Wizard of the Wind

by Don Keith

  If anyone ever noticed the work getting done, that things looked neater, sounded better, worked more dependably, then nothing was said. Finally, Detroit even began leaving Charlie McGee neat schematic drawings of what he had done, along with carefully lettered notes telling him exactly what changes had been made, documenting the improvements. Anyone would have known it could never have been the work of Clifford Snodgrass or the other part-time engineers. But still, Charlie McGee said nothing to Jimmy about it, or ever let on that he noticed anything at all going on.

  That was not unusual, though. Charlie did not say much to anybody about anything. All along, he seemed to grow more distant. He was always irritable or preoccupied, even more so than before. And he was gone from the station instantly each night at sunset after the power to Big Beulah was cut.

  One afternoon, Jimmy caught Charlie reading a newspaper that he quickly dropped and tried to hide when he heard him coming, just as he once had his books with pictures of naked women. But this paper did not feature unclothed girls. Jimmy saw a fiery cross sketched on its front page, a hooded man holding a sword skyward on the back. The headlines screamed something ugly and angry in blood-red letters that he could not quite read before Charlie hid it away.

  Just that quick glance at the newspaper reminded Jimmy of the night the crosses were burned on the railroad high-line. Just then, and for the first time, he made the connection between Charlie McGee and the man with the chunky wrist watch. The hooded man who had made the sinister salute as he rode away in the pick-up truck bed, leaving the flaming cross behind. Charlie caught him staring at him, at his watch, and gave Jimmy an aggravated wave of dismissal. He muttered something about having to do some paperwork and to get the hell out of his way.

  It was an odd time, a time of strange feelings for Jimmy Gill. He was so busy trying to avoid schoolwork, hanging out at the radio station, cooking and cleaning for Grandmama and himself, that he hardly noticed the change that hung in the air like the orange smoke from the mills.

  It was happening all around him. All over Birmingham. All over the South. The status quo was reeling under the strain of conflict, a clash of ways of life that had torn things right down the middle. But Jimmy Gill spent most of his energy trying to pass ninth grade math. Trying to make his voice go deep and his segues on “AUDITION” smooth and professional-sounding.

  Eventually, he and Detroit talked about what was going on. It frightened him. He was afraid that all that was happening would somehow get in the way of their friendship. Dee Simmons was the only friend Jimmy Gill had in the world.

  Jimmy knew better than to discuss such weighty matters as race relations with Grandmama or anyone at WROG. She had her head in a picture tube all the time. The people at the station were wrapped up in the music, sock hops, and selling commercials.

  The George twins were about the only other people he had anything to do with and there was little doubt where they stood on the subject of race relations. Jimmy and Detroit had gotten to know Clarice George’s boys well since the night their father was killed. The twins usually worked on one of the collection of cars they kept parked in front of the duplex. It was hard to avoid running into them.

  Jimmy was especially surprised that Hector George’s sons took to the colored boy so readily. Maybe it was because Detroit seemed to know more about the mechanics of their old ragged cars than they did. Or because he seemed to always be able to find the exact part they needed or could jury-rig something else if he couldn’t. That impressed the hell out of the twins.

  Duane and DeWayne George were also fascinated by Jimmy Gill’s attachment to the radio business. They asked him endless questions about the celebrities and songs and the disk jockeys they listened to. Soon, Jimmy was bringing them sacks full of give-away eight-track tapes and junk records. They loved the rock and roll music and played it loudly on the powerful car stereo systems Detroit put together and sold to them.

  In exchange, the twins took Detroit and Jimmy wherever they wanted to go and sometimes let them climb behind the wheels of the cars and drive themselves. Or they shared a can of beer or a cigarette with the boys while they told amazing stories about the girls they had met and conquered in all their exploits.

  Lately the twins had not been around so much. Sometimes, they would be gone from home for weeks at a time, only showing up to take their mother or Detroit and Jimmy for rides in their ever newer, sleeker, fancier automobiles. Mrs. George proudly told Jimmy that her boys were doing well in their new jobs. That they were running a "transportation co-op" for truck farmers and small businesses around the state.

  Jimmy later learned their transportation consisted of rented panel trucks, and the crops they hauled to market for the farmers were not even remotely legal. Their drivers made runs to secluded mountain coves in north Alabama and Georgia, to out-of-the way bayous around Mobile Bay and east of Pensacola, to sloughs along the Biloxi River on the Mississippi coast, bringing in loads of commodities by the dark of night for a very demanding marketplace.

  They were still good for the occasional ride and Jimmy wanted to take advantage when the twins were home. At the same time, Detroit seemed to lose interest in hanging around with Duane and DeWayne. He always had something else to do when they offered him a lift, so Jimmy reluctantly stayed behind, too. That meant he spent more and more time hanging around WROG, listening to the music, practicing his show in the production room.

  That was what he was doing one Saturday afternoon when Charlie McGee finally broke his surly silence to ask Jimmy to help him paint the outbuilding at the base of the tower. He promised him five dollars cash. Jimmy jumped at the chance. He was already saving money for an old car of some kind to replace his warped bicycle.

  As they worked that afternoon, the sour little man began to talk to him as he had never done before. He started talking about football. Of how things were going straight to hell at the University of Alabama with the coloreds wanting to go to school there.

  “Next thing, old Bear Bryant is going to have to take in a young buck down there. And that’ll be the end of it, boy. The end of it all.”

  Charlie actually looked frightened, a sad cast moving across his eyes as he viciously swiped white paint against the blackness of the mildewed concrete blocks.

  “We got to put a stop to all this uppity nigger stuff, boy,” he said loudly, to overcome the demon buzzing of the coils inside the tower building. There was a cold meanness in the man’s eyes. A stony evil Jimmy Gill had seen only once before in his life. In the eyes of Hector George the day he chased Detroit Simmons away from the duplex. “It’s going to get real ugly before it’s over, boy. Only way to show them is to hurt some of them. Only way to stop them is to kill some of them and show them we’re serious. That’ll put an end to it once and for all.”

  The tone of his voice scared Jimmy as much as his words did. He pretended to stop painting to wipe the sweat from his eyes. Then, slowly, he worked his way around to the opposite side of the building, as far from Charlie’s bitterness and angry raving as he could get.

  It did not matter. The man was determined to have his say. He followed Jimmy around the shack, completely forgetting to paint any more as he continued his preaching.

  “I’d advise you of one thing, Jimmy. Stand clear. When the shooting starts, them that’s friendly with the niggers are going to get shot just as full of holes and get blown up into just as many bits by the dynamite as the coons are. You know what I mean, boy?”

  McGee backed away, watching Jimmy, and he stood there trembling with emotion in the knee-high grass as the brush at his side dripped paint. Jimmy let the arcing and hissing of the transmitting coils serve as his only answer and kept swiping his brush vigorously across the cement blocks.

  They had made quick work of the paint job. Almost finished, Jimmy was anxious to get his five dollars and deposit it in the sock in his bedroom. And he did not want to hear any more about bullets and dynamite and black people.

  The sun had dipp
ed below the trees at the far edge of the field and darkness was threatening to catch them. Just then, the first fuzzy drum beats of “Dixie” signaled it was sign-off time. Its buzz drowned out anything else the old man might want to spew at him.

  As they gathered up their buckets and brushes, the last of the noise from inside the outbuilding faded away. “Dixie” was over. The transmitter would be turned off momentarily.

  Suddenly, though, Charlie McGee stopped his work, cocked his head to one side, and cupped his paint-splattered hand to an ear. He seemed to be listening to the breeze droning through the tower supports and guy wires that stretched high above their heads.

  “What the hell was that, Jimmy?”

  Gill had not heard anything but a couple of crows fussing as they played across the field from them. He told him so.

  “You don’t hear that squeakin’ and squawkin’ in the matching coils?”

  “No, Charlie, I don’t....”

  But the engineer had taken off toward the station building at a full gallop. Weighted down by the buckets and brushes, Jimmy had to trot to try to keep up. Charlie burst through the back door of the station, almost running over the part-time engineer who was about to pull the main power switch on Big Beulah. He stomped through the door and down the hallway for the control room, now dark, quiet and deserted, the “broadcast day” done.

  “Dixie” had recently been recorded on one of the new continuous loop tape cartridges. The old scratchy disk recording of the song had been put away on a shelf. The tape machines were an important development for radio stations. The song or commercial announcement was always cued to the beginning, ready to play instantly when a button was pushed on the new tape players. Charlie had tried to install them, but their sound had been muddy and distorted at first. Detroit had done the job correctly the next Sunday morning and they had worked well ever since.

  Charlie McGee jerked the tape cartridge from the rack where it lived in the control room and slammed it into one of the machines stacked on the counter. He cranked up the knob on the control console, slapped the machine’s start button hard with the punch of a fist, and then listened as the band played loudly, happily, all the way through. Trombones, fifes and snare drums bounced off the carpeted walls of the tiny room. Jimmy could not help it. He tapped his foot on the floor to the happy beat.

  Then the music ended with a flourish of flutes, and there was only the hiss of tape and the slight rumble and pop of the needle in the record’s groove, just as it had been recorded on the cartridge.

  “BLOOP-BLEEP-BLEEP-BLONK-BLEEPITY-BLOOP-SQUEAK-SQUEAK!”

  Jesus! The sudden loud series of tones almost deafened them both. Charlie’s eyes lit up like coals of fire. He jerked the plastic tape cartridge from its slot in the playback machine the instant it stopped and rushed back out the control room door. Jimmy followed him again, now even more confused. He had never before noticed the noise on the tape after “Dixie” ended.

  Charlie stood at his desk and held a small black box in his hands, twisting and turning it around as he studied it intently. Jimmy couldn’t imagine what he was looking for.

  “You ever seen this contraption before?”

  Jimmy nodded a “no.” He said, “Never saw it before.”

  It was one of Detroit’s experimental projects, just like the screaming black box that had to be flushed to silence it. Jimmy knew that. He had seen him working on it and several more just like it.

  “I found this box under some stuff on that shelf over there the other day. First, I thought it was something Clifford might be working on, but that old drunk ain’t got the sense to do any work this pretty. The solder joints are perfect. Holes in the chassis are punched out just right. And whoever did it used some new components I don’t even know what are yet. Solid-state Japanese transistor shit. I got me an idea, though...”

  He spun quickly and dashed into the production studio, then plugged the cord attached to the strange box into a power socket and set it down on the shelf in front of a speaker. He gave it a few seconds to warm up, then shoved the “Dixie” tape cartridge into a player on the shelf and punched it off. When the music finished and the squeaks and squeals on the end of the tape rattled the speaker, something strange happened to Detroit’s black box. A series of letters and numbers in a window on the front of the thing suddenly began flipping over with each squeak and squeal, one at a time, in perfect order, as if riffled by an unseen finger.

  They read “300315N”.

  Charlie held the box out to show it to Jimmy. His hands were shaking. He had developed a twitch in his right cheek.

  “It’s that damn nigger, ain’t it, Jimmy? That damn nigger buddy of yours. What’s the little bastard been doing here in my shop?”

  McGee was quietly livid, the maddest Jimmy had seen him since the day he had chased him off his tower. He grabbed up the black box, ripped its cord from the wall socket, turned suddenly, and trotted toward the back door of the station.

  Sure enough, Detroit was there, waiting in the dark shadows of the building for Jimmy to finish washing his paint brushes and ride home with him. Somehow, Charlie had known he would be there. Before Detroit could hide, the old man threw the box at him hard, well-aimed, and only a quick duck and a dodge kept Detroit from getting hit square in his stomach.

  “What the hell are you doing with my radio station, you little black bastard?”

  Charlie fairly spat the question, stomping his feet with each of the words. Jimmy was afraid the dirty little man’s head was going to explode like a cherry bomb in a watermelon.

  Detroit stepped bravely from the shadows. He obviously saw McGee had nothing else to throw at him. No gun to shoot him. There was an odd, defiant look on his face, in his eyes. Jimmy had seen that look the day Hector George appeared on the porch with the shotgun.

  He wanted to warn his friend, to scream at him to run, to get on home to Ishkooda before Charlie fetched the nickel-plated revolver Jimmy knew he kept in his middle desk drawer in his office. The old man seemed, at that very moment, just mad enough to use it. But before Jimmy could squeak out a word, Detroit was answering the question.

  “There’s one of those boxes sitting right next to the radios in a dozen houses all around Birmingham. The houses belong to colored ministers. They are the preachers who are leading the protest marches for Dr. Martin Luther King. You know them. You one of the ones been leaving sticks of dynamite under their porch steps.”

  Detroit was speaking calmly, deliberately, his voice so low, so different from any tone Jimmy had ever heard from him that he could hardly make out what he was saying.

  “The tones on the tape control the numbers and letters on the display on the front of the box. They let the minsters know exactly where and when the marches are going to be held so they can tell their congregations. The colored stations announce it too, but their frequencies are so bad and their power is so low, some can’t hear them. I record the stuff on the tail end of the sign-off tape cartridge so it can play after ‘Dixie’ and before the transmitter switch is pulled. Three in the afternoon, Third Avenue and Fifteenth Street North. That’s what that one said that you have there. Everybody in town will know where the march is tomorrow, thanks to WROG.”

  Jimmy was stunned, amazed Detroit had hatched such a plot without him even knowing about it. Even a little hurt that he had been left out of the scheme. But at that very moment, he was mostly afraid that Charlie McGee was going to shoot or strangle Detroit right there behind the radio station.

  The skinny old man surprised him, though. He just sank back down to sit on the step, his head in his hands, disbelieving, and Jimmy took advantage of the chance to scoot around him, to grab Detroit, to try to make their getaway.

  They jerked up their bikes, jumped on them in a full run, and pointed them up the drive and toward escape along the highway. They only turned back to look when Charlie McGee screamed at them in a voice that sounded like metal-on-metal.

  “Either of you ever come b
ack around here again, I’ll string y’all up my own damn self!”

  He shook his fist, then reached down for handfuls of gravel from the drive and hurled them toward the fleeing boys, stomping around the backyard of WROG in a blind rage.

  The next time Jimmy Gill saw Charlie McGee’s face, it was only a grainy black and white photo of him, glaring out at him from the front page of The Birmingham News. The dim eyes and face full of whiskers were just under a headline proclaiming arrests in connection with the bombing of several houses in North Birmingham. In a place called "Dynamite Hill." In a city dubbed "Bombingham."

  Jimmy fussed at Detroit for not telling him about what he was doing. But it was hard to stay mad at him when he saw the pride in his face every time he talked about it.

  It had been his aunt, Lulu Dooley, who had first talked with Detroit about the scheme. She knew how inventive he had become. How knowledgeable he was with the electronic mysteries in the radio station shop. The ministers were looking for a way to efficiently notify everyone where the marches would begin, without Bull Conner and his police or the Klan finding out beforehand. If they found out, they could barricade the street or gather a crowd of ruffians to try to disrupt the demonstration.

  Of course, neither of the boys told anyone about Lulu’s role in the whole thing. She continued to work at WROG. But Jimmy was finished there. He had been fired from a radio job for the first time at fourteen years old.

  It did not discourage him. It only strengthened his resolve. Aimed him like the pointer on a radio dial toward where he had to go. He knew what he wanted to do now. No, what he had to do.