The Radio Magician and Other Stories (2 page)

THE RADIO MAGICIAN

I
n the evening Clarence sprawled on the ragged hook rug, facing the cathedral front of the burnished wood Edison, a pillow tucked beneath his chin, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, and his useless legs encased in casts, sticking behind him. Eyes shut, he listened to KLZ, the Reynolds Radio Company, and then slowly rotated the dial through the other Denver stations. Sometimes late at night he’d pick up WDAF out of Kansas City or WAAF in Chicago. Everywhere he turned he found wavering voices, scratchy baseball games, foreign speech and strange music. News from overseas. Poland invaded. President Roosevelt. Big bands. The slightest twist of the wooden knob brought new sounds, all so far, far away from his tiny bedroom and the ragged hook rug. He wished he could crawl in among the glowing tubes with their tiny suns suspended in glass cages. They warmed his chilled hands. He’d listen as hard as he could so that he wouldn’t hear his own breathing, so he wouldn’t even
think
about his breathing. Did that breath hurt? What about the next one? Did the muscles in his chest tighten up just a little that time?

Mom had said, “You’re luckier than some, son. It’s only your legs.”

So far, thought Clarence. So far. No, he didn’t want to think about breathing.

So, he listened to
The Shadow, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders, The Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooters,
and he loved Charlie Chan stories from
Five Star Theater
, but mostly he listened for
Professor Gilded’s Glorious Magical Extravaganza
. On the table by the window, the clock ticked to the hour, just as the announcer said, “Now, for your listening pleasure, Denver’s very own radio magician.” Clarence shivered in delight, and waited impatiently through a Pepsodent commercial.

“We return today to disappearance and transference,” said Professor Gilded. “Last session, we talked of coins that moved from one hand to the next, from your hand to a pocket, from a pocket to a purse, or coins that vanished all together.”

Clarence scooted closer to the radio, holding his own coin tight, a gold quarter eagle that felt warm and smooth. Tonight he barely had a headache, so the show was more enjoyable.

“You see, I put a coin in my left hand. I show it to the audience. The coin is there, I assure you. Its edges press against my skin. Everyone has seen it go into my left hand. That is the secret. Everyone must see.”

Clarence pictured Professor Gilded on his tiny radio stage. Once
The Denver Post
had printed a picture of the professor’s broadcast. Beside him, his top hat rested on a spindly legged table. The audience of ten who were there by the luck of having their names drawn from letters they’d sent the show, leaned forward. Every week Clarence wrote Professor Gilded a letter, but his name had never been drawn.

Last week, Father had patted Clarence’s head. “How would we get you there, Clarence boy? You won’t be going on that journey while you are sick. But write your letters. It’s good your mind is so active.” Then Father drew a long breath through his pipe, and held it in his lungs before releasing a steady gray stream.

Professor Gilded continued, “The coin does not know the trick. That is the trick. The coin does not know. So when the magic happens, the coin has jumped from my left hand to wherever I want it to go.” He paused. A quiet drum rolled in the background as it did before the magic occurred. “Where do you think the coin has appeared this time? It is not in my left hand as you can see.” The audience oohed and then clapped. Clarence squirmed in contentment. He
could
see Professor Gilded’s empty hand. “Young lady with the fancy hat sitting in the back row. Yes, you. Would you check inside that beautiful red ribbon on the hat?”

A surprised squeal burst from the background. The audience buzzed with startled conversation.

The announcer said, “Ma’am could you describe what happened for our listeners?”

“The coin was inside my hat! Professor Gilded never moved from the stage!” She giggled suddenly. “I’m going to keep this forever.”

Clarence squeezed the quarter eagle, a birthday present. “A ten-year-old deserves real money,” Mother had said as she gave it to him. “It’s a lucky coin, minted the year your father and I were born.” She put her finger on the date, 1910. “You can’t spend it. It’s not legal money anymore.” She leaned close, like a conspirator. “We were supposed to turn all the gold over to the government in 1933, but I held this one for you.” The secret made the coin worth even more. Sometimes he thought of what the two and a half dollars could buy, and it made him feel rich.

Clarence pressed the small coin’s bumpy edges against his skin, clenched it in his fist, turned the hand over, willed the coin to vanish. He scrunched his forehead, focused, tried to believe the quarter eagle was no longer in his grasp. But it was no good, just like wishing he could move his legs was no good. Even getting around on crutches would be better than his plaster jail. New crutches rested against the closet door. Beneath them in a box waited leg braces with long metal bars, heavy leather straps and black buckles. Someday, his mother promised, he would walk in them. The casts, though, were too heavy, and he couldn’t swing his legs to keep himself moving forward. A week ago he’d tried, only to fall face first onto the hardwood floor.

Professor Gilded’s voice broke in. “We do not dabble in the supernatural here. Charlatans claim their magic is real. The coin’s disappearance is an illusion, a trick of perception only, but our perceptions make reality for us all. If you perceive you are cowardly, then illusion becomes the world. If you perceive you are ill, then illness becomes you.”

Clarence’s eyes popped open. He turned the sound up, his own attempts at the trick forgotten. Beneath his casts, his legs ached. He remembered running home down the long muddy lane beside the field, its corn already harvested, the broken stalks lying across each other. He’d run on the weeds beside the lane to keep his shoes dry. Then he stumbled. For a second, he thought he’d stepped in the mud, but he could see the shoe was clean. His right leg dragged again. He slowed to a heavy limp, massaging his thigh through his jeans. What was wrong with his leg? The house had never looked so far away. Too far to call for help. He leaned on the fence and felt his strength fading.

Just as he reached the gate an hour later, Mom came out on the porch to look for him. She ran to him as he fell, her face wet with fear. By morning, the left leg had gone weak too. How far would it stretch? As the doctor poked at him later that day, Clarence made a fist, then unmade it, over and over. Would the paralysis spread? Fist. No fist. Fist. No fist.

Professor Gilded said, “The world’s illusions cloud perceptions. Most fail to recognize reality before them. They believe they are poor, or ugly, or life’s horizons are short. If my assistant will allow me to demonstrate, observe the reality of my four-legged friend.”

The sound of clopping came from the speakers before the announcer said, “Professor Gilded’s beautiful assistant, Sonia, is leading a horse into the studio, a strawberry roan, courtesy of the Phipps Ranch. I have to tell you folks, livestock in a radio studio is not what you see every day.” Chairs scraped across a wooden floor. Someone said, “Give him a bit of room.”

The announcer whispered, “The studio is not large, my friends. Our audience has moved to the back wall. The horse, a gentle one, chosen especially for this demonstration, stands no more than five feet from them. Professor Gilded’s stage gives him a height advantage. He’s removing a large, blue blanket from the chest behind him.”

Clarence turned the sound up again. The big trick always ended the show. First, the small demonstrations. Cards that reordered themselves. Balls that multiplied. Flowers that changed colors. Handkerchiefs that metamorphed into birds. All the while Professor Gilded lectured on magic, on the magic he was doing and the magic in the world, as he built to the finale, something so impressive that his audience clapped and clapped and clapped until the sound faded and the show ended. But he’d never worked with a horse! He couldn’t possibly make a horse vanish from a small studio in front of an attentive audience. Not even Houdini could accomplish such a feat. For a moment, Clarence didn’t think about his legs.

“A beautiful animal, the horse. Much more intelligent than humanity imagines. Please, people, run your hands along the horse’s side. Don’t be shy. Feel his beating heart. Ahh, a true horse fancier, are you? Yes, check his hooves. This is a hale and healthy representative of his breed. Assure yourselves of his reality, for, I promise you, in a moment you will doubt your memories and senses, and, perhaps, you will wonder what other illusions you harbor about the world.”

Outside Clarence’s window, a trolley car rattled by. Every fifteen minutes the trolley clattered, reminding him that his parents had moved from the farm so they were close to Broadway and Denver General Hospital. “We can’t risk him, Thomas,” Mom said. “The doctors warned about the disease migrating into his lungs. We might need Dr. Drinker’s respirator until Clarence becomes strong again.” Father had only nodded, and soon he completed negotiations with their neighbor to lease the land. Within weeks, both parents had found part-time work, which was remarkable. Jobs were hard to come by. Mom cleaned houses while Dad sorted mail. Clarence envisioned the virus like a horrible mold. Its name sounded like a mold, poliomyelitis. The doctors put his legs in casts. Itching during the day was intolerable, but Clarence could force a pencil, or a ruler, or a straightened coat hanger only so far under the plaster. Maybe the virus really reassembled a mold, growing out of sight in the cast’s moist darkness. If the casts came off now, would his legs look human anymore? And that wasn’t the worst. In his blood, he pictured the virus marching toward his lungs, filling them with cauliflower-like lumps of gray and green mold until he couldn’t inhale. Mom called the machine they would put him in “Dr. Drinker’s respirator,” an iron lung, and Porter’s hospital only had one. Iron lung. Iron lung. Nothing sounded more frightening. It made him think of iron crosses and invasions, a German army charging up his arteries’ roads, a blitzkrieg to the heart. But that wasn’t the worst. Close as they lived now, the iron lung would do no good if someone else filled the machine. Clarence was not the only sick child in Denver. An eleven-year-old from Broomfield lay in the machine now. The
Post
put his picture in the paper yesterday. The caption read, “Young Sean Garrison, completely paralyzed from the neck down, battles for his life against all odds.” But he didn’t look like he was battling in the picture. He looked like he’d lost, and all the weight of that loss, and all the grief, were written in his face.

Professor Gilded said, “Could you hold the edge of the blanket, Sonia? There, stand on the stool so you may reach high enough. Ah, it is a good horse, longing for its stable perhaps, for a fresh pile of hay and a rub down for the evening.”

The announcer’s lowered voice barely leaked from the speakers. “I and the audience cannot see the roan, but we see the blanket’s ends. There is no place to lead the horse. I can hardly describe the tension as we wait for Professor Gilded’s wonder. I’m afraid he has set himself too daunting a task tonight.”

A drum rumbled in the background.

Professor Gilded asked, “Do you believe the horse is still behind the blanket? If I have planted doubt thoroughly enough, then the horse may both be there and not be there. You have no way of telling, unless, of course, you walk around my blanket.” He paused. The drum rolled louder. “Or, I can pull the blanket away.”

A clatter, a scream, then voices in tumult. Another scream.

“I cannot believe what I am witnessing,” gasped the announcer. “Too much. Too much.” A hard click, as if the microphone hit something. “Oh, be glad you cannot see.”

Someone sobbed.

“Professor Gilded holds his blanket over his arm, like a cape. Sonia stands beside him. The horse, the beautiful roan that walked into the studio is gone, but . . . the bones . . . a pile of bones sits on the floor. Horse bones, dry and clean, piled as if flesh and fur disappeared. No muscle. Oh, please, can we have a commercial now?” Another click.

Professor Gilded’s soothing voice said, “An illusion, I assure you. A trick of light and distraction, as all the best magic is.”

“Sonia takes the blanket,” said the announcer’s shaky voice. “He picks up the skull.”

“Alas, Horatio, I knew him well.” Professor Gilded laughed, a long satisfying chuckle. “The magic show is theater in the best tradition. Shakespeare wove illusions too. The bard said, ‘I’ll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion! If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, speak to me, if there be any good thing to be done.’ As you leave the studio you will find the lovely roan on the street, awaiting your inspection.”

The show’s closing musical notes played. Clarence realized he had pressed himself off the floor with his hands so his head was closer to the speaker. His arms trembled with the effort.

The announcer appeared to have recovered composure. “Tonight’s show was brought to you by the kind attention of our sponsors. Be sure to shop for products that support the continued broadcast of
Professor Gilded’s Glorious Magical Extravaganza
.” The music rose, but Clarence heard the announcer say to someone in the background, so muffled that Clarence wondered if he heard it at all, “What the hell was that?”

Clarence’s bedroom door opened. He twisted to his side to see his mother holding a basin, several towels, and a filled bucket heavy enough to make her lean.

“Show over, son?” She put the towels, bucket and basin next to him on the rug.

“Yes, it was a good one.” He shivered with the thought of bones. Professor Gilded
said
the horse was outside the studio and that the show was a trick, but how could he fool that many people who stood so close? A horse is not a coin to be hidden in a sleeve or to be gripped by the back of the hand while the audience sees an empty palm. Clarence knew coin tricks and the names of tricks: the gangster spin, the backspin bounce, the knuckle roll, the horizontal waterfall. He could flick a coin into a hidden pocket, make a coin between two cards vanish, pull a coin out of someone’s hair, but they were practiced techniques, not magic. Making a coin disappear just involved making the audience’s eye go to the wrong place. When he did the tricks for his friends, he watched their eyes, and when they looked away from the coin, he had them.