The Dick Gibson Show (44 page)

“Dick Gibson?”

“Yessir.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you two months.”

“I’m pleased you finally got through. Go ahead, sir.”

“Dick Gibson?”

“Yes. Go ahead, please.”

“Your feet stink.”

“Oh?”

“I smell them over my radio.”

“But you turned your radio down.”

“I smell them over my telephone.”

The crank hung up. Dick took another call.

He’d had the program for a little more than two years and had been Dick Gibson uninterruptedly all that time. He would never
not
be Dick Gibson again; he had even had his name changed legally. Laying to rest the apprenticeship forever, he had at last found his format.

The program was a simple one, a variation of something he and radio had done for years. It was a telephone talk show, but slightly different from the hundreds of other telephone talk shows.
Dick Gibson’s Night Letters
was a sort of club really, a kind of verbal pen pals. WMIA, a powerful clear channel, 50,000-watt station, sent out its signal in a northerly and westerly pattern, regularly reaching states throughout the South and Middle Atlantic regions. His listener/callers, chiefly from Florida and Georgia, though almost as often from Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Virginia to the north and Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas to the west, were loosely organized into clubs called Listening Posts or Mail Bags. There were perhaps 15,000 members who for a fee—which barely covered the cost of printing and handling—received a directory of the membership. (Countless others who were not members listened regularly and called the program.) Meetings were rarely held, but from time to time Dick traveled to one Listening Post or another and met fans. Though he preferred talking to them on the phones, it was something the members wanted.

Anyone could telephone the program, but many of his callers were regulars, people who through some trick or other of dialing or patience were able to get through repeatedly. He recognized many of their voices, but he could even identify those who called in less frequently. Crank calls like the one he had just taken were rare. He barely ever had to cut anyone off the air; the six-second tape delay was a nuisance, and he wouldn’t have bothered with it except that the FCC required it. As it was, he used it sparingly; his Southerners were gentle in their speech, however violent they may have been in their private lives.

The show went on from one
A.M.
until four, and during the course of a program Dick might take anywhere from fifteen to forty telephone calls. He was in no hurry to move things along or to get in as many calls as possible. He had become very patient, learning in the course of the show’s run that you got the most out of people when you let them go at their own pace. He would not, for example, have cut off the man who told him his feet stank.

A light was blinking on the Arkansas line.

“Night Letters,” Dick Gibson said.

“Gibson bwana?”

It was an old friend, the caveman from Africa, the last member of the mysterious Kunchachagwa tribe. He had been discovered by anthropologists near the Fwap-dali digs on the great Ennedi Plateau in eastern Chad. The last of his race, Norman—no one could pronounce his real name, an indecipherable gaggle of clucks and chirps—had been found by the scientists as he wandered helpless and distraught outside the opening of his cave. The night before, the very night his people had discovered fire—the story had come out slowly, painfully—they had panicked and been asphyxiated in the ill-ventilated cave when a group of young, zealous hunters, made too daring by the novelty of the flames, began to throw everything they could find onto the pyre. The anthropologists comforted him and taught him English.

“Oh awful,” Norman had told Dick on the air one night, “eberyting hot, eberyting in flames. Burn up our mores, artifacts an’ collective unconscious. Eberyting go up hot hot. Young bucks burn totems, taboos, cult objects and value system, entire shmeer go up dat ebening. Whole teleology shot to shit.”

Norman had spent a happy summer with the anthropologists who debriefed and photographed him. He slept in a tent under mosquito netting. “I don’t care what you say,” Norman confessed one night, “white fellers
got
to be gods. Dey introducing Norman to mosquito netting. In cabe we don’t hab dis convenience.” Now, he slept under the stuff on his farm in Arkansas even in winter, using the same netting the anthropologists had given him, though it was much worn and there were holes in it. Dick tried to convince him that it should be repaired, but Norman thought it was white man’s magic that made it work.

In the fall, after that first pleasant summer, while Norman’s trauma slowly healed, the anthropologists could not decide what to do with Norman when they returned to their various universities.

“It’s not fair to the poor fellow to take him back with us to civilization. His ways are not our ways. He’d only be lost in New Haven.”

“A chap can be acculturated,” Norman had pleaded.

“I don’t see what else can be done with him,” another of the scientists said. “He’s little better than an orphan now. Intelligent though he is, he wouldn’t be able to survive alone. He’d be just as miserable by himself here in Chad as he would in the States.”

“No, Doctor. We live in two different worlds. It couldn’t work.”

“Den dis las’ one take Norman by de han’ an’ lead him into de forest. Get funny look in he eyes an’ whistle ‘Born Free.’ But Norman find way back to digs.”

The discussion went on until it was time for the anthropologists to leave. “Can we sell him to the circus, perhaps?” one of the scientists finally asked. They consulted Norman and he consented to be sold to the circus.

“Poor Norman, him culturally disoriented,” Norman told Dick on one of the first evenings he called. (Norman owned no radio; as far as Dick could tell, he had no notion that he was even on the air. Dick supposed that when the phone was installed in his shack in Arkansas some practical joker had given him Dick’s number. Possibly Norman thought it was the only number he could get.) “Him all alienated thoo and thoo. How you like dat Norman for de culture lag?”

“Were you really a caveman?” Dick asked him on another occasion.

“Oh, sah,” Norman said passionately, “my people hab nuttin’. We
so
backward. We neber heard ob cars or planes or tools. We so backward we neber heard ob de wheel or trees. Shee-it, we neber eben heard ob
air.”

Norman had not been a success with the circus. His masters were kind—it was from them that he picked up much of the rest of what he knew of English—but the public dismissed him as a fraud. No amount of newspaper clippings or reprints from scientific journals could convince them of his authenticity. They didn’t have the patience to read them, and his gentle demeanor and essential passivity destroyed whatever confidence they might have placed in a wilder, club-swinging Neanderthal. “Norman too hip, too cool for dem public cats. Him speak to owners. Dey say hokey Wild Man of Borneo ruin it for legitimate cabeman like Norman, and advise him to go into different business. ‘What public
really
go fo’,’ dey say, ‘is if Norman sit up on platform above tank and let rubes th’ow baseballs at him.’ But Norman don’ like dat. Whut de hell? I son of Aluminum Siding Salesman when I back wit’ my people in de cabe.”

“An Aluminum
Siding
Salesman?”

“Yassuh. Dat’s our Kunchachagwa word for ‘chief.’ Yassuh”— Southerners had taught him all the rest of what he knew of English—“How you call in yo’ language—‘chief.’ Aluminum Siding Salesman way we say dat.”

So when Norman refused to become a target for baseballs the circus owners had to let him go. He signed up with a lecture bureau and traveled briefly around the South giving talks, but fearing the same reaction he had received in the circus he took measures to improve his act. He appeared before them naked.

“Folks,” he would say, “y’all see befo’ you a tragic essample ob de noble sabage. I looks out ober dis yere audience ob ladies an’ gennelmuns in yo’ all’s fancy finery an’ it gibs me de culture shock. Acherly, if No’man not be so perlite he lak to bust him sides laughin’ jest to look at yo’ all’s suits an’ coats an’ whatnot.

“Shoot! Yo’all eber lib in a cabe? You prob’ly tink sech ting all dark an’ slimy. But I tell you sho as ah lib de Stone Age was de bes’. Ain’ no air pollution in de Stone Age, ain’ no angst, ain’ no sech ting as identity crisis. Course we had our shibboleths and societal taboos, dass true. Fo’ essample, we worship peanut shells, an’ ebery autumn when de leaves fall offen de trees we tink it’s gone be de end ob de wod’ for sho’. But whut
dat
mean? It all relatib. Eberyting relatib. Norman, him see fire an’ him see wheel, him see television an’ him see Indiana, an’ dere ain’ no comparison. When de blood ob Aluminum Siding Salesman run in yo’ veins, I guess yo’ neber be satisfied wit cibilization. But I say
one
ting fo’ yo’all—I sho’ laks dat mosquito netting. De proper study ob mankind is man.”

Usually he was arrested.

After the lecture tour he took a job in a foundry, and with the money he saved he was able to buy a little piece of bottomland in Arkansas.

“Norman,” Norman told Dick one night, “trace de whole entire history ob western cibilization all in his own self. Start out in de Stone Age, in on de birt’ ob fire—may dey rest in peace—go into de foundry fo’ de Iron Age, an’ now he a farmer. Eben do some time in show biz. It jest goes to show dat it’s true whut dey say—ontogeny sho’ nuff recapitulates phylogeny an’ make no mistake! Him all tuckered out do. Tink dis nigger skip de Industrial Rebolution!”

Dick wondered how Norman was feeling tonight. The caveman was a moody caller, and at times recently he had seemed almost deranged with gloom. “Norman, how are you?”

“Norman all messed up, Gibson Bwana. Crop come up. Norman get him ’nudder culture shock.”

“What’s happened, Norman?”

“I buy farm fum white man, neber tink to ask what he planted. Norman just a jerk, neber make it in de white man’s worl’.”

“Come on, Norman, that’s no way to talk. You’re very adaptive.”

“You know whut dat son bitch planted?”

“Well, let’s see—”

“Peanuts!
Him planted peanuts. I neber
see
so many peanuts. In cabe in Chad we got maybe altogedder five peanuts. My people worship little feller peanut. Now Norman got him more peanuts den de Kunchachagwa Pope. Make him nerbous to tink he got so many. If Mama only alibe to see …” His voice cracked and trailed off.

“Norman—you’ve got to stop thinking like that. Your mother’s dead. She died when the tribe discovered fire.”

“Sho, Norman know dat. Still, Mama very religious woman, very ortodox. Her stay in de temple all de day, make holy holy. Wouldn’t she be pleased to see her Norman wit all dem peanuts!”

“She’d be very proud.”

“Also—har, har—Norman in lub.”

“What was that?”

“Norman fall in lub.”

“That’s wonderful, Norman. Who’s the lucky girl?”

“Her—tee hee—her— No. Norman dassn’t say. Not ’llowed speak name ob female fo’ de marriage ceremony.”

“Oh?”

“I speak to she fadder do. Him ’gainst de marriage.”

Dick could imagine what the prospect of a caveman in the family might do to a parent. “Well, sometimes these things happen,” he said soothingly. “Still, if the girl loves you—”

“Dat’s jus’ whut Norman tell he sweetheart. She say she want to finish school.”

“That isn’t unreasonable. If you both still feel this way after she graduates—”

“Can’t wait much longer. Norman no chicken. Him be forty yar nex’ comet. An’ little girl just startin’ de kindergarten.”

“You’ve fallen in love with a child in
kindergarten?”

“Otre temps, otre moeurs.”

“Norman, that’s … You can’t—”

“Gibson bwana prejudiced as de udder white man,” Norman said sourly.

“Prejudiced? What’s prejudice got to do with it? … What other white man?”

“Udder white man—de redneck. She fadder.”

“The little girl’s
white?”

“Whut dat matter? After we married we go back to Chad. Whut dipperence color make in a cabe?”

“Norman, you live in Arkansas! Listen to me. I want you to promise— Norman, listen to me. Listen to me, please.”

“Norman got to go. Some fellers poundin’ at de cabin do’.” Gibson could hear it, an alarming Tattle and some confused shouting.

“Norman?”

But the line went dead.

A newsbreak and a couple of commercials followed. Dick took the next call at seven minutes after three. It was from an Atlanta man who couldn’t sleep and called Dick to share with him the thought that had kept him up all night. He worked as an adjustor for an insurance company and was puzzled by the fact that people always told funny stories at lunch. “Why lunch? Why humor?”

“Well probably you eat with your co-workers, and most of them are men, right?”

“Yes, but you’re on the wrong track. These aren’t dirty jokes. Mostly they aren’t even jokes at all. They’re anecdotes, amusing things that happen to them in the business, or about odd people they used to know. Sure, sometimes people are smutty, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”