David Zimmer felt like he lived at the end of the line, at the bottom of the barrel, or at a frequency so low that it could only be heard by whales. Being the last name on any roll or list was just part of it. What festered was a feeling of being left out, left behind, or simply ignored. His father moved the family frequently, but no one talked to David about it. Instead, he’d hear a muffled argument through his bedroom wall during the night, and the next morning his father would announce their new destination. His father was a salesman, always on the play, pitching everything from water filtration systems to time-share condos, but never finding the success he promised David and his mother. Arguments grew louder as the failures grew in frequency, and one night his bedroom wall shook with the force of a body being thrown against the other side. He listened with his ear against the wall and heard his mother sob. He wanted so badly to shut the noise out, but he couldn’t pull his ear away from the wall. The next morning, she wore big sunglasses that hid her eyes and in the car she sang along with the radio—Where did our Love Go? He loved to hear her sing with the radio. She dropped him off at school as usual, but at the end of that day he stood waiting until all his classmates had been picked up or shuttled onto buses. Well after the sun had dipped low in the afternoon sky, his father finally arrived at the school and told David that his mother was gone. “She left us,” he said.
+
A week later, David and his father moved to a motel in Dothan, Alabama. David asked, “What about school?”
“I’ll teach you what you need to know,” his father said.
However, like many of the other promises made, his father couldn’t cope with having a nine-year old boy around while he was trying to sell worthless shares in Amway or Herbalife, so he’d enroll him in school, promising the administrators that David’s transcripts would be sent along directly. Of course, that rarely happened. Sometimes David envied his mother’s courage to leave, and even though he felt betrayed by that decision, there were times he missed her, wondered where she was and how she was doing. Sometimes he wondered what songs she listened to on the radio in her new world.
+
As he and his father moved westward—Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, Slidell—David became adept at paring down his possessions. One of the few things David carried with him from place to place was a pocket transistor radio. He’d found the blue radio at a bus stop, and although the battery compartment door was missing, with a new battery and a piece of electrical tape to hold it in place, it worked. At school, he listened to kids talk about singers and bands; being the perpetual new kid, no one asked him anything. David liked radio because it could be the center of conversation, like at school, or it could be a friend when David found himself alone, which was frequently. Music soothed, but the announcer, the voice in control, captivated his imagination. Wherever they moved, the radio offered the comfort of an old friend. There was always a station that played the music he liked and a voice that greeted him with warmth. At night, he used an earphone to listen in bed. He felt comfort in the confident golden voices that carried him from one song to the next. Sometimes the voice told stories that turned into something else, like a commercial, and sometimes the stories led into a song about to be played. DJs earned his trust as strong-jawed men who spoke truth into the microphone. As he drifted to sleep, he’d imagine a day when people would turn a switch and tune a knob to find his voice, and that he too could make people feel the same way.
+
Their moves had tracked steadily westward along I-10, and when David turned seventeen they moved to Lake Charles. KNUS, a new station in the market, tried to make a name by having their morning DJ pole sit. It made the station the talk of the school. The pole stood seventy-five-feet tall and had a tree house-sized platform on top with colored banners and pennants emblazoned with the station’s call letters and the frequency, and it sat near the drive-in movie theater. Morning Mike, who spent one-hundred days DJing from the top of the pole, occasionally provided suggestive commentary to the movies at the theater. Everyone knew about the pole-sitting DJ, and David dreamed of being able to sit above all the chaos. He wanted to play the music people listened to in their car on the way to work or dropping their kids off at school.
When his father decided it was time to move again, David packed as he’d always done. But on the day of their departure, David’s legs didn’t work.
“Come on, Beaumont will be great,” his father said.
David thought about his mother, and how she’d just left one day without warning. He stood still and thought about school and his senior year. He’d lost track of how many different schools he’d attended, but at this moment he’d decided that the number would go no higher. He’d simply grown tired of never belonging anywhere. He stood his ground and dropped his bag by his feet. “I don’t think so,” he said.
His father looked at him from the driver’s side of the Datsun and paused. David expected to see him grow taller, to put on his sale’s voice, to work his craft, but instead he seemed to shrink a little bit, and then he pulled at his keys and tossed one to David. “Rent’s due in a week. Stay until they call the Sheriff to evict you. That should buy you 30 days or so.” He looked down at the ground for a moment and then back at David. “Are you sure?”
David rolled his molars together as he felt the ground under his feet become uncertain. Despite the constant drama, and all the moves, his father had been the one constant in his life. To let go of him, to step out without any plan or support made the small hairs on the back of his neck prickle, and he felt a drop of perspiration slide down his spine. Still, he nodded. “I’m sure.”
“Good luck, son,” he said and got into his car and pulled onto the street. Suddenly, he was alone, truly alone.
+
That night, David wondered what to do next. Some in his school were going to college, but not him, and he didn’t have the physical stature to enlist in the service or work on the offshore oil rigs. He tuned his radio to KNUS and listened, and the voice he heard felt like home. Regardless of where they had moved over the years, the friendly voice on the radio was always there. So that night he decided to call the station. He dialed and waited.
“KNUS; we play all the hits. What can I play you for?”
It was strange to hear that voice through the phone, the same voice, though not used in the same way, kind of like how his father could turn his charm on or off. Something about the moment made him take a breath. “Hi. Uh, I’ve got a weird question?”
“Alright,” the DJ said.
David felt the trepidation in the man’s voice; he figured DJs get pranked a lot. If you ask for people to call all the time, David reasoned, you’d have to expect someone to act stupid sooner or later. Is Seymour Butz there? Can I speak to Mike Hunt? David cleared his head.
“Do you have to go to college to be a DJ?” David asked.
“I have an associate’s from ITT, but no, you don’t have to have one. Some of the jocks here barely made it out of middle school. They’re real animals, let me tell you. You’ve heard the morning crew, right? Those guys—”
The word jocks rang in David’s head as the DJ kept talking. He’d never thought of the word in that context. Jocks were football or basketball players who got invited to parties. David was not a jock, though now he thought he could be. He’d be at all the parties because radio was everywhere. He’d even heard that sometimes when bands came to town to play a show the local DJ would get to introduce them to the waiting crowd. David began to see the possibilities, envisioning himself introducing John Cougar or Survivor to cheering crowds.
After school the next day, he borrowed a tape recorder from the library and used it to practice announcing. He’d listen to the cadence and inflection in the voice of the announcers. He worked hardest on the PSAs. The FCC requires stations to operate in the public interest, so they make public service announcements that announce food drives, park clean-ups, literacy programs, AA meetings, and school board elections. Local issues mattered to the public, so he worked hard until his tone rang true like a casual smile with a reassuring wink. He made demo tapes and sent them out to all three local radio stations, but no voice from any of the radio stations reached out to him.
He had two months before graduation, and only a few weeks left in the apartment his father had rented. David knew he had to do something, so he walked down the road and hit every store front, looking for work. He didn’t have any luck until he reached Bateaux’s Seafood restaurant.
They hired him to be a host, but they quickly discovered he froze when he had to look at customers in the eye and talk. The manager called him in after his first hour and gave him the bad news.
“Do you have a job where I don’t have to talk?”
“Dishwasher,” the manager said. “No one wants to hear what the dishwasher has to say.”
“I’ll take it,” he said.
“Show up at eight a.m. Don’t be late.”
The manager was right. No one expected David to say anything other than yes when waitresses asked for more salad bowls or iced-tea spoons or when cooks asked for pan sheets or sauce pots. While he worked, he listened to his transistor, running the wire for his earphone up through his shirt. Everyone began to think he was special, but no one messed with him. The money wasn’t good, but the work satisfied something in him and they fed him well. At the end of the night, he was the last to punch-out. And though it wasn’t necessary, he did finish high school. He’d also worked out a deal with the landlord to pay some rent, and to clean, paint, and repair units after people moved out, to make up the difference. Over the summer, he continued to wash dishes and practice his On the Air voice each night, but as time passed, his aspirations waned. He wondered if he would ever be good enough. He thought about making more demo tapes, then thought, Who would let a dishwasher be a DJ?
+
In the heat and humidity of August, David’s dreams melted as the skin on his hands wore thin from hot water and detergent. Occasionally, the battery in his transistor would die, and he’d keep his earphone in anyway, simply listening to the dishwasher as it cycled. Days passed, and not much changed until the fall. After Thanksgiving, the owners of Bateaux’s threw a celebration for one of their longtime waitresses, Sissy. After five years of part-time study, she’d earned a paralegal degree and had a job lined up with her father-in-law, a respected local attorney. As the party slowed down, Sissy brought dishes to the back, unable to break the habit of bussing that had been ingrained over years. Something about her reminded David of his mother. He found courage he didn’t know he had and asked, “Where’d you get your degree?”
Sissy paused a moment and looked at David. It was the first time he’d ever said anything of consequence to any of the waitresses. She smiled and said, “From the community college, over on Johnston Avenue.” She scraped a plate and banged it on the side of the garbage can. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a nice voice?”
A week later, when one of the admissions counselors said, “Broadcast Journalism,” the words rang like a clear bell in David’s ear. The phrase held sophistication and prestige, and David was certain that it was out of his reach, until the counselor mentioned Pell grants and student loans. He decided to begin in the spring.
+
After the On Air light goes off, David walks into the control booth of the community college radio station. It’s a small room, maybe eight foot square. Albums line every inch of wall space, and two huge speakers hang from chains over the control board. They angle down at a big guy who sits behind the board. His frizzy brown hair and lazy eye remind him of Gene Simmons and Marty Feldman.
“Hey, I’m Bill.” The DJ stands up and extends his hand.
David shakes Bill’s hand and nods while looking him in the good eye.
“Hang on a sec; I got to segue.”
Bill sits back down in the ancient swivel chair behind the control board, while David resists the urge to wipe his hand on his jeans. Bill puts on the headphones and places a finger up to his lips. The music goes silent and red and green lights from the board glow in the dim of the booth. He eases forward in his chair and his lips practically touch the foam covered microphone, like he’s whispering into a lover’s ear.
“You’re tuned to 91.1 KPRG, Lake Charles, your only alternative music source in the Chemical City. It’s two a.m. Here’s something new from Copernicus: ‘From Bacteria.’”
As he says this, he hits a button and it turns green and one of the turntables comes to life. Bill slides another fader down and hits one of the dark red buttons and it lights up. The music comes back on in the booth and it sounds like an orchestra is tuning up. A gravelly voice with a neurotic edge emerges from the din of instruments and proclaims, “When Bacteria ruled the world, there was no Bruce Springsteen.”
Bill reaches over and turns down the monitor. “So you’re the new DJ, huh?”
David nods.
“Relax; it’s all about the flow.”
David nods again and wonders how long Bill has been in school. He must be pushing thirty, or maybe forty, like John Belushi in Animal House.
“The overnight shift sucks. There’s hardly anyone listening, and it can be hard to stay awake if you’re not used to it, but you can do whatever the hell you want because it’s the last shift of the day.”
“I’m used to being last,” David says.
Bill swivels around in his chair and pulls a few albums out of the stacks. “Here, this is some great stuff.”
He hands David an album with a beautiful brunette on the cover. Her lips are red and full and she has a penetrating stare. The name of the band is Throbbing Gristle. Something turns in David’s stomach; he’s simultaneously attracted and repulsed.
Bill stands up and stretches. His t-shirt rides up and exposes his pudgy, hairy midsection. He pulls a few more albums from the shelf and hands them to David. “All right cowboy, time to saddle up because I gotta take a dump. This stuff is easy. Cue up a cut like this, and when one song ends just run the slider up and drop the other slider down. Pull the album, place it in its sleeve, and put it away. Wash, rinse, repeat, my friend. Just like shampoo.”
David accepts the stack of albums and Bill disappears through the soundproof door. It closes with a thud. He flips through the records, feeling like Alice after she’s stepped through a cracked looking glass. He doesn’t know who he’ll reach. After all, he thinks who tunes their radios to stations so low on the dial and who listens at 2:00 in the morning? He imagines bedrooms with mattresses on the floor; efficiency apartments nestled over small bookshops. He sees a neighborhood collective that hosts open-mic nights and displays and sells local artwork, and a store that sells second-hand clothes and handmade soaps. He sees it all in that moment.
He sits in the creaky chair and selects a track he’s never heard before. He previews “Hamburger Lady” from the Throbbing Gristle album through the headphones. The music, if you can call it that, is not to his liking. His fingers lift the needle and he re-queues the track, but then it hits him, he’s the one in control. He pulls the album from the platter, returns it to the sleeve, and searches for something he knows: U2’s “New Year’s Day.”
He feels excited yet strangely lonely sitting in the chair. The small booth with the phone that only blinks, and the heavy door with a black rubber seal designed to keep all external noise out feels insulated and isolated, like a space capsule or a bathysphere—or even a platform on top of a pole—but it seems like where he belongs.
He puts on the headphones and queues the record. Copernicus finishes whatever he’s doing that passes for music, and David pushes the slider for the other turntable. A green light illuminates, and the record spins. The needle rides the groove, and the music starts, and he waits for the chorus. For the first time, David is on the air and above the chaos; secretly, he hopes his voice will eventually find its way into one particular car radio.
+++
Penn Stewart lives, writes, and teaches in Wichita Falls, Texas. His latest fiction appears in The Westchester Review, Waccamaw, Pacifica Literary Review, Literary Orphans, and Iron Horse Literary Review, and he has a nonfiction essay on JAKE. Penn is also the author of the story collection The Water in Our Veins and the novel Fertile Ground. Find out more about Penn by visiting pennstewart.com.