The Porch Broadcaster

If Georgia Pie is your strain, this is your sign: the Porch Broadcaster. The porch at the top of the long row, golden hour, the sky gone pink, you on the air at the old microphone, the red bulb lit, and the whole orchard town listening in.

If Georgia Pie is your strain

You are the voice that keeps a whole town company. Not the loudest one, not the newest one: the one that is there every evening at the same hour, on the same porch, saying the same first sentence, so that people at the ends of long roads have something to set the kettle by. You know whose tree is ripest and whose dog has wandered off, and you have never once used either against anybody.

You move slowly and talk easily. You never hurry a sentence, and you never leave one hanging. The swing does half the work. You read the evening the way other people read a paper, row by row, and you can tell from the color of the light on the far trees how many minutes are left and how many of them to spend on birthdays.

At your best you make a scattered place feel like one room. Somebody in a truck cab, somebody in a packing shed, somebody at a kitchen table with the window open: for an hour they are all listening to the same porch, and none of them is alone, and none of them could tell you exactly why the evening went down so easy.

Your flaw is that you cannot stand dead air. You will fill any silence with a story, a forecast or a dog named Biscuit, and you do it out of kindness, because quiet on the radio sounds like something went wrong. The people who love you have learned to ask you for something slow. Every so often, you give it to them.

What you need is a porch that faces west, a swing with one good creak, a microphone on a long enough cord, and somebody out there who keeps listening after you stop talking. Give you that, and the whole town gets its golden hour.

Your hour: Golden hour
Your place: The porch at the top of the long row
Your object: A round microphone on a long cord
Your tempo: A story between every request
Your weather: Warm, still and gold
Your flaw: You can’t stand dead air

Your people

The Sprinter (Green Crack)The Sprinter has the orchard rows at sunrise; you have them at sundown. Between the two of you, the fruit is never without company.
The Night Owl (Purple Urkle)The Night Owl comes on as you sign off. You leave the red bulb lit a minute longer, in case it is listening.
Cindy at Midnight (Cinderella 99)Cindy is the only caller who rings in to argue with the time. You read it out anyway, every quarter hour, a little slower for her.

Things you say

This is the porch, and you’re not alone out there.
Peach report first. Then birthdays. Then whatever the wind brings up the hill.
If it’s ripe, it’s news.
Somebody’s always listening. That’s the whole point.
Stay where you are. I’ll be right here.

A scene from your world

Something slow

At a quarter to seven the light comes down the long row sideways, the way it only does in late summer, and lies gold on every peach between the porch and the packing shed. The Porch Broadcaster is already on the swing: microphone on its long cord across her knees, headphones around her neck, reading glasses up in her hair, where she will spend the next hour looking for them. She reaches over and gives the red bulb on the porch post a quarter turn. It comes on. So does the town.

“Evening. This is the porch, and you’re not alone out there.” She says it the same way every night, and every night the swing creaks on the same word. Down the hill, in kitchens and truck cabs and the cool dark of the packing shed, radios go up a notch. She does the peach report first, row by row, as if reading out names: the old trees at the top are done, the middle of the row wants two more days, and the one by the water tower is showing off again.

Then the jar. Folded notes from the porch rail, read out one at a time. A birthday for somebody turning ninety. A dog named Biscuit, brown, answers to nothing, last seen heading for the creek. A request for “something slow” from a name she doesn’t know, which is rare enough that she reads it twice. She talks between every note, because that is the job, and because in all these years she has never once let the air go quiet. Silence on the radio sounds like something went wrong.

The sun touches the ridge. This is the part of the broadcast the town likes most and could not explain: the swallows start working the top of the long row, the shadows of the trees reach the porch steps, and the whole orchard goes the color of the inside of a peach. She lifts the microphone to say so. She has the sentence ready. It is a good one.

Then she doesn’t. Somebody asked for something slow. She holds the microphone out past the porch rail, toward the long row, and leaves it there. Thirty seconds of orchard go out over the air: the swing chains, a screen door somewhere down the hill, a peach letting go of its branch and landing in the grass with a sound like a soft knock. In a truck cab with the engine off, a man doesn’t touch the dial. In the packing shed, nobody says a word.

When she brings the microphone back, her voice is lower than usual. “That was the long row,” she says, “for whoever asked.” She finds her glasses, finally, on her head, and folds the note back into the jar for tomorrow. The red bulb stays lit until the last of the light is off the ridge. Then she reaches up and turns it off, and the porch goes off the air, and the town goes in to supper.

The porch and the long row

The porch: Six boards wide, facing west over the orchard, painted the color of the inside of a peach. Most of what the town knows by sundown, it heard from here.
The swing: Two chains, one cushion pressed flat, and one creak that lands on the same word every night. The town would notice if it didn’t.
The red bulb: Screwed into the porch post. When it is lit, the porch is on the air, and anybody coming up the steps knows to wave instead of talk.
The long row: The oldest peach trees in town, running downhill from the porch to the packing shed. Whichever tree is ripest gets read out first.
The antenna tree: The tallest tree in the yard, with a copper wire run up to its top branch. It has carried the station for years and still drops a peach on the roof every July.
The jar: A glass jar on the porch rail where neighbors leave folded notes: birthdays, lost dogs, a request for somebody. It has never been empty and never been full.