WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  The press box perched atop the grandstand, a shack on a cliff, and the writers sat at a rickety plank table pock-marked with thousands of cigarette burns. Under the table were coffee cans where the men urinated during the game. The wall behind them was gouged and splintered and adorned with violent and disgusting writing, everything that a person could never put in a newspaper. Above them, on the roof, the purring of hundreds of pigeons. The ceiling was barely six feet high. Every so often a writer would stand up and pound on it with both fists and the pigeons would rise in a burst of pigeon hysteria, to return to the roost a minute or so later. There was room for twelve at the table, plus Sparks the Western Union man at the end, but because certain men refused to sit next to certain others, the seating was complicated. Buck, for example, insisted on keeping an empty chair to his right, and the Star man couldn’t be near the Tribune man, who had once stolen his coffee can, and the man from the Dispatch was kept as far from everybody as humanly possible. He was a hard drinker and became elaborately ill.

  Frank had never met people quite like sportswriters, not since he was a small boy; they were cruel as a matter of art—cruelty for its own sake—and they devised elaborate pranks, such as tying a rope to the Dispatch man’s ankle and then throwing him out of the window, and simple ones, such as pouring urine in his beer cup. They gawked at women in the seats below and scanned the rows with their field glasses to pick out good specimens. They gabbed about pussy, pussy, pussy, but they never talked about any woman in particular or recalled good times with a woman. They were most passionate about distant tiny unknowable facts—questions such as “Against which pitcher did Heinie Spartz hit his inside-the-park homer when the ball got stuck in the outfielder’s glove?” or “Which Miller did not pitch in the famous 32-inning Uncalled Rain Game of 1919?” could get them going for hours, and a question like “Who was better, Zez Hoover or Tooty Beck?” could touch off ferocious discussions for days. But none of them looked as if he had ever swung a bat himself. And none of them looked like a ladies’ man.

  When Frank met Buck, the old guy reached out for a handshake and missed—he was almost blind, Frank soon saw, and that was why he needed Frank, to venture out between innings and fetch the hot dogs to sustain him through nine innings of broadcasting. The steps down to the hot-dog stand were treacherous.

  Buck smelled of powerful cologne—to keep the writers away, he explained. He was a dapper old guy in a plaid jacket and a green tie, which he tucked into his shirtfront, between the fourth and fifth buttons. He kept a cold cigar plugged into the left corner of his mouth, and talked around it, his gray brush moustache riding up and down under his hooked nose, hooded eyes, arched eyebrows, and gray snap-brim hat.

  As near as Frank could piece together the story of Buck Steller over the next month, he came from Colorado, an old cowpuncher, who had arrived in Chi Town (via Nashville, where he had killed a bunco artist in a fistfight) aboard a B&O freight without a spare pair of underwear and walked straight west to Tony Studs’s Bar in Cicero and shoved aside the gunsels at the door and sat down with the boys in the boiler room and eight hours later, $14,000 richer, he pushed back his chair and walked to the Palmer House. He slept for three days, and a week later was flat broke again—the best week of his life! Everything the best! Oysters and steaks, wine and whiskey, a penthouse suite, banks of fresh roses, and a tall dark lady named Pasqual who could turn a man inside out. Buck went through the simoleons like a hot knife through butter. Soon he headed back to Cicero to reload but a big genial fellow named Gino took hold of his elbow and said to lay off, that Tony Studs did not like to see greed on the part of newcomers. Gino spoke softly and carried a cannon on his hip, and as he spoke, he smoothed out Buck’s lapels and straightened his tie. Buck said, “Fine. What Tony Studs wants, he’s got. I’m gone.” He headed for the North Side, won a little there, and finally talked his way into The Game at the Drake Hotel, in a room eighty feet long overlooking the Lake, though Buck didn’t notice that until six hours later when “I was down so far that if I jumped out the window I’d fall up” but twenty hours later he had collected a pile of chits a yard high and that’s how he came to become The Voice of the Cubs on WGN, because so many of those chits belonged to Mr. Phil Wrigley, who owned the club. He said, “Steller, here’s my personal check for sixty-eight thousand dollars. When you’re done spending it, come see me about a job,” and two weeks later he made Buck his broadcaster, which lasted three years, until a chewing-gum underling who resented Buck’s heavy fan mail and way with the ladies fired him.

  That was Buck’s version. Arnold Dingell of the Star said, “Buck Steller, a.k.a. Ernest Twiff, was an old cigar butt from the Chicago Trib copy desk who landed the WGN job when the able-bodied went off to the war. The Cubs fielded a team of gimps and cripples and dingleberries and they stuck Twiff behind the microphone. He was fired on V-E Day. Ask anybody on the Cubs.”

  But this was Minneapolis, a Triple-A town, and the Cubs didn’t play here, so who could you ask? Buck never mentioned having worked at a paper. To him, newspapers were fish wrap, and the scribes and the Pharisees who sat poking at their typewriters in the press box were nothing but sore losers. Nobody cared what they wrote. The game was all over by the time the paper came out. Buck sat at the microphone, taking a paintbrush to the game, making the Millers into giants who waged war with blazing fastballs against an arsenal of bats, the merciless sun beating down or black storm clouds threatening. If Buck spotted a kid hanging over the railing by the dugout, he’d make the kid an orphan with a rare blood disease or a gimpy leg. The players looked at that kid, wiped the tears from their eyes, glared at the enemy, and vowed to decimate them. Hatred burned in the dugout. Old grudges flared up. Revenge was always uppermost in their minds. The Millers played for the love of the game and the good people of the Midwest, but they were human too, and not to be trifled with.

  The writers snickered and hooted at him—it was pure green envy, he told Frank. He got one hundred letters a week, and they got none except for complaints that the paperboy was heaving the Daily Whosis up on the porch roof. By the time a writer got into print, the game was yesterday’s mashed potatoes. No wonder they were so bitter and vengeful.

  Blindness seemed to improve Buck’s powers of narration. He could make out shapes and shadows, evidently, and follow the sound of the play, and was free to invent the rest, to elaborate and give it weight and color. “And Fisher leans back on the mound and he kicks toward the sky and reaches back and hurls the fastball. And Dusty jumps on it and sends a sizzling grounder off the lanky left-hander’s glove—Ouch! that stung! Fisher drops to his knees! and the ball shoots up through the hole, Davis missing it by a half-inch as he lunges headlong in the grass, and out to left-centerfield it merrily rolls as Ginter comes charging around to third safely, and Dusty wisely holds up at first, though he made the big turn, challenging Barger’s arm in center, trying to draw the throw—there’s been bad blood between those two for years but I guess I don’t need to tell you that,” Buck hollered, taking a fairly routine single and making it into a Play that made the listener perk up his ears.

  The writers thought this was one of the dizziest things they had heard. They cackled and wheezed and sometimes took a wire coat hanger and tried to hook Buck’s microphone line with it and yank him off the air. Buck had no engineer, just himself and a microphone and a cord that he clipped onto a phone line. If a writer knocked him off the air, Buck bided his time, waiting for revenge, waiting for the enemy to let down his guard, waiting for a big inning below to distract him and then, bingo, the man had an earful of guano. Buck was blind but his aim was sure.

  He looked forward to road games, when he had a chance to shine—WLT couldn’t afford the long-distance line charges so Buck did his play-by-play from the studio, reconstructing a big colorful game from the skinny little facts that came in over the tickertape. The tape might read: Ball 3-2—and Buck would say: “And McPherson is ready. He glares over at Reedy on third—oh, what hi
story in that glance! what depths of frustration!—and now he winds up, and throws a high inside fastball that sends Husik sprawling in the dirt. He jumps up! It looks as if he may charge the mound! But he thinks better of it, and steps back into the box. Three balls, two strikes, and now McPherson is looking in for the sign, getting ready to deliver again.”

  The engineer supplied the sounds of booing, cheering, and crowd chatter, from transcriptions, and Buck made the crack of the bat or the smack of the ball in the catcher’s glove, and at least once a game, when the tickertape read: Foul—No play—Buck would holler, “And Dandy sends a high high foul ball straight back—LOOK OUT BOYS!—Into the press box!” And he’d pound on the table a few times and drop some tin cans and rattle a walnut in a popcorn box. “Oh boy! OH BOY! Wish you’d seen that one, folks! Ha-ha! All these old fat writers hitting the deck and diving under their typewriters—hee hee hee! Yes sir, you could hear the jowls flapping on that one! Oh boy! The fear etched on their faces! Oh, they look like they could use a clean pair of knickers now—ha ha ha! Yes sir! Smells like somebody dropped the whiskey bottle! Oh boy! That was worth coming all the way to Indianapolis for!”

  The writers heard about the fouls Buck was banging their way and how they were diving for cover—“Oh boy! Old Man Dingell from the Star practically climbed into my lap on that one. Easy, Arnie!”—and they were laying for him when the Millers returned to Nicollet Field. They grabbed him during a fifth-inning Miller rally, with the bases loaded and nobody out, and stripped every stitch of clothing from him and threw them in the street and emptied a coffee can on his head. All the time, of course, Buck had to stay on the air, talking as if nothing was happening.

  That was when he invited Fr. Ptashne from Our Lady of Mercy to join him on the broadcast. Father sat between Buck and the writers and offered comments on the game—he had a voice that could knock your hat off—and talked about his playing days at St. Lucy’s back before they used gloves and about his brief career in the minors: “Yes, friends, I even had me a year of Class D ball, but then I got a better offer to catch in the Church, and that’s the Big League, with Our Lord on the mound, shutting out Satan in the bottom of the 9th, score tied, bases loaded.”

  “You take Christ for your roommate, and you’ll never regret it,” said Father, looking over at the writers, and none of them cracked a smile. They looked straight ahead like they were in class. But none of them tried to pull anything with Father in the press box, and Father stayed nine innings. He had a bladder of steel.

  Roy Jr. asked Frank if he had seen evidence of gambling, and Frank said, “No, I don’t think Buck is a gambler. I’m sure he isn’t. He’s just a sharp-eyed old buzzard and we’re lucky to have him.” Frank brought Father John around to the Ogden to see the station—“lifelong dream of mine, radio,” said Father—and to meet the boss. Father clapped Roy Jr. on the back with his big mitt. “Too much fornicating music in radio nowadays,” he told Roy, “but otherwise, you run a good shop.” They disappeared into the office.

  Two weeks later, Father was broadcasting Mass on Sunday morning, in the dual role of celebrant and play-by-play announcer. “I now greet the congregation,” he whispered into the microphone as if covering a tennis match, and then thundered, “DOMINUS VOBISCUM.” The microphone was mounted on a brace around his neck. “And now we’re preparing the chalice, mingling a few drops of water with the wine,” he confided a moment later. “And now I’m going back to the middle of the altar for the offering of the chalice. . . . and now I am blessing the incense. . . . and now I am incensing the offerings.” And a few minutes later, the audience heard a couple hundred Corpus Dominis as he dispensed the sacraments.

  A week after that, it was Frank’s twenty-first birthday, and Buck took him to a whore. First, they went to a bar called The Backstop, around the corner from the left-field pole, and enjoyed a few boilermakers. Then Buck said, “I’ve got a surprise for you, a couple blocks from here, a birthday gift. From me to you, slugger.” Frank thought it was a joke. He imagined that a naked girl would jump out of a cake. Buck pulled up in front of a grocery store. “Go to the side door and up the stairs and knock on Apartment B. She’s expecting you,” he said.

  She was a skinny blonde lady named Dandy who lived in an apartment strewn with clothing in cardboard boxes. She wore a blue bathrobe and her hair was snarled. She laid him down on a tattered quilt on an Army cot and pulled his pants down. What in the world are you doing? he was going to ask, but by then he knew. “What a nice big guy you got here,” she said in a sad voice. “Should I undress?” he said.

  Nawww, takes too much time. She dropped her robe. Her skin was so pale and thin, her breasts like small turnips. She stepped out of her panties. My gosh. She squirted cream on him and lay down next to him and touched him. He kissed her and she pushed him away. She said to get on top. You’re awful big, sonny, and I ain’t, so don’t get too excited. This was exciting and he pushed into her two, four, six times and groaned and out it came. My, aren’t we horny today? Was that nice? Yes, it really was. Thank you very much. She wiped him off with a cold rag and went in the toilet. He guessed it was time to go. “How was it?” asked Buck, in the car, grinning. Frank looked away. It coulda been worse.

  Back at the Antwerp he tumbled into bed and tossed like a boat and finally dropped off and woke and slept and then awoke. Downstairs, Patsy sat very still in a chair, sipping a glass of sherry, listening. He was alone, thank goodness. She was afraid, it being his birthday, that that Italian tramp would be climbing into Frank’s bed, but it was just Frank, a little drunk, judging from his footsteps, and weary, but home safe. Then Frank groaned and sat bolt upright. “You pig,” he said bitterly. “Oh what a pig you are. What an awful pig. How could you do that! That poor kid. You are such a pig.”

  So, she thought. The Italian tramp had come across, gave the birthday boy a roll in the hay, poor Frank. Those Catholic girls had a way of giving you what you wanted and making you sick with guilt at the same time. Patsy knew the type. Well, it was time to make her move, she thought. The emanations seemed quite clear. There were no intervening currents whatsoever, no shadow thoughts, no psychic hands reaching out of the bushes to draw her back. Her path was absolutely clear. She had never spoken to Frank face to face before but now she would offer herself to him.

  She also thought she would get rid of Delores DuCharme and Corinne Archer and place an embargo on any new young female characters until the tramp packed her bags for Milwaukee. Then she dozed off in the chair.

  When Frank awoke, it was Sunday morning and Father John was proclaiming his own unworthiness. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, he intoned and struck himself on the breast three times, the breast where the microphone hung. It felt as if Father John were beating him on the head.

  CHAPTER 30

  Debut

  “Uncle Ray, did you ever meet a woman you didn’t want to make love to?” Roy Jr. asked at lunch. Frank blushed, and looked at the waitress coming, butt first, through the kitchen door, hauling a tray.

  “Well,” said Ray, thinking carefully, “my mother, of course, died when I was young so I can’t say about her, and my sister, I would say, I had no particular desire for after I was old enough to see what all was available. And there were aunts, I must say, who had lost most of their charm, such as it was, by the time I was of age. Other than them—I’d have to think—I suppose there must’ve been a few. Offhand, though, I can’t think of them. ”

  Frank had tuna stackups and the cherry cola Jell-O salad. He thought about Maria. The night before, they had gone to see Deanna Durbin, not their favorite star, in How Bright the Morning, and he had kissed Maria, or she had kissed him, one kiss so thrilling that she grabbed his leg and he slipped his hand into her blouse. Her bra unclasped in front! What an innovation! He unfastened it, expecting the theater lights to flash and sirens to wail, but instead her breast fell into his hand, a small, friendly breast. Then a man and his wife slipped into the row and sat next to Maria an
d the woman gave Frank a walleyed look and whispered to her husband. The man shook his head in disgust. Frank withdrew his hand. Deanna Durbin smiled onscreen like she didn’t have a brain in her head. A man leaned across the table and took her hand. A closeup of their hands. Frank didn’t know what the story was about, but there is only one story, he thought; the only difference is, who is the girl?

  Dear Daddy, he wrote after lunch. You said you wanted me to go to college but this is better, to be around smart people (some, not all) and listen to them without having to repeat everything back. My boss loves to talk. I sit and listen to him go on and on, and I wonder, “Why is he saying all this to me, I’m nobody, I don’t know anything,” but of course he isn’t asking me to be anybody. He is a frustrated performer who had to become the manager because they didn’t have one of those. He tells me things I know he wouldn’t tell his own wife. He told me that he thought it must be happy to be on the air. Just for those minutes, then you might be very unhappy, but those few minutes would be like a dream. I wish I could get on the air myself one of these days. P.S. I am in love.

  Frank had asked Roy Jr. for a shot at announcing and Roy Jr. said he was too valuable to waste. “Announcers sit around, waiting. You’d never like it,” he said. “You’re a doer.”

  So Frank went to Reed Seymour, the Chief Announcer, and invited him to the Red Eye for a beer and by the second pitcher they were on the verge of friendship. Frank said he sure admired people in radio, people who could talk on the air, announcers, and Reed said, “I got into radio because I wanted to impress a girl I knew, a beautiful girl with red hair and green eyes and long legs. I met her at my brother’s wedding. She asked me what I did, and I said, ‘I’m in radio.’ ‘Oh really,’ she said, ‘my gosh that must be scary.’ Nawwww, I said. So I had to get into radio. I knew how disappointed she’d be if she knew I was lying. It’s true.”