about this crazy new “sport” made possible by the Model T: night-hunting, freezing jackrabbits in the glare of the lights. The sudden, artificial beam had a paralyzing effect on the animals just long enough for a skilled marksman to squeeze off a shot. “Poor things don’t have a chance,” Andrew had said. “‘Cept most of the boys who go in for it aren’t real hunters. Drunk kids, mostly, in their daddies’ new cars.”

  “Get back home,” Harry whispered to Mollie. “Through the trees here—and stay low. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “What about the podium?”

  “We’ll have to leave it.” He bumped noses with her again, then ran, crouching, down a narrow path behind the field.

  “Bud, swing the car around! I saw something!” one of the hunters shouted. Harry tripped on a tree root, scraping his knee and the flat of his palm. A shot whizzed behind him, splintering tree bark? The podium? He couldn’t stop to look. A spider web, invisible in the crook between two poplars, hit him and stuck like cotton candy to his lips. When he woke in his bed the following morning, sore from running, rank with sweat and mud, the web was still in his mouth. He tried to spit it out, and finally brushed it off on his way to the kitchen to wash. He heard his parents dressing in their bedroom, cleaned himself quickly. His throat ached and he felt his fever had returned.

  Later that morning, as his mother was stirring a pot of beans in the yard, Harry saw through the newly curtained kitchen window Mollie and Lil approaching the house from the road. He laughed—they were safe!—but right away his relief switched to panic. His mother had told him to avoid the Weryavahs. He rushed out the kitchen door, waving his arms to catch Mollie’s eye. She smiled when she saw him. He motioned her down the road, tried to signal her he’d meet her in their usual spot in the field. Annie Mae bent above the beans, sniffing the rising steam. She hadn’t seen anything yet.

  He was stupid. How could this girl make him do such silly, dangerous things?

  Halley in the kitchen doorway thrilled to Harry’s swift gestures. He yapped loudly twice, drawing Lil into the yard, leaping and barking. “Harry?” said Annie Mae, looking up. She saw Mollie. Mollie halted in the road, alerted by Harry’s face. Playfully, Lil and Halley wrestled in the kitchen, smashing the barriers of the chick pen, scattering the frightened birds who ran in all directions in the yard. “Harry, the babies!” Annie Mae yelled, putting her hands to her head. “Shoo, shoo!” she screamed at the dogs. Startled, Halley and Lil veered toward the mule pen, jumped between the slats of the fence, and nearly ran into Patrick Nagle. The sleepy old mule twitched, suddenly wary and, sensing danger, jerked forward, stumbling over Lil, who’d tried to squeeze between his legs. The unexpected contact sent a wild shiver through the mule. He leaped the fence but he was too old and slow: one of the spikes snagged his belly. Harry heard a sickening tear. Patrick Nagle stumbled and squealed and ran toward the woods. Harry followed, watching through tears as intestines spilled, steaming and slick, from the hole in the mule’s belly. Patrick Nagle trampled his guts and fell, finally, in a clump of sticker burrs. Harry dropped beside him, not feeling the ground’s needles, and cradled Patrick Nagle’s head in his arms. The fright in the animal’s eyes eased into quick, numb calm. His breath turned cold, swelling goosebumps on Harry’s flesh. “Patrick Nagle,” Harry said. His voice cracked. “Patrick Nagle.”

  Halley trotted around the edge of the sticker patch, wagging his tail, then whimpered, confused, when neither Harry nor the mule ran to play with him.

  Mollie stood on a small rise nearby, watching quietly. “Socialist?” she said finally. “Socialist, are you all right? Can I help?”

  He looked up, but didn’t answer her. He thought he saw her kneel in the grass. Tears blurred his sight.

  Patrick Nagle smelled rancid, ancient. He seemed to be attentive as Harry delivered one final speech to him, his most faithful listener. “Be brave, brother,” Harry whispered. “You fought the good fight.” Patrick Nagle relaxed and buried his nose in Harry’s lap.

  WARREN STARGELL HAD LOADED his wagon with water pails and jerky, soda crackers, candies. “Got to keep the Boy Orator happy on the road,” he said, clapping Andrew’s back. “We’ll take good care of him, Andrew. Don’t you worry.”

  Annie Mae buttoned Harry’s shirt collar tight around his neck. He still had a cough and he was pale. He’d never seen his mother so worried, but she kept her promise to him and didn’t try to hold him back. Neither of his folks had said much about Mollie or the mule, maybe because they knew how awful he felt about Patrick Nagle, maybe because he was leaving and they missed him already.

  Annie Mae had only found two of her chicks. The rest had probably perished in the woods somewhere, during the cool summer nights.

  She kissed her boy and told him not to forget his tonic, to go to Mass when he could, then she turned to the house and disappeared inside.

  Andrew shook Harry’s hand. “Carry the message, son.”
/>   “I will.”

  “I’m proud of you.” They hugged quickly, then Harry climbed onto the buckboard seat beside Warren Stargell.

  They didn’t talk. Warren Stargell concentrated on the road, Harry gazed at the fields. He hadn’t seen Mollie to tell her good-bye, and he felt a pang of regret. But he was carrying the message now and he’d decided his mother was right: he had to be a responsible young man. Whatever he felt for Mollie—and he wasn’t sure what he felt, though it was powerful and strange—he didn’t act responsibly when he was with her. He had to focus on the task at hand; the country needed the wisdom he and his fellow speakers could offer.

  He wondered if the Baptists’ podium had survived the night of the hunters. Someone had removed it from the field. He hoped it had weathered the cold and wind and dew, prayed the boys’ bullets hadn’t touched it. For the rest of his life, he knew, before every important speech, he’d imagine that glorious pulpit all alone on the Oklahoma plains.

  PART THREE

  Barnstorming

  5

  Kate O’Hare wore a light cotton blouse with ruffles down the front, and a red bow tie around her high collar. Her deep green skirt swept the speakers’ stand as she paced in front of the crowd. She was a tall woman in her mid-thirties. Harry loved her face: long and narrow with a short, thin nose and a generous mouth quick to smile. Her red hair curled across her neck and ears. She raised her arm, waved a fistful of newspapers. “When we’re done here, folks, take an Appeal to Reason—it lays out our philosophy for you. We ask you to subscribe if you can, but if you don’t have the pennies, that’s all right, tuck one of these in your overalls or your jumpers, take it home and share it with your neighbors. Those of you who can read, light the lamps for your less fortunate friends.”