Free Ask the Dice by Ed Lynskey Page A

Panasonic AM transistor radio, compact enough to fit in my shirt pocket. My transistor radio went everywhere with me. I listened to it through the plastic plug I fitted into my ear. The transistor radio's clear as a bell tone was heads above the tinny bleats I heard from the Hong Kong knockoffs discounted at the corner five-and-dime. Mid-winter nights I tunneled my way under the crazy quilt in bed, mesmerized by my AM's vast broadcast range.
    I vicariously experienced those glorious nights when my birth father, Bradford , had tuned in the tacky X-radio stations beaming their megacycles up from wide-open México. He caught the broadcasts in his boyhood Texas , and I wished I'd asked him about the X-radio stations. But I had many questions he'd never get to take. Reconnecting with him was essential. I flipped down the sun visor, put on the map light again, and rifled through the sheaf of poems. The right one waxed lyrical on what his adventurous radio nights must've been like in Texas .
     
    X-Radio Stations
    Texas, 1940s
     
    The renegade megacycles bumped off
    Mercury, then boomed back miracles
    to Chapman's Folly. Over the muddy Rio
    DJs played to plowboys enraptured
    by the wireless radios. Blinky stars
    above spoke: "So gents, you've
    lost your crust? The good goat
    doctor will restuff the starch!"
    Midnight a thin-lipped sky pilot
    for a fist of Borax box tops sent
    "a signed pix of Jesus H. Christ,
    deal done at dawn." Clabber Girl
    mewed, her mesquite tongue trailed
    down ears: "The cash in your bibs
    for my Tango Pink." Slim Rhinehart
    yodeled "I'll Fly Away"—ended
    his sacred broadcast plugging tree
    stump water as a grace for grippe.
    Those X-radio airwaves fell hushed
    on the sage as Pancho Villa had died.
     
    The golden era of the X-radio stations he knew and loved was lost to the forgotten past. I pondered if the coupé's AM radio possessed the right powerful magic to suck in the old jazz stations. Doubts besieged me, but I had to try searching for them. I turned the radio dial, my ears piqued for any riffs to a die-hard jazz tune still afloat in space. The dial swept past the radio spots of the rabid talking heads, the easy-listening snoozers, the hollow-voiced rappers, the hackneyed rockers, and the cowboy hat acts.
    My search in vain to detect and lock on any jazz program crushed out the glow to my dying embers of hope. But I had to cling to my hope that somewhere beyond the murky switchyard, an ace trumpeter was heating up the mike. I had to believe he did it for all I was worth, or my spirits faded away like the jazz riffs had done. I kept going until reaching the radio dial's most extreme left position where a different, but well-remembered voice yammered over the coupé's speakers.
    Shine, the prodigious trickster in black folklore, was spinning one of his tall yarns, and I listened in on him. The only defender left alive at the Alamo mêlée was ole Shine who then stole General Santa Ana's prized pinto and hauled ass across the Texas plains to hunt up Sam Houston and Company. Shine led the fighting mad Texans back to their final victory fought at San Jacinto , and I knew the rest of the story. Well, the cocky Shine tickled me to laugh so hard in joy that I related my own stirring saga.
    “You see, the big crime boss Mr. Ogg set up ole Tommy Mack to take the hard fall for the murder of the niece Gwen. Only it backfired. Ole Tommy Mack was too cunning and knew how to dodge a frame job fitted on him. He'd scoped out a fat armored truck to heist, and he lifted a cool million bucks.”
    Shine, cackling in risible laughter, slapped me on the shoulder. Good one, he said. Go on, Tommy Mack. I'm digging it, man.
    “Well, ole Tommy Mack paid in cash for this spanky new Learjet, and he flew off into the indigo skies while chain-smoking his Blue Castles. Hours later, he touched down on this tropical island in some forgotten but exotic dot of the Pacific Ocean . He had it made. Hell, he might pitch and star in his