The Boy Orator Read Free Page B

horned owl aired its wings, creaky and expansive, in the broad walnut rafters. “American farmers are stragglers of rooted armies—,” Harry would begin.
    â€œ Routed armies,” Andrew corrected, “scattered by the money men.”
    â€œâ€”routed armies, always hoping that somewhere in this great land of ours, there’s a piece of dirt for them.”
    The way his voice thickened in recitation, the way his face flushed dark crimson the first few times they worked on a speech, reminded Andrew of his own father, gentle Michael Roy, resting now seven years in the ground, the hard Texas ground he’d plowed until the strain of loving it, and paying all its costs, burst his heart.
    â€œAnd who do the money men serve?” Andrew would shout at his boy, eyes salty with tears, thinking, Father, listen, your dream hasn’t died.
    â€œThe forces of greed!” Harry yelled back.
    For you, Father. Listen. “Greed?”
    â€œThe smasher.” Sunlight burst through slats in the barn. Harry’s face flushed with excitement and a swelling desire to please: Father, watch me, listen, for you. “The smasher of souls!”
    â€œLouder!”
    â€œOf souls!”
    â€œWhat?”
    Harry planted his feet, shaking with energy, love (Andrew saw it in the lurching tilt of the boy’s whole body), fear of letting his father down. He closed his eyes. “Souls !”
    T HIS AFTERNOON IN A NADARKO , Andrew felt anxious for the first time in weeks. The crowd was tired, overheated, close to fury over bad deals, inflated prices. These were just the poor wretches Harry could aid if they were willing to listen but Andrew feared they weren’t. Farmers weren’t the only ones tending to business. Men in ties—bankers, lawyers, owners of the farmers’ rocky lands—strolled among saddles, plows, and furs, counting the county’s wealth, their kingdom’s gold. Klansmen, Andrew thought, spitting into the dirt. Most of these bastards were night-riders. They wouldn’t welcome Harry’s message.
    Three or four fellows approached the platform. They didn’t look friendly. Andrew preferred camp meetings in the country, addressing honest, hardworking folks with their simple hand-stitched clothes and coal-oil lamps, to these market-day affairs. In the country, people hungered for the word; they’d come to a rally dragging water in big tin buckets, hauling firewood and bedding. Fiddlers played reels and boisterous jigs, tunes the farmers’ ancestors danced to in Ireland or Scotland, generations ago. For the oratory, the stirring advice, crowds straggled in for miles, slatternly, weary, but full of vinegar. Here, in county seats like Anadarko, where most people ate three full squares a day, sympathy for the poor was hard to scare up. Andrew had said as much to the Socialist League, who sponsored Harry’s trips, but the party was after converts, it didn’t matter where. Andrew didn’t trust anyone in the electric light towns.
    â€œThe standard beginning,” he whispered to his son. Harry cleared his throat, straightened his black string tie. “Live to see the coming century!” called the breathing mask man. “Don’t let this evil apparition rob you of your dearest years!” Down the street a strained buyer argued the cost of a scythe: “You thieving son of a bitch, I’m not blind. Who do you think you’re talking to?” Harry said softly, “The rent you pay your landlord—what is it now, twenty-five dollars a bale?—would buy a lot of biscuits for your wife.”
    One of the men who’d faced the platform stepped forward, removed his hat, and said, “What’s that, son?” His teeth were brown and his skin, beneath his whiskers, was a dark, mottled red, relieved here and there by hooklike scars.
    â€œI said”—Harry raised his voice, gestured crisply at the