Swallowed Birds-a-Listenin'
Mike
Smith
I was hired to work overnights at Stark Radio.
This company owned four stations in Louisville, including the
#1 station in the city. Although the company owned four stations,
everyone still called the building "the station."
On my first night, I arrived 30 minutes before the start of
my shift. Embarrassed for showing up so early, I waited in the
lobby. The lobby was boring, with only a wooden chair and two
doors labeled "1" and "2." From my one-hour
training session a week earlier, I remembered what was behind
the two doors. Door #1 contained the oldies studio and the soft
rock studio, while door #2 contained classic rock and eighties.
All of the studios were basically the same, with a control board,
a big screen TV, and a computer from which everything was run.
I learned in my training that these stations were 99% automated
and recorded. Only the morning shows were live (most of the
time). They liked for us to "hang out" in the highest
rated station's studio, so I headed for soft rock behind door
#1.
I was dreading the inevitable sleepiness that
was likely to hit between 3 and 4, but figured I could handle
it somehow. I talked to a guy named Gerald, who was leaving
for the night. Gerald looked like he was about 40 years old
and cussed like a motherfucker. "They ain't givin' me shit
around here," he said. "I can be #1 in Boston, so
fuck Louisville!"
All I was allowed to do was babysit in kind of
a robotic on-call mode. If severe weather struck, I had to go
on the air and announce it instantly, somehow on all four sta
tions simultaneously. If the computers shut down, I was supposed
to pull CDs and introduce songs, again on all four stations
at the same time. Instructions for how to do these things were
not included in the training session. Like a lot of training
sessions, this one was more of a nickel tour. I wasn't actually
trained on anything, just shown where things were.
The station was scary at night, but most of its creepiness was
psychological. I paid attention to funny sounds, but convinced
myself to brush them off as sounds coming from the air conditioner.
I tried to stay awake by watching some soft-core porn flick
on Showtime. The station actually paid for premium cable channels,
I guess so overnight employees could keep themselves adequately
aroused all night.
After about three or four hours, I had a difficult time ignoring
the noises. They were happening more often and were becoming
stranger. When I heard a distant cough, I jumped out of the
tall chair in the control room and walked out into the hall.
My hands were shaking because it was so cold in the building
and because I was contemplating my death at the hands of an
insane serial killer. The only sounds I could hear out in the
hallway at this point were the underpaid moans and worn-out
"fuck me baby" phrases coming from the studio. I looked
around the corner and at the very end of the hallway sat a man
with his pants down, squatting, taking a shit.
He was a short man, in his early sixties with
a long, dirty, gray beard. He was obviously homeless and must
have found one of the doors left open. When he looked up at
me, his face turned red and he ran like hell into an empty "production
studio" nea rby, leaving a trail of shit behind him. I
didn't know what to do. No one ever told me how to respond during
a break-in. Break-in??? I know, call the police!!!
The 911 lady sent police units in about 10 minutes. I waited
for them outside of the building, in the cold, just like I was
instructed to do. I had an overwhelming feeling that I was the
one who was going to get in trouble over the whole thing, but
I kept reassuring myself that I did the right thing. The cops
arrived and told me to wait outside, "just in case the
guy's still in there." I waited for 10 more minutes, freezing
my ass off. I thought to myself that I was probably in more
danger by standing on a street corner in downtown Louisville
at 4 in the morning than I would be if I had remained inside
with the homeless guy. I was standing right in front of a police
car with its lights flashing, but that only made me feel less
safe. ; People hate cops.
The cops led this man outside in handcuffs, thanking
me. As they loaded him in the car, he looked at me and seemed
like he wanted to tell me something, half grinning. The cops
didn't take any information from me or anything, they just drove
off with this guy sitting in the backseat, looking anxious.
I went back inside, really feeling like I had accomplished something.
I finished my shift, a little jumpy during those last few hours.
The guy who relieved me seemed kind of pissed off about something,
so I just left, not feeling any obligation to explain what had
happened a few hours ago. "Have a good weekend," I
said. He didn't respond. The next day I got a call from my boss
at the station. He fired me, but enthusiastically said, "You
can still come to the Christmas party!"
....
Mike Smith is a writer, but makes more money by working at libraries
and radio stations. He once used his training in English to
teach high school Math. "Tell Christian I'm Sorry"
is his first novel. The novel contains a lot of stories. Read
his book. Look at his website (www.tellchristian.com).
To read Mike's Telling
the Truth about Social Studies, click here, on this sentence.
