The Last Broadcast (Part 1)

KDMR 88.7 broadcast from two rooms above the hardware store in Dunsmuir, and everyone in town knew which window was the studio, because it was the one with the fan in it all summer.

On Tuesday morning Sanjay came in with a folder instead of his coffee. That was the first sign. He had managed the station for nineteen years, and in nineteen years he had never come in without coffee.

“Sit down,” he said. “Both of you.”

Zeynep was still wearing her headphones around her neck. Rafael was on the floor behind the desk with a screwdriver, doing what he always did to the old board when it started to hum.

Sanjay opened the folder on the table. The county had cut the arts money in March. The two biggest advertisers had moved to a station in Redding with a bigger signal. What was left was rent, power, the transmitter up on the ridge, and three salaries.

“Six weeks,” he said. “Maybe eight, if nobody gets paid in August.”

Nobody said anything. The old board hummed.

“We're not closing for lack of listeners,” he said. “We're closing for lack of money. I'm going to say that on air. This town pays for us. They should hear it from me and not from the Redding paper.”

He said it at ten past nine, in about forty words, and then Zeynep opened the phone lines, because she didn't know what else to do.

A woman called from the laundromat on Sacramento Avenue and said she'd listened every morning since her husband died. A truck driver called from the shoulder of I-5 and said 88.7 was the only human voice between Weed and Redding at four in the morning. A boy called and asked if they could still play his song on Friday. Zeynep said yes. Then she went out into the hall and stood at the window for a minute.

At noon the phone rang again.

“I don't want to be on the radio,” the man said. “I want to talk to whoever handles the money.”