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dark.
    Harry sank to the ground, picked up the choc bottle and smashed the rubber mask with it, scaring then drawing the curious dog. Here, sitting in the dirt of Anadarko, hearing music fade in the place across the street and knowing he was too late to get any supper; here, on the night he was twelve, while his beaten father slept, he determined his story would begin. The speed Bob Cochran had mentioned, the chrome machines and the buildings, Harry Tracy Shaughnessy would bring them here, right here , to Oklahoma. Why not? Fired by the beer, and the thrill of the pitch, he decided the century would deny him nothing.
    When he rose he noticed Bob Cochran’s yellow kerchief, crumpled like a tiny paper parasol in a puddle. He picked it up, squeezed it almost dry, and wrapped it around his wrist.
    The clerk was nodding off on a stool behind the hotel desk when Harry returned to the lobby. He crept back up the stairs, tripping twice, found his father still lost to the world. His face, in poor, reflected light from the window, had turned the color of split-pea soup. The candle had long since guttered out. Labored snores. Harry stood, holding the money sock and the kerchief, watching the street below. The little dog did an agitated dance. It seemed he was looking for Harry. A wagon passed, drawn by a single white horse. A tuckered-out farmer, leaving market day late. Harry looked up to see if he could see the coming century, or maybe just the comet, its fantail wide as a peacock’s, sowing sparks like seeds above the bank’s peaked roof. Clouds packed the sky; he couldn’t see very straight after all the beer he’d drunk. When his gaze dropped again he saw in the street Bob Cochran and Sue-Sue, her dark skin bold against the paleness of her dress. She was—in Harry’s blurry sight—the most beautiful woman he’d ever stopped to watch. They danced (she stiffly, with swollen, trampled feet) to music he couldn’t hear—music from the future, perhaps—in front of the cafe window, silhouetted, ghostly by a faint electric light.

2
    T he day Harry carted his father back from Anadarko, Annie Mae hurried them both into her kitchen. “That’s quite enough of politics,” she said, seating her men in rough wooden chairs. “From now on you’ll stay home where you’re needed and wanted.”
    Andrew wasn’t one for doctors; she knew this from their earliest days here in the Territory. She fired up her kerosene stove, boiled burn-weed tea for his chills, then pole beans to mix with honey and butter for a poultice. She ground ivy in a mortar, added sugar, soot, spider webs, and water to stop Harry’s bleeding.
    Andrew winced while she sponged him clean. “I’m sorry. Sit still and I’ll try not to hurt,” she whispered, as she’d done every night when he’d first found work in these parts, a dozen years ago. Each dawn, in early spring, she remembered, he’d be out, biting into trees with his hand briar saw, slicing the ridged bark as if cutting hard bread; then, using a steam-powered skidder cable rented from a neighbor, he’d drag the logs, with their sweet meat exposed, out of the mud. Some evenings he’d straggle home from the woods slashed across his back from a snapped choker chain, flying out of the crazy steam contraption, and Annie Mae would stand over him in the dim lamplight of her kitchen, spreading butter on the bumps of his swollen skin.
    She did this now, recollecting those early days, humming random tunes to soothe him as she worked. “Is it okay if I touch you here?” she asked him, “or here?” brushing purple patches on his shoulders, back, and arms. He groaned and shook. She whispered, “Shhh, shhh. Just stay still.”
    After feeding Harry a bowl of hot beef stew, and insisting he swallow some tea, she tucked him into bed.
    â€œMa?”
    â€œWhat is it, honey?” She kissed his