It was a beautiful thing, made of what looked like red maple, one of the trees milled in the mountains outside Bristol. It came up to my shoulder and was polished to a sheen. At the top were some switches and a round dial with numbers. On the dial, it said Zenith. Below that was a row of curved wooden slats with fabric in between.
I’d seen a radio before, at the furniture store downtown. The store manager, Cecil McLister, had tried to sell me one. Mr. McLister knew I was only thirteen years old and was that crazy preacher’s kid, but he still had tried to sell me a radio. I liked that. Of course, Daddy wouldn’t have allowed me near it, but Mr. McLister didn’t know that. As far as Daddy was concerned, the radio was doubly sinful: it was made by science, and music might come out.
Gray’s radio was as nice as Mr. McLister’s—maybe nicer. His family had put it in a sitting room at the back of the house. Next to it was the open window I had crouched below on Saturday night. A warm breeze blew in, ruffling the lace curtains.
In front of the radio sat a woman, knitting. She was pretty. Her dress was light and silky, and her hair was done up in what people called a bob. Supposedly it was the latest style, but we didn’t see much of it around Bristol. I noticed that her hands were smooth and white, not rough like Mama’s, though she and Mama were about the same age. I thought of Mama washing dishes and had trouble imagining this woman at the sink.
“This is my mother, Isadora Lane,” Gray told me. “Mother, this is…What did you say your name was?”
“Nate Owens. Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
She cocked her head. “Owens—isn’t it the preacher’s name?”
“Yes, ma’am. Wilvur Owens is my father.”
An unpleasant look crossed her face, like you might get if somebody had a bad rash.
“Sometimes we can hear him preaching from our house,” she said. “He’s got quite a voice.”
I shifted uncomfortably. On the radio, the music changed. The opera stopped, and a banjo started. Mrs. Lane, who didn’t seem like the banjo type, frowned and gathered up her knitting.
“I have some other things to do. It was good to meet you, Nate.”
I watched her go. “Does she really like opera?”
Gray said, “In Lexington, she was chair of the Opera Guild.”
“The singing sounds screechy to me. I like banjos better.”
He sneered. “Hillbilly music?”
“Mountain music,” I said. I had heard it in town, fiddles and harmonies drifting out of restaurants and off people’s porches. The music had a rough, rugged quality, like the hills around Bristol. Sometimes, when the harmony was just right, you could hear the wind blowing through the canyons.
I approached the radio, knelt down in front of it, and listened. When the fiddling stopped, the announcer said it was somebody named Uncle Jimmy Thompson, playing with a group called the Fruit Jar Drinkers. They started another song. I liked what they were doing, even if Daddy thought it was Satan’s work—or maybe because it was Satan’s work. The music was rough, like Mama’s hands, but it seemed simple and honest.
Besides the music, I liked the radio itself. It was parts and pieces and energy, put together to create something useful. Through it, you could overcome distance, pull in sounds through the air, and hear people singing from miles away. It wasn’t magic. It wasn’t wild, like church. It was science. Voices poured out based on scientific principles, laws as unbreakable as the Ten Commandments—maybe more so. Daddy would swat me if I said it, but it was true.
“What do you think?” asked Gray, beaming proudly.
“I want one,” I said.
“Talk to your father.”
I smiled, then saw that he was serious. My father, who loomed so large in my life, was barely a speck in Gray’s, just a voice drifting up the hill. Gray didn’t seem to know about the tent or the sign, and obviously he hadn’t heard about Daddy’s views on music.
Thinking about it, I realized that Gray’s house wasn’t just on a hill. It was in a different world, where I wasn’t the crazy preacher’s son but could be someone new, someone of my own making. I wasn’t sure yet what I thought of Gray, but I liked his house and the way it made me feel.
Gray said, “My father loves new things. When he saw this radio, he had to have it. He paid cash, and a few hours later we were listening to it right here in this room.”
“Opera?” I said.
“Well, it sure wasn’t hillbilly music.”
“What about the WSM Barn Dance? You know, from Nashville.”
Gray said, “I’ve listened once or twice, because WSM has the strongest signal. I don’t much like it.”
I heard a car, and Gray perked up.
“Dad’s home,” he told me. “Come on.”
I followed him from the sitting room, back down the hall, and out the front door. It was a long way. If you’d gone that far at my house, you’d be standing in the middle of the street.
At one end of the circular driveway, in front of the garage, was a gleaming, green car with a long, low body and headlights shaped like drums. A man got out wearing a perfect, black suit and a fedora tilted at an angle. He had the same dark hair, big ears, and pointed nose that Gray had, or maybe it was the other way around. He pulled a leather briefcase from the car and shut the door.
“Hi, Dad,” said Gray.
Mr. Lane looked up. “Oh, hello.” Seeing me, he said, “Who’s this?”
“He’s my friend Nate,” said Gray. I wasn’t used to being called a friend, and it made me feel good. In town, people were more likely to giggle and whisper behind my back.
Mr. Lane held out his hand, and I shook it. His skin was soft, but his grip was hard. His fingernails were trimmed and polished.
“How’s the car?” asked Gray. I noticed that he acted different with his father than with me. He seemed small and eager, like Mrs. Mim’s toy poodle.
“Runs like a top,” said Mr. Lane. He smiled the way Gray had smiled when he told me about the radio.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“It’s a Packard 343,” said Mr. Lane proudly. “Leather seats and trim, double windshield, holds seven passengers.”
On the front of the hood, over the grill, was the silvery figure of a woman. She had wings and was holding a wheel in front of her.
Mr. Lane saw me looking. “They call her the Goddess of Speed,” he said.
Gray said, “We bought this car last weekend, right off the showroom floor.”
“I like machines,” I said.
The words just popped out—I’m not sure why. Daddy didn’t like machines, so I’d never allowed myself to think much about them. But seeing the Packard up close, I could feel its power. It shrank miles and brought people closer together. It was made for a purpose, like me. I don’t mean a religious purpose, like going to heaven. I mean a purpose right here in the world, one that makes you roll up your sleeves and sweat.
“Want to see the engine?” Mr. Lane asked me.
“Could I?”
He swung open the hood, which folded back. There was a heavy metal block inside, with pipes running off of it.
“It’s a straight eight,” said Mr. Lane. “Three-eighty-five cubic inches. Hundred and six horsepower. Drives like a bat out of hell.”
We heard a lot about hell at my house, but it was always bad. This seemed good. It seemed right and natural. I thought that if I studied Mr. Lane’s car for a while and maybe laid hands on it, like Daddy did to those in his congregation, I could figure out the way it was made.
Mr. Lane closed the hood, then reached over and opened the door on the driver’s side.
“Really?”
“Don’t ask, boy. Just do it. You may not get another chance.”
I put my foot on the running board and slid behind the wheel. The leather seats swished softly. Gray opened the door on the other side and got in.
Mr. Lane pushed a button, and the engine hummed to life. In my mind, I engaged the gears and sped out the driveway, down the street, past the Bristol sign, and into the wide world.
Daddy wanted to escape the world, but I wanted to see it. When I did, I would be riding a machine like this.
Mr. Lane shut off the engine, and we followed him into the house. Gray took me up to his room. It was triple the size of mine, and the floor was a foot deep in clutter.
“Sorry about the trash,” said Gray, though it didn’t seem to bother him. He tromped through it like Daniel Boone in the woods.
Of course, what Gray called trash wasn’t really. It was what you might get if you picked up a toy store in one hand, a five-and-dime in the other, and shook them to see what would come out. I could have spent weeks in that room. Gray, meanwhile, showed me his latest finds, which I was sure would end up on the floor in a few days.
He pulled out a baseball bat, a yo-yo, a board for Chinese checkers, and a stuffed bear that turned somersaults. What interested me the most, though, wasn’t a toy but a picture. Sticking out from some books on Gray’s desk, it showed a man floating high above the trees, carried by a big, white balloon. In the distance was another man and balloon, as if traveling that way was as common as sailing a boat.
I pulled out the picture and discovered it was a magazine cover. At the top, in big, red letters, were the words Popular Mechanics.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Gray shrugged. “It has articles about science, inventions, stuff like that.”
I flipped through it. There were ads in the front:
Chemistry—Learn at Home
Boys! Electricity is Fun
and Pays Big Money
Following the ads were dozens of articles:
Girl Invents Airplane Motor
for Russian Government
Can Inaudible Sounds Kill?
American Inventor’s Death Ray
May Spell Doom for Submarine Crews
World a Ball of Stardust, Geologist Believes
Popular Mechanics—why hadn’t I heard of it before? It seemed to have been written for me.
“Could I borrow this?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Gray.
He moved some things on his desk, and underneath were more of the magazines. There must have been a dozen. He organized them into a pile and plopped them into my arms.
“Don’t you want these?” I asked.
“I get a new one every month,” he said. “I can’t keep up. Anyway, think of it as a public service. You’re helping to clean my room.”
A few minutes later, I headed home for supper with a stack of magazines tucked under my arm. The hills around town were turning orange and pink. The tree branches crisscrossed above me, like highways on a map.
Two nights before, I had heard sounds through a window. Now, in the pages of a magazine, the window had become a door. On the other side were the outlines of something big and new. It could have been science or escape or maybe hope—hope for a world that made sense, where if you had a problem, you could fix it instead of pray about it. That world had radios and cars and balloons. The door was open. Somehow, in spite of Daddy, I was going to step through.