Wizard of the Wind Read online

  The short service ended with a quick prayer and the cranking up of the crane’s smoky diesel engine. Just then, as the crowd was turning away and the chain attached to the crate was drawing taut, a bit of cold light from the late-December sun finally found a crack in the dark clouds. But as quickly as the light appeared, it dimmed. Something massive and powerful got in the way, casting a dark shadow across the gravesite. Something was defying the sun, scolding it for shining on this man now, when it would do him so little good. Jimmy Gill turned to see what it might be.

  It was the bulk of the WROG transmitting tower.

  Jimmy decided that Rockin’ Randy Mathews would have liked that.

  Fourteen

  Jimmy Gill soon learned something important. People have to take their breaks in life where they happen to fall and there is no point in looking back and wondering why. That was especially true in the radio business. The two best ways to advance in the broadcasting industry were to be in the right place at the right time or to have pictures of the boss with a donkey. At least that’s what Jerry Diamond told him one day. Either way, you prosper at someone else’s misfortune. And if you did not, someone else would.

  When Rockin’ Randy Mathews pitched over onto his face and died in the hallway at WROG on Christmas Eve, Scotty Bowman got the big break. He was shifted up from his part-time weekend job and moved right into the afternoon drive time show where Randy had been. Everybody knew he was ready and he was instantly a star there.

  That put Charlie McGee on the hot seat. He was afraid he was going to be stuck with a dreaded weekend chore that Scotty had always done, and he wanted no part of it. So, out of self-interest, and not because he wanted Jimmy Gill to get his own big break in radio, Charlie talked the manager into letting the kid do it.

  Jimmy would have to come in early on Sunday mornings and rack up the taped programs of the holy-roller preachers, watching them as they spooled off on the big recorders in the control room, making certain the tapes did not break or run out too soon. He would also have to ride the volume controls on the one black quartet and the several ministers who still showed up and did their shows live on the station each Sunday morning.

  Charlie knew the kid would always show up and do exactly what he was told to do. He knew there was no chance of him making a mess or getting drunk or screwing any women in the bushes out back of the building when he was supposed to be cueing up tapes and collecting cash money from and writing the preachers their receipts.

  Jimmy immediately felt like a radio professional, even though his pay had not changed. He still received few throw-away records or an occasional gimmick from a record company promotional campaign. And he still was not allowed to turn on the microphone and say anything on the air. They had tapes made to cover every possible emergency and he was ordered, in no uncertain terms, to use those if anything happened.

  “You say anything on the radio, it better be something like: ‘The Russians have just launched the damn missiles so kiss your ass goodbye,’” Charlie warned. “Otherwise, it’s your ass that’s going to be gone.”

  But Jimmy was not complaining. He figured he had to be the first twelve-year-old disk jockey in the world.

  Most of the time there was only Jimmy and Clifford Snodgrass, the weekend engineer at the station, pulling the Sunday morning shift. Clifford usually slept off the previous night’s drunk on a cot set up near Big Beulah’s warmth while Jimmy handled the tapes and controls and the money. The old man would only get up from his resting place once or twice each Sunday for a trip to the bathroom and to fake the meter readings on the transmitter log he was required to keep.

  Then, after a month or two and Jimmy’s invitation, Detroit started tagging along with him to the station. He waited out back in the bushes until the gray-haired old engineer settled down next to the transmitter. Then when Clifford started snoring as loudly as Big Beulah’s exhaust fans, Detroit sneaked in the back door, past the cot, and into the studio.

  Detroit spent the time each week keeping Jimmy company or leafing through the Sunday paper. But after a while, he began wandering back to Charlie McGee’s engineering office. He liked to fool around with the tools and electronic parts and test equipment that were kept there, and to read the books that were piled on the desk and shelved in a shaky bookcase in a corner. After a few Sundays had passed, Detroit would only make a quick appearance in the control room and then, as soon as he could, he disappeared, headed back to what he called “the shop.”

  “What the Sam Hill are you doing back there, Dee?” Jimmy finally asked him one morning.

  “Nothing.”

  That was not like Detroit Simmons. Usually, a question like that led to a long discourse on the subject at hand.

  “Well, you just make sure you don’t leave anything out of place or Charlie McGee will know somebody’s been messing with his stuff and he’ll come looking for me.”

  “There’s no rhyme or reason for anything back there, Jimmy. I’ve been arranging everything the way they ought to be for a month now and he has not said anything to you yet has he?”

  Jimmy cringed. He could see his budding broadcast career slapped down rudely by the bewhiskered, ill-tempered engineer.

  “He’ll lynch you if he finds out you’re messing around back there! He doesn’t care much for nig...uh, colored people, you know.”

  “I’m helping him and he doesn’t even know it. Like this morning. I’ve been matching up all his resistors by their color code so he can find them a lot easier. Then I’m going to put all the capacitors in boxes, sorted by their values, and put new labels on all those audio transformers.”

  Jimmy could not imagine what a color code or a resistor or the value of a capacitor was. He was mightily impressed that Detroit did.

  “You just don’t mess up my job for me, Detroit Simmons. That’s all I got to say on the matter.”

  Detroit was about the most stubborn person Jimmy had ever seen. He seemed to love his Sunday mornings spent in “the shop.” He looked forward to it every week and babbled on and on about all the things he was doing back there, the things he was learning.

  Jimmy sometimes left the tapes running and walked back to Charlie McGee’s desk, merely to check on him. Detroit would be stringing together the rainbow-coded resistors and flat yellow capacitors and tiny light bulbs and buzzers on sheets of aluminum or squares of brown perf board, making them blink and flash and hum in some predetermined order. His knack for melding junkyard flotsam together into something useful had led him naturally to his electrical experiments with the circuits in the radio station’s back room. Jimmy continued to be amazed and impressed with what Detroit was learning and doing all by himself.

  When he was not tinkering, Dee seemed to be soaking up all he could read in the electronic books and shop manuals Charlie left lying about. He devoured pages of schematics and diagrams, and cooked up funny, odd boxes that sometimes smoked and sparked, or burped and beeped, and always had questionable purposes.

  One Sunday morning, he appeared in the control room door, proudly carrying a black metal box. It had a single red button on its face. A piece of plastic label above the button clearly ordered: “DO NOT PUSH BUTTON.”

  “Whoops. I think I left the soldering iron on. Be right back,” he told Jimmy, and trotted back out of the room. He left the black box lying on the counter, three feet from where Jimmy sat, preparing to switch from a taped show to a live one. Only a half-minute passed before curiosity got the best of him. He dragged the box closer, examined it, shook it, listened to it, read the warning label again, chose to ignore it, and pushed the forbidden button.

  A piercing siren inside the box tore open the control room and nothing Jimmy did could make it hush. No matter how hard he pounded the button or slammed the box on the floor or called the thing the few foul names he had learned hanging around the disk jockeys at the station. It only continued its ear-numbing squealing and warbling.

  Sister Phoebe Richards and her gospel-singing sidek
ick, Ralph, were in the big studio getting tuned up for the next show. When they heard the squalling siren, they jumped up in a panic, looking wild-eyed around the studio for the source of the racket. Then they looked at each other and immediately fell to their knees on the studio floor, crying and praying, absolutely certain that the Lord was coming back that very instant with the blaring of angelic trumpets.

  Jimmy grabbed it up, ran to the bathroom, tossed the noise box into the toilet, closed the lid, and flushed. Only then did the wail give way to the wicked laughter of Detroit Simmons, in the hallway behind him. All the noise, though, had brought back to life the painfully hung-over Clifford Snodgrass. He burst through the swinging door in a full charge, stomping and grumbling and cussing whatever it was that had broken his slumber.

  “What the hell is that? What’s broke? What’s on fire?”

  Detroit ducked into the toilet to hide, just ahead of Clifford’s appearance, but his sniggers almost gave him away.

  “What the hell was that noise, kid?”

  “I don’t have any idea, Clifford. I heard it myself and came looking for it out here.”

  “Well, it had to be something.”

  “Yeah, it sure did.”

  “Shit! I guess it’ll go off again if it was something important, won’t it? I feel so bad with this flu that I ain’t even got the strength to look for whatever the hell it was.”

  “And I got another show to get on the air in a second.”

  “Mind you watch for smoke. Don’t let this damn place burn down on top of us if that was some kind of fire alarm or something.”

  “I will, Clifford.”

  And he was gone, grumbling, back to his sick-bed next to the purring Big Beulah.

  About a year after he started his first big job in the broadcasting business Jimmy found out how much knowledge Detroit had picked up in his experiments in the station’s back room. It was a blustery Sunday morning. The two boys had peddled full-speed to the station through wind-driven rain and stinging hail.

  Thank goodness, Detroit and he had saved up odds and ends and pieces from the junk-yard until they could finally put a bike together for Jimmy. He was proud of the bicycle, even though the frame was bent at an odd angle that meant he had to keep the handlebars steered several degrees to the right. He was especially glad he had it to ride that stormy Sunday morning. Fierce lightning bounced off the boiling clouds and thunder grumbled.

  Even Big Beulah balked when Clifford goosed her high voltage button to get her started that morning. Only on the third try did her big contactor switch finally stick, the current begin to flow through her multi-colored veins. Her roar and hum rattled the windows, almost as if the old woman was defying the electrical storm that raged outside, daring to challenge her signal with its static.

  “Look kid, I got to go to the store and get me some medicine,” Clifford told Jimmy wearily, once he was assured the transmitter was going to stay on the air. “I feel like I’m fixing to die back here. This weather’s got my bones achin’ like hell. I’ll be back directly.”

  Snodgrass knew it was illegal to leave the transmitter unattended by a licensed engineer, but Jimmy figured the crusty old man must need his anesthesia badly, so he did not say anything. Surely no Federal Communications Commission inspector would be out and about so early on a Sunday morning. Surely not out inspecting radio stations on such a stormy day.

  Detroit was glad that Clifford was leaving the station for a while. He could leave his damp hiding place under the back steps sooner and come inside where it was warm and dry.

  They were five minutes into the first religious show of the morning, the tape-recorded “Full Gospel and Holiness Hour” program. Suddenly, all hell broke loose throughout the building. A blinding flash of brilliant lightning scurried up the hallway. There was a sharp crack and a sizzle and then an instant explosion of thunder that threatened to shatter the control room’s double-paned windows and knock Jimmy Gill right out of the chair. The headphones hopped right off his head. He quickly accounted for his arms and legs and seemed to all still be there.

  Somehow, the lights in the studio only flickered, managing to stay lit through some kind of miracle. But the speakers that should have been rattling with the sound of fire-and-brimstone preaching and fevered gospel singing now only spit staccato static crashes and an ominous frying noise.

  Big Beulah had been severely injured by the lightning strike.

  Detroit had gone to the back room only a few seconds before the lightning strike. He wanted to get to work on one of his projects while Clifford was gone. But when Jimmy burst through the engineering office door to check on him, Dee was nowhere to be seen. Smelly, black smoke hung in the air everywhere. The atmosphere was electrically charged, saturated with the stench of burning wiring and ozone.

  Oh, my God! Jimmy’s first thought was that Detroit had been vaporized by the lightning. Completely gobbled up!

  Then he noticed the usually-locked door to Beulah’s cage was open and heard Detroit banging around somewhere inside her, talking to the old transmitter the way he did his bicycles and the projects on the work bench while they were under construction.

  “Detroit, you stupid so-and-so!” Jimmy was relieved to see his friend alive and not a pile of ashes, but at the same time he was furious at finding him in a place where all logic told him he should not be. “God help us, Dee! You’re going to get yourself fried to a crisp in there!”

  “Aw, the lightning just took out the filament transformer is all,” Detroit assured Jimmy. “I can switch it to another winding and get you back on before that old drunk Clifford even knows you’re off the air.”

  “But Dee, there’s electricity and high voltage all over the place in there and it’s still lightning outside like crazy...”

  Then Detroit stepped out of the cage, slammed the door hard behind him to re-set the interlock switch, reached as high as he could reach and flipped up a huge circuit breaker in a box on the wall. Once again he punched the high-voltage button on Beulah’s breast. She spat once, balked and bitched a bit, but then finally made up her mind to go ahead and work again. The old gal hummed and purred as if she had been rejuvenated by the jolt of heaven-sent lightning she had just taken.

  Jimmy Gill stood in the middle of the engineering office, his mouth open in awe. Detroit Simmons sat back down at Charlie McGee’s desk and calmly resumed soldering a mess of twisted wires into a metal chassis as if nothing had happened at all.

  The Full Gospel and Holiness Hour Choir happily sang its appreciation from the big corner speakers.

  Fifteen

  Jimmy knew it was inevitable that Detroit’s tinkering and experimenting and hanging around the station would lead to trouble. It turned out to be big trouble. It got Jimmy fired from his Sunday morning job, his first radio job, and it got him banished from WROG for good. And it came dangerously close to getting them both shot.

  Jimmy suspected all along that Charlie McGee was suspicious about what was happening in his department at WROG. There was no way he could not know that someone was coming to the station on the weekends, and that whoever it was, he was using his tools and parts to build things. But he never said anything to Jimmy about it. Or mentioned it to anyone else for that matter, as far as the boys knew. Either he was afraid he would have to start coming to the station on Sundays himself and putting up with the quirky preachers, or he was thankful for what was getting done there in his domain, with or without his permission.

  After a couple of years, the station had begun to pay Jimmy Gill a few dollars an hour for his labors. The manager even told him how pleased he was with the way he kept the preacher programs tight together with no dead air. He praised Jimmy for always racking up and playing the correct tapes instead of accidentally replaying the same one that ran the previous week. He thanked him for cutting off the preachers when their program time was up so they would not run over into somebody else’s time, no matter how fervently the minister might be in electronically
saving souls. And he was especially pleased with Jimmy for always making sure to collect the cash money before allowing the ministers on the air, and then giving receipts to those preachers who were live and who paid for their segments of time each week with wrinkled, wadded up, listener-contributed one-dollar bills.

  Even so, Jimmy was growing tired of the dull sameness of it all. Of never getting to play the rock and roll records that he loved, or to talk again into the microphone. He did take advantage of the dead time during the taped programs to flip some of the console’s switches to “AUDITION.” That gave him a chance to spin records and do his own “show.” Of course nobody could hear it except him, or Dee when he took a break from his mysterious project-building and sat in the control room with him.

  At least it gave Jimmy the chance to practice lowering his changing, cracking voice to as much of a baritone as he could muster. To work on his delivery and clever patter until it sounded as much like Jerry Diamond and the others as he could. To practice talking over the music at the beginning of records right up to the point where the singing began, unhurried and natural, just the way the pros did it.

  Detroit used his time wisely, too, hungrily learning all he could about the intricacies of the broadcasting and electronic equipment and the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. He borrowed books and brought them back the next Sunday morning. No one seemed to notice them missing. He also continued to use Charlie’s tools and parts to build contraptions and curious boxes, but he left the workbench and tools so neat and orderly that it was better organized than before he was there.

  Detroit even began to rewire some of the gear in the studio where the station’s commercials were recorded. Years of abuse and neglect had left them a mess of jury-rigged wiring and make-shift parts. All the jocks complained of static and hum and distortion when they tried to record there. Detroit also cleaned up the rat’s nest of old brittle wiring in the transmitter’s control circuits and redid the heavy cables that delivered power to Big Beulah and Little Bertha, the one-thousand-watt standby transmitter.