WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  They went to a movie, about a detective who nabs a German spy in a small town in New Hampshire. When a vicious dog, fangs bared, suddenly tensed for the leap onto the detective’s back, Maria squeezed against him.

  He walked her home and then they walked around the park, the moon shining on the quiet pond, the empty tennis courts, the horseshoe pits with their upright posts reminding him of what he was all too aware of. “You’re my lucky horseshoe,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Frank, do you think I should change my name to Anderson?”

  “Why give up a great name like Antonio?”

  “People think Italian girls are loose.”

  Are you? he thought. “I’ll tell you a secret. My real name is Francis With. It sounded so wispy. I changed it for good luck.”

  But the good luck was her. She wove her fingers into his and looked him deeply in the eye. “I want to know you,” she said. Well, okay, that can be arranged. She turned her face up to be kissed, and he kissed her on the lips and felt a flick of her tongue. “Again,” she said, so he kissed her again.

  They ate lunch together in his little office, sandwiches that he made the night before. He stood in the control room during her shows. The massages moved into the shoulder region and along the spine and under the wings. When he moved forward, along the rib cage, she pressed her arms to her sides, but glanced back and smiled, as if to say, “Not now, but soon.”

  When Dotty returned to Chicago, having put a tremor in Bud’s voice and glamored up the poky people of Green Corners, Maria moved to Friendly Neighbor where Dad felt a young actress might settle Marjery down. She was taking to whooping it up during commercial breaks—lighting a smoke and rolling her eyes and saying, “Boy, this bra itches,” or “I wonder what folks would say if they knew Little Becky’s on the rag.” Dad had to ask Faith what that meant.

  Worse yet, Marjery suffered from the giggles. The word “cheese” set her off once and once Dad said, “Hunger makes the beans taste better,” and she almost blew a gasket. Faith clapped a hand over the girl’s mouth and hauled her out of the studio—Dad was reminiscing about his late mother at the moment, and had just mentioned how hard she had had it with six children during a drought: hardly the time for Little Becky to shriek and guffaw—so they improvised for a few minutes, until Marjery got control of herself and came back into the studio, and her next line was “Pass the beans, Dad,” and she dropped to the floor by the microphone, tears streaming down her cheeks, her face contorted in ugly helpless laughter. All because she remembered the lines:Order in the court—

  The judge is eating beans.

  His wife is in the bathtub,

  Counting submarines.

  So Patsy had to remember never to put beans in another Friendly Neighbor script, which she added to a long list of forbidden Becky words, such as “chicken,” “crabs,” “prunes,” “turkey,” “spaghetti,” “meatballs,” and “pickle.”

  The next day, Dad, still thinking of his mother’s sad life, remarked, “Well, everyone is the judge of their own luck,” and Becky fell down foaming at the mouth again.

  So Maria came into the story as beautiful Delores DuCharme, whose car broke down south of Elmville, near Round Lake, en route to Detroit. It was a sunny day and birds sang as she walked along and over the hill and saw Dad and Tiny in the skiff, fishing, about the same moment they spotted her.

  TINY: Laws, Misteh Dad, but dey’s a gal oveh dere

  who am jes’ ’bout de purtiest lil gal dese ole peepers

  has evah peeped ’pon—an if’n she ain’t lost, den mah

  name ain’t Tiny.

  DELORES (OFF): Yoo-hoo.

  They brought her home for lunch, naturally, it being lunchtime, and she sat down with Dad and Jo and Becky and Frank, Tiny having excused himself (“I’se gots to go do sumpin’ ’bout the Widda’s terminites, boss. Dey’s get-tin’ just fierce oveh dere”), and Jo gave Delores a bowl of tomato rice soup and a toasted cheese sandwich. “Sure is nice to have Frank back,” said Dad. (Frank had been gone for six months, prospecting in Alaska, because Randolph Cleveland, who had been Frank for all those years, had upped and gone to Chicago, and the new Frank, Dale Snelling, Faith’s husband, who had been playing gangsters and foreigners since the demise of Sunnyvale, didn’t sound much like the old one. Six months, Patsy thought, should be long enough for the folks to forget.) “Thanks,” said Dale. “So what do you do, Miss DuCharme?”

  She was a dancer, she said, looking for work in a roadhouse near the Motor City and also looking for her boyfriend Bo, who’d gone there to seek employment in the manufacturing industry.

  “What kind of dancer?” asked Becky.

  “Hush, eat your lunch,” said Jo.

  “Exotic,” said Delores.

  The actors looked up. What did she say? They checked the script.

  It said “exotic” all right.

  On the fourth floor, Ray, rising from his chair to go upstairs for a nap, heard “exotic” and sat down again.

  “Oh, that’s interesting,” said Dad. “My late mother loved to dance, but there wasn’t much exotic about the polka, I guess. Not if you’re from Windom.”

  “I dance on tabletops in smoky bars full of truck drivers who like to reach up and stick dollar bills in my clothes,” said Delores, hesitantly.

  “In your pockets?” asked Dale. “They put money in your pockets?”

  “Sort of. And they like to put money up here. And down there.”

  WLT performers were strictly cold readers, one and all. The notion of rehearsals was foreign to them. It was a matter of pride to stroll into the studio in time to pour a cup of coffee, drink it, pick up the script, glance at it, and when the red light went on, do what the words said to do. You answered the door, you pulled the trigger, you leaped from the ledge, you walked to the mailbox or to the gallows or to the kitchen—you wept, you thundered, you murmured, you gasped, whatever it said, and when the light went off, you chucked the script into a wastebasket and got the hell out.

  And now, drifting down the stream of dialogue that had suddenly become a rapids, the cast backpedalled, reading slowly . . . with long pauses . . . trying to read ahead. “My late mother used to earn money dancing, but only in polka contests there in Windom. She won $25 once,” said Dad, saying each word separately as his eye scanned to the bottom of the page and the top of the next. When would he need to abandon script and maybe tell a story about his mother—“Speaking of my mother reminds me of the time . . .” But what time did it remind him of? What mother stories had he told recently? And would Maria know enough to abandon script too? or when he finished the mother story would she pick up again with men stuffing dollar bills in her pants?

  “Sometimes you get $200 a night dancing on tables.”

  “Gosh,” said Little Becky. “You get that much just to dance?”

  “You can if you dance like men like to see you dance. You do the hootchi-koo and a little this and a little that and then you go sit with them for a few minutes. Have a drink. Talk. Hold their hand. Then maybe if they’re nice—”

  Dad swallowed. And then Tiny came back. “Misteh Dad, I’se finished wid dem terminites an’ I’se wondrin’ if’n you got sump’n fer me to do here. Uddawise I’ll jes’ mosey back to th’ Lake.”

  It was Wilmer, Dad’s brother, trying to be helpful and offer them an escape. The actors looked up. What did he say? There stood Wilmer—without a script. Wilmer is winging it. Maria looked to Dad. But Faith spoke first. “Maybe you could take a look at my—at my—clematis, Tiny.”

  “Yo cli—what?”

  Now Homer the sound effects man perked up his ears. He had been clinking coffee cups, rattling silverware, slurping soup, all easy business, but what in blazes is a clematis and what sound does it make? He thought, whirr.

  “My clematis. It’s on the back porch.”

  Homer looked around behind him. Shit, where’s the screen door? It’s summertime. All I’ve got here is a big heavy oak d
oor and a creaking door and a car door and a jail cell door.

  “No sense rushing out there to prune a vine—it’ll wait,” said Dad. Then he heard a body fall. It was Becky. The reference to prunes had felled her and she lay in a heap, her body racked with giggles.

  “Sit down and have a cup of coffee,” offered Dale. It was all he could think of to say, Faith having knelt down to stifle the child. But her sobbing could plainly be heard. “Little Becky’s kind of allergic to that clematis. It makes her wheeze. That’s why Jo wants it trimmed back, I guess,” added Dale.

  “That’s right!” Faith called up from the floor.

  Roy Jr. and Frank and Ray all arrived in the control room in time to hear Dad say, “Well, anyway, we’re pleased you dropped in, Miss Douche.”

  “That’s not her right name, is it?” whispered Ray.

  Dad was perspiring. He held up two fingers. Page 11, he mouthed. Last page. They were on page 9. The others flipped ahead to page 11, except for Wilmer who misunderstood the signal and went back to page 2, the fishing scene. Wilmer arrived there first.

  “Ah sho recommends you puts a new wum on dat hook, Misteh Dad. Ah blieves yo fust wum is near ’bout daid.”

  Dale didn’t hear him. “Jo, this is the best coffee cake you’ve ever made, I swear,” he said. “But I’d give anything to have a piece of your jelly roll.”

  “Miss DuCharme,” said Dad, “let me show you to your bedroom.”

  And the organ came up with the closing theme, and Reed did the back-announce, and the studio was still. The actors stood stock still. “Jesus H. Christ,” said Dale.

  And that was what made Roy Jr. come striding red-faced into the studio. “Never say a word near a microphone that you wouldn’t want to go out on the air. Never,” he said. Itch the engineer had been so convulsed by “Miss Douche” he forgot to the mike switch and so “Jesus H. Christ” went out to the friends and neighbors in radioland and so did Faith’s “Get your fat little butt off the floor and out the door,” spoken to Marjery but, as Jo speaking in Elmville, it could only have been directed at Delores.

  “Don’t ever curse in a studio. Don’t ever assume a microphone is off. You’re professional radio people. You know that.”

  “Well,” said Dad, mopping his face, “it could’ve been worse. At the moment, I don’t see how, though.”

  And then Mr. Odom popped in to say that Patsy had called to apologize—some pages got left in the script by mistake. “Some mistake,” said Roy Jr. He turned to Ray. “She’s your problem. I can’t do anything with her. You hired her and you’re keeping her here, for reasons that have nothing to do with radio, if you ask me. Fine. Do what you like. But don’t ask me to manage a situation that’s unmanageable.”

  “Patsy Konopka is a hell of a writer,” said Mr. Odom.

  Roy Jr. turned and cocked his head and blinked. “I didn’t ask for your advice, Mr. Odom.”

  “If you don’t want my advice, then don’t talk about Patsy Konopka in front of me.”

  “Patsy is fine,” said Dad, “but she isn’t writing for our audience. I don’t know who she’s writing for.”

  Ray said he would talk to Patsy, and Roy Jr. went off to call up Marjery’s mother to tell her he was giving Marjery six weeks’ notice.

  Listening to the last minutes of Friendly Neighbor from the control room, Frank didn’t find it funny. Not at all. The actors in the studio looked pale and helpless, and Maria trembled for ten minutes after it was over. He hugged her. She laughed and then she cried. “I’m going to get fired,” she said. “They’ll throw me out on the street because I played the bad woman. You wait and see.”

  “No, they won’t,” he said. “It’s only a part in a play.”

  “I might as well pack up and go back to Milwaukee,” she said. “Oh, Frank. Just when I was getting to like you!”

  So Frank ran, three stairs at a bound, up to Roy Jr.’s office. He was still talking to Mrs. Moore.

  “Marjery’s a little old for ten. She’s been ten for almost fifteen years and she was fourteen when she started,” he said.

  “Maybe Little Becky ought to grow up,” said the mother, hopefully.

  “I don’t think she can grow that fast. So I think she ought to go back to her dad. All good things come to an end, and this is one of them. Anyway, I think that Jo and Frank are going to have a baby.”

  “I’d like to talk to Ray about this.”

  “Honestly, Ray doesn’t deal with this anymore. He turned this all over to me, Mrs. Moore, and I don’t like to be the one to have to tell you, but I am the one, and you just have to accept it.”

  “I think that if people knew—if the listeners out there were aware—that you are getting ready to dump Little Becky like she was a sack of potatoes—I think there’d be a real uproar out there if people knew.”

  “She’s a popular girl, don’t think I don’t know it. But I think the listeners would be a little surprised if they knew that Marjery’s twenty-nine years old.”

  “I know those people, Mr. Soderbjerg. I think they’d be behind us.”

  “I’m not taking a vote, Mrs. Moore. I’ve made up my mind.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Roy Jr. hung up and said, “Had your lunch?” and he and Frank strolled over to the Pot Pie. Then Roy Jr. said, “Naw, let’s splurge.” And they walked downtown to Charley’s. They ordered oysters and prime rib steaks. Frank had never eaten oysters before, and when the plates arrived, he thought of asking, “Is it raw?” and then thought, “Naw, of course not.” And ate all six of his, doused in red sauce. He was in love with Maria. He could eat anything.

  CHAPTER 27

  Be There

  The waitress at Charley’s was one who believed in striking up meaningful conversations with customers and after she brought their steaks, they got to hear her thoughts about the criminals running loose in Minneapolis. She thought there were too many and that politicians were in cahoots with them and held back the police from making arrests. She said it was getting so that the streets were too dangerous for a girl to walk, even in broad daylight. She felt that a lack of religious faith was behind this trend. She said, “A person who goes to church on Sunday isn’t going to come around and rob you on Monday.”

  “No,” said Roy Jr. “If he is going to do it, he’ll probably do it on Sunday.”

  “Well,” she said, “it’s been nice talking to you. Let me know if you care for dessert.”

  The moment she sidled away, Frank leaned forward and said, “Mr. Soderbjerg, I have to ask a favor of you. Maria Antonio, who was on the show today, she’s a friend of mine, and she’s a wonderful person. I hope you’re not going to fire her because of that. It wasn’t her fault—”

  Roy Jr. stuck up his hand. “Don’t give it another thought. It wasn’t that big a problem.”

  “She’s worried that you’ll cancel the show or something.”

  “Not a chance. It was an accident. Put it out of your mind.” Then he said, “Which one is your friend?” Frank told him. “Oh,” said Roy Jr. “The one Patsy Konopka is trying to get me to fire.” He laughed. “Poor Patsy doesn’t care for Catholics, I think. She told me your friend is a gold-plated whore. Interesting terminology.”

  “Who is Patsy Konopka?”

  The older man smiled and looked at the ceiling, as if about to launch into a story, but then he thought better of it and frowned. “She’s our head writer. An old friend of Ray’s. Sits over at the Antwerp and cranks out six shows a day, believe it or not. It certainly isn’t Broadway material but people like it. But she gets sloppy. Can’t keep the characters straight. Dad’s had six different next-door neighbors in the last month.”

  Frank thought he would look up this Patsy Konopka and see what he could do to change her mind about Maria—but Roy Jr. was saying, “No, this episode today —I tell you, all the worst things that happen in radio aren’t as bad as you think. The only unforgivable sin is to not show up. Punctuality. The first law of radio: BE TH
ERE. Remember that. The corollary of that law is: a radio man should own two alarm clocks and have a third available. Not many people were ever fired for not being brilliant, but the list of brilliant guys who wound up as shoe salesmen because they came late for the shift is as long as your leg.

  “We had a fellow once named Burns L. Strout who overslept one snowy morning and as a result The Early Birds wasn’t there at five a.m., not the theme song, ‘Bugle Call Rag,’ or the cheery voice saying; ‘Morning, early birds! And a beeeeeyoootiful morning it is too!’ The voice that was supposed to say this was in the sack, dead to the world, having been out until three a.m. climbing into a whiskey bottle. Burns had a problem of wanting to be two things at once: a responsible decent person who brings sunshine into the lives of thousands and a crazy man who feels the throb of the midnight tom-toms and goes coursing out into the crowded avenues of the great hairy metropolis to seek the woman of his dreams.

  “On this particular night, I believe, he had had to hire a girlfriend, so he was absolutely broke and came home to his slough of an apartment and passed out in a pile of old clothes and woke up late with a hangover that felt like his head had melted and came high-tailing it into the studio at 5:07 with terror in his watery blue eyes and hurled himself into the chair like a sinking ship, a sheaf of weather reports and livestock summaries and news headlines in hand, and he looked at his engineer Itch—the guy you just met—his real name is Mitch but he was always a little late with the microphone, so we called him Itch—a joke he never got, by the way—and Burns hit the chair, landing on his hemorrhoids big as Concord grapes, and his brains sloshed, he moaned and said, ”Jesus, this light is bright. Why in flaming hell can’t I hear the music, you asshole?“ The reason he couldn’t, of course, was that the microphone was on. Itch had put him on the air the moment his butt hit leather.