"THE BOARDWALK BARKER" (chapter one, work in progress)

I'M STARTING AN ONLINE NOVEL. THIS IS CHAPTER ONE, "The Boardwalk Barker". THE NOVEL IS UNTITLED AS OF YET, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT IS GOING.


Robert River sat down on his couch after a long but eventful day at work. As a sound engineer, he often needed at least one solid hour to "shake the audio out of his hair", as he liked to put it.

It wasn't so much the content that bothered him, the right-wing conservative lip service paid by every radio host who has a reputation and an agenda; no, it was more a matter of the actual frequencies each sound occupied in his inner ear after eight hours of multiple audio feeds being routed every which way. Even for a seasoned pro as himself, Robert sometimes got lost amid the channels, all of them turned on with volumes set at specific levels so that all the programming blended into one frenzied slushball of sonic sludge.

This week there was a guest host filling in for the usual right-wing political personality that Robert had come to kind of admire, in a sick and non-partisan way. Mark Rayburn knew that his chief engineer was "an unwashed pinko liberal Commie sympathizer"-- that was Rayburn's favorite way of teasing Robert whenever they had meetings concerning the show --but he respected Robert's work ethic, his knowledge of the studio craft, and his ability to keep cool under pressure. In live radio, things go terribly wrong at the turn of a moment, and Robert had passed the trial-by-fire phase with flying colors.

There was the time the ISDN unit dropped in the middle of a remote feed. Robert was back at the studio, monitoring the show from the control booth, while another, less-experienced engineer was at the remote site. Even when separated by a distance of 50 miles, Robert was able to tell the apprentice engineer, over the telephone, how to reconnect the ISDN to the receiving line. Luckily, the line had dropped during a commercial break, and by the time the break was done, the show was back up on the air, and no one in the audience knew any better.

That didn't stop Mark Rayburn from acknowledging Robert's technical prowess over the air. "I'd like to thank my engineer Robert River, who just saved us from pure embarrassment during the break. We owe you big, kid. Thanks again!"

So Robert took a liking to Rayburn, simply based on the man's mutual respect for him. And when Robert's friends scoffed at him for working for such a pillar of the Republican community, Robert took it with a grain of salt, adding:

"Hey, man, it's only entertainment!"

This week in particular, Rayburn was on vacation, and the guest host was none other than Daniel Lazarus, a former counsel to the Black Panther Party and self-described "card-carrying liberal" who changed horses midstream sometime in the '80's, embracing the conservative right and its ethos. Lazarus now spent his every waking moment trying to puncture the same political apparatus that he'd once had a hand in constructing.

Robert was less enamored of the guest host, because he couldn't invoke his motto of "just entertainment" to explain a man like Daniel Lazarus. The man seemed friendly enough, but there was an off-putting quality to Lazarus that Robert couldn't put his finger on for the life of him. Whereas Rayburn was self-effacing and blunt, Lazarus came off as glib, smug, the type of person who only cares about being on the winning side, regardless of principles.

All through the week, Lazarus was kind and polite to Robert, but it didn't make Robert feel any better. Whereas Rayburn was at least a human being beneath his rabid bulldog on-air veneer, Lazarus left him cold, almost inhuman. Robert didn't like it, and every day after work that week he felt like he was dirty, soiled by the bigotry and biases of someone who realized they didn't fit in with their chosen crowd and decided to see how the other half lived.

The other half seemed to be doing fine. Daniel Lazarus was married to a trophy wife, wrote books and toured the lecture circuit. He was well-respected amongst the right-wing politicos and talking media heads. Among the religious right, people saw Lazarus in the same way they view a recent convert: the story leading up to the "redemption and salvation" was more important than the values of a man who only admits he is wrong once so that he can continue thinking himself "right" in the future.

In Robert's mind, Mark Rayburn stood for something; Daniel Lazarus only stood for himself.

The final blow was when the show had ended on Friday. Lazarus' wife, dutiful and passive, stood waiting as he gathered his affects. Robert went to shake Lazarus' hand and wish him well.

"It was nice working with you, Mr. Lazarus," Robert said.

"Thanks, kid." That's what everyone called Robert: "kid". He looked like he was barely 18. It burned Robert up inside every time he heard it from someone.

Daniel Lazarus decided to ask the "kid" a question.

"Robert, would you like a copy of my latest book?"

"Excuse me?" Robert didn't quite grasp what Lazarus had asked him.

"I'm giving away promotional copies of my latest book, My Former Life As A Godless Heathen. Do you want one?"

"Sure, why not?"

Robert read books like crazy. It was well-known around the radio network that the twenty-something Robert was a "gutter intellectual", a low-rent version of Matt Damon's character in the movie Good Will Hunting: didn't go to college, didn't have a degree in engineering, and yet knew more about the world and current events than anyone else.

Robert often took offense to this view of him, because he surmised it for what it really was-- a convenient label to slap on him for those who judge other people based upon their resumes. Robert's teeth would grit together whenever he overheard someone say, "My, that Robert... so smart, for someone who didn't go to college... had he gone to graduate school he could be running this company by now... what a pity..."

However, he sometimes enjoyed being an underpaid employee who knew everything about his job (and everyone else's, for that matter). There was an underdog currency to his position. He was the one that tended to be underestimated by his superiors, with their degrees framed on the walls of their offices, meaningless pieces of textured paper that signified nothing except the willingness to jump through flaming hoops on cue.

Not everyone who went to college was incompetent, in Robert's mind, but he also knew that a certificate stating that someone completed four years of college did not mean that the person was especially smart or knowledgable about anything outside of the normal realms of experience. He stopped counting the number of times he'd saved his bosses hides for mistakes that not even the rawest rookie would make.

Because of his sober dedication to a job well-done, Robert's reputation for being a reader enhanced his overall standing in the company. And his reputation often foreshadowed him-- people knew him first and foremost as a serious intellect, unafraid to pad his opinions with tasty facts gleaned from the news.

In fact, it was his bold and argumentative style that landed him the Rayburn gig in the first place. The whole thing was a lark-- the regular engineer at the time needed a back-up, and Robert was easy to train. He learned the mixing board and the method of operations within one week. But no one was sure if putting outspoken Robert "Lefty" River in the same room with GOP stalwart Mark Rayburn would be a good idea.

As predicted, the two started to clash immediately, arguing back and forth over then-President Clinton's policies. But, a strange thing happened during the exchange: Robert and Mark found common ground, in regards to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

"Yeah, I voted for Clinton in 1992," Robert said to Mark, while cueing up a pretaped promo on the reel-to-reel. "But I voted Green this last time, because if you ask me Clinton is not that far away from your own political stance, Mr. Rayburn."

"You can call me Mark," Rayburn said, which stunned his producer and her assistant. It took them six months each to get on a first-name basis with Mark Rayburn.

"Okay, Mark," Robert continued. "The reason why I say that is because the fallout from the Telecommunications Act, much like the fallout from the repealing of the Fairness Doctrine--"

"How old are you again, Robert?" Mark interjected.

"25, sir."

"My God-- A young man your age, so up to date with what's going on... I bet you if I asked any other person your age about things like the Fairness Doctrine and the Telecommunications Act, they'd draw a blank. Hell, my own son is almost your age, and he has no interest in any of that stuff, try as hard as I might to get him to look into it."

Robert snickered. He knew Rayburn's son personally. They would occassionally party at Robert's apartment in Sherman Oaks. If Rayburn only knew how much he and his son had in common.

"Well," Robert replied, "radio has always been a passion in my life. A minor passion, true, but it pays the bills. I like the work. And when I like the work, I do the math and the research."

After landing the engineering gig permanently, after the regular guy left the post to pursue another career, Robert's stock went up. People took notice. Maybe this diamond in the rough was ready to play ball after all, or so went the reasoning of the company heads.

So Robert found himself agreeing to accept a book from Daniel Lazarus reluctantly. It wasn't like Robert wouldn't read the book-- on the contrary, Robert would probably ingest it in a heartbeat. He liked reading up on what "the other side" had to say-- he called it "boning up on your enemies". And Robert was known to go through the box of books that Rayburn received almost daily, from fans of the show and maybe some haters who wanted to blow Rayburn's mind somehow.

Anything that Rayburn or his staff didn't have time to go through was thrown in the box. A sign above the box read "FREE BOOKS-- TAKE 'EM!" and as far as anyone knew, Robert was the only person in the entire company to take them up on the offer on a weekly basis. He had so many books from the Rayburn show's offices that he had to buy another bookcase at home to accomodate them.

As Daniel handed Robert a copy of his book, he asked Robert, "Would you like it autographed?"

Robert bristled at the chutzpah, but kept composed. "That would be nice," he said.

The inscription read:


To Robert,
Keep on fighting the good fight.
Freedom must be preserved at all costs.

Yours Truly,
Daniel Lazarus


Robert shook his head and headed home. But before he got home, he witnessed something very peculiar on the street outside of the radio network's offices.

As he walked out onto the busy boulevard, he saw a van parked in front of the adjacent bank. The van's side door was opened, and a disheveled-looking man with glasses sat down on the curb, blaring a portable AM radio. He was busy scrawling words onto a whiteboard that was mounted to the interior of the van door. Strewn on the outisde of the van were pieces of white cardboard taped together lengthwise and covered with handwritten messages.

The slogans were printed big and bold enough to read without effort:

ALL PRESIDENTS ARE CROOKS

THE POLITICAL CRIME FAMILY

WHO REALLY RUNS THE UNITED STATES?

Underneath each slogan was a continuous paragraph of text, fleshing out the theses in more detail.

Robrt laughed at the display. It reminded him of the booths in Venice Beach, where the crazies and wackos would say anything to get your attention. He stopped to watch what this guy was doing, hoping that maybe the disheveled man would put on some sort of show, not unlike the boardwalk barkers in Venice.

Then, he noticed something, with those finely-tuned ears of his. He noticed something familiar about the audio emanating from the man's AM radio. It sounded like he was listening to the voice of... Mark Rayburn.

This jarred him for two reasons. One, Robert momentarily forgot about the fact that, after the live portion of the show was done, a re-feed of a past show was pumped out to fill in the time slot. Since Rayburn was on vacation all week and Lazarus had been in the host's chair, Robert lost his bearings for an instant.

Two, if this disheveled man was listening to Mark Rayburn's show and making a public spectacle of himself by disparaging politicans on the street, then that meant he was targeting Rayburn for something.

As much as he could understand the man's desire to speak out against what he believed was wrong, Robert also felt that, as the engineer on the show, he should do something about this before it turns into an ugly incident. If this man was after Rayburn, for whatever reason, it could extend to him personally... and Robert wasn't going to be having any of that.

Robert opted to talk to the man first, to measure if there was a threat or not.

"Hey, man... what's with the colorful signs?"

"Nice to meet you, sir," the man said, extending a hand to Robert. "The name's Kennedy. John Kennedy."

Robert almost laughed in the man's face, but instead turned it into a wry joke. "Funny, you don't sound like you have a Boston accent..."

"Yeah, and I'm pretty healthy-looking, for a corpse, eh?" Kennedy guffawed, and then said, "I get it all the time. But my name really is John Kennedy. John H. Kennedy."

"No relation to the famous Kennedys?"

"Not by a long shot, bro."

"Well, judging by your signs, maybe it's not that long of a shot."

"If you knew what I knew about the Kennedys, kid, you might not think that they are too long of a shot from the Mark Rayburns of the world."

"What have you got against Mark Rayburn?"

"I tried to call into his show once, and the prick just yelled at me and hung up on me. He doesn't fight fair. He just yells at people and tells them to shut up, and then he hangs up on them. That's not civil discourse. That's just being an unfair asshole. So here I am, bringing it to him. I know he broadcasts out of this building."

"You realize that his people might call the cops on you if they know you're out here?"

"Let 'em call," Kennedy said, fire in his eyes. "I don't care. Anything to bring attention to what these freaks are doing to this country. If it makes the news, then a night in jail is worth it. I live in this van-- a night in County is like a room at the Ramada Inn for me."

"Are you a Democrat, Mr. Kennedy?"

"Hell no, they're just as bad," Kennedy said. "I haven't voted in decades. You can't change the agenda that these-- these elitists have by voting. It's a meaningless ritual now. Do you know that almost every significant election in the 20th Century has been rigged in one way or another?"

"Is that a fact?"

"Read up on it, kid. I ain't lying."

"I'm not saying you're lying. But is it possible that you're mistaken?"

Kennedy stopped and looked at Robert. Then he smiled, showing that his yellow teeth had been weathered and almost grinded down to nothing. "If I'm mistaken, kid, then it wouldn't be the first time. But... if I'm right, then this world is fucked. Hell in a hand basket, you know? I hope, for your sake and mine, that I'm dead wrong."

Then, as if Robert had never been there in the first place, John H. Kennedy began to rant and rave in front of the small crowd that was by now gathering in front of his van, parked outside of the bank. Kennedy was going on about political and global conspiracies, the kinds of things that Robert liked to read about because they were so far-fetched and improbable.

The names were there: Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Haig, Kissinger, Greenpsan, Rockefeller, Rothschild, Vanderbilt, Hearst, Hunt, Heinz, all the stock characters whose valuable family surnames pop up incessantly in the netherworld of conspiracy fiction.

Robert checked it out for a while, then he became bored and grabbed the first bus out of there.

He got home, sat on his couch, shook the audio out of his hair, and tried to unwind. But he felt like he would turn on the news and discover that John H. Kennedy went on a rampage and killed a bunch of people with a semi-automatic rifle and if only they had known he was there they could have stopped the carnage...

He thought Kennedy was harmless and cool, but he didn't want anything on his conscience. He wasn't a radical teenager anymore-- he was an adult, with bills to pay and a job to do.

Robert picked up the phone and called his work.

"Sandy? Hi, it's Robert. I'm just calling to let you know-- when I left work today, I saw a guy outside of the building who was demonstrating, I guess, against Mark Rayburn. Well, he didn't say he was going to do anything... he was a caller on the show, and Mark hung up on him. Yeah, I know, tell me about it. Anyway, I don't think he would hurt a fly, but you might wanna... oh, okay, well... man, that was fast. So it's already taken care of? Okay. Well, hey, no problem, anytime. See ya Monday. Bye."

The police had already asked Mr. Kennedy to move his van away from the location, according to Sandra, the producer for Mark Rayburn's radio show. If Robert had stayed around for 15 minutes longer, he coud've seen it all go down himself.

Robert turned on the TV and opened up the book that Daniel Lazarus had given him. He had no plans for the evening, so he decided to start reading. He had other books in his bag that he'd taken from the box at work, so if Lazarus' prose was anything like his personality, at least Robert had other things to capture his attention.

CHAPTER TWO COMES NEXT FRIDAY! HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, FOLKS!!