Hunched in the breakfast nook, he read every word of the story: “An audience of eight hundred that packed the Northend High School last night—” What was eight hundred when Sonny Baker played to two hundred thousand? He carried dishes to the sink and asked a tentative question.
“Don’t you think radio’s swell, Mother?”
“Not when I get it for breakfast, dinner, and supper. Sometimes you tune in for a noisy midnight snack.”
“I mean dramatic sketches,” Joe said hastily. “Aren’t they swell?”
“Some of them.”
This, Joe thought, might represent encouraging progress. Perhaps this was the moment, while his mother was in the mood to like something about radio, to drop a hint of his plans.
“Some are pretty bad,” Mrs. Carlin added with conviction.
“Well—some,” Joe said unhappily. Back in his room, after packing the costume, he tried to give his tie a Fancy Dan Carlin touch—a tweak here, a pinch there. The effect wouldn’t come. He came downstairs with the costume in a box. How did you arrange for a radio audition?
June roses bloomed on a trellis in the next-door yard, and the sky was a June blue. All at once the courage and faith of young spring were in Joe Carlin’s blood, and problems and perplexities were miraculously gone. Why, no station could give you an audition unless it knew you wanted an audition. It was as simple as that.
The corridors of the high school, brisk and alive during school hours, were shrouded to-day in Saturday darkness and gloom. Somewhere in the building a janitor’s mop knocked against a wall and filled the stillness with hollow echoes. Joe pulled at one of the great doors leading to the auditorium. Instantly light and clamor burst upon him.