Dogwood (19 page)

Naseeb S. Tweel chose his call letters to reflect the town’s name, WDGW. He had wanted to use WMUD because the building overlooked the banks of the Mud River, but those call letters had already been taken. The river overflowed each spring and fall and flooded homes built near the riverbank. Why the people didn’t move was a mystery, especially since the
Farmers’ Almanac
could predict the rains with great accuracy.

A new Lincoln sat at the back of the building, a monument to the power of spot announcements. Seeb did a trade-out with the local dealer and for as long as I could remember had been driving a new Lincoln with all the bells and whistles.

The morning announcer, Tom, who also served as chief engineer, head of sales, and maintenance man, had gotten up at 4 a.m. for twenty-three straight years, and not a day went by that he didn’t remind listeners that he was doing this for them.

The secretary looked just out of high school and stared at the ringing phone as she watched her nails dry. She was in midchomp of a sizable wad of Bubblicious gum (I saw the rest of the pack on the desktop), her fingers stained yellow, when she finally glanced at me. “Who you want to see?”

“I’m looking for Seeb.”

She reached for the phone, looked at her nails again, and lifted her head. “You can just go on back.” She said “go on” as one word:
goewn
.

Seeb was in a familiar pose, the way I’d remembered him. Hands behind his head. Feet up on the desk. Eyes closed. A fat cigar twitching in his mouth.

He still had the first microphone he’d ever used in radio on his desk, the framed one dollar bill—also the first—along with a
Playboy
desk calendar. He had learned the hard way to tip it over when someone came in. The hard way was a local Boy Scout troop taking a tour that lingered behind his desk. It was even worse when a local pastor had reached for a pen to sign a contract for more airtime.

The only difference in the new and old Seeb was the absence of a cloud of smoke in the room. Somewhere between the time I was sentenced and got out, he had stopped smoking and started chewing his cigars. Perhaps a doctor’s order?

I sat in the faux leather chair across from his desk, and it creaked just enough for him to raise an eyelid, then shut it. Without warning and with only the smallest intake of air, his voice rang out in the office. “Virginia!”

“Yeah?” she yelled back.

He did not open his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you not to send people back here when I’m working?”

It was meant as a rhetorical question, but Virginia tried to answer, which sent Seeb’s feet banging to the floor, and his eyes bored a hole in me. “You want to shut the door?” he said, the stogie hanging out of his mouth.

I stood, kicked the hollow door closed, and turned back to him. “Nice to see you again too.”

His face fell and I could see the blank spots in his corneas, white and unseeing. “Do I know you?” Then he squinted and moved closer, his hands like spiders, skin hanging from his arms. “Will? Is that you?”

I smiled. “I survived.”

He sat back and laughed. “It’s the eyes. They’re going on me, with the diabetes and all.” He shook his head, pursed his lips around the stogie, and smacked the desk. “Will Hatfield,” he whispered, looking me over as if he were passing by a casket. “Never thought I’d see you again.” He grabbed my hand and shook it.

“I never thought I’d be back here asking for a job,” I said.

“Sit down. Sit down. How long you been out?”

I told him.

“You okay?”

I nodded. “I feel kinda marked. Branded.”

He looked at his desk calendar. “Yeah, I suppose you do.”

We sat for a long time, just staring.

Finally Seeb said, “It was a real shame what happened. This town . . .”

“I don’t know that you ever get over something like that.”

He thought a long time. “I don’t know what people would say or think if I . . .”

“Mark Joseph,” I said. “I was thinking that might be a good name. Or you don’t even have to put me on the air. I could write copy. Fetch Tom’s morning coffee.”

“You hear he has cancer?”

I shook my head. “I’m surprised he’s still alive. I see the hole’s still in the wall where his wife threw that hatchet at him.”

“No, he patched that a few years ago. That’s another one.”

“What was it this time?”

“Same thing. She caught him with the secretary and threw a Coke bottle. Couldn’t keep his hands off the help.”

“And Virginia’s safe?”

“That’s his daughter.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Hard to believe a girl who looks like that could come from those two, isn’t it?”

We talked about others who had worked at the station. I had always felt it was one of Seeb’s secret ambitions to hire the next Howard Stern or Rick Dees and pay him as little as possible so one day he could put his picture on the wall and tell prospective employees, “I made this guy what he is, and I can help you too.”

There had been modest success for a couple of DJs. One was working in Cincinnati, another in Louisville, but most had been content to stay in a small market world and eke out a living.

A few who had come through the doors of the station had been on a long spiral down. Drugs. Alcohol. Trouble with the law. Or all three. Several people had been taken off the air in Huntington or Charleston for some indiscretion and had fallen all the way down to Dogwood. It was truly the bottom of the radio barrel, but it was a job and it paid the bills. At least some of them.

“You introduced me to a bunch of characters, Seeb. The underbelly of the business.”

“We did have some strange birds. Remember the guy who did afternoons—always rode his motorcycle to work in those leather chaps?”

“Steve,” I said. “He’s the one who trained me to do news and not laugh. Wrestled with that big six-foot Easter bunny just outside the window while I tried to make it through a story about the Jonestown massacre.”

Seeb smiled, biting his cigar. “I found out later that bike was the only thing he owned. Slept in the park most nights or down by the river. Found him a trailer to rent for a hundred dollars a month, and he was happy as a clam.” He looked straight at me. “But I never hired anyone I didn’t believe in.”

“You always told me that once radio was in my blood, I’d never get it out.”

He nodded. “It’s genetic to the species. A little taste is all it takes. When was the last time you were on-air?”

“I guess it was the morning before the accident. Didn’t come back before the trial. The warden let us do a talent show every year, and he heard about my experience, so he let me emcee the thing. Don’t suppose that would look too good on a résumé.”

“Sure it would,” Seeb said, flipping to the next picture on his calendar and squinting. “You’ve got to be a little rusty on the board—hasn’t changed too much.”

“I could use a refresher.”

“Come in Saturday afternoon. Clay is on the board. You can run it for him and let him do all the breaks. We’ll go from there.”

I told him how much I appreciated it.

“Whatever happened to that girl you brought in here? Anything ever come of that? Carrie or Carleigh or . . . ?”

“Karin,” I said.

“Yeah, what happened to her?”

“I’ve kind of been out of the dating scene, if you know what I mean.”

“She get married?”

I stood and walked to the door. A spider crawled up the side of the wall until it reached a grainy black-and-white picture of a radio antenna, the original one that stood in the field behind the station. Three workers stood on the antenna, their faces as fixed as the guy wires, waving, smiling. A few minutes after the shutter snapped, so did the guy wires and all three were killed. The one at the top from the fall, the two on the ground from the tumbling steel. It had been the most publicity the station ever received. Until news reports came out about the accident, naming me as a part-time announcer at the station.

“She’s the reason I came back here,” I said.

I walked into the station on Saturday afternoon, an unusually hot day for that time of year, my stomach churning like I was sixteen again. The announcer who had trained me almost two decades earlier called himself Chip Stevens and spent the first hour showing me the incomprehensible display of buttons and knobs and how they worked. He taught me the best way to cue a record on the turntable without scratching it. When I tried, the needle jumped and bounced because my hands were shaking so much.

Then he sent me to a fast-food restaurant for ham sandwiches. It was his pattern for the next two weeks—an hour of teaching, then
a food run. It was part of the reason he weighed close to three hundred pounds and wore out just about every chair in the building.

There were two cars in the parking lot when I arrived, a late model Chevy and an older Suburban. The monitors were turned up to earsplitting levels as I walked through the front door, but no one was at the board.

Weird sounds came from the production room. Like someone was doing some heavy lifting. The song playing was a Kenny Rogers tune, and I figured Clay was in the middle of a set of five songs in a row, which was probably more than enough time for him to finish whatever it was he was doing.

I stepped back outside and rang the bell, moseying around the front of the building.

A young kid came to door, buckling up, his shoes off. He reminded me of myself at that age. He had curly hair and pimply skin, thin but not muscular. His handshake was firm. “Clay Woodman,” he said, smiling. He had lipstick on his cheek and earlobe.

“I’m Will. Nice to meet you.”

“I wasn’t expecting you until later.”

“Well, Seeb never told me a time, and I flipped on the station and heard you and thought I’d just come by.”

Virginia came out of the production room—an apt name for it now that I thought about it—straightening her shorts, pulling at her bra strap, and slipping into flip-flops. She had pale, long legs, but her toenails were a bright red to match her fingernails. She still worked at her gum. Sunglasses were propped above her forehead to hold back her blonde-streaked hair.

When she saw me, her jaw dropped. “You’re him, aren’t you?” She clenched her teeth and glared at Clay. “Why didn’t you tell me he was coming?”

“Come on, Ginny,” he begged.

In the background a stinger sounded—a computerized series
of blips and splashes overcome by a deep-voiced announcer saying, “Classic Country”—and Willie Nelson began a scratchy-voiced tune.

Virginia grabbed her keys, slung her tiny purse over her shoulder, and sashayed out the door.

Clay cursed as he watched her hips. She skipped down the stairs and he followed. “I’m sorry! We still on for dinner?”

She floored the accelerator and spun a truckload of gravel out of the parking lot.

Clay returned and walked past me. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“I met her yesterday and she didn’t say a thing. What’s up?”

“She didn’t know who you were yesterday.”

“Oh.”

He put a dollar in the soda machine and pulled out a Mountain Dew. “She went to kindergarten with one of the kids you killed. Used to play over at her house.”

“I guess she has a right to be upset.”

“Yeah. I don’t know what Seeb was thinkin’.” Clay took a long draw from the bottle and burped. “People around here are gonna be hacked off when they find out.”

“I was hoping to use a different name. Listeners don’t have to know.”

He gave me one of those slack-jawed teenager looks, as if I had no idea what I was saying. “People who listen to this station know who works here. I won’t say nothin’ if that’s what you want, but it’s only a matter of time.”

Clay showed me the automated playlist on reel-to-reel and walked me through the board. It was a lot more complicated, a lot more computerized than I remembered, but in a way a lot easier. I knew other stations were even more advanced and that WDGW was trailing the competition by about ten years.

There was still a wall full of 33 rpm records stacked on shelves in the control room. Most of the 45s were gone, except for a few
strays here and there. The carpet was worn thin under the control room chair, and there was a new table in front of the window housing the transmitter with a microphone and headphone amp.

“Seeb said I should sit over there and do breaks and let you get the hang of the board,” Clay said.

“You don’t record your stuff and play it in between?”

He shrugged. “We can, but Seeb likes to hear stuff live. He says it’s cheating and unprofessional to record the stuff and not try to do it live.”

I had first “flown solo” that summer long ago under the teaching of Vern Jackson, one of the best DJs on the air. His full-time job was with the wastewater treatment plant, but his first love was country music. He was our music director and did a board shift Saturday and Sunday. He produced the Country Countdown, a two-hour song-by-song countdown to number one. The station didn’t have half the records on the Billboard chart, so Vern threw some in just because he liked them. He seemed strange, somehow out of place, but I couldn’t put a finger on what was so different.

He came in Saturday afternoon with bloodshot eyes, turned up the speaker in the back room, and told me he’d listen from there. “Knock ’em dead, Hatfield.”