WLT (37 page)

“I'm not sure I care to work for someone who addresses a man of the cloth in those terms,” said the pale Presbyterian, smiling faintly, peering over his wire rims.

“Suit yourself, but if you come to work here, remember: no sex with a WLT employee, or anybody else you meet on the premises. You can jump into the sack with your fans all you like, but keep the fornication out of the station.”

Rev. Knox decided he could join the staff on those terms, but that summer, a few weeks after Frank's debut, Knox was nabbed in Freddie's Cafe slipping his hand into the blouse of a girl from the typing pool who was dizzy from three vodka sours. “I've been working too hard,” the minister explained. “My nerves are shot. I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” Roy Jr. told him to go south and have it. “No sex on the premises, that's Ray's rule,” he said.

Rev. Knox wept. He told Roy Jr. that he was troubled by unnatural sexual urges and that he had tried to seduce the girl as a way of proving that he was normal. Roy Jr. wavered. He detested clergymen, but the station needed one, and Knox had the sort of chummy tone that people liked in a spiritual leader. In person he was a pill but on the air he shone as a beacon of manly Christianity, a light on life's dark paths, and Roy Jr. was loath to have to break in a new man. He gave Knox a dreadful, withering lecture that left the man pale and trembling and his hanky damp with tears. “I don't need a loose pecker around this place, believe me, and if I catch you trying to grab one of my girls again, I'll call up the bishop and have him trim your nuts for you. I'll throw you in the street and call the newspapers.” But he let the man stay, a mistake.

“We are showing weakness. You should've kicked his skinny butt across the street,” said Ray. “Now the word is out. Sex is okay, just don't do it on the desks. We are in for a storm.”

But he agreed with Roy Jr. about the horror of replacing Knox: when you thought about all the clergymen you'd have to interview for the job—days and days of aimless uplifting conversation with flabby men in dowdy clothes, men with big watery eyes and trembling lips and a perpetual look of faint hope on their faces—plus the inevitable Bible-beaters and the whoopers and jumpers—who would you find in the end? At worst, some brilliant demagogue like Pastor Paul Anderson the Lutheran Lothario on WEVE (“A Man Named Paul”), who would draw an immense audience of peabrains and then you could never get rid of him, and at best, you'd find another sad sack like Knox.

But Ray was right about the storm. After Knox was not fired, WLT went through months of heavy erotic activity. John Tippy fell in love with the music librarian, a young pianist named Jeff, and they were said to spend weekends together in Duluth. The staff organist Miss Patrice had a fling with Phil Sax and for a whole week she showed up for the 7 a.m. Organ Prelude with an exhausted, moony look about her, smelling like a cigar. But the busy boy was Wendell Shepherd of
The Rise and Shine Show
. In his Milton, King Seeds pocket calendar, he drew in twenty-seven shining suns in one month, twenty-seven times with three different women, three
very
different women. Lottie Unger was a secretary in a pretty tweed suit that Wendell removed and hung up without a wrinkle, and Julia Jackson Butts was a fine young woman with long black hair piled on top of her head, the assistant editor of
Dial
:
The WLT Family Magazine
, whose hair Wendell unpiled, and Lacy Lovell was an actress on
Up in a Balloon
who mistook him for the producer of
The Hendersons.

“The staff is acting just like the President,” said Roy Jr. “And I don't mean Mr. Truman.”

Ray bristled. “I do
not
run around here jumping secretaries,” he said. “The women with whom I am acquainted are women of attainment—”

“Employees, nonetheless.”

Ray stared him down. “Life is not always reasonable, or even logical,” he said. “There are exceptions and anomalies. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I am extremely fond of a number of women who work for me. True. I wouldn't dream of lying to you about that. And yet I do not permit the men who work for me to run around here like animals. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly. ”

And now, on a warm October morning, there was a boxful of allegations about Knox himself that Roy Jr. had found locked up in Sloan's old file drawer (under “Knox: Testimony in re Patrimony: SAVE”) that pointed unmistakably toward debauchery on a scale that would shame a goat.

“Frank! The man is crazed. He's besotted with lust. Look at this! Letters in his own hand, written to schoolgirls! Offers of private swimming lessons! Invitations to travel! Invitations to pose for photographs! Hikes in the woods! Rendezvouses in the library stacks! Romps in the hay! Fondue parties! Listen to this: ‘My darling dearest Marjery, Yes, I do love you, deeply and absolutely, and it has taken me months to get up the courage to say so, and now, with a trembling hand and a heart full of profound feeling, I am asking you to—' Outrageous! The man seduced Little Becky! Look at this—” And he tossed Frank a packet of letters, from Marjery to the minister, whom she addressed as “Nervy Irvy” and “Snuggums” and “My Little Lemon Drop” and who, evidently, she accompanied to ministerial conferences in Seattle and Cleveland, in the role of his niece.

“Well,” said Frank, “she's a grownup person. I suppose she knew what she was doing.”

“So did he. He knew he was cutting his nuts around here.” Roy Jr. picked up the phone. “
Damn
. And now I gotta go find another one.”

“How about Reverand Odom?” said Frank.

“Who's he?”

“He works here. Harold Odom. He's a janitor. But he's also a Lutheran minister. He's a very sensible person.”

“Odom. I know him. He's the guy who's in love with Patsy Konopka. How come he gave up the ministry? Is he some kind of nut?”

Frank sat down and leaned across the desk. “No. Not a nut. Just a very practical person. He had a church in North Dakota and he thought he wasn't doing any good, he was only being a minister. So he asked himself, What job can I find where I
know
I'll do some good? and he came up with janitor. But he'd make a great radio minister. You should try him out.”

Frank stopped—he was trembling. He had never tried to tell Roy Jr. what to do before, and it felt as if he had walked up to the edge of a chasm.

“If he did a radio show every day, could he still continue as a janitor?”

Frank said he thought Mr. Odom would insist on retaining his janitorship.

“Good. So you tell him. Monday through Fridays, the ‘Scripture Nuggets' segment of
The Rise and Shine Show
, and the five-minute meditation at ten-fifteen, and Sunday morning, the chapel at six a.m. and vespers at ten-thirty. Right? Good. Now I just have to fire Snuggums and then deal with Wendell Shepherd and his hormones.”

Frank found Reverend Odom wet-mopping the lobby and when he told him about Roy Jr.'s offer, the man's eyes filled with tears. He put his arms around Frank and squeezed him so tight his back cracked. “I knew something good was going to happen to me today,” he said.

And the next morning, he was on the air. He read from Ephesians on
Rise and Shine
—the Shepherd Boys were glad to see him, they knew him from way back, Elmer Shepherd said—and a few hours later the old minister did a nice meditation about leaving our burdens with the Lord. Roy Jr., on his way to lunch with Ray, gave Frank a thumbs-up and said, “Good man.” And Ray said, “Frank, you're the first
smart
person I've met who hardly says anything. Come and have lunch with us.”

Come and have lunch with us.
What sweet music to his ears! He had raised up Reverend Odom—lifted him up from his mop and pail and put him on the Mountain of Radio—just like Dad Benson, who lifted up his brother and his friends. Dad had once said, “It takes genius to elevate the ordinary, a very ordinary genius,” and that's exactly what I am, Frank thought, an ordinary genius. He had unlocked the secret of radio. The sport of the ordinary! Brilliant men like Reed Seymour couldn't figure this out for the life of them! Reed was ashamed of radio. Vesta was ashamed of it. Reed wanted to do something worthy with his life, like write books. He had part of a manuscript in his desk drawer. Frank had read it. Very intense, very poetic.
And very hard going
. Vesta wanted to bring in the treasures of the world and display them on the air, like opening a museum and showing postcards of the Venus de Milo. No, radio was a cinch if you kept reaching down and grabbing up handfuls of the ordinary.
Keep your feet on the ground
.

R
ay was looking for Dad Benson. Frank said, “He's in the Green Room, but he's feeling a little sick.” “I hope so,” said Ray. He walked up to Dad, who was lying on the couch, his face covered with the morning paper. “You in the sack with Faith?” Ray asked. Dad sat right up. “What does that mean?”

“It means are you humping her? Are you hiding the salami? Are you pearl diving?” Sometimes, Ray thought, Dad had the worldly sophistication of a Camp Fire Girl. Dad probably thought “Tobacco Road” was about the evils of smoking. Dad probably thought that prostitutes were women waiting for buses. He probably wished they would dress more warmly and not smoke so much.

“Are you balling Faith?” Ray asked.

Dad looked stunned. “Ray, don't try to go between the tree and the bark,” he said.

“What in blazes is that supposed to mean?”

“Like my father said: don't say anything you wouldn't want somebody to know.” Dad started to get up. Ray put a hand on his shoulder.

“So the answer is yes.” Sweet little Faith, the radio housewife, turning tricks with her radio dad—it made a person blanch to think about it.

Ray let him stand up. The two men faced each other. Ray cleared his throat. “Dad, we have a long-standing rule here. Let me offer it to you as a recommendation:
no fornicating between employees
. Please.”

“Ray, all I can say is that the big thieves hang the little ones.”

“What does that mean?” But of course he knew what it meant. He blushed. He said, “Dad, I have just one thing to say about that, and that is: what's sauce for the goose is Greek to the gander,” and he wheeled and marched out.

Soon after, Faith Snelling announced she was leaving the show. “You can't,” said Roy Jr. She said she wanted to do other things. “You're doing this thing,” he said. She wanted to act in plays.

“Be my guest,” he said, “but you can't quit the show. You're Jo. Nobody else can
be
Jo. Everybody
knows
Jo. She's got to
be
there, on the radio. You can't just go and murder a friend of five-hundred-thousand people because you
feel
like it. If it's money we're talking about, let's talk. You don't even need to say anything. I'll offer you $300 a week. That's a 25-percent raise.” Faith stayed and she did not act in plays after all. She and Dad remained close, so far as people could see. With her husband Dale playing the role of her husband Frank, Ray thought that might keep Dad in line, the old gander, but no such luck. Dale seemed to be running around with Laurel Larpenteur.