Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [104]
If you ask me, jazz is a menace. It's as dangerous as alcohol and just as likely to drive a man to domestic violence. Basically, jazz is what's left of a song after you take the tune out. So why KBRW would devote an entire show to it I have no idea. It's just asking for trouble.
“You're listening to Jazz Below Zero, brought to you Saturdays at noon by a grant from Pepe's North of the Border.”
Oh, really? Hm.
At the control desk, two frail white hands mess about with the faders, pushing one, dragging another, until another jangling jazz travesty begins. Then, Fran returns her attention to me.
“Basically, I've got no money,” I tell her, laying out the format of our program, “and no place to stay. So what if I went on air during your lovely show—because nobody's interested in jazz—and asked if someone could put me up for the night?”
“Oh, that might work,” she says.
Once the current CD track—a collection of odd musical phrases belted out by fourteen instruments at once for the benefit of people with a tin ear—herniates to a close, Fran adjusts the faders again and pulls the mic to her lips.
“We have an important announcement. We'd like people to help. This gentleman, Cash Peter”—almost right—“needs to find a place to stay for the night, or 'til whenever he can afford a ticket out of town. So could someone call in and offer him a home or an apartment or at least a cot to sleep on?”
“What I need,” I interrupt, grabbing a microphone, because I know how people are; they need an incentive, “is someone to come forward, some Barrow person, and let me stay in their home. If you do, I'll tell you my new slogan for Barrow, which is great, isn't it, Fran?”
“Oh, it's wonderful,” she coos, opening her mouth to say something else.
“No, don't tell them what it is!”
“Oh.”
“If you come forward and let me stay in your home, I will give you this slogan.”
“Yeah,” Fran chips in, thrilled, “and you can make pamphlets!”
After this, and while yet another jazz tune is foisted upon the poor listeners—seriously, shouldn't this kind of abuse require a permit?—we sit back and wait for the switchboard in the other room to light up.
And we wait, and we wait.
But nothing happens.
Either their antenna's seized up on account of the ice and Fran's broadcasting to herself, or the zero in Jazz Below Zero refers to her audience figures, because out of a reach of eighty-eight thousand square miles my plea receives no response whatsoever. In fact, eventually she leaps in with an unprompted desperate plea of her own. “Come on, let's help this gentleman. We're known for our friendliness and togetherness and helping each other out during bad times. So please call in and offer him a room or a bed, someplace to sleep. Call in!”
But they don't.
Minutes go by, and still nothing.
“Come on, folks!” Her voice is shrill now: “This gentleman's going to sleep in the studio. We need to get him out of here.”
When that flounders too, she finally gives up. “I'm sorry, Peter …”
But wait, Fran! What's that?
A solitary light is flashing on the board.
The proprietor of Pepe's North of the Border couldn't be more relieved. KBRW's antenna hasn't frozen up like everyone thought! Somebody out there from their key demographic, the human race, is listening. A man. Calling from the high school. If I'd care to meet him there in half an hour, he says, he'll find me somewhere to stay.
“Great!”
Sweet victory!
Thanking Fran for her participation, and doing her a big favor on the way out by suggesting to the station manager that her format be changed to Country, because everyone loves Country, I brave the gnawing cold once more, shuffling along empty, icebound streets to the intersection of Okpik and Takpuk (that's your actual Eskimo right there), thrusting my flashlight between houses and behind cars as I go, in case of polar bears, and into the snug bosom of Barrow's best, and only, high school.
In recent years, the school has become the focal point of the community. There's a body shop and