Ashlyn's Radio (5 page)

The wind blew through the full trees out back, rattling the leaves on the oaks. The caw of a crow punctuated the rhythm every so often, and there was something about that call — it felt so right to the place. Oddly comforting. Ashlyn heard the happy bark of a couple of the dogs. Maudette could tell each dog by their bark, and swore they had distinctive ones — happy barks, stranger barks, hungry barks and even low lonesome barks, which Maudette would respond to by going out to the kennels just to sit and pat her dogs. Ashlyn, on the other hand, couldn’t yet tell one dog from the other, though she thought she could distinguish Lolly-Pup, a young female who’d taken a particular shine to Ashlyn. She could, however, certainly tell a dog’s angry bark from a friendly one. Like now. The dogs were barking delightedly.

Ashlyn closed her eyes. Very soon, she felt herself dozing off. Felt that lovely pull of sleep as the breeze blew through the trees. The crows seemed to be calling for her to relax, and even the dogs’ happy whines and occasional woofs wove their way into a sleepy afternoon soundtrack. Then a deep male voice broke into her consciousness—

What the heck?

A joyful male laugh lifted up, carried on the breeze.

Sleep forgotten, Ashlyn slid from the bed and crossed to the window.

Situated at the back of the house, her bedroom overlooked the kennels, a fact she wasn’t too pleased about initially. (Hello? Dogs
barked
.) But today she was very, very grateful for the bedroom’s positioning.

The dogs had all been turned out into the ginormous fenced dog run behind the kennels, and a young man strode through the area. The big Airedales bounded and jumped around him like he was a doggie Pied Piper, and Ashlyn knew how they felt. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. He’d peeled his shirt off in the afternoon heat, and though his muscled chest and torso suggested familiarity with physical work, he didn’t have the filled-in, bulked-up look of a full-grown man. His dark skin seemed to absorb the sunlight, and his laughter was like sunlight itself.

But if he was a teenager, how come she hadn’t seen him at school? She was pretty certain she’d have noticed him. Towns didn’t come any WASPier than Podunk Junction. He’d stand out like a … well, like a black kid in a sea of white faces.

As she watched, he drew a tennis ball out of a bag and threw it. Several dogs raced after it. Chuckling, he drew out another and another. Soon all the dogs were either racing after a ball or returning one. He praised the dogs when they returned a ball and rewarded them by throwing it again. And he laughed easily and often, clearly a fan of the breed’s innate silliness.

Ashlyn found herself smiling. The pull to go down there and join him was incredibly powerful. So powerful, she instantly rejected it. When it came to guys, caution was advised.

Besides, how would she pull that off smoothly? She never visited the kennels before supper. That after school/before supper period was her decompression time. To depart from her schedule now would be totally transparent. And for some reason, she didn’t want anyone — her grandmother included — to glimpse her feelings. She just wanted to hug this little buzz of awareness to herself and think about it.

So instead of going down there, she contented herself with watching. For twenty minutes, he exercised the dogs. Then he disappeared into the roofed kennels, the Airedales hot on his heels. A short time later, probably after kenneling and feeding the dogs, he emerged through the barn’s front door, latching it behind him. Ashlyn’s eyes followed him as he crossed the backyard to a bicycle he’d left leaning up against the big oak that shaded the barn from the noon-day sun. She watched as he strapped a helmet on and threw a leg over the bike.

Then he turned his face up to her window and smiled.

Ashlyn released her grip on the window curtain and leapt back.

Crap! She’d been caught.

When she dared to peer out the window again, he was gone.

Caden Williams. That’s what his name was.

In their initially stilted conversation over supper, Ashlyn had asked casually who that was in the kennel earlier. Maudette told her his name, indicating she’d just hired him to help with the dogs. He was a high-school senior, like Ashlyn, she’d added. Which gave Ashlyn the perfect opportunity to remark that she’d never seen him at school. Maudette explained he was being home schooled by his professor father, who was here on sabbatical from NYU researching World War II troop trains. That’s what had brought the Williams family to Prescott Junction. Caden had come knocking on Maudette’s door a couple weeks back wanting to take pictures of her dogs. No charge, no scam. Please and thank you, ma’am. He was just an avid photographer who happened to love dogs. He’d brought the pictures over to show Maudette today and the two of them started talking. She’d wound up offering him a part-time job helping with the terriers in exchange for one of Lolly-Pup’s pups when she was bred in the spring.

Ashlyn figured that was a pretty good deal for both of them. A Caverhill Airedale was a valuable dog, and from what Ashlyn saw, Caden Williams was a hard worker. Competent. Kind to the dogs. Totally ripped too, but in that nice, lean way she liked….

After dinner, it had taken a while to settle to her homework, but once she found her focus, she completely lost track of time. She was exhausted by the time she closed her book and changed into her pajamas. She only meant to put in a little extra time with Othello, but found herself going way beyond the assigned next act. It was midnight before she turned her light out. Sleep came to her easily, in that head-hitting-the-pillow kind of way. In no time at all Ashlyn was fast asleep — dreaming of city lights and her mother, blue balloons and waterfalls, howling dogs and dancing music — until she realized she wasn’t dreaming at all. At least not entirely.

Her eyes shot open and Ashlyn was instantly awake. The dogs
were
howling beyond her open window, and she
was
hearing the music. Loud enough to wake her. But still not loud enough that she could easily make out the words.

Ashlyn recalled her grandmother’s warning.
You’re supposed to stay in bed at night, Ashlyn. Everyone does in Prescott Junction. We all have to.

Then she recalled mumbling a few words of her own. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

Ashlyn stood up and turned her light on. She walked to the door, expecting the music to sound louder there, but it didn’t. She moved around the room. There! By her bed. She glanced up at the tin cover on the wall where the stovepipe used to run though the house. Of course! The music was coming up from there. And the tune. My God! She knew that tune from — oh, wow, like
kindergarten
.

Carefully, she removed the tin cover. And the sounds almost doubled in volume. The music crackled as if coming from ancient speakers or a very scratchy old record. Or both. And she could make out the lyrics now too, though they were strange to her.

The conductor will be there to greet her when she comes

When she comes!

The conductor will be glad to greet her when she comes

When she comes!

Screw it. No matter what her grandmother said, Ashlyn had to go see for herself where the music was coming from. It was more than defiance. It was more than curiosity. The song was enticing somehow. Reaching, almost. So were the lyrics.

Ashlyn set the tin cover down on the nightstand. Creeping across the room, she opened her bedroom door as quietly as possible and stepped out into the hallway.

Her grandmother’s bedroom was down on the first floor, right below hers. And Ashlyn’s initial thought was that the music was originating from in there. But when she passed by the old woman’s room — the door wide open — it was empty of the Gramophone Ashlyn expected to see. And the moonlit room was empty of Maudette also.

“What the hell’s going on here?” She’d fully expected to see the old woman cowering under the covers. Slowly, her arms out to the sides as she made her away along, Ashlyn began walking through the darkened house. The living room furniture, so cheery in the daytime, loomed gray and large. The drawn curtains only added a more solid depth to the stillness all around her

A line of light sliced out from under the basement door. Ashlyn saw it the moment she entered the kitchen and it stopped her fast in her tracks. A chill crept along her spine and across her shoulders. She knew her heart was racing. Outside the dogs howled. Inside, the music played on and on.

The conductor will be there to greet her when she comes

When she comes!

The conductor will be there to greet her when she comes

When she comes!

She’ll get onboard the train; her life won’t be the same.

The conductor will be there to greet her when she comes

When she comes!

“Maudette?” Ashlyn quietly called her grandmother’s name as she opened the basement door. Not that she expected her to actually hear her whisper over the blaring music. Slowly, Ashlyn descended the stairs.

She stopped half-way down the steps. This was the first time she had ever been in this part of the old house. The door was always kept closed and locked with a slide bolt high up on the door. Not that this physically had stopped Ashlyn from entering the basement before now. But mentally, it had barred her. That had been enough.

In Toronto, the apartment she shared with her mother had a small storage area on the basement floor, but this windowless basement was nothing like that. A workbench filled with tools lined one wall by the furnace. Shoved under the bench were a few planks of wood and a couple of dark railway ties. Boxes and a half dozen paint tins were piled in one corner. There was some old baby furniture, and what appeared to be an old-fashioned railway lantern hung down from the rafters. There was a sink, as well, over by the white water heater, old and industrial-looking with the water pipes snaking from it, along the walls and up to the rafters.

And though everything that Ashlyn gathered in this quick glance around the basement was interesting, none of it drew her attention like what she saw directly before her.

Maudette stood before the largest floor model radio Ashlyn had ever seen. She knew it had to be an antique, though it looked like it might have come straight from the factory. The wood shone as if newly polished, and the glass on the large face display was smudgeless. Even under the low lighting of this damp and dingy basement, Ashlyn could see the radio’s maker proudly emblazoned across the radio front.
Henderson
. Not that the brand meant anything to her. She’d never heard of it before.

But how could it keep playing that song? Over and over, that very same song? Was there some kind of record player hidden inside? Was it loaded with those old ’45s she’d heard about? And if all that was the case, why was her grandmother down here playing that same song so damn loud in the middle of the night?

Ashlyn was just about to open with all these questions, when she saw how much her grandmother was shaking. Maudette’s head hung down as if in defeat, her feet placed wide apart as if she needed all the balance that stance could offer. Ashlyn swallowed hard. She was about to call out to her, about to say something — “Could you turn that thing down!” came to mind — when she saw the humongous shotgun her grandmother held at her side.

Ashlyn’s heart thumped harder than she knew a heart could thump. And then it pounded still harder as Maudette raised her trembling arms, aimed the shotgun, and blew the radio away with one blast. The bouncy lyrics immediately stopped, leaving only the report of the shotgun ringing in Ashlyn’s ears.

That and her own startled scream.

Maudette whirled around. “Ashlyn! You’re supposed to be in bed!” she cried. “You’re supposed to—”

“What the hell was that?” Ashlyn demanded, her voice shaking. “Why’d you shoot the radio?”

Maudette looked down at the gun. “Get upstairs now, Ashlyn. This doesn’t concern you—”

“Doesn’t concern me? God, how could it
not
?”

She knew. By the look of sheer horror on her grandmother’s face, Ashlyn knew it concerned her a great deal.

Maudette wet her lips and when she spoke again, her words broke from her throat. “Go now, Ashlyn. Please. Go quickly.”

Ashlyn could feel the anger rising. “Dammit, are you totally off your Geritol? It’s the middle of the night, my mother is locked up in a psychiatric hospital sixty miles away and no one will really tell me what sent her there. Yeah, yeah, car soaked with enough gasoline to blow herself to kingdom come, but for God’s sake,
why?
Why can’t anyone explain that to me? And now I come downstairs to find my grandmother blowing the hell out of the appliances, and all you can say is it doesn’t concern me? How the hell can you just—”

She’ll step on board the train; her life won’t be the same.

The conductor will be there to greet her when she comes

When she comes!