The second installment of Dead Air:
ONE SPRING NIGHT, thirty-eight years ago, I was camping in my back yard with my four friends Rodney “Raskol” Lodkochnikov, Marvin Jones, Rose “Spike” O’Grady, and Matthew Barber. Spike had brought our meandering conversation to a sudden end when she suggested that she might not be the daughter of Mr. O’Grady, her apparent father, but of the man who delivered the Yummy Good brand of baked goods door to door in Babbington, the man we called Mr. Yummy.
In the embarrassed silence that followed, Spike stirred the fire while the rest of us tried to think of a way to change the subject. This wasn’t easy. The thought that Spike might be the daughter of Mr. Yummy stood in the way like a fat man in a narrow tunnel, as plump and sticky as “Little Yummy,” the cartoon fatty who promoted Yummy Good’s products on television. We sat there, working hard to squeeze past the thought and on to something else, working our jaws over our gum, ruminating vigorously.
When the ideas came, they seemed to come all at once, as if we had squeezed past Mr. Yummy and tumbled into a vestibule from which many passageways radiated. Each of us scrambled into one and asked whatever question he found there.
“Any more potato chips?” asked Raskol.
“Will good eventually triumph over evil?” asked Matthew.
“Are flying saucers real?” I asked.
“Do all hermits live in caves?” asked Marvin.
“Do they fake those nudist-camp pictures?” asked Spike.
Another silence fell. I spent some time wondering about whether the potato chips were all gone, about the likelihood that sweetness and light might eventually prevail over the forces of darkness, whether life was present elsewhere in the universe, and whether all hermits were troglodytes, and I suppose that the others thought about those things, too, but when we finally spoke, we all asked the same question: “What pictures?”
Grinning, Spike produced a folded magazine from her back pocket.
After we had looked at the pictures very thoroughly and tried to explain how the photographer had made the black rectangles stay in place on the people’s faces, fatigue settled over us, and we ran out of conversation.
“We can still catch a little of Baldy,” I said to Marvin. His question about hermits living in caves had been inspired, I knew, by listening to “Baldy’s Nightcap.” This was a radio program hosted by a dummy, Baldy. His ventriloquist, Bob Balducci, had been relegated to the background as file clerk, gofer, and yes-man — or in Bob’s case, yeah-man. Part of Baldy’s routine was the pretense that he lived in a cave.
“Okay,” said Marvin. He turned his radio on.
I coveted Marvin’s radio. It resembled a small piece of luggage, with a real leather case. The radio took a while to warm up, as radios did in those days, so the sound of Baldy’s voice came upon us gradually, as if he had been waiting outside the bubble of firelight and now, when we summoned him, joined us there, within the shrinking sphere. Baldy was bringing his show to a close, ending, as he always did, with the news:
“The hour is growing late,” he said, “It’s time to see what’s going on in the hideous world outside the cave. Bob?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you roll the rock in front of the cave?”
“Yeah.”
“Good boy, Bob. Let’s see . . .” There was the sound of rustling newspaper. “We’ve got the war in Korea . . . some bombings . . . refugees . . . a little corruption here and there. . . . Here’s something: ‘Ferry Sinks, Ninety Dead.’ What is it with these ferries? They go down like rocks! Bob?”
“Yeah?”
“Bring that ferry file to me, will you?” A pause. “Thanks. Nice work, Bob. What have we got here? A hundred orphans on their way to a free lunch . . . ninety lepers going to a clinic . . . two hundred virgins off to dance around a maypole. They always take the ferry! And down they go! Let me tell you something, boys and girls: if you see a ferry pulling away from the dock with a hundred nuns on a pilgrimage, stay off it! That boat is headed for the bottom! Bob?”
“Yeah?”
“Make sure that rock is in front of the cave.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s time to say good night, boys and girls. Remember what Baldy says: stay in the cave. It’s a nasty world out there.”
Baldy’s closing theme came on, and Marvin clicked the radio off. Silence fell into the dying light. I squirmed lower in my bedroll and pulled the blanket over my head — to make a little cave.
[to be continued]
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