Bad Radio tee-1

by Michael Langlois

  “I know. I’d like a little reassurance on that score, too, come to think of it.”

  He chuckled, his deep voice smooth in the moonlit room. “I think you and I both know better by now. It’s not that the universe doesn’t want justice, it’s that it doesn’t even know the concept. Like color to a blind man.”

  “Maybe that’s what we’re here for, then. Maybe we, of all things in the universe, sow justice in a field that was never meant to have it.”

  “Could be. In any case, you know that she wouldn’t be here right now if you didn’t want it, no matter what she said or who her grandfather was.”

  “I need her, Henry. I can’t finish this without her.”

  “Is it worth it, considering what might happen to her?”

  I leaned forward on the couch, suddenly angry. “You tell me, Henry. You’ve been working on what happened that day for decades now. So you tell me. Is it worth sacrificing her for? And you and me besides? Shit, we just sat on those pieces all this time, heads in the sand, hoping it would all go away. Or maybe just hoping to die before anything else was required of us. Isn’t that what we were doing?”

  He sighed a long, tired sigh. “Maybe we were. The question is, why aren’t you still? You gave up on us twenty years ago and went to hide down on your farm. You didn’t even come out to Frank’s funeral. And I’m pretty sure I know what you’ve been working yourself up to since Maggie died. Why are you here now?”

  I thought about the kind of obligation that can never be denied. Ties that cannot be cut. “Patrick called me for help. I had to go. And when I got there I didn’t save him.” I met Henry’s eyes. “They killed one of us. I will endure for as long as it takes to teach the man responsible what that means.”

  He nodded and I could see for a moment the old Henry, full of fire. “And then?”

  “And then it will be finished. I’ll be done.”

  We sat in silence for a little while, each lost in thoughts of the past and the friends who dwelled there.

  “I came out here to show you something.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a small dark object and put it into my hand. It was light, maybe as heavy as a spool of thread and as big as an unshelled walnut, and made of wood. I smiled as it uncurled in my open palm and stood up.

  “Mr. C!”

  “Oh, yes. He’s still around. Will be until we’re both gone, I imagine.”

  Mr. C, or Mr. Careful as he was known to the squad, was a small wooden spider about three inches long and two inches wide. His head, thorax, and abdomen were all one piece of wood, carved by Henry with a pocketknife over a month of campfires. It was pretty crude. The shape was right, but there was no real detail carved into it.

  The two eyes in the front, on the crown of its head, were the largest, and made from two sewing pins with round black plastic heads on them. The pins had been cut in half, and the steel shafts of the top halves had been pushed into the wood until only the round heads were showing for eyes.

  The sharp bottom halves had been bent into gentle curves and pushed into the wood underneath the head for fangs. Those only stuck out about a half-inch or so. There were six more eyes around the top, but they were actually just dents pushed into the wood with the tip of a knife and colored in with a felt tip pen.

  The legs were made out of matchsticks with the square edges whittled off until they were pretty round. Each leg was made up of three segments, a long one pushed into a hole in the body like a dowel, a short one in the middle, and a slightly longer one that was whittled down to a point at the end.

  The ends where the segments met were wrapped in a tiny piece of cloth cut from one of Henry’s shirts, and then carefully wrapped again entirely in brown thread to make a joint. When Henry had first finished putting it together, the legs had stuck straight out from the sides of the body, like eight spokes.

  We didn’t know what to think of the serious black man in our midst at that time, new as we were to both the army and each other, especially since Henry was the only black man some of us had ever met in person.

  We’d been together in the field for months at that point, so he was no stranger, and make no mistake, any one of us would have taken a bullet for him without hesitation, but he was still an odd duck as far as we were concerned. So you can imagine our reaction when he came around to each of us in turn and asked for a drop of blood to smear on his little wooden spider.

  It was Shad who agreed to do it first, of course, claiming that he wasn’t afraid of any voodoo, being from New Orleans and all. Henry told him it wasn’t voodoo, more than once, but Shad didn’t agree. To Henry, voodoo was a specific practice, to Shad it was anything that smacked of the supernatural. Once Shad pressed his pricked thumb on it, everyone had to do it. Nobody was going to be the guy who chickened out.

  Henry drew some stuff on a square of cloth with a charred stick from the fire, wrapped the spider up and tied a string around the whole package, and then buried it. The next morning, there was a round hole about two inches wide with a tiny pile of dirt around it, where something had dug up out of that spot.

  And there was Henry, as proud as I’ve ever seen him, beaming and holding that spider, dirty now, but with legs bent in a natural, very spider-like way, on his palm. I took a look at it, and I’m not ashamed to admit that when it spun in his hand to look at me, I jumped back with a high-pitched yell. Like a little girl, Shad couldn’t resist pointing out.

  Close up you could see that it was just made of wood and cloth, but it moved with a kind of fluid grace and speed that even a real spider couldn’t match. Its legs bent at the joints without tearing the cloth, and the tips of the pins that made up its fangs flexed easily.

  Over the next year of living outdoors and in the mud and the heat and the rain and everything else you could think of, that spider got dirty, but it never seemed to get worn or frayed. It was Shad who gave it the name, Mr. Careful. If you put your hand down to get it, the thing would skitter back until you stopped moving, then it would creep up real slow and get on your hand.

  If Henry sent it into a building or over a wall, it would flash up to a corner and then ever so slowly peek over the top or into a window, for all the world looking like a nervous Peeping Tom. Shad found it hilarious, and started talking to it, telling it that it was too careful for its own good, like an old lady.

  It would scout something out, and come back and jab Henry in the palm with its fangs, and then he would tell us what Mr. Careful saw, more or less. At first it was plenty creepy, but for some reason, we eventually came to look at the little wooden scout as a pet or a mascot.

  Maybe it was the fact that each one of us donated blood to it, but it always felt friendly, like it was completely on our side, the way your dog would be.

  I put my other hand, palm up, next to the first and the spider stepped lightly from one to the other, the tips of its legs barely denting my skin. It moved just as fluidly as I recalled. “Hey there, Mr. Careful.” I smiled down at it.

  Henry held out his hand, and Mr. C leapt gracefully between us. “After you called to say you were coming up here to visit, I went to my desk to get my old notebooks and things from Warsaw, and I saw the matchbox that we kept him in, and got him out.” He looked at Mr. C thoughtfully. “I haven’t thought about him in years.”

  “Brings back a lot of memories.” Very few of them good.

  “That it does.” He got up and his knees cracked like old sticks. “Good night, Abe.”

  “Good night, Henry.” I drowsed that night, but I didn’t sleep. Every sound drew my attention to the big windows overlooking the porch, and out into the night.

  10

  The sun woke me, spilling cheerful light through the windows and across my face as I lay tangled up in my blankets on the couch. The night had been a fitful mix of half-remembered dreams and anxious watchfulness. Getting up was a relief.

  Savory smells and the subtle sounds of breakfast cooking revealed that I wasn’t the only one up. Warm thoug
hts of coffee and eggs hurried my steps as I grabbed both of my bags and padded across the chilly wooden floor to the hall bathroom to take a shower.

  Ten minutes of scalding hot water did an acceptable job of substituting for several hours of sleep, driving off the last of the night’s tension.

  After dressing and repacking my old clothes, I knelt on the bathroom floor and unzipped the second duffle. Inside were two old familiar things, both of which I had salvaged from my house as it burned down around me.

  The first was a leather holster that was stiff and shiny with age, the worn surface covered with a fine network of cracks and lines. A long strip that started with a metal ring and ended in a six-inch tube went against the outer thigh of my right leg, attached by a leather strap meant to go around your belt and snap shut, and another stout strap at the bottom that went around my leg. I buckled it on a little clumsily. It had been a long time. I stood and knelt a few times, getting the tightness right and making sure that the old leather was still sturdy. It was.

  The second item was an eighteen-inch-long steel rod that was an inch-and-a-half in diameter. The bottom four inches were wrapped in sweat-darkened leather over crosscuts in the metal underneath.

  A two-inch piece that was the same diameter as the shaft was welded to the side where the wrap ended, giving it the appearance of a tonfa, except that the short side handle was cut off square instead of rounded, and much too short.

  I hadn’t had any desire to get fancy at the time, I just cut two pieces off of a thirty-foot section of steel construction stock and welded them together.

  I wrapped my hand around the grip and squeezed the leather until it creaked. The heft of it felt good to me, although it would be uncomfortably heavy to any other man. I had kept it oiled and wrapped, but the metal had still developed a dark patina over the years.

  Its metallic smell was at once familiar and disquieting for the memories it carried. I slipped the end through the metal ring on the holster and down into the snug leather tube at the bottom. Unlike the single belt loop that most batons or nightsticks were carried with, this rig would keep the weapon in place regardless of whether I was running, climbing, or even inverted.

  Of course it was uncomfortable and awkward as all hell, but with bags around, I figured I could live with it one more time. I rolled up the empty duffel and stuck it in my clothes bag, then followed my nose to the kitchen.

  When I walked in, Anne was already seated, and Henry was putting a big bowl of grits down on the table. The bowl stopped in midair as his eyes went from my face to my leg and back again. “Sleep well?” The bowl thumped down.

  “Like a baby. Cranky and two hours at a time.”

  He put an empty plate and a cup of coffee in front of me. “Like a big, ugly baby.”

  “Granted. Morning, Anne.”

  “What are you wearing on your leg?”

  “It’s for my Teddy Roosevelt impression. Hey, you mentioned that Patty taught you to shoot. Can you handle my.45?”

  She shrugged. “Yes, but I’m better with a nine or a.38. The recoil on the.45 is more than I like.” She grinned at me. “Because I’m so dainty.”

  “Well,” said Henry, “I’m sure I can find you something that will better suit a lady of your refinement after breakfast.” If he was surprised, he didn’t show it.

  “Thank you, Henry.”

  Conversation drifted into small talk as we ate, as each of us tried to hold on to the pleasant mood of the morning. While Anne and Henry got acquainted, I mostly kept quiet and ate.

  I can’t remember the last time I had real grits, but it was surely too long ago. They were creamy and buttery in just the right way and went perfectly with the fried eggs and thick slices of bacon that Henry served on top of them.

  I was on my second plate when we heard the crunch of tires on gravel outside. “That would be Leon and his friend,” said Henry.

  They came into the kitchen full of energy and testosterone. Both wore Marine BDUs, whose pixilated pattern of light and dark brown patches mixed with the occasional rectangle of blue looked strange and futuristic to me.

  Leon dropped into a seat and was already reaching for a plate before he spoke. “Everybody, this is my buddy Carlos.”

  “Hey.” Carlos gave me a friendly nod, then turned to Anne with a big smile. “And hello to you, sweet thing. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” He was young, handsome, and obviously having fun. Anne rolled her eyes and laughed as he took her hand and kissed the back of it.

  I turned to Henry. “Yeah, they’re Marines all right. Rangers have more class.” He laughed and slapped my palm.

  “You got that right.”

  “Just like the Army to call in the Marines when things get tough,” said Leon with a grin.

  Carlos just shook his head sadly. “Some things will never change.”

  The two men promptly settled in and inhaled the remaining six eggs, half pound of bacon, and pot of grits in five minutes flat.

  “Still hungry?” asked Henry, who was apparently used to it.

  “Nah, we had breakfast on the way here.”

  “Of course you did.”

  When we were done cleaning up the kitchen, Henry led us all outside. The morning air smelled green and fresh, and the sky was a deep clear blue. About a hundred yards behind his house was a square building made out of sheet metal on a wooden frame. It was about the size of a barn and it looked old. He opened the big padlock on the front door and let us inside, flipping on the overhead fluorescent lights as he entered.

  Walking in, I was hit with the smell of machine oil and concrete dust. Two large worktables stood in the middle of the floor, and a desk was pushed into one corner. Four full-sized metal filing cabinets stood against another wall, and wooden shelves lined the entirety of the remaining two, the top shelves filled with books and binders, the bottom shelves stacked with boxes and small crates.

  “Wait for me by that table there,” Henry said, indicating the larger of the two tables in the middle of the room. “I just need to get a few things.” He walked across the room in the slow, measured gait of the elderly and began pulling boxes off of a shelf.

  “Didn’t you used to work on your tractor in here?” I asked.

  “I did. But after I sold most of my acreage, I decided to get rid of it. Besides, this place makes a nice study. I have enough elbow room for my research.”

  “Most people just take up a little woodworking in their golden years.”

  “Oh, I do a little of that, too. I’ll make you a picture frame next time I see you.” He came back with a small wooden box perched on top of a larger metal one. He set them down on the table, and then opened the wooden one, his strangely young fingers quick and sure on the latch.

  The first thing he pulled out was a small book bound in thin, supple leather. I recognized it as the ritual book that we had taken from Piotr all those years ago in the train yard. There were as many extra pages of handwritten notes sticking out of it as there were original pages.

  “What’s that?” asked Anne.

  I handed it to her and watched her thumb through it. The original pages were covered in a dense pattern of curling symbols. They looked sinuous, as if they were meant to convey some kind of disturbing twisting motion instead of words. You couldn’t help but follow the undulating pattern with your eyes, but I knew from experience that staring at it for too long would give you a blinding headache in short order.

  The handwritten notes and diagrams were in Polish.

  Henry gently took it back from her. “If you translate the Polish, you’ll see that these are just notations, not a full translation like we originally thought. So it appears that Piotr could read the original text. One interesting thing that he did mention in his notes, however, was the fact that this book was delivered to him by an unknown agency. He woke up one day to find it next to his bed, wrapped in leather, next to several additional items. The altar pieces for sure, and a few other things that are never mention
ed by name in his notes.”

  “And you don’t know who gave it to him?”

  “We do not. There’s no other example of this writing in the world as far as I can tell, and Piotr himself doesn’t know. We had hoped that taking the instruction manual and the altar pieces would be the end of it, but it appears not.”

  He reached back into the box. “I believe this is what you’re looking for.”

  He removed a flat, quarter-circle of metal and set it face down on the table. Twin spikes four inches long jutted towards the ceiling. I picked it up gingerly and felt my lips involuntarily thin in disgust. It felt oily to the touch, as I remembered, even though it was bone dry. I found myself rubbing my fingers together to prove that there was nothing on them. It was heavy, as though made of lead, but I knew from experience that it was harder than anything we had tried to use to smash it. Sledgehammers would only make it skitter and bounce away, a drill press couldn’t bite into it, and we even discovered that a steel plate backed by a vice would simply be punctured by the spikes.

  On its front side, bumps and sinuous ridges chased each other across the face. Disturbing patterns seemed to catch your eye in them, but they never quite resolved into anything you could name. Worse, the light always seemed to be moving subtly across the face of it, making small shadows in the depressions writhe, as if it were reflecting a dim light from elsewhere.

  “Can I see it?” asked Anne. She had the back of one hand pressed to her upper lip.

  “Sure. Bad smell?”

  She took her hand away from her face and accepted the piece from me. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”

  “I don’t smell anything,” said Carlos.

  “She’s just delicate.”

  Anne turned it over in her hands. “What is it?”

  “According to the journal, it's a transmitter. Or part of one, anyway,” said Henry. “We think you need all four to broadcast, judging from the way we found it.”