Cowpunk in the Nighttime

Cowpunk in the Nighttime1

It started when Skeeter Muckenfuss stumbled out of the radio station closet cradling a pile of albums and the laws of physics in his arms.2

"Eyes, nose, throat and groin—throat and groin—"3

Humming along with the public service announcement that chirped through patched speakers, he set his pile down. For a second, he let his eyes frolic amongst shelves crammed by heartache, misery, rejection, joy, irony, frustration—the entire human spectrum set to guitars, pianos, horns, strings, bass lines, the occasional kazoo—4

"Eyes, nose, throat and groin—throat and groin—"5

It made a hidden pocket of space behind his navel shiver in delicious pleasure.6

His waist bent and his fingers sorted deftly in time with his brain, which whirled up to a Doppler whine. 7

Okay. So—The Dreary Toads went with POP/ROCK 1990s, except for their recent experiment in ELECTRONICA, and did Ms. Pedicure go in HIP HOP 2001 or '02? /Moisture Rich/ had been released midnight on December 31, really just a marketing ploy—but he could just file her at the very end of '01 since the years ran next to each other...8

"Hey, Skeet, I'm 'bout to get out of here." The station manager slumped in the library's doorway, peering from above two shadows brushed across a good-natured face. His keys—THE keys—rustled against each other, dangling from a finger.9

Skeeter looked up, still seeing track numbers. He blinked, and they arranged themselves around the wall clock. 10

"You staying?"11

"Thought I'd finish organizing these, yeah." Frowning, Skeeter stared at his pile, at a shelf, at his pile, until something snagged his eye and his face smoothed. "That's where I put it."12

"Ah-ight, man." The keys jumped and flashed in the short arc to Skeeter's rubber soles. "Do me a favor before you lock up?"13

"Yeah, sure." He unfolded his knees, slowing ascending into the real world. "Sure."14

"C'mere." The station manager shuffled a few steps down the short hall. Following, Skeeter caught glimpses of wires crossing like veins underneath wallpaper layers of posters and stickers yelling band names as loud as possible.15

Everything led through the scarred door, one that needed a different sort of coaxing every time movement was required of it. The station manager kicked the frame and waved Skeeter inside; they were greeted by a bulky black switchboard, sleepily winking at them. A microphone stood in the center of the room like a sliver of a dancer waiting for a partner, facing a desk groaning under stereo equipment gathered from the finest yard sales around and made to play nice with duct tape on the connections. ON AIR pulsed red in rhythm with the broadcast.16

Skeeter felt the navel tingling slide slightly south. His prick didn't know the difference between bedroom and church.17

"And ears and wrists and mouth and shins—"18

The station manager pointed to two buttons snuggled up next to each other, one square and one round. "Looks like Westerberg won't be doing Cowpunk tonight, so if he ain't here in time, push the circle to automate the system."19

"How long's he got?" Skeeter read the label over the square. MIC 1, it said.20

"Eyes, nose, throat and groin—"21

"Until the PSA's done," said the station manager over his shoulder and halfway home. "About ten seconds."22

"—throat and groin!"23

A deep silence froze Skeeter. He aimed his hand—paused.24

The microphone. Oh, the microphone looked so very inviting, grabbing the harsh red ON AIR, which now glared at him steadily, and turned it mellow, easy. Around it, cords and plugs and dials copulated into electronic mutations that Skeeter knew how to tame—they all did, they all had to take the same training, even music librarians who never came out of the back room unless the all-clear was nodded.25

It was too much for Skeeter. Punching the circle and punching out would be too much like wadding up destiny and throwing it away to rot for a billion years with all the Styrofoam cups and plastic sporks.26

Shoving headphones over his curls, Skeeter grabbed the mike in a grip he imagined as aggressively smooth and pulled it near his lips.27

He punched the square button.28

***29

She couldn't sleep. Again.30

Her bladder had yanked her eyes open a few minutes ago and shoved her across the hall into the bathroom, from the dark womb of her room into fluorescent determined to erase all shadows. The light stabbed at her as she sat defenseless and bare-assed on the can until she was wide awake.31

Now she stood, back on her side of the door, feeling exhaustion carved under her eyes, and listening to her boyfriend's snores catch in the air above her bed. He was so cute when he slept, a great heedless sprawl of limbs and head surrounded by a cornea of dark waves, but now she couldn't see anything except a vague lump.32

And the clock radio's bright red numbers, of course. 2:58 am. 33

She hated that damn clock, hated how it counted and measured and segmented and seemed to save up so it could run its absolute slowest at the most inconvenient times—34

Abruptly, she scuffed through the carpet (the sudden deep-pile forest of her roommate's section rug always surprised her bare toes) and reached over to turn the clock's smug face into the wall.35

Her finger brushed a control and, "GOOD NIGHT—I MEAN, MORNING, UNION STATE COLLEGE—" leapt out of the speakers.36

Quickly, she turned down the volume and glanced at her boyfriend.37

Didn't even blink, her guilt sighed in relief, and she let it relax. It wanted to listen to another human, possibly the only other human on campus awake at 3:01 on a Wednesday morning, so she brought the radio to her ear like an awkward phone and settled the rest of her on her boyfriend's wide, open chest, where she could feel a heartbeat.38

"This is Skee—I mean Cowpunk—well, my name's Skeeter Muckenfuss but I'm filling in for Cowpunk in the Nighttime so technically at the moment this is Cowpunk in the Nighttime—although this is morning—technically—"39

***40

"Yo, Skeet."41

Oh, God. "Yeah?"42

"C'mere." The station manager crooked a knuckle in Skeeter's direction.43

All shift, Skeeter had managed to avoid this anticipation drenched in dread. All shift, he had buried himself up to his elbows in the oldest box of music he could find, a nightmare of faded ink and half-peeled labels and blankets of dust that no one else cared about. 44

All shift, it had worked enough to keep hope alive, but suddenly hope sprouted bullet holes and fainted dead away with its mouth still open.45

Skeeter made his slow way to the station manager's side and tried to keep his heart from fluttering out of its proper cavity. "What's—what's up?"46

"I need y'to stay for Cowpunk again."47

"You need me?" It vaulted out of his mouth and did a happy little shimmy around his pride.48

"Yeah. Cowpunk got mono at the staff party, so it'll be temporarily permanent." 49

Bless Cowpunk and keep him sweating in bed forever and ever amen, prayed Skeeter. "I was okay?"50

"What?" The station manager glanced up from a clipboard hovering under his nose. "Oh. Yeah. It was fine."51

Skeeter allowed himself an internal moment of pure glee. He was fine! He—Skeeter Muckenfuss, graveyard shift music alphabetizer—was fine! "Really?" 52

"Don't worry, nobody listens past like midnight anyway, not on a Tue-" Something on the clipboard caught the station manager's attention and held it fast. "Damn, did we go over filing budget /again/? Trudy! C'mere!"53

*** 54

"So you multiply this variable—"55

"—in the Nighttime. Morning. Whichever—"56

"—and then you—"57

"—the next hour forty-five minutes and seven, eight, nine seconds—"58

"—and then you—"59

"—dedicated to Polka Covers Week." Dubious pause. "So." Accordions burst forth, flailing dense wings of notes that flapped manically through farting tubas and burping clarinets. 60

A hand shot out and choked the music. 61

"No!" 62

Her boyfriend cocked an eyebrow at her, his finger still mashed against the button. "What's the matter?"63

She felt panic rise to fill her throat. "Why'd you turn it off?"64

"I have a test in like four hours." Wearing a smile that was suppose to tease the anxiety out of her, he leaned and brushed a kiss against her cheek. "And you're distracting enough, missy."65

She barely noticed her flesh nodding back at him. "Yeah."66

"It's late. Early." The clock turned softer in his examining grip. "Want to go to bed?"67

A challenge; can she endure? "No, no."68

"Okay." A great intake of breath, puffed out of solid nostrils onto paper covered in sharp pencil scratches curled around structured lines of type. Gathering the troops, he bent his head and squinted. "So you multiply this variable and then you..."69

She settled back in her chair and let her mind off its leash to wander the world wrapped in 3:35am haze.70

***71

"So call to tell me what to play, what to burn, that I suck, that I rule, or that your very favorite radio station in the whole world is WUSC. That number again is..." Skeeter ran out of handwriting on the index card he held up to his face. The standard station announcement ended in the standard station phone number, which was—72

Ahem. The standard station phone number /was/— 73

He said it before he thought. "Shit."74

The obscenity landed in his headphones, curving back into his ears and laughing fatly. Skeeter gaped at the red ON AIR, still pulsing, counting the beats. "Oh shit! I said—"75

He clapped a hand across his mouth before it could do anything else to get him fired. In the silence, Skeeter realized his futility. Nobody ever called.76

Music. Music would make it all better.77

He jammed in the nearest album—a mixed tape cassette that had last seen airplay about 1992 if he wanted to judge from its hand-annotated cross-references to Hall Meeting and the Floofy Feathers. Filaments whirled as the Beast ground away at them—to Skeeter it sounded like blood rushing through veins. 78

Finally—79

"Nobody makes me feel that way and gets away with it!" Dodo dooodo, WAAAAAAAH wanka wah!80

Instantly calmer, Skeeter slumped and closed his eyes, wanted to drown. (Bip. Bip. Bip.) But they wouldn't let him. (Bip. Bip. Bip.) Dammit. What was it? (Bip. Bip. Bip.) Was the Beast finally dying? (Bip. Bip. Bip.) How much would it take (Bip. Bip. Bip.) to replace him? Would they take it out of his (Bip. Bip. Bip.) nonexistent paycheck? Would they banish Skeeter for life because the stupid (Bip. Bip. Bip.) thing—81

His eyes peeled open and saw a dot of light winking at him from the switchboard. 82

A call.83

He stared stupidly for a second, gathering the procedure from a dusty corner of his brain, then flipped the switch right under the beacon. "He-hello?"84

"Yeah, I wanna order two large pepperonis, a couple sausage—hey, Mike, like how hungry are you?—Mushrooms and black olives? No way, dude, buy that shit on your own plastic—"85

"Thanks for calling WUSC. You have Union Station College on the dial, this is Cowpunk in the Nighttime." It came out as smooth and modulated as a woman's nightie. Skeeter almost wept. 86

"Oh...this isn't Pizza Mia?"87

And it all came crashing down. "...No."88

"Oh, sorry dude. My bad."89

"Well, wait—" Skeeter clung to hope, refused to let it go, tied it up with ropes and handcuffs and duct taped its mouth shut so he could keep it. "D'you want to request anything?"90

"We want some pizza."91

"Yeah—uh, how about a song?" He dug through the catalogue. "Timetastic Trip O'Doom's cover of 'Hello, I Must Be Going'? Preston's 'Graduate and Work For the Man'? Um—oh! You'll love this one—Flying Saucer's 'Lump of Dough,' their best experimental thrash pop with sprinkles of grunge—"92

"Nah, that's cool. Thanks, man." Click.93

Skeeter looked at the switchboard, still (Bip. Bip. Bip.) blinking at him, without seeing. His finger, drained of illusion, flicked at the light, then trailed down to the automation button. 94

He punched the circle and walked out.95

***96

"Thank you for calling WUSC, Union State College on the dial. All lines are currently automated. Your call is important to us so please contact us on the web at—"97

She hung up in disbelief and mild disgust. It was only ten minutes past three on a Tuesday morning.98

THE END 99