"Horst P. Lepplemier," says the slim man, drawing on his cigarette with what appears to be great enjoyment. "Try saying that one ten times fast, you moke." Behind him and to his right, the door opens again, and although the smoker is still standing directly beneath the speaker, he hears the door perfectly well. The eyes behind the aviator shades have been dead his whole life, but his hearing is exquisite.
The newcomer is pasty-faced and comes blinking into the morning sun like a baby mole that has just been turned out of its burrow by the blade of a passing plow. His head has been shaved except for the Mo-hawk strip up the center of his skull and the pigtail that starts just above the nape of his neck and hangs to his shoulder blades. The Mohawk has been dyed bright red; the 'tail is electric blue. Dangling from one ear-lobe is a lightning-bolt earring that looks suspiciously like the Nazi S.S. insignia. He is wearing a torn black T-shirt with a logo that reads SNIVELLING SHITS '97: THE WE GET HARD FOR JESUS TOUR. In one hand this colorful fellow has a CD jewel box.
"Hello, Morris," says the slim man in the fedora, still without turning.
Morris pulls in a little gasp, and in his surprise looks like the nice Jewish boy that he actually is. Morris Rosen is the U-Crew's summer intern from the Oshkosh branch of UW. "Man, I love that unpaid grunt labor!" station manager Tom Wiggins has been heard to say, usually while rubbing his hands together fiendishly. Never has a checkbook been guarded so righteously as the Wigger guards the KDCU check-book. He is like Smaug the Dragon reclining on his heaps of gold (not¸ that there are heaps of anything in the 'DCU accounts; it bears repeating to say that, as an AM talker, the station is lucky just to be alive).
Morris's look of surprise — it might be fair to call it uneasy surprise — dissolves into a smile. "Wow, Mr. Leyden! Good grab! What a pair of ears!"
Then he frowns. Even if Mr. Leyden — who's standing directly beneath the outside honker, can't forget that — heard someone come out, how in God's name did he know which someone it was?
"How'd you know it was me?" he asks.
"Only two people around here smell like marijuana in the morning," Henry Leyden says. "One of them follows his morning smoke with Scope; the other — that's you, Morris — just lets her rip."
"Wow," Morris says respectfully. "That is totally bitchrod."
"I am totally bitchrod," Henry agrees. He speaks softly and thoughtfully. "It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it. In regard to your morning rendezvous with the undeniably tasty Thai stick, may I offer an Appalachian aphorism?"
"Go, dude." This is Morris's first real discussion with Henry Leyden, who is every bit the head Morris has been told to expect. Every bit and more. It is no longer so hard to believe that he could have another identity . . . a secret identity, like Bruce Wayne. But still . . . this is just so pimp.
"What we do in our childhood forms as a habit," Henry says in the same soft, totally un–George Rathbun voice. "That is my advice to you, Morris."
"Yeah, totally," Morris says. He has no clue what Mr. Leyden is talking about. But he slowly, shyly, extends the CD jewel box in his hand. For a moment, when Henry makes no move to take it, Morris feels crushed, all at once seven years old again and trying to wow his always-too-busy father with a picture he has spent all afternoon drawing in his room. Then he thinks, He's blind, dickweed. He may be able to smell pot on your breath and he may have ears like a bat, but how's he supposed to know you're holding out a f**king CD?
Hesitantly, a bit frightened by his own temerity, Morris takes Henry's wrist. He feels the man start a little, but then Leyden allows his hand to be guided to the slender box.
"Ah, a CD," Henry says. "And what is it, pray tell?"
"You gotta play the seventh track tonight on your show," Morris says.
"Please."
For the first time, Henry looks alarmed. He takes a drag on his cigarette, then drops it (without even looking — of course, ha ha) into the sand-filled plastic bucket by the door.
"What show could you possibly mean?" he asks.
Instead of answering directly, Morris makes a rapid little smacking noise with his lips, the sound of a small but voracious carnivore eating something tasty. And, to make things worse, he follows it with the Wisconsin Rat's trademark line, as well known to the folks in Morris's age group as George Rathbun's hoarse "Even a blind man" cry is known to their elders: "Chew it up, eat it up, wash it down, it aaallll comes out the same place!"
He doesn't do it very well, but there's no question who he's doing: the one and only Wisconsin Rat, whose evening drive-time program on KWLA-FM is famous in Coulee Country (except the word we probably want is "infamous"). KWLA is the tiny college FM station in La Riviere, hardly more than a smudge on the wallpaper of Wisconsin radio, but the Rat's audience is huge.