WLT (27 page)

“Young Reed interpreted this to mean,
Don't read the bulletin
. So the minutes passed and Reed did the station break and did the weather forecast and turned it back to Pop, who told a joke about a dog and brought in the Bellhops for a Bud's Salve jingle. There they were, at one of the most important moments in American history, a day that you look back on and remember exactly where you were when you heard the news, but there was no news on WLT, just a quartet of goofy guys singing

“The phone started to ring off the hook, irate people wondering how WLT could sit and fiddle and sell unguent while American boys were dying in Hawaii. I tried to call and couldn't get through, but Dad Benson was downtown and heard the news and ran to the station and took over. He told Babe to bring him every scrap of wire copy, and Dad sat in Studio B, the old mausoleum, and told people what was happening and talked in his quiet way about how awful war is but we can only live in peace if our neighbors are willing. But if Hitler and the Emperor wanted war, then they would have it, and though it would be a long hard struggle and there would be sacrifices, we would come through on top because Americans always pull together. Pop and the
Melody Hotel
gang worked up a version of ‘There's a Star-Spangled Banner Flying over Home Sweet Home' and it was so tremendous and rousing that nobody remembered we were almost an hour late with the news. If Dad hadn't been there, we might've been shut down for high treason. You care for coffee? No? Where is the waiter?”

That evening, as Patsy listened to Mr. Devereaux take a shower, she almost wrote him into
Golden Years
as a French-Canadian hockey player torn with self-loathing when his slap shot kills an innocent passer-by and in terror he plunges naked out the door of the shower room and through the snow seeking absolution and meets Miss Leff-well, she of the lonely nights, who gasps at his nakedness, but offers him her coat, and then he gasps, for she is naked under the coat—
hmmm,
perhaps,
but does it make sense?

She thought of inviting him down for dinner.

Frank's door banged the next morning, and he walked out the front of the Antwerp, no hat on his head, wild hair over the collar of his Navy peajacket, hands jammed in the pockets, and turned at the curb and stood and looked up at the roof. Maybe, she thought, he could be a young writer whose novel she might read, earthy and full of grunting and moaning, naked perspiring bodies writhing in the dark, and she would provide insights from the womanly point of view (“Here at the bottom of the page, where he cups her breasts, frankly don't you think the metaphor of young golden apples is trite? And the ‘hard throbbing muscle of his manhood'—why don't we just call it a cock and be done with it?”). He headed east, past the YWCA, leaning into the wind. Au revoir, mon Philippe. It was the next day before she learned his name. It was printed on a pale pink letter stuck under his door.
Francis
, it said,
I can't believe that our home is gone and other people live in it and we have nothing, our family is gone. It is a beautiful day today and I hope you will come visit me soon. They hate me here but I don't care. Their hearts are full of hatred and mine is at peace. What a sad life it is
. That evening, Patsy heard him whistling, over the sink as he washed his dishes, “Red River Valley,” the theme song of
Golden Years.
She rang Mr. Odom downstairs and asked, “Harold, who moved into 4-C?”

“Patsy, his name is Frank White. But the way he said it, it's probably something else. He works for Roy Jr. Ethel Glen says he's got Sloan's job.”

“Sloan's leaving? For where?”

“He doesn't know it yet, but Sloan is bound for the big Out There. He got too smart-alecky. He had this way of every time he left Ray or Roy Jr.'s office, making a smart remark over his shoulder. I hope somebody takes this kid aside and tells him what the score,is. He's Art's nephew, by the way.”

“Harold, you are a doll.”

And then suddenly one day Frank came clattering down the stairs at WLT as she headed up to bring LaWella the script for tomorrow's
Adventures in Homemaking.
He galloped past her and around the bend toward the studios. Vince was behind her. “Who's that?” he said. “Frank White,” said Patsy, “and he's a comer.”

A week later, Frank White finally had purchased a few kitchen utensils and was making himself breakfast and supper instead of running out to the luncheonette, but Patsy could hear that he was eating too much fried food. Perhaps a neighborly visit to 4-C: “Mr. White, I'm Patsy Konopka from downstairs, welcome, and here's a free VegaRama—it peels, pares, slices, dices, minces, chops, hacks, and makes food preparation a pleasure—perfect cole slaw every time with no big hunks, no lumps, no snappers,” but his apartment was a mess with all the clothes she'd heard him drop on the floor, he'd surely be embarrassed to see her. Odd, that he took his pants and shorts off first, then his shirt. An interesting man.

H
e did everything. He washed coffee cups and emptied ashtrays and gave his opinion when it was asked for. “What do you think of her?” Roy Jr. asked, after Faith Snelling left his office, upset that Dale was off
Sunnyvale
, hinting that her days on
Friendly Neighbor
might be numbered. “She's Jo,” said Frank. “And Jo is what makes the show go. You couldn't do it without her.” And so Roy Jr. smoothed things over with her.

When the annual “Little Becky Souvenir Scrapbook” came out, full of inspirational poems and songs and a dozen photos of a golden-haired child with unremitting smile (not Marjery Moore) in various lifelike poses (Little Becky Wakes Up, Little Becky's Breakfast, Enjoying A Chat With School Chums, Little Becky Spells The Word Correctly, Little Becky And Miss Judy, Home For A Nourishing Lunch, Little Becky And Dad Say Grace Together, Climbing A Tree, Practicing The Piano), Frank had to address hundreds of them and mail them out. More than 40,000 copies were sold or given away. The child drew about a hundred letters a week, several of which were written by Frank, who made sure that Marjery saw them. “You disgust me, you little wretch, and I wish you'd get the hell off the air and leave performing to people with talent,” began one. They didn't bother Marjery at all. She thought of them as the work of some creep with a hair up his ass.

He arrived at the office at seven-thirty, made coffee, wiped the excess polish off the executive desks, and sharpened six pencils each for Ray and Roy Jr. Ray liked a fresh pencil, liked to smell the shaved wood and lead. When Ray arrived, Frank helped him off with his coat. “Thanks, Stan,” said Ray.
Frank
. “Of course. Frank.” Then he got their mail from the mailroom, where the girls were barely awake at eight. He had to rummage through the sacks and yank the Soderbjergs' letters and run them upstairs: the day didn't start for Roy Jr. until he had opened a letter. Then Frank waited for Roy to call him from Moorhead.

Roy was an early riser and by eight he had saved up a large load of conversation. Frank got to hear everything; he was new, he hadn't heard it before. “I don't know. I've been thinking,” Roy'd start out. “Radio seems to me to be fading. What do you think?” Frank said he didn't think so. Roy continued: “I used to listen to the Barn Dance when I lived in St. Paul, and then one night I quit listening to it. It was still on, and I could hear it, but I was listening to next door. A couple lived there who fought a lot, and in warm weather, they left their windows open, and I sat and listened.

“They'd fight over money—he was a carpenter, a journeyman, and she worked at The Emporium—or they'd fight about sex. They'd start slow and then get to yelling and running from room to room and then she'd smash something and then it got very quiet. She cried and he comforted her and in a few minutes, you'd hear that bed thumping the wall. It must've been on loose rollers. They'd go at it for fifteen, twenty minutes. Ka-bam, ka-bam, ka-bam. And then they lay and talked and smoked.

“In broad daylight, this was a couple you wouldn't look at twice, but secretly, they were fascinating. She'd say, after they'd had sex, ‘I can't figure us out.' And he'd promise that everything'd be better. And then they remembered how they met. It was at her dad's drainpipe warehouse, and she came in after school and around a corner and came face to face with a man's crotch. It was his. He was standing on a stool, measuring a doorpost. She was going to ask her old man for money to go to Europe and suddenly there was a fly and a bundle inside it. She looked up and he held up the measuring tape. Three and a half feet. And she didn't go to Europe.

“I thought to myself: this is what should be on radio.” He meant it.

“Hank, the future of broadcasting is eavesdropping. We could use hypnotism. Ordinary people could be actors of the subconscious. Their dreams and all the night thoughts people think—put it on radio. Of course, it'd be obscene and against the law, but, you wouldn't try to change the law, just change radio. Put out a signal so a person needs a decoding machine to receive it. Put it beyond the law. Radio's fading fast, Hank.”

Frank
.

“And you know what could save radio, Frank? If you put a microphone in my brother's jacket pocket. My brother dogs around town like nobody's business. But maybe you know that. My brother could save radio single-handed. Not that he would ever use his hand, of course.”

Frank did know that. He drove Ray one day to the Great Northern Depot to entrain him for New York and there was Erie Monroe, a young actress on
The Hills of Home,
a little green suitcase in hand. The old man beamed as he took her hand and kissed it. He turned to Frank. “Tell Vesta I took an extra berth for the Great Books,” he said.

Erie took Ray's arm and Frank carried their bags down the stairs and up the platform alongside the Empire Builder to the Pullmans up front. “By the way, I am going to talk to a buyer and try to sell the station,” said Ray, stopping to catch his breath. “Bing Crosby. That's between you and me. I've decided to sell. I'm not getting any younger. That's what my brother says.” Erie squeezed Ray's arm and smooched him on the side of his head.

“My brother is up in Moorhead pondering the imponderable. And I am going to go to New York and screw the inscrutable.” He squeezed Erie back. “Bye, kid.”

The conductor hollered “Board!” Up went the stepstool and the Builder steamed away and across the Stone Bridge over the Mississippi, the cheery glow of the parlor car disappearing behind the NSP power plant. Frank drove the big Buick back, walked the dog, watered the lawn, closed the windows. Two weeks later, Ray returned. Bing had been in Tahiti, but never mind, Erie had been wonderful and Ray was feeling pink again. They had gone to Radio City Music Hall and seen Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, Frances Langford and Don Ameche, Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, Gene Austin, the Boswell Sisters, and Jesse Crawford at the Mighty White Wurlitzer, in a four-hour broadcast with not a minute of slack, not a single song or gag or line that didn't belong there, a glittering all-star revue.

“Radio,” Ray declared, “it's here to stay, and we're going to stick with it.”

The love of a beautiful woman seemed to be a real picker-upper. “New York is the ticket,” he told Frank. “Terrible place to live. People lie to you. Perfectly nice people. They lie all the time. You buy a suit and the salesman promises it by tomorrow morning. Two days later you call him up and he pretends to be upset, says the tailor got the chalk marks mixed up, it'll be here Tuesday. Finally on Friday you start to get steamed, but now he's blaming it on a missing button, and Monday, he says Wednesday. Wednesday, it's Friday. Finally, you walk in and threaten to kill him with a screwdriver. You screech and rave until the spit is dripping off your chin. And you see, this is what he expected! He listens and when you're finally done screeching, in comes Sam with the pants. You have to yell at people to get things done. Terrible place to live. But my gosh, a good hotel, and a Broadway show and dinner and breakfast at noon in bed reading the newspaper. That's the life, Frank.”

A few days after Ray returned, Frank became a hero. It was a Monday, and WLT went off the air. The transmitter shuddered and the air went dead about midway through the
Jubilee
during an Evelyn Pie commercial.

And nothing happened for awhile. Bells didn't ring and lights didn't flash.