The Boy Orator

by Tracy Daugherty

  “No!” He pulled away. “I ain’t joining no goddam cause!” Trembling, he brushed his salty cheeks. “I drink because I like it, lady, all right?” He laughed, a forced hack deep in his throat, and motioned his friends to follow him down the street. They lurched past buggies and shiny new wagons. Kate O’Hare closed her eyes for a moment, straightened her hat, and said, “I believe we’ve done all we can here for the time being. I think I’ll go back to the room and lie down. Frank, can you take the kids to lunch?” She turned and, with great dignity, moved slowly beyond the shoppers and smiling storekeepers sweeping their walks.

  AFTER LUNCH HARRY TAPPED lightly on her door. She looked sleepy when she answered. Soft. Warm. Her red dress was wrinkled. “Harry. Come in, come in.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but I guess Mr. Stargell and I are heading home tomorrow. I didn’t know if I’d see you again.” He looked at the floor. “It’s been a real privilege sharing the stage with you.”

  “Likewise.” She sat on her unmade bed. “I’ve heard a lot of fine speakers in my time. Oscar, Eugene, Kate Barnard, Caroline Lowe, Mother Jones. But you, Harry … you’re one of the best, and you’ve got a lot of years ahead of you. When I get home to Kansas City, I’ll tell all my friends about you.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “When I first started barnstorming, I had a high, shrill voice,” she said. “Frank used to tell me to tone things down, but I didn’t believe him until we visited the St. Louis World’s Fair a few years ago. They had a pavilion there where you could make your own phonograph records. Lord, when I heard how I sounded! I had to do a lot of work. But you’re a natural, Harry.”

  He smiled. “Do you mind if I ask …?”

  “What is it?” she said.

  “This morning. When no one listens. When changes don’t happen fast enough. How do you—” “Keep myself going?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll tell you, Harry, no matter what happens today, tomorrow, or the day after that, I’m content just knowing I’ve served. I’ve given the working class my girlhood, my young womanhood.” She shrugged. “And now my motherhood. It’s true. Changes don’t always happen quick enough to suit me. But all we can do is spread the word.”

  Harry nodded again.

  “Here. I’ve got something for you.” She knelt beside her bed. “It’s not a doubloon or a gold ingot, but I’d call it a treasure just the same.” She pulled a thick, cream-colored book from a bag, turned to its flyleaf, and scribbled something in it with a pen. She handed it to Harry: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. “A few years ago we serialized part of this novel in the Appeal. Words can change things, Harry. If you ever doubt that, remember this book. Did you ever hear of the Pure Food and Drug Act?”

  “No ma’am.”

  She smiled. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Hold on to this. It might be important to you someday.”

  Harry said, “I love you.”

  She hugged him and told him she’d see him again down the road.

  THAT NIGHT, SITTING IN the steak house after dinner, J. T. Cumbie told Fred Warren and Warren Stargell it had been a grueling month, full of triumph and tragedy, a long day, and he could use a little nightcap, how about them? They agreed and asked a young waiter to recommend a quiet place where Mr. Cumbie wouldn’t be recognized (it wouldn’t do for a gubernatorial candidate to be caught guzzling “demon rum”; he’d managed to promote himself, publicly, as a teetotaler). The waiter pointed them toward Hudson Street. There they’d find a drab brick building attached to the rear of Swangaard’s Waffle House. “Three rapid knocks on the door,” he said. Warren Stargell thanked him and gave him an extra tip.

  Harry asked if he could tag along. “Certainly,” said J. T. Cumbie, buttoning his coat. “I’d say you’ve earned your stripes.”

  The “gray horse” led the charge to Hudson Street. It was just a few blocks away. Across an alley from the waffle house, beneath a dim electric light, two young women in thin black dresses stood smoking and talking. Harry thought of Sherrie, the dancer he’d seen in the miner’s dining hall, and the pregnant girl in the camp waiting in line for the outhouse. He felt a sudden sadness and missed his mother. These women looked lonely and cold. He wished he could invite them in to talk without awkwardness or misunderstanding.

  He wished he could touch them.

  The night smelled of coal and oil. Train cars clattered in the distance.

  The tiny room was filled with smoke, low voices, and laughter. Fred Warren ordered a bottle of grain alcohol for Warren Stargell, J. T. Cumbie and himself, and a glass of beer for Harry, his first since Anadarko. The bartender didn’t mention Harry’s age; everyone knew that minors were the least of his problems if the law got wind of this place.

  They found a round table in the middle of the room. Sawdust covered the floor. Kerosene lamps, hung on twisted nails in the walls, sputtered and hissed, casting more noise than light.

  Warren Stargell raised his drink. “To fallen comrades,” he said.

  “Dear Chester.” Fred Warren threw back his head and drained his glass. It was cracked and chipped and slightly discolored.

  “To our next governor,” Harry said, nodding at J. T. Cumbie.

  “Thank you, son.”

  They toasted again. Warren Stargell reached into a pocket for his pouch of Bull Durham. Harry noticed a white-haired, black-clad figure enter the door in a flurry of commotion. The smoke made him dizzy. Then he heard a woman’s voice: “There are just two crowds on Earth, God’s and the devil’s.”

  Warren Stargell lighted a match. “What the hell?” he said.

  The figure in the doorway tossed off her light cotton scarf and raised her arms. Her dress was as black as a judge’s robe. She was chunky and small. “It’s plain to see, the devil makes this his stopping place when he’s not busy down in Texas!” She stalked to the center of the room, grabbed the whiskery jaw of a young man chewing tobacco. He swallowed hard, choked. “You remind me of an old billy goat gnawing his cud,” the woman said.

  “My Lord,” whispered J. T. Cumbie. “You know who that is, don’t you?” Before he could say the name, she whirled toward the table and slapped the cigarette out of Warren Stargell’s mouth. “Sucking on a coffin nail!” she shouted. “Are you in a hurry to meet the devil, my friend?” She spotted Harry. “Dear Christ, this boy’s losing his soul already. Run, boy, run!”

  Harry sat, astonished. She had a wonderful speaking voice, he thought.

  The bartender snagged her arm. “Listen here, lady, you can’t just waltz in here—”

  She leaped away from him, reached into the folds of her enormous skirt, and produced a smart little hatchet. She swung it over her head then brought it down, mightily, on the table in front of Harry, spilling the whiskey and beer, sending long blond splinters twisting into smoke in the air. “The wrath of God!” she screamed.

  All the drinkers dove for cover.

  “I thought she’d retired,” Warren Stargell said, scrambling under a table.

  “I thought she was dead,” Fred Warren replied. Bottles crashed, wood snapped, arms and legs splayed, twitching, in sawdust and bubbles of ale.

  “God is a righteous cyclone,” she yelled, “sweeping the Earth!” “Who is she?” Harry asked.

  “Carry Nation,” answered J. T. Cumbie. “Saloon-buster and goddam pain in the ass.”

  Harry remembered the sign in the hills near Zeke Cash’s still, but he didn’t have time to think about it. She was heading his way again with the hatchet. Swiftly, he crawled behind the bar. A chair-leg sailed above his head. “I strike this blow against the brewers and distillers, the Republicans and Democrats and all the city’s businessmen who’ve conspired to pickle the masses!” she wheezed.

  Men rushed out of the room in twos and threes, squeezing past each other in the doorway. Harry followed Warren Stargell into the alley; the blade wasn’t far behind. He heard its whistle, the groan of the doorjamb.

  The two women who’d been smo
king huddled by an overturned trash can. Drunks scurried past them, scattering garbage, ash, and gravel. “Smoke and booze and hoity-toity girls!” Carry Nation screamed. She set off after the women.

  A minute or two later, half a block down Hudson Street, Harry met his companions and they walked back to their hotel. Sawdust garnished J. T. Cumbie’s beard like strings of tinsel in a Christmas tree. “Man wants a quiet drink,” he muttered, brushing off his sleeves. “Ends up with his head cut off.”

  The night air was cool. Harry took it gratefully into his lungs. His knees were sore from crawling around on the floor. Steam rose from open grates in the streets, smelling of water and earth and of families forced too close together: the crowded wastes of the city’s full life.

  In the bright lobby of the St. Nicholas Hotel the men exchanged their good-byes. Up in the room he shared with Warren Stargell, Harry stood at the window savoring one last view of the avenues. He didn’t know if he’d ever see Oklahoma City again. He stared intently, then closed his eyes, seeing the lights—memories already—etched against the slippery darkness of his lids.

  The crowds, the dusty roads, the speeches of his heroes: the month had been blessed with excitement and event, but now that it was over, a thought he’d long been trying to ignore swamped his mind once more.

  Warren Stargell told him good-night.

  He mumbled, “Sleep well,” and turned to the window again. He’d be up for a while. With his little finger he scribbled on the glass a faint and smudgy “Mollie.”

  6

  He woke, and for a moment he didn’t know when or how he’d got to bed. It was his own bed, with the faint lemon smell of his mother’s homemade soap in the folds of the sheets. Halley slept at his feet. He remembered stumbling into a flat, ordered field at twilight—yesterday? the day before that?—unbuttoning his pants to relieve himself and being surrounded by bison; they rose all around him like mossy stones unearthed in a sudden upheaval. Warren Stargell shooed them away, whooping, waving his hat. After that, the journey home was a swell of dust in his mind. He vaguely recalled his father lifting him from the wagon; now here he was in his room.

  He sat up and scratched Halley’s ears. The dog sighed and burrowed deeper into the quilt. Harry didn’t hear his father’s snores. When was the last time his father had slept without snoring? He got out of bed, tiptoed to his bedroom door and, with the certainty learned from long familiarity with a place, knew he was alone in the house.

  He pulled on his pants and shoes and stepped outside. The gate to the empty mule pen swung aimlessly on its hinges, creaking and rubbing the wood by the open latch. Starlight silvered the leaves of the trees, the distant fields’ tight rows. Cotton season soon. He didn’t want to think about it.

  Clover, mint, and honey weighted the lazy air. The night’s silence seemed loud and profound after the constant hammering of voices and noises in the city. The sounds of his own breathing seemed clamorous in the stillness.

  His father stood next to the barn, hands in pockets, unmoving.

  “Dad?”

  “Harry. Thought you’d sleep at least a couple of days.” He laughed and held out his arm. Harry slipped under it, toward the warmth of his father’s chest. Andrew squeezed his shoulder. “I was just thinking we got to ride into town tomorrow. Buy some boots and gloves. It’s that time of year.”

  “Dad?” Harry blinked sleep from his eyes. “Where’s Ma?”

  Andrew stepped away from him. He didn’t have his cane but still he moved slowly and with care. “Your ma,” he said. “She’s tending to some business in Walters.”

  “What kind of business?” Harry had never associated this word with his mother.

  “We’ll talk about it in the morning. You need your rest now.” He patted Harry’s back. “Before he left, Warren told me you’d brought a lot of converts into the fold. I’m real pleased.”

  Harry nodded and yawned, gave up and said good-night when it was clear his father wasn’t going to say any more just now. He jumped back into bed next to Halley, comforted by the dusty smell of his fur, the light flapping of the curtain in the midnight breeze. Home. But something was wrong. His mother had never been away before. Tired as he was, he lay awake all night, anxious for dawn and his father’s explanation.

  ANDREW LOOKED LIKE HE hadn’t slept, either. His face was puffy and pale, his thin hair stiff. His eyebrows, bushy, seemed ready to spring into his eyes.

  He set a bowl of oatmeal in front of Harry. A scorched smell hung in the kitchen. “I may have overcooked that a little,” he said. “Eat up. I’ll get the wagon. We got some errands to run.” He limped toward the door.

  Harry tongued the oatmeal; it was spongy. He set it aside. He brushed some baking soda over his teeth, dragged a hand through his hair. His mother usually cut it twice a month, but now it was long and tightly curled.

  They were halfway to town before his father finally leaned back in the wagon’s seat and looked at him. “Don’t be alarmed now, Harry, but your mother’s in jail.”

  Harry sat up straight. “Real jail?”

  “She didn’t do a thing wrong, not as I see matters—”

  “What happened?”

  A bitter laugh. “Liquor, if you can believe it.” He told Harry that Annie Mae and three other women from the church had slipped five dollars to an Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad man so he’d deliver a barrel of sacramental wine to them Monday night, on the late run.

  “I don’t understand,” Harry said.

  “While you were gone, the county tightened its prohibition laws. The new ‘bone-dry’ statute says you can’t bring out-of-state alcohol here unless you can prove it’s for medicinal purposes.” He shook the reins; the horses speeded up. “For years now, St. Mary’s wine has come from Kansas City. The county says no more.”

  Harry thought for a minute. “But that makes the Mass illegal.”

  “That’s exactly what Annie said.”

  “They can’t do that!”

  Andrew shrugged. “They got her on a bribery charge.”

  The jailhouse in Walters was musty and small, flooded with cold gray light through grimy windows set in a patchwork of bars. When Harry and Andrew arrived, Annie Mae, in a tiny cell with three other women Harry didn’t know, was complaining to the sheriff. “I know you know it’s not right. You’re a good Christian man, Sheriff Stephens.”

  “That I am, ma’am, but—”

  “Then you realize it’s indecent to keep the four of us here without partitions or curtains of any kind. When we need to change clothes or tend to our toilet—”

  The sheriff, a short, balding man with bowed legs, scratched his head. “We never had women in here before, Miz Shaughnessy. I didn’t rightly know how to prepare—”

  “Andrew! Harry!” Annie Mae reached between the bars in the door. She wore a pink blouse and a gray cotton skirt. “Harry, oh Harry, I’m so happy to see you, sweetheart!” But then she frowned and pulled her arms inside the cell before Harry could touch her hands. She dipped her head. “I’m ashamed for you to see me like this,” she said.

  “No, Mama, no.” He whirled on the sheriff. “You’re the one who should be ashamed,” he said. “Locking these fine ladies up …this is a direct violation of the Constitution of the United States, which, in case you didn’t know it, Mr. Stephens sir, guarantees freedom of religion. I demand their immediate release or we’ll have you in court!”

  Annie Mae grinned.

  “I don’t make the laws, young man.”

  “Don’t you have a conscience? Can’t you spot impropriety when you see it? This statute will never stand up—”

  Andrew poked his arm. “That’s enough now. We’ll handle this the proper way, through the proper channels.” The smile on his lips reassured Harry. “Do you have everything you need?” he asked Annie Mae.

  “Except my dignity.”

  “As soon as they set bail, we’ll get you out.”

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” Harry added. The
haggard look on her face made him cry.

  She smiled at him. “My little politician.”

  Andrew kissed her through the bars then led Harry back outside. “Well,” he said quietly. “The road toughened you, son. You’ve got more authority now than ever. More presence.”

  “Dad, isn’t there something we can do?”

  “You had a good argument in there, but Sheriff Stephens is the wrong man to make it to. We’ve got to go higher up, and we will, we will.”

  They walked across the street to the hardware store. Andrew bought two new pairs of gloves for cotton-picking, and a thick set of boots, but later that day, when a county judge set bail for Annie Mae at twenty-five dollars, Andrew sold the items back to the store and went to the bank for the rest of the money. “Looks like we’ll be picking bare-handed this year,” he said.

  At home, in the kitchen, Annie Mae sponge-bathed over a tin tub for nearly an hour—“I’ve felt dirty for days”—closing her eyes and letting the warm water relax her, then set about baking cornbread and a peach cobbler, steaming red beans and rice, pouring sugar into giant tumblers of tangy iced tea. Except for the night in the arbor, when the Baptists chased them away, the family hadn’t eaten a meal this abundant all year, and for the balance of the evening they laughed and forgot their troubles.

  Later that night Harry was awakened by a glare beneath his bedroom door. He heard his father’s snores. He got up, stirring Halley who sighed and turned on his back, dangling his legs in the air. The dog still had digestive problems; he smelled like the gas in Chester’s balloon.

  Harry got dressed and walked into the kitchen, where his mother sat at the table sorting bills. “I didn’t mean to wake you,” she said.

  “That’s all right.” She brushed hair from her eyes. She looked so tired. “What is it, Mama?” He touched her wrist. “They won’t send you back to jail, I promise.”