Terry McDermott was growing uncomfortable living with the girls. He heard their ghostly giggles whenever he ouched himself doing something, or while fluttering about looking for his keys or wallet or Ray-Bans that turned up in the oddest places, or when losing his balance while coming down the stairs. He also had his doubts that a couple loose screws wrecked Gram’s collection of holiday knick-knacks last Christmas. And his move-in day wasn’t the only time he was locked out of Blackstone. He kept these suspicions to himself to keep the peace with Ian.
May 12th, Mother’s Day. In Dallas City, abundant April rains had been the smelling salts for spring: it’s dogwoods’ pinks were perfume; flaming yellow forsythias torched the last vestiges of another long winter. The ubiquitous buzz of mason bees and lawn mowers were as sure as baseball.
Ian was called to the Nauvoo Visitors Center after temple to attend to the overflow of tourists that were just beginning to descend upon Nauvoo; in a few weeks when schools let out, the trickle would be a steady stream, especially in mid-summer when the musical pageant celebrating the legacy of the early pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo was performed, the event complete with games and activities of the 1840s.
He loved the springtime view below from the church above: the grassy bluffs, lush and emerald green, rolling down to the river, infused with patches of sky-blue hyacinths and the saffron of crocuses and daffodils against the old red-brick structures still standing; the Iowa farmland being readied for another growing season; the flowers surrounding the statue of Joseph and Hyrum on horseback, in full intoxication, enticing insects to spread their pollen.
Terry returned to Blackstone, alone and bored, and turned on a Cubs game to kill time until Ian returned—they had planned on prepping the rose garden bed, but now that would have to be put on hold until next weekend. No biggie, he would spend another afternoon with the hapless team who had more errors than runs, but were still in the game until the sixth, when an opposing player representing the Big Apple blasted a two-run screamer onto Chicago’s Waveland Avenue.
Terry listened, stunned, to the announcer’s call he thought he heard, as the shortstop rounded the bags. “And the score is now four to nothing,” the guy in the booth lamented, “thanks to the gopher ball sent over the wall by the Methihkwiwi.”
“The Met’s Cecchini, you mean?” Terry asked rhetorically to the big screen after he thought he heard the New York shortstop’s name being mauled. He realized he was only half-listening to the audio anyway; his attention was really focused on the planting information on the roses’ shipping boxes that he was anxious to get to, but it was still a weird hatchet job from a professional sports announcer.
Even weirder was the bottom of the ninth when the Cubs scored four runs to tie. Terry’s boisterous encouragement to his team, with two outs, runners on first and second, turned silent when the dreaded satellite signal code 11-12-35 popped up on the screen’s black background: Complete Signal Loss. Check for anything obstructing the signal to your satellite dish, such as tree branches, severe rain, or snow build-up. If it is safe to do so, remove the obstruction or wait for it to pass.
It’s 71 degrees and sunny; no deluge, no blizzard, not even a twig next to the dish, he thought, now annoyed he was going to miss the rest of the game (not to worry, the Mets won it in the 13th because of a wild pitch). And when he heard the adolescent giggling while he was fumbling with the remote, he knew the problem with the satellite signal was not due to an obstruction, but probably because Ian was such a die-hard Cardinals fan.
“Fine, you win,” he said, resigned. “I’m going outside.”
Looking out towards the river, Terry noticed that the yard looked a little shabby, in need of a trim, just like his hair when it starts to tickle his neck or sprout over his ears. May grass sure grows faster here than it does in the Utah desert, so maybe I’ll get ahead of the game. Good personal grooming for our guests in Nauvoo; a good yard impression for the passers-by on Highway 96, he thought and closed the door, smiling.
He unlocked the implement shed and hopped on the John Deere garden tractor. “I don’t think Ian will mind, and shoot, the yard will be done for the week,” he said out loud, shifting into sixth gear and heading out to the acreage.
The mowing was going great, the scent of fresh-cut grass blowing out the stuffy smell of winter, as he made long diagonal sweeps back and forth where the factory buildings once stood. Making a final cut towards the river, Terry was still smoldering over the fritzed-out baseball game.
“Did they do the same thing to you during the 1912 baseball season, Mr. Burg?” he asked over the noise of the mower’s gas engine, only slightly less powerful than the ones that powered his autos built on the spot, back in the day. “Oh yeah . . . no tv, shoot, not even radio was around then. How did they ruin your baseball then, Mr. Burg? Burn the newspaper’s sports page?”
He laughed out loud, then wondered how they did enjoy sports without mass media. Then he began to wonder why the mower was accelerating, even though he already had it at full throttle, and why the brake was failing, and why the steering wheel wouldn’t turn, and why the key in the ignition wouldn’t shut off, and how was he going to stop it from dumping straight into the water?
That was solved when the front axle snapped just as the lawn ended—a chunk of limestone used as edging, an effective stopper. The tractor nose-dived forward, flipping Terry over the engine and onto the river’s muddy bank.
Thrown on his stomach, headfirst, just inches from the water, eyes closed, gathering his composure, he heard the giggles meshing with the lapping waves. Well that was uncalled for, he thought, feeling lucky that at least he wasn’t injured. Feeling unlucky was the flash he had while flipping--as he tumbled over it, the mower looked old-fashioned and was painted cardinal red, a very distinct color, one directly opposite John Deere green on the color wheel. Noticeably different even in a blurry panic. He was sure of it.
Ian returned around five, buoyant that this weekend’s surge in traffic would predict a busy tourist season. The sun, firing up for summer, was still out and warm when he pulled into the drive and saw Terry waving him towards the river and his ditched John Deere.
“What happened? Are you okay?” he asked, running to him with a hug and a kiss.
“Yeah. . . a little shook. I’m really sorry about your machine. I was mowing right along and the rod snapped when it hit the rock border, I guess I didn’t see. I throttled it down right away, but yeah, I got a little jostled, but I’m fine.” It was the only time he told Ian even a little white lie. He did not mention the giggles or the flip or the morph or the growing-more-obvious-all-the-time signs that he really wasn’t welcomed at Blackstone.
“Great! Don’t worry about the mower, it’s still under warranty and Deere’s good on replacements,” Ian replied. “Now come on in and watch some tv with us.”
2
Z was most likely correct that the station with Jack as owner probably wouldn’t last three months, but not because he was deaf; hell, Jack was finding out that disabled people can function reasonably well in society given the chance, the tools, the time, and the patience. He didn’t want the station because he didn’t want the hassle of running anything. Jack could half-ass a lot of things, but being the owner of anything was a line he dare not cross. A line he had no intention of crossing.
The Mayhews had contacted Springfield telecom attorneys Mason & Byers to help them sell the licensing paper and it was a buyers’ market. The broadcasting bidding war was heated, until there were three serious contenders. And then there was one.
They were out on their pool deck catching some mid-spring rays when the call came.
Jack could gather nothing from his wife’s demeanor, just her intensifying, nervous focus that the caller’s message in legalese required, until finally, she responded with a reaction that aspiring mimes would envy. He watched her speech-gush, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Mason. We’ll be there!”
Now watching her trying to bang out a message with her bare feet on springs, he knew it was a done deal without even hearing her obvious whoops and cheers. OMG! His bare feet were on springs, too, when he saw what she had typed:
Rainbow. 8.7 mil $$$$$!!!!!! Sign papers at M & B, Friday 10:30.
A local snooping through the alley might have mistaken the two for a pair of Riverview Restaurant’s taxidermied specimens should they have gawked by right then. Jack and Julia stared into her phone; devoid of time and space for a second time in their lives, this time with disbelieving bliss, until a yellow butterfly landed on the screen, resurrecting them back to their newly-minted reality. They kissed and hugged; held hands and leapt into the water that the bobbing thermometer revealed to be only 56°. Back on the deck, quickly, they flopped down on the loungers, still stupefied, to contemplate what now and what next?
Jack stretched out, soaking it all in, saying nothing, thrilled at the irony of it all. The Rainbow Broadcasting Group headquartered in Duluth, Minnesota, owned and operated 43–no, make that 44!—FM radio stations scattered across the Midwest, all programmed in the “easy-listening” format. He joked that their slogan should be “old fart music for old fart ears that still worked,” and laughed that they were the perfect buyers because, to him, that format sucked so damn much.
Soft pop, soothing instrumentals, the yacht rock of Christopher Cross, Gordon Lightfoot and the like, easy-listening was just a few yawns removed from elevator Muzak, as white-bread as Dallas City, Jack thought to himself referring to the company’s fact sheet. Now, white bread was going to make them rich. And white bread was going to really piss off Z, the self-described king of controversy and heavy metal. Wonder how he’ll like the new “rock” station in town?
Julia signed what’s so funny?
“Just thinking about Z punching buttons and coming across his old frequency. Will he be blasting Kenny G as loud as he blasted AC/DC? Just thinking that if he would have started the station with this mellow shit I would still have a job. Even the dB readings would have been pan de blanco!”
They both laughed at the white bread joke told in espanol while Julia typed out: Mason said we should have $ by aug. Right around when school starts, but ya, it’s a done deal. Then what?
“Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,” he replied. “For now, let’s enjoy our millionaire status with a pizza from Caseys. On second thought, one of us would probably choke to death on the crust, so we better eat something more digestible. How about a big glob of vanilla pudding, instead, as you enjoy the melodious strains of the Carpenters, blasting Close to You to honor Z!”
Through all the thin and thinners during the last twenty years, it looked like the deluge was ending, the storms were over, the sun finally coming out and shining bright for the Mayhews. Haha! they were being blinded by a Rainbow and it felt damn good, Mick!
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