The Radio Magician and Other Stories (4 page)

“My word, child, what are doing here by yourself? Where are your parents?”

“They’re at work. Do you mind if I sit down?” Clarence lowered himself gingerly onto one of the two worn leather chairs in the lobby. He sighed, his eyes closed, as the weight fell from his arms and legs. A ceiling fan creaked through slow revolutions and stirred the smell of furniture polish and old magazines. Across the small receiving area, in the other chair, a balding man wearing a blue bow tie and a white shirt studied a newspaper. He glanced at Clarence, briefly meeting his eyes, then turned a page and returned to his reading. Behind the secretary’s desk, three doors, marked STUDIO 1, STUDIO 2 and SOUND ENGINEER, were closed. Drooping wires high on the wall connected to a bare speaker, playing KLZ’s afternoon news softly, a litany of political reaction to the events in Europe. Polish soldiers were in retreat. British bombers attacked German war ships.

“You look like you could use a glass of water.” The secretary disappeared through the sound stage door.

Sweat soaked the sides of Clarence’s shirt. His legs throbbed from the arch of his feet, where the braces’ metal bar clamped against his shoes, to the grinding spots where the leather upper straps dug into his hips. Even his fingers hurt from squeezing the crutches, and he doubted he could make the one block trip back to the trolley stop, but he was here. He had arrived! He couldn’t keep a smile off his face.

The secretary returned with the water. Clarence rolled the cool glass against his forehead before drinking half of it in one long swallow.

“Is Professor Gilded here?” he asked. “I’d like to meet him.”

“That old fraud?” said the man in the bow tie, putting his newspaper down. He winked at the secretary. “He’s a bore.”

Clarence’s jaw tightened up until he realized the man was teasing. At least he was pretty sure he wasn’t serious.

“Do you know him?” Clarence pulled the quarter eagle out of his pocket. “I’ve been practicing magic.” He did a quick knuckle roll back and forth with the coin.

The bow-tied man put his paper aside. “Can you do a pass under and around?”

Clarence rolled the coin between his fourth and little finger, tucked it under, caught it on his thumb, then brought it around from underneath. “Sure. I learned that one first.”

The man produced a half dollar from a vest pocket, then walked it from finger to finger on his right hand. “Okay, we’ll race. First one to get the coin around their hand ten times wins. It’s a little unfair. My hands are bigger and the coin has farther to go.”

They counted out loud. Clarence was at eight when the man reached ten, flipped the coin into the air, and then watched solemnly as the white feather it had turned into drifted to the floor.

“You’re pretty good for a kid. Can you do a sleeve flick? How about a coin cascade?”

Clarence nodded.

The secretary, who had returned to her desk, laughed. “Don’t get him going. He’ll talk your ear off about magic.” She looked at the clock. “Bob will be here in a couple minutes. You’d better get into the studio.”

The bow-tied man dismissed her comment with a wave. He leaned toward Clarence, his elbows on his knees. “So, why do you want to see Professor Gilded?”

Clarence tried to recall the picture of Gilded from
The Denver Post
. His hair had been thick and black, almost touching his shoulders, and a moustache hid most of his mouth. Was it possible that the bald, bow-tied man
was
Professor Gilded? But where was the accent? Clarence imagined Gilded as tall, like a black-cloaked Abraham Lincoln. Who was this guy?

As if reading his mind, the bow-tied man said, “I’m John Albenice, his understudy. You can tell me.”

A couple dressed in their Sunday best pushed through the door. The woman in a floral print dress with her hair pinned up, whose pinched cheeks and pointed chin made her look a little like Clarence’s fourth grade teacher, walked straight to the secretary and said, “We’re here for Professor Gilded’s afternoon performance. We have an invitation.” She put an envelope on the desk. Her husband stood behind her, his hands pushed into his pockets, as if he really didn’t want to be there.

“Of course, studio two, please.” The secretary opened the door for them. Clarence glimpsed a short hallway.

“Will Professor Gilded be here soon?” He raised himself out of the chair to get a last look before the door closed. “He said perception is reality. He said if I perceive that I’m sick, that I am. I wanted to ask him what he meant by that.”

John leaned back in his chair. He idly pulled his bow tie. “Professor Gilded says a lot of things on the air you probably shouldn’t listen to, kid. He’s paid to talk, you know. He’s an entertainer.”

The secretary cleared her throat and looked purposefully at the clock.

“Look, I’ve got to get ready for the show. He just meant that magic happens in your head.” He stood up and started for the studio. “Are you as proficient with cards as you are with coins?”

“I can do a pretty good fan and a table spread, but my hands are too small for a one-hand shuffle. I’ll have to grow into lots of tricks.” He held up his hand like a starfish.

“Huh,” John said. “Have you tried cutting down a deck? Smaller cards might do it.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “I hadn’t considered that before. I’ll bet small cards might get a lot of kids interested in sleight of hand.”

“Oh, no,” said the secretary.

The door opened. A gray-headed man carrying a briefcase walked partway into the foyer, and then froze when he saw John.

“I told you to stay the gawd damned hell away from me, freak,” said the man, bringing the briefcase to his chest like a shield.

The secretary stiffened. “Bob, there’s a child in the room.”

Clarence recognized the man’s voice. He introduced and narrated
Professor Gilded’s Glorious Magical Extravaganza.
He said “hell” on the air at the end of the last show.

John straightened. His voice deepened. “I’m not responsible for your irrational fears. If you can’t separate a trick from reality, then you have the problem, not me.” It was Professor Gilded’s voice, without the accent. He stood in between the two chairs, only a yard from Clarence, and he didn’t look like he was going to move.

Keeping his briefcase between them, the other man scooted along the front windows until he reached the sound engineer’s door. He found the knob without looking away from John. “I’ll announce the show, but I don’t want to have anything to do with you. Keep your distance. There’s nothing natural about you.” The door slammed behind him.

John shrugged. He looked at Clarence. “Sorry you had to see that. He had difficulty with the horse trick. It . . . disturbed him.”

“Did you . . . I mean, did the professor really make a horse turn into bones?” Clarence’s heart thumped in his throat.

“If you think so, then he did. That’s the perception trick. An audience thought he did. And Bob there . . . well,” he moved toward the studio door. “He believes.”

He stopped at the secretary’s desk. “The only thing I really know about magic, kid, is that if there isn’t some of it in the world, then we live in a dark, dark place. If you’ve got any, you have to share it.”

The secretary reached into her hair. “Hey, what’s this?”

John plucked the object off her palm. He looked at it, genuinely puzzled. “1910 quarter eagle. Isn’t this yours?” He walked back to Clarence, the coin between his fingers. “Nice trick.”

The coin dropped into Clarence’s hand. He hadn’t even realized that John had taken it.

“Nice trick yourself.”

John paused. “I didn’t do anything. How’d you pull it off? Pass it when she gave you the water? No, don’t tell me. A magician never tells. But I like it. Effective illusion. Okay, gotta go. There will be a whole audience here soon, and the stage isn’t ready.” He shook Clarence’s hand. “Somebody’s got to amaze them all.” He laughed, and Clarence thought he’d heard a hint of a European accent in it.

Then, he was gone. Clarence tossed the gold piece from one hand to the other.

The secretary looked at him pityingly. “If there were room in the studio, kid, he’d let you in, but we’re booked for weeks.”

When Clarence stood on the sidewalk outside the radio station, his arms felt completely without strength. Had he used up everything he had to get to the station? He stepped forward, letting most of his weight rest on the crutches, his breath ripping in short gasps against his aching legs. No hike could have ever been longer. He thought about soldiers marching to far off fronts, their courage flitting about them, not knowing if they would make it back, but he kept pushing forward, his braces clicking against the cement. The metal creaked at the knees, and he went steps at a time with his eyes closed.

By the time he reached the trolley stop, he could hardly inhale, and his heart flurried like a trapped bird. Was this the beginning of a new paralysis? He whimpered. Cars passed on Broadway in the afternoon sun, and only after agonizing minutes the trolley trundled into sight.

“Please,” gasped Clarence as the same driver from his ride downtown lifted him into the car, “can you take me to the hospital?”

Every bump jarred his legs. He held the back of his thighs to try to keep them from bouncing, but he couldn’t anticipate the next jolt. His cheek rested against the wooden sill under the window, and tears leaked between his closed eyelids. Finally the trolley stopped.

“Hospital, young man,” said the driver, concern in his voice.

Clarence struggled to get his crutches under his arms.

“No need. I’ve sent someone in to get you a wheelchair.” He placed his hand on Clarence’s shoulder. “You don’t look good.”

A nurse appeared at the trolley door and helped Clarence into the wheelchair.

“I’ll take him to emergency,” said the nurse. “We can evaluate him there.”

“No,” said Clarence. The trolley driver wrung his hands. Passengers crowded at the windows. A little girl holding a book waved at him through the glass. Clarence waved back weakly. “I need to go to the polio ward. I need to get to the iron lung.”

The nurse started pushing him up the sidewalk toward the ramp. “You have polio? Are you experiencing breathing difficulty?” She sounded businesslike.

Clarence relaxed his head against the back of the wheelchair. He rested his hand on the quarter eagle in his pants pocket, its shape a solid comfort. “I’m not sick. I’m visiting. I want to see it.”

“You look sick.” The nurse walked beside him as they rose up the ramp and into the hospital’s entrance way.

“Honest, I’m okay. I think I probably tried to do too much today. My legs hurt a little,” he lied, “but I really want to see the polio ward.”

He rolled into an elevator.

“There’s someone in the iron lung already,” she said.

Lights flicked beside each floor as the elevator went up. Clarence had never been in an elevator before. “I know. Sean Garrison. He was in the paper. How is he doing?”

“You’re really not sick?” She looked down at him doubtfully. “If you’re not, you’re the sorriest looking healthy boy I’ve ever seen.”

“I walked to the trolley all by myself.”

“Hmmm.” The elevator stopped and the doors opened. “I hope you don’t mind if I have a doctor check you anyway, and we need to talk to your parents.”

Forty beds separated by light green curtains filled the polio ward. At some, family members sat by the wan children. Antiseptic smells filled the air.

She wheeled him into a broad hallway, and then into a room where a large steel canister dominated the middle. A compressor whirred under the device, stopped, shifted, then whirred again with a lighter tone. Clarence knew the machine was switching back and forth between exhaling and inhaling. A dark-haired boy lay face up, only his head outside of the iron lung, looking at him blankly through a mirror positioned above his face. Grief lines marked his face. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed. Clarence had never seen anyone so sad. A long window in the metal showed his arms and chest, while another showed his legs. Two rubber-lined holes permitted doctors to reach in to rearrange the patient if necessary, but the only way to actually touch him would be to undo the heavy clasps that locked the head end to the rest of the machine.

Clarence pushed the top of the wheels to move closer. “Hi, I’m Clarence.”

In the background, the motor clicked. “I’m sick,” whispered the boy, and Clarence knew that he could only whisper because the power to speak came from the machine compression. He could talk when the iron lung made him exhale. Putting his hand on his own chest, Clarence tried to imagine being inside the canister.

The motor cycled several times. Clarence looked at Sean’s reflection in the mirror. Sean looked back.

“Would you like to see a magic trick?” said Clarence.

The motor whirred.

Sean’s voice was a falling leaf. “No.”

“I’ll show you anyway.” The 1910 quarter eagle came out of Clarence’s pocket. In the sterile hospital light, its gold glowed. He did knuckle rolls for Sean. He did false drops and sleight of hand passes, showing the coin and then vanishing it. He stacked the gold coin with the three dimes he had left, hid them under a tissue, then asked Sean where the coin was, top, bottom or middle. Wherever Sean said it was, when Clarence uncovered the coins, there it was.

Two more nurses came into the room, watching Clarence go through his repertoire. They clapped when the coins reappeared in unexpected places.

“Magic is about perception,” said Clarence, leaning close to Sean. Sitting in his wheelchair, his head was on the same level. “What we perceive is our reality. If you think you are hungry, then you find food. If you think you are cold, you shiver.” Clarence paused. He thought about Professor Gilded on his stage talking to an audience. What happened that night when the horse turned into bones? How did Gilded perceive it? Did the animal shimmer before the flesh dissolved? Clarence flourished the quarter eagle. Sean watched, his eyes dark and intent.

“Now I’ll show you a trick that will amaze you. I don’t even know if I can do it, but I’ll try. Are you ready?”

Sean nodded, mostly with his eyes.