Authors: Rob Levandoski
“Gladys, give me something to eat,” he said about six o'clock. She handed him a melon. He threw it into the passing corn. “Ain't we got anything else?”
“Nothing you don't have to cook,” she said.
He held out his hand for another melon. He sliced it in two with his pocketknife and worked on both halves. “I don't know about you folks, but I'm hungry as a suckling lamb.”
Will watched him gobble. “For someone who was supposed to be dead two days ago, you sure eat a lot.”
I clenched my teeth, expecting Gus to turn on Will. Instead he was genuinely apologetic. “You all know I fully intended on being dead by now,” he said.
Gladys leaned forward and sympathetically rubbed the knot on his head. “You boys can't blame Gus because the Weebawauwauans don't have the walnuts to kill him.”
Gus swatted her hand away. “Quit playing with my head, Gladys.”
Will should have let matters rest. He couldn't, of course. Gus Gillis had ruined his life. “All I know is that it's already Friday afternoon and we've got to be home before Church on Sunday. Even if you get killed in the next five minutes and Ace drives like hell to Chicago, we wouldn't have time to see one-fourteenth of the wonders.”
Gus sank deeper into the seat. “You sure know how to burden a guy.”
Will stayed with it. “You sure know how to ruin a guy's pilgrimage.”
I saw Gus's hands tighten around the barrel of his gun. “You got any film left in your camera?”
“A whole roll,” Will said. “Unless you ate it.”
Gus's knuckles went white. “Judas Priest! You have got to be the orneriest creature to ever wear shoes. I've half a mind to blow that funny head of yours right into Lake Michigan. Pull this thing over, Ace.”
This was years before Gladys told me that Gus was incapable of shooting anybody. So I took his threat for real. “You wouldn't kill Will just for talking back a little, would you?”
“Just pull it over.”
I kept on flying.
Gus pointed his gun in the general direction of my head.
I pulled it over.
Gus jumped out, and with his gun sticking straight out from his hip, started across the empty field. We scrambled after him, all certain Will was about to be executed for his sass. “He ain't gonna shoot Will, is he?” Clyde asked in a sideways whisper.
“I doubt it,” Gladys whispered back.
“He might as well,” Will said in anything but a whisper. “I won't ever get to the World's Fair anyway.”
Gus stopped.
We all stopped.
Gus looked at Will through squinty, disappointed eyes. “Where's your camera?”
Will sheepishly pointed toward the Gilbert SXIII.
I could see the veins wiggling in Gus's reddening neck. “Well go get it!”
Will hurried back to the Gilbert SXIII, stumbling more than once.
“What a flat tire that boy is,” Gus said.
Will returned with his camera. He held it up to his eye and pointed the lens right at Gus. “OK, go ahead and shoot me. But I can't promise the picture won't develop a little jumpy.”
Gus just about melted into the ground like April snow. “You are a whole set of flat tires. You think I want you to take my picture at the same time I'm blowing your head into Lake Michigan? Judas Priest. I don't even know which direction Lake Michigan is. I ain't gonna shoot you. I ain't gonna shoot nobody.” He stuck his chin out and slowly turned his head left and right. “Can't anybody see it on my face?” he asked. “Look close. Look close. You can see it, can't you, Gladys?”
Gladys studied his face. “You mean the goose egg on your forehead?”
“Not the goose egg, Gladys. My whole face. My whole diddly-damn face!”
We all studied his face now. We were stumped.
“Are you all blind? Can't you people see how low I am?”
“I can see it,” I said, even though I couldn't.
He patted my shoulder. “Thank you, Ace.” Then he shuffled away, maybe ten feet. He turned and dropped to one knee. Pressed his cheek against his gun barrel. “I am in the blackest mood of my life,” he said. “I have been trying for nearly a month now to get killed in a hail of bullets. And here I am. Still alive. I've let you down, Gladys. I've let you boys down. Most of all I've let myself down. Will, I know you don't owe me nothing, but I want you to capture this black mood on my face. And when I do manage to die, I want you to give that picture to every newspaper in the country, big and small, so the whole world can see what a troubled soul I was.”
“Be happy to,” Will said. While he readied and steadied his camera, Gus played with the brim of his fedora. We all held our breath. Right in the middle of Will's click, Gus's black mood gave way to an inspired smile. He rose. Walked right past us. In a trance. He stopped and pointed to a faraway line of trees. “Is that what I think it is?”
We all strained to see what he was seeing.
Gladys saw it. “Oh Gus! It is!”
What it was, was a radio tower.
Ten minutes later we were sneaking toward a little flat-roofed building made out of cement blocks. The building sat at the end of a long driveway, atop a grassy knob that rose out of the tall corn. On one side of the building stood a chicken yard with only one nervous hen. On the other side of the building stood the radio tower itself, a zigzag of rusty iron surrounding an inner ladder nobody in his right mind would climb. An old school bus and a dusty panel truck sat next to the door.
We reached the door. An
On the Air
sign hung from a nail. Gus thought about knocking, then barged in. Hillbilly music hit us in the face.
This wasn't Radio City Music Hall. There was one main room about twenty by twenty and a second room with a large glass window which apparently had combined duty as control room, kitchen, and bedroom. Behind that window sat an enormous man in bib overalls. He had Virginia ham jowls and a black-as-coal pompadour. There was a microphone in front of him and several empty Canada Dry bottles, all quart sized. He was plucking a chicken. In the main room there were twenty or so chairs set up in rows, all empty. On one wall hung a banner proclaiming the WEEB Friday Night Hoe-Down Featuring the Harmony Heavers. Below the sign were the Harmony Heavers themselves. They were singing some dumb song called “Chawin' Chawin' Gum.”
The Harmony Heavers were one of those strange country jug bands all the rage then. Clowns and minstrels wrapped into one. One man was dressed as a hobo with a ratty porkpie hat and a bandanna around his neck; he was playing a guitar. Another wore a farmer's straw hat, big rubber boots, and a pasted-on Uncle Sam beard; he was going crazy on a little squeeze-box accordion. A third member of the band was wearing fancy cowboy garb, woolly chaps and a tall Hopalong Cassidy hat; he was playing a fiddle. A man wearing huge fake ears was blowing on a jug. The drummer intrigued me most. He was wearing a fancy three-piece suit and derby; had a black goatee glued on his chin. His bass drum was an old washtub, his snare drum a round tin box sitting atop a wooden crate; his cymbals were pot lids. All five men sported big show business smiles, even though every chair was empty.
Gus motioned for us to sit in the front row. Apparently we were going to enjoy the hoedown before holding it up. The Harmony Heavers finished “Chawin' Chawin' Gum.” Their show business smiles immediately slid into frowns of boredom. The enormous man behind the glass set aside his chicken and leaned into his microphone: “Evening everyone. This is Lloyd Potts, your fave-or-rite announcer. You are listening to the
WEEB Friday Night Hoe-Down
, featuring the heavenly harmonies and hilarious hijinks of the Harmony Heavers. Howdy boys!”
The Harmony Heavers stepped up to their microphone, their show business smiles back and beaming. “A Hoosier howdy to you, Lloyd,” they said in unison.
Lloyd Potts waved through the glass. “We want to welcome you fellas back for your fifty-seventh consecutive appearance here on the
WEEB Friday Night Hoe-Down
.”
“Our pleasure to be back, Lloyd!”
“And ours, boys!”
“Thanks a million, Lloyd!”
“Well, thank you a million. Say, how about another musical treat for our studio audience and the fine folks out there in radio land?”
“Our pleasure, Lloyd!” One. Two. Three. Four. They broke into a worthless song called “My Horse Ain't Hungry.” Halfway through the number the drummer came out front, tipped his derby to Gladys, and tap-danced like a goddamn fool.
Later Will had them pose for a picture with Lloyd.
I still have all those pictures Will took: the bon voyage pictures with his mother, the picture by the Indiana line sign, the one of Will down in the dumps, the one with Aunt Mary and the beagles, all the pictures of Gus and Gladys posing with our victims, the blurry one of Gus having his epiphany in that empty field, the one of Lloyd Potts and the Harmony Heavers. I keep them in a box along with his
Official Guide Book of the Fair
and Gladys's radio scripts. My aviator's cap and goggles are in there, too. So's my cooking school diploma and my discharge papers, my commendation, and my blue spiral notebook with my recipes for feeding one thousand men at a crack. All under my bed here at the Sparrow Hill Retirement Villa.
“
You can talk to Jesus, get the answer right away
;
there will be no static, every word he'll hear you say;
In the air above, or on the earth below
,
you 're in touch with heaven o 'er God's radio
.”
“G
OD
'
S
R
ADIO
”
BY
J. W. P. B
AILEY
Sixteen/Checkered-Shirt Cowboy
Piecing together what happened wasn't easy. It took most of my life. But I had to do it. I owed it to Will. Owed it to Mrs. Randall and Clyde. Owed it to myself.
My first attempt was in the summer of 1942 when I took that bus up to Weebawauwau Center and found Bud Hemphill, Sheriff Orville Barnes's whore ladyfriend Millie Macmillan, his cousin Albert Finley, and Lloyd Potts, too. Millie told me about the Chicago FBI man named Pruitt. Told me about the part he played. Another twenty-two years passed before I cooled down enough to look him up.
After the war I returned to my parents' farm on Stony Hill Road. I could've gone back to work at B. F. Goodrich but I needed more out of life. When I drove to Bennett's Corners to see Will's brother Clydeâjust back from the war himselfâI stopped in to visit with Ruby and Rudy and buy some cigarettes. I learned they were about to retire. Wanted to sell out. I didn't want to become a storekeeper, but their fine building would make a dandy restaurant. The war and depression were over. Jobs were falling out of the sky. Money was growing on trees. People were crazy about eating out. So I put my uniform on and took my cooking school diploma and commendation to the bank. Got a loan. Bought Ruby and Rudy's store. Opened the R&R Luncheonette. It was a good name for a restaurant I figured. All the returning GIs knew what R and R wasârest and relaxation. It also stood for Ruby and Rudy, giving, I figured, my new business a bit of emotional continuity. Everybody in Bennett's Corners loved Ruby and Rudy. On their last day in business I took a picture of them standing arm in arm on the front step. Hung an eight-by-ten print of it on the wall by the cash register. Outside I put up a venetian blind string of signs just like the one I'd seen at Hal's Half Way.
I met and married Lois Cobb and settled down to make a fortune in my fine ten-stool, ten-booth restaurant, located right where six roads came together like pieces of a pie. I did pretty well for a few years. Then they built the Big Boy on U.S. 42. I fought like the devil to compete. I sold triple-decker hamburgers for the same price as their double-deckers. I concocted a secret mayonnaise sauce five times better than theirs. By 1955 I was broke and on the verge of divorce. Sold out to some dreamer home from the Korean War who figured he could make a better go of the place if there was a television set on the wall and a pinball machine by the window. That's when I went to see Gladys Bartholomew in Mingo Junction. She didn't want her old radio scripts back and she didn't want to talk much about that week in 1934. Still, I learned a little.
I took my R&R moneyâthe half Lois Cobb didn't getâand opened a frozen-custard stand in Brunswick. Called it the Dairy Doodle. The whole country was goo-goo over frozen custard in the fifties. And lots of autoworkers were moving out from Cleveland, buying little three-bedroom ranch houses with attached garages. Put up a new string of venetian blind signs offering passersby every frozen temptation imaginable.
I did pretty well until 1968 when a McDonald's came in. I started selling hamburgers again, too. But I couldn't make them as fast as McDonald's, or sell them as goddamn cheap. Sonofabitch. I was out of business again. Fifty-two years old. Sold the farm on Stony Hill Road for what was a fortune then. Fifty-seven thousand. I took a drive to Indiana. Looked up Will's Aunt Mary. She was living in a trailer park in Michigan City, on the banks of Lake Michigan. She was an old woman now. And sitting there, I couldn't imagine how I once thought she was the most sumptuous woman alive. Learned how her German husband Fritz had tried to rescue us. I never knew that. Fritz died of a stroke in October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, carrying a huge bag of canned food back from the supermarket. Mary said he was worried to death about a Russian H-bomb being dropped on Valparaiso. He planned to hole up in his basement with a can opener until the radiation wore off.
From Aunt Mary's trailer I drove to Chicago and found the FBI man named Pruitt. He was living in a suburb called Elmhurst, west of the city. He'd just been forced to retire and he was angry about it. Hippies were descending on Chicago for the Democratic National Convention and he wanted desperately to give them all haircuts with the heels of his wingtips. Pruitt told me more about what happened that week in 1934 than anybody else. It took every bit of religion I had not to kill him right there on his patio.