From where he was lying, Billy could see the red light winking at the jet planes. On off. On off. The airport seemed like a long way from his house and the radio tower, but Billy was not a pilot. What did he know about airplanes and towers? He just knew the light was at the top of the tower, and it appeared brighter now than it was when the lamp was on. Then it barely pierced the window, but now it almost filled up the room like the signal pouring forth from the antenna.
Billy could not see the signal, of course, but he knew it was there. It was always there. He heard it between rings when he dialed the telephone. It could be distracting when he talked to his girlfriend in town. She could not hear the DJ, so she thought he was a little bit crazy until the day she came out to the house to meet his mother. He made her call someone just to hear the radio come through the telephone. She knew he was crazy after that, but she liked how she felt a little out of control with him. Billy did not like being out of control. That’s why he liked the light.
It blinked on and on. All night long. He had not been able to see it from his old room, the one with the strawberries printed on the wall paper. That was the kids’ room, and he had finally graduated to the big room (which was the same size as the kids’ room but without the stupid wall paper. The big room had pale mint wall paper printed with silver trees that reminded him of Robert Frost.) Each of his brothers had occupied this room in turn before they left for college. They left behind the lumpy full size bed, various pieces of athletic equipment, a few dirty pictures, and a crystal set radio.
He tried listening to the Hossman play R&B on WLAC, but there was no use in that after the ionosphere had come down at night. 50,000 clear channel watts from less than two miles away were radiating straight toward him from the blinking red light, obliterating whatever else was floating around out there. Billy had to settle for Ralph Emery and country music, but he was glad to at least have the radio to escape into whenever he needed it. There were nights when the call letters WSM and their tag line were more comfort to Billy than the public relations men at the National Life and Accident Insurance Company probably imagined.