WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  As all of the people got on.

  And Jim he looked in his jacket

  And the precious ticket was gone.

  He looked in the old cardboard satchel,

  And his pockets, the left and the right.

  He had lost his ticket to see her,

  And Mother was dying tonight.

  He whispered, “Please, Mister Conductor,

  The Evening Mail I must ride,

  For Mother is dying in Pittsburgh,

  And I need to be there at her side.”

  The conductor looked down at him gravely.

  He said, “There is naught I can do.

  There are rules by which railroads are managed,

  And we make no exception for you.”

  So Jim found a gentleman standing

  Beside the first-class sleeping car,

  And he wore a fine suit and a top hat

  And smoked a three-dollar cigar.

  And Jim said, “Please, sir, can you spare me

  Two dollars to pay for my fare?

  For I must tonight get to Pittsburgh.

  My mother is perishing there.”

  And the gentleman sneered at him cruelly,

  “Be gone or I’ll call the police.

  I’m tired of beggars and chisellers!

  Be gone, you’re disturbing the peace!”

  So Jim found a place in the station,

  A corner behind the front door,

  And he felt so cold and so sleepy

  As he lay on the cold marble floor.

  And he dreamed he saw angels in heaven.

  How sweet were the anthems they sung,

  And there in the middle was Mother,

  So happy and lovely and young.

  And she said to him, “Jim, you’re a good boy,

  A child of sunshine and love,

  And tonight you will join me in heaven

  And live with your mother above.”

  And Jim put his hand out to touch her

  And the heavens resounded with joy

  To know he would have no more suffering,

  That ragged and poor little boy.

  A janitor found him at daybreak,

  And they covered him up with a sheet,

  And they sent round a hearse in an hour,

  And they carried him up the main street.

  And O how the sidewalks were crowded,

  ’Twas Christmas for young and for old,

  And nobody saw the black wagon

  With its cargo so tiny and cold.

  They were busily worshipping Jesus.

  They sang halleluias to Him.

  But Jesus looked down with a smile

  And He said, “Welcome home, Little Jim.”

  Mother was radiant. It was the loveliest song she had ever heard. So sad, but she couldn’t cry, it was too beautiful. “Things will turn out for us, I know it,” she said. “It’s just like the song says.”

  “But why does he have to die to be happy?” Francis thought it was the worst song in the history of radio.

  “Don’t you think Daddy is happy?” she asked. Her upper lip trembled. “I know he is. He says he is. He tells me every day that he is.” She turned off the radio. “Dying is the easy part,” she said softly. “It’s the waiting that’s unbearable.” Francis turned the radio back on. Little Buddy’s dad, Slim, was talking about corn flakes. It would be nice to have a dad, Francis thought, especially one who could play the guitar.

  The next summer, Francis moved to Minneapolis to live with Art and Clare for awhile because Mother had to go back to the hospital. She had dreams, terrible ones, and now the dark figures from her dreams were coming to her during the day. “Do I seem crazy to you?” she asked him. He said no. “But I am,” she said.

  She came to his room late at night and sat on the edge of his bed. “My life is gone, Francis. Gone up in smoke. We were happy once and then Daddy died. He burned up, Francis. He was a good man and God let him die in the flames. We were so happy. I don’t know why this happened to us. You’re my little boy and I love you more than anything else and my wish is that you could have had a happy life but there’s nothing to be done. I’m sending you away but it breaks my heart to do it. Just do one thing for me, Francis, because I don’t know if we’ll ever be together again. It’s all I ask. Remember your mother, Francis. Just remember me. That’s all I ask. Will you promise me that? Will you? Promise that no matter what happens, you’ll always remember your mother, who brought you into the world. I love you. Goodbye, darling boy. Remember your promise. Remember.”

  Art was waiting at the Great Northern Depot and they drove up to Art’s cousin’s plumbing shop on Plymouth Avenue. “You hear that Ole and Lena moved away too?” said Art. “Yeah, they moved away because Ole read in the paper that most accidents occur at home.” Ed the cousin locked up the shop and took off with them and they all had hamburgers at a gleaming steel diner where the dishwasher had a dark green eyeball—“Zez Hoover. Usedta catch for the Millers long time ago, got hit by a pitch,” said Ed—and then they dropped in at the fire station for a hand of cribbage. Art had a silver flask and passed it around. “Gotta go check out a babe,” he told Francis. “You stick with Ed. I’ll be back in a shake.”

  Francis and Ed shot pool with a couple firemen, then the two of them walked back to the shop. “That Art. Quite a guy,” said Ed. “Quite a guy. I sure envy him. Plumbing is nothing, you’re dealing with nobodies. I tell you, one thing about radio is that a man can get laid faster than anywhere else. They’re all doing it. Those firemen you just met? Lily Dale goes there once a week and does half the guys in the department, that’s why she has so much tremolo.”

  Lily Dale? said Francis. Oh yes, she drove down to Engine Co. 1 after her show, pulled the big Caddy into the barn next to the pumper and the firemen lined up at the rear door. All those radio people were banging away as fast as they could. That Leo LaValley, they say he’s a real pussy hound. That minister who’s on Sunday mornings, him too, and that Shepherd Boys Quartet, that bass singer, they say his balls hang down to his knees.

  Leo a what kind of hound?

  “Oh, he’s hot for that woman who’s on in the morning. That LaWella.”

  LaWella Wells? The homemaker?

  “That’s the one. They say she does that whole damn show in her undies and sometimes she takes them off and sits there naked as a jaybird. Not a stitch. A real knockout, too.”

  LaWella Wells? The peanut butter cookie recipes and how to get cranberry juice out of a wool sweater?

  “Sits there in her little brassiere and panties, and whenever the recipe calls for milk, she unhopks the top and whenever the recipe calls for sugar, off comes the bottom. I heard that from a guy who worked there. He said the control room was so crowded during that homemaker show, you couldn’t take a deep breath.”

  That sweet woman with the cheery “Good morning everybody! It’s a beautiful day and it’s so good to have you here in my kitchen!”—naked?

  “She’s got breasts as firm as a McIntosh apple. Real nice little breasts with big pale-brown nipples. Nice long legs. Real nice. Soft red hair. Beautiful woman. Sits there at a table covered with soft green felt and she’s talking real smooth and sweet about making bread pudding, in those lace panties and that pretty little black brassiere, and she talks about breaking up them bread crumbs and adding a cup of milk, and she reaches back and unhooks and suddenly her two little breasts are there, covered with goosebumps, and the nipples sticking out a half an inch, and then she comes to the half cup of sugar and she gets up and lies down on the table, under the microphone, and she eases out of those panties, first one long leg, then the other, and she’s talking along just so cool and sweet about putting that pudding in the oven, and she’s moving her little hinder around and around and holding those little boobies, and she touches herself down there and when she says goodbye, she points at one guy in the control room and he gets to come down and bang her right there. Just one guy. Sh
e chooses a different one every day. That’s the truth. That’s what he told me.”

  “Bang her?”

  “Yeah, those radio guys got it made. Plumbing is nothin’. It’s like sled dogs. Unless you’re the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”

  On the way home, Art drove downtown and parked and took Francis into Dayton’s Department Store, and they rode the elevator up to the twelfth floor. Twelve floors of goods to buy, a palace of underwear, a cathedral of socks. Great high pillars and arches and below, aisles and aisles of sweet new pajamas and suits and, on the third floor, dozens of naked dummies in corsets and slips. Art bought a slip.

  “For Aunt Clare?”

  “It’s for her birthday. Don’t mention it to her, okay?”

  “Does LaWella Wells really do her show in her underwear?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her show. Want me to check it out for you?”

  Francis nodded. Yes. He would like to know this.

  Mother was in the hospital for June and July, and got out, and went back in for most of August. Clare took Francis up to Fargo to see her and she didn’t recognize him. She called him Chester and thought he was pretty funny, or strange—she laughed and screwed up her face at him and gave him a friendly shove. Clare kept saying, Ruby, Ruby, it’s Franny. They stayed for only a few minutes and when Mother got too worked up they left. She kept pointing at the radio and laughing at him. Maybe she thought he was Leo, from the radio. Anyway, Mother certainly enjoyed seeing him. It was the happiest he had seen her in years.

  Art was not as much fun to live with as he had been when he visited. He didn’t do card tricks or tell many jokes, he preferred to sit in his big easy chair in the dark and smoke and drink Manhattans. The ice clinked and the red coal got brighter and dimmer.

  “Mind if I sit with you, Uncle Art?”

  “No.”

  “Care for a little light on the subject?” (One of Art’s lines.)

  “No thanks.”

  “Anything I can bring you?”

  “Francis?”

  “Yes?”

  “If you’re going to fidget, go fidget somewhere else.” And he’d peel off a dollar bill and give it to him to go buy comic books. Francis soon had the largest collection of comics on Blaisdell Avenue, and even though he’d trade them three-for-one to other boys, trying to win friends, his pile grew and grew. He bought the Doctor Dolittle books, he bought Richard Halliburton and novels about men sailing away on tramp steamers to the Orient and detectives and Gene Autry’s adventures in the Golden West. Like the good doctor from Puddleby-on-Marsh, Francis learned to find company outside of the human race. Instead of animals, Francis collected books.

  CHAPTER 17

  Minneapolis

  Francis attended West High School for six years and lived with Art and Clare except when they felt under the weather. Then he’d live with Clare’s brother James and his wife Alta for a few weeks, or with Alta’s aunt Rosamond. Clare sold cosmetics at Dayton’s and the crowds exhausted her and she’d come home and lie down on the sofa and when Art got home she would whisper to him and he’d call for Francis and send him away. Or sometimes Art sent him away for reasons of his own. Art’s limit seemed to be a month, and after that, he got tired of having Francis around, no matter how nice Francis tried to be.

  Francis learned how to be extremely nice, even invisible. He sat in his little room in the attic, which he kept neat and clean, and he made no noise, treading around in stocking feet, and never bothered anybody, washed and dried the dishes, did all his own laundry, darned his socks, sewed on his buttons, earned his own money delivering the Tribune, shoveled Art’s snow, listened to Art, was agreeable, and still Art would say, “Maybe it’s time you went with James and Alta for awhile, okay?” and off he’d go. James and Alta had four little kids and no spare room, and Francis slept on a couch in the basement that otherwise was their dog’s. Rex resented Francis and growled at him. The little kids stole his stuff. He woke in the morning with dog hair in his mouth. His clothes were full of it. He smelled of Rex at school. After a week, he’d creep back to Art and Clare, humiliated. They didn’t give him a key to the house but he was able to jigger the basement window open and slither through and climb onto the laundry tub and tiptoe upstairs to his room and lie in bed and hope they wouldn’t be too upset that he was back.

  Art didn’t do his magic tricks or tell his jokes, except if James’s little boy William came over. He ran straight for Art’s pant leg and hung on and squealed, and then Art was the old happy-go-lucky Art. Otherwise, he read the paper and worried about the war. Art was sure that Hitler would be in Minneapolis before next Christmas, the Panzer divisions of the Wehrmacht speeding west across the plains to meet the Japs in California, the Luftwaffe settled in at Wold-Chamberlain Field, and a Heinie as mayor of Minneapolis. Art told Francis that if the Germans came, he would sell the house and they would move to Canada and Francis would have to go back to Mindren. Art said that we had made a big mistake sending ships and planes to England and that Hitler’s wrath would be all the worse for our sending weapons to kill German boys. Roosevelt had betrayed America by getting us into this war. American cities would be laid to rubble, Americans would die by the tens of thousands, all because the President was an Ivy League cookie pusher with a weak spot for the Brits.

  After school, Francis liked to ride the Como-Xerxes streetcar downtown, spend an hour at the main library, and walk to the Hotel Ogden and hang around WLT and then ride home with Art. It was scary the first time: he approached the desk in the lobby and said, “I’m Francis With, I’m Arthur Finn’s nephew, I’d like to be able to go up and see him if I may, please,” fully expecting the tall woman with bright red fingernails to laugh cruelly and call a cop and have Francis pitched out into the street. But she only smiled and said, “Fourth floor,” and after that he didn’t need to ask, she only smiled. And then he didn’t go to the fourth floor, where Art wasn’t so happy to see him; he went to Three and wandered near the studios.

  He had a story ready in case somebody asked him what he was doing there. He was Arthur Finn’s nephew and he was writing a term paper for school on the subject “Radio Goes to War,” about the vital importance of radio entertainment in keeping morale high on the home front. But nobody ever asked him. Men stood and smoked in the halls, men charged past and dove into studios a moment before the On Air light flashed, men in cowboy clothes sat and read the newspaper, Homer Jessie studied his scripts and practiced woofing or whinnying or chuckling or sobbing, and once a trained seal flapped past on its way to play “Silent Night” on the Jubilee, and nobody asked Francis anything. He walked off the elevator, turned left, walked through the double doors and past Studio B and into the Green Room, got a Coke out of the cooler, and sat and listened to the radio. And after a moment, the people he had just heard on the radio would walk into the room, pour themselves a cup of coffee, plop down, and shoot the breeze. Francis sat, polite and invisible, a fly on the wall.

  One day, Leo was on the radio talking bravely about the value of determination and how many impossible deeds had been achieved by people simply because they refused to quit, and a moment later he was flopped on the couch and complaining to Gene the engineer that Little Buddy had spit seeds in the studio and they stuck to Leo’s pants.

  “The little shit, somebody ought to drop a rock on him,” said Leo. “He’s spoiled rotten. The kid sits and eats grapes by the bagful and sprays the seeds in all directions. Then he gets the runs and goes fills up the toilet and doesn’t even flush it! What you gonna do with a kid like that? I’d say, drop him off the roof and be done with it.”

  “Kinda sours a person on children in general,” said the engineer.

  “Even his own father hates him,” said Leo.

  Francis did not know Little Buddy Graves personally, only as a voice on Friendly Neighbor with his father Slim, singing “I Heard My Mother Call from Heaven” and “Little Bob the Newsboy,” and then later on their own show on M
onday nights at 7:30. Slim strummed guitar and sang along, but Little Buddy, of course, was the star. He sang songs about sickly children with drunken fathers who lay dying in the snow. The show closed with Little Buddy kneeling at his radio bedside in prayer, asking God to bless his dad and his mother and his brothers Bobby and Billy and “all of the dear children listening tonight,” and when he chirped “Good-night, Daddy,” it made Francis think about his own daddy coming in to kiss him good night.

  “I’m not kidding,” said Leo, lowering his voice. “I believe the kid is a midget. Check him out sometime. Follow him into the men’s room and stand next to him and take a glance at his gonads. I bet you’ll find that he’s in his twenties and a little small for his age. Yank his hair while you’re at it, five bucks says it’s a rug.”

  Francis had seen Little Buddy’s picture, of course, in the souvenir songbook: he was short and plump and had long dangly golden ringlets.

  “Naw, he’s a kid,” said the engineer. “You can tell by the way he’s scared of his old man. I’ve never seen a man rag on a kid like Slim does, he’s on that little bugger about every little damn thing. Other day, he yells, ‘Don’t look at me so dumb, ya look just like yer photographs, ya cheesehead.’ He stands over him and makes him sign the autographs and makes sure the kid writes big and loopy. The kid gets so spooked, he starts forgetting the words or singing off-key and then—you never saw anybody chew out a kid like Slim does.” The engineer stiffened and glared and hissed, “Shape up ya little dipshit—ya keep slowing down, yer gonna put everbody to sleep—so quit farting around and stay on the beat or I’ll kick your fanny out of here and get somebody else and nobody’ll know the difference except it’ll be better!” And then the engineer smiled warmly and said, “Welcome back, friends and neighbors, and now it’s hymn time. Isn’t it, Buddy? Yes, Buddy asked me last night, after he said his prayers, if we couldn’t do ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ on the broadcast today, so here it is. Son?” And the engineer whispered in a little high-pitched voice, “This is for all the little children, especially the ones who don’t have enough food to eat.” And the engineer sang, in Little Buddy’s voice,What a friend we have in Jesus,