Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter (92 page)

“I
know,” I said, trying to strike up conversation. “I’ll go check the library,
but I’m pretty sure we have it.” We did—on a Janis Joplin Greatest Hits
LP. We hadn’t really gotten around to Janis, so I guess Hal would gripe at me
if the boys in the VFW hall bitched at Hibbert tomorrow over coffee and donuts.
But it wasn’t antiwar, wasn’t risqué, just a great love song.
What the hell
,
I thought. “Who is this going out to?”

“No
one,” the voice said casually. “Just for me.”

“And
me is?”

A
pause. “Kyria.” She spelled it. Like she was used to it.

“That’s
a pretty name. I’ve never known a Kyria.” Her lilting voice drew me in.

“Thank
you,” she said sweetly, her voice going an octave higher, bashful at the
attention. Like she wasn’t used to it.

“Do
you live here?” I asked. The Animals were half-done. I grabbed a random 45 from
the small cardboard box resting by Turntable 1. The Who’s “My Generation.” No
explicit ban on early Who, so I took it out, laid it on the turntable, cued it up.

“Yes,”
she drew out the word.

“Do
you go to school?”

“Not
for a while now.”

“Do
you think we could meet sometime?”

“Aren’t
you being a little forward? We don’t know each other.”

“What
better opportunity –”

“Your
record is about to end. You’d better put another one on. ‘Bye.”
Click
,
and a dial tone. I was left there staring at the phone for a minute, longing
for the first friendly and intelligent voice I’d heard since arriving here.

I
ran back to the library, searched frantically for the Janis Joplin album found
it with a couple seconds to go as the last crashing chords of “My Generation”
sounded, I visualized Pete Townsend trashing an amp with his guitar, Keith Moon
setting the drums on fire, and hit the green PLAY button for the first ad, cued
down #2, and slipped the album from its sleeve. Track 4, I dropped the needle,
cued it up—the cue burn wasn’t too bad—and hit the second ad, then
the PSA and after everyone had been advised to write to Pueblo, Colorado, for
more information, I potted up the mike.

“Here’s
a request, going out on this starry, starry night to Kyria, a special lady out
there in WFY land. Take a piece of my heart, baby.” Corny, on-the-make boss
jock stuff copied from TV and radio shows that made me wince as I said it, but
I was twenty-one and trying to impress a girl. I hit the switch, turntable 2
began spinning, Janis began belting out “come on, come on, come on.”

The
rest of the evening was uneventful. I signed off promptly at ten, shutting down
the big tower in the rear of the control room, tearing off the paper from the
teletype machine, so as not to jam it, killed the lights, locked the doors,
dumped the coffee pot and put Folger’s crystals for John Raymond, the morning
man, four scoops, extra strong, and was out by quarter after, back to the
trailer and a couple of beers and an old Heinlein novel.

It
happened again the next night. The Royals were on the road to Detroit, so no
game. I began the Rock Block at nine, starting off with “Love Me Do.” Halfway
through the hour, coming back from the bathroom, the red light was blinking. I
grabbed the receiver as I sat down. Johnny Rivers was crooning “Baby I Need
Your Loving,” and fading, so I put both hands on the pots, cradling the phone
in my neck, turned down 4, hit the ON for turntable 1, cued up 2, and gave John
Mayall and the Bluesbreakers to this small sleepy hamlet.

“Hi,”
said the voice. Kyria, high and airy and happy. “Thanks for the song last
night. You still do requests?” she asked coyly.

“Haven’t
heard any complaints from the management,” I said breezily. “More Janis?”

“Mmmmm,
noo. Let me think. There’s so much. Oh, how about Creedence Clearwater Revival?
I really dig ‘Who’ll Stop the Rain?’”

Dig
?
Jeez, no one had talked like that since tie-dyed shirts went out of style ten
years ago. “Sure. Got some Creedence right here,” I patted the box. I had a
half-dozen CCR 45s, including “Who’ll Stop the Rain.” I thumbed through the
box, found it near the back, took Procol Harum off 2, and put on CCR, cued it
up. The cue burn (from doing what I was doing) was terrible.

“Hey,”
I said softly, apologetically, “I’m sorry about last night, if I was sounding
like I was trying to hit on you.” I had been, I was sorry that it didn’t work.
“It’s just that, well, I’m new in town, and I don’t really know anyone. And it
gets kinda lonely out here sometimes at night.”

A
small giggle. “It’s okay, you don’t need to apologize. I’m not used to guys
hitting on me, either.” She was quiet for a moment, and then added softly, “I
get lonely too.”

“With
a voice like that?” Was she grossly fat? Her face a morass of acne and pus? Her
teeth crooked and coke-bottle glasses perched on a pug nose? “That’s kinda hard
to believe.”

“Thank
you,” a small, shy sound. “Most guys around here don’t notice your voice.
They’d prefer it if you didn’t use it at all. Some of them size up women like
they’re breeding cattle, looking for good hips and an ample bust. And I don’t
have either one.” She sounded sadly bitter by the end.

“I
don’t farm, so I don’t care. Hey, what’s your last—
Click
,
buzzzzz
.
“name?”
Damn, what a tease
. The Bluesbreakers finally faded, and I
potted up CCR. “Here’s another request, for Kyria, going out over the airwaves
on this lonely Wednesday night. Call me again, baby. Here’s Creedence, here on
WFY.” She didn’t call again, and I was out at ten.

My
thoughts the next day were on her, puffing along with my shoes crunching under
the gravel as I did a good hard four miles. Back in town, I looked at all the
female faces, those that were old enough to be out of high school but not old
enough to collect Social Security, and tried to guess which one might be hers.
After a while, I decided it was a joke. It was some lonely head case, too shy
to use her real name, messing with me, the same way other guys—or girls—had
messed with her. She was probably a fat, recluse spinster who wrote bad poetry
after reading far too much Emily Dickinson, endlessly listened to Janis Ian and
talked to her many cats. Or maybe some psychotic wacko, and I was walking into
a real-life replay of
Play Misty for Me
, only I wasn’t Clint Eastwood.

“You’ve
got a fan club, Steve,” Hal said to me with a wry smile that afternoon as I
came in. He was back from a sales call, a big black binder tucked under his
arm.

“Yeah,
I guess so,” I said, pouring the sludge that passed for coffee into a Kansas
City Royals mug sent to us as a promo device. I was on in five minutes.

“The
program seems to be working out well. I think we may go with a jazz format on
Sunday afternoons and evenings, if you’d be interested.” Hal had a slight smile
on his face. Was I interested? I was gonna bring a little culture to this burg,
introducing them to Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck and Thelonious Monk and John
Coltrane. I jumped at the chance, and Hal said he’d talk to Hibbert about my schedule,
but consider it good as done, maybe start next week, two at most.

It
was the bottom of the third, Royals up 3-1 on the Twins, one out, two on,
George Brett at bat, when the light flashed again. I answered, expecting Hal to
have some reminder or change in the commercial rotation.

“Guess
you can’t do requests tonight,” Kyria said. My heart jumped.

“Guess
not,” I croaked, then recovered. “Looks like there won’t be another rock hour
until—Monday. There’s a noon start with the Yankees.” A low roar from the
speakers under excited voices told me Brett had connected and sent one into the
bleachers.

“That’s
too bad,” she sighed. “I really
needed
to hear something tonight.”

“Tell
me now. I’ll play it on Monday.”

“I
might change my mind by then,” she giggled, a tinkling of glass bells and
stardust. Her voice had a teasing lilt to it.

“So
I can’t play a request. Does that mean goodbye?” My voice was a little
accusatory.

“Oh,
no, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be abrupt with you, hanging up like that.
It’s just that—well, I’m not used to—to talking much.”

“Shy?”

“You
could say that.”

“Feel
like talking some more?” I asked, hope oozing out every pore.

“Sure,”
she said. And we did. She wanted to know about me. There wasn’t
much—ordinary childhood in a Topeka suburb, parents who hoped for so much
more for their son than hoboing around the country, from station to station
every couple of years, the older sister who had been a Kappa Delt at K-State
and was now just out of law school and working in Wichita, the older brother
who went to Vietnam with the Marines in ’69 and never came back, my radio
career so far, starting at a low-watt station in Topeka in high school, going
to Salina for a couple years until I could no longer suffer disco, and finally
here.

I
kept one ear on the speakers and an eye on the clock, getting the commercials
and station IDs in as scheduled, which made the conversation a little
disjointed. We kept talking until the last out, about our tastes in
music—hers were out of date by a decade, so I figured she was probably
around thirty. I couldn’t blame her, though there was some good stuff of late,
like Boston or Skynrd or Fleetwood Mac. I told her that she reminded me of the
song Stevie Nicks sang, “Rhiannon,”
she is a cat in the dark and then she is
the darkness
, mysterious and elusive, a voice in the ether.

“Who?”
Jeez, this was ’79, no one hadn’t heard of Fleetwood Mac. I mentioned
Rumours
and
Tusk
. She was silent for a moment, and then merely said “oh,” like
she was being polite over some gross error of mine.

I
ran the national anthem cart, shut down, watched the board and tower go dark. I
picked up the phone, and her voice simply said “That was nice. Thank you. Can I
call you tomorrow?” and I couldn’t refuse.

And
she was good to her word. Another night matchup with the Twins, top of the
fifth, Dan Quisenberry was getting ready to smoke Ron Jackson on a 2-3 count.
The phone lit up. “Are you
ever
going to play more records?” Kyria
teased.

“Monday,”
I said, looking at the wallet-sized scheduled tacked to the small corkboard on
the wall behind Turntable #2. “It’s an early game, starts at three, oughta be
over by seven if there’s no extra innings. Don’t you have a record player at
home?”
Whap
from the speakers. Strike, end of inning, time for a station
ID.

“I
did, but it’s not the same. I like to listen to the radio. I had the little
radio in my room set on WFY.”

“Small
wonder. It’s the only station around for miles.”

“Yeah,
but on good nights I could get some AM stations out of Wichita, or even Denver.
But WFY played real music, not the cowboy stuff. I’d turn it on and fall asleep
to the Beatles, or Chicago, or the Temptations.”

“We
still have the albums. They’ve been gathering dust for the past ten years.”

She
giggled. “So you get to play cleaning lady, too.”

“Yeah.
And Hibbert gives me ten bucks a month for keeping the grass out front mowed.
God knows who sees it, though.”

“My
father got me a radio for Christmas one year. It had AM, FM, and shortwave. I
could hear the BBC on a good night. Imagine that,” she said wondrously.
“Hearing words from London. Or some foreign language stations. There’s one from
Japan, I think, low on the shortwave dial. I didn’t understand it, but it was
still fascinating.”

“What
else do you like to do?” I asked slyly.

“I—I
write a lot,” she stammered. “Stories, poetry, things like that. Or I used to,
in school.”

“Tell
me about them.”

“Oh,
nothing special. Some poems about silly things, stories about girls with dreams
too big for small towns.” She wanted to talk about something else. Her passion
was secret, something to be kept from view until the last word was penned, the
last typo or grammatical boner corrected.

“It
doesn’t sound silly. Mari Sandoz writes about it.”

“You’ve
heard of her?”

“
Old
Jules
was an assigned read my senior year. I actually enjoyed it so much
that I read
Love Song to the Plains
on my own.” Maybe it was because
Jules Sandoz was so much like my own father, demanding and distant. “Ever sell
anything?”

“No.
I won some prizes, though. But that was a long time ago.”

“You
quit?”

“Yeah.
Circumstances beyond my control.” Her voice was quavering, growing fainter. Was
it the hectic existence of a farm wife, or the weary routine of a mother, or
both? Or something else? My antennae told me not to pursue it, at least not
now.

I
checked the clock. The second hand was swooping towards the top of the hour,
and a station ID. I pulled one of the carts out, scratched plastic and smudged
letters on yellow tape on the end, stuck it in the machine, left hand on the
cart machine, right on the pot, and waited for Fred White to give the cue.

“I’ve
tried writing too, you know,” I told her. “But it’s no good.” I had penned a
few things in high school, real space opera shoot ‘em-ups scribbled in a Mead
tablet in study hall, that even now were oddly flat. I told her about a little
embarrassed at first. But she giggled knowingly.

“I
had the same problem. I would write about medieval princesses, but I got bogged
down in details. I didn’t know about clothing, about speech patterns, the
politics of the time, or society in general. All I knew was from the awful
fantasy books I’d read.”

“So
what’d you do?”

“First
rule of writing,” she said. “Write what you know.”

“All
I know is boring.”