The Radio Magician and Other Stories (3 page)

Clarence turned his hand over. Where was his quarter eagle? A red circle showed where he’d held it so tight for so long, but where was it?

“I’m going to need you on your back, Clarence. Help me here.”

She knelt beside him and lifted his right leg over his left as he rolled. Still, despite her care, his casted foot thumped when it hit the floor. “I’m tired of waiting this disease out,” she said. She sat back on her heels. “Are you tired of just waiting?”

Clarence nodded. On his back, he looked for the coin. Perhaps it rolled under the radio. She’d tied her hair into a bun behind her ears, but strays escaped from all sides, touching her cheeks with black threads and sticking to the sweat of her forehead. He rested on his elbows so he could see the casts, smudged now with weeks of dragging around. “What are you thinking?”

Mom took a heavy pair of scissors from the basin, then filled the basin from the bucket. Steam eddied off the surface. “There’s a nurse in Australia who claims that putting children in casts is exactly the wrong thing to do.” She snipped the scissors open and shut a few times. “Your muscles are paralyzed, but they’re not dead, so we’re going to remind them what it feels like to be active.” As she talked, she worked her way down the cast, using both hands to clip through the plaster-stiffened cloth. Clarence wanted to shrink away from the blade as Mom cut past the knee and down the shin. “President Roosevelt himself recovered from polio, and look how far he’s gotten. There.” She pulled the cast apart like a long clam. Clarence’s leg, marked with grime at the thigh and ankle, lay as pale as a fish in the middle. No mold! But it smelled like the root cellar. Clarence wrinkled his nose.

Mom moved to the next one. When she finished, she dipped a towel in the basin, then cupped her hand under his knee and gently lifted. A ripple of pain flashed from his knee to the back of his thigh. Clarence gasped.

“Sorry,” said Mom. She draped the hot towel over his leg. Water pooled in the cast. “The Aussie nurse says that the muscles will respond to stimulation. I’m going to rub the muscles, but I also have to move your leg, son. It might be uncomfortable.” She put one hand under his knee again and the other on the foot. Her serious eyes stared into his. Clarence nodded. Mom pressed the foot toward him while pulling the knee up.

Clarence had read that polio is the cruelest of diseases: it paralyzes but feeling remains. Liquid fire poured down his leg, like the skin would turn inside out. He scrunched his eyes tight. Thigh muscles stretched, moved, tore apart, melted, screamed a thousand tiny voices of death and torment, remade themselves into agony battalions, fought bloody battles, crushed each other with stones, ground salt into their wounds, flailed their backs with rose stems, broke their bones, pulled their fingernails off, stuck each other with rusty pitchforks, then twisted them deeper and deeper.

“There,” said Mom. “That’s one. Four more on this leg before we go to the next.”

In the middle of the night, Clarence lay on his back in bed, his legs’ memory a throbbing reminder of the session Mom said they would go through again in the morning. The clock ticked loudly in the hallway, forever holding tonight’s pain and the inescapable progress to tomorrow’s session.

From the bedroom next door, Mom and Dad argued. “How could an Australian nurse know more than our own doctor?” Dad talked calmly, his voice a steady rumble. “If her system was good, don’t you think doctors here, American doctors, would prescribe it?”

“Sister Kenny has shown results. I don’t have faith in that ‘convalescent serum.’ It doesn’t make sense to pump blood in him from people who have recovered from the disease. That doesn’t work for other diseases.”

Like all of their arguments, they were reasonable with each other, but Clarence still rolled over carefully, helping his left leg to go over his right, biting his lower lip until it stopped moving, then buried his head under the pillow. The sheets smelled of the menthol and petroleum jelly Mom had rubbed into his skin.

A little while later, their voices quieted, then their bedroom door clicked open. Steps creaked in the hallway before his own door opened. Mom padded into the room. Peeking under the pillow, Clarence saw her bare legs beneath her short robe and the thick wool socks she wore as slippers. She rubbed his back gently.

“I’m awake,” Clarence said, sliding the pillow aside.

Mom’s hand stopped. “You should be asleep. Sleep heals.” She kneaded the muscles under his shoulder blade. The motion felt comforting. Clarence sighed. He remembered today’s broadcast. He had wanted to tell Mom about it earlier, but hadn’t had a chance. “Do you think Professor Gilded can really make a horse disappear?”

Mom laughed. “I saw a magic show once. The magician sawed a woman in half, and then he put her back together. He made a table float, so I suppose, but, Clarence, it’s a
radio
show. He could tell you he was making the state capitol vanish and you wouldn’t know any different.”

“There were people there, ten of them. They saw Professor Gilded turn a real horse into a pile of bones, and then the horse was whole again, outside the studio.”

Mom moved to the other shoulder blade. “They
said
ten people were there. They could be actors.” She scooted farther up on the bed so she could rub his shoulders. “But maybe it is true, son. Marvelous things happen all the time, miracles, even.”

“Do you think Professor Gilded makes miracles?”

She stopped rubbing again. “You have to believe in miracles. Miracles and hard work. That’s a powerful combination.”

“Does Dad believe in miracles?”

“Well, that’s a good question. He told me once that he believes in Jesus, but he doesn’t believe someone who says he’s talked to him lately.”

Clarence giggled.

She patted his head. “Now, you go to sleep. In the morning we’ll try a little of the hard work and see if we can’t help our miracle along. How do your legs feel?”

“They hurt. They didn’t hurt as much in the casts.”

“I think they’ll feel better soon. Remember, they haven’t moved in a month.” She pushed herself up from the bed. “Oh, I found your birthday quarter eagle in my sock when I put it on.” The coin clicked when she placed it on his nightstand. “I have no idea how it got there, but you better hold onto it. Remember, it’s for luck.” She tucked the covers in so they pulled snug against his chest. “Don’t forget, tomorrow your dad and I will both be at work. Mrs. Bentley from next door will come by to see if you need anything.”

Clarence nodded. In all the times Mom and Dad had been gone together, Mrs. Bentley never dropped in, which was okay because Clarence could listen to the radio as long as he wanted.

After she left, Clarence pulled himself close enough to the nightstand to reach the coin. New aches broke out as his legs shifted, but he gritted his teeth until his fingers found its mellow, round shape. From the light coming in off the street, he examined its soft gold. It fitted neatly into his palm, then vanished into his fist. “Now you see it,” he said in the empty room. “Now you don’t.” He opened the hand where the quarter eagle still sat, but he imagined what it would be like to make it go away. When his hand hid it, the coin was both there and not there. He only had to choose the reality where it wasn’t, and the hand would be empty. How did the coin get into Mom’s sock? What had he been thinking about the coin during Professor Gilded’s show?

He fell asleep thinking about coins appearing out of a lady’s hat, and long red velvet lined black robes, and then, finally, as he slid into the deep darkness, he dreamed of a horse galloping across a field of spring hay, a divine roan with a long tail whipping behind, until it staggered on suddenly weakened legs, trying so hard to stay upright and running. It buckled, whinnying in terror as only a horse can, its eyes wide, its nostrils snorting, before the fur and flesh disappeared. Pathetically, it took one skeletal step, then clattered into a pile of crisp white bones. Green hay poked up between its ribs as the skull rolled a few feet more, the last of its momentum used up. In the dream, Clarence cried until he saw a gold glimmer reflected in the horse’s jaw. It was his quarter eagle clenched between the teeth, catching the sun.

Then, he slept.

In the morning, the massage hurt even worse. Mom bit her lips in as she pushed her thumbs deep into Clarence’s thigh muscles, and she rubbed and bent and twisted and grinded and pinched for weeks until Clarence couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He released his pain in short gasps, concentrating on the radio as she dug her thumbs deep into the back of his thighs. The news reported Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand declared war on Germany. Then a commentator argued America should stay out of the conflict.

“There. Not so bad, was it. Just ten minutes this time,” said Mom. She used the back of her wrists to wipe her eyes. “We’ll have you walking before Christmas.”

When she left, Clarence lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Polio, he realized, had made him a little kid again. He couldn’t see the tops of tables without someone lifting him. He couldn’t reach the upper drawers on the dresser. All he saw when looking up at the window were clouds and the leafy branches. With the casts, he could at least slide himself around the room and even get to the bathroom without help, although it took a gymnastic maneuver that left his arms quivering to get himself onto the toilet.

From the higher vantage point of the bed, he could see most of the tree. Someone yelled to someone else, and their feet pounded on the sidewalk as they ran by. Maybe they were playing tag. Maybe they were throwing a ball back and forth. Clarence couldn’t see enough to tell. Then the trolley rattled down the middle of the street. The trolley stopped at the end of the block and ran all the way to downtown Denver, passing the radio station with its soundstage. Even now, Professor Gilded could be preparing for today’s show.

Clarence rolled onto his side. The crutches and leg braces rested in the shadow next to the window. Professor Gilded’s show began in two hours. By trolley, he could be there in fifteen minutes, if only he could get to the trolley’s stop at the corner.

It took most of an hour to get into his pants. The pant legs folded over and kept twisting, so he had to inch them up his legs. He looked up every time the house creaked, afraid Mrs. Bentley would choose this moment to check on him, sitting on the floor in his underwear. His feet wouldn’t cooperate, and when his toes caught the cloth, sharp pains raced up the back of his legs. By the time he buttoned the top button, perspiration ran into his eyes and dripped from his chin. Getting into the braces took less time, but the leather was stiff and fastening the heavy buckles hurt his fingers. When he finished, he rested on his back. Placing the crutches under his arms while maintaining his balance seemed an impossible task, but there was only fifty minutes until the show started, and his legs felt so much lighter and flexible without the casts that he was sure he could get to the trolley on time.

He clumped through the hallway to the front door. In his left pocket nestled the quarter eagle; in the right, five dimes. He had no idea what the trolley cost. At the door, he rested his hands on the doorknob. For a month he’d been lying or sitting. His head hadn’t been this much higher than his feet for weeks. Every muscle from the hips down tingled and ached. Clarence bit the inside of his mouth and opened the door, clenching the crutches tight under his arms. When he stepped outside, he realized he hadn’t felt the sun on his face since he’d gotten sick.

The trolley man took a dime for the ride after lifting Clarence to a seat. “You hurt your legs, son? Where you going?” He smelled of garlic and cigarettes.

“The KLZ radio studio.” Clarence tried to keep the tremor out of his voice. The half block walk to the trolley stop had been the longest sustained effort of his life. Every crack in the sidewalk, every pebble, every movement threatened to pitch him over. In the house, he’d used a footstool and chair to get himself upright enough for the crutches. There was no way to help himself in the open. He would just have to lay there until someone saved him.

The woman on the seat next to him, holding a basket full of knitting, nodded and smiled. “You’ll need to get off at 15th street. I listen to KLZ all the time.” She glanced at his leg braces. “Must be hard getting around in school. I hope your schoolmates are kind.”

Clarence leaned the crutches against the trolley’s wall, careful to keep them from falling. The trolley lurched into motion, clacking over the tracks toward downtown Denver. Even the jiggling hurt. He focused on the shops passing by the windows and smiled through the pain. The radio station was only fifteen minutes away, now. He fingered the quarter eagle. It’s here and it’s not here, he thought. Only thinking makes it so.

A few minutes later, the trolley passed the hospital. A pair of marble lions, their jaws open, flanked the double door entrance at the top of a flight of stairs. To the left, a wheelchair ramp rose along the side of the building for the crippled. The building’s severe white face rose six stories into the sky punctuated by rows of dark windows. Clarence’s breathing tightened just looking at it. Somewhere inside, Sean Garrison stared at the ceiling, the iron lung squeezing his chest to expel the air, then reversing the pressure so he could inhale. Clarence could almost hear the wheezing sounds. He wondered, how does he itch his nose? He couldn’t move a muscle below his neck. What does he think about? Clarence was glad when they left the hospital behind.

KLZ wasn’t directly on Broadway, it turned out. The conductor lowered Clarence to the sidewalk, clamping his arms to his crutches so he hit the cement ready to go. “The station’s a block that way, son,” he said, pointing. “Watch your step.”

Clarence’s legs quivered beneath him as the trolley rumbled away. The radio station’s sign looked awfully far. He gritted his teeth and leaned forward.

Ten minutes later his arms ached with the effort to keep him upright, but he stood before KLZ’s front door, a heavy metal and glass barrier. In the shadow of the room behind the door, he saw a secretary looking at him, a prim blonde with dark-framed glasses, like a librarian. Before he could brace himself to pull the door open, she was holding it for him.