The Boy Orator Read online

  That afternoon, Mahalie sent him downtown for groceries while she looked after Annie Mae. He was still seething at the league, confused about the bad turn his father’s mind had made. Distracted, he spilled coins in the butcher shop, fumbled his sacks on the walk.

  The army posters upset him. Along with the local news, the morning paper had described a battle near St. Etienne, France, in which a German division had slaughtered most of the old First Oklahoma—renamed, for its duties in Europe, the 142nd Infantry. The regiment had been misinformed about the enemy’s location, somewhere between the Rheims and Aisne Rivers, the paper said, and had met unexpected artillery fire.

  He thought of the young soldier who’d given him a ride into town, just a few weeks ago now, and closed his eyes to squeeze back tears.

  Downtown seemed almost deserted today, the merchants low on goods. He noticed Avram with a bucket of brown suds wiping a muddy scrawl off his window. Die, Harry read. He started across the street when he spotted Warren Stargell leaving the livery stable, and ran to catch him. “What are you doing?” Harry hissed. “You’re crazy!”

  Warren pulled his hat low, cocky. “Class war, Harry.”

  “This isn’t the way!”

  “War is war, son. There’s only one way to fight it.”

  “Yes. By refusing to participate.”

  “Uh-huh, speaking of which, your daddy just told me you tried to register for the draft, though you’re not even old enough yet. Doesn’t sound like refusal to me.”

  Harry blushed.

  “I’m not inconsistent,” Warren Stargell said. “I’m not the one who’s turned his back on his principles.”

  “Warren, don’t you understand, every lawman in the state’ll be after our hides—”

  “So what’s new?”

  “They’ll be relentless.”

  “Harry, listen now, I’ve watched you mature in the last few years, but you’re still just a kid. Wait a minute. Let me finish. You don’t know what’s happening. Last week in Muskogee, son, a German-owned building was blown to bits, courtesy of some fine American patriots. Real true-blooded night-riders. You didn’t read that in the paper, did you? No. Of course you didn’t. There wasn’t room after all the space devoted to tongue-lashing us sorry Reds.” He lowered his voice. “We’re in a fight for our lives here, Harry. You think there aren’t ‘patriots’ in Walters?”

  Harry rubbed his eyes. “Call another meeting. Please. Let me speak, let me try to talk some sense into—”

  “Words’ve failed us, Harry. Words didn’t do us any goddam good.”

  “Move on!” someone hollered. Harry turned to see the sheriff. “It’s against the law to loiter and congregate in the streets.”

  “Congregate?” Warren Stargell said. “There’s only two of us here, Sheriff. Having a friendly conversation.”

  “I’ll tell you one more time, Warren. I won’t stand for agitation in my town. And if I learn you had anything to do with that business last night, you’ll never see the goddam sun. Now move along!”

  Warren Stargell shrugged. Harry turned away, just in time to see Avram, who apparently couldn’t scrub all the hateful words off his window, close his door and pull his brand new shades.

  THE NIGHTLY RUMBLES FROM the fort and the sighs from his mother’s room kept him jittery in bed. There were times when he wished Mahalie, who spent hours whispering sweetly to Annie Mae, would tip-toe in, sit beside him, and hum a tune to put him to sleep. You’re still just a kid, Warren Stargell had said. But he wasn’t. The fears he felt now weren’t irrational or silly—like the nights he used to scare himself watching tree shadows leap across the walls. Illness and war, destruction and death.

  His father seemed to sleep through them all, snoring loudly, then ignore them in the morning blaze. Mahalie blamed the comet; when he thought about it, Harry was inclined to trace the family’s troubles to that day in Anadarko when Andrew was beaten. His father seemed to lose some vital part of himself after that, and nothing had ever been the same. Sometimes Harry longed to be a boy again, to crawl into his father’s arms and be consoled, but Andrew was a figure of disturbance now. Harry had only himself.

  Late one night he heard nothing beneath his mother’s heavy breaths and knew Andrew was not in the house. He got out of bed, pulled on his clothes, and ran into the yard. Andrew was just closing the gate.

  “Dad, where you going?”

  His father jumped. “Harry. You scared me. I’m … just going to walk into town. I couldn’t sleep. Go back to bed now.”

  Is there a meeting?”

  “No.”

  “I think I’ll walk with you. I can’t sleep either.”

  “Harry, go back inside.” Stern now.

  He knew not to argue. He went in, peeked through the living room curtains until Andrew was several yards down the street, then slipped back out and followed quietly at a distance. Andrew wasn’t heading downtown. Immediately, Harry knew they’d wind up, this night, in the oil fields.

  New moon. Seamless clouds. Candles out all over town, and in the houses on the outskirts. Cornstalks rustled, papery, dry, in the fields; mint freshened the breeze. Crickets grew wary, hushed among pebbles and dust, when Harry approached.

  For a man with a limp, his father moved at a pretty fair clip. Harry wheezed, trying to keep up. Damn smokes.

  Dog-bark. A distant motor, chuffing.

  Lanterns hung from crossbars on the derricks. Harry crouched behind a wooden tool shed (he guessed) with a big fat lock on its door. The lanterns hissed like snakes, sent hot air roiling down the back of his neck. His hair prickled. From somewhere near, a metal clanging, as constant as a child banging a table for attention. The dumb persistence raised a lonely pang in his throat. The night was heavy, rancid, rotten with grease and a faint, languorous odor of natural gas.

  His father stood alone for several minutes, fidgeting. Then someone whispered his name. Once, twice. Andrew turned. Warren Stargell, accompanied by four or five young men Harry recognized from the meeting, but didn’t know. “Glad you could make it tonight, Andrew.”

  He nodded. “Where’s the bridge?”

  “‘Bout a quarter of a mile west of here. You’ll go with Al. He’s got everything you’ll need. The rest of us’ll take care of the pipelines.”

  The men didn’t waste any time. They split up. Harry didn’t know what to do. Shout? Scream for them to stop? But that might get them arrested; surely, after the earlier blasts, this area was heavily patrolled. His spine stiffened. Why hadn’t he noticed any cops? How could these fellows reach the rigs without being seen?

  The conviction grew in him, then, that they’d walked into a trap. Warren Stargell’s zealousness had made him careless—had softened his brain. Sure enough, as Harry followed his father to the bridge, he saw a dark car on a clay road looped between derricks. Its headlights were off. A long steel rod poked from an open window in the back. The sheriff’s men wouldn’t shoot without a warning, would they?

  Andrew and Al, seeing the car, pressed themselves to the ground. Harry knelt at the base of a rig, his feet sinking into black, chewy mud which popped beneath his weight, releasing wretched little stink bombs of gas.

  The car took a curve by a steep, grassy culvert, and disappeared. “Come on,” Al whispered to Andrew, but just as they stood, a blue and yellow flame shot from the earth several yards to their left. Apparently, Warren Stargell and his boys had blown a pipeline. A billowing stench, dense and hot as cowhide, enveloped Harry as he shivered and shielded his eyes. The fire broke, orange then gold, as it ate its way up the sky. Another burst, then another, a rhomboid of fire as big as a gas balloon, and the night was a tattered furnace. The oil derricks loomed like skinless ribs against the light. Harry heard screams—shrill and high, like his mother—and watched in terror the shapes of shadows on the leaky clay ground. Randy Olin rose from the dark, clutching his bloody head; the ghosts of the First Oklahoma, a dolorous mist, rushed from the flames, waving bayonets. The man from
the veterans’ home—Hole—stuck his tongue through the dirt, right where Harry was sitting.

  A plume of fire shattered just below Lyra: a giant yellow bird ripped at the belly.

  One of Warren Stargell’s boys rolled in the mud, trying to douse the blaze on his arm. He screamed and screamed. Harry saw the car slide to a stop in murky ruts. His father and Al took off. He started to follow, tripped, then scurried behind the base of the nearest rig. He couldn’t see Andrew anymore. Spirits had emerged from the car—tall and white and plentiful. Swiftly, they surrounded Warren Stargell and the others. The boy who’d been on fire lay with his charred and smoking arm in the muck of the grass. He swore beneath his breath.

  The men from the car, in hoods, in long, loose sheets, all held dull black rifles; one had a spidery hemp rope. It was curled into a noose. “Well, lookee here,” said Warren Stargell with a tremor in his voice. “It’s the Chamber of Commerce, come to greet us.”

  “You’re a dead man, Red.”

  “We’re the Distinguished Knights of Liberty,” said the tallest ghostly figure. His voice was vast, but muffled by the cloth on his face. “And you.” He cocked his gun. “You’re about to pay for your sins.”

  The burned boy whimpered. The man with the rope walked over to him and fitted it around his neck, pulling the knot tight. “How ‘bout it?” he said. “On that rig over there.”

  “This is quicker.” The tall man shoved the barrel of his rifle against the kid’s temple.

  “Please,” said the boy. “Sweet Jesus, don’t, please—”

  “Fucking Bolshevik.”

  Harry looked away. He heard a blunt roar, and almost simultaneously, a softer sound, like a watermelon crushed beneath the gait of an angry horse.

  “Goddam bloodthirsty capitalists!” Warren Stargell screamed.

  When Harry raised his eyes he saw the boy’s fingers twitching in the mud. The rope that had curled around his neck lay in a dark red lump collapsing into thick yellow clay. Harry’s stomach clenched. He crawled on his hands and knees beneath the derrick, heaving into the grass.

  Another rifle-cock, then: needles of flame in the distance—a delayed reaction, perhaps, from the first blasts, or a slow-burning fuse. A wall of fire as wide as a house rose and shimmied in the sky, painting orange all the bumpy bottoms of the clouds.

  Warren Stargell broke for the woods, followed by his comrades. The Knights of Liberty, momentarily dazed, were slow to raise their guns. They got off a couple of shots then piled into their car. Harry bolted, back the way he’d come. Bile rose in his throat. He didn’t see Andrew—maybe he’d gotten away. He heard a car motor, ducked between brambles but never slowed down. He had no breath. By the time he reached town, his lungs were ponderous stones, pulling him down. He fell to his knees in a dusty lot behind the livery stable. The dead boy came swimming, spasming into his mind. With each try for breath his stomach made a fist. Someone shouted in the street. He inched, crouching, along a birch fence to get a better view. The Knights again—only these were different men. Most of them were shorter, dumpier than the figures he’d seen in the field. Their hoods were large and misshapen. They raised their arms; a second later Avram’s window flew apart.

  The men began to scatter but this time Avram was waiting for them. He scrambled out of the Emporium, firing a pistol.

  Grabbing a birch slat, Harry raised himself. One of the Knights lumbered past the stable like a big frightened steer; Harry pulled himself over the fence and fell on his legs, ripping his sheet, wrestling him into the dirt. He pounded the man’s wide head until his flapping hood tore away.

  “Thtop it, thtop it, pleathe!”

  Harry’s fists faltered, high in the air. “Oh my god,” he huffed.

  “Thtop it, I thurrender!”

  “Jimmie? Jimmie Blaine?”

  “Yeth? Who—?”

  “Damn it.”

  “Harry? Ith that you?” Blood swirled on Jimmie’s lip where Harry had hit him.

  “Jimmie, what the hell are you doing?”

  His old pal grinned. “Thit, boy, it’th good to thee you.”

  Harry’s head ached. “Why are you here? Answer me!”

  “Thcaring the Jew, Harry. We’re thcaring the Jew.”

  “Jimmie, Jimmie, oh Jimmie.” He wheezed. “You can’t possibly—” He sat back, limp, on the ground. “Who told you to do this, huh?”

  “Rick and Eddie and Thteve—”

  “Eddie? Eddie who? Eddie McGarrah?”

  “Yeah. Remember him? It’th tho thad, Harry. Hith friend died, the one we uthed to pick cotton with—you remember him, don’t you?” “I know.”

  “Eddie’th been tho thad.” Voices faded down the block. “He thayth the only thing that helpth ith to root out the evil—”

  “Jesus, Jimmie. Do you even know what a Jew is?”

  “Yeth, Harry. They’re witches. They live in caveth with big fat thnaketh—”

  “No. No. Eddie’s a liar, just like Randy was.”

  “I know the cave part ithn’t true—”

  “Damn it, Jimmie, none of it’s true.”

  Avram rounded the fence. When he saw Jimmie’s sheet, he raised a hand and aimed the pistol at his large, benevolent face.

  “No, Mr. Greenbaum. Please. This one … this one doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Harry said. “He was tricked by the others.”

  Jimmie just smiled at this, as agreeable as ever.

  Avram looked confused. His arm wavered. “Bastard,” he croaked.

  “Yes.” Harry stood. “But this one can help us. He can identify the others. He didn’t mean any harm, really. He’s just misguided. Trust me, sir. Please, please put the pistol away.”

  “Harry?” Jimmie asked.

  “What?” Harry snapped, still focused on Avram’s hand, on the big ruby ring near the trigger.

  “Tell him to keep hith big fat thnaketh away from me, all right?”

  “There aren’t any snakes, Jimmie,” Harry said. Carefully, he patted Avram’s arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll take care of everything. We’ll put a stop to this, I promise.”

  HE FOUND HIS FATHER at home, on the porch, spattered with mud and clay, rubbing his hobbled leg. Andrew said nothing when he saw Harry, also filthy and worn, open the gate.

  “There’s a man dead out there,” Harry said. “One of your buddies from the league.”

  Andrew stared at his shoes. Crickets whirred in the grass. The eastern horizon pulsed with strident flames.

  “They shot him right in the head. The others …Warren …maybe they got away. I don’t know.”

  Halley, long-nailed, came clicking down the dusty gravel path, nuzzled Harry’s hand. His mother’s roses and poppies, dry, curling, browned at the ends, sweetened the air.

  “What were you doing?” Harry whispered harshly.

  “Fighting for my country,” Andrew answered, equally softly, and just as fierce. But his face had turned pale.

  “You’ve thrown away everything you’ve ever believed in.”

  “No.” Andrew stamped his right foot on the porch’s bottom step. “Changing tactics is not a defeat.”

  “So I have to obey the law. I have to be careful. But you, you can do any damn-fool, reckless thing you please—”

  “You’re still just a boy—”

  “I am not a boy! I watched a man die tonight for no good reason.” He wiped his eyes. “I’m not a boy anymore. Not anymore. No, sir.”

  “We’re in a struggle for the working class, Harry. People … well, people die in struggles. If you can’t accept that, maybe you should run off, then, and join the Democrats. You can sit on your keester in the city, moan and do nothing, right along with them.”

  “You sound like Warren,” Harry said. “He’s lost his judgment. You’re smart enough to know that.”

  A Model T came ratcheting up the street. Harry’s shoulders tensed, Andrew paled even further, but the car just shuttled past.

  “You’re smarter than thi
s, Dad,” Harry said again, glancing once more in the direction of the oil field fires.

  Mahalie filled the doorway and shushed them with a finger to her lips. “Your wife’s trying to sleep,” she said. “It’s been a hard night for her.”

  For all of us, Harry thought. And then he thought, It’s over.

  MAHALIE RAN THROUGH THE house unlatching the doors, prying open all the windows. “Got to unbind this place,” she said.

  Harry followed her. “Why? What do you mean?”

  “If we loosen up all the locks, the spirit of release will blow through these rooms and relax your mama’s body. It’s time for her to drop that baby she’s carrying. If she don’t, I fear it’s bad trouble.”

  “Can I see her?” He’d been kept from her bed all morning.

  “She’s in pain, child. You can see her after a while.”

  Flies and bees flew through the open windows. They lighted on the sugar tin in the kitchen; Harry smashed them with yesterday’s paper. The survivors of the old First Oklahoma had been shipped home from Europe, he read, and were recovering in a military infirmary in Oklahoma City.

  At midmorning, just as the shadows of the house’s front eaves were starting to swallow Annie Mae’s withered white roses, Father McCartney walked through the open gate, up the gravel path and onto the porch. Halley stirred and growled but didn’t bother to bark. Tiny sparks of sweat wobbled on the priest’s pale neck—the day was broiling already—and slid beneath his collar. “Howdy, Harry. Is your daddy inside with your ma?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think I could see them?”

  Harry shrugged. Father McCartney slipped past him, into the house. Harry sat on the porch scratching Halley’s ears. A strong smoke-smell drifted through town, more powerful, even, than the dog’s impressive odor.

  At noon came the visit from the sheriff. Harry had been expecting it; he determined to keep his mouth shut as much as possible.

  The sheriff got right down to business. “I want Andrew.”

  “My ma’s real sick,” Harry said. “He’s inside with her. I’m sorry, but they can’t be disturbed now.”