—129—

Seven

Mojo Man

Charlie called himself Mojo Man. He was both a prophet and a joke. In the name of rock ’n’ roll

he took outrageous liberties with the language. He was audacious and he knew it. He was to

bring down upon us cops, congressmen, crooks, and cowards, all interchangeable in their

duplicity. But he never saw his own conduct as corrupt, while I closed my eyes to it and counted

the cash. He took to the air with a new breed of deejay show, the kind few audiences in the fifties

had ever heard. Some listeners loved him and all he stood for, while others hated him for the

same reason. But such exuberance…

And the music, well, dig that crazy beat.

“Hey rug-cutters, time to howl at the moon. The lights are dim, the door’s wide open, the

rug’s rolled against the wall, and everything’s copacetic. Your ole Mojo Man, Mister Big hisself,

the boss of rock ’n’ roll, Charlie Speed, has the platters y’all like best. Baby, if’n you don’t hear

—130—

what you wanna hear, drop a dime and call me to make a ree-quest, ’cause I ain’t tel-lee-pathic.

Everything the old Mojo Man spins is dy-no-mite too-night. And, gals, if you’re on a date, just to

be on the safe side, make sure Mr. Happy’s wearin’ his business suit. Now, it’s time to plug the

mug and cut a rug. Let’s roll, let’s rock. Let’s rock ’n’ roll. Here’s an eighteen-karat platter by

Cool Mama Caruthers and her Flesh Tones as she sings, ‘Keep It Inside, Baby.’”

Charlie, his microphone hot, pounded on the Yellow Pages, rapping in time to the beat while

the single, seemingly endless groove of the record circumnavigated the turntable. He kept the

studio monitor at top decibel to feel the thunder, and also because his hearing hadn’t improved

since his radium days. He rang a cowbell for emphasis while he whooped and shouted and

stomped, and near at hand was his requisite bottle of Iron City, faithfully refreshed by me so his

mouth never got dry and his enthusiasm never waned. For Charlie, alcohol would become as

indispensable as sex, nicotine, and rock ’n’ roll, but he wasn’t quite there yet.

He’d almost called himself Mau Mau Man because Mau Mau was a derisive term—“damned

Mau Mau music”—and it would have been satisfying to turn the slur to his advantage. But when

he heard a recording by Muddy Waters that went, “I got my mojo workin’ but it just don’t work

on you,” he was hooked, not only on the music but the word. He played it on the air and off,

practically without stop, so in time the music and the clicks and scratches on the disc became one

and the same, as if it had been planned that way.

“Just listen to that Muddy Waters side, Spencer. I get a hard-on every time I hear it. ‘I wanna

love you so bad, child, but I don’t know what to do.’ Wanda Jean says if I play it around her one

more time she’s whacking me with separation papers.”

“So what’s it mean, ‘I got my mojo workin’?”

“Hey, old son, I don’t mean to sound snide, but you’re a man of the world. When you’re not

listening to the radio you’re off in a corner reading some damned book, so you oughta know how

—131—

to get your mojo working, and if you don’t…” Buddy-buddy, he poked my shoulder. “Look it

up.”

Charlie, a Smoky City boy with ash in his blood and soot on his skin, fancied the word and

its undercurrent of voodoo, hoodoo, smoodoo, but he wasn’t to find out what it actually meant

until the night he was confronted by a shriveled gypsy woman with nails like claws.

Charlie faked his ignorance well—like my father. As a kid, I’d ask Dad the meanings of

elusive words, but dismissively he’d order me to look ’em up in that damned Webster’s that

props up the damned sofa with the damned broken leg I’m gonna fix if I ever get the damned

time. But his intention wasn’t to make me dictionary-conscious. Dad not only didn’t know the

definitions, he didn’t want to know. He wasn’t an educated man, nor did he pretend to be, but he

had his pride. However, his advice proved to be more profound that he knew, and it helped me to

become more aware of why he disliked me so much. I was fat and awkward and wore glasses,

and he was ashamed, even embarrassed, to call me his son.

Ashamed, adj., seven-letter word meaning to feel shame or guilt.

But by the time Charlie and I bonded as partners, I no longer cared about what my father felt.

Now, at WFUC, the teens who were glued to their radios took to our Mojo Man’s Mau Mau

music like candy, the cotton kind and otherwise. Charlie knew what he was doing.

“Spencer, no one up north plays R and B but me, except maybe that guy Alan Freed in

Cleveland. But I’m the true first. Most of the other rock ’n’ roll jocks work out of jerkwater

places like Shreveport and Birmingham. And mostly they’re white, although they give

themselves highfalutin names like Daddy, Big Daddy, Poppa, which means they talk down to

their listeners. But I don’t. That’s why I not only have a black audience but a white one, and the

music rocks, baby. It’s copacetic. And the record distributors love me because the kids who hear

my show are the ones who buy the forty-fives.”

—132—

My role in this tableau was minimal, and might even be considered demeaning. I gathered

the platters Charlie played, answered the phone when the requests came in, replied to his mail,

negotiated with the record merchandisers, lined up his sock hops, kept a full bottle of Iron City

by his side, and was the buffer between Charlie and Irving Meier, chief honcho of WFUC.

It seemed I’d found my calling, a living anyway, but the best part was that Charlie and I were

together again, just as when we were kids playing radio in the living room, broadcasting to

nowhere, except to my dying mother puttering bravely in the kitchen, and pretending she was

going to survive—even as Charlie intuitively provided her with the solicitude she craved.

“Sorry you’re not feeling so hot, Mrs. S.” “Mrs. S, you go and lie down. I’ll make sure

Spencer doesn’t disturb you.” “How long do you think you’ll be in the hospital, Mrs. S?” “I’m

rootin’ for you, Mrs. S.”

I yapped through the intercom.

“Charlie, we have another request for ‘Yellow Rose of Texas.’”

“Tell ’em they got us mixed up with that other station.”

“Which one?”

“The one run by Ralph Fuckin’ Pittaro. And let ’em know if I get a request for any more of

Mitch Miller’s pablum I’m gonna puke, and everyone’s gonna hear it ’cause I’ve already got my

finger down my throat.”

The vociferous campaign against rock ’n’ roll by Mitch Miller, Columbia Record’s artist-

and-repertoire man, had become personal to Charlie. Miller denounced the music as trash,

accusing the teens of liking it only because everybody else hated it. Charlie, on the other hand,

despised sappy music, pretentious violins, turgid love ballads, and fluff about doggies in the

window, pawn shops on the corner, and dunes on old Cape Cod. He grooved on unrestrained

harmonies with throbbing beats that conjured up carnal ecstasy and slashed through the pretense,

—133—

drawing out the most fundamental of appetites.

Passion scored higher than technical expertise, and it didn’t matter to Charlie if the music had

been spawned in some acoustically-challenged basement, which it often was. He was amiably

rebellious—although to such pop czars as Miller he was little more than a heretic. Which

actually gave me still another reason to revere my childhood pal, whose zeal I admired, even

envied. In secret, however, I tended to side with Miller. Hush. There are certain matters in life

you can never admit. Charlie’s father and mother, one a violinist, the other a pianist, considered

his infatuation with rock ’n’ roll a benign betrayal, but the solution to this parental malady was

beyond repair. His jive-ass, g-droppin’ delivery made him sound black. His listeners assumed he

was, and he didn’t try to correct the impression.

He’d discovered black was gold.

“This one’s for all you cha-chas and honey pots out there. Gang, y’all are gonna throw a beat

when you hear this next platter. And, baby, if you got Mr. Winkie standing up close, why, you

just grab him and get goin’, ’cause it’s time to make the bald man cry. And guys do yourself and

her a favor and give that monkey of yours a well-deserved banana. It’s copacetic. Rug-cutters,

we gonna rock tonight. We gonna roll. Let’s roll ’n’ rock. Let’s rock ’n’ roll. Yessir, your ole

Mojo Man’s got a brand new single by Wee Little Willie and his Willies called ‘Back Door

Daddy.’ It’s dy-no-mite.”

I encountered Irving Meier just as I was about to deliver the plastic cooler I’d refilled with

fresh Iron Cities for the Mojo Man. Red-faced, the boss shuffled to go around me, but I shifted

my wide, yet gradually slimming, torso so as to block the door to the studio, although I made it

seem fat-man clumsy rather than planned. Meier didn’t like me much, and I knew he felt Charlie

had foisted me on him, although Charlie paid half my salary. Irving never said so to my face, but

he considered me a corpulent, no-talent hanger-on and lackey, which I was, and there was no

—134—

way I could prove otherwise, not even to myself.

“I gotta talk to Charlie, and you’re in my way, Summers.”

“He’s on the air right now, Irving. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“I couldn’t catch him before the show so I stayed late to talk to him.”

“You know Charlie doesn’t like distractions while he’s on the air.”

“Dammit, Summers, whose station is this? Mine or his? Okay, dammit, I’ll explain it to you,

but you better get it straight.” He poked a cantankerous finger into my chest. “Charlie can’t use

that phrase rock ’n’ roll on the air no more. Rhythm and blues is okay but no rock ’n’ roll.”

“Why not?”

“On account of it’s colored slang for fucking, that’s why.”

“What makes you think that?”

“On account of I ain’t stupid. Besides, my wife told me.”

“Irving, what do you expect him to say? Half the songs he plays have rock or roll in the title:

‘My Daddy Rocks Me With One Steady Roll,’ ‘Rock That Thing,’ ‘Rock Me Mama,’ ‘Rockin’

Rhythm, ‘Lick That Jelly Roll.’ Shall I go on? The same naughty stuff you sell everyday in your

record shop.”

“What I sell and what I play on my station is two different things. When you replace the

word rock with fuck what do you got?”

“Only dirty minds, Irving…”

Meier lit his signature El Producto and exhaled, engulfing my head in carbonaceous

contempt.

“Summers, there’s this low IQ congressman from Mississippi, some guy named Parnell, who

tried to get all the stations to ban Cole Porter’s ‘Love for Sale’ on account of he thought it was

about a hooker. Jesus, if a moron like him hears Charlie, anything could happen to my license.”

—135—

“Irving, even if rock ’n’ roll means what you say it does, who’s going to figure it out, aside

from a few purists like you and the lovely Mrs. Meier?”

“The FCC, that’s who, and I don’t intend to lose my permit. It’s the only one I got except for

my driver’s license. I got a lot invested here.”

“It’ll take more than rock ’n’ roll to make you lose your card, Irving. The FCC doesn’t know

difference between B.B. King and Wayne King.”

“Summers, lemme tell you something that you better learn fast.” He put his two pudgy hands

on my shoulders and spoke with the cheap cigar vibrating at the side of his mouth. “I gotta

operate in the public interest, necessity, and convenience. The immoral words of J. Edgar

Hoover.”

“To be accurate, Irving, it was another Hoover called Herbert, a man now transcended to that

vast GOP mausoleum in the sky, right up there with such other great Republican Party thinkers

as Harding and Coolidge. And little doubt more in their undistinguished lineage will follow.”

“Summers, I’m okay with the music Charlie plays. I turned him on to it, and it’s why I hired

him. I know what sells. But it’s not the rock ’n’ roll I’m worried about so much. It’s them words

he uses on the air, like cha-chas and honey pots. And who’s this Mr. Winkie? And what’s it

mean when Charlie says it’s time to make the bald man cry?”

“You don’t want to know, Irving, trust me.”

“I know enough to tell a fuckin’ double entendre when I hear it.”

“Entendre?”

“Yeah, I ran across the word in the crossword in today’s Sun-Tele.”

“It’s just jive talk, Irving. The kids dig it. It’s cool. It’s hip. And it’s paying off. Charlie’s

Hooper ratings are super for an indie like ours.”

The taut muscles in Meier’s neck visibly loosened, and I saw his fury lifting.

—136—

“Yeah, through the fuckin’ roof. Every kid from six to sixteen’s listening to him. I’m

thinkin’ about putting him on earlier so his show don’t cut into his audience’s bedtime. It’s just

his language…”

“If you’re happy, we’re happy, Irving. You are happy?”

“Well… I just hope he don’t get me into some kinda shit.” He flipped the ash from his El

Producto, some of the powder floating onto my shoulder. “And why the hell am I talkin’ to you

when I should be talkin’ to Charlie? I’m payin’ half your salary.”

A question best left unanswered. Meier stalked off leaving a plume of cigar smoke to mark

his territory.

When Charlie and I left the studio on Smithfield Street after the show there was always a

clutch of fans, teenagers, waiting by the door, screeching for autographs, as if he were a musician

instead of a messenger. That night his admirers were noticeably ardent, and Charlie, wielding a

leaky ballpoint, happily signed anything slapped in front of him. He adored his listeners.

“Can I touch your hand, Mojo Man?”

“We love you, Mojo Man.”

“You the man, Mojo Man.”

“We didn’t know you was white, Mojo Man.”

“How’s about playing more Elvis, Mojo Man?”

And from a teen, bottle-blonde, fifteen maybe, with splotchy purple eye shadow, “Want

some company tonight, Mojo Man?”

I half dragged Charlie, Groucho-like leer on his face, to my Dodge.

“Hey, Spencer. That was grade-A prime back there, that little blond bitch with the purple

whatever. She was white too.”

“Have you ever seen the inside of the Allegheny County Workhouse, Charlie?”

—137—

“You’re trying to tell me something.”

“To paraphrase your own words, grown men who feed bananas to prepubescent monkeys risk

the zookeeper’s wrath. Need I add you have a wife with pending child?”

“You got a point there, old son. Still…”

As we were about to enter the car, a primordial, black crone sprang from the dark and

clinched her bony hand around Charlie’s wrist like a trap. She was emaciated, her skin leathery.

“Is you de Mojo Man?”

Startled, Charlie tried to pull away but the woman’s grip was unyielding, her nails puncturing

the sleeve into his flesh.

“I say, is you de Mojo Man I hears on the radio?”

“Yes, yes, I’m the Mojo Man, mother. Would you like an autograph?”

She squeezed his wrist even tighter and fixed her eyes, burning dots within her mummified

face, into Charlie’s.

“Knew you wasn’t no Negro soul. Lemme see your mojo, Mojo Man.”

“See my…”

“Lemme see it.”

“I really can’t…”

“’Course you can’t. You don’t even know what a mojo is, does you?’

“I…”

“You think mojo’s all about your cock. But you’s mistaken. Mojo don’t have nothin’ to do

with cock. You ain’t got no mojo. You just likes sayin’ so, ain’t that right?”

Charlie’s lips fluttered but nothing came out.

“So I gonna give you a mojo you can feel and smell and taste, which will beget the actual

mojo in your soul.”

—138—

She pulled from her multifarious layers of dress a small bag made of crude, sewn cloth with a

string attached like a loop. She draped the string over Charlie’s head and let the bag fall loosely

on his chest.

“When I leaves this place you look inside this here mojo bag just to satisfy your natural

curiosity, and then when you carry it you keeps it hidden out of sight. But you always got to

carry it.”

“What’s in it, this mojo bag?”

She laughed, her mouth deep as a grotto.

“A little piece of copper, a bit of rat bone, some red flannel soaked in Evil Conditioning Oil,

a few flax seeds, a badger tooth, a vial of cat urine, a four leaf clover, and a few other things you

doesn’t wanna knows about. You keeps this mojo bag on you at all times, ’cause if you don’t…”

“If I don’t?”

“You gonna die before your time.”

Charlie gasped.

“My age is a hundred-and-two, and I knows these things.” She backed away, cackling. “On

account of I’m a gypsy woman givin’ you advice.” The broken teeth in her unending mouth

flashed under the street light. “You ain’t the true Mojo Man. You’s a fake. There’s a Mojo Man

whose realer than you, and he’s gonna getcha. Be warned.”

Her skeletal shape disappeared into the darkness as quickly as it had appeared.

“What the hell was that?” Charlie said, astonished by the wizened specter, so antithetical to

his usual fans.

“Just some crazy old hag,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What she said about being a gypsy woman… Muddy Waters sings that. On his mojo

record.”

—139—

“Everyone knows that, Charlie, so forget it.”

“But a gypsy woman givin’ me advice…”

“Some moron put her up to it. Let’s get out of here before she comes back with a brigade of

zombies.”

“She said she was a hundred-and-two. Spencer.”

“Nobody’s a hundred-and-two.”

“Jesus, she sure as hell looked it.”

Charlie, using the back of his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow, climbed shakily into the

front passenger seat. He stared in distaste at the mojo hanging from his neck before he snapped

the string, opened the bag, and peered suspiciously inside.

“This thing stinks. It’s either the badger tooth or the cat urine.”

As I put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb, he cranked down the window and

threw the bag, like a dead rat, into the gutter.

“Screw that.” He sniffed the air in the car. “It still stinks in here. Like piss. Is it your car or

that damned mojo bag?”

“The car, Charlie. It was that way when I bought it, and I’m so used to the smell I’ve gotten

to like it.”

He seemed absorbed as I made the turn onto Forbes from Smithfield.

“Do you think that old woman could be right? That I’ll die an early death unless I always

carry that mojo bag?”

“Hoodoo, Charlie. Whether you die young or old some mojo bag won’t have anything to do

with it. It’s like counting beads, waving crosses, genuflecting, lighting candles to replicas of

knocked-up virgins. Institutional mysticism. Unsupported by fact, logic, or the laws of nature.”

“I’m not so sure. Just because you’re some kind of left-wing, atheistic nut… We could go

—140—

back and find the mojo. Probably still in the street where I threw it.”

“You believe in rhythm and blues, not superstition, Charlie. You’re Mister Big hisself, the

boss of rock ’n’ roll.”

“But early death… Spencer, I almost died once. Of an earache. Remember? My draft card

shows I’m Four-F on account of it.”

“And modern surgery and a few doses of radiation effectively cured you, not mojos.”

I sensed some unarticulated inner fear replacing his usual jaunty presence, and I hoped he

wasn’t losing touch. Charlie was, after all, both my champion and meal ticket.

“Charlie, mojo schmojo. You and I are products of the radio age. What do the following

words mean to you? Fifty-thousand watts, clear-channel, network, New York City.”

His tensions seemed to subside.

“You’re right, old son. Screw the mojo. We’re radio guys.” He pulled out a Camel, lit it, and

let the smoke from his nostrils permeate the car. “Say, you’re a smart guy, all those books you’ve

read. When are you writing one about me? The Mojo Man’s about to a household name. And

you’re on the ground floor. Hope you’re taking notes.”

He chuckled as though he’d made a self-depreciating joke, but I knew in his heart he

believed it.

“No writing for me, Charlie, and never, ever about you. Requires too much mental heavy

lifting. I’m hooked on broadcasting. Same as you.” I turned a bit pensive. “But the problem with

radio is… What you hear always goes away. It’s not permanent.”

“Hell, old son, radio’s not meant to be permanent, anymore than the newspaper you wrap

your left-over yellow perch in. You knew that before you got into it. If you want something

permanent, write another Hamlet or A Tale of Two Cities.” He flipped the ash from his cigarette

out the open window. “Nothing lasts over time, so why worry about it? The only thing now is

—141—

now.”

We landed at the smoke-glazed Musicians Club on Wylie Avenue for some eighty-six proof

R&R, after which I was to return him to his expectant wife, the ever bitchy Wanda Jean Speed,

née Petry, a ball breaker more than ever now that she was a full nine months and waddling like a

penguin. She’d assert to anyone within calling distance I was a bad influence on Charlie, and that

there was something unnatural about the way we always hung out together. I thought the same

about her—although I kept it to myself. She was the wrong babe for Charlie. He just didn’t know

it yet.

Drummer Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers were playing after hours. Blakey, a fellow

Pittsburgher, later found enlightenment, converted to Islam, and became Abdullah Ibn Buhaina,

but that night he was just Art.

Suddenly, a large man shaped like an outsized bowling pin leaned over our table familiarly,

too much so.

“Hey, Charlie Speed. Remember me?”

Charlie tried to move back but his chair seemed to be stuck.

“I, I don’t think so.”

“Dag Hammerstein, regional distributor for Register Records. We’ve met before. And you

and me talked on the phone just last week. Mind if I sit?”

The man yanked over a empty chair from the next table and plopped down on it. He leaned in

to Charlie so their two shoulders almost touched.

“I got some hot singles coming up, Charlie. Sure-fire hits. I sent you over a few demos the

other day. You get a chance to listen to that side by the Silks?”

“I heard it. Stinks. Isn’t that right, Spencer?”

“You said it, Charlie. Stinks.”

—142—

Hammerstein said, “What about that single by the Rudimentals? They’re just about the

greatest—”

“The Rudimentals stink too. Right, Spencer?”

“You got that right, Charlie. They stink too.”

Hammerstein said, “Is there a fuckin’ echo in here?”

He moved in even closer, and I noticed his tie had ugly cartoon dog faces embossed on it.

“Charlie, what I really want you to hear is this terrific gal singer, Joey de Vivre. Joey Dee.

She warbles with a group called the Deetours, and she’s got a new single out that…”

Hammerstein looked around the room and signaled the tuxedoed black waiter.

“Hey, boy, ’nother round over here.” He put his hand, pinky ring flashing, on Charlie’s arm.

“Don’t worry about the drinks, they’re on me. Charlie, listen, you ain’t heard R and B until

you’ve heard what Joey Dee’s done with it. She’s white but she sings colored, and she’s home-

grown out of Etna across the river. If her new side don’t become a million seller I’m gettin’ out

of the record business. And Joey’s a big fan of yours. I mean B-I-G. She wants to meet you, if

you catch my drift. And I can arrange it. Now, what I’d like to do—”

Charlie stood.

“Sorry, I need to piss real bad.”

Hammerstein said, “Register Records wants to do good by you, Charlie. Maybe we can offer

some kind of token to a man who’s doing so much to promote this unique music on the radio.

Pittsburgh’s one of those key cities, like Cleveland and Philly, where we try out records before

we send ’em national.”

Charlie said, “Spencer, why don’t you take over here while I go to the head?”

Hammerstein whined, a peculiar sound in such a big man, “But Charlie…”

“Spencer’s my producer, Dag. I’m helpless. What can I tell you?”

—143—

Charlie threaded his way through the smoke and shadows and rhythm, patting shoulders,

shaking hands, and giving Art Blakey the thumbs up.

Hammerstein said to me, “What’s your name again?”

“Summers.”

“So I got to go through you.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

I answered with a greater assuredness than I felt, but Charlie had coached me well. Men like

Hammerstein needed us more than we needed them, and that alone endowed me with more

power than I’d ever enjoyed before. I not only heard Dag’s rumbling sigh I felt it.

“I got some great sides comin’ out, Summers. Not the least of which is Joey de Vivre’s

new…” He showed his nicotined teeth fang-like, but he was, in the final analysis, a salesman

who survived solely on commission. “Listen, I’ll just cut through the crap. What do I gotta do to

get my shit heard on Charlie’s show?”

I leaned back in my chair expansively. For a change, someone wanted something from me, or

precisely Charlie, but it had to go through me first, the same kid who was humiliated by the

loutish Billy Bob Gentry; disgraced on “The Boy Scout Buckskin Scout-A-Roos”; ridiculed

because he was too fat to climb a rope; taunted by Wanda Jean Speed, née Petry; fired

unceremoniously by a Greek named Nick who recycled garbage as food at some crummy Isaly’s;

punched around by a drunken dad; abandoned by a mother who wanted to get sick more than she

wanted me.

I said, “I’d have to listen to your demos closely, Dag, and then decide if they’re up to our

standards, fit in with our format. You know what I mean. We’re too busy to hear everything that

comes our way, but in your case we might be able to make an exception and even provide you

with some professional guidance regarding the quality of your material.”

—144—

“So you’d need, like, a listening fee.”

“Well put, Dag.”

“For your advice.”

“Couldn’t have said it better.”

“How much?”

“Why don’t we start small and work our way up? See how things go. A hundred should do

it.”

“A month?”

“A week.”

“That’s a lot of moolah when I got no guarantees my stuff will catch on, Summers.”

“Your stuff will catch on if Charlie plays it. Assuming he likes it, of course.”

“So assuming he likes it, how many plays will I get a week?”

“Depends on the side.”

“I want to make sure they get enough exposure.”

“They’ll get more than enough, Dag.”

“That’s vague.”

“That’s radio.”

“What about the Silks and the Rudimentals?”

“We’ll give them another listen, Dag. Maybe we missed something when we heard them the

first time. More than likely they’re better than we originally thought.”

“Fifty.”

“Seventy-five.”

Hammerstein reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a checkbook.

“Who do I make this out to?”

—145—

“Bills are more… decorous.”

“I don’t have that much cash on me.”

“No problem, Dag. You can drop the, ah, listening fee off at the station tomorrow afternoon.

Put it in an envelope with my name on it and leave it with the receptionist.”

“I’ll need a receipt.”

“I don’t know…”

“So I can be reimbursed by my boss.”

“No problem. After delivery, your receipt will be in an envelope at the front desk. And don’t

forget those demos. Charlie really, really wants to hear Joey de Vivre and her Deetours.”

The waiter deposited the fresh round just as Charlie returned to the table.

I said, “Charlie, Dag here is going to bring his demos around tomorrow.”

“Copacetic, baby.” Charlie fired up a smoke, drained his scotch, and saluted Hammerstein

with the empty glass. “Register Records. My all-time favorite label. I know the kids who listen to

my show are gonna eat your stuff up, Dag. Glad we could get together. Hey, dig that Blakey guy

pounding those skins.”

Charlie had more than several drinks, as did I, losing count.

“Come on, Charlie, time to go home,” I said. “The room seems to be tilting.”

“One more drink.”

“You’re sloshed, Charlie.”

“I’ll be sober in the morning while you’ll still be fat. Hey, that’s a joke, old son. You’re

lookin’ better every day.”

When we withdrew from the Musicians Club we left the bar bill for Hammerstein, a fitting

reward for a man who sported images of dog faces on his tie, with which he waved goodbye like

Oliver Hardy, the overweight half of the antique movie comedic duo. Charlie was reasonably

—146—

sober by the time we got to his house, a duplex at the edge of Squirrel Hill.

As he left the car he said, “About that mojo bag…”

“A stupid amulet, Charlie. I told you. Put it out of your mind.”

For a moment he looked as though he wanted to say something important, but then decided

against it.

“You’re right. It’s out of my mind.” He smiled, then reached out to me with his usual

affection. “It’s a great life, huh, old son? And we’ve barely started. Just stick with me. And, like

you said, I’m etching on stone your own words: fifty-thousand watts, clear-channel, network,

New York City.”

I watched as he staggered up the stairs to his side of the house. The light was on in the

kitchen. Wanda Jean waiting up for him. A great life, he’d said. I wasn’t yet prepared to go that

far, unlikely to analyze our lives with any profundity, but things had improved for me, and not

just the moola. I’d gotten slimmer. Ten pounds off in the past month. I was working at it.

Exercise. The right food. At that rate I’d whittle myself down to Charlie’s weight.

I put the car into gear and backed out of the driveway, and as I did, a few single 45s I’d

carelessly tossed onto the top of the dash skittered to the floor. Some of them were warped, the

result of being left in the car in the summer heat. Forty-five rpms: round, small, doughnut-like

hole in the center, costing pennies to fabricate, but when enough of them were sold fortunes were

made, which was why Dag Hammerstein propelled himself from station to station, jock to jock,

store to store. Each grooved disc sold was engraved with a money sign.

Did my conscience bother me?

Why should it?

Former faithful wearer of Captain Midnight’s Secret Squadron insignia, until the fiendish

Billy Bob Gentry ripped it from my sacred person; signer of Don Winslow’s Squadron of Peace

—147—

pledge, in which I vowed to promote the fulfillment of all things clean, wholesome and upright;

loyal listener of Tom Mix and his Ralston Straight Shooters—and when Tom said straight he

didn’t mean the simple trajectory of a bullet, but that which was right and true; dedicated fan of

Captain Marvel, who fought against the seven deadly enemies of man, among them envy and

greed; ex-Boy Scout, in which I contemplated patriotic deeds when I wasn’t being coached in

Jesus and pre-combat skills.

Why should my conscience bother me?

I drove home dial-switching, searching hopefully for my mystery broadcast, which eluded

me still again, although I knew that, as sure as there was a Charlie Speed, “To Be Announced”

was out there, concealed within the cacophony, about to burst through the ionosphere—and

when at last I heard it my world would be realized, and I could die satisfied.

Okay, call my obsession with TBA still another of my mental blocks, not merely some form

of ignorance I should have overcome as a child. So what? This is my story—and Charlie’s—and

I’m telling it my way.

I was still sleeping in my old room in my father’s house, where Dad and each I came and

went our separate ways, barely speaking to each other. I knew I should have moved to a place of

my own, but emotionally I wasn’t prepared to abandon my mother’s ghost. I was also burdened

by a certain timidity, as well as the thought that I might still reach an accommodation with my

father, both of us afflicted by the survivors’ guilt that followed her death.

Before dawn, the phone on my bedside table rang, and, groggily, I fumbled for it.

Charlie.

“Spencer, I’m calling from Allegheny General. You ain’t gonna to believe this, but I’m a

father.”

“Of course I believe it, Charlie. Wanda Jean was about to burst. Congratulations.”

—148—

“You don’t understand. I’m not just a father. I’m two fathers. Wanda Jean had twins.”

In the afternoon, I visited Charlie and Wanda Jean Speed, née Petry, at the hospital, where

Charlie and I looked through the nursery window to admire the two inmates in adjoining

bassinettes, one containing Charlie’s new son, the other his new daughter.

“I’m not sure I like their noses, old son. Too much like mine.”

“Their noses are fine, Charlie. Besides, I read somewhere that a great nose makes a great

man. Or woman.”

“Wanda Jean’s named the girl Wanda, after herself, and the boy Gene, after herself. What do

you think?”

“Inspired, as only Wanda Jean can do.”

The Speeds had other callers at the hospital that day, and one wore a familiar and appealing

face. Betsy Maloney, the girl who’d sat next to me in the first grade, the girl who always got me

in deep shit when I tried to talk to her in class, the girl I tried unsuccessfully to kiss one childish

Valentine’s party to my everlasting mortification. Then, she wore pigtails and braces and her

knees were affectionately scabby. Now, her teeth were impeccable, the result of what would

have been expensive orthodontia for everyone else, but her father was a successful dentist, my

own dentist. And the skin on her knees was just as pale and inviting as that on her lilting face.

“You’ve lost weight Spencer,” she said.

“I take that as a compliment.”

“But your glasses are still pretty thick.”

“To see you better.”

I laughed self-consciously. Even Betsy had to know we all weren’t perfect—including her, as

time would prove.

I said to her lamely, “Somehow I thought you’d be married by now.”

—149—

As soon as I’d blurted it, I inwardly kicked myself for my own obtuseness. There were things

never put to a woman.

“You still don’t have much finesse, do you, Spencer?” Betsy’s face crinkled into an Irish

smile. “Then I don’t have much myself, as you saw when I just said that stupid thing about your

weight and glasses. I didn’t mean it, really. You have slimmed down. And I like your face.”

I groped for words.

“The radio bug hit me. I’m working with Charlie now.”

“I remember how fascinated you were by my father’s wire recorder, and I’ll bet you

remember those silly singing canaries on the radio.”

She laughed in a girlish way.

“I’ll never forget them.”

“So dumb of me.”

“Just childish confusion.” I grinned bashfully. “Are you… you…”

“Am I seeing anybody?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Not at the moment, Spencer. Would you like to ask me out?”

I first heard the singing canaries on the radio in the third grade after Betsy invited me to her

home, three streets away although a better block than my own, to admire her room. As an

orthodontist, Betsy’s father was financially several cuts above the other neighborhood dads,

notably my own.

Something in her family’s basement rec room caught my attention. On the counter of the

pine-paneled bar was a unique apparatus that actually reproduced sound. I desperately wanted to

test it, but Betsy wouldn’t let me. She insisted on showing off her bedroom, which was as girlish

as mine was boyish. Nancy Drew versus the Hardy Boys.

—150—

A canopy rose over her bed, and a comforter overflowed with fluffy pillows of sundry sizes

and colors. She owned an assortment of fancy dolls that wet and winked, and stuffed animals that

mooed and mewed. A mansion-like doll house, with a roof that detached to display exquisitely

furnished interiors, sat on the floor below the ruffled window curtains. Her walls were decorated

with pictures of collies and sad-eyed clowns. On a bedside table next to a lamp with a white

pleated shade was her own radio, a plastic Emerson, burnt orange, with an enormous round dial

and a cloth grill in an arrow pattern, as if it intended to take flight. On that day an extraordinary

sound came through the speaker.

I said, “Listen, Betsy, it sounds like birds.”

I was in awe.

The rhapsody from the radio seemed as though hundreds of canaries were warbling in

unison. They were accompanied by organ music. I marveled at the sound.

“It’s beautiful. I know that song they’re singing. It’s ‘April Showers.’ Those birds are singing

‘April Showers.’”

“That’s stupid,” Betsy said. She abruptly turned the dial to another station, some drippy-eyed

soap-opera nonsense. “Birds just chirp. They can’t really sing songs. That noise meant there was

something wrong with my radio.”

“No, they were singing.”

I reversed the dial to the birds.

“Stop that,” she yelled, grabbing my hand and switching the dial again. “You only think it

sounded like birds.”

“They’re canaries and I need to hear them.”

“They’re not canaries.”

“Please.”

—151—

“No, No, No. All you want to do is to break my radio. Go listen to your own, and if you don’t

go away I’m telling my father on you, and he puts people to sleep because he’s a dentist and he

has a long needle. Wanda Jean’s right about you. Everything she says.”

I raced home, humiliated, startling my sickly mother, and ran up the stairs to switch on my

own bedside radio. A breathless infinity passed before the tubes heated and I felt the warmth

spreading to the top of the set. How had I ever missed that show? Singing canaries. How did they

teach canaries to sing in tune with the organ music? How did they get all those canaries in the

studio? Were they in cages or flying around loose?

The signal arrived just as the deep-throated announcer, it must have been Tony Marvin, said,

“You’ve been listening to the Alps Mountain Singing Canaries. Look to Alps Mountain for all

your pets’ needs: birdseed, nesting food, oyster shells. Alps Mountain offers quality pet products

catering to the individual requirements of a vast array of household friends: dogs, cats, parakeets,

canaries, cockatiels, finches, goldfish, tropical fish, reptiles, ferrets, chinchillas, hamsters, and

rabbits. And don’t forget. Only Alps has formulated the first vitamin-impregnated birdseed, a

must for your canary. A healthy canary is a singing canary. At your pet store now.”

Ah, radio. So good, so bad. But no matter. Radio. It was mine, all mine. Poor, innocent

Betsy, who believed her set was broken by the ecstasy of birds. Silly girl. And at the time so

childishly cruel to me—although it wouldn’t be the last.

Such innocents we were.

And so I forgave her.

While Wanda Jean recuperated in the hospital, Charlie, Betsy, and I celebrated the birth of

the twins at the Musicians Club, with Charlie flirting no end with Betsy. He’d once dated her

older sister, Sally, and it was obvious he was mentally sizing the two siblings.

Betsy had never been to the place before, or The Hill for that matter, but she was comfortable

—152—

from the start, tapping her foot to the rhythm, applauding the riffs, becoming enchanted when the

music was sweet, mellow when it turned sad. Not exactly the kind of music Charlie played on his

show. I adored the way the light glanced from her reddish hair, creating a subtle glow, almost a

halo, in the hazy room, and the way she’d place her hand so spontaneously on mine.

Soon our table was filled with Charlie’s admirers, musicians, wannabes, sycophants. Dag

Hammerstein in his stupid dog tie showed up with Joey de Vivre.

“You’re the greatest deejay on earth, Mr. Speed,” Joey Dee breathed, holding his hand too

long.

The smoky club on The Hill was a different world for Betsy Maloney, who worked as a

secretary at J&L while waiting for liberation, still living at home, still sleeping in the same

canopied bed. Late that night in my car I kissed her, but this time my arms, instead of feeling like

kryptonite, were light as a cloud and all over her, holding her the way she was supposed to be

held, touching her the way I once had been instructed by Charlie, and at that moment I imagined,

Charlie aside, that Betsy would be all I’d ever need to transform my world from shallow to

complete.

Naively, I conferred onto her the impossible emblem of perfection. She wasn’t perfect of

course, far from it, and over the years I discovered an astonishing array of axioms of my own

invention: how the passage of time refashions one’s perceptions, how one need is supplanted by

a contrasting one, how burning passions pass into faint memory, how betrayal is the deepest

wound of all.