Wizard of the Wind

by Don Keith

  It had grown quiet, too, along Wisteria. The only noise they could hear was through the open door behind the two boys where Grandmama was arguing loudly with George Burns and Gracie Allen.

  Involved in their stories, neither of the boys noticed the roaring return of Hector George’s car until it slid sideways to a screeching stop just beyond Mrs. Polanski's scarred yard. One of its headlights was shining on the damaged lawn, the other one was dark, winking wickedly. George raced the motor, blue smoke billowing up toward the weak streetlight.

  Then he popped the clutch and the car jumped forward in a cloud of steam and dust. But he immediately slammed on the brakes, squealed to a stop, forced the gears into reverse with a grinding growl, and peeled backward. Twice more he faked new assaults on the expanse of green grass.

  The plants and shrubs and flowers in the yard seemed to stand a bit taller, to mock Hector George and the rest of the dreariness along Wisteria Street. Detroit and Jimmy still sat there on the edge of the high porch, frozen in place by the evil of the car's hoarse voice.

  Window shades went up a few inches in several nearby houses. Venetian blinds were cautiously parted to see what all the roar and bluster was about. Jimmy jumped. He thought there had been some kind of movement in the moon shadows behind the screen on the Polanksi’s front porch.

  Finally, on the fourth run, the drunk old man skewed into the yard, again spewing grass and dirt behind him. Even from half a block away, the boys could see the wild, crazed look on Hector George's face in the glow of the dashboard lights, as intoxicated on this one bit of power in his miserable life as he had ever been on liquor.

  He spun in a circle around the lawn, rear-end losing traction in the well-watered topsoil. He had just righted the angle of his attack and pointed the car toward the near edge of the yard when the boys saw a flash of some kind from the Polanski’s porch. Then, immediately, there were two more flares, with sharp cracks that could only be gunshots.

  Jimmy and Detroit looked at each other, stunned, then back to see George's car whip suddenly to the left, its weight shifting dangerously, and finally flipping onto its right side, sliding into the big water oak that guarded the street corner.

  Several men in undershirts, their suspenders flopping, ran from nearby houses to the toppled car. One man climbed to the driver's side window that now stared blankly upward at the sliver of moon. He waved away steam and smoke, peered inside, and simply shook his head. Another man climbed up next to him and helped him pry open the door, dragging out the lifeless form of Hector George. They handed him down to other neighbors who laid his body down in the middle of the ruts he had just plowed.

  People stood on porches now and others knotted in clumps of three and four along the street, muttering uncomfortably to each other like strangers, as a distant siren once more approached their block. Detroit and Jimmy still sat on the edge of the stoop with feet in mid-air, shocked motionless by what they had seen. Grandmama had missed it all. She was still talking back to the television set in the living room.

  Then, behind the boys, there was a slight scuff of a shoe on the cold concrete of the porch floor. Jimmy Gill turned his head quickly at the sound. It was the woman, Mrs. George, standing there in the darkness. A bluish glow through the window from Grandmama’s television set illuminated a strange smile on her haggard face.

  "Thank you, Lord," she said, her voice just audible above the screaming laughter from the television show, the hissing of her husband’s car’s radiator, the quiet buzzing of the neighbors. "Thank you, sweet Jesus."

  Then she turned and floated out of sight into the darkness at the far end of the duplex's porch.

  Four

  It rained for two days. A solid, blustery, continuous downpour left rivers in the street and found leaks in the moss-covered roof of the duplex. Grandmama ordered Jimmy to set pots and pans under the more pronounced drips. The music of the dripping kept them both awake at night. She got even more ill when she had to turn the television's sound up loud so she could hear the programs over the constant rhythmic plinking. So she could catch every word that Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton were screaming at each other.

  Jimmy had grown tired of playing cowboys-and-injuns on the front porch. The soap operas on the television were nothing but the same sad happenings over and over, just as dismal as real life. They certainly offered him no escape. Finally, he moped into the bedroom in search of something to while away the endless rainy hours.

  For the first time since the day of their move, he noticed the big Zenith console radio, hiding in a dusty corner where Wiley Groves had slid it out of the way. Its face was against the wall and it was covered with musty sheets and junky bric-a-brac that had not found a better place to live yet.

  Carefully, he piled the junk in a corner and wrestled the big cabinet to the center of the room. He almost pulled it over on top of himself when he tried to turn it around to face the dim light that filtered through the raindrops on the window. Finally, though, the big radio stood there, quietly staring back at him.

  Even with its dust and scratches, a couple of missing cross-pieces on its grill, and a cracked knob or two, it was imposing. Now freed from its corner, it dominated the room with its size and presence.

  Grandmama had gotten up during a commercial to shuffle to the kitchen for another pack of cigarettes, another glass of iced tea, and saw what Jimmy was doing. She stopped at the doorway and watched him for a moment.

  "That thing is broke, Jimmy. It won't pull in a thing," she said, and then hurried back to the living room as cascading organ music signaled the resumption of her story. "Mind you don't get yourself electrocuted messin' with that old worthless pile of junk."

  The radio’s wooden cabinet was a dark crimson mahogany, chipped and peeling and scraped in a few places. But when he wiped at it with a corner of a bed sheet, it seemed to shine beautifully in the dim light. Its large circular tuning dial was a smoky tan behind some dark spots of mildew that stained the glass. The row of knobs across its front was labeled cryptically: "VOL," "TUN," "AM," "SW," "TONE."

  The cloth that covered the big speaker in the front of the box was ripped and a couple of the wooden strips that were supposed to hold it in place had been lost in a prior collision with something. Jimmy could remember a rich, resonant flow of sound from its big speaker when he had listened to it for hours with his mother and father in better times. It had sounded much different, deeper, fuller, more life-like than the tinny squeaking noise that came from the television’s miniature speaker. For some reason, right then and there, he suddenly wanted to hear the sound of that old radio again.

  The prongs on the plug at the far end of the power cord were bent sideways. That didn’t look right so he twisted them out straight as best he could with his fingers.

  A wire that was hooked to a screw in the back of the box was hanging by its rubber insulation only. The screw was labeled “ANT”, so he figured that was the antenna. Clearly, the inner part of the wire was not making any contact with the radio at all. Jimmy awkwardly backed out the screw with a butter knife and then slid the shiny copper wire underneath it and tightened it down again.

  He paused to build up his nerve then carefully eased the plug into a wall socket, fully expecting an eruption of fire and sparks from the bent plug. Nothing happened.

  One of the brown knobs next to the tuning dial was labeled "ON/OFF." He took a deep breath and gave it a flick, then jumped away when there was an immediate answering pop from somewhere in the box's insides. But there was still no fire or smoke. Instead, the amber dial light glowed as warmly as a sincere smile.

  Almost imperceptibly, a low hum had begun from somewhere behind the cloth-and-wood face. Then there was a crackling sound, a deeper roar, and finally, just as he was sure the big box was going to do nothing but sit there and buzz and hum at him, there was an explosion of noise so powerful it almost knocked him backward onto the hard floor.

  Somehow, Jimmy got his fingers on the "VOL" knob and twiste
d it until the blaring blast was tolerable. The sound was identifiable as strange music, unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was a man singing. Drums and guitars beneath his voice pounded out a contagious rhythm.

  Grandmama had hurried to the door to make sure all the noise did not signal her grandson’s electrocution. She switched on a sour face when she was satisfied he was not burned to a cinder. She did not like the song he was listening to.

  "You ought to turn off that nigger music," she advised. But she did not stay to see if he obeyed her. She fled back to the living room and the weepy sadness of The Guiding Light.

  There was something special about the song the man was singing. The way he phrased the words and slurred them together with such happiness and abandon. The way he told the world that he was "all shook up" but did not seem to mind it one bit The way the instruments and voices flowed through Jimmy’s body as he sat there on the cold linoleum floor near the speaker. It all combined to give him a funny feeling in his stomach and made his hair tingle and goose bumps erupt along both arms and up his back.

  Then the song ended abruptly with the strum of a guitar. A man with a deep god-like voice jumped on the tail end of the trailing music, his delivery just as frenetic and frenzied as the singer's had been.

  "Hey, everybody, that's Elvis Presley and the song that's number one here in Birmingham on our exclusive Top-Forty-Hit Parade. Shoot, folks, it’s already number one all over the country on the Billboard ‘Hot 100.’ Even over in England. It’s Elvis's first chart topper across the big water, but it’s certainly not going to be his last."

  The man was speaking English but Jimmy was not sure he was getting it all. The lilt in the man’s voice, though, made him smile despite himself and he forgot the dreary weather and all the tragic things that had happened lately. The voice spilling from the big booming speaker hardly paused for a breath. The man just kept rattling on at a break-neck pace as if somebody else might take over the radio if he hushed for a second. Jimmy marveled at his energy, could picture the broad smile on the man’s face as he preached away, could hear in his voice the joy the talker must be feeling.

  "And remember, folks, the rest of the WROG Hit Crew will be joining me at the big sock hop next Saturday night at the National Guard Armory on Graymont Boulevard and we'll have live music from the Favorite Five and I'll be spinnin' records by Fats Domino, Buddy Knox, Pat Boone, the Diamonds, and, of course, Elvis!"

  Then a man was singing a silly song about selling cars. Another deep voice talked about a cafe somewhere that served all the catfish you could eat for a dollar-twenty-five. A group of singers harmonized like a church choir as they chanted the letters “WROG.” Then another song was pushing beautiful notes and a slight breeze from the speaker next to his ear.

  He sat there in awe, captivated by the rapid-fire way the aural parade floated out of the box in the middle of the cold, damp bedroom. He was caught up in the feel-good atmosphere of the radio announcer and the music the man sent spinning out into the air like a rainbow. One that could only be heard, not seen. It was different from anything he had experienced and he loved the feeling it gave him.

  The smooth voice of someone with the melodious name of Perry Como gave way next to a raucous piano and the slap of a happy drum, and a liquid-voiced man singing about "Walkin', yes indeed..." It was a man named Fats, and Jimmy could picture him bouncing and singing and playing gleefully, all just for him.

  The hook was set and he spent the rest of that miserable, rainy day getting reeled in, lured by the sounds coming out of the big upright radio. He could not believe the way the music and talk made him feel inside. Happy, then sad, like dancing or like crying.

  Jimmy had listened to the radio before, but it had been different back then. There had been a sweet-voiced crooner on one of Grandmama's shows, soap operas just like the ones on television except with no pictures, or quiz shows with their boring questions and dull contestants. He also had distant memories of his mother, getting ready to leave them for another night, half-listening to the Grand Ole Opry's screeching fiddles and yodeling singers as they barely cut their way through the summer static.

  This was not the same. Something about what he was hearing was vastly different, and he knew somehow that it was touching him in a spot somewhere near his soul. But it was not violation that he felt. It was elation. A feeling that someone knew just the chord to strike to resonate inside him. That whoever sang and played the music knew more about him than he knew about himself. And that they had found a way to pry loose emotions he did not even know he had.

  Jimmy had not noticed night falling outside or that the room was almost completely dark. But suddenly, the man on the radio dumped out right in the middle of the song that he was playing. There was a moment’s pause. Then Jimmy heard the opening strains of a band playing the familiar sounds of "Dixie."

  "And now, we come to the end of another broadcast day here at WROG," the deep-voiced man spoke, almost reverently. "WROG operates on a frequency of 820 kilocycles with a power of five-thousand watts, as authorized by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, D.C."

  Five-thousand watts! Jimmy was astonished at the image of power that number represented. And the Federal Communications Commission must be some authority just below God and Jesus on the grand hierarchy of things if they authorized the use of such power.

  "And now, with thanks to almighty God for the greatest heritage man can possess, the privilege of living under the American flag, this is Rockin' Randy Mathews, saying 'good night' until we resume broadcasting on WROG at six-thirty tomorrow morning."

  The music quickly died, there was a quiet hum for five seconds, then a cacophony of static, shrill voices speaking staccato foreign languages, and the whines of signals warring with each other for the speaker like distant armies fighting for precious territory. Sadly, Jimmy flipped the power switch off and the noise faded rapidly to nothing but the quiet popping of the wood as the radio’s cabinet cooled.

  He sat there a moment, feeling elated, disappointed, reborn. Already, he longed for six-thirty-in-the-morning to come so he could once again lose himself in all those sounds he had been listening to. To once again forget the rain, the loneliness, the grime, the deaths, the orange smoke in the sky, the sad faces of their neighbors on Wisteria Street.

  He ate his baloney-sandwich supper in silence then wandered to the front porch to sit atop the high steps for a while. The rain had finally stopped and the air was clean and cool for a change. A breeze brought the fragrance of gardenias and sweet shrub. He turned to see where it came from.

  There was a single sad light in the front window of the Polanski house two doors down, and someone had hung a dark, flowerless wreath on the door. Jimmy suddenly felt as sad as he had ever felt in his life as he tried to imagine the pain there must be in that house.

  Behind him, inside the open screen door of their duplex, Ricky Ricardo was yelling something at his silly wife, Lucy. But when Lucy did not answer immediately, Grandmama volunteered a reply for her.

  "She's in the kitchen with Ethel, Ricky," she screamed. “But you better not go in...aieee! I warned you, Ricky! Just look at that mess!”

  Grandmama had the sound on the set up loud to over-ride Jimmy’s radio listening. He was so lost in his own sad thoughts that he failed to hear the door to the other duplex as it opened behind him. Then, before he even had a chance to feel her presence, Hector George's widow was standing there beside him at the top of the steps.

  But when he glanced up quickly, startled, he noticed that she looked totally different in the light that filtered out the window from the television set than she had the last time he saw her. Different than she had the night of the deaths. He hardly recognized her. Her face was made up so she looked twenty years younger, her hair fluffed and combed neatly. And she wore a bright flowered dress that showed an almost girlish figure.

  "You're Jimmy Gill. I'm Clarice George," she said, and offered her hand, smiling. "I've just rec
ently been set free from the Devil and I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gill."

  Her words were puzzling and strange, but Jimmy stood politely and took the warm hand. They shook vigorously, sincerely. He could not help noticing her sincere smile, the spark of happiness in her eyes as they met his directly, a glow in her face that most certainly was not there before.

  "I've heard your grandma call you and talk with you, Jimmy. You seem to be a good boy. Kind and obedient," she said. But suddenly, she dropped her smile like a veil. "I'm sorry you had to see the things you saw the other day. I'm sure they must have bothered a good boy like you."

  And she was right. They had. Mr. Polanski tumbling and twirling through the air and the lifeless, limp body of Hector George, angry even in death, the shimmering ghosts that had haunted his dreams the last two nights. And they had joined the ones that usually played there, the black and white television shows starring his dead momma and daddy. The images all seemed to stick around for hours as he tossed and turned next to his snoring grandma and then they departed just before the first light of morning like a slow-working burglar.

  Jimmy nodded his head.

  She reached then to stroke his hair, moved her hand to cup his chin in an affectionate way, and once again broke into a warming smile.

  "Some good will come of it all, Jimmy," she said firmly. "You'll see. I can feel it. Some good things will come from all this bad. Now, I'm going over to that woman's house and thank her for what she did. Let her know her husband didn't die for nothing."

  The woman's words did not make sense to Jimmy. He watched her negotiate down the high front steps, sidestep rain puddles in the muddy front yard of the duplex, and make her way to the sad house on the corner. Clarice George marched right up the flower-lined front walk to the Polanski porch steps, paused just a moment to caress the bunch of begonias that already flowered brightly in a pot there, and then gave a knock so firm and sure Jimmy could hear it from where he sat.