MEMORANDUM
FROM: A. Carnegie Hall, Station Mgr.
TO:WEEP Announcers
RE:Pay raises.I am unhappily saddened to here that there has been a continual of discussion re: pay raises for announcing personels.
WEEP has been very outgoing and generes, I think, in it's tradition of raising salaries whenever the Minimimum Wage goes up. Apparently some consider this sufficiency not enough.
I trust you all realise and understand that we would really truely love to increase the remuniation and pay to all our personnels. But, economical conditions being what prevail, there's only so much money to go around. Also, resent expences encurred in the renevation of our Executive Offices have proved more prohibtive than expected.
I might remind you, however, that if everyone would only put out a little more dillingence, sales people selling more time, announcers do better shows to increase our market share, making posible a small encrease some time.
Remember, your hear to work for the Lord, so you've got to work very hard.
But, you're working for the Lord, so you can't expect much money.
A.C.H./cak
Rory Buchan read the memo twice while he waited for the pre-recorded program to finish. It was a few minutes before 6:00 p.m., when his shift would begin, but he'd told the afternoon man to go home. There'd be nothing to say on the air before the station ID at the top of the hour.
At least two memoranda a week showed up tacked to the studio's walls. Mr. Hall felt strongly about memos, and no one was allowed to take them down but he. And since he never visited the studio (some of the announcers had never met him at all), the slips of paper had pretty nearly crowded out the acoustical panels. How they got posted in the first place was a Sacred Mystery.
Rory cued up his first two CD's and pulled his commercial carts for the next hour. He went into the news room (news closet, really) and cleared the wire service machine, pegging the stories, and waited for the weather forecast, which was due any minute.
Predictably, the forecast started printing about two minutes before air time. Rory rather enjoyed the suspense of standing over the old black machine, tensed to rip and run, while the printer clacked its leisurely lines out.
He made it to the mike with three seconds to spare. He pulled on the earphones and said, "The Righteousness Abounding Hour has been brought to you as a public service by WEEP Radio. It's six o'clock, and you're tuned to WEEP, AM and FM, Inspiration and Country Music for southeastern Minnesota. America can still be saved, and we're here to help. I'm Rory Buchan, and I'll be with you till midnight, keeping you company on a Wednesday night. Stay tuned for more music on the Country side, but first the weather.
"The National Weather Service reports a strong cold front moving south from Manitoba. We can expect temperatures to drop during the next few days, with increasing winds. Freezing temperatures and snow are also possible by the weekend, so you farmers will want to get those combines out and bring in what's left of your corn. This is Minnesota, folks, the Theater of Seasons. And as fast as they're bringing winter on, fall's boxoffice must have been really lousy.
"Look for northwesterly winds tonight, around eight miles per hour, increasing tomorrow. Temperatures tonight will be in the upper 30's to low 40's, tomorrow's highs in the upper 50's. Chance of precipitation 20% tonight, 30% tomorrow.
"Currently in Epsom, we're looking at winds from the northwest at eleven miles per hour, and our temperature an ominous 46°. No wind chill factor, but it won't be long.
"And that's the weather, brought to you by WEEP, the voice of decency in southeastern Minnesota. I'm Rory Buchan. Coming up, Sally Crocker with, 'You Cheat On Me, I Cheat On You.'
"But first a WEEP public service message: 'There'll be a special prayer meeting on the steps of the Minnesota Capital in Paul City which we still like to call St. Paul, no matter what the courts say to pray that God will guide the Supreme Court in Washington to overturn the Definition of Religion Act.'" He gave a telephone number for people who wanted to arrange for a ride.
He started the CD and took his earphones off. The red telephone light was flashing, but the line hummed when he picked the receiver up. Many callers thought the time to telephone an announcer was while nothing important was going on while he was announcing.
"God bless you anyway," said Rory.
He loaded his carts for the next break.
Rory was a tall, beefy young man with a lot of curly brown hair and a Buffalo Bill beard. A short upper lip gave him a pleasantly rabbity look. He wore blue jeans and a flannel shirt with cowboy boots, and a bronze cross hung from a thong around his neck. He was that fiercest form of Country Music fan, the converted Rocker.
The phone light blinked again, and he picked up the receiver.
"Hi, Rory, this is old Pontoon. How you doing?"
"Just fine, Pontoon. How's yourself?"
"Not too bad, not too bad, except for the arthritis. Couldn't hardly get out of bed this morning."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Well, be glad you're young."
"I enjoy it."
"Hey Rory, I sure do like that Righteous Rebounding Hour. That's a real good show. I listen to it every week, except when I miss it."
"Glad you like it, Pontoon."
"And I sure do like that music you folks play. Can't stand that Rock and Roll junk. Dirty, immoral Satonic music that Rock and Roll is."
"That's a fact, Pontoon; that's why I got away from it."
"Hell yes. Can you play 'Wakin' Up With Someone Even Uglier Than You'?"
"I think I can do that for you, Pontoon."
The first number was fading out. Rory potted it down and started the second, then ejected the first and turned to search the CD rack, the receiver tucked between his shoulder and ear.
"I sure appreciate it, Rory. You're a good guy. I listen to you all the time. I like good music, none of that nigger Rock and Roll."
Rory hung the phone up, but he continued looking for Pontoon's song. He'd promised.
The phone lit up again.
"Listen, Rory, you're a good kid, but you've got no idea what's goin' on in this country. Satonic powers is at work, and it all comes from those BLACK savages "
Rory hung up again.
The phone rang again.
"I don't take any offense, Rory, because I know you young folks all got brainwashed by the schools, but where do you think all this Satan worship is coming from? Cows mutilated, right here in our own county, and their owners is too scared to tell the cops, scared the hoodoos'll come and take their kids next.
"And what about old Jack Tysness, him whose farm that W.O.W. cult owns now? They say wild dogs ate him. Well I ask you whoever heard of a body ate up that bad in one day? People saw him alive in town that same morning. And I never heard of no wild dogs killing no man, anyhow."
"Look, Pontoon"
"This used to be a decent, God-fearing town, Rory. That was before the college started bringing in them BLACKS on football scholarships "
Rory hung up. The phone didn't ring again, and Rory took a moment to say a prayer for Pontoon. Then he broke for commercials and started the request. When he was done the phone light was blinking again.
"WEEP. God loves you."
"Hello, Rory," said a woman's voice. "Do you know who this is?"
"How are you, Violet?"
"Can you play, 'You Cheat On Me, I Cheat On You,' for me Rory, dear?"
"I just played that one, Violet."
"I know, Rory, but I'd really like to hear it again. It has special meaning for me."
"I'm sorry, that's against the rules. You know that."
"Well then, you know what my favorite song is, don't you?"
"I'm sorry, we don't have 'My Shy Violet.' We only play Country."
"Couldn't you get it? If you asked the manager?"
"We only play Country, Violet. I'm sorry."
"Well, play something by the Beaurivoir Brothers for me, won't you, Rory?"
"Yes, I can do that, Violet."
"Thank you, dear."
"You're welcome." Click.
Rory was always happy to play something by the Beaurivoir Brothers. They were his favorite group. Once they had been a Gospel group, and Rory was convinced that they had only pretended to cross over to mainstream Country. He knew in his heart that there was a secret message in the Beaurivoirs' songs. He was sure he could figure it out if he listened to them enough. Then he'd find his own Calling.
For Rory, the line between this world and the next was a very thin one.
Rory's shift ended at midnight. As he was clearing the teletype in the newsroom the phone rang. In that room it rang audibly.
"WEEP. God loves you." Rory hoped it wasn't anything that would keep him late.
"Is this Rory Buchan?" a man's voice asked, and Rory said it was.
"I've been told you're somebody who's concerned over what's happening to destroy our country today."
"I sure am. Lots of people are."
"That's right. But you know and I know that most people aren't really serious. Are you serious, Rory?"
"If you'd seen what I saw back in California if you'd been through what I've been through you'd know I am."
"Were you a drug user?"
Rory took a breath. "I was a drug user, and a drug runner, and a thief and a mugger and every other kind of bad thing. Praise God, He delivered me from it all."
"They said you'd say something like that. That's good. It means you understand you're not just talk. Do you know the Vinland Motel?"
"Out on Highway 60."
"There'll be a meeting there at 12:30 tonight. Some people who see the danger and are willing to be counted for the Lord. We'd like you to be there."
"A meeting? Who are you?"
"Just sinners saved by grace."
"How do I know you're not some kind of crazies? There's lots of crazies around. Just saying, 'Lord, Lord,' doesn't make you right with Jesus."
"Matthew 7:21. Come and see. That's what Philip said to Nathanael. John 1:46."
"Well you know your Bible. OK, I'll be there, but I'm not making any promises."
"That's fine. Come to Room 12 and knock."
When Carl Martell left the medical center he walked back to his office. It wasn't far. He felt disoriented by the pain killer, but he'd decided not to take the next day off. He'd let things slide the last few weeks, and it was time he took control again. He didn't have an early class on Thursdays, so he'd be able to sleep in. And maybe he could grade papers with his left hand.
He climbed the worn cement steps of Old Main, between the wooden pillars of the portico, painted white in homage to marble. He turned his key, awkwardly, in the heavy lock. Old Main had been built in Victorian grandeur as a hotel before 1900. Failing, it had been acquired by an association of Norwegian farmers who wanted a place where their children could learn business skills and the Word of God. It was still possible to learn business skills there.
In the dark, high-ceilinged lobby he paused for a moment to clear his head. Even in the dark, he almost felt the stares of the college's founders, Oskar Frette and Haldor Bendikson (affectionately known as Moral and Hardy to the students) from their gilt-framed portraits on the wall. Then, creaking across the hardwood floor, he made his way to the stairway that led to the second floor, where the History Department lived. He took the steps with deliberation his balance was off, and it was dark. It hadn't occurred to him to turn a light on. He struggled to unlock his office door for a full minute.
Inside he fumbled to the desk and switched the lamp on. The light stabbed his eyes, and he switched it off again. He sat a few minutes with his left hand over his eyes, feeling just as the doctor had told him he'd feel now and then. Maybe working tomorrow wasn't such a good idea.
He lost track of time. Footsteps in the hallway roused him. The old boards creaked, and somebody was giggling. There were voices, a boy's and a girl's (Correction, he told himself, Young Man and Young Woman. 'Boy' and 'Girl' are pejorative terms which infringe on basic human dignity. This was a universal truth, set forth in a memo from the President's office. The fact that Christiania College no longer taught the infallibility of Scripture did not mean it had abandoned the concept of infallibility. Nowadays infallibility didn't have the shelf life it once enjoyed, but it was ex cathedra while it lasted).
"Can we use one of the rooms?" the Young Man said.
"I don't know," said the Young Woman, "whose offices are these? Henrich, Fosse here's Carl Martell, the sexual harasser."
"I hear they let him off on the Julie Anderson thing."
"Well sure, they protect their own. The man's a known sexist."
"Yeah, but be fair. He's also known not to sleep with students. How many profs under sixty can say that?"
"So he's gay."
"Gay profs sleep with students."
"Then he's a closet gay. A hypocrite."
The Young Man began to recite:
"I do not love thee, Carl Martell;
The reason why I cannot uh..."
The Young woman laughed, "You can't use 'tell'!"
"On the reason why I cannot dwell!"
"Oh, God."
"But only this I know full well:
I do not love thee, Carl Martell."
The footsteps moved further down the hall. "Here," said the Young Man. "This door's warped. I think I can get it open with a credit card."
"You think we'll get in trouble, breaking and entering?"
"Don't worry about it. I've got a suitcase full of VQ points."
A door opened and closed. Martell smiled, oddly moved. It wasn't often one got epigrammatized in the modern college. And the young people's bigotry had been sincere, as the bigotry of the young always is.
There was no question of interrupting them. If, as the Young Man had said, he had plenty of VQ points, he was essentially immune from prosecution for anything less than a gross misdemeanor before the law, and for anything less than murder within the school.
A law passed a couple years back had required each U.S. citizen to fill out a questionnaire, under penalty of perjury, along with his or her annual income tax return. The answers to the questions on this form (What is your ethnic background? Have you ever been sexually molested? What was your parents' estimated annual income?) formed the basis for the awarding of Victimization Quotient points. These points were used to increase or decrease welfare benefits and adjust tax obligations, and were taken into consideration in judicial sentencing.
Anyway, the kids were probably just looking for a place to have sex, and thought it would be kinky to do it in a teacher's office. If you wanted to get into real trouble with civil rights lawyers, you couldn't do better than trying to prevent a teenage couple from copulating.
He tried to remember what he'd come up to the office to do.
Finally he left, moving as quietly as possible so as not to disturb the young burglars. Martell had a nice sense of personal honor, and to let them know he'd heard them insult him would have smirched it.
His feet knew their way home. His apartment wasn't far (nothing was in Epsom), but he wasn't usually medicated when he made the walk. There was such a thing as a taxi in town, but the driver would be long asleep by now.
Some people were awake though. Here and there, on lawns and rooftops, comet-watchers sat out in parkas and stocking caps, peering through telescopes and binoculars. It was the best time of night to see Cerafsky. Martell looked up too. After all, he had a message coming.
The comet shone bright as a neighbor's TV set seen through a window at night, a straight, white blade in the southwest, stretching between the constellations Pisces and Pegasus.
"A ball of space garbage," some science writer in a magazine had called it, as if that ended the matter. "Justly less famous than Halley's, though admittedly more spectacular this time around. Judging from the records, most of its passes seem to have escaped all notice."
Phooey. There was more to a comet to anything than could be learned by analyzing its composition. We have only five senses, after all, Martell reasoned (it was amazing how clearly he was thinking tonight). Suppose we had six or seven? What would we learn that would seem fabulous to us now? Think about that, astronomers and journalists! Think about that, Professor Forsythe!
No, best not to think about Professor Forsythe.
"Hey, Carl!" Martell lowered his face to see Roy Corson walking toward him. Although Roy belonged to the English Department, his office was along the same hall as Martell's. He'd lost a game of musical offices, he liked to explain, and History had had a room available. Martell thought that the two Young Persons could be doing unspeakable acts in Roy's office even now.
"Out kind of late, aren't you, Carl? Celebrating your vindication? Good for you. But how come you didn't invite me along? What's with the band-aid?"
"I had I got hurt. Stitches." Martell held his hand up. "You'll have to excuse me the doctor put something pretty heady in my veins and I don't think I'm tracking real well."
"You'd better get home and rest."
"My very plan."
"You want a lift?"
"No. It's not far now."
"You sure?"
"I'll be all right. Thanks."
"They give you pills?"
"Yeah. They're here somewhere." Martell patted at his pockets.
"Don't bother. Just make sure you take them. You should take drugs whenever you can, Carl. Good for the character."
He strolled away, a '70's revolutionary trapped in history as in amber. Martell wondered what he was doing out walking at midnight. One? 1:07 by his watch.
His apartment building stood on a corner. He paused at the intersection and studied it as if he'd never seen it before. There was his building, and a handsome clump of firs on another corner, masking a house, and a parking lot, and another house.
He'd never noticed before how large a space an intersection took up. But there it was, bathed in brave halogen light from a street lamp. You could teach a class in that space. Or hold a dance. Christiania had once (it was hard to believe) had a rule against dancing. Some in the community still pointed to its abolition as the beginning of the downhill slide.
Martell stepped out into the intersection, thinking itwasteful to let so much paved space go unused. He walked around in it, like a man in a new house. There was no traffic, yet he felt bold standing in dead center, temporary occupying force in Automobile Territory.
The pain killer was affecting him. No question.
And it must have been the pain killer that made him think he heard a rumbling overhead. Thunder? No. It was a fair night perfect for comet watching.
The rumbling grew louder, and he looked wildly about him for its source. In sudden panic he started for his apartment.
Glancing over his shoulder just as he reached the door, he thought he saw a line of clouded shapes in the sky, not quite blotting out the stars. They looked like those Ghost Riders In the Sky Vaughn Monroe had sung about once upon a time. There seemed to be hundreds of them, on horse-shapes, riding an unseen terrain high above the town; fading in, fading out, defying focus like cheap film stock. Black they were, and their horses were black, and at their head a gigantic black figure rode, who screamed and waved a spear, and his black cloak flapped like ravens' wings.
"Bed. Bed is the thing," said Carl Martell as he poked his key at the lock with his left hand. He felt naked at the back.
In her little house, once a country schoolhouse, the witch laid her cards out on the kitchen table, one at a time.
She didn't look like most people's idea of a witch. She wore her brown hair in a pleasant shag, and her shirt and jeans came from L.L. Bean.
The witch was a charlatan, but not merely a charlatan. Most of her business was carnival tricks, and it kept the customer satisfied. But now and then the Patterns appeared, as they had ever since she was a little girl. From time to time, unbidden. Exciting, when it happened, like fast driving. And frightening in the same way.
She sipped a cup of herb tea, still buzzing from the joint she'd smoked to calm her nerves. The Patterns were back tonight. The strongest ever. No matter how she shuffled the deck, the message came out the same.
Death. Violence. Fire.
The witch was troubled. She was not a woman of ill will. She considered herself a White Practitioner. She had never poisoned a well, or stolen a child, or gone about invisible to pinch her neighbors. Or wanted to.
Death. Violence. Fire. The faces of the cards looked past her with the idiot depravity of Eighteenth Century woodcuts. The witch did not wish these things for herself, and she did not wish them for others.
The knowledge had been growing in her for weeks. The leaves spoke of it as the trees shed them, and the cold breeze out of the north was full of it. Something was coming, for good or ill, and it was not something she could control.
"I'm out of my league here," she whispered.
It was the secret fear of all her Order that the forces, unseen and inscrutible, which obeyed her (she knew) by whim would turn, like goaded bulls, to crush her. She had cultivated her gifts, knowing the risk, in the hope of doing good.
Now, as the turning approached (what sort of turning?) she wondered about that long-ago choice. Could it be that Good was not, as she had been taught, an elastic, gauzy thing you groped for in the dark, but something hard as iron, big as a planet, something you ignored at your peril, like clean air and healthy food?
No. That was what the Puritans had thought, and the Puritans had been vicious burners.
The Patterns were clear. Some kind of turning was coming.
The witch felt very alone.