The Boy Orator by Tracy Daugherty

trust.
    That night Andrew sat up for supper. He hadn’t spoken in days. He slumped in his chair over steaming porridge, staring at his family with the startled expression he’d had when the Klansmen cornered him. He’d lost weight. Suspenders slipped off his shoulders, brushed the floor, where Halley playfully pawed them. “Honey, would you like some tea?” asked Annie Mae, lifting the cup. She talked to him gently, the way she talked to the chicks in her kitchen.
    He smacked his dry lips. Black circles rimmed his eyes. “I need a blessing,” he wheezed.
    â€œOf course, Andrew, I pray for you every day. And Father McCartney asked the whole congregation to speak to God on your behalf.”
    Harry knew what he really meant. After supper, while Annie Mae scraped the dishes, Andrew grabbed Harry’s arm and told him to walk into town on Saturday, get in touch with Warren Stargell, a buddy of his in the Socialist League. He knew Zeke Cash. “Tell him to tell Zeke it’s an emergency.”
    The rest of the week Harry swelled with quiet anticipation of his mission. His mother trusted him, his father needed him. He wouldn’t let them down, though what he really wanted was for them to agree he needn’t do his chores, that he could talk and talk and talk to his dog and his mule.
    At school he volunteered for games, trying to make friends. The boys played cops and robbers. Randy Olin was always the sheriff. Harry was his prisoner, in a cardboard box at the edge of the school lot. The box had once held textbooks and Harry could still smell in it fresh paper and ink—small consolation for the humiliation of crouching in the dark while Olin scuffed dirt at him and called him a killer. “You’re going to pay for your crimes now, Shaughnessy. What do you have to say for yourself?”
    â€œNothing.” In a Socialist world, would he have to be everyone’s brother?
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    Showy bully. “Put me out of my misery.” Harry felt his cheeks burn and wondered if friendship was worth it.
    Or they got into rock fights, teams of six or seven squaring off on either side of the school wagon, parked behind the outhouse. The rocks raised welts on the boys’ bare arms, wounds they wore with pride. In these more active games Harry enjoyed himself, though he was always the last boy picked for a team. He wished summer vacation were months, not days, away. With a little more time the boys might start to like him.
    At home he did his chores distractedly. He walked around the mule pen with Patrick Nagle, imagining ways to approach Warren Stargell. Each dusk, to call him in, his mother tapped the kitchen window with her thimble, a brisk cracking that carried clear across the yard. He kissed the mule good-night, scattered chickens as he ran through orange evening light. Breezes stirred the loose steel bins of the grain elevators; they groaned in the growing dark like old Apache warriors back from the dead, Harry thought, howling in loss and pain. Crows veered above sweet-scented columns of wheat.
    Annie Mae lighted the coal-oil lamps, shading green the blond pine wood of the house. Over the stove she heated her curling iron. When it was hot enough to brown a page of newsprint she ran it slowly through her hair. Afterwards she figured the family’s finances. The local coal companies were calling for timber to prop up their mines, but Andrew was in no shape to accommodate them. Harry could see she was worried about the bills.
    He cleared dishes from the table, opened his books on the oilcloth mat, and finished figuring the sums his teacher had assigned. Andrew slumped in his chair, nodding at his son: their little secret.
    On Saturday morning Annie Mae set out on her weekly visits to the neighbors, to relax and gossip with her friends. She filled a basket with fresh brown bread. “Back this afternoon.” She kissed Harry’s cheek. “Watch your