TWO O’CLOCK, EASTERN WARTIME

by John Dunning

  Already Stoner’s men are bringing out the biggest speakers ever made: each of them half as big as a house. They must be winched along like a cannon before it’s mounted, and it all seems to take forever. It doesn’t matter, nobody’s going anywhere; even the sun doesn’t move until the speakers are mounted and ready to go. One goes on a platform in the marsh, the other on a floating battery out near the ironclads. Now we can have our battle, Livia says, and in the same split instant the booth begins to fade, it becomes a fort again, and the men come to life as she starts back down the beach. A shot rings out, and suddenly she’s got to run to get off the soundstage before she’s killed in the cross fire. She barely makes it, leaping out of the way as the battle heats up. Stoner’s men aren’t so lucky. The last I see of them they are screaming and clawing at the walls. In that moment, just before they are cut down, I see the faces of George and Peter Schroeder.

  • • •

  His eyes flicked open. The actuality had been superb! In his dream they had almost captured it, caught it as clearly as any catastrophic battle can ever be simulated for the ear alone. He saw Carnahan at the wall, his colored regiment all around him, his Negroes aghast at the magic in his hat. Now at the moment of truth they all wanted to be near him. They would fight from his shadow, where nothing could touch them. He stood on the wall and smacked those Rebs into that great cotton field in the sky.

  There had been another dream, and another before that. But he would lose them now. He heard Holly’s footsteps in the hall and their first words of the day would dash any memory he might have had. She turned into the bathroom and he had a short vision of the next dream in the chain. They were walking the boardwalk and suddenly the old man, Pauline’s friend, had appeared before them. He had come to tell them that it was the old war, it was never this war at all.

  The door cracked open and she came into the room and sat on the bed. “What’s with you, old man? Gonna sleep all day?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Ten after seven.”

  “Jesus,” he said, his voice thick with sleep. “When did you come in?”

  “Usual time. You were dead to the world so I hated to bother you.”

  “That’s what happens when you can’t sleep more than four hours a night. One night a month, you die. What about you? Did you sleep?”

  “Not yet, but I will. I had stuff on my mind when I got home, so I sat out on the deck for an hour. Then I came in and read a book.”

  Thirty minutes later they sat on the deck talking and eating. He told her about his dream, what the old man had said about another war, long ago. He couldn’t get it out of his head that March Flack was their true starting point. That the others were linked perhaps only by necessity. That the threads went back to the old war, not to this one.

  This was new ground to her, something he hadn’t shared. “That old man might have the answer to everything,” she said. “We’ve got to talk to him.”

  “Yeah, but how? He’s only coherent half the time. He’s shell-shocked and angry and he sees threats behind every tree.”

  “He’s in love with Flack’s wife, she told you that herself. That’s his weakness.”

  “That’s her interpretation.”

  “Then it’s mine too. I’ve watched them together since I first got here and I know the signs. The old war’s not all that’s got him dippy.”

  They were quiet for a while. “She saw lights back in the marsh,” Holly said. “What does that tell you? It was either Harford or the old man. Choose your poison. Somehow we’ve got to find a way to talk to him. I think it should be me who does it.”

  “Not alone, you don’t.”

  “He’s going to be upset if he gets as much as a glimpse of you. He knows you, he’s seen you talking with Mrs. Flack. I can be a new face.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Then you come up with something.”

  “I can’t. All I know is, if you go see him, I’m going to be there.”

  “We’ll see. Now why don’t you shut up and put me to bed?”

  Tuesday. Another incredible day at Harford. Suddenly he had the last word on everything he wrote. Dark Silver was down from mimeo: a thick package of scripts on his desk with a note from Kidd asking for early auditions, cast assignments, and the soonest possible starting date. A note from the sales staff. Could he meet with a prospective sponsor Thursday at noon? . . . a silverware company in Connecticut liked the title and might create a Dark Silver table setting if he’d work a mention into his story line every other week. Zylla needed to confer on music as soon as he had the final rewrite for Friday’s show. Livia had some technical questions about the bombardment. And there were at least a dozen telephone slips from New York, actors in the second tier of radio regulars who had already heard of him, probably from Rick Gary, and were willing to travel for steady work. Another note from Kidd: the radio critic for the Times was coming down on Friday, would like to watch the Negro show and perhaps do a short interview, which would run in the paper sometime next week.

  Becky Hart arrived as usual at ten o’clock. “Waldo’s waiting for you downstairs. You look like a man under siege this morning.”

  “I never knew how much other stuff was involved in writing radio.”

  “Cheer up, Jordy, the marines have landed. Kidd says you can have me for four hours a day if you want me. I’ll take care of the busy stuff.”

  “God bless the wisdom of Jethro Kidd.”

  She laughed. “I’ve found us a spare room we can use for an office. That’ll get you out of the firing range and buy you some work time. I’m having a phone put in tomorrow. I know that’s a pest but I guess it’s a necessary evil. At least you’ll be out of this bullpen.”

  They looked at each other for a moment. “What are you doing tonight?” he said.

  “Nothing that can’t be changed. What’s on your mind?”

  “I’d like you to produce Dark Silver for me.”

  It didn’t sink in at once, what he was telling her. “You want me to get some people in for a reading?”

  “I want you to produce this serial for the air. The whole shebang.”

  She looked stunned. “Are you serious?”

  “I can’t think of anybody I’d rather have. Who’s got better judgment. Who works harder or is more competent or knows the business as well.”

  Only determination saved her from sudden tears. “Jesus, can you do this on your own?”

  “Harford seems to think I can do anything.” He shrugged. “Let’s find out how much rope they’re willing to give me.”

  “Well, thank you,” she said, still fighting tears. “I’ll try to do a good job.”

  “I have no doubt. Now, about tonight. Call Brinker and Rue.”

  She scrambled for a notepad.

  “Tell them I’d like to read them tonight, about eight o’clock. If the time’s bad, do what you can, make it tomorrow if that’s the best we can do. I need Pauline, too, and both announcers. Tell Brinker he’ll be doing the younger son. That still leaves you two key roles to fill before we can schedule the first broadcast.”

  “Don’t forget the villain. That awful man on the racing board.”

  “I think Eastman may be just right for that. He’s certainly got enough natural piss for it.” He picked up his notes. “Then I need you to answer these phone calls.”

  She recognized most of the names. “There are some good actors here.”

  “That’s what we need, a couple of good actors. We want voices for the father and the older son that haven’t been heard here a million times over. The father’s the family’s strength. He’s where the daughter gets all her fire. But he’s also the fiber, the measured calm of the older son. That’s what I need you to do today, right now before you do anything else. Get on the phone and use your best judgment about who might work, then invite those people down for an audition.”

  “Do you want them tonight?”

  “In an ideal world, yes, that wou
ld be great. Tell them we’ll send a car for them and put them up here in the hotel. Make sure they understand these are leading roles and we’re asking them for a long-term commitment. I don’t want to change any of those five voices once we’re on the air.”

  “You know who’d be great for the father? Rick Gary.”

  “Yeah, he would.” He thought for a moment. “He sure would.”

  “If he wasn’t so busy on the network.”

  “Ask him anyway, maybe we’ll get lucky, catch him just when he’s getting sick of the big-city rat race.”

  “I think he’s got a thing for Rue. That could help us.”

  “No, that’s exactly the wrong reason. He’s got to want to play this part. If he comes because of Rue, one of two things will happen, both of them bad. Either the thing with Rue won’t pan out and he’ll be gone. Or it will and he’ll take her away to New York and we’ll lose them both.”

  “Poor Jimmy. He’s going to lose her and he knows it.”

  He thought of Holly and Tom and the way things sometimes happen. But that was life, you couldn’t change it and you probably shouldn’t try. “Go on, ask him down,” he said. “If he comes I’ll have a talk with him and we’ll decide then if we’re buying a load of trouble.”

  He shuffled through his notes and ticked off the remaining items.

  “Would you please handle this? Tell the advertising staff I’ll take anybody’s money, but all they get is a straight commercial. Make sure the silverware company understands what this story’s about. I doubt if most racetrackers have ever seen a formal dinner setting.”

  “I’ll handle it. You shouldn’t be bothered with stuff like this.”

  “Here’s another one. A reporter is coming down Friday to watch us do the colored show. Tell Kidd I’m not good with interviews, have him talk to Waldo and the cast. Play up the fact that Waldo was doing this show six years before I got here. Keep me in the background, as far back as possible. I know that’s not going to be easy. Do what you can for me.”

  He shuffled paper. “Touch base with Livia and Zylla. Tell them I’ll have the Battery Wagner final first thing in the morning. Both of them need to think big. We need a score with power and sweep. And Livia needs to produce the end of the world by fire and thunder, the biggest sound she can imagine. Tell her we won’t know for sure what we’ve got till the cast gets here on Friday, because I want to try an experiment with speakers on the soundstage. Big ones, placed on the dead sides of the mikes. I want the place flooded with noise, I want the actors to hear it all when the bombardment starts, so they’ll have to scream to hear themselves think.”

  He spiked his notes and she made her own. Occasionally she had a question. Sometimes he had an answer, but often she was left to her own devices.

  “Then,” he said, “when you get everything else done, I’d like you to tell Kidd I need to see that prison camp script.”

  She made the note and almost let it pass without comment. But at last she said, “What’s going on?” and he gave a little shrug as if to dismiss it.

  “I’m trying to give Kidd the context he needs to get that play on the air. Tell him I need to see that original script so I can make the others blend and do what we want them to. Tell him I’ve already got one written and I’m working on the others. The Japanese script is giving me trouble. It wants to get angrier than how I originally saw it. I keep seeing the faces of those kids at that relocation camp and I’m having trouble getting into their shoes.”

  “Are you talking about American Japs?” Her eyes opened wide in astonishment. “My gosh, Jordan, what are you doing?”

  “Just something to go with the script you found. A lightning rod.”

  “It’ll be a lightning rod, all right. Jesus, we’ll be attacked by mobs and burned to the ground.”

  They seemed to be finished. She folded her notes and got up to leave.

  “Well, thank you again for the chance.”

  “My pleasure.”

  She looked thrilled again, excited. “Suddenly I’ve got a feeling about this place. I think we’re going to do things that may never be done again. The talent’s always been here. You were the missing ingredient.”

  She looked at him through the smoky haze. “Something tells me you’ll be needing me a lot more than four hours.”

  “Then tell Kidd that,” he said.

  ( ( ( 12 ) ) )

  WALDO had brought him a memoir, written down by one of the battle’s survivors, never published, stashed in an archive after the man’s death. “I copied it myself by hand, long ago,” Waldo said. “Thought it might give you some ideas. I don’t think we can use it as it stands, and I’m not sure what copyright law might still be in effect after sixty-five years. But it’s got some juice in it.”

  It was better than that. It reshaped his two lead characters without changing any of the music or sound. An air of excitement had come over Waldo, banishing his fear. He sees it now, Jordan thought: he sees what an opportunity this is. They worked over the noon hour and by two o’clock they had Friday’s script marked into oblivion and again ready to be typed for mimeo. “It’s different enough now, I don’t think we need to worry about the man’s great-grandson suing us,” Waldo said. But as they finished, the voice of that long-dead black soldier seemed to demand his name, and Jordan typed in a credit line: Suggested by the unpublished memoir of Private Leroy Stokes, Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Colored Infantry, U.S.A. “I think we’re ready to go,” he said.

  He skipped lunch and moved on. Alone now, he sat at his desk and in a while the bullpen babble began to fade and the smoky air took on the earthy pungence of a shedrow. Again he saw that Japanese child waving at him through the fence at Tanforan. Saw the worry in her father and the weary despair in her mother as the guard called their names. The father stood and the woman and children came at once to his side. Such quiet people, so disciplined and dignified. So willing, at least on the surface, to make this sacrifice for their country.

  Maybe that was their problem as fictional people. They sacrificed too willingly.

  Hie eyes flicked open to the first real glimmer of story.

  They were far too orderly and ready to cooperate. Never mind that they had no more choice than a Jew in one of Hitler’s camps . . . what they lacked, for the purpose of drama, was that moment-to-moment struggle to survive, the main order of business in Poland and on Bataan and in the Confederate hellholes of 1864. This was a different kind of prison camp. No violent or pestilent death, just a slow, steady sapping of the soul.

  If I were Ben Doi I would be angry, he thought. I’d be goddamned angry and I’d do whatever I could to disrupt the harmony of the camp.

  What would they do to a Japanese malcontent?

  Now his story came in a rush of thoughts and pictures. He’d need to change the hero’s name. Doi was too subtle. The listener must know at once what was going on and exactly who the characters were. The name Sakamoto came into his mind and he wrote it down. The father’s name is Danny. His wife is named Jill. Jordan had heard that they called themselves Nisei, American citizens born of alien parents. They must speak flawless English: a formidable challenge to the actors who must capture that Japanese touch almost by innuendo, without anything resembling dialect. Danny and Jill Sakamoto. They have two children, Lucy and Leo. For years they have been making monthly payments on a house and a small business in San Francisco. They will lose everything. Danny Sakamoto faces his family’s ruin in disbelief, then with growing anger.

  In the heat of that moment a streak of rage shot through his eyes and out through his fingers to the paper that suddenly appeared in his machine. The next time he looked up, the day was gone and the bullpen was empty. He heard the footsteps in the hall: Becky Hart, coming to tell him about her efforts of the day.

  Rue and Brinker and Pauline were all free for tonight. Stallworth was a maybe; Eastman hadn’t been home. Rick Gary didn’t answer in New York. “But all the other New York actors are interested and will be
here. I’ve arranged to have them picked up.”

  “Good. Have you talked to Kidd yet?”

  “He’s been out of touch all day. Over at the office building sequestered with the man. But your office is ready. If you’d like to see it.”

  It was a small room across the hall, with a desk and a typewriter and an exit to the roof. She gave him the only key. “If you want to use the roof I can put a table out there. On mild days you can work yourself silly in the fresh air. You can speak directly to God.”

  She had provided him a shelf of reference books—dictionaries in several languages, a fat one-volume encyclopedia, a world almanac, an atlas, an NBC guide to dialect and pronunciation, and several volumes of military history. There was a globe within arm’s reach, and on the wall above him a chart showing the developing theaters of war.

  “As your racetrackers would say, we’re off and running. My home number’s marked on your calendar. Use it if you need anything, day or night. If you get a brainstorm and you want a sounding board, I’m a pretty good one, even at midnight.”

  She picked up his approval and shrugged modestly. “I’ll get your stuff moved over now if you want.”

  It didn’t take them long to move: they made it in one load and he settled in at his desk as the clock bumped its way past six. “I’ll bring you something to eat,” she said, and he nodded absently as she left the room. Then the muse flooded through him and he knew this was going to be a very good place. He gave the globe a spin and stopped it with his finger. There they were, Carnahan and Kendall, somewhere in the Pacific, torpedoed and cast adrift on a raft, hiding from the Japs in a dense stretch of unpopulated islands. A good straight adventure yarn with no pretensions to be anything else. He leaned over his desk and wrote quickly, raw notes to be filed with his other undeveloped ideas and brought out in their own time.