WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  A good idea, and Frank would be perfect as a young reporter, keen but lovable. He could be a young reporter who arrives in Elmville to investigate something on Friendly Neighbor, she thought. Ha-ha! He could investigate Delores! The little Italian tramp.

  Patsy paced as the ideas jumped into her head.

  Delores could be a Mafia gun moll who calls Chicago late at night while the Bensons sleep and conducts mysterious business with a man named Gino, talking tough talk sotto voce with a cigarette dangling from her lip, which Frank overhears, but she sees his shadow and slips him a Mickey Finn in his morning juice but Dad takes it instead and slips unconscious to the floor. In the uproar, she grabs the silverware and the taxi arrives and Frank offers to help with her suitcase and it falls open and bundles of fresh C-notes tumble out and she says, “Freeze, buster, I got two guns concealed in my blouse and they’re both pointed at you right now!”

  Well, maybe not her blouse.

  Patsy rolled a page into the typewriter and as she did, she saw her reflection in the glass door of the highboy, her tangled black hair with swashes of gray, the bags under her eyes, the pouches under her chin, and then she held her head high, rose, and closed the door. Intelligence will triumph in the end, she thought. Brains over boobs.

  It was a big morning for gossip at WLT, with a knot of people around Laurel at the front desk and more upstairs by Ethel’s desk and other groups in the Green Room and the Women’s Bureau, and messengers darting from one to the other with fresh bulletins, and the gist of it was that Slim was on the road with the Shepherd Boys and so The Blue Movers had done the Sunrise Waffle show in his place after spending the night around Seven Corners crawling from Larson’s Bar to Koerner’s Copenhagen Club to Palmer’s to the Stockholm where they had had a skinful, whiskey and beer and brandy and peppermint schnapps, and had gotten plotzed, blotto, schnokkered, burned to the ground, so they wound up on the control room floor at 6:15 a.m., too drunk to know who they were or why. A musician friend of Slim’s who had chauffeured them to WLT in his truck had picked up a guitar and done the Sunrise Waffle show alone under the name “Mr. Pokey” and had sung a song called, “Baby, I Got a Big Wiener for Your Bun,” and that Ray Soderbjerg, on hearing it at home, had collapsed in the bathtub and died, either from the concussion or by drowning. That the station would be sold to the Wills radio chain, the cheapest SOBs in broadcasting, and that everybody would be fired in two weeks with only one week’s worth of severance.

  What was true was the part about Mr. Pokey. Itch had the proof, on tape, and the men of WLT—the stuff was too strong for women, Itch said—packed into the control room and they played the Waffle Show over and over. Not only did Mr. Pokey sing the hot dog song—Baby, I got a big wiener for your bun.

  Big and hot and sweet,

  Where you ever seen such meat?

  I got lots of mustard too—and (uh uh) onions ...

  but he also sang “Ram Rod Daddy” and “You Got Me Dancing in My Pants” and “I’m the Best Banana in the Bunch”—I’m the best banana in the bunch.

  Baby, don’t you know

  I’m not for dessert, I am your dinner and your lunch.

  Peel me nice and slow,

  With just a gentle squeeze,

  And I don’t mind to ask it—

  Please put me in your basket,

  That lovely little basket

  That you keep between your knees.

  He sang one after the other, dedicating them to various WLT people—Ray, Patsy Konopka, Faith Snelling, Slim, Wendell Shepherd—“Here’s one of Dad Benson’s favorite songs”—and was smooth and professional— paused for the commercial and said, “Now here’s LaWella with a word from the Sunrise Waffle kitchen,” and LaWella, stunned, came in with a recipe for pigs in blankets (“After the dough has risen, heat your oven to 325 and wrap each wiener in a little muffin of dough, making sure it fits nice and tight”), and then Mr. Pokey said, “Mmmmm-mmm, that sure sounds good, Miz LaWella, I hope you’ll be making me up some of those little piggies real soon,” and then he sang, “I’m your handyman, I do anything you want me to,” and “Got so much lead in my pencil, I could write you a book tonight,” and then poor LaWella returned (“LaWella Wells, tell these folks about your sweet li’l cakes, honey—”) and had to do a commercial about how good Sunrise pancakes are if you spread jelly on them and roll them up tight (“You can use two if you like it thicker, but make sure to put enough jelly in so a little bit oozes out the end when the cakes are rolled”). Mr. Pokey thought those roll-ups sounded just right. Then he closed the show with “Baby, You’re My Radio”:Baby, you’re my radio,

  I love the way you broadcast all your charms.

  Your lovely little knobs

  That do their special jobs—

  I’d love to hold your speakers in my arms.

  Your dial makes me smile,

  You’re the star of every show.

  And I guess you know that when a

  Man extends his big antenna,

  Baby, you’re my radio.

  It was quite a morning. The phones rang and rang, and the switchboard lady had to be augmented by two others. “Thank you for calling,” they said over and over, until they were hoarse. “We appreciate hearing your views on our WLT programs. Thank you, ma’am. Thank you.” Quite a morning. Dad Benson fell into a hiccupping fit in the middle of the Almanac and Reed Seymour had to finish it for him, while the old veteran was hauled away to a doctor. And minutes later, while Roy Jr. was phoning around, trying to find Frank so he could fire Slim, Miss Lily Dale stopped in the middle of “Charlie Darling,” and she was weeping. On the air. She sobbed, “Oh, my dears, I am so sorry, but this week will be my last here on the little street where old friends meet, unless you all write to WLT or give them a ring this morning and tell them how you feel.” She sobbed. Then she laughed. “Oh, heavens, I know I’m nothing to look at, but how we need these old songs—I know I do—Oh, Mister Tippy, play ‘Ave Maria’ for me.” And she sang the hymn to the Virgin, and at the end, after the last long lingering note, she whispered, “That’s a song my mother used to sing, and though she’s been dead these many years, she lives on in the songs she loved. Please call or write today. Thank you so very much. Goodbye! Goodbye!”

  The moment the On Air light blinked off, Roy Jr. strolled into the studio and stood, hands on his hips. He shook his head. “Dear Aunt Lottie, what are we ever going to do with you?”

  “Keep me and cherish me,” she said. “Bring me flowers. And when I’m too old to sing anymore, have the kindness to shoot me like you would a horse.”

  He personally wheeled her to the back elevator and down to the loading dock, avoiding the crowd of forty foaming fans in the lobby, all in a lather that the Friendly Neighbor station could consider dumping a bosom friend after all those years, passing around a petition that vowed that the undersigned would never eat Betty Brand Party Wafers again until WLT offered Lily Dale a lifetime contract, and hissing at poor Laurel who had to tell them that, no, they couldn’t go upstairs and talk to Mr. Soderbjerg in person. No, he wouldn’t come down and talk to them. “How can you work at a place like this and live with your conscience?” a woman screeched at her. Laurel said, “I sleep a lot.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Monday Afternoon

  Ray was not dead, he had only gone to the dentist. His No. 4 upper tooth, to the left of the incisors, the tooth used to crunch a peppermint stick, had gotten infected around Thanksgiving and the gum swoll up, and he had dosed it for awhile with an elm compress soaked in whiskey, and reduced the pain to a steady throb, but then it got worse, about the time Vesta left for London. There was a meeting there of University Women for World Understanding, and a full bill of speeches by authors and mystics and such, but what sold Vesta on going was the thought that she would miss the WLT Christmas party. No eggnog, no damp handshakes, no making small talk with people who weren’t that smart sober. So off she flew, and the same afternoon his cheek had ballooned out and the
pain was insistent, so he dropped in at Dr. Nordstrom’s office. The dentist was reading the paper. He was a stocky young man with thick glasses and his practice was slim because he perspired heavily and breathed hard while working on patients for fear that he might hurt them. Many people found this disconcerting.

  The door jingled as Ray entered but the young man was absorbed in the news. “Morning, John!” said Ray. The young man leaped out of the chair, knocking a half dozen steel picks off the tray. He stood with the chair between him and the patient. “What is it?” he said, his eyes big. “An emergency,” said Ray. “Why didn’t you call?” the young man pleaded. “I hate to have things just thrown at me, with no warning.”

  He took an X-ray of the tooth, and then another, and poked at it timidly with a pick, and sprayed it with water, and put a cotton plug under Ray’s lip, and looked at the X-rays, and announced that the tooth was infected. He thought about this for a minute. “Then let’s pull it out,” said Ray. “I don’t have all day.” The young man pondered this. Then he filled an immense syringe with anesthetic and, with a hand that was trembling, eased it into Ray’s gum and uttered a soft murmur of pain, “Ohhh!” As he slowly pumped the liquid in, Ray felt the left side of his head go numb.

  As the young man waited for the anesthetic to take hold, he read a book that appeared to Ray to be a textbook with diagrams of teeth. He jotted down a few notes. Then he glanced at the X-ray again, and let out a low gasp. “Oh no,” he said. “I never noticed this. Oh my God. Oh, this is terrible.”

  “What is it?” asked Ray.

  “I think you have cancer.”

  “In my tooth?”

  “No. In your jaw. It looks like a terrible tumor or something up in the roof of your mouth and it’s in the bone and it’s—oh, this is an awful thing to have to tell somebody. I’m sorry! This is just terrible!” The young man’s eyes were full of tears. “You woke up this morning and you thought it was just a tooth and you come down here and now I have to tell you that you have cancer. I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you!”

  He changed into a fresh white smock and he put Ray, who was now stunned and glassy-eyed as well as numb from the neck up, into his car and drove him to Abbott Hospital and delivered him to a doctor named Forbes who sat him down in a row of miserable people sitting in the hall. The young man squeezed Ray’s hand and burst into tears and fled around the corner. Forbes disappeared into an inner office. The man next to Ray was slumped down as if shot and he stank of whiskey. Ray looked straight ahead at a water stain on the opposite wall, which somewhat resembled the state of Texas. A state he had never seen nor felt any desire to see. Texas nor most of the rest of the South, except maybe Nashville. He had known a Nashville girl once named Judy Jo who taught him a bedroom technique called The One-Man Band; Or, The Ballplayer’s Friend. Now he was sick, maybe near the end, and he’d never see her again. How gladly would he trade this whole week for one minute alone with her!

  The man next to him said, “The last days are here, the last days of the end of time, and when I was young I scorned the thought and now I see they are here. And God will come upon us with fire and a sword. And God will open the book. And our torment will be great.”

  “Shut up, ya old rum-dum,” said a man down the line, and there were murmurs of agreement.

  The man looked at the wall. “And there will be no escape from it. And they will cry out for comfort and there will be none. And they will cry out for the end to come, and the end will not come, only grief and pain. And their weeping and gnashing will rise up to the heavens, and there will be no answer, only fire and the sword.”

  Ray blinked. He was not sure if he wanted to go quick or go slow. Quick, he thought, but how could a person want to cease to exist when the world was full of so many delights, such as the nurse who now came and helped him up. “Mr. Soderbjerg, we’re ready for you now,” she said. Such a sweet girl! She took his old hand in hers and he heaved himself up on his feet. “That’s the way!” she exclaimed, as if he had leaped over a fence for her. She led him around the corner to the room where Forbes would see him. Ray took her arm and his hand brushed against her breast and he felt a quickening of the loins. O love, dear love. Even at the end of the last days, a strong persistent urge. Maybe he wasn’t sick after all. Maybe a few days’ rest and some little green pills and it’d all clear up. Maybe she’d like to go to New York in the spring.

  Roy Jr. had no idea where Ray was until around five o’clock, and meanwhile Ethel had been dispatched to Ray’s house to search for him and Laurel was sent to the police. The switchboard ladies had given up answering calls and gone home after lunch. Between Mr. Pokey’s party songs and Lily Dale’s tearful appeal for public support, WLT had managed to touch the folks in radioland all too deeply, and then, on Friendly Neighbor, Dad Benson, weak from his intestinal troubles, misread a line and instead of saying to Dale Snelling, “Well, Frank, did you send the seed all right?” (referring to a complicated order at Benson Feed & Seed that had to go out by parcel post), said, “Where did you spend your seed last night?”

  FRANK: Where did I spend my seed last night?

  DAD: I mean ...

  FRANK: You’re one to talk, ya big letch—how about you keep your hands off my wife!

  JO: (Burst into tears)

  DAD: What?

  (Slap)

  TINY: Mornin’, everybody! Howdy, Miz Jo! Lawd, but them pancakes smells good! Hoo-eee! Whass dat you sayin’ ’bout dem seeds, Mista Dad—you means dem seeds dat dey orders up to Hatchetville, you askin’ if’n I sent dem seeds, why sho, Mista Dad, why sho! you knows I did! Yassuh! Yassuh!

  Dale and Faith Snelling stalked out of the studio at the end of the show, tight-lipped and green in the gills, and a few hours later she phoned Roy Jr. to say that neither of them would be returning to Friendly Neighbor again. They planned to return to Bird Island and resume their careers in secondary education. Dad, she said, had told her he wouldn’t continue the show without them, but she couldn’t think about that now, her marriage had to come first.

  “Are you sure about this?” A silence. “Faith?” And then a click in her throat, and out came a river of remorse.

  “How could I have done it! I feel so—stupid. I feel like dirt. Why did I do it? I was happy. I didn’t need this—this intrigue. But I did it. And I’ll have to live with it for the rest of my life. And you know what? I won’t even have nice memories of it—because it wasn’t that much fun.” And at that thought, she was racked with sobs. To have launched upon something so shameful and then have nothing to show for it—to be no good at virtue and then prove to be an artless sinner on top of it and to have no fun.

  “Well, I’m sure you’re not the first or the last,” said Roy Jr.

  He buzzed for Ethel. “Find Frank and tell him to come back, all is forgiven,” he said. “I need him here. We’re falling apart.” Ethel thought the Rise and Shine Show was probably in St. Cloud at the moment, en route to Moorhead.

  “But they were way up in Roseau this morning,” he said. “How can they be down in St. Cloud?” But then he remembered what he told Harry in the Artists Bureau: lose these guys. He said, “Can you reach him, Ethel? It’s important—”

  And a minute later, she reported that she had raised the Shiners. Not Frank, but she had Slim Graves on the line.

  “Is he drunk?”

  “Worse than that,” she said. “He’s remorseful.”

  When Slim came on the phone, his sinuses were backing up on him.

  He said, “Morning, boss,” and turned away and hawked and cleared his head, and said, “Sorry. Kind of a rocky day today. Believe me, I feel real bad about that Pokey business. I knew I never shoulda left the Movers to do the show,” and he turned and hawked again.

  Roy Jr. didn’t have the heart to fire him. He had already fired Itch the engineer, and one was enough for one day, and Itch was a better choice. Itch had been sober, mostly, and sat and listened to Mr. Pokey for half an hour without touching
the switch.

  “I’m an engineer,” he muttered, standing on Roy Jr.’s rug. “I don’t listen to all that shit. It isn’t my job to decide what goes on the air.”

  “A song called, ‘Baby I Got a Wiener for Your Bun’?”

  Itch blushed. “Hqw’m I supposed to know what it was about? It coulda been a commercial.”

  “You didn’t know what ‘Ram Rod Daddy’ referred to?”

  “It coulda been about a lot of things. I didn’t know. Maybe ‘Jimmy Crack Corn’ is a dirty song. I don’t know. Maybe ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep.’ I don’t study songs.”

  “ ‘You Got Me Dancing in My Pants’?”

  “I donno. It isn’t my job. You wanna fire me, fire me. But don’t try to convince me that it’s fair.”

  So he fired him. Itch took it well. He looked Roy Jr. in the eye and said, “I saw your wiener once in the men’s room and it was the size of a Vienna sausage. Your wiener’d be lost in a bun. It wouldn’t’ve filled a bon bon.” And he turned and stalked out.

  Still feeling shrivelled in the loins, Roy Jr. rang up the hospital and got hold of Dr. Forbes, who said that Ray was resting up from his tests and would be released in the morning.

  “How is he?” asked Roy Jr.

  The doctor lowered his voice. “Do you want to know the truth or do you want what I told him?”

  Roy Jr. chose the truth. “A few weeks,” said the doctor. “He’s full of cancer. I don’t know how the old bugger kept going this long. He’s like Swiss cheese inside.”

  When Ray came on the phone, a minute later, he sounded weak but still game. “They skewered me like a pig,” he said. “Stuck a tube down my throat, and rammed a rod up my ass, had me running around in a little cotton dress with my hinder hanging out, I tell you it’s the last time I ever go to that dentist.”