Read Online The Dick Gibson Show by Stanley Elkin - Free Book Online Page A

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, ‘Ididn’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.
    “Because we had all stopped listening.
    “And that’s why I never heard. Because one by one