The Essential W. P. Kinsella

by W. P. Kinsella

  Frank sigh, and point to Rufus, who flip a switch and a trio start singing “Let the Sunshine In.”

  Frank has hardly lit up a cigarette when the phone rings.

  “‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour,’” I say, in kind of a whisper. I’m betting it’s either Vince or Harvey giving us five minutes to clear out of the station or they’ll call the RCMP.

  “Collect from Jasper, Alberta,” say an operator’s voice.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Brother Frank is the biggest idiot I ever heard on the radio,” say a man’s booming voice. He apply a couple of unpleasant curse words to Frank, and a couple more to me, then he slam the receiver in my ear.

  “Wrong number,” I say. “They wanted a tow truck.”

  “Hey, I would of got them a tow truck,” say Frank. “There is nothing Brother Frank and the power of prayer can’t accomplish.”

  The record is about over before the phone ring again.

  “Hello,” say what sound like a young woman’s voice.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  “If I tell you what I need to make me happy, what are you gonna do about it?”

  “Maybe I should let you talk to Brother Frank,” I say.

  I nod to Frank. He nod to Rufus who got more music ready to go.

  “What can Brother Frank do for you?” Frank ask.

  “You really want to know what will make me happy?” say the girl.

  “That is Brother Frank’s purpose in life.”

  “I need a CD player and the latest Tanya Tucker CD.”

  “Don’t we all,” says Frank, with his hand over the receiver. “Why would that make you happy?”

  “Because my parents belong to a religion that thinks music is sinful. I have to sneak my radio on under my covers after they’re asleep.”

  “A day without music is like a day without sex,” say Frank. “Give me your name and address and Brother Frank will mail you enough money to buy a CD player and Tanya Tucker.” Frank write for a minute. “You start watching the mail. And when you get your own money, you make a contribution to ‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour,’ so we can help somebody else.”

  The girl bubble with thank yous, and promise to send money when she is able.

  “See, that wasn’t so hard,” says Frank.

  “Only trouble is we don’t have any money to send her,” I point out. “All that’s gonna happen is she’ll watch an empty mailbox for a month or two.”

  “Never underestimate Fencepost Power,” says Frank.

  Frank launch right in. “Our motto is, ‘Before my needs, the needs of others,’” Frank say, and he explain the girl who live in a house without music and ask listeners to send in a dollar or ten dollars to make other people happy.

  Within an hour we got an old lady who need money to pay her heating bill. Another old lady need money to take her pet cat to the vet. And a woman who sound about thirty call to say her husband drunk up the welfare check and her kids is hungry, what will make her happy is a few groceries.

  “Wow,” says Frank. “I think we touched a nerve.”

  We get stupid calls, too. Smart-ass guys, sound like Frank just a few weeks ago, want money for beer, or a date with Madonna, or to touch the jockstrap of Mario Lemieux, the famous French hockey player.

  Frank, without using any names, tell the stories of the people in need.

  “Brother Frank going to see that those little kids don’t go hungry, and that lady don’t have to be cold, and that cat gets to the hospital. If I have to steal to do it, I will. But you can help. Send what you can, a dollar, five dollars, ten thousand,” and Frank chuckle, “to ‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour,’ c/o K-UGH Radio,” and he give the station’s box number in Wetaskiwin.

  Frank stay on the air until 3:00 A.M.

  “Brother Frank will visit with you again tomorrow. And may your Great Spirit, whatever that may be, never rain on your parade.”

  Rufus shut off the equipment and give Frank the thumbs-up sign like we seen Harvey give Vince.

  “From now on, Silas, you pick up Brother Frank’s mail every day. Wouldn’t want all this money fall into the wrong hands.”

  We kept expecting Vince or Harvey to discover what we been doing, but Frank keep up his late-night broadcasting.

  I check the mailbox every day, but there is nothing addressed to “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.”

  People’s requests all translate into money. The people who call in come mostly from a long way off. That girl without music live in a place called Blueberry Mountain, hundreds of miles up north.

  Frank, doing some creative borrowing at a K Mart in Edmonton, acquire the CD player, but among us all we couldn’t raise the postage to mail it.

  Connie stand in line at a post office, ask for seven dollars’ worth of stamps, then just pick them up and walk out. The clerk yelling like crazy, but not running after her.

  “They wouldn’t feel so bad if they knew they were contributing to making someone happy,” says Frank, as he stuff the parcel into a slot at the main post office.

  One morning me and Frank head off to Calgary in Louis Coyote’s pick-up truck. Frank, he want to hear an evangelist on a Calgary radio station. This fellow he got a twang in his voice sound like the real Hank Williams used to.

  “Entertainment, and touching the heart is what it’s all about,” says Frank. “I got to have the qualities of a good country singer, a striptease dancer, and . . .”

  “A welder,” I say.

  “Damn right. A good entertainer melt solder with his bare hands. Look into that, Silas. See if there’s a magic trick where I can pretend to melt metal.”

  We figure the place to listen to a radio in comfort would be at my sister’s house up in the hills in northwest Calgary. It’s been over a year since we visited.

  I have to admit Brother Bob treat my sister pretty good, but he been insulting Frank and me ever since he first met us. He sic the police on us more than once, not that we are totally innocent. We one time wreck Brother Bob’s new car, and another time we put live horses in his brand-new house. Last time here, Frank did a certain amount of damage to the computer system at the finance company my brotherin-law manage. Brother Bob McVey make it clear we ain’t welcome at either his home or his business. But we figure time dim the bad things, and we make sure to arrive in the middle of the afternoon.

  Only trouble is, he at home.

  “How come you ain’t off repossessing trucks from poor Indians?” Frank ask when Brother Bob answer the door.

  Brother Bob don’t look very good. He is wearing a bathrobe and ain’t shaved in, I bet, half a week. I always figure Brother Bob woke up already shaved.

  He just wave us into the living room, where my sister Illianna patching some of little Bobby’s jeans.

  “You sick or something, Brother Bob?” I ask.

  Brother Bob just stare at The Price Is Right on TV. Illianna answer for him. “Bob’s been out of work—almost nine months now. He’s feeling kind of depressed.”

  Illianna explain that the big finance company Brother Bob managed went out of business. They loaned millions of dollars to companies in the oil patch, and since the price of oil been going down forever, those companies couldn’t pay their loans. The finance company close up after they used up all the company pension fund trying to stay in business. Brother Bob don’t get a dime in layoff pay for all his years with the company, plus he lose all his pension money.

  “Why don’t you get another job?” Frank ask.

  “There aren’t any jobs in Bob’s field. In case you haven’t noticed,” Illianna answer, “the economy is really bad.”

  “Sorry,” says Frank. “Being unemployed all my life, it’s hard to tell.”

  “I’ve been trying to get a job,” says Illianna, “but it’s years since I worked, and then I was just waiting tables. All I could earn as a waitress wouldn’t pay the mortgage. Silas, I don’t know what we’re gonna do.”

  “I got maybe sixty dollar
s,” I say.

  “And you got my good wishes,” says Frank. “But I got a scam going that gonna make us all rich. Six months from now Fencepost will offer you a job. Fencepost might even offer Brother Bob a job.” Frank consider that possibility for a moment, then say, “Nah.”

  After that we are kind of uncomfortable. We wait long enough to give little Bobby a hug when he get home from school, then we listen to the evangelist in the truck at a truck stop on Deerfoot Trail.

  On the fifth day there are two letters addressed to “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.” I rush them back to the pool hall and Frank rip them open. One contain a two-dollar bill, the other a useless one-dollar loonie coin.

  We is all pretty disappointed.

  Frank is getting five to ten calls every night from people in need. It surprising how small people’s wants are. A pair of eyeglasses, a toy, shoes, some dental work so someone can look passable when they go job hunting. Frank has written down everybody’s requests along with their names and addresses in a notebook. There is close to forty and it don’t look like we going to be able to fill none of them.

  “If people could just see me in person,” says Frank. “I could convince them to part with their money. We’d pay off the needy people and have a lot left over for us. Guess I’m gonna have to do like these real evangelists and beg hard.”

  Turn out the problem wasn’t Frank, but our usual bad mail service. After about eight days, the mail box start to fill up. There is fourteen letters one day, total eighty dollars in cash and checks. The next day there is twenty-six letters, with over a hundred dollars. The lady from Drumheller get her grocery money. The lady from Obed get to pay her heating bill.

  That night Frank thank people for their kindness, he get a tear in his voice as he say there is so much to do and so little time and money.

  It take Bedelia and me and even Frank’s girl, Connie Bigcharles, to talk him out of imitating that famous evangelist, I think it was Oral Robertson, who claim he going to be called to heaven if he don’t get enough money donated from his followers.

  “For one thing, we don’t think you’d be called to heaven,” we tell Frank. “For another, Oral Robertson didn’t get all the money he craved, and he didn’t die.”

  “All he got, I think, was a toothbrush named after him,” says Connie Bigcharles.

  “It would attract attention to me,” says Frank. “That’s what being a celebrity is all about. I read somewhere that unless you get caught in bed with little boys, all publicity is good publicity.”

  “Or unless, like that other evangelist, you get caught in the back seat of your car with a working girl.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” says Frank. “I been in more back seats than a McDonald’s wrapper.”

  Frank finally see things our way.

  “Was that good, or what?” Frank say, after he is off the air. “I never knew I could get that catch in my voice. I figure I’m worth about a thousand dollars a tear from now on.”

  What Frank say is true.

  In another week the requests are only twenty dollars or so ahead of the income. And the prospects are looking righteous. Unfortunately, whenever something is going good, something go wrong.

  I only take the mail addressed to “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.” How am I supposed to know that people are writing to K-UGH to say how much they enjoy Frank's program?

  One morning when I go to pick up the mail, Vince been there before me.

  Vince and Harvey ain’t mad. They just want a cut.

  “Word will get back to the higher-ups eventually, but until then, you got a great scam going. We checked in on your broadcast last night. You, Mr. Frank, have got charisma.”

  “I hear you can get antibiotics for that,” says Frank.

  For 10 percent off the top, Vince and Harvey agree to be deaf, dumb, and blind to “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.” There was nearly four hundred dollars in that day’s mail.

  We have to open up a bank account for “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour” at the Bank of Montreal in Wetaskiwin. Frank and me and Bedelia Coyote are the ones who can write checks. Frank cut Bedelia in because she got the stamina to deal with government.

  “There is ways for every dollar we take in to be tax-free, and I’m gonna research all those ways,” Bedelia say.

  Another month and Frank just keep getting better. Soon, there is actually money left over when the requests are filled.

  “We put a definite five-hundred-dollar limit on what we pay out,” Frank says. “I mean, no sex-change operations that ain’t covered by medical insurance. No vans for the handicapped, no matter how worthy the cause. Three hundred dollars for bus tickets so Granny can see the daughter and new grandchild is what we’re all about. That draw more tears than a $40,000 van for some guy who can only move two fingers and his pecker.”

  Things get complicated when the newspapers start coming around, wanting to interview Brother Frank. Soon as the stories run, the bigwigs at K-UGH start asking a lot of questions.

  Since I am the worrier, I worry we been doing something illegal, and maybe all of us, or especially Frank, could go to jail.

  But the bigwigs at K-UGH find that after only six weeks, “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour” draw more listeners at two in the morning than all their regular shows.

  Frank get called in to K-UGH, and me and Bedelia go with him. There is three guys in suits, one come all the way from Toronto, which, they tell us, is where everything really happen.

  “Then how come I never been there?” Frank ask. He live life like he got nothing to lose. And I guess that’s true. Until now.

  The suit from Toronto chuckle politely, then offer Frank a contract and the 9:00 P.M. to 11:00 P.M. broadcast time.

  “We’d like to offer you a five-year contract at $60,000 a year, rising $5,000 each year, so by the end of the contract you’ll be making $80,000 a year,” the Toronto suit say.

  “I bet that’s almost as much as the guys on ‘Stampede Wrestling’ make,” says Frank.

  At this point Bedelia Coyote break into the conversation. Bedelia has studied accounting by mail, and she has studied business management by mail, as well as how to organize a demonstration and how to get your organization’s name in the newspaper without committing an indictable offence.

  “Mr. Fencepost will be happy with your salary offer,” she say, “but we only want a month-to-month contract.”

  Bedelia have to pull Frank off into a corner and have a pretty loud whispered conversation to get him to agree to that.

  “Plus,” Bedelia go on, “‘Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour’ manage all the money that is donated. We pick which people get their requests filled, and Mr. Fencepost hire his own support staff and pay them out of the donated money.”

  The suits argue for quite a while because they had their eyes on the income donated to “Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour.”

  “We can take our program over to CFCW, the country-music station in Camrose. Bet they’d be happy to have us. Or, we might contact one of the big radio stations in Edmonton,” say Bedelia.

  The suits give in.

  I can’t believe how fast things move after that. What Frank talk ain’t exactly Christianity, but he mention the Bible often enough that Christians like him. He throw in enough fictional Indian mythology, some of which I make up, to what Frank call “make us politically correct.”

  “Everybody loves the idea of an Indian these days. So look me up a bannock recipe, and I’ll include it on tomorrow night’s program,” he say to me. “And saskatoon pie. We’ll tell them where to pick the best saskatoons. The country will be overrun with berry-pickers.”

  Frank also talk about fulfilling dreams and positive thinking enough that the people who believe in crystal power and having conversations with rocks and trees like him, too.

  By the time Frank get settled in his new time slot, Bedelia is negotiating with the big radio stations in Edmonton and some outfit would do something called “syndicate”
the show, putting Frank on over one hundred stations, many of them in the United States, where, Frank say, the real money is.

  Frank make Bedelia his business manager and me his personal assistant, and he find jobs for Rufus and Winnie Bear, Robert Coyote and his girl Julie Scar, and about ten other of our friends. My salary in a month is as much as I ever made in a year writing books.

  One night I try to phone Illianna, but all I get is a guy with a deep voice tell me my call cannot be completed as dialed. After I pretend I’m Frank and get real pushy with Information, they tell me the number I’m calling been disconnected for non-payment.

  The day I cash my first check at the Bank of Montreal, I put a hundred-dollar bill in an envelope and address it to Illianna.

  At supper one night a couple of weeks later, Ma say, “Illianna phoned Ben Stonebreaker’s store and left a message that she coming for a visit.”

  “That’s wonderful,” says my sister, Delores. “I just love Bobby.”

  Bobby is only a year or so younger than Delores.

  “That’s what makes me worried,” says Ma. “She’s bringing Bobby, and What’s-his-name, and she ask Mrs. Ben Stonebreaker if maybe the Quails’ old cabin is available, ’cause they planning to stay for a while.” After the Quails build themselves a new house, their old cabin sit vacant with half the windows knocked out and a few strips of what used to be bright green siding bulging loose under the front window.

  Ma, over the years, has mellowed some toward Illianna’s husband, Robert McGregor McVey. Now it’s What’s-his-name. She used to refer to him in Cree as He Who Has No Balls.

  A few days later, Illianna and her family turn up on the reserve, and I can’t help remembering the first time they visit after they been married. Brother Bob was driving a new car with racing stripes and silver hub caps, and we give him an Indian name, Fire Chief, just like the gasoline down at Crier’s Texaco garage, and little Bobby was still a glint in Eathen Firstrider’s eye.

  Today they is driving what white people call an Indian car. It is a huge Pontiac, about a 1972, painted a pumpkin color, full of dents, sagging and clunking, with about a million miles on it, and a big U-Haul trailer with stuff tied all over the outside of it rattles along behind.