The Boy Orator Page 3

  “Yessir.”

  “Yes, you know what it means? Or yes, you are one?”

  Harry steeled himself. “I believe in the noble tenets of Socialism, sir.”

  Andrew shut his eyes.

  “Tenets!” The man in the mask laughed with a low rumble like rolling marbles. “Well now, he sounds pretty smart to me.” He turned to Andrew. “Shaughnessy. That a mick name?”

  “Sounds mick to me, Billy,” one of his buddies answered.

  “Damn it, I’ve told you, don’t identify me.” He tightened his rubber disguise. “So, not only are you Reds, you’re goddam Irish Catholics. You want to take our land and Romanize our schools, that it? Enslave our kids to the Pope?”

  “No,” Andrew said. “We want what you want. Honest, we’re just like you.”

  “Listen, mick, we got a nice town here. Folks work hard, go to Protestant churches, earn what they have. We don’t need country scum coming ‘round telling us how to live. So you go on back to your nasty women and your niggers, you hear?”

  “Lucky for him we’re fresh out of hot tar, eh Billy?” The man cracked Andrew’s nose with the flat of his palm. Andrew wobbled and fell to the ground. The group swarmed on him, kicking. Blood bloomed in a swell of dirt.

  Harry hollered. He looked around for help, pounded one of the men. Someone grabbed him from behind and tossed him into a woodpile. A loose ax bit his side. Squatty logs, fat as little bulldogs, tumbled all around him. He tasted dirt and blood, the smoky tinge of oak.

  THE NEXT THING HE knew, rain was hammering his face and his feet were cold. He picked himself out of the rickety stack of wood, ripped his shirt on a splinter. The ax had left a big gash in his side just above his right hip. He’d landed at an angle so the wound wasn’t worse. The rain pasted his hair to his face, washed blood down his thighs. Shivering, he stumbled toward his father who lay face up in a thin crater of mud. Andrew’s eyes and lips were swollen, purple-green. He groaned when Harry touched his shoulder.

  “I’ll get a doctor,” Harry croaked. In the rain, bubbles formed on his lips. He remembered a pharmacy on Main Street. No one was around.

  Andrew raised a bloody arm. “No,” he hissed. He tried to speak without moving his mouth. “Don’t trust. … the bastards here. I’ll be …fine, with rest. Did they take our money?”

  Harry turned and found the half-open bag. He looked inside. The clothes were soaked. “I think everything’s here,” he said.

  “Good. Are you hurt?” Andrew tried to sit up, groaned again, sank deeper into shallow streams of muddy yellow rain.

  “Not bad.”

  “Thank God. If you can get me … to the hotel, check us in, same room. Rest. Rest the night…”

  Twenty minutes later Harry had managed to pull his father to his feet. They traveled stiffly. In the lobby of the Palmer Hotel, Harry snapped at the startled clerk in his most effective tones, “No, we don’t need a doctor. Just our room. Now!”

  The clerk, a pasty man with a mole near the top of his head, persisted. “I think I should inform the manager there’s a serious injury on the premises.”

  “Please,” Andrew said. He dripped blood and water on the desk. “Listen to the boy. There’s an extra buck in it for you. I’ll be fine. You won’t be liable for anything, I swear. Harry, give him the money.”

  Harry opened the bag and did as he was told. As he helped his father up the stairs he glanced into the restaurant. Waiters with trays shot from the kitchen in their crisp red jackets, trailing feathers of pleasant smoke. There’d be no “blessing” tonight; no birthday, even.

  The bedsprings squealed when Andrew flopped onto the sheets. Harry lit a white candle on the night table. Gingerly, he washed his father’s face with a cool, wet rag. His own cut he cleaned without soap. He wrapped one of Andrew’s suspenders around his waist to stop the bleeding.

  Andrew motioned Harry to his side. “In the morning …you’ll have to drive the wagon. Do you think you can do that?”

  “Yessir.” Harry smeared tears from his eyes. He’d never seen his father so helpless. The sight of Andrew battered changed the world. The ground, the air around him, no longer seemed a sure bet.

  “Son, it’s important … you know why this happened.”

  “I know why it happened,” Harry said. “Because we’re right.”

  “Yes. Those men are scared.” Andrew sighed so heavily it seemed his features would alter forever. “Make a good family, make a good life. There’s no higher calling for a man—my own daddy used to tell me that. When you talk to people like you do, Harry, you’re … doing that. Trying to make life good. Some people don’t understand. They want to—” He rolled over in pain.

  “It’s all right, Dad,” Harry said, gripping his father’s hand. “I know. You don’t have to say any more. Rest now.”

  Soon Andrew was snoring, threatening the candle flame with his breath. Wax peppered the floor. Harry’s stomach growled. He unrolled the sock with the money inside. The hard, dark coins were warm as sunny pebbles in his palm. Maybe not steak, but a slice or two of bacon? Creamed corn, a mashed potato? No, his father would notice if even a little was gone. “That’s not our jack!” he’d say. “It belongs to the league. You don’t spend a dime without my permission, you hear me?”

  Harry wondered what his father would say if he admitted to him, “Dad, I’m tired of making speeches.” The trips weren’t fun if he and Andrew couldn’t eat a nice meal or do something special. Once, in Guthrie, they’d watched a traveling circus. A woman in a silver gown wrapped herself like a pretzel around a barrel of water; later, she stayed for Harry’s talk. He liked his time onstage, the warm cedar smells of the platforms he paced, the crack of his shoe heels on the shiny new wood. He loved using his voice like a rope pulling people toward him, the red flags in the trees waving like pairs of pudgy hands applauding, but everything else—the long wagon rides, the meetings with league officials—wore him out.

  It wasn’t true his father wrote his speeches. Harry found his own right words. He’d read the great Oscar Ameringer, the father of their movement (“Socialism grows when every other crop fails”). Heard the chicken-eating preachers at brush arbor revivals. From them all he’d learned to plant ideas, like burrs, in people’s minds. He knew what worked. If only he could talk from his porch, never leave. He craved his mother’s biscuits, the warm flour smell of her apron as she rocked him in her arms.

  He walked to the dresser mirror to adjust the strap around his wound. In the near-dark he almost tripped on the open leather bag. He heard the choc beer slosh. His belly murmured again. A sip or two would surely ease his pain … he could throw the bottle away, say it rolled into the alley and smashed when the men attacked them. His dad would never know. He reached inside the grip.

  Last summer Andrew had taken him to the Wichita foothills west of Lawton to watch a man he called an “old family friend” mix a batch of corn liquor. “Don’t ever tell your mother,” Andrew warned him as they groped through stickery woods. They saw a hand-painted sign in a clearing: “All Nations Welcome But ‘Carrie.’” His father grinned. “It’s not far now.”

  “Who’s ‘Carrie’?” Harry asked.

  “Carry Nation. Saloon-buster.” He stopped to shake the sweat off his face. “Like your ma, she doesn’t approve of this sort of thing.” They walked a little farther, past post oak and gnarly mistletoe groves, until they heard hushed and serious voices. “I’m a friend!” his father shouted and raised his arms. Harry did the same. Immediately, they were surrounded by shotgun-toting men in dirty blue overalls. A big bearded fellow spat tobacco onto a pine stump. “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s Andrew and his boy.” The men lowered their guns.

  All day Harry watched them brew. His father’s friend, Zeke Cash, said, “Now, the Anti-Saloon League and the Christian Temperance Union’ll tell you this stuff’s a sin but don’t you believe it. The Bible says, ‘Wine maketh glad the heart of man.’ Psalms 104. Look it up.” He poured sweet mash fr
om a barrel into a still-pot, added oak chips for flavor. Meanwhile, his buddies, swatting off horseflies, dug sacks of unground corn out of cone-shaped manure piles, to see if they were ready to mush with sugar and water. One of the men, standing guard beneath the mistletoe, played lonesome love songs on a mouth harp.

  “How much of this Ruckus Juice you want, Andrew?” Zeke said.

  “Couple of bottles.”

  “Two bottles of Panther Sweat comin’ up.”

  He ran off the first batch of bran, threw the slop on leafy ground by a pair of strutting chickens. The birds pecked at the bristling foam, dithered in half-circles, then fell down drunk. Zeke offered Harry a sip; he stalled. His father said, “I’ll tell you a secret, son. When you were teething as a baby, screaming all night and keeping us awake, the only thing that’d soothe you was a bit of Zeke’s Bust Head. Your ma didn’t like it, but I told her to rub a spoonful on your gums each night and you settled right down, like a sweet, lazy lamb. That’s the only time she ever let the stuff in the house.”

  “All right,” Harry said, doubtful. He raised the wooden cup, rolled his head back slowly, gagged. A huge, raw hand had reached into his throat and stolen the breath from his lungs. He hacked and gasped while all the men laughed. Later, he tasted the murky choc from the bottom of the mash barrel, liked it better than the whiskey. Since then his father had always tossed a “blessing” in the bag when they went on trips. He didn’t let Harry have much; a quick shot if his speech was particularly good.

  Now, while his father slept in the dim room, Harry chugged the beer. “Happy birthday,” he said to his face in the mirror. He heard piano music from lighted rooms across the street below. Restless, stirred by the choc, and a little dizzy already, he cracked the door, tiptoed down the hall and slipped downstairs to the lobby. The desk clerk stared at him. Harry balanced the bottle with both tingling hands behind his back. He still wore his torn, bloody shirt.

  “Everything all right?” the clerk said. The black mole quivered on his forehead.

  Harry nearly dropped the bottle. The clerk squinted, tried to peer around the boy to see what he was hiding. Harry realized he’d stuffed the money sock into his pants when he was thinking of ordering dinner. He walked to the desk, set the bottle by his feet so the clerk couldn’t see it, pulled out the sock, and spilled a mound of coins. He’d think of something later to tell his father. “Here.” He arranged the change in a circle. “Just go about your business, okay?”

  The clerk grinned. “Big guy, eh? I know who you are. I’ve seen the posters.” This sounded like an accusation. He swept the coins into his coat and turned away.

  On the street Harry hid in the shadows of a newspaper office across the way from a raucous cafe. He leaned against a hitching post, nursing the choc. A few men passed, talking, smoking. They didn’t see him there in the dark. He watched their swinging arms as they walked, ready to run if he spotted the thick hair he’d glimpsed on the gang who’d hurt him. He smelled pepper-beef from the place across the street, heard women’s laughter, deep and lively as his mother’s. He shivered.

  The storm had left as quickly as it rose. The air was warmer than before but his shirt was damp. The street was rutted with puddles. Someone strummed a banjo in the kitchen. His stomach gurgled. He took a step into the street, dodged back when two men passed. What if his attackers were in the cafe? He couldn’t risk it. And there was still a problem with the money. His father would see he was short already.

  A ruddy dog with spots on its back yipped at his feet. “Get!” Harry hissed. A strolling couple looked over and saw him. “Get away from here. Leave me alone.” The dog was playful, insistent on sniffing the choc, surprised at its own frequent farts.

  Voices accompanied the banjo now. Harry went soft in the knees. “Well well,” someone said. Harry jittered, startling the dog. It farted loudly, a sound like clattering brass, then scampered off down the street, dark then light, dark then light, as it passed through shadows then under sidewalk lamps.

  “Take it easy, friend.” A figure approached from the alley. “You’re pretty skittish for a Communist. I thought all you fellows were fearless, out in front, fighting the people’s war.” The breathing mask man, weaving with drink, still in his green tweed suit, stained now under the sleeves. His yellow kerchief dangled from a hip pocket next to a curly rubber string.

  Harry hadn’t thought about the comet since the beating. He looked up now. Clouds flat as planks, stars like nails, nearly hidden, holding them all together.

  “I’m not a Communist,” he murmured. Beer ambushed his head, pinching, pinching.

  “Could’ve fooled me.” The man rolled a cigarette. A sliver of brown hair bobbed on his chin just below his lower lip, a woolly wood chip. “You know how many of these I sold today?” He pulled a mask from his pocket, spilling his kerchief onto the ground. “Five. Yesterday, in Shawnee? Fifty-five.” He lit the fag, flicked the match into the street. A brief flare. A comet-tail. “You and your Communist talk, stirring folks up. You ruined it for me, kid.” He staggered and belched.

  Harry set his bottle down. He staggered too. “Maybe tomorrow—”

  “Hell, tomorrow’ll be too late. Halley’s will have come and gone. Have to find another scam. Where’s your old man?”

  “Asleep.”

  The salesman laughed, nudged the empty bottle with his boot. “You and me, we got something in common. The thrill of the pitch. Afterwards you can’t settle down, right? Others hit the sack, your blood’s still racing.” He fingered the loose threads of Harry’s shirt. “What happened, you bust a longhorn? Boy, you do have energy.”

  Harry didn’t answer.

  “Well, I say us drummers, we gotta stick together.”

  “I’m not a drummer, either.”

  “Sure you are.” The man swirled his cigarette like a stubby yellow sparkler over his head. “You’re selling the biggest idea of all. Promise of a better life. And it’s about as useful as the crap I push. You’re pretty good, though, I gotta say. What was that line?—‘I pray we see the Kingdom on Earth.’ Pretty good, kid, pretty good. How old are you?”

  “Twelve. Today”

  “Well now, happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.”

  The man offered his hand. “Bob Cochran.”

  “Harry,” Harry said.

  “Harry, you stick with this business, you’ll be a damn fine drummer someday. Got the spark, that’s a fact. I only wish you’d take it somewhere else.” He’d smoked his cigarette quickly. He ground it out in a knothole on the hitching post then rolled himself another.

  Harry looked at the mask, stuck now back in Bob Cochran’s pocket, glanced nervously at the sky. Behind him, in the doorway of the newspaper office, a cricket rattled. “Where’s your friend?” Harry asked.

  “Who?”

  “That lady with you.”

  “Sue-Sue?” Bob Cochran smiled a mean-looking smile, the closest smile to a frown Harry had ever seen. “Waiting for me back in the room. That’s how I get my energy out.”

  “You hit her,” Harry said.

  Bob Cochran frowned his smile. “She’s Kiowa,” he answered, as if that explained everything. He noticed Harry eyeing the mask. “You want that? Think it’s going to save you? Take it.” He dropped it in Harry’s hands; the rubber was cool and crawly. “Nothing’s going to save you, kid.” He bent level with Harry’s face. Whiskey leaped off his breath. “The coming century, it’s going to be a marvel, you know that? Electric lights are just the beginning. People are going to eat, drink—believe it—travel with speed. There’ll be shiny chrome machines doing all our work. Buildings tall as stars. And you won’t see a whit of it. Know why?” He stroked his wood-chip beard.

  Harry, weary, hungry, befuddled by his daddy’s beer, said, “The comet?”

  “Ha!” Bob Cochran sailed his second fag at the farty little dog, who’d returned and was crouching in the street as if waiting for him to leave. “‘Cause you’re stuck in Shithole, O
klahoma, that’s why.” He rose unsteadily, angled off down the walk. “Nice talking to you, Harry,” he called from the dark.

  Harry sank to the ground, picked up the choc bottle and smashed the rubber mask with it, scaring then drawing the curious dog. Here, sitting in the dirt of Anadarko, hearing music fade in the place across the street and knowing he was too late to get any supper; here, on the night he was twelve, while his beaten father slept, he determined his story would begin. The speed Bob Cochran had mentioned, the chrome machines and the buildings, Harry Tracy Shaughnessy would bring them here, right here, to Oklahoma. Why not? Fired by the beer, and the thrill of the pitch, he decided the century would deny him nothing.

  When he rose he noticed Bob Cochran’s yellow kerchief, crumpled like a tiny paper parasol in a puddle. He picked it up, squeezed it almost dry, and wrapped it around his wrist.

  The clerk was nodding off on a stool behind the hotel desk when Harry returned to the lobby. He crept back up the stairs, tripping twice, found his father still lost to the world. His face, in poor, reflected light from the window, had turned the color of split-pea soup. The candle had long since guttered out. Labored snores. Harry stood, holding the money sock and the kerchief, watching the street below. The little dog did an agitated dance. It seemed he was looking for Harry. A wagon passed, drawn by a single white horse. A tuckered-out farmer, leaving market day late. Harry looked up to see if he could see the coming century, or maybe just the comet, its fantail wide as a peacock’s, sowing sparks like seeds above the bank’s peaked roof. Clouds packed the sky; he couldn’t see very straight after all the beer he’d drunk. When his gaze dropped again he saw in the street Bob Cochran and Sue-Sue, her dark skin bold against the paleness of her dress. She was—in Harry’s blurry sight—the most beautiful woman he’d ever stopped to watch. They danced (she stiffly, with swollen, trampled feet) to music he couldn’t hear—music from the future, perhaps—in front of the cafe window, silhouetted, ghostly by a faint electric light.