Magnus Shortwave And The Curse Of One-Way Radio

Caution: Hot.

Here's another one of those hobo stories I often never refer to as a "one-drink tale," because there's really not much to it, so it can be recited over the course of one adult beverage. Brevity begets brilliance, I always say. Okay, I never say that. What does that even mean - brevity begets brilliance? I sound ridiculous. I look ridiculous, too, but lucky you - you can't see me. Sorry. I won't let it happen again, and this time I really, really mean that (I really really don't mean that).

Magnus Shortwave was the second known hobo named for a weird dentistry-related phenomenon. His fillings were arranged in the one-in-a-million array that transformed his mouth into a shortwave radio receiver. He called it the bane of his existence, although it wasn't quite the curse that it might have been, as his friend Cricket-Eating Charles Digges often reminded him.

"I told you about that kid I knew back in Terre Haute," he'd say, usually through a crunchy mouthful of crickets, "Got them metal braces to straighten his teeth and started picking up radio stations from Bloomington to Decatur, day and night. Drove him batty. When I left there, they had him locked in the loony bin. So, you're getting off easy with this shortwave stuff; it's just every now and then, for you, not constant."

Magnus' cricket-munching friend was right. Shortwave radio was not yet in widespread use by hobbyists, in 1939. It was still mostly employed by government agencies and the military, for long-distance communications. The transmissions Magnus received were sporadic, and popped into his head - literally - with startling randomness. Also, a lot of what he heard was from many thousands of miles away, and living with so many non-English-speaking voices in his head at random intervals was stressful. That wasn't the only thing about his condition that he found curse-like, however.

What really bothered him was the fact that he could hear these broadcasts, many of them seeking replies from other shortwave users, but he had no means of answering them. It was annoying, and on one occasion, probably tragic.

One of voices that repeatedly made its way across the lower-frequency airwaves and into Magnus' tortured head was that of Edwin Winnipeg, a part-time hobo and amateur radio operator. Many of his hobo brothers and sisters suspected that Edwin was secretly rich, because really - a part-time hobo? No one had ever heard of that. 

One sticky August night, as Magnus Shortwave and Cricket-Eating Charles Digges trudged along the L&N mainline between Nashville and Bowling Green, the voice of Edwin Winnipeg crackled to life in Magnus' dental work.

"Hey - I'm picking up Edwin Winnipeg," Magnus said, stopping to listen.

"That means he's home again," Charles Digges said. "I'm tellin' you, ain't no way that fella ain't rich. You can't just go back and forth between this life and that. Nope - no way."

Magnus grabbed his friend's arm. "Oh no! He's saying he's only home for the night... hitting the rails again tomorrow!"

"So what?"

"Oh dear Lord, no! Edwin! Edwin, can you hear me? Don't go! Edwin? The Car-Knocker Killer's coming that way! You gotta stay off the tracks for a while. He's headed straight to Winnipeg! Edwin!"

"What are you talking about?" Charles demanded. "How would you know that?"

"I saw him, Charlie. A couple weeks ago in Grand Rapids. He didn't kill me, on account of I wasn't in a boxcar, but I know it was him - and he said he was going to - and I quote - 'Car-knock all the way from Winnipeg to Calgary.'"

"Uh-oh - 'car-knock' means murder, don't it?"

"Yep. Oh, Edwin's doomed. Edwin! Can you hear me? Damn this one-way connection! Oh, he's a goner..."

Charles Digges dug a fistful of crickets from his trouser pocket and shoved them into his mouth. "Yep," he said with an unpleasant crunch, "probably so..."
     

On The Further Cultivation of Additional Alternate Memories

It's prettier when it's yours.

It wasn't an invitation. it wasn't a suggestion. It was an order - a veritable commandment - from Brock Swackhammer: "Meet me where the old tractors used to be, between the train tracks and Seneca Farm Road. It's a moral imperative," the email said. It wasn't Ted's first visit to the ancient farm at the edge of the ever-expanding Maryland suburbs. It had been a year since the last time he'd been here. By then, the farm had been sold to a developer, and he assumed that he'd seen the last of the prehistoric rural partying grounds of his misspent youth. 

He was wrong. 

Ted was the first one there, and he stood at the end of the old dirt road and stared, confused. The desiccated corn was long-gone, as were the old farmhouse, the barns, and a lot of the topsoil, but at the property's edge the ancient rusted tractors defiantly continued to sit. There were signs yelling "No Trespassing" and "Coming Soon - Seneca Village and Estates," but no construction equipment; no indication of any recent activity whatsoever. A small rock sailed over his head, landing with a clack in the ballast of the railroad tracks.

"Dammit, Swack!" he protested. "What is your damage, dude--" he turned, ready to unload on his unruly friend, but the endlessly clever and profane tirade caught in his throat. "Oh! Nicole! Hi! Um..."

"Sorry," Nicole said sheepishly, through longish bangs of increasingly-grey-streaked brown hair. "I thought it would be funny. I also thought you would be Swack, and not Ted."

"Oh geez - I thought YOU would be Swack," Ted groaned.  "Please tell me he didn't set us up for a rom-com set-up thingy?"

"A what?"

 "You know. I come here expecting to find Swack. You come here expecting to find Swack. But what's this? It's just us! What? Guess we might as well make the most of it, and go ahead and get engaged. Not getting any younger, you know..."

"Um, no..." she growled. "I'm married to being single."

"Oh, so am I, so am I," he lied. "I'll settle for a nice friendly hug..."

"And I'd settle for you two doing a little gratuitous pawing at each other in the back of that Prius over there - presumably Ted's," Swack said, walking up the dirt road, seemingly from nowhere. "You know - makin' up for lost time..." He belched loudly. "But make it quick - great things are afoot, and we must converse."

Ted pinched the bridge of his nose. "Oh, geez..."

"Will you seriously never grow up, Swack?" Nicole muttered, turning to accept a hug from her inappropriate old friend (more accurately, her late husband's inappropriate old friend).

"Never, Yoko," he affirmed, releasing her from his requisite just-slightly-too-lengthy embrace. He reached toward Ted, offering and receiving a fist bump. "'Sup, Theodore. I'm glad you're both here. We must converse - and quick-like, because it's cold as balls out here."

"'Cold as balls,'" Nicole repeated. "Nice. Hey - have you lost weight? You look good - and now that we've noticed, put your coat back on. Looking at you is making me even colder."

"Thirty-five fuckin' pounds, dude! Wanna know my secret? A fifty-game season plan for the O's, parking a mile from Camden Yards, and nothing but H2O at the ballpark."

"Whatever works for you," Nicole laughed. "Hey - that reminds me..." she pantomimed removing an unseen baseball cap. "N - A - T - S, Nats, Nats, Nats, WOOOOOO!"

Swack smiled and looked away. "Okay, okay. Credit where it's due. Congrats, you guys. I did not see that coming. I mean, who did, right?"

"Oh, but wait - there's more," she teased, starting a strange, straight-armed clapping, aimed at Swack.

"What is that? What's happening?" he said, backing away.

"Baby shark doo-doo-do-do-do-doo, baby shark doo-doo-do-do-do-doo, baby shark doo-doo-do-do-do-do-doo, baby SHARK!" she sang.

"Okay, okay, stop! Jesus! I get it. The Nats had a magical, ridiculous year, and exorcised all kinds of demons, and God bless 'em - it was fun to watch. I got nothing bad to say about any of it. They still need to win a couple more World Series, just to match the O's, but whatever..."

"You want me to sing more 'Baby Shark' at you?" Nicole threatened.

"No! Listen - I dragged you guys out here for a reason. I need your help with something."

Ted and Nicole shared a long look, unsure of their next step.

"Did you-- did you lose your MAGA hat," Ted started, "and you need us to help you look for it?"

Swack shook his head sadly, looked skyward, and sighed heavily. "No. I'm out of the red hat club - and no, I don't wanna talk about it. Anyway... you guys remember the party at Bobby's house - senior year - 1986?"

"Oh lord," Nicole groaned, "we hadn't met, yet. I didn't meet Bobby - or any of you guys - until college."

Swack was momentarily flummoxed. "Oh. Right. Shit. Well, um, Ted - you remember that night, right?"

Ted looked helplessly at Nicole. "Are we really doing this?"

"I'm not. I'll sit this one out," Nicole said. "But we will circle back to that 'out of the red hat club' thing..."

"You remember the air raid sirens?" Swack continued, "the news interrupting MTV, and the lights went out..."

"And the walls came down," Nicole muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing." 

Ted's eyes did a slow, are we really doing this loop-the-loop beneath their lids, and he shook his head in disbelief. "Yep," he deadpanned, "I remember it like it was three-and-a half decades ago."

"...And we tried listening to the radio with Bobby's boom box, and all the stations were doing news alerts or emergency broadcast network shit, but everyone at the party was yelling at the same time and we couldn't hear the radio, and before we could get everyone to shut up, all the radio stations went dead..."

"Yes, Swack. It was the scariest twenty minutes of our lives - mine even more so, because I lost my virginity with Chloe during the blackout, utterly convinced that we were about to die in an all-out nuclear war. You're terrible at the make-shit-up game, by the way."

Swack sighed heavily. "I know."

"What's really going on, dude?" Ted asked. "I don't think I've seen you this stressed since Obama was elected."

"Ha," Nicole added, checking her phone.

"Are you finally having the existential crisis the rest of us went through at least ten to twenty years ago? If so, we're here for you and all, but mostly it's about freakin' time, man."

"You wanna talk about leaving the red hat cult?" Nicole said, affecting a syrupy after-school special tone. "Ooh - is that a train? I think I hear a train, guys."

"Ugh. No. What can I say? It's a cult. I got wise to the bullshit and fuckin' quit. I'm not a fan of being used, so I cut my losses and cashed the fuck out. End of story."

"Congratulations, Hannity," Nicole said, trying and failing to sound genuinely supportive. She bent over and picked up a couple of fist-sized rocks. "Train's coming, boys. Get some rocks..."

Swack quickly moved to position himself between Nicole and the railroad tracks. "No, no, no. Nobody's throwing rocks at trains from my property!"

Ted and Nicole stared at Swack, then at each other, then at Swack again, then at each other again, and finally at the sprawling old half-excavated cornfield that surrounded them. "Say what, now?" Ted eventually said.

"Seriously?" Nicole demanded.

"Seriously," Brockton Swackhammer replied, "Life's savings - every damn penny I ever made as a lobbyist for the Dark Side - everything I have and a double-mortgage on my future, just to keep this place from becoming four rows of townhouses and sixty-six McMansions. So, yeah - I'm feeling a little fragile..."

"Can we continue this at a nice warm bar in Frederick," Nicole interrupted. "It's cold as balls, out here."