The migrants were ahead 1–0. The seniors were up with the bases loaded. There was one out. Shippleton, the relief announcer, a man who had been with Credenza for years, was doing the play-by-play. “The tension here,” Shippleton was saying, “is terrific. Consolidated High has a good chance to tie it and even to go ahead, and this crowd knows it. Their hopes are on Scholar Joe Niebecker to hit one out of here. (Scholar Joe’s the valedictorian and could really make himself a hero if he connects.) Just listen to this crowd. I want you to hear this—” Then came the sound that Shippleton was talking about. Only it wasn’t the expected roar at all, just something very faint, something softly liquid, not a roar or a rush but more like a trickle of water in a pipe in a distant corner of the house at night.
Shippleton’s gone crazy, Marshall Maine thought. He knew that Credenza, like the parents of the boys themselves, was a strong supporter of the high schoolers, and resented something in the mute underprivilege of the migrant workers as the townies resented their strange rough ways. Did Shippleton mean to be ironic, Maine wondered. What was the point? Appalled, he thought, have I inspired him? It was insane. Shippleton was a hack, a safe man. Yet when Niebecker hit into a double play and ended the graduating class’s chances in that inning, Shippleton’s voice came booming over the speaker in top-heavy decibels. “IT’S A DOUBLE PLAY! THIS INNING IS OVER!” It was exactly like the wrong weight he had given Jack’s slow progress past the sleeping giant.
In the last inning, when the kids went ahead and won the game, Shippleton sounded quiet, defeated.
He left the shack to call Murtaugh. The man lay on his back inside the steel ribbing at the base of the antenna, poking a flashlight up at the various angles of the tower and pulling on cables to test their tension.
“Heh, Murtaugh,” he shouted, “you can knock that off now. Come here a minute.”
The man directed his beam into Marshall’s eyes. “What? What is it?”
He thinks it’s happened, Marshall Maine thought. Whatever it is, he thinks it’s already happened.
“Maybe an emergency,” Maine said. “Come inside.”
Moving from beneath the steel tent, Murtaugh swore softly.
Marshall Maine stood at the speaker and waited for him. They had switched back to the studio where the engineer had put on some marches while waiting for Shippleton to return. Maine pointed at the speaker. “Listen,” he said.
“For Christ’s sake, buddy—”
“Shh,” Maine said, “listen.”
There was no mistaking it. The values of the music were totally confused. The volume bore no relation to what the band was playing. The sound was completely erratic — now loud and booming where it should have been soft, or so thunderous and distorted where it should merely have swelled that Maine thought the cone of the speaker had ripped. At other times the music was incredibly tinny, as if someone was moving the needle around the record at exactly the right speed but with the power off. Then the sound would settle normally, only to erupt or fade again seconds later. The effect was incoherence, a sort of musical gibberish.
“Hey, that ain’t right,” the transmitter man said. He went to the control board and examined some dials. He turned a knob experimentally, Maine watching his hand carefully as it reached out for the knob. It ain’t right, he thought warily. Something’s fishy, Murtaugh. You were supposed to be pulling cables, weeding the hardware, planting the tower deep in the garden.
“Something’s wrong,” the transmitter man said.
“It is,” Maine said, and wondered what Credenza was up to, how his ends were served by throwing the transmission out of whack. What did he mean to do, give him the headache?
“Here,” Murtaugh said, “when I give the signal, push the amperage on that dial up to eighty. I want to try something.”
So, thought Maine. So. Electrocution. It’s to be electrocution. Then he understood why Credenza troubled with vagrants, why he kept them around — so they could electrocute the announcers when they got out of line. Maine shook his head and, walking calmly toward the doorway, planted his feet firmly on the rubber welcome mat, grounding himself.
“Come on,” the transmitter man said. “Quit fucking off. I’m testing for a short circuit.”
“I’m a staff announcer,” Maine said simply. “I have nothing to do with the equipment.”
“Shit,” Murtaugh said. Then, to Maine’s surprise, he went through the motions without him, fiddling with knobs and dials, throwing switches and, at one point, actually taking apart a rather complicated piece of machinery with a screwdriver, the best acting Maine had seen him do that evening. When Murtaugh finished he looked up at Maine. “It’s at the studio,” he said.
“Is it?”
“I’ve checked everything out. It’s at the studio. The only thing it can be is the coil.”
Marshall Maine planted himself even more firmly, making himself a dead weight on the doormat. “The coil, is it?” he said.
“The meter’s disabled,” Murtaugh said. “I’ll call the station.” He picked up the direct-line telephone and said something to someone at the other end. He waited for a few moments, appearing to listen as the engineer got back to the phone and made his report. The transmitter man nodded. “I didn’t either,” he said. “No, what’s-his-name, the staff announcer told me about it.” He put back the phone. “It’s the meter, all right,” he told Maine. “The needle must have jammed and shorted the coil.”
Marshall Maine looked at him.
“That’s why it sounds like that,” Murtaugh said. He pointed to the loudspeaker. “He’s been riding a false gain. There’s no equilibrium in the output. He couldn’t tell. The needle was just floating free.”
“ONE MOMENT PLEASE!” they heard the engineer shout. Then the loudspeaker went dead.
“And he hadn’t noticed,” Marshall Maine said.
“What’s that?”
“He hadn’t noticed. That’s what he told you before you said, ‘I didn’t either.’ That he hadn’t noticed. You hadn’t either.”
“That’s right. Hey, how’d you know that?”
“He hadn’t been listening. Only watching the needle.”
“That’s right. Say, mate, could you hear all that?”
“When I shrieked,” Marshall Maine said.
“What’s that, fella?”
“Nothing,” Marshall Maine said. He stepped off the mat and came back into the shack. He leaned against the equipment. He played his fingers over the dials and stroked the switches. He thrust his hand into the space from which the transmitter man had removed the electric panel which he had taken apart. He picked up one of the loose wires.
“Hey, watch it!” the transmitter man yelled. “You want to get burned?” Murtaugh knocked the wire out of his hand.
“Right,” Maine said calmly, grabbing the wire again and picking his teeth with it.
Murtaugh shook his head and started outside with his flashlight. “Call me when it comes back on,” he said.
The first time I laughed, Maine thought. When I shrieked that time. That’s what jammed it. That’s when I tore it. And they hadn’t noticed. Not the engineer or the relief engineer, not the transmitter man or the relief transmitter man, not Shippleton, not the Indians — not even Credenza himself. Hell, not even me.