The Boy Orator Read online

  “Merry Christmas, Ma.”

  That afternoon, Jimmie Blaine dropped by with a baby rabbit. “My baby grew up to be a mother and now thee’th having babieth,” he said. “Happy ‘olidath, Harry.” He said he couldn’t stay; he had dozens of sweet bunnies to deliver to friends. Rabbits had replaced snakes in Jimmie’s confessions to Father McCartney. Jimmie told him this, and Harry laughed.

  Annie Mae wrapped the rabbit in a blanket and kept it in a box by the kerosene stove so Halley wouldn’t bother it. This is where she’d kept her chicks, and Harry couldn’t look at the box or the mule pen without a melancholy pressure settling in his stomach and his legs.

  Andrew spent much of the holiday season standing by the barn, watching the swirling gray skies behind the silos, which moaned and creaked with each new frost. Harry knew not to bother him. He stood with Annie Mae at the kitchen window, studying Andrew’s silent struggle with the losses they all knew were coming. The house was falling away, familiar no longer.

  On New Year’s Eve, Annie Mae surprised Harry by arranging three nice glasses on the table and pouring wine from a jug. “We need to put 1910 behind us,” she said. “It’s been a hard one. Call your daddy in.”

  “Is this real?”

  “Of course it’s real.”

  “Where’d it come from?”

  Annie Mae grinned. “The night we made the deal with the railroad man, we opened up that barrel of sacramental wine and set aside about three jugs’ worth—just in case the county stood firm.”

  “Mama!”

  “I can’t think of a better use for the surplus. Now call your daddy.”

  Andrew was even more shocked than Harry. “Liquor, Annie? You?”

  “It’s been blessed, Andrew.” She smiled and winked at Harry. “‘Wine maketh glad the heart of man’? Don’t tell Father McCartney.”

  “You’ll have to do penance, Ma.”

  “You let me worry about that.” She raised her glass. “To a better year.”

  “To the people’s revolution!” Harry said.

  Andrew simply nodded and swallowed his wine. At midnight, the winter’s first snow brought the new year cascading gently into their yard.

  PART FOUR

  Battlefields, 1917

  7

  The year had begun with bombs in Europe. Ever since the sinking of the Lusitania, Americans had been outraged and confused. President Wilson urged “friendly feeling” toward the poor German people, and toward German Americans in general, but each new talk he’d given had moved the country closer to intervention overseas.

  Finally, in April, he called a special session of Congress and declared, stirringly—reluctandy, it seemed to Harry—that it was a “distressing and oppressive duty,” a “fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war.”

  Harry read the text of Wilson’s speech in a week-old copy of the New York Times he’d found scattered in a chair in the lobby of the St. Nicholas Hotel. Since the first of the year he’d stayed in Oklahoma City, on a stipend from the league, helping plan antiwar rallies.

  He sipped his tepid coffee, smoothed the page. Some of the war news appeared next to a long feature on the rope tricks and cowboy jokes Will Rogers performed on Broadway, in the Ziegfeld Follies. While he was making people laugh and forget their troubles, Wilson was swearing to Congress that “we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy … for the rights and liberties of small nations …”

  Harry tossed the paper aside. That’s it, he thought. America’s first step into this vile and bloated carnage. Saddened, angry, he pushed past the lobby’s glass doors, onto the street. Spontaneously, he shouted, “Shall our boys become cannon meat? My fellow Americans, the blood-stained currency of war is sorry business, sorry business indeed!” Women and men scurried by him, staring. “Let’s demand of our leaders an embargo on the exportation of war munitions, demand mediation rather than struggle—and, like dew from the heavens above, peace shall blanket the earth!”

  A man with a briefcase and a wide felt hat spat at his feet. Through tears Harry watched pigeons strut precariously across roofs of dirty brick buildings, dodging paper and flecks of ash in the air. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, ducked back inside the hotel.

  His small room felt cold and harsh, as if the planet’s thin atmosphere had suddenly soured, spoiling all of Earth’s goods. He looked at his frightened face in a wall mirror. One month shy of his nineteenth birthday, he still had a pert, childlike appearance, freckles, and thick wavy hair. The league’s posters still proclaimed him the “dynamic” Boy Orator.

  Restive, he paced the room, tugged at the curtains of his second-story window, gazing at people on the streets. There were far fewer horses and buggies, many more cars, now than he’d seen only a few years ago when he’d come here with the speakers’ circuit. Merchants, shoppers, children moved with much greater speed than they used to, with a confident recklessness that fragmented the city. The avenue itself seemed to roll and spill like a cresting ocean, but going nowhere—or everywhere at once. Prosperous, preoccupied, this looked too busy to be a nation at war.

  Federal law would require him to register for the draft. He wondered if he could refuse on principle? What would happen then? He’d write and ask his father. Andrew wanted to be here, but the livery stable demanded all his energy.

  For two years now, since around the time of his seventeenth birthday, Harry had been in touch with his family mostly through letters and telegrams. Soon after New Year’s Day, 1911, when things were at their worst for the farm, Andrew had received a telegram from Oklahoma City, informing him that his brother, Lee, had been hit by a streetcar and killed. No one had heard from Lee since he’d left his wife and kids in Lehigh and disappeared into the Indian Territory years ago; apparently, he’d been in the city all that time, and had made quite a success for himself in the garment business.

  Lee left a nice sum for his brother; with that and the money he earned selling off all his farm equipment, Andrew moved his family into Walters and made a down payment on a boxy little house. Within a couple of months, he’d partnered up with another investor in town and opened a livery stable.

  Harry had felt funny, living there after the farm. Closed in. Too many buildings, too many people.

  One of their neighbors had a phone. People walked for miles just to see it. Two short rings, one long, got you the sheriff. But the novelty of that wore off quickly, and nothing else in Walters held Harry’s interest. The circuit, his speeches, the love of the crowds had made him restless.

  So one spring, after he’d lasted as long as he could confined by narrow lanes, boring routines, he’d decided against both his parents’ wishes that he belonged on the road. The farm was gone. School offered him nothing. He was a man now, ready to be on his own. His heart beat to the rhythm of the pitch.

  When the league could afford to sponsor him, he spoke full-time. Otherwise, he took odd jobs wherever he could find them, hiring himself out during cotton season, haying and baling, stacking lumber. In McAlester, he’d worked for the MK & T as a station clerk. He swept the waiting rooms at the depot—separate spaces for “Coloreds” and “Whites”—tagged baggage, hung the mail sack on a platform so the conductor could snatch it with a long iron pole as the train whisked past.

  Occasionally—usually on holidays—he visited his folks. His mother was lonely in town. She missed Mahalie and her other friends. Now that Harry was gone she longed for another child to care for; shortly after the move, she’d had another miscarriage. Her back hurt her worse than ever. She was in her early forties, and knew the dangers of continuing to try to have a baby, but her need was strong. Harry always hated to leave her, though he was eager to get out of town. It had never felt like home. Halley, big now, lanky and lazy, followed him partway to the train tracks whenever he left. Harry stooped and patted his head: “Go back to the house now, Halley. Take care of Ma.”

  This spring, he lived lavishly (c
ompared to his depot-days) in the city. War-fever had stirred passions all across the state; the league’s membership had jumped at the first of the year. Tenant farmers were dropping away, but new members came from the towns, from the industrial working class: people afraid of the draft. With the extra dues, league organizers put Harry up where they thought they could use him the most.

  A week after Wilson’s speech, the Appeal to Reason declared America’s entry into the war an “international crime against the workers of the world.” Harry’s father wrote to say, “Be careful, son. An ugly mood is strangling the nation. Wherever you speak, make sure you’ve got a handy escape-route. More than ever, short-tempered men will want to argue with their fists.

  “A somber note,” the letter went on. “Your old schoolmate, Randy Olin, was killed last week at Fort Sill. He was one of the first volunteers from this area. His unit was practicing maneuvers when some kind of accident happened. The paper was vague about it. You knew him pretty well, I seem to recall. I’m sorry, son, to be the one to tell you.”

  Harry set the letter on his bedside dresser. His temples throbbed, his hands felt numb. He had never liked Randy Olin. He wouldn’t miss him. But dead? Crouched in a cardboard box, maybe, squatting in the cotton fields, waiting to torment poor Jimmie Blaine, but surely not dead.

  He splashed water on his face from a porcelain basin by the door, rolled down and buttoned his sleeves. He couldn’t sit here with the letter. He was set to give a speech.

  The league had scheduled a rally on South Central Avenue near Douglass School, an all-black institution. Lately, newspaper editorials had been targeting Negroes, suggesting that young black men could “rise in society” by “serving their country with pride.”

  Harry arrived at the site just after noon. He helped his comrades unfurl linen banners—“Drive War Off the Earth,” “Remember: When the People Speak It Is the Voice of Command”—and make a speakers’ platform out of packing boxes. Pupils from the school, on their lunch break, drifted across the street to watch them work. Harry hadn’t been surrounded by so many dark faces since that summer near Taft. He hoped for a warmer welcome here.

  He leaped onto the platform. “Friends, let me tell you who I am,” he began, pacing, gazing directly into the eyes of his listeners. They all wore plain, but finely-pressed, dresses or suits. “I’m a Socialist and a child of God, first. An American, second. Now what does this mean?” He added a little spring to his step. “It means, friends, that I’ll serve my class before I’ll serve the industrial giants who own this misguided nation!”

  The crowd began to whisper. A few heads nodded. They were all so young! His age. Randy Olin’s age. He felt a tug in his throat, a sting in his eye. His fingers tingled.

  He wasn’t going to cry for Randy Olin, of all people. Not here. Not now.

  “Friends!” His voice cracked. He coughed, turned away from the street to regain his composure. He spoke more softly now, for better control. “Never will I serve the bankers, the food speculators, the ammunition makers who, with the wealth they’ve stolen from us, the people, are leading us into the maws of violence and greed!” He glimpsed a puzzled girl near the platform. The uncertainty on her face, the darting eyes, reminded him of Eddie McGarrah, and now he did begin to cry. Poor, dumb Eddie. Always needing Randy to show him the way, never acting on his own. What would he do now?

  “What do we do?” Harry said. He didn’t stop to wipe the tears from his cheeks. He paced even faster than before. “Our country is the world. Workers, our countrymen. To them and them alone we owe our allegiance. White, Negro, Indian.” Another catch in his throat. “If we’re workers, we’re brothers and sisters.” His agitation seemed to have stunned the crowd. They watched him closely, fascinated, maybe even a little frightened. “The papers tell you if you march off to war, and survive it, maybe when you come back home you can start a better life here.” He shook his head. “Neighbors, hasn’t the Negro race heard ‘maybe’ one too many times?” he asked, recalling the long-ago words of Bobby Springs, Taft’s Deputy Mayor. “Don’t be tricked or persuaded this time by hollow promises. Follow your conscience. Follow—” He couldn’t finish; sorrow choked his words. He looked to his colleagues for help. They didn’t know what was happening to him, so he jumped off the platform and ran down the street, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t stop until he reached a hash house he knew on Northwest Twenty-third.

  For hours he sat in a corner booth, sipping coffee, smoking cigarettes. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. His face burned with shame. He’d never failed to finish a speech. And all because of Randy Olin! Because Europe had come to Oklahoma.

  Outside, he noticed, shiny Fords were beginning to park beside the curb. Across the street, a cinema house, the Centurion, had opened its doors: The Adventurers starring Charlie Chaplin. Harry had never seen a moving picture. He was curious, but he couldn’t spend the league’s money on silly entertainment.

  From his seat inside the restaurant he saw men remove their hats, women adjust sleek stoles on their shoulders, as they entered the Centurion. A short while later they shuffled back out, laughing, blinking. Their faces seemed glazed, as if the watery light had left a sheen on their skin.

  Harry paid for his coffee and walked to his room, chastened, still, by his afternoon performance. Up ahead, the quarter-moon appeared to be lying, tossed and forgotten, on the concrete roof of a shoe factory. It looked like a soft, wrinkled bag glowing from within.

  He didn’t sleep that night, or for many nights afterwards. He dreamed repeatedly of standing on a platform, before an audience of Randy Olins, bony and pale in a bloody cotton field, unable to move his tongue.

  THE MORNING AFTER HIS birthday he filed his name in a busy Selective Service office. The clerk there was too overwhelmed by paperwork and people to answer questions; competing rumors had confused Harry about the age of conscription—was it twenty-one or younger? His father, also puzzled, had warned him not to break the law. “Probably the authorities are already watching you because of your political affiliations and your activities. Don’t give them any more reason to follow you,” Andrew had written. “Maybe you won’t be called. If you are, we’ll wrestle with it then.”

  Governor Williams had established a State Council of Defense, to educate civilians about their wartime responsibilities. After leaving the draft board, Harry found a street corner near a state agency and told the passersby, “This is a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight. If forced to serve in the military, if ordered to murder my fellow workers, I will instead die fighting humanity’s enemies in my own ranks!” No one stopped to listen to him, but he felt better about himself.

  He’d spent his birthday alone. He didn’t know his comrades here very well. They were all older than he was—grocers, factory workers, union organizers. He missed the old days with Kate O’Hare, Fred Warren, even J. T. Cumbie. Kate O’Hare was slated for an Oklahoma rally in early July, after a speaking tour in the West. Harry hoped she’d make it. His spirits needed boosting.

  The night he turned nineteen, he debated with himself, then broke down and bought a ticket at the Centurion. This was a misuse of official money, he knew, but he’d worked hard, he was lonely. He owed himself a treat. “That’ll be a dime,” said the woman in the box office. In the booth’s yellow light, her teased blond hair was a giant parfait. Harry blinked. “I thought it cost a nickel,” he said.

  “This ain’t no nickelodeon, son. And this here’s what they call a big picture.”

  He hesitated, scrabbling for coins in his pocket. A noisy line had formed behind him; he spilled ten pennies into the booth’s silver slot and hurried inside. The place was opulent: red carpet, glass chandeliers. Boys bought candy and fizzy drinks for their girls. He was hungry but he’d already overspent, terribly.

  He took a plush seat in the back row; it nearly swallowed him. A blue velvet curtain hung on the auditorium’s front wall. The room smelled of chocolate and shoe leather, rose water, and a faint trace of
mildew. Though the crowd laughed and whispered excitedly, the surroundings were almost solemn. They promised miracles, a Grand Experience. Except for the dancing women, carved into the walls on either side of the curtain, this could be a church, Harry thought.

  The lights went out, the curtain rose slowly, seductively, the way certain ladies lifted the hems of their skirts to adjust their sheer stockings. He wished he had a girl to sit with.

  He felt a cool draft of air. His heart beat rapidly. The Chaplin picture had closed last week. This one, The Birth of a Nation, he knew nothing about.

  The glare on the screen, the many movements at once, dazzled and bewildered him. At first he couldn’t follow the flow of events. He was looking at a room. Next, people on horses. A man’s face. A woman. He didn’t know what was happening. Eventually, though, he grew accustomed to the rhythm of the changes, lulled almost, and the story began to make sense to him. It was about the Civil War. Two families, North and South. He nearly laughed with shock and delight. He’d been delivered into a different era. He felt he could reach out, pluck the actors’ sleeves, they looked so present, yet they moved with a simple grace missing from daily life. Near the end of Part One, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination was performed with such clarity and detail, he felt he’d actually witnessed the crime. It unsetted him. He clutched the arms of his chair, helpless.

  Part Two chronicled the rise of the Klan in the South. As images slipped by like shuffled cards on the screen, Harry watched with increasing anger. The story portrayed most Negroes as licentious, greedy, crazed with freedom. In one scene, they overtook South Carolina’s House of Representatives, propped their bare feet on polished wooden desks, gobbled fried chicken, and sipped secretly from bottles of whiskey. Finally, the Klan restored order.

  Bull! Harry thought, recalling the men who’d beat his father long ago. Murdering pond-rats is what they are!