Ashlyn's Radio (7 page)

“Hot chocolate?” Maudette asked.

“Coffee.” Ashlyn answered, her voice just as tremulous as the old woman’s. “Black.”

“You won’t get back to sleep.”

Ashlyn looked at her incredulously. “Like that’s a possibility after what just happened?” She raked a hand through her hair. “And isn’t that just the question of the night. What did just happen, Maudette? What’s going on here?”

Maudette held up a hand. “I’ll answer your questions, Ashlyn. All of them. But please, just give me a minute. I need my tea.”

Turning away, her grandmother filled an old kettle from the small sink beside the grooming stations, set it on the single burner of the hot plate and turned it on high. The coil burned bright red within moments. A short time later, Ashlyn, her mind racing, sat at Maudette’s small desk with her hands wrapped around the hot mug of instant coffee. Maudette grabbed a tea bag from a decorative tin on the counter, plunked it in a china mug and filled it with hot water.

The old woman was still shaking as she sat down across from Ashlyn.

They were in Maudette’s office in the dog barn attached to her kennels. It was small, cramped and smelled like wet Airedale. The office’s paneled walls were covered with dog show ribbons, certificates and pictures of various people, places and dogs. There was a picture of Ashlyn and her mother at a Blue Jays game from ’09 and one of Ashlyn standing alone on the balcony of their Toronto apartment. Ashlyn hadn’t even known Leslie had sent these along. There was an absolutely amazing shot of Lolly-Pup and two others that stood out for their quality, and Ashlyn wondered if it was Caden’s work. Dozens more framed photographs topped Maudette’s small desk, the filing cabinet in the corner, and the tiny metal nightstand beside the utilitarian-looking cot.

A cot?

Did Maudette spend some nights out here, out of earshot of that bizarre radio in the basement?

“Okay, so what’s with the radio?” Ashlyn demanded. “How can it be back again looking showroom-new? I mean, I saw you go all Rambo on it last night. There was hardly anything left of it!”

Maudette stopped stirring the whitener in her tea, and the panic started to show all over again in her green eyes. She set the spoon down quickly, let go of her teacup and half stood, as if ready to run again. Faster. Further. Anywhere the hell away from here.

“Maudette?”

Her own heart pounding in her chest, Ashlyn watched as her grandmother fought to conquer her flight response. After a few deep breaths, the old woman subsided on her chair again.

“I don’t know,” she confessed. “I don’t know how it does it, but it always comes back, exactly like before. This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to destroy it, and it probably won’t be the last. But I can’t get rid of it. I’ve tried everything. I’ve burned it. I’ve buried it. I’ve burned it and buried it. I’ve sunk it in the river. I’ve buried it and laid cement over the site. I’ve driven it miles away and tossed it out. I’ve taken a sledgehammer to it.”

Ashlyn trembled. “But that’s … that’s impossible.”

Maudette snorted. “Tell that to the radio.”

“Can you get away from it out here?”

Maudette blanched. “Can you still hear it?”

“Only faintly. Very faintly. And just the music. I can’t make out any of the lyrics at all. Especially not with the dogs whining like they are.”

“Good.” Maudette sat down again, expelling her breath in a long sigh. “That’s good.”

“So, what? Is the radio possessed? Or haunted or … whatever?” Her words came out a little more sharply than she had intended.

“Possessed? Maybe,” she allowed. “But it certainly possesses us. Sure as anything.”

“Us, as in you and me?”

“Us as in our line. The females of this family. It all started with my mother — your great-grandmother, Catherine Brennan. And that radio surely has owned us in one way or another over these decades. I never wanted you to be a part of it. Not you or your mother. I tried to protect you both.”

Ashlyn looked at the old woman’s hands as they trembled on the edge of her cup. For a moment, Ashlyn was afraid Maudette wouldn’t go on, but at the same time, almost equally afraid that she
would
. “I’m already part of it, Maudette,” she said.

“Yes,” she said. “You are. And you always have been. Even before you were born.”

Maudette pointed to a small, green corner shelf just above the filing cabinet. On its paint-chipped surface sat a framed black-and-white photograph of a smiling little girl holding the hand of a tall, too-thin, nervous-looking woman with pure sorrow in her eyes. Even as dated as the photograph was, Ashlyn recognized the place. The picture was taken in front of the Prescott Junction train station, probably sometime in the 40s. There were crowds of people behind the woman and little girl, almost half of them soldiers wearing fresh-pressed uniforms. Scared-looking. Holding on for dear life as they wrapped their arms around loved ones they might never see again. Some of the young men looked at the camera, and the look on their faces broke Ashlyn’s heart, even after all these years. Some of these men — boys, really — were not coming back, and they knew it. She could see it in their eyes. They tried to look brave, but she could see their terror.

“That’s you.” Ashlyn said. “The little girl in the picture with the tall lady is you, isn’t it Maudette?”

She nodded. “Me and your great-grandmother. That was the day my brother Colby went off to war. I was five, but I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. I didn’t know any better than to be happy and excited as we stood there in the bright sunshine with all those people around. I knew Colby was going away, but … I didn’t really know what that meant. We rarely went down to the train station, and this was the first time I’d ever actually seen anybody off. First time I’d had someone real to wave to as I ran along the platform.” Maudette’s bottom lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t know that I’d never see Colby again.”

“Did your brother take this picture?”

She nodded. “He insisted on it. Mama took so many pictures of him that day he told her he wouldn’t pose for one more unless he could take one of us too. And it wasn’t all digital like it is today. It was film and flashes and sending it away for processing. But Mama took rolls and rolls of film and paid to have every single one of them developed all at once. You’ve seen a couple of the pictures in the living room. I think my mother knew Colby wouldn’t be coming back. She felt the … heaviness, the finality even then. Her husband was dead. Her only son was going off to war, and she was left alone.”

Ashlyn bit her lip. “She had you.”

Maudette smiled sadly. “My brother Colby was always her shining star. Her golden boy. And she was losing him. My God, how Mama’s heart was breaking that day. I … I don’t really blame her for what she did. Nor do I blame her for what happened after Colby left. Others do, but they don’t know how much she loved her boy. I remember when the conductor yelled ‘all aboard’, my mother screamed so hard her knees gave way and she fainted right onto the platform. When we revived her, she told me … told Colby … it was just his leaving. I think she truly believed that. The conductor smiled, so jovial, so reassuring. But that was then….”

Maudette stared into the picture, lost back in that time.

“What did your mother do?” Ashlyn whispered. “What happened after your brother left?”

“She bought a radio.”

Ashlyn blinked. Then her eyes opened wide, and she gasped. “The radio in the basement?”

“The very one. Mama bought it brand new on July 1, 1942. Less than a week after Colby went to war. It cost a fortune and we were far from rich. Daddy was gone by then, killed in a hunting accident. Mama cleaned nights at the hospital and picked up a few hours here and there at the general store. In the spring she did extra cleaning for a few of the older people around, and that’s what we lived on. But she ordered that damned radio right from the factory and paid for delivery from Bangor. She wasn’t interested in music. Mama didn’t wonder about the weather and could care less about local tractor pulls or county fairs. But the war…. Mama had to know about the war. Everything about it. About her beloved Colby over there. She became obsessed with listening to that radio. And I think … I think that radio became obsessed with her. Yes. Yes that’s what happened. The radio became obsessed with her too.”

Ashlyn could only imagine what Catherine had gone through. How awful it must have been to be widowed and have your only son go to war. Yet she could also imagine what Maudette had gone through. It must have been hard with a mother so distracted, so wrapped up in missing her son. Worried and grieving. Had she forgotten about her daughter?

“At first, Mama listened every night to the evening news,” Maudette continued, “before she went to the hospital to clean. I was young, not yet in school, so I went to work with her. I slept on a cot behind the nurses’ station. The nurses tucked me in and spoiled me rotten.

“But soon the evening broadcasts weren’t enough for Mama. And she no longer lay down to sleep after we walked home from the hospital at the break of day. As tired as she was from mopping and scrubbing all night, we practically raced the mile and a half back home so she could get to her radio and the morning news. Then it was all day she listened — just in case. She had the Henderson set up in the living room, and soon enough she barely left the room. Eventually, she just slept on the sofa, but she barely slept at all. She was always sitting up wide-awake when any word of the war came on. She dusted the living room over and over, but ignored the rest of the house. We had our meals there as she listened.” Maudette snorted a laugh. “Of course, meals by that time were store-bought bread and butter. Mama couldn’t take time to make anything else. It had her. The war. The fear. The radio…. It had her all right.”

“Wow, that must have been hard on you. Watching your mother….” Ashlyn’s words trailed off.

“Watching my mother slowly go mad?” Maudette nodded. “Even as young as I was, I knew. And yes, it scared me, losing her slowly. Day by day it got a little worse. She became more and more obsessed with those radio reports. Others saw it too, of course. The nurses covered for her, best they could, but soon Old Doc Weaver saw that things weren’t quite right. Mother stopped taking the shifts at the store when they asked her to come in. She missed so many nights at the hospital, Doc Weaver had no choice but to hire someone else.”

“That must have been awful.”

“That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the news.”

“The news she heard about the war? About everything that happened day in and day out? The killings. The bombings.”

“Hell on earth, for sure. But no. The worst was when she heard the things that had yet to happen. When she heard that strange reporter’s voice, telling her of things yet to come.”

Ashlyn’s heart surely skipped a full beat. She stared at her grandmother. “I’m not sure what you—”

“I mean just that. Like I said, Mama became obsessed with the radio and it became obsessed with her. She heard the news before it happened. It was little things at first.
Losier’s prize heifer is going to wander into the yard.
Mama looked out the window an hour later, and there it was eating the daisies.
Al Heenan is going to hit the jackpot at bingo.
Al Heenan did. He hadn’t won a thing in two years, but that Friday night he walked out with five 20-dollar-bills and a picnic ham.

“Then came the day the radio announced,
Polly Fanning is pregnant. And being too much for her to handle, she’ll soon be dead by the tracks.
That’s what the velvety voice on the radio said. Poor Polly was only fifteen, and scared to death of her father. He was a nasty son of a bitch. Mama worried, I remember that; I understood that. But she said nothing, not about that or anything else she heard … but then Polly was found dead out by the tracks, near the train bridge. Just like the radio said she would be — two days before it happened. Everyone figured the poor girl must have had a heart defect, but Mama and I knew. Like the radio said, Polly took her own life. She just couldn’t face her father.”

Ashlyn had to ask. “Did you hear it too, Maudette? The things your mother heard from the radio. About the war? About the train?”

“Every damn word. I heard about the Losier cow. About Al Heenan. I heard the announcer tell all kinds of things. Even when it reported that Colby was fatally wounded in a battle that was yet to be fought. Mama and I both heard that, and I knew I’d lost her then. She pulled her hair, she screamed. She pounded on that radio, yet it played on and on.” Maudette looked at her sadly. “And Polly used to push me on the swing down by the schoolhouse. I loved her dearly. And I missed her terribly when she died. I felt as bad as Mama did. Worse I guess, for I was the one who told her that she’d die on the tracks, the day before she did.”

Oh, sweet Jesus! “Maudette, I’m so sorry.”

Maudette didn’t even seem to hear. She just continued with her story. “Mama felt terrible when Polly died. She thought she could have stopped it somehow. While I, of course, thought that I’d caused it.” A pause. “Anyway, after that, Mama started telling people … telling them the things she heard on the radio. The things that the smooth-voiced announcer said. That was … that was a mistake.”

“Didn’t people want to know?”

“Bad news? It was always bad news that the radio gave as time went on. Who was about to die. Who was going to become ill. Which sons, brothers and fathers wouldn’t be coming back home from the war.”

“Oh, man,” Ashlyn said. Of course people would blame Catherine Brennan. They’d have to eventually.

“That still wasn’t the worst of it, Ashlyn.” Maudette’s age-spotted hands fisted on the table. “That radio wasn’t finished with Mama. It wasn’t finished in our lives! One night while Mama slept in the living room, a voice broke again through the static. It was his voice — same announcer. That damnable announcer that always gave the ‘future’ news. And this time, he spoke about that evil train.”

The train.

A chill crawled along Ashlyn’s shoulders. She froze. “But trains … trains don’t run through the Junction anymore,” she whispered, repeating the mantra she’d heard ever since she’d come to Prescott Junction. The rest of it tumbled out automatically. “Goddamn, it’s really a shame.”