The Boy Orator by Tracy Daugherty Read Free Book Online Page A

creatures from an ancient age, when all this land was sea.
    This spring, Andrew had encouraged Harry’s public speaking more than his farmwork; despite his hours in the sun, Harry had failed to take in the finer points of cultivation. Now, with his father laid up, he over- or under-fertilized the fields, damaging crops. He fed the chickens too much—he tried to be sparing!—making them sluggish and lazy.
    Andrew was already angry at him for shortchanging the league, chugging the choc—when it came right down to it, he couldn’t lie to his dad—and dragging the dog home. It had followed the wagon out of Anadarko that morning. Andrew slept fitfully all the way back; Harry stopped the horses three or four times, stood in the loose spring seat, yelled, “Shoo!” but the dog’s tail leaped as if Harry’s shouts were a promise of food. He gave up, hoisted the poor creature into his lap, and named it Halley. “Sit now, Halley, be a good boy.” Halley farted with pleasure.
    Andrew was too weak to punish Harry, but his scowls let the boy know he wasn’t happy about the money, the new pet, the beer, or his work. Annie Mae frowned on Halley, too—she called him “filthy, a burden, a pest.” So Harry spent most of his time outdoors with the dog and the swaybacked mule, Patrick Nagle. The real Patrick Nagle was an Oklahoma Democrat-turned-Socialist, an active member of the Friends of Irish Freedom, and a hero of Andrew’s, who tended to name his animals (and his son) after people he admired. The mule had hauled timber for years until its back gave out. Now Harry helped it enjoy a pleasant retirement. He patted and talked to it while Halley yipped around the spiked stakes of the old loblolly fence.
    At first Harry was happy to be off the road, home with his ma. His chores exhausted him, but the long sunny weekends lightened his mood. He loved the smell of grass, the cool of the mud, the long corridors of afternoon sky where thunderheads swirled like buttery curdles of cream. In the fields upwind, dry cereal oats spilled, crackling, through steel bins in the county’s grain elevators, settling into troughs. From there, men would shovel them onto the MK & T when it next came through on the rails. The elevators were stark white, splashed with colorful words: Poag Grain Inc., Equity Coop Exchange, General Mills. Harry squinted into the sun, watched the letters dance in fly-riddled ripples of heat. The elevators’ spires rose like the massive columns of cathedrals he’d seen in picture books, shading cows and rows of brittle wheat.
    In the evenings, Harry, Patrick Nagle, and Halley chased fireflies around the mule’s narrow, fenced-in pen. Harry crushed the bugs, spread the glow all over Patrick Nagle’s musky neck. The animal hummed with warmth, and Harry hugged him close.
    On weekdays he rode four miles to school in the county’s John Deere wagon, a boxlike contraption with tall, spoked wheels and a canvas roof, drawn by two red mules. He always had makeup homework to do, from the many trips he’d taken, but he was a quick learner. The schoolhouse, a single square room packed with kids of all ages, buzzed with news of the comet the week Harry returned from Anadarko. Eddie McGarrah, a farmer’s boy from over near Cookietown, swore that diamonds fell from the sky that night, slicing the ears off his daddy’s prize hogs. Randy Olin, from Walters, said his sister had given birth to a bloody mess, cursed by the star, that smoked and fizzed and finally disintegrated in her hands.
    â€œI don’t believe it,” Harry said. “That comet talk was nonsense.”
    â€œYou calling me a fibber?” Olin pushed him into McGarrah, who shoved him back at Olin.
    â€œYou bet I am, both of you,” Harry said. “Filthy liars.” The boys scuffled, knocking over desks, until the teacher, a stout woman with red, blocky arms, separated