The Boy Orator Read online

  “Exactly,” said the first man. “Woman suffrage and Socialism will ultimately lead to the destruction of our marriage vows. Do we want our daughters raised on the doctrine of free love? I think not!”

  The women in the audience were stirring, tugging at their bracelets and puffy sleeves, waiting for Kate O’Hare to respond. Harry feared the anger of men, but by now he’d learned its shapes: the sudden boasts, the strutting shows of power. With women he didn’t know what to expect. His mother usually went silent and asked to be alone when she got upset. What did she do by herself? What would the Chautauqua ladies do here in public, in the middle of the day? Their whispers made him nervous. Their perfume sailed in clouds. He felt closed in, he couldn’t breathe: like sitting in a mine shaft again.

  Kate O’Hare patiently raised her hands. “I agree with you,” she said.

  Several of her listeners shook their heads in disbelief.

  “Women shouldn’t be given special treatment.”

  The men nodded at each other.

  “The issue is the oppression of the working class. That’s the battle we’re fighting. If we separate the sex struggle from the class struggle, we’ve lost sight of our ultimate goal.”

  Women rose in their seats, shouting at her and each other. She stood calmly on the stage, smiling, supremely at ease with her principles. Harry thought he was probably in love with her.

  “Where you’re wrong,” she called, addressing the men, “is insisting that Socialism will destroy the institution of marriage.” The audience hushed. “I agree wholeheartedly that a woman’s place is in the home. But in a capitalist economy, poverty is so rampant, many of our best young women are forced into the streets, pushed brutally into prostitution, abortions … far from harming the family, Socialism will promote better relations between men and women by giving them greater security.”

  She spread her arms, a gesture of appeasement. “Look at the people you know,” she said softly. “Look, perhaps, at your own lives. Women are exploited at home. We all know it. A farm wife is just a hired girl. Despite what the ads say in the big city newspapers, it’s not lack of cosmetics that ages women before their time. It’s the treadmill, the life of hard, incessant labor without reward. Inevitably, a young girl ruins her health dragging big, heavy sacks up and down cotton rows day after day after day. Moneyless, she lives without power, without individuality. In time she weakens, grows bitter and dull.”

  She wiped a film of light sweat from her brow. “Is her husband to blame?” she said. “Certainly, certainly—up to a point. But is he any better off? Isn’t his back also bent and sore from the loads he carries? Gentle women—friends—I ask you, I beg you, to consider the larger issue. The real problem is that we’re landless people. Our homes aren’t really our homes. We’re all of us—men and women both—slaves to the bank.”

  The women nodded and murmured. The men fiddled with their shirt collars. “One step at a time,” said Kate O’Hare. “I absolutely support forcing a referendum on woman’s suffrage onto the ballot this year. But that can wait if it has to. More important right now, because it affects all of us, is a statute declaring that use and occupancy are the only title to land.”

  Brilliant, brilliant, the way she worked the crowd, Harry thought: first agreeing with her opponents on a minor point, setting them up, snaring them later with their own strict logic. She never raised her voice unduly, never got ugly, never lost her patience.

  Day after day, he watched her charm miners, schoolmarms, merchants; heard her teach frugality and hope. In the country or in town, on a pinewood platform or in the grandest carpeted hall, she was equally at home.

  “Never speak at people,” she told Harry. “Speak for them. You and me, blessed with this little gift of words—we’re servants, that’s all. We’re not here to rise through the ranks of labor. We’re here to rise with them.”

  And their ranks swelled daily. They traveled in a ragged caravan of horse-drawn wagons and jitneys, Ford touring cars owned by various communities. Each week Harry and a few other young men would run into town ahead of their comrades with posters announcing the festivities:

  MAMMOTH SOCIALIST ENCAMPMENT

  Tell Everybody

  Come Join the Merry Throng

  Daily addresses by different orators who know and will

  tell the truth. They will prove that Socialism can give every

  man an equal opportunity to labor and receive the full

  product of his toil undiminished by legalized robbery.

  •

  Picturesque grounds one mile west of town.

  Bring all the folks, camp and spend a day or two of

  instructive and entertaining pleasure.

  Meals and supplies at regular rates.

  •

  The brainiest and ablest statesmen in America will positively attend!

  GOOD LOUD SPEAKERS

  GUARANTEED!

  One day while unloading equipment, one of the organizers told Harry his philosophy of a successful encampment: “Shade and water—essential. Good concessions—food, pinwheels—to keep the kids happy, and enough adults willing to supervise the little brats. Musicians are okay, but never hire a brass band. They drown out the speakers. And never put a merry-go-round too near the speakers’ stand.”

  That summer, the biggest attraction, aside from the speeches, was a gas balloon leased from an Oklahoma City circus. Chester Leeds, the man Harry had watched skin the squirrel his first night out, gave the public free rides in the giant contraption. He let Harry feel the balloon’s rough fabric as it lay pooled on the ground, unfilled, between rides. Chester was a puppy of a man in his twenties, exuberant about the crowds that streamed into the camps, helpful and kind to the sunburned families who traveled many miles to receive the benediction of Socialism. He was engaged to a friendly young girl named Sally. At supper every night Harry split his time between the O’Hares and Chester and Sally, who adored him.

  After a while, the towns, noisy and dry, blurred in Harry’s mind. Durant, Atoka, Ponca City. On the first leg of the trip he heard, every night, Fort Sill’s big new army cannons practice firing on a distant range. The dull booms echoed in the hills to the west; occasionally a scent of gunpowder drifted into camp on a breeze. The wind was always hot. His dreams were ribbons of images pulled from newspapers he scanned while Warren Stargell drove the wagon from place to place.

  One day, he had so much time to read, he memorized a whole editorial from the Walters New Herald: “With the death of Geronimo the curtain was rung down on the life of a human being who lived but to curse mankind,” it said. “The reading public for years has been nauseated by the publicity given to the affairs of this most cruel and vicious character whose name has ever made a blot on the pages of human history.”

  Andrew had always admired Geronimo. “He loved his people,” he’d once told Harry. “That’s the most you can ask of a man.”

  “Make a good family?”

  “Right. ‘Family’ means all of us.”

  “Even the capitalists?”

  Andrew had paused. “We have to hope they’ll come around. For their own sakes.”

  In the paper Harry also read articles about Chief Crazy Snake, whose band of Creeks refused to settle on their tiny reservation. Each day, editors warned white families in Okmulgee County to look after their scalps. In his sleep, Harry kicked and groaned, escaping vague screams. He heard his mother warning, “Trouble.”

  In mid-July, a three-day encampment was scheduled two miles north of Ada. Ninety-two men had been murdered senselessly in Ada since statehood; it was a rough and lawless place, and everyone knew it.

  On a sticky, dusty Monday, Warren Stargell, half-asleep, leading the caravan to the campground, was nearly thrown from the seat of the wagon when his horses stopped abruptly. Harry had been reading a paper and he, too, almost tumbled to the ground. The horses had come upon a plowed-up patch of road south of town. Beside the road, ankle-deep in strawberry vine
s and rows and rows of sunflowers, nine or ten young men with shovels and hoes shouted, “Turn around! Goddam Reds! We don’t want you here!” “Bellyachers!” “Communists!”

  Warren Stargell started to protest but one of the men yelled, “Cracker, shut up! We’ve heard it all before.”

  “Instead of talking all the time, you ought to listen for a change. Listen to a preacher, listen to a banker!”

  “Hell, if you sorry sons of bitches had any initiative you wouldn’t be so poor!”

  This last remark pierced Harry; blood raced to his head in waves. His vision shrank to the size of a shirt button. He pictured his father stooped in a field, miners trapped in a hole. He stood in the seat, red-faced and shaking. “Let me tell you something!” he hollered. “Capitalism is an evil that feeds on the initiative of good people, and like all evil it’s going to devour itself.”

  “Harry.” Warren Stargell tugged his sleeve. “Harry, hush up. Let’s just get out of here.”

  Harry shook him off. “Your town is a center of despotism, boys. I can smell it from here. My friends and I, we’ll just wait till it fattens itself and bursts, then we’ll come in and bury the corpse!”

  His words so enraged the men, they squatted, reached for stones, and tossed them at the wagons and cars. Warren Stargell leaped from the buckboard, finding cover behind a big spoked wheel. Harry saw Kate O’Hare, in a wagon behind him, hustle her kids to safety behind a scrawny mulberry bush. He’d developed a strong arm in the rock fights at school. He jumped from the wagon, scrabbled for ammunition in the road, and hurled it at the men. Mostly he found his mark: a soft upper thigh, a fleshy forearm. He was outnumbered, but the townsmen didn’t have his accuracy, and after a couple of minutes they retreated into the woods. “Harry! Harry, let’s go!” yelled Warren Stargell. He climbed into his seat, reversed the wagon, and led the group out of danger.

  They canceled the encampment, followed Rock Creek to the town of Sulphur. There, they rested and relaxed in the natural hot springs. Stress, hasty meals, and Warren Stargell’s cigarettes had upset Harry’s stomach. The healing waters did him good. Sally spoon-fed him Peruna, a digestive remedy, and Cardui Tonic. Harry-had seen Cardui advertised in the newspapers. In the ads a smiling woman said, “For seven years I suffered from female troubles. I took twelve bottles of Cardui and now I’m fat, healthy, and strong!”

  “What are female troubles?” Harry asked Sally. “That’s not anything I have to worry about, is it?”

  “Just take it, honey. It’ll settle your nerves.”

  Chester laughed and ruffled Harry’s hair. “Believe me, we all have to worry about female troubles.”

  “Chester!” Sally blushed.

  “It’s alcohol,” Chester said, reading the bottle’s label. “Eighty proof. You know, now that I think of it, I believe I’ve been having troubles.”

  “Give me that,” Sally said. She sounded angry but she was grinning at him.

  That week, while the organizers planned new campsites, Kate O’Hare decided to visit the Confederate Veterans’ Home in nearby Ardmore. She said she fervently supported the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who’d founded the home, and wanted to commend them in person. Harry, Chester, and Sally went with her.

  The place wasn’t finished. Boards lay scattered on the grounds. The main building was made of gray brick; four large pillars supported a double-decked porch. The nursing staff and the Daughters of the Confederacy were thrilled to have a visitor as famous as Kate O’Hare. She told them she was proud of the work they did. She introduced Harry and Chester and Sally. A young woman toured them through the dining area, the barns out back, the orchard, and the vegetable gardens. She explained to them that all “Johnny Rebs” were welcome here, especially those who’d lost their families and homes in the war, and had nowhere else to go. “We have about eighty-five valiant old warriors here,” she said proudly. Harry saw tears in her eyes and understood that the South’s defeat grieved her deeply.

  While Kate O’Hare and the others took the tour, Harry wandered back into the house. He’d smelled something wonderful in the kitchen: peach preserves or some other sweet boiling fruit. Sally’s medicines seemed to have done the trick. He felt better, and he was hungry. He tried to follow his nose but he wound up in a narrow corridor leading away from the dining room’s light and the pleasant smell. He inhaled a whiff of Mercurochrome, of damp, sour clothes. He turned into an open doorway and nearly ran into a man on spindly crutches. The man was old, naked from the waist up. The flesh of his breasts sagged like saddlebags. He had a wispy beard and smoky white eyes. “Whoa there, Private,” he said to Harry, smiling, then hobbled on past, down the hall. He left a faint scent of boiled milk in his wake. He moved in obvious pain. The gray pantaloons he wore made loud scratching noises.

  Harry peered into the room. In buttery light from a single tall window he saw old men in high-backed wheelchairs, old men in narrow iron beds, old men hunched over rickety tables playing dominoes. Coughing. Raspy breaths. The smell of onions, unguents, urine. Harry kept to the wall.

  He heard Manassas, Antietam, strange names whose exotic sounds thrilled him so much he felt his scrotum tighten. Drawn by the music of the words, he stepped cautiously toward a pair of beds and a conversation there. One fellow said to another something about “sizable corn.” The listener had no arms. He lay propped in his bed like a damp bulky box. The speaker’s left leg was memory and air. As he spoke, his red stump thumped his sheets. “I’s crouching there, thinking how good the sun felt on my skin,” he said, “thinking I’d never seen ears of corn this juicy and big, when all of a sudden I’s blinded by a splash of light, then another, in the rows ahead of me. I took a step and just as I realized what I’d been looking at, a lightning bolt burned my face. Bayonets,” he whispered. “Points gleaming in the sunlight. We’d stumbled right smack dab into a Yankee platoon. They’d been waiting overnight for us in the field.” He hawked and spit into a cracked tin coffee cup on a table by his bed. “Blade went right through my cheek. Five minutes later the day was as still as you please. Three hundred men in my unit. Only four of us left moving.”

  The armless man shook his head, then, startled, spotted Harry near the foot of his bed. “Say, boy!” he grumbled. “Whatcha doing, lurking there?”

  “Nothing,” Harry said.

  “Nothing? What kind of answer is that?”

  “I was just—”

  “Staring at the war heroes?” He laughed, an ugly gurgling sound. “Eyes ‘bout to pop out your head.”

  “You ‘bout to cry, boy?” said the man with the stump. Harry’s eyes were blurry; he noticed a long bandage on the man’s right cheek. “Or are you a girl? I think maybe that’s it. A little crybaby girl. They oughtn’t to let girls in here.”

  His friend laughed and wheezed.

  “I’m not a girl,” Harry mumbled.

  “Then get those tears outta your goddam eyes. You think I want your pity, boy? To hell with your pity!”

  “I’m sorry,” Harry said. The light from the window diminished. The sun had slipped behind a cloud. Harry had a vague impression, in the shadows of the room, of open sores, jaundiced flesh, bones and pieces of men.

  “Sorry? Damn your sorriness, boy! Come here. I said come here!”

  Harry walked carefully to his bed. “You know what they call me ‘round here? Call me Hole,” he said. “Know why?”

  Harry trembled. “Why?”

  The old fellow slowly pulled the bandage from his cheek. There was an empty space where his skin should have been. He grinned. “I can stick out my tongue ‘thout opening my mouth,” he said. “Watch.” He pressed his lips together. His tongue wiggled through the hole in the side of his face. Harry’s stomach lurched. The man with no arms laughed so hard he fell into a coughing fit. Helplessly, he thrashed in his bed.

  “Want to touch it?” the old fellow said.

  “No thank you, Mr. Hole, sir.” Harry heard a squeak of shoes behind him on the dark linoleum f
loor. A woman’s voice said, “What are you rascals up to? Tommy, Tommy, calm down.” He turned to see a nurse in a stained white uniform. She raised the armless man by his squared-off shoulders and pounded his back. He stopped coughing. She looked at Harry’s face and at the old man’s absent cheek. “Randall, you been scaring this boy?”

  He spit more phlegm into his cup. “He wanted to see the war heroes. We obliged him.”

  “Who are you here with, hon?” the nurse said to Harry.

  He backed away, wide-eyed.

  “Run along now, little girl,” Randall said. Tommy laughed and began to cough again. “Run to Mama, boo hoo hoo.”

  Haltingly, in the wagon on the way back to Sulphur, Harry told Kate O’Hare, Chester, and Sally what he’d seen. Chester shrugged, flicking the reins. “Those weren’t no war heroes, Harry. They’re just bitter old men.”

  Kate O’Hare touched Harry’s shoulder. “Losing an arm or a leg can make a man awfully bitter. Justice, fairness, democracy—men say these words when they go into battle. But what you saw today, Harry—that’s what it really is.”

  He nodded.

  That night, around the supper fires, his friends shared memories of the War between the States. Some of them had been children when the fighting broke out. Their fathers and grandfathers and older brothers had served the Confederacy. “None of the men in my family wanted to join,” said one young man. “We weren’t rich enough to own slaves. I remember my daddy saying, ‘Why should we fight the rich folks’ battles?’”

  “Isn’t that always the question in war?” asked Kate O’Hare.

  “I must have been ten or eleven when the war ended,” another fellow said. He set his plate of chicken at his feet, wiped his hands on his pants, and though the night was warm, held his fingers near the fire. Harry heard crickets in the tall, moist grass. “I remember traveling to Atlanta with my family, trying to find my father’s brother. He’d been wounded, and we’d got word he’d ended up in a hospital there. I can still picture it all, clear as a bell. The streets were full of rats. Garbage had been piled to the sky. Everywhere I looked, I saw kids squatting in filth. My father wept. I’d never seen him do that. He’d been raised in Atlanta. He couldn’t believe what the war had done to it.”