The Boy Orator (28 page)

“It's not for everyone.” Behind his counter, Avram raised the lid of a metal freezer and poured them all glasses of lemonade from a tall, pudgy bottle. “How's the speaking business?” he asked Harry.

“Most folks cover their ears.”

“All the more reason to talk.”

“I think we had this conversation once, didn't we?”

“So we did.” Avram smiled.

Harry pointed at the broken window. He drained his glass. “Be careful.”

Avram bowed and tipped his hat.

Back on the street, strolling with his parents, Harry noticed on nearly every building recruitment ads for the army. On one, a gorilla in a spiked German helmet grasped a helpless woman. “Destroy This Mad Brute,” the copy read. “Enlist!”

Harry wondered, and worried, about his status with the draft board. Still no word.

Walters didn't please him any more now than it used to. He thought it ugly and flat. The buildings were too close together—he still missed the spaciousness of the farm—without the cozy charm of the big-city blocks he'd seen.

Andrew told Annie Mae he should run by the livery stable. She took a dollar from him for groceries, and asked Harry to wait for her by the butcher's shop. He gripped her paper-wrapped fabric, stared idly across the street at the barber's where he'd come to find Warren Stargell years ago, and saw, loping toward him, a long, familiar form. Doughy, more stooped than he used to be, but it was him, all right. Eddie McGarrah. Harry grinned. At first McGarrah didn't recognize him, then he didn't seem to know how to respond. He smiled, frowned, then simply stared.

“How you doing, Eddie?”

“Same old six and seven.”

“You remember me?”

“Sure. The Boy Orator.”

“That's right. Harry Shaughnessy. It's been a long time. Put ‘er there. Where you keeping yourself these days?”

“Roughnecking mostly, out in the oil fields east of here.” He looked at the sky as though something were in it. Nothing was. “Hard work, good money.”

Harry shifted the package under his arm. “I heard about Randy,” he said softly.

McGarrah nodded.

“Were you in touch with him, out at the fort?” “Yeah. He was eager to ship out.” He coughed into his hands. “Ready to serve his country.”

“You know what happened, exactly?”

“Some kind of explosion's all we heard.”

McGarrah seemed lost, unused to the daylight, out of practice talking. Why hadn't the army snatched him? Well, he didn't look healthy. In the past, Harry wouldn't have given him the time of day, but now he was grateful for the familiarity, however strained. Obviously, though, McGarrah wanted to be anywhere in the county but on this particular street corner. He didn't want to talk about Olin; Harry didn't press him. The encounter was turning gloomy. “Okay. Well. It's good to see you. Take care of yourself.”

“Yep,” McGarrah sighed, and shuffled away like a lucky rascal wriggling out of a scrape. Harry felt lonely watching him leave. He stood by himself, remembering his school days, craving a smoke (he'd promised his mother he'd try to quit), in this flat, ugly town that wasn't his home.

The house his parents lived in wasn't home, either, though Annie Mae had hung the old curtains. She had the latest Citizens National Bank calendar in her kitchen, and that recalled the farm. Best of all, though, she'd asked Mahalie to come live with her, to help out during her pregnancy. Mahalie couldn't turn back time, or ease Harry fully, but her presence seemed natural and soothing.

To insure a safe delivery, she insisted that Annie Mae wear a tight girdle just beneath her breasts; this would prevent the fetus from rising too high in her body, Mahalie said. She told Annie Mae to keep fresh willow leaves under her mattress. The leaves guaranteed fertility, health, robustness. Mahalie combed Annie Mae's hair each night before bed: plaits, even accidental tangles, might incline the umbilical cord to strangle the baby at birth. Annie Mae put no stock in these ancient Choctaw rituals, but they were harmless, she said; she was grateful for Mahalie's love, for her care and concern.

In his first few days in Walters, Harry didn't know what to do with himself. His mother was well tended to, his father had plenty of employees at the livery stable, he wasn't giving any speeches. To keep his mind off the draft board and the war, he accompanied Annie Mae and Mahalie whenever they took morning walks. Halley followed happily, fetching sticks. The old dog was sinewy, still a gasbag, twitchy with ticks and fleas and restless energy.

“Watch your step,” Mahalie said one day. “If a pregnant woman trips on a rabbit hole, her child'll be a harelip.” Harry laughed, then hushed when his mother frowned. He picked an Indian paintbrush and tossed it at her, playfully. This prompted another warning from Mahalie. “If the flower touches her face, her baby'll be born with a cherry-red stain on its forehead.” Harry surrendered, shook his head, and walked away. Halley dropped a slobbery twig at his feet. He threw it again, glanced east, across the streets. A gray haze hung above the oil fields. Much as he hated to, maybe he should hire himself out, he thought. Make a little cash. Distract himself. He could speak to Eddie McGarrah about it. On second thought—poor, bashful Eddie—he'd learn the rigs on his own.

That night after supper, as he was standing on the porch, staring again at the smudgy glow in the east, wondering what to do with himself, his father suggested, “Let's take a little walk.” Andrew lowered his voice so Annie Mae couldn't hear him. “Bring a smoke or two if you want.” Harry smiled.

They strolled into town. Andrew's limp didn't slow him up anymore; it was just a part of who he was. Harry pulled a pouch of Bull Durham from his pocket, rolled a smoke for himself and his dad.

In a squatty barn behind the livery stable the Socialist League had gathered: Warren Stargell and a lot of men Harry didn't know. (A number of their brother-farmers had stopped attending meetings, Andrew explained; the new blood was mostly from the oil fields and the small petroleum towns near Walters.) Harry was shocked by Warren Stargell's thinning hair, the sagging yellow skin of his face. He was old and worn-out, though his lazy left eye still exuded light.

Cigarettes fogged the room. Everyone stood and talked—shouting and laughing—all at once. In the old days, the meetings were decorous and grave, well-organized. Tonight, a wild almost-violence peppered the haze.

Most of the new men were young, a little older than Harry—here, it seemed, for a high old time, for something to do. They were whiskery and rank-smelling, strong and nakedly bored.

Warren Stargell banged his hand on a tabletop, calling the meeting to order. “Is this a popular war?” he yawped.

“No!” the group)—fifty or sixty men, Harry guessed—yelled back. Like a school game. He thought of Eddie McGarrah, of their scattered classmates.

“Who gave the United States government the right to ship our healthy bodies, and the bodies of our sons, to Europe?”

“No one!”

“That's right. The people don't want this fight. And the government serves the people!”

The men cheered, slapped each other's sweaty shoulders—more in the spirit of high jinks and play than with any true fellowship, Harry thought.

“Now, I've been talking to our brothers in the IWW—”

“The Wobblies? They're goddam cowards!” someone shouted. “They won't take a stand agin' the war!”

Warren Stargell raised his arms. “Wait, wait, now listen to me. Some of the men in the Local 230—up the road, in the city—they're starting to see things our way. They want to help us end conscription. But they're convinced the time for speeches and pamphlets has passed, and by God, I think they're right. Hear me now. We need a series of dramatic events—attention from the press—to make our point.”

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.