Stanley Elkin - The Dick Gibson Show

Other calls — hi-fi for a power mower — suggested windfall, upward mobility, some sudden unmiring intimate as disaster. So that he seemed continually caught in waves of disparate fortune, high and low tides of luck. He had a feeling of horserace, a seesaw sense of change. As the middleman he was untouched, a node through which the currents raced, and this, despite the innocuousness of the program, made him uneasy about it.

Sometimes he could not resist thrusting himself into the deals of his callers. It was frustrating; the middleman was always dropping out of the middle, and he never knew if the traders found each other. It probably seemed playful to the audience, but he was in dead earnest.

A woman called.

“Good morning. Merchandise Mart.”

“I want to speak to Bill.”

“Bill speaking. Go ahead, please.”

“Bill, I’ve got a nice double plot in Ames Gardens Cemetery. I’ll trade it for a washer and dryer or sell it outright at a 20-percent discount. My number is Field 3-8927.”

“Aren’t you going to die?”

“What’s that?”

“Aren’t you going to die? Did what you have go away? Are you cured?”

“Listen, I want to speak to Bill.”

“I’m Bill. You are speaking to him. Are you and your husband splitting up? Are you a spinster? Have you been living with your sister and now she’s getting married? I’m Bill.”

“Quit horsing around, then, and take my number.”

“Field 3-8927. I’m Bill. Are you marrying someone from an old Ames family with its own section in Ames Gardens? I’m not horsing around. Why a washer and dryer? Your voice is young. Maybe you have a lot of children and too many dirty clothes. Are you looking for a larger plot? Have you decided that your babies will be buried with you? I’m not horsing around. Do you have different ideas about death? Don’t hang up. I’m not horsing around. I’m Bill. Have you made up your mind to be cremated? Don’t ha—”

An old man with a cultured voice called.

“Bill Barter’s Merchandise Mart. Go ahead please, you’re on the air.”

“Sir, I have an eighteenth-century Chinese Chippendale stand made of aromatic tea wood and in mint condition. The piece has been in my family for two hundred and thirty-seven years.”

“Gee, what would you take for something like that?”

“Well, I thought if I could get a real nice Barca-lounger or Simmons Hide-a-Bed—”

People’s conceptions and arrangements bewildered and terrified him. A young man wanted to exchange a motorcycle helmet for a crucifix. Gardening tools went for animal traps, sheet music for rifles.

A teen-age boy called up. “I’ve got nineteen pair of women’s high- heel shoes in sizes 7A through 9 double B. Assorted colors. I’ve got eleven pair of brown pumps. I’ll take yellow belts and percale pillowcases.”

Once or twice he offered to buy things from his callers. He simply wanted to get to the bottom of at least one mystery.

A woman called the program. “I’ve got a sixty-pound bow, Bill, and a complete set of newly re-feathered arrows plus quiver and arm guard.”

“That’s just what I’m looking for.”

“You?”

“How much? What do you want?”

“Have you got puppets? I need puppets.”

“I’ll give you cash. Buy the puppets.”

“I need used puppets.”

“Why? Why, for God’s sake? I’ll give you a hundred dollars.”

“It isn’t the money,” the woman whispered. “Only used puppets will do.”

The program made him nervous and he left it when his contract ran out.

A few months later he did a straight telephone request show in Fort Collins, Colorado.

“‘The Theme from The Apartment’ for Roger.” It was a man’s voice.

“‘Days of Wine and Roses,’” a little girl sobbed. “It goes out for Phil and Doris.”

“Is that your mommy and daddy? Do they drink? Is someone with you?”

There were experiments. At KBS in Needles, California, he arranged to call old colleagues who had telephone shows of their own. They kidded each other about former employers and sent out regards over the air from mutual friends. He was trying to create an aura of the thick past, an untrue sense of ebullient history. They should seem to have been boys together — close, loyal, raucous as student princes from operetta.

“Go on, Jeff, give my KBS listeners one of your famous commercials.” And as Jeff, across the country, complied, Dick — he was Marty Moon in Needles — drowned out his friend’s voice in campfire guffaw.

One night in Ohio he called backstage to the Shubert Theater in New York and talked a stagehand into leaving the phone off the hook. By manipulating sound levels his listeners were able to hear a hollow performance of the second act of Hello Dolly, together with comments by the principals as they stood in the wings waiting for their cues.

He tried to impart a sense of the spontaneous and wacky by giving his audience the impression that it had just occurred to him to telephone some world leader. Then he attempted to call De Gaulle or Nehru or Khrushchev. Most of the program was taken up with just the mechanics of placing such a call, with kibitzing the operators here and overseas. He never got through, of course, but once he reached a minor official in the Soviet Union who spoke a little English. Neither knew what to say to the other.

He placed calls to whorehouses. He called a Mafia drop he had heard about, the town drunk, the village idiot. By now he was as obsessed with the telephone as he had once been with radio.

One Monday night (he was off on Mondays) he was drinking in his hotel room in Richmond, Virginia. He’d had a letter that day from Arthur. Carmella was pregnant but was having difficulty. She was older than either of them had thought, probably too old to have an easy pregnancy. She was very sick, and it was a question of whether they would be able to save the baby. The doctor was afraid her water bag would break. She would have to be in bed for five months. Dick started to think about his old mistress and about his brother and about his life. He had drunk enough to be very sad. The radio was on, as it nearly always was whenever he was home — for years he had been unable to live without the sound; it often played all night; it influenced his dreams and was the first thing he heard when he woke up in the morning — tuned to a controversy show, one very much like the one he’d had five years before in Hartford. The guest, a Klansman, had even been on his old show once. He was very outspoken and people called up either to support him or to ask him annihilating questions. Since he had been in the game a long time, he was just as equable with his enemies as with his fans.

Dick hadn’t actually been listening to the program, but now he picked up the phone by his bed and absent-mindedly began to dial the station. When he was connected he was put on hold. As he waited his mind was empty, not confused so much as fiercely blank. He had no idea what he was going to say, and when his turn came he began to talk about his life. He told about his childhood and his family, about his apprenticeship and about Miriam, about the war and about Carmella, who he said he loved, and all about Carmella’s trouble. The show’s host must have recognized his voice and didn’t try to interrupt him, letting him go on as long as he wanted. Then he talked about the last five years without Carmella, and he began to cry.

This got to the host; the man tried to reassure him gently that everything was all right.

“No, it isn’t. But if you want to know who I am,” he said, “I’m Dick Gibson.”

“Dick Gibson?”

“Yes.”

“Dick Gibson?”