Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 43 - Analog

Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash

Mickey and Grace hardly knew what to say to each other after Olivia left. Their conversations were lowly, forced, and awkward.  

Grace found comfort only by sitting in the tattered brown recliner in the living room, which overlooked their western plot of sand-colored fields. She endlessly dialed David’s number over and over and over again, each attempt met with busy signals.  

“Gracie,” Mickey finally said, “this isn’t helping anyone, let alone you.”

“What if I get through, though?” she said.  Her eyes were rimmed red from exhaustion and tears.  

“Well, what if Olivia calls from the road?  She won’t get through to us if you’re always dialing that phone.”

“We’ve got to fix this, Mick.  We’ve got to.” 

“Why don’t you go into town and visit with some of the ladies down at IGA?  Or over at the Church?  Find out what’s happening in town.  Just do something else for a while.” 

“What happened to Rosie and Mark, Mickey?  Are they really gone?”

“We just don’t know, honey,” Mickey said.

Grace once more picked up the phone, listened for a dial tone, and dialed again. 

As he’d done in the days since Olivia left, Mickey relegated himself to busy work in the backyard workshop, sweeping out floors, organizing bottles of engine oil and filters, and taking inventory of his toolbox.  

At one point, he lost himself for some time when he started flipping through the 1986 calendar nailed to an exposed two-by-four beam.  He’d grab two of them each year after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve from a box in the narthex, an annual gift from Fr. McClintock and St. Mary’s.  The companion calendar hung by a magnet on the side of the kitchen refrigerator.  The calendar in the workshop was already flipped to July. It showed an exterior overhead shot of the Vatican, the columns and promenade reaching out from St. Peter’s Basilica like arms outstretched and sweeping.  He suddenly realized that John Paul II — already declared a saint — might very well be walking around inside the walls of that massive edifice.  

“Now, how would that work?” Mickey mumbled to himself.  He tapped the photo on the calendar.  “Just doesn’t make sense now, does it?”      

Below the image, he studied his ponderous handwriting with the gnarled, tight, and jagged circles on the tail ends of his lowercase “g’s” and “j’s,” “f’s,” and “q’s.”  Scrawled into the boxes of each date were miniature journal entries with bullet point reminders that chronicled how he’d spent his days forty years prior.  He’d changed the oil on the truck just a week before Olivia took it.  So that was good.  He was disappointed in himself for not considering that bit of maintenance before she’d left. 

After reading through his entries from the beginning of the year, he hung the calendar back on the wall and continued exploring his workshop.  He marveled over the simplest forgotten things like the old screwdrivers he’d used just two weeks before the incident.  Like so many things, the screwdrivers were much smoother, bright, and shiny than he remembered.  On the wall were a series of unused belts for farm equipment that had been out of commission for over thirty years.  He thought about driving into town and maybe going over to Corklin Tractor to swap theories with other local farmers before remembering that he no longer had a truck. Perhaps he’d walk in.  Save the sedan for emergencies.  Exercise would do him good, possibly.  

But still, he didn’t want to leave Grace for too long. He was worried about her, for sure. 

It was now understood that in the first hours after the event, just about everyone acted a bit cloudy. Uncertain and wobbly.  For most, that soon wore off.  Even if the event itself still didn’t make sense — how could it? — at least people were able to make attempts to think it through.  While no one fully understood what had become of the world, most were at least trying to figure out the next logical steps.   

That’s what Mickey was doing, even if just in his workshop.  

If he was here, in this time, in this place, he might as well get going on about how to make do and push forward.  There’d eventually be fields to attend with watering and fertilizing, maintaining the crops until the corn came in.  And if nothing returned to the way it was, it stood to reason that by Fall, he’d have the get crops harvested, hauled down, weighed, and sold at the granary on the eastern edge of Cornerstore’s, down by the railway that ran parallel to Highway 150.    

For those first few days, though, Grace seemed stuck.  Before all this happened, Gracie was usually all business, making lists and getting things done.     They weren’t just a family but a farming family.  

Grace had never had a problem staying busy.  She’d jar up preserves from the strawberries she grew in the large patch garden on the northern edge of their house that got the most sun each day.  She’d make up a couple of casseroles every Monday morning and put them in the freezer, always prepared for the next potluck dinner or when someone in the community fell ill.  On some Tuesdays, Grace and a couple of the other farmer’s wives drove up to a fabric store in Moline and would treat themselves to lunch at Bob Evans on the way back.  Sometimes, she wouldn’t finish her sandwich, and she’d bring it home for Mickey along with leftover french fries that she’d heat up in the toaster oven, and they’d share over dinner.

But Grace seemed unable to do any of this now.  It appeared to Mickey that she was struggling more than most to return to her senses fully.  She was somehow stuck. Her face often hung like clay, drooping as if maybe she’d had a stroke.  She just wasn’t herself, and Mickey worried about her.  

An ancient CC Crane shortwave radio was on the cheap plywood shelf he’d built above the workshop’s grease-stained worktable.  It not only broadcast AM and FM channels but — what seemed to Mickey was a miracle — could pick up over-the-air television broadcasts from WGN all the way in Chicago, nearly a hundred and seventy-five miles away.  He’d listen to Cubs games, news broadcasts, and whatever was on the air.  For years, he kept that radio always running, rarely turning it off, even at the end of the day.  

Photo by Alberto Bobbera on Unsplash

When the Federal Communications Commission mandated in 2009 that all United States television signals had to be transmitted digitally, most major stations eventually abandoned their previous format. The old analog radio could no longer pick up the sound from television stations. Over time, Mickey could barely find a radio station worth listening to, and he finally tossed the old radio in the trash. 

He looked back over at the calendar back on the wooden post.  Nearly a whole week had now passed since the world rewound.  Mickey flipped on the radio, wondering if the shortwave was back in commission.  Perhaps WGN was broadcasting news they hadn’t yet heard in Cornerstone.  

The radio crackled with static, followed by a high-pitched test signal that rang faintly in the background. Mickey slowly twisted the tuner dial, listening for a clear transmission, when an unexpected spark of static emanated from the radio’s metal casing and shocked his hand.  

“How the?” he yelped and rapidly shook his hand to shake off the sting of the shock.

“Mickey?” Grace asked from behind him.  He jumped again, this time at the sudden sound of her voice.

“Good Lord, Gracie, you scared the hell out of me,” he said.  “Did you see that? The radio just shocked me.”

Gracie stared blankly at Mickey, her arms hung loose at her sides.

“I think I understand what’s happened,” Grace said.  “And I think I know what’s going to happen.”

“Grace, you’re starting to scare me, hon,” Mickey said.  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Our grandchildren,” Grace said.  “I know how we can see them again.”

From behind Mickey, the radio let out another loud crackle.

“There!” Mickey said, turning to the radio.  “You hear that?  That’s what it did before.”

“I turned on the television after you left,” Grace said.  “It did the same thing.”

“Crackling?”

“Yes,” she said.  “And they were showing people in New York standing near a big black circle just floating out of nowhere.”

“What are you talking about, Gracie?”

“And some of them jumped right in.”

“Grace?” Mickey asked.  “Hon, you’re not making sense.”

“The same thing was happening in San Francisco, too.  And up in Chicago.  People are just jumping in.”

“What?”

“These black hole things are just popping up everywhere, and people are just giving up and jumping inside of them.”

The radio let out another snap, louder this time, followed by a buzz that filled the room.  The humid July air seemed to instantly evaporate and become crisp and electric.  The thin, fine hairs on Mickey’s arm bristled and raised, sending a chill straight down his spine.  He reached out to Grace and quickly recoiled his hand when another spark arched from the radio and reached across the floor toward them.  

“Good Governor!” Mickey said.  “Can you feel that?”

“Look,” Grace said calmly and pointed at the radio.  “That’s what I was seeing on television.”

Mickey turned and looked in horror at the black circle mysteriously forming at the center of the device.

“Watch,” Grace said.  “It’ll get bigger.”

Even as the words left her mouth, the small black circle pulsed and instantly doubled in size.  Then, like a heartbeat, it pulsed and doubled yet again.  The shelf above the workbench disappeared into the void, along with the radio.

Mickey jumped again, grabbed his wife’s arm, and began pulling her out of the shed. 

“Our grandchildren,” Grace said, pointing at the floating blackness that was now the size of a basketball. “Our grandchildren are in there.”