The Boy Orator (23 page)

Harry liked to start early each morning—he competed with Randy Olin and Eddie McGarrah to see who could harvest the most—but the weighers wouldn't take wet cotton. “Ain't paying for dew,” they'd say. “You wait'll that's dry, so we can get an accurate measure.” They paid the boys thirteen cents a pound; on a good day, when his back wasn't screaming and he could still bend and stretch at sunset, Harry averaged two hundred pounds in just under twelve hours.

The first day school was out, Randy Olin appeared in the fields wearing a white mask beneath his battered straw hat. To avoid sun-burn, everyone wore long sleeves and hats, though fall temperatures still topped ninety degrees. As Olin approached, Harry saw it wasn't a mask at all, but a whorled cream spread liberally across his cheeks and the back of his neck. “Buttermilk and cornmeal,” Olin explained. “So's I don't freckle and end up looking like a damn ol'
Irishman.”

“You look like an ass,” Harry said. “Careful, or they'll hitch you to that wagon over there.”

“Shaughnessy, is it true all Catholics are drunks?”

Harry ignored him; he adjusted the straps of his croker sack so they wouldn't nip his shoulders. Eddie McGarrah, trailing Olin, giggled and spat in the air.

“I heard they had to pass a law so's the Catholics wouldn't fall over tipsy in church.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Harry said. “You might learn something if you read the papers.”

“Damn papers write about the damn Irish all the time. Mr. Boy Orator. So what?”

“So what?” Jimmie Blaine echoed, approaching Harry, dragging his long empty sack.

“Oh look, it's Shaughnessy's friend, the simpleton,” Olin said. McGarrah laughed. “Finally, there's someone on Shaughnessy's level.”

Jimmie tried to smile but he only looked confused.

“Olin, you're pathetic,” Harry said.

“I hear your daddy got so soused in church one day he ran outside and tried to fuck a cow, thinking it was the Virgin Mary.”

Harry nearly swung at him, and would have if his arm hadn't snagged in his sack as he turned. Jimmie saw Harry's anger and, apparently trying to help, reached for Olin's arm. Olin jumped back—“Stay away from me, simpleton!”—bumping McGarrah, who fell against a sharp cotton stalk. Its limbs stuck out at right angles to the ground, and ripped his long checkered sleeve.

“You boys!” yelled a foreman from the road. “Time's a-wasting. Snap to it!”

Harry looked darkly at Olin, then turned and began to pluck at the bolls. He didn't have gloves. The family's bills and Annie Mae's bail had eaten up the supply-money. At thirteen cents a pound, he wasn't going to relieve his parents' debts anytime soon.

It was impossible to avoid being jabbed by the bolls' prickly edges, even when he was careful, and he wasn't careful today: he was furious at Olin, more than ever determined to outpick him. He told himself Olin wasn't worth the energy it took to be mad at him, he was just a baby; he understood, then, that this loudmouthed kid wasn't the only fellow troubling him. The “drunk Catholic” talk brought him right back to Father McCartney.

As Harry had warned Commissioner Boyd, the local courts were now reviewing the “bone-dry” statute, questioning its efficacy in light of the Catholics' anger. Last Sunday, Father McCartney had told his congregation he was “sure this abominable law was going to be repealed, with the Lord's generous help.” What did the Lord have to do with it? Harry thought. Did the Lord speak to Boyd, the
Herald?
Immediately, he was ashamed of his immodesty, but the priest had annoyed him just before Mass. He had thanked Harry for “staying out of the fray” while he, Father McCartney, in agreement with Chancellor de Hasque and Bishop Meerschaert, negotiated with the county leaders. Harry hadn't stepped back on purpose. No one had come to him; for all his big talk when the reporter had asked him his plans, he didn't know how to take the next step. He was still just a kid. A powerless little boy.

His helplessness infuriated him; county laws, tribal laws, marriage customs. He wanted the knowledge and the ability to change them all. Irritably, he pulled at the bolls. They punctured his hands until he bled. By noon, his spine and his knees ached. He reeked of sweat, a deep, earthy musk. Boll-needles and thin, nuggety seeds pinched his skin beneath his nails. His fingers throbbed, swollen and red. His throat crackled, deep inside, like wallpaper ripped from sticky boards.

He dragged his sack, eight or nine feet long, through the field toward the water-wagon and the weighing scale. Sunlight hammered his face. Little green bugs peppered his forehead and cheeks. A small girl, happy to be helping the adults, very serious and self-important, dipped a tin cup into a barrel of water and handed it to him. While he drank, two men lifted his sack onto the scale, a shiny metal pan hung on a chain attached to a raised wagon tongue; it dangled six or seven feet in the air. “Forty-five and …one-half pounds,” said one of the men.

He'd have to do better than that if he was going to beat Randy Olin. He reached toward the little girl who was standing in the wagon and gave her the cup, a small movement that seemed to tear every muscle in his back. He limped into the field. Children walked steadily along the rows, carrying dripping water dippers to several of the pickers. The white kids were fascinated by the big black men. They tried to catch rides on their sacks, trailing the ground as the quiet workers moved up and down in a line. Harry could see the frustration, pain, and annoyance on the faces of the men; they couldn't snap at the kids for fear of upsetting the whites and losing their jobs.

Randy Olin was laughing at Jimmie. “That's right, there are snakes here too, all over this field!” he said. Jimmie had been telling his snake story to everyone. “You can try to kill them, simpleton, grab a hoe from one of those wagons and chop them in two, but you know what happens then?
Both
halves jump to life! So you chop and chop and chop. Pretty soon there's
ten
snakes slithering after you, rattling their tails and gnashing their fangs!” Jimmie screamed.

“Shut up, Olin,” Harry said.
“You're
the simpleton. That buttermilk on your face has seeped through your skin and into your brain, and there's nothing left in there but a soggy mess of cereal.” He grabbed Jimmie's arm and led him away.

“Ith that true, Harry? The ten thnaketh?”

“No, Jimmie. Randy Olin's a liar. Don't believe anything he tells you.”

“Hey Shaughnessy!” Olin called across the field. “You pick like a girl! End of the day, I'll have you beat by a mile!”

Harry's jaw clenched. He dropped to his knees and began to tug at the cotton. Right away, his joints burned again. Tears streamed down his face with every pluck and pull. Jimmie noticed his distress. “Harry, you all right?”

“Just exhausted, that's all.”

“Let me help.”

Harry shook his head but Jimmie said, “It'th okay, my thack'th full. Take it in. I'll finith yourth.”

Jimmie was big and seemed not to tire. Too dumb to know he was hurting, Harry thought: the kind of thing Olin would say. He smiled, then carried Jimmie's sack to the wagon. “This is Blaine's,” he whispered to the weighers. Olin, in the field, stared at him, astonished. Harry took a drink, watched several women, including his mother, in the shade of two maples weave ducking for extra sacks. She waved at him.

By the time he returned to his spot in the field, Jimmie had nearly filled his sack. “Take a break, Harry,” Jimmie said merrily. Harry sat behind a thick clump of stalks, out of sight of the foreman and Randy Olin, kneading his muscles, catching his breath. He rolled himself a cigarette. Twenty minutes later he hauled his sack to the scale. Olin had a fit, his face as red as a sting. Harry could see him squint from several yards away, and pound his thighs with his fists.

Back in the field, Harry said, “Jimmie, I appreciate your help, but—”

“It'th okay, Harry. You're a good friend to me.”

So the rest of that afternoon Jimmie regularly spelled Harry; by sunset, he'd picked enough for each of them to top three hundred pounds. The weighers counted out the money. Olin accused Harry of cheating but no one listened to him. People were tired and ready to leave for the day. “It's politics, Olin,” Harry told the boy. “Expediency. Finding, and appealing to, the proper constituency.”

“Huh?”

“Exactly the response I expected from you. Which is why you'll never beat me.”

He turned for home. There, against the sky, surprising him, was Avram's dark profile, the big black hat and flowing shirt. The peddler passed in his noisy hack, nodding hello to the pickers. Harry tasted lemonade deep in the back of his throat, remembering the flask Avram had given him the day they'd moved the wagon. Thin clouds, purple and gold, streaked the yellow horizon behind the salesman's head. Watching him all alone in his seat, bobbing, flicking the reins, Harry was overcome by loneliness, the ache and the loss he'd felt since parting with Mollie. Did Avram have a wife? A child? How did anyone survive this windy, rocky world on his own? Avram turned a corner at the edge of the field before Harry could say anything to him. The weighers called good-night. Harry brushed dark seeds from his sleeves, tried to shake the sadness from his mind. He folded up his sack, and followed the ruts in the road.

F
ATHER
M
CCARTNEY MURMURED,
“A
MEN
,” then gave a lesson from the Pentateuch. “Good tidings” closed the evening service: “Friends, just this morning I was contacted by Sheriff Stephens. He told me that the ‘bone-dry' statute will be repealed as of the first of next week, and all charges against our neighbors”—he indicated Annie Mae and her three co-conspirators—“have been dismissed.”

A burst of applause from the pews. Afterwards, on the church steps, the priest shook Annie Mae's hand and told her she'd been very brave. He ruffled Harry's hair as if petting a dog. The next day, when he got home from the fields, Harry saw a picture in the paper of Father McCartney shaking hands with Commissioner Boyd. The caption read “Faith in Compromise.”

Harry tried to squelch his jealousy and his feeling that he'd been outmaneuvered by the priest, who seemed to crave celebrity of his own. His mother was free—that was the important thing—and besides, at least this was a triumph in a season of defeat. The Democrats in Oklahoma City had passed the Grandfather Clause, killing the Negro vote. The Democratic candidate, Lee Cruce, had been elected governor on a promise of attracting new investment capital to the state. In the end, J. T. Cumbie pulled over twenty-four thousand votes, an impressive showing, but not enough to change politics-as-usual. Warren Stargell had told Andrew, “Cumbie's taking it hard, I hear, but he swears he'll rise again to fight another day.” Harry heard little conviction in his voice. Cruce was a disastrous choice, Andrew said: a banker by trade, he was an overly cautious man, deliberate and without a shred of humor. He supported black disenfranchisement. He swore he'd block the Socialists' attempts to distribute textbooks, free, in all the public schools. Andrew, Warren Stargell, and the other members of the league sat for hours in their meetings, barely moving or talking.

Their lethargy affected Harry's work in the fields. He was grateful for Jimmie's help. Following the incident in the pond, Jimmie had decided to convert to Catholicism. He liked Harry and Harry was Catholic, he explained; priests didn't go anywhere near muddy old swimming holes; and he enjoyed Confession. It was like telling stories, he thought, so over and over he told the story of the snake to Father McCartney, who emerged dazed from the booth each time he'd blessed and forgiven Jimmie. Harry enjoyed the priest's annoyance.

One afternoon in the fields Jimmie leaped into the air, wringing his arms. He called Harry's name. “Thnake!” he said. “I think I heard a thnake!” Harry knelt. Beneath a thick clump of stalks he spotted a cinnamon-colored foot, a long, twitching ear. “Come here, Jimmie.”

“I don't think tho, Harry, I—”

“It's not a snake. Come look.”

Jimmie crouched beside him. A waxy whisker poked from a cloud of cotton. Small squeaking sounds, muffled, rose from ribbed furrows in the dirt. “Rabbith!” Jimmie shouted. “Harry, it'th rabbith!”

A mother cottontail had given birth beneath a flat canopy of bolls, fat and hanging close to the ground. Jimmie reached for one of the babies, sending a shower of seeds into the soil and into the animals' fur. The mother bristled but didn't attack. Jimmie rocked the tiny rabbit in his palm. Its eyes were barely open and it tried short thrusts with its stunted hind legs.

That day, Randy Olin outpicked Harry by nearly fifty pounds. Jimmie's production dipped considerably; he couldn't be pulled from the rabbits. Harry loved Jimmie's delight and didn't mind losing the race except for Olin's taunts. By midafternoon it was clear that Olin had established a faster rhythm. “By a mile, Shaughnessy!” he called across the rows. “I'm going to beat your Irish ass by the length of this county!”

Harry tried to cap his anger but it swelled inside his chest, like the soft, throbbing heads of the blisters on his fingers. At one point, with the sun burning holes in everything in sight—or so it felt—he and Olin approached the weighing scale side by side. Olin's white grin burst through streaks of buttermilk and dirt, grit and sweat. “How much did the little girl pick this time?” he said to Harry.

Harry jumped on the wagon and drank from the barrel of water.

“Two pounds? Three pounds?”

“I've beat you every day this week,” Harry said. “My arms could fall off and still you'd never catch me.”

“You're a cheater, Shaughnessy, that's why.”

“Take it back,” Harry said.