"No," he said.
"You say the magazines and phone book were weatherbeaten."
"Yes," he said. "Very."
"Then they must have found them in a garage or outdoors. I think probably in that old bombed-out armory the county used to maintain. The rubble is still there; you people never cleared it."
"We can't!" Black said. "It's county property; it's up to them. And anyhow there's nothing there. Just cement blocks and the drainage system that carried off the r.a. wastes."
"You better get a city work truck and a few men and pave those lots. Put a fence up."
"We've been trying to get permission from the county," he said. "Anyhow I don't think they found the stuff there. If they did -- and I say if -- it's because somebody salted the ground, there."
"Enriched, you mean," Lowery said.
"Yes, a few nuggets."
"Maybe so."
"So if we pave over the lots, whoever they are will just enrich a little closer home. And why would Vic or Margo or Ragle be poking around those lots? They're half a mile across town, and--" Then he recalled Margo's petition. That possibly explained it. "Maybe you're right," he said. "Forget it." Or the boy Sammy. Well, it didn't matter. He had the phone book back.
"You don't think they looked up anything in it while they had it, do you?" Lowery said. "Besides the numbers they tried to call."
Black knew what he meant. "Nobody looks themselves up," he said. "That's the one thing nobody ever turns to, his own number."
"You have the book there?"
"Yes."
"Read me what he would have found."
Balancing the phone, Bill Black turned the tattered, watercrumbled pages of the phone book until he got to the Rs. There it was, all right.
Ragle Gumm Inc., Branch 25 Kentwood 6 0457
Between 5 P.M. and 8 A.M. Walnut 4 3965
Shipping dept. Roosevelt 2 1181
Floor One Bridgefield 8 4290
Floor Two Bridgefield 8 4291
Floor Three Bridgefield 8 4292
Receiving dept. Walnut 4 3882
Emergency Sherman 1 9000
"I wonder what he would have done if he had happened to turn to it," Black said.
"God only knows. Gone into a catatonic coma, most likely." Black tried to imagine the conversation, if Ragle Gumm had found the number and called it -- any of the numbers listed under Ragle Gumm Inc. Branch 25. What a weird conversation that would be, he thought. Almost impossible to imagine.
six
The next day, after he arrived home from school, Sammy Nielson carried his still-malfunctioning crystal set from the house, through the back yard, to the locked clubhouse.
Over the door of the clubhouse was a sign his dad had got for him down at the store. The man who did the lettering for the store had made it.
NO FASCISTS, NAZIS, COMMUNISTS,
FALANGISTS, PERONISTS, FOLLOWERS
OF HLINKA AND/OR BELA KUN ALLOWED
Both his father and his uncle insisted that it was the best sign to have, so he had nailed it up.
With his key he unlocked the padlock on the door and carried the crystal set inside. After he was in he bolted the door after him, and, with a match, lit the kerosene lantern. Then he removed the plugs from the peep-slots in the walls and watched for a time to see if any of the enemy was sneaking up on him.
Nobody could be seen. Only the empty back yard. Washing hanging from the line next door. Dull gray smoke from an incinerator.
He placed himself at the table, strapped the set of earphones over his head, and began dipping the cat's whisker against the crystal. Each time, he heard static. Again and again he dipped it, and at last he heard -- or imagined he heard -- faint tinny scratchy voices. So he left the cat's whisker where it was and began slowly running the bead along the tuning coil. One voice separated itself from the others, a man's voice, but too faint for the words to be made out.
Maybe I need more antenna, he thought.
More wire.
Leaving the clubhouse -- locked -- he roamed about the yard, searching for wire. He poked his head into the garage. At the far end was his dad's workbench. He started at one end of the bench, and by the time he reached the other he had found a great roll of uninsulated steelish-looking wire that probably was for hanging up pictures or for a wire clothesline if his dad ever got around to putting it up.
They won't mind, he decided.
He carried the picture wire to the clubhouse, climbed the side of the clubhouse to the roof, and attached the wire to the antenna that came up from the crystal set. Out of the two wires he made one vast antenna which trailed the length of the yard.
Maybe it ought to be high, he decided.
Finding a heavy spike he tied the free end of the antenna to it, got his throwing arm limbered up, and then heaved the spike up on to the roof of the house. The antenna drooped. That won't do, he thought. It should be tight.
Returning to the house he climbed the stairs to the top floor. One window opened on to the flat part of the roof; he unlatched that window and in a moment he was scrambling out onto the roof.
From downstairs his mother called, "Sammy, you're not going out on the roof, are you?"
"No," he yelled back. I _am_ out, he told himself, making in his mind a fine distinction. The spike with the antenna dangling from it lay on the sloping part of the roof, but by lying flat and inching along he was able to grab hold of it. Where to tie it?
Only place was the TV antenna.
He tied the end of his antenna to the metal pipe of the TV mast, and that was that. Quickly he crawled back inside the house, through the window, and ran downstairs and out into the yard to the clubhouse.
Shortly he had seated himself at the table, before the crystal set, and was running the bead along the tuning coil.
This time, in his earphones, the man's voice could be heard clearly. And a whole raft of other voices babbled in; his hands shook with excitement as he tuned them apart. From them he picked the loudest.
A conversation of some kind was in progress. He had got it part way through.
"...those long kind that look like sticks of bread. Practically break your front teeth when you bite on them. I don't know what they're for. Weddings maybe, where there's a lot of people you don't know and you want the refreshments to last..."
The man talked leisurely, the words spaced far apart.
"...not the hardness but the anise. It's in everything, even in the chocolate ones. There's one kind, white, with walnuts. Always makes me think of those bleached skulls you find out on the desert... rattlesnake skulls, jackrabbit skulls... small mammals. What a picture, right? Sink your teeth into a fifty-year-old rattlesnake skull..." The man laughed, still leisurely, almost an actual ha-ha-ha-ha. "Well, that's about all, Leon. Oh, one more thing. You know that thing your brother Jim said about ants going faster on hot days? I looked that up and I can't find anything about that. You ask him if he's sure, because I went out back and looked at ants for a couple of hours since I talked to you last, and when it got good and hot they looked to be walking around at about the same speed." I don't get it, Sammy thought.
He tuned the coil to another voice. This one talked briskly.
"...CQ, calling CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; calling CQ; this is W3840-Y asking is there a CQ; is there a CQ anybody; W3840-Y asking for a CQ; CQ; CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ; come in CQ; is there a CQ; this is W3840-Y calling CQ; CQ..." It continued on and on. So he tuned further.
The next voice droned so slowly that he gave up almost at once.
"...no... no... again... what?... to... the... no, I don't believe so..."