The Radio Magician and Other Stories

by James Van Pelt

  KLZ wasn’t directly on Broadway, it turned out. The conductor lowered Clarence to the sidewalk, clamping his arms to his crutches so he hit the cement ready to go. “The station’s a block that way, son,” he said, pointing. “Watch your step.”

  Clarence’s legs quivered beneath him as the trolley rumbled away. The radio station’s sign looked awfully far. He gritted his teeth and leaned forward.

  Ten minutes later his arms ached with the effort to keep him upright, but he stood before KLZ’s front door, a heavy metal and glass barrier. In the shadow of the room behind the door, he saw a secretary looking at him, a prim blonde with dark-framed glasses, like a librarian. Before he could brace himself to pull the door open, she was holding it for him.

  “My word, child, what are doing here by yourself? Where are your parents?”

  “They’re at work. Do you mind if I sit down?” Clarence lowered himself gingerly onto one of the two worn leather chairs in the lobby. He sighed, his eyes closed, as the weight fell from his arms and legs. A ceiling fan creaked through slow revolutions and stirred the smell of furniture polish and old magazines. Across the small receiving area, in the other chair, a balding man wearing a blue bow tie and a white shirt studied a newspaper. He glanced at Clarence, briefly meeting his eyes, then turned a page and returned to his reading. Behind the secretary’s desk, three doors, marked STUDIO 1, STUDIO 2 and SOUND ENGINEER, were closed. Drooping wires high on the wall connected to a bare speaker, playing KLZ’s afternoon news softly, a litany of political reaction to the events in Europe. Polish soldiers were in retreat. British bombers attacked German war ships.

  “You look like you could use a glass of water.” The secretary disappeared through the sound stage door.

  Sweat soaked the sides of Clarence’s shirt. His legs throbbed from the arch of his feet, where the braces’ metal bar clamped against his shoes, to the grinding spots where the leather upper straps dug into his hips. Even his fingers hurt from squeezing the crutches, and he doubted he could make the one block trip back to the trolley stop, but he was here. He had arrived! He couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

  The secretary returned with the water. Clarence rolled the cool glass against his forehead before drinking half of it in one long swallow.

  “Is Professor Gilded here?” he asked. “I’d like to meet him.”

  “That old fraud?” said the man in the bow tie, putting his newspaper down. He winked at the secretary. “He’s a bore.”

  Clarence’s jaw tightened up until he realized the man was teasing. At least he was pretty sure he wasn’t serious.

  “Do you know him?” Clarence pulled the quarter eagle out of his pocket. “I’ve been practicing magic.” He did a quick knuckle roll back and forth with the coin.

  The bow-tied man put his paper aside. “Can you do a pass under and around?”

  Clarence rolled the coin between his fourth and little finger, tucked it under, caught it on his thumb, then brought it around from underneath. “Sure. I learned that one first.”

  The man produced a half dollar from a vest pocket, then walked it from finger to finger on his right hand. “Okay, we’ll race. First one to get the coin around their hand ten times wins. It’s a little unfair. My hands are bigger and the coin has farther to go.”

  They counted out loud. Clarence was at eight when the man reached ten, flipped the coin into the air, and then watched solemnly as the white feather it had turned into drifted to the floor.

  “You’re pretty good for a kid. Can you do a sleeve flick? How about a coin cascade?”

  Clarence nodded.

  The secretary, who had returned to her desk, laughed. “Don’t get him going. He’ll talk your ear off about magic.” She looked at the clock. “Bob will be here in a couple minutes. You’d better get into the studio.”

  The bow-tied man dismissed her comment with a wave. He leaned toward Clarence, his elbows on his knees. “So, why do you want to see Professor Gilded?”

  Clarence tried to recall the picture of Gilded from The Denver Post. His hair had been thick and black, almost touching his shoulders, and a moustache hid most of his mouth. Was it possible that the bald, bow-tied man was Professor Gilded? But where was the accent? Clarence imagined Gilded as tall, like a black-cloaked Abraham Lincoln. Who was this guy?

  As if reading his mind, the bow-tied man said, “I’m John Albenice, his understudy. You can tell me.”

  A couple dressed in their Sunday best pushed through the door. The woman in a floral print dress with her hair pinned up, whose pinched cheeks and pointed chin made her look a little like Clarence’s fourth grade teacher, walked straight to the secretary and said, “We’re here for Professor Gilded’s afternoon performance. We have an invitation.” She put an envelope on the desk. Her husband stood behind her, his hands pushed into his pockets, as if he really didn’t want to be there.

  “Of course, studio two, please.” The secretary opened the door for them. Clarence glimpsed a short hallway.

  “Will Professor Gilded be here soon?” He raised himself out of the chair to get a last look before the door closed. “He said perception is reality. He said if I perceive that I’m sick, that I am. I wanted to ask him what he meant by that.”

  John leaned back in his chair. He idly pulled his bow tie. “Professor Gilded says a lot of things on the air you probably shouldn’t listen to, kid. He’s paid to talk, you know. He’s an entertainer.”

  The secretary cleared her throat and looked purposefully at the clock.

  “Look, I’ve got to get ready for the show. He just meant that magic happens in your head.” He stood up and started for the studio. “Are you as proficient with cards as you are with coins?”

  “I can do a pretty good fan and a table spread, but my hands are too small for a one-hand shuffle. I’ll have to grow into lots of tricks.” He held up his hand like a starfish.

  “Huh,” John said. “Have you tried cutting down a deck? Smaller cards might do it.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that before. I’ll bet small cards might get a lot of kids interested in sleight of hand.”

  “Oh, no,” said the secretary.

  The door opened. A gray-headed man carrying a briefcase walked partway into the foyer, and then froze when he saw John.

  “I told you to stay the gawd damned hell away from me, freak,” said the man, bringing the briefcase to his chest like a shield.

  The secretary stiffened. “Bob, there’s a child in the room.”

  Clarence recognized the man’s voice. He introduced and narrated Professor Gilded’s Glorious Magical Extravaganza. He said “hell” on the air at the end of the last show.

  John straightened. His voice deepened. “I’m not responsible for your irrational fears. If you can’t separate a trick from reality, then you have the problem, not me.” It was Professor Gilded’s voice, without the accent. He stood in between the two chairs, only a yard from Clarence, and he didn’t look like he was going to move.

  Keeping his briefcase between them, the other man scooted along the front windows until he reached the sound engineer’s door. He found the knob without looking away from John. “I’ll announce the show, but I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Keep your distance. There’s nothing natural about you.” The door slammed behind him.

  John shrugged. He looked at Clarence. “Sorry you had to see that. He had difficulty with the horse trick. It… disturbed him.”

  “Did you… I mean, did the professor really make a horse turn into bones?” Clarence’s heart thumped in his throat.

  “If you think so, then he did. That’s the perception trick. An audience thought he did. And Bob there… well,” he moved toward the studio door. “He believes.”

  He stopped at the secretary’s desk. “The only thing I really know about magic, kid, is that if there isn’t some of it in the world, then we live in a dark, dark place. If you’ve got any, you have to share it.”

  The secretary reac
hed into her hair. “Hey, what’s this?”

  John plucked the object off her palm. He looked at it, genuinely puzzled. “1910 quarter eagle. Isn’t this yours?” He walked back to Clarence, the coin between his fingers. “Nice trick.”

  The coin dropped into Clarence’s hand. He hadn’t even realized that John had taken it.

  “Nice trick yourself.”

  John paused. “I didn’t do anything. How’d you pull it off? Pass it when she gave you the water? No, don’t tell me. A magician never tells. But I like it. Effective illusion. Okay, gotta go. There will be a whole audience here soon, and the stage isn’t ready.” He shook Clarence’s hand. “Somebody’s got to amaze them all.” He laughed, and Clarence thought he’d heard a hint of a European accent in it.

  Then, he was gone. Clarence tossed the gold piece from one hand to the other.

  The secretary looked at him pityingly. “If there were room in the studio, kid, he’d let you in, but we’re booked for weeks.”

  When Clarence stood on the sidewalk outside the radio station, his arms felt completely without strength. Had he used up everything he had to get to the station? He stepped forward, letting most of his weight rest on the crutches, his breath ripping in short gasps against his aching legs. No hike could have ever been longer. He thought about soldiers marching to far off fronts, their courage flitting about them, not knowing if they would make it back, but he kept pushing forward, his braces clicking against the cement. The metal creaked at the knees, and he went steps at a time with his eyes closed.

  By the time he reached the trolley stop, he could hardly inhale, and his heart flurried like a trapped bird. Was this the beginning of a new paralysis? He whimpered. Cars passed on Broadway in the afternoon sun, and only after agonizing minutes the trolley trundled into sight.

  “Please,” gasped Clarence as the same driver from his ride downtown lifted him into the car, “can you take me to the hospital?”

  Every bump jarred his legs. He held the back of his thighs to try to keep them from bouncing, but he couldn’t anticipate the next jolt. His cheek rested against the wooden sill under the window, and tears leaked between his closed eyelids. Finally the trolley stopped.

  “Hospital, young man,” said the driver, concern in his voice.

  Clarence struggled to get his crutches under his arms.

  “No need. I’ve sent someone in to get you a wheelchair.” He placed his hand on Clarence’s shoulder. “You don’t look good.”

  A nurse appeared at the trolley door and helped Clarence into the wheelchair.

  “I’ll take him to emergency,” said the nurse. “We can evaluate him there.”

  “No,” said Clarence. The trolley driver wrung his hands. Passengers crowded at the windows. A little girl holding a book waved at him through the glass. Clarence waved back weakly. “I need to go to the polio ward. I need to get to the iron lung.”

  The nurse started pushing him up the sidewalk toward the ramp. “You have polio? Are you experiencing breathing difficulty?” She sounded businesslike.

  Clarence relaxed his head against the back of the wheelchair. He rested his hand on the quarter eagle in his pants pocket, its shape a solid comfort. “I’m not sick. I’m visiting. I want to see it.”

  “You look sick.” The nurse walked beside him as they rose up the ramp and into the hospital’s entrance way.

  “Honest, I’m okay. I think I probably tried to do too much today. My legs hurt a little,” he lied, “but I really want to see the polio ward.”

  He rolled into an elevator.

  “There’s someone in the iron lung already,” she said.

  Lights flicked beside each floor as the elevator went up. Clarence had never been in an elevator before. “I know. Sean Garrison. He was in the paper. How is he doing?”

  “You’re really not sick?” She looked down at him doubtfully. “If you’re not, you’re the sorriest looking healthy boy I’ve ever seen.”

  “I walked to the trolley all by myself.”

  “Hmmm.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a doctor check you anyway, and we need to talk to your parents.”

  Forty beds separated by light green curtains filled the polio ward. At some, family members sat by the wan children. Antiseptic smells filled the air.

  She wheeled him into a broad hallway, and then into a room where a large steel canister dominated the middle. A compressor whirred under the device, stopped, shifted, then whirred again with a lighter tone. Clarence knew the machine was switching back and forth between exhaling and inhaling. A dark-haired boy lay face up, only his head outside of the iron lung, looking at him blankly through a mirror positioned above his face. Grief lines marked his face. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. Clarence had never seen anyone so sad. A long window in the metal showed his arms and chest, while another showed his legs. Two rubber-lined holes permitted doctors to reach in to rearrange the patient if necessary, but the only way to actually touch him would be to undo the heavy clasps that locked the head end to the rest of the machine.

  Clarence pushed the top of the wheels to move closer. “Hi, I’m Clarence.”

  In the background, the motor clicked. “I’m sick,” whispered the boy, and Clarence knew that he could only whisper because the power to speak came from the machine compression. He could talk when the iron lung made him exhale. Putting his hand on his own chest, Clarence tried to imagine being inside the canister.

  The motor cycled several times. Clarence looked at Sean’s reflection in the mirror. Sean looked back.

  “Would you like to see a magic trick?” said Clarence.

  The motor whirred.

  Sean’s voice was a falling leaf. “No.”

  “I’ll show you anyway.” The 1910 quarter eagle came out of Clarence’s pocket. In the sterile hospital light, its gold glowed. He did knuckle rolls for Sean. He did false drops and sleight of hand passes, showing the coin and then vanishing it. He stacked the gold coin with the three dimes he had left, hid them under a tissue, then asked Sean where the coin was, top, bottom or middle. Wherever Sean said it was, when Clarence uncovered the coins, there it was.

  Two more nurses came into the room, watching Clarence go through his repertoire. They clapped when the coins reappeared in unexpected places.

  “Magic is about perception,” said Clarence, leaning close to Sean. Sitting in his wheelchair, his head was on the same level. “What we perceive is our reality. If you think you are hungry, then you find food. If you think you are cold, you shiver.” Clarence paused. He thought about Professor Gilded on his stage talking to an audience. What happened that night when the horse turned into bones? How did Gilded perceive it? Did the animal shimmer before the flesh dissolved? Clarence flourished the quarter eagle. Sean watched, his eyes dark and intent.

  “Now I’ll show you a trick that will amaze you. I don’t even know if I can do it, but I’ll try. Are you ready?”

  Sean nodded, mostly with his eyes.

  The nurses leaned in.

  Clarence clasped the coin in his right hand hard enough that he could feel the ribbed edge marking his palm. He let his thoughts drift from it, so that he was both holding the coin and not holding it. Forced distraction, but to himself, not his audience. He thought about war news and Pepsodent and Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders. Instead of the coin, he imagined the Edison’s polished wood tuning knob in his fingers as he slowly turned from station to station, of how delicious the sound tasted late at night when his parents had gone to bed and the search for voices made the time flee. Clarence thought about magic. He thought about “take a card, any card” and “abracadabra” and “there’s nothing up my sleeve.” There were illusions and tricks, and then there was magic. There was a horse that was there and not there. Perception made it real. Perception ruled.

  When he opened his hand, the coin was gone.

  One of the nurses sighed, disappointed. After all the other tricks Clarence had
done, this one must have seemed anticlimactic.

  Clarence smiled. He said to Sean, “The coin is gone. Do you know where it is?”

  Sean waited until the machine reversed so he could speak. “Is it…” The motor clicked. He inhaled. It flipped into the exhalation cycle. “… in my hand?”

  “What?” said a nurse. She stepped to the side of the iron lung to look through the window. “Oh, my gosh.” The other two nurses crowded around her. “He’s got it in his hand! How did the coin get in there?”

  Clarence touched Sean’s forehead. “A friend of mine told me the world is a dark, dark place, if we see it that way, and if we’ve got any magic, we should share it.”

  Sean waited for the machine to give him the air. “Okay.”

  “You need to get better. Someone else might need that iron lung.”

  “I will.”

  Clarence shifted in his wheelchair. One of the braces clanked against the chair’s metal frame, and he realized his legs didn’t hurt as badly as they had on the trolley. He’d barely thought of them while he did the magic. The thought made him happy.

  The nurses were still marveling about the coin. Clarence could see it through the window in the paralyzed boy’s hand.

  Slowly, Sean’s fingers closed over it.

  WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?

  WHERE DID YOU GO?

  Monday started bizarre. At the bus stop, the sun rose like a diseased orange, dark and ruddy at the bottom and a sick yellow at the top. “It’s the fires in California,” said someone as we shivered in the October cold, but it looked like an omen to me. I shouldn’t have worn a skirt.

  The bus arrived late. A little girl who’d missed her ride to the elementary school sat in my seat. I asked her to move. She said, “Who do you think you are?” I had to sit on the other side and watch houses slide by I’d never watched before. At the high school, scraps of paper and an empty milk carton littered the hallway by my locker. The janitors must have taken the weekend off. My locker combination didn’t work the first three times, and then it did. In the meantime, kids walked back and forth behind me, headed to their rooms. I didn’t catch what anyone said, and what I did hear sounded foreign.