WLT

by Garrison Keillor

  Elmer sat with a hanky over his weeping eye. He had a cup of coffee. He let Rudy put a snowball on his eye. “You want some breakfast?” asked Wendell. Red turned in the driver’s seat and asked if Elmer felt up to him driving. They had a show in Bemidji in three hours. Elmer shook his head.

  “I think this is the Lord’s way of telling us to move on,” said Elmer. “I never ran out on a show before and I hate to start now but maybe there’s a reason. We have done all we could do in radio. The Lord has used radio to teach us, but now school is out. We have to move on.” He said, “We are done with WLT as of six o’clock this morning.” They all cheered and clapped. He had an old buddy from Fargo who ran a Bible camp in Eveleth and they could get there by lunchtime and stay for a couple days and rest up and decide what they were going to do. Real beds. The Rise and Shiners fell all over themselves with gratitude—Wendell wept and Rudy hugged him and Al cried, “Thank you, Jesus!” Even Slim was moved. They were getting out of hell and into a warm shower, and then they’d eat lunch, talk, take a nap, sit around, like human beings—Red put the bus in gear and they bumped along out of the backyard and pulled onto the highway and Red yelled, “Eveleth!” and they all cheered, except Frank.

  My job, he thought. I can’t throw away my job. I lose this job and I have to go back to Mindren. On the other hand, it was an impossible job. Roy Jr. had told him his job was to get the Rise and Shiners through the tour, but the purpose of the tour was to punish them and get rid of them, drive them from the radio—so Roy Jr. had accomplished what he wanted: the Tour of Hell had worked and the Shepherd Boys were leaving radio. But they were leaving too soon, before their suffering was complete. Frank’s instructions were to make sure they did all the shows.

  You gotta get off this bus, he thought. Or else you’ve got to head them toward Bemidji. But how? Slim had unpacked his mandolin and Al was playing the guitar and they were singing,Onward to Canaan we joyfully fly,

  Swifter than eagles that wing cross the sky.

  With sweet jubilation we go round the bend

  And there we see Jesus, our Saviour and Friend.

  Away! Away!

  Away from sorrows and strife!

  Rise up! Rise up!

  Rise up to the heavenly life!

  Farewell to misery, we cannot stay—

  We’re going to Canaan today!

  The Shepherds were laughing and singing and had their arms draped over each other and they weren’t even drunk. This troupe would no more go to Bemidji than they’d take work in a lacquer factory. Red was happy, driving with one hand, beating time with the other. Reverend Odom sat next to Frank, and Wendell behind them was talking a blue streak about how this was the beginning of the good times. Television. A big touring bus, bigger than The Rankins’. A bigger TV show than theirs. Records. Maybe movies. “There never was a good movie with our kind of music in it,” said Wendell. “But more people like our music than that Broadway crap and all that tinsel and showgirls—that’s rich people’s music. We could get rich playing poor people’s music.” He laughed at that.

  “Gospel music?” asked the old minister, cranking his neck around.

  “Naw. Cheatin’ songs. That’s real poor-man music. Rich guys don’t even understand somebody like Hank Williams. A rich man hardly needs a woman at all. If she runs away, who cares? he’ll go get another one. But when you’ve got nothing and not much to look forward to, then if your woman runs off and you lose the one good thing in your life, man, that just about kills you. Rich sonsabitches can’t understand none of that shit. It’s like they say, a song only gives you a taste of what you already know. We oughta get out of gospel and into cheatin’ songs, cause that’s what we know, right?” He clapped the Reverend on the back.

  Maria is waiting for me, I can’t let her down, Frank thought. He slouched down in the seat, his knees pressed up against the seat in front, and imagined her next to him, her hair, his hand in her lap, his other hand easing into her shirt the way she let him do and easing along her soft belly, touching her tiny crevasse of bellybutton, reaching, slowly reaching. Everything that made a difference in this world lay inside that shirt and down below—everything else was so weary and stale, men, dreary men, angry men, the bragging and strutting and the loud words like a whipsaw and the sharp blow, but she was so sweet and peaceful. His hand against her breast, resting. He cupped her in his hand and she seemed to swell with pleasure, he slipped his hand into the cup and curled around her skin and her delicate sharp nipple and she sighed and turned toward him, almost snapping off his wrist—he withdrew—his hand slipped around to her back and unclasped her bra, his hand slipped down into her pants and along her sweet butt, left and right—his hand slid up over her hipbone and up the delicious ribs and up and freed the breasts from their hammocks, slipped them loose, like opening an ear of sweet corn—he weighed them in his hand—he slipped down front over her soft belly and felt the slope—his hand tiptoed down the beautiful hill and into her soft darkness, and up the sides of her thighs—O Canaan our homeland we praise thee and bless

  The day we arrive at our true happiness!

  So perfect and pleasant, the day of the Bride.

  The Bridegroom awaits thee, O fly to his side!

  It was all so perfect, what else was there in the world but her? The rest was all paper and long dry afternoons of typewriters ticking far away and the clock stopped and men’s voices yammering over the office transom—he would gladly stay in the hallway and never go inside that room! The vanity of men in suits is hard to bear. Ray was right. One could hardly regret being alone with a beautiful woman and, compared to the men in the room, what woman is not beautiful?

  A cold chill on his face: he remembered the money. The $800 for expenses. He touched his wallet. It was thin. He snatched it out. The money was gone. Stolen. He hadn’t touched it the whole trip, hadn’t seen it, hadn’t thought about it. Somebody had filched the whole wad. Stupid, stupid.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Reverend Odom.

  “I think my money is missing.”

  “What money?”

  “Some money. Seven hundred dollars.”

  The mention of $700 rang in the air like trumpets, and Slim and Al stopped singing. “What money is that?” asked Elmer, his right eye red and swollen.

  Frank looked straight ahead down the highway. “Expense money from Roy Jr.”

  “Why’d he give it to you and not to Elmer?” asked Wendell.

  “I donno. Ask him.”

  “That was our expense money. You shoulda handed it over.”

  Elmer was hurt. “Why didn’t you even tell me about it? We coulda slept in some motels, we coulda eaten some dinners we didn’t eat. That’s not right, Frank.”

  “All I did was what Roy Jr. told me. It was for an emergency.”

  “That don’t make it right. This whole trip has been an emergency.”

  They kept sniping at him all the way to Eveleth, everyone except Reverend Odom. Two minutes before they hadn’t been aware of the money and now the loss of it weighed heavy on them. Money they hadn’t even seen, but its loss was a grievous blow to them, almost worse than if it had been taken straight out of their pockets. “Seven hundred dollars,” Wendell kept saying. “Seven hundred dollars.” Frank tried to look them in the eye, looking for that flicker that would give the culprit away. The thief knew it was eight hundred not seven, and he must wonder why Frank lied. Frank looked for curious stares, but there were only accusing ones.

  It was a tired owly bunch that pulled into The Nazarene Bible Camp around eleven, nobody singing and Wendell was hitting the bourbon and getting argumentative—“Sick of gospel! We come to the end of gospel! If you can’t see that, then you’re too dumb to deal with!”—and though Elmer’s buddy, Fred Porch, and his wife Alma turned out to be wonderful people and anxious for the company and they hustled the Shiners right into the main lodge and sat them down to a ham dinner with fresh biscuits and redeye gravy with peach pie for dessert, everyone w
as still mourning the $700. “That was our start-up money,” said Elmer. “That’s what woulda gotten us to Chicago.” Elmer had friends in Chicago, important friends in broadcasting. Chicago was a day and a half away. In a couple weeks, Elmer could get them a show. In a month or so, the money would start to come in. The $700 would get them over the hump. “I hope you didn’t throw away our whole future,” said Elmer gloomily.

  It had begun to snow heavier, and Reverend Odom told about winter in North Dakota when he was a boy, sleeping in the attic and waking up to find a snowdrift on your covers in the morning. This story cheered them up somewhat, and then Slim told about a winter in New Guinea during the war when he was in the Navy playing for troop shows with Uncle Soddy Johnson and the Destroyers, playing two and three ships a day, and the men hanging from the davits and yelling and beating on the deck with hammers in time to the music and it was so loud that it killed fish and the Destroyers scooped them out of the water from their launch and ate them for supper. Of course, the Shiners had heard these stories before, but they were good stories, and so was Al’s story about seeing Faron Young in a Nashville department store buying a pair of cotton socks, and then Alma left to go take a nap and Wendell told his story about their childhood church’s custom of baptizing in the river and how he had been dipped with his head downstream so the current ran up his nose and he floundered in panic and tore himself loose from the preacher and was swept away and carried over a waterfall and almost drowned but grabbed a branch and hauled himself ashore and when he stood up, he had the biggest erection of his life, nine inches, and he had to run from the search party, and as he trotted along, his penis jumping, it got so big it broke out of the front of his pants. Meanwhile, he could hear his ma back at the baptismal site screaming that he was gone, dead, drowned. “I was the farthest thing from dead,” he said. “I had reached the other shore from dead. I had crossed over into the land of love, boys.” It was snowing so hard, they couldn’t see from the lodge to the lake. “It looks like we’re going to stay here for awhile,” Elmer remarked happily. He said he was almost done writing a new song called “Waiting for Thee” (or “I Know He Is Coming”) and was pretty sure it would be a big hit.

  There were warm bunks waiting in a little log cabin under a tall pine, Fred said, and supper would be at six. The Shiners ambled up the path between the snowdrifts and into the cabin, where a fire blazed in a cast-iron stove. “I could stay here forever,” said Rudy.

  Al found a shelf of Harold Hand, Christian Detective novels under a window. He had enjoyed them as a boy and had not seen a copy in twenty years. Slim found a crack in his fiddle. “I wonder if there’s any epoxy in Fred’s shop?” The old man found a book of sermon outlines, including the themes of Christ the Refuge in time of trouble, the tribulations of the Tribes of Israel, and the perfection of love through testing and trial. And then all of them undressed and climbed into bed and drifted off to sleep, except Frank. He lay on his back so he wouldn’t fall asleep and when he felt drowsy, he thought of Maria and he woke right up. He imagined her climbing the stairs with him and him unlocking a door, but it wasn’t the door at the Antwerp. It was a nicer room than his, with windows that looked out on a park. It was dark. They didn’t turn the lights on. She took him by the hand and led him to the bed and he sat down and she took his shoes off. He unbuttoned her shirt and it came off in his hands. All her clothing melted away and his too and they plunged into the bed together and dove below the surface, hand in hand, bubbles streaming from their mouths as they laughed and floated and dove and turned—beyond that, his imagination did not go.

  He lay in his bunk and it seemed to be several hours later. There was general snoring. He eased his feet onto the floor and sat up. The springs creaked, loud. The snoring stopped—there were snorts, groans, a sigh or two—then the snoring started in again, scattered at first, then steady and orchestral. Frank stood up and tiptoed over to Wendell’s bed, where Wendell’s green pants hung on the post, and slowly he slid Wendell’s wallet out and felt his pockets. One down, six to go.

  His next guess was Rudy, and that was no luck either. He even rummaged in Rudy’s grip and checked his coat.

  Frank felt that he was being watched but he didn’t see who, nobody’s eyes were showing. He slipped over to Red’s bed, but Red had his pants on. So did Al. He looked in their suitcases. He checked Slim’s mandolin case. He even tried to pry Slim’s shoes apart, in case he had a false sole. Time was running out. If one of them had swiped the money from him, he didn’t care to stick around. He’d have stuck by the Shepherds if they had played fair with him, but a thief in the crowd—and then he found the money. It was where he had hoped not to find it, smoothed out, almost flat, tucked into the minister’s Bible, between Revelation and the concordance, leaving a slight gap in the gold edge, a gap that caught his eye, and Frank was ashamed of what came to his mind, the suspicion, the minister was a friend, and he opened the Bible to clear Reverend Odom’s name and there was the cash.

  Not a bill was missing. Hundreds. Eight crisp ones.

  CHAPTER 40

  Gone

  Frank slipped the bankroll into his pocket, took his coat off the hook, picked up his valise, and left. As he opened the door and as he tromped down the steps and as he headed down the snowy path, he expected the Shepherds to come hurtling after him with sticks of kindling in their fists, but he got all the way to the lodge and found Fred and Alma in the kitchen, washing dishes, and he asked for directions to Eveleth.

  “You’re not staying? But there’s a blizzard coming.” Fred bent down and looked out the window up at the sky. It looked leaden all right. “Where you going to?”

  “Minneapolis,” said Frank. “I need to get to Minneapolis.”

  “You’re not going to the Cities tonight,” said Alma. “I don’t think there’s even any trains running. Oh, I do wish you’d stay.” She gave him a pleading look. “I know your mother wouldn’t want you to go out on a night like tonight. ”

  But he knew that blizzards didn’t stop the train, of course. Fred gave him a lift into town and the southbound train to Duluth had just arrived from Ely and was sitting in the station, steaming, and Fred drove up to the platform and Frank had barely time to run and jump aboard before the conductor waved and there was a whoosh of steam and the train pulled away. “What are you in such a big rush for to get to Minneapolis anyway?” asked Fred, an instant before they spotted the train, and Frank had been going to say, “Got to get my job back,” but he wasn’t sure about that as he rode down to Duluth. Time to ponder, while the train swayed and bucked through the snowy night.

  He could get on a train to Minneapolis and be at work in the morning and see Maria at noon, but it seemed like the short road to nowhere. He had lost all the Soderbjergs’ trust the moment he ran away from the show. It would take too long to win it back again. Besides, radio was dead. How do you know? You know, that’s how. The ones who were trying to keep it alive were dying themselves —Dad Benson, Slim Graves, Elmer, Ray, Patsy, Reed Seymour—all fading away, not much spunk or drive left there. The audience was leaving in droves.

  Ten years before, they would have been a big hit in these little towns, big crowds, lots of noise, reporters from the paper nosing around, pretty girls standing out on the periphery blushing and trying to catch your eye. But here it was 1950 and every tavern had a television set and every tavern was packed with people. All of the Rise and Shine audience was staying up late at night with their eyes glued to Milton Berle as they sat guzzling beer at Bud’s Dew Drop Inn. And old Bud was bitching that business was dropping off every week, as more and more people bought their own televisions.

  The tavern guys wanted television to belong to them, and Frank wanted radio to go on and on, but like Dad said, yesterday’s river doesn’t turn the mill.

  You’ve got to be smart, he thought. You don’t want to get yourself into a line of work where two years from now, four years from now, six—you’ll be sitting high and dry, the tide gone o
ut, and you feeling like you are somebody else’s mirage.

  Like Vince Upton and Sheridan Thomas. Up in a Balloon was gone, crashed two weeks before—they quit radio and moved to St. Augustine and opened a seashell shop. They made their decision the day the two German cleaning ladies, Charlotte and Mathilda, came marching into Studio B, ignoring the Quiet Please, on the Air sign blazing red over the door, and walked smack into the middle of the show as Bud and Bessie were navigating their helium balloon, The Minnesota Clipper, at 6,000 feet over the Burma Pass in pursuit of the Pasha of Endur. Charlotte started vacuuming the carpet.

  “Looks like a monsoon moving in from the East!” yelled Vince. “Hang onto the guy ropes, darlin’! We’ll have to ride it out!”—where the script said:BESSIE: I see elephants—a whole train of them! They’re going to ford the Wasabi below Luala Pindi.

  BUD: We better go down and have a look-see.

  Sheridan shouted, “Okay! Whatever you think!” Mathilda brushed past her.

  As he called out the monsoon warning, Vince edged toward the wall, microphone in hand, and leaned down and yanked out the vacuum cleaner plug, but it wasn’t, it was the plug to the turntable and slowly the transcription of stratospheric winds and the thubthubthub of the engine ground to a halt.

  “I don’t like the looks of this! I think we’ve hit a pocket of dead air!” he yelled. “The equalizer broke! Those mountain peaks are coming closer! We may have to abandon ship!”

  Smoke drifted up from the wax that Mathilda spritzed on the hot tubes in the turntable console. She waxed the turntable too and the needle slid off the disc grrrrrrrr-eee and she dusted the microphone. It sounded like thunder.

  And that same afternoon Vince packed his traps and said goodbye. “When the hausfraus walked in, I felt dumb, like my mother had come in the bedroom and caught me loping the mule,” he told Leo. “I’m sixty. It’s too old to be standing in a little room and pretending that you’re flying a balloon. Sherry and I are going to Florida and get into the seashell business. There’s no limit to what you can do with seashells, you know. Ashtrays, wall plaques, you name it.”