The Boy Orator Read online

  Harry’s toes went cold. He didn’t like the direction this was headed. He’d seen Warren Stargell excited in the past, passionate about planning, but the man had never been this raw, this close to losing physical control. His body jerked when he gestured. His voice cracked.

  “You mean West Texas?” someone said.

  Warren Stargell grinned. “But with better results.”

  Two months ago, a group of West Texas tenant farmers (“Red renters” according to the papers) had announced an “armed and forcible opposition to the oppressions of the capitalist class.” They declared the draft a conspiracy to thin the ranks of workers, and began stockpiling weapons. Early one morning, federal agents and a band of Texas Rangers raided their compound near Mineral Wells. Most of the farmers were arrested; one was found with twenty-three gunshot wounds in his chest. Wobblies and Socialists around the nation were beginning to use the incident as a rallying point.

  “We have to stand by our brothers,” Warren Stargell said, “or the federal govemment’ll swoop in here and stamp us all out! Now consider for a moment. Where is the government’s weakness, eh? Think hard.”

  The crowd murmured. The room was close and hot; stirred-up straw-particles stitched the air.

  “Communications. Roads,” Warren Stargell answered himself. “How can they take our sons if the bridges are out? How can they call in the law if the telegraph lines have been cut?”

  Harry glanced at his father. Andrew smiled eagerly, just like the men around him. Harry couldn’t believe it. Warren Stargell wasn’t a particularly effective speaker, but apparently the time was right for his message. The war had knocked people silly with fear. He worried about his father’s opinion, but he couldn’t sit still any longer. He rose and raised his right hand. “Stamped out?” he shouted. “You better believe that’s what’ll happen if we’re damn-fool enough to fire at Washington.”

  Heads turned. A few whispers. “The Boy Orator?” “Yes. Remember? That’s him.” “You sure?” “Strike me dead.”

  Harry walked up a narrow space along the side of the barn, past yellow hissing lanterns, until he stood near the front. “I’ve pledged myself to class war, just like the rest of you, but guns and destruction of property, well, those are losing strategies. Warren, you and I have campaigned together many times in the past.” This was the first occasion he’d ever called the man anything but “Mr. Stargell.” “And you know as well as I do, we can’t win the battle for a better America without broad public support. Capture the hearts and minds of the people, that was always our first aim. How are we going to do that if we’re running around wrecking bridges and roads?”

  Warren Stargell folded his arms. “Harry, you’ve always had a honeyed tongue, but we’re in a national crisis, boy, and talk’s no longer useful.”

  “On the contrary, Warren. We’re talking now. And we damn well better hash it all out, right here, what we’re going to do.” He turned to the men in the room. “You oil workers. What do you earn?”

  “Thirty-five cents an hour,” someone said.

  “For what? A ten-hour day?”

  “Twelve.”

  Harry nodded. “Seven years ago, men just like you working the Osage coal mines made about that. A cotton farmer was lucky if he got thirteen cents a pound. Nothing’s changed. This is the war we have to fight.”

  Muttering and shouting. “What about Europe?” a skinny man called from the rear.

  Harry raised his hand again. “I’m coming to that. I suppose, because your wages are low, and because Standard Oil keeps raising the prices of housing, most of you can’t afford to stay in any one place too long, is that right?”

  Loud, angry assent.

  “So you keep moving on, hoping to improve your situation.”

  “Yeah.” “You got it.”

  “It’s the same everywhere, isn’t it?”

  “You bet.” “It damn shore is.”

  Harry started pacing, forcing their eyes—and minds—toward him, and away from Warren Stargell. He’d learned a trick or two, over the years, about competing with other speakers. “That’s their power over you,” he said. “Landless, migratory men don’t vote. They’re never anchored long enough in any one community to register. They can’t organize—their population’s unstable. Fellows, Standard Oil counts on the fact that you won’t stick together. But what if you did?” He stabbed the air with each word. “What-if-you-did? What if you made a vow to each other, brother to brother? What if you sat right down in the oil field and refused to lift a finger until your working conditions improved? What would the company do? And—you wanted to know about Europe?—here’s the kicker. What would the government do without your oil to fuel its shameless war?”

  “Land, land, land!” Warren Stargell yelled. “No no! It’s not a question of land anymore. You’re living in the past, Harry. The picture’s changed.”

  “It hasn’t changed a bit, Warren. That’s the trouble.”

  “The stakes are much higher now. They’re trying to kill the working class by sending our boys—boys like you—to spill their guts in the fields of France.”

  “This war is for the speculators, Warren, it’s for the bankers and the lawyers who’ve found another way to line their pockets. What was it Wilson said? ‘Financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process.’ Yes, they’ll use us, but the fighting will end one day, when they’ve stolen all they can, and we’ll be faced with the same old dilemmas. Low wages. No land. They don’t want to kill us off. They need us. But they are trying to wear us down. They’re trying to provoke us to armed rebellion, so they’ll have an excuse to break our spirit, just like they did in Mineral Wells. We can’t let them do that to us. We have to hold steady.”

  “Right,” someone sneered. “All we have to do is blubber and whine, and the next thing we know, Standard’ll be planting posies under the derricks—”

  “I didn’t say it’d be easy,” Harry said.

  “That’s Wobbly talk, boy. It won’t work.”

  “Besides, time is running out,” Warren Stargell called. “Selective Service is up and running—”

  Amid the clamor of the crowd, the barn doors creaked. Seven or eight men, armed with rifles, alertly entered the room. Harry recognized one of them, a stiff, bowlegged man, as Sheriff Stephens, portlier now than when he’d jailed Annie Mae, and utterly bald.

  Silence spread, soft as a rain of cotton, over all the hot bodies. Warren Stargell sputtered, “What, what’s the problem, Sheriff?”

  “This meeting is over, Warren.”

  “We’ve got a permit, we’ve—”

  “I’m declaring a nine o’clock curfew every night, as of tonight.” “Why?”

  “These are extraordinary times. The nation’s at war.”

  “What does that have to do with us?”

  “I won’t stand for agitation, Warren. You’re adjourned.”

  “We’ve been gathering like this for years.”

  “You heard me. Y’all get on home.”

  The crowd grumbled but no one moved. The sheriff and his deputies cocked their rifles, a deafening clack. The men hushed. “I’m not going to tell you again.”

  The barn emptied quietly then in less than a minute, the lawmen watching impassively as the young oil workers sprinted down the streets. Harry watched Warren Stargell, muttering angrily, slip out the back. He knew his affiliation with the league was in danger. Kate O’Hare was sitting in jail for speaking; if Warren convinced his buddies to take up arms, that was the end of their movement. For good.

  Crickets were thick in the weedy fields around town. A slice of moon stuck to the dark above Scorpio’s flickering red heart. Harry glanced at his father. “I’m confused,” he said.

  “How’s that?”

  He remembered how much he’d wanted to please Andrew, those afternoons, years ago, practicing speeches in the barn. He remembered the ache of pride in his chest whenever A
ndrew had praised him. “You told me to register. Obey the law. But in the barn back there, while Warren was talking, you had a mighty fire in your eyes.”

  Andrew rubbed his stiff leg. “The truth is, Harry, my heart and my head are telling me two different things,” he said. “My head tells me to protect you, no matter what. To keep you out of trouble.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “My heart wants to smash the bastards.”

  Harry nodded. They walked past Avram’s store with its shiny new glass. Gunpowder soured the air, riding a southerly breeze from Fort Sill. Harry heard someone singing in a parlor, children’s laughter through wide open windows, the sound of a bath being poured.

  Halley ran to greet them as they turned into the yard. Annie Mae was sitting in a rocker on the porch, cradling her belly as if it were a mystery package she’d found on a table in the house. She sniffed. “You reek of smoke, both of you,” she said, smiling ruefully. “You’ve been naughty boys, haven’t you?”

  “Not naughty enough,” Andrew said wearily, and sat at her feet. “I think we’re done.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cannon fire from the fort. Harry blinked. His eyes were tired; the moon seemed to wobble.

  “That’s what I mean,” Andrew said, gesturing into the night, at fading echoes of the blasts.

  Halley howled at something rustling in the grass: a possum, perhaps, a cat or a rabbit flashing past. Harry imagined Randy Olin, shattered, clattery-boned, rising from the dirt. Halley ran in circles, sniffing, whimpering. Thunder shook the dark, long after midnight.

  EACH DAY HARRY ANXIOUSLY checked the mailbox. Still no notice from the draft board.

  He wandered idly down to the creek south of Walters, where Mollie’s father reputedly ran a shooting range and a gambling house. He saw no one among the blackberry brambles and patches of poison ivy.

  He remembered one evening, before the podium heist, walking with Mollie in the woods. They were shy with each other, avoiding glances. They didn’t talk: a quiet filled with import, a stillness bursting with force. Finally she said his name. He reached for her hand. Amazing peace; his life felt tinny without it.

  But Mollie was gone.

  Harry knew certain women dawdled near the oil fields, hoping to hook up with fellows who’d struck it rich. Even without much money in his pockets, he might find company for an evening or two, but easing the pressure in his body, he knew, wouldn’t cool the cored-out ache in his spirit.

  One morning, Harry had just finished his oatmeal when Mahalie called, “Bring me a towel, son, quick!” He grabbed a dishtowel from the kitchen cupboard and ran to his parents’ room. Through the doorway he caught a glimpse of his mother, pale, sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath, before Mahalie blocked his path. “That’s not heavy enough,” she said. “We need a bath towel. Hurry!”

  His mother’s legs had been rivered with blood.

  All morning he sat on a tattered hallway rug beside the bedroom while Mahalie and, eventually, a doctor from town ministered to Annie Mae. He heard his mother’s muffled moans through the door. He wished his father were home from the livery stable, but he didn’t want to leave to go get him. Finally, by early afternoon, Annie Mae was calm. The doctor left. Mahalie said Harry could see her.

  He grasped her trembling hand. “What’s the matter, Mama?”

  “There could be a problem with my pregnancy, Harry, but the doctor thinks maybe the danger’s over.”

  “Are you hurting?”

  “Not much now.”

  “Is the baby?”

  “We don’t know for sure. Pray for me, okay?”

  As if these words had summoned him, Father McCartney appeared on the porch. Mahalie let him in. He was thinner than he used to be, balding. “I just ran into Doc Harned downtown,” he said softly to Annie Mae. “He told me you were feeling a mite poorly.”

  Annie Mae tried to sit up. Harry adjusted her pillow. “It’s thoughtful of you to drop by, Father. I’m better, thanks.”

  She spoke to the priest for over an hour while Harry helped Mahalie shuck peas. “Mahalie?” he asked.

  “What is it?”

  Talking settled him some. “Where are your husband and children while you’re staying here with us?” “Back home, of course.”

  “They miss you, I guess.”

  She laughed. “They miss my suppers. My sister is taking care of them, and she can’t bake a bean to save her life.”

  “When you had your babies, did it hurt?”

  “The first time. My second child was easier. Your mother’s had bad luck. Her back, and all. Maybe she’s not built for giving birth. Some women are like that.”

  “What is she built for?”

  Mahalie paused with a pea-pod in her thick, dark hands. “For kindness,” she said. “Your mother is the nicest woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Yes,” Harry said.

  Father McCartney came out of the house. He reached down and patted Harry’s back. “See you in church Sunday?”

  “Sure, Father.”

  He nodded curtly at Mahalie. He hadn’t said a word to her.

  “He thinks I’m a pagan,” Mahalie explained once the priest had gone.

  “If you could get his picture into the paper, somehow, he’d cozy right up to you,” Harry said.

  Andrew returned at midday and spent a couple of hours with Annie Mae. Harry tried to listen to their whispers. Mahalie pulled him away from the bedroom door and put him to work in the kitchen, but not before he’d heard the words “virus,” “clotting,” “placenta.”

  That night, Annie Mae rested peacefully. Mahalie dished up peas and potatoes and a tender flank steak for Harry and his father. She downplayed Annie Mae’s problems. “Doctor thinks she’ll be all right, and the baby too. Don’t worry.”

  “I’ll try not to,” Harry said. “I wish I could do more.”

  “Your mother knows that.”

  “I feel in the way.” He glanced at his father. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll walk over to the oil fields this week, see if they’re hiring.”

  Andrew sliced his meat slowly. “They’re not. I heard it in town.”

  “You sure? Wouldn’t hurt to check. Seems they’ve got a new gusher over there every day, and I’m doing no one any good sitting here.”

  “Son, stay away from those fields.”

  Harry looked up, startled by his father’s harsh tone. “Why?”

  “It’s rough over there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s going to get … I mean, there are stirrings—”

  “What?”

  “Just don’t go near them, all right?”

  Andrew wouldn’t say any more. He finished his supper quickly then went to check on Annie Mae. Harry helped Mahalie with the dishes. Afterwards he went out and rolled a cigarette on the porch.

  “Can I have one of those?” Mahalie asked, bumping open the screen door. She untied the apron around her waist.

  Harry smiled and reached into his pocket for his papers.

  “Smell the wisteria.” Mahalie sniffed. “I think the purple flowers are sweeter than the white ones.”

  “Here you go,” Harry said. He struck a match for her. She inhaled slowly as though she’d never known such pleasure. She placed her hands on her hips and bowed backwards just a little, stretching, rolling her head. “Lordy, what a day,” she said. Harry nodded, watching the sunlight fade, exposing the Milky Way low in the southern sky. “Hard times,” he sighed.

  “It was that damned shooting star, remember?” Mahalie said, pointing up.

  “Halley’s Comet?”

  “That’s the one. I knew when I saw it, I said to myself, ‘We’re in for a decade of trouble. At least ten years.’ God always sends a sign.”

  “I don’t think—” He stopped, flicked tobacco flakes onto the grass. “Well, maybe,” he said. He didn’t want to get her started.

  “Listen.” She cocked her head to the east.

  “I know. It’s t
he Fort Sill cannons. They practice every night.”

  “No.” Mahalie blew a stream of smoke from her nose. “It’s closer than that.”

  Harry walked into the yard. She was right. These booms were much nearer than the fort, and in the opposite direction. Smaller, more intense.

  Andrew appeared in the doorway, scored by the mesh of the screen, framed by lantern light from deep inside the living room.

  “Dad?” Harry said. “You hear that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like—”

  Andrew cleared his throat, turned again inside the house. Harry’s skin tingled. He didn’t move until the cigarette singed his fingers.

  The following morning, the Herald’s inky headlines smeared his palms with the news that three paved roads east of town had been dynamited, and that a series of explosions had “rocked” several pipelines in the oil fields. An editorial blamed “anti-war subversives for this insidious act of cowardice. What will the Reds do next? Poison our water supply? Plant incendiary bombs in our homes? These malcontents have menaced the state of Oklahoma long enough. We call upon Sheriff Stephens and his office to do whatever he deems necessary to rid Cotton County of this scourge.”

  On the same page, the editor announced that the Oklahoma Press Association had informed the state’s congressional delegation that all their reporters would firmly support the war effort.

  Harry carried the paper into the kitchen where his father was stirring sugar into a cup of coffee. “You knew about this, didn’t you? That’s why you didn’t want me over there.”

  Andrew went on with his breakfast.

  “Why didn’t you tell me what they were planning?”

  “Because I knew you’d try to stop them,” Andrew said. “I didn’t want you getting hurt.”

  “This is the end of us. You know that. We’ll all wind up in jail.”

  “These younger men in the league now, they want—”

  “I know. Action. Revolution now.” He slammed the paper on the table. “Oscar Ameringer’ll be horrified when he hears about this.” He turned and left the room.