Frequency Modulation

Long week, and I’m tired; tired enough that my Friday non-dissertational will probably be the only thing I post tonight. I don’t have it in me to think much right now or read anything, not after days of face-to-face conferencing and having to reply intelligently to draft after draft after draft and nights of grading and commenting, plus giving two presentations this week, and — well, let me stop before my whining gets worse.

So: on a tired night, here’s a small, quiet story for you.

Frequency Modulation

They were the first ones to arrive at the railhead, days before the rest. Storms delayed their landing at Las Vegas by thirty minutes, and the three of them shifted uneasily in their seats to see the lightning so close, to feel the plane lurch and buck with the winds. They circled the airport in a tightening spiral, and finally touched down.

There was another two hours by bus into the desert, past the training center to the logistics base at Yermo.

Travis had fallen asleep. Broome read a travel magazine. Dunn watched the passing landscape, the blasted rocks and dry scrub of the Mojave and the string of white wooden crosses that marked a wide, empty stretch of road, places where drivers had swerved from the long, straight two-lane blacktop. All three had taken this ride before.

The bus passed a place where Dunn could see the radio telescopes of NASA’s Goldstone facility craning their concave faces skywards from the sides of distant hills. He reached over to touch Broome on the shoulder, to tell him to look, but thought better of it. Broome turned a page.

Dust settled in the empty parking lot at Yermo. Travis was last to step from the bus. He looked around at the stunted pines and expanse of asphalt, at the low, ash-brown terrain and the incongruous nearby row of Porta-Johns. He sniffed the desert air’s alkali sharpness. The others shouldered their duffel bags. “Come on,” Broome said. “We’re burning daylight.”

“It’s hot,” Travis said.

“It’s the desert,” Broome answered.

Travis considered this briefly, and could find no reply. “You think the train’s here already?” he asked.

“The train’s always here already.”

Their lodging was a shell of tan fiberglass stretched over steel ribs, a cavernous, empty instant Quonset hut, with sand for the floor. They changed in silence, trading civilian clothes for camouflage and combat boots. After they were done, Broome went to arrange for food and tools and cots. Dunn and Travis found several pallets and empty wire spools and some scrap lumber, and began to try to make the shell more livable.

“I brought my radio,” Travis said. “So you know.”

Dunn nodded.

Broome returned carrying a plastic milk crate on one shoulder. He placed it on the ground. In it were red hard hats, field rations, walkie-talkies, and large stainless-steel socket wrenches: three of each. “This is what we got, for now,” he said. He looked at the interior of the shell. “We can bring the cots over later. They need us at the train.”

“Ours on it?” Travis asked.

“Two of them. They’re at the tail end.”

Travis cursed perfunctorily. “We’ll be all day.”

Broome shrugged. They fastened their wide riveted nylon web belts around their waists and gathered the gear from the milk crate and walked towards the rail yard. Dust rose from their footfalls.

There was a steel ramp set up on one end of the train for the vehicles to drive down: tanks, trucks, tracked artillery, all painted desert tan. Other soldiers strode up and down the flatcars, using their wrenches to unshackle chains from axles. Broome went to talk to the officer in charge. Travis and Dunn watched a soldier lower himself into the driver’s hatch of the first tracked vehicle, heard the low cough of the diesel’s ignition, heard the engine balk and chug before rumbling into life.

Broome came back over. He indicated a lieutenant. “He’s got enough people busting tie-downs. He wants to get the drivers moving.”

“We do it like usual?” Travis asked.

Broome indicated the rear of the train. “Go down and get ours prepped. Dunn’ll ground-guide.”

Travis went.

Dunn would walk in front of each vehicle and use hand and arm signals to guide it down the row of flatcars to the ramp, stepping aside for Broome to get it safely to the ground. A gradual tightening in the extension of the right or left arm to correct the driver back to true, hands in a pushing-down motion to decrease speed, fists and crossed wrists to stop.

The afternoon’s hours advanced marked by the clank of steel track on the train’s deck. The air reeked of diesel fumes. Dunn wiped sweat from his face.

They had seen it happen before: an overeager driver moving too fast, oversteering, overcompensating. Travis and Broome heard the drawn-out groan of metal on metal and the final booming crash as the tracked vehicle’s front end slid diagonally from the train’s deck and pitched in a slow-motion drop to the ground.

Dunn was helping the driver from the front hatch when Travis and Broome approached. The rear treads still rested against the flatcar’s edge, pointing skyward. It looked as if the vehicle had dove out of the sky.

The driver had his eyes screwed shut. “He OK?” Broome asked.

“My arm,” the driver said. It hung limply at his side.

Dunn got him to the ground without moving the arm. “Broken?” Travis asked. Dunn nodded.

Broome shook his head. He took his walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it. There was no answer.

Travis came over to where the driver sat with Dunn. “You all right?”

“Hurts.” He gritted his teeth. He was sweating, pale. “Hell.”

Others had begun to gather around the driver and the upended vehicle. One of them looked at its precarious position and said, “Colonel’s going to eat his stripes for breakfast.”

Broome turned to the soldier who had spoken. “That the Colonel’s?” The vehicle bristled with antenna mounts, domes, dishes. “Thing’s got more communications gear than ours does,” he finally said.

“Fire command. FM, GPS, EPLARS, all the rest. Takes a second generator just for the radios. Coordinate three battalions from it.”

“Artillery?”

“Yeah.” He looked at Broome. “You work for the big boss?”

“Yeah. Those two and me. Support staff.” Broome tried his walkie-talkie again. Nothing. “I can’t raise anybody,” he said. He turned to Travis and Dunn. “Travis. Go down to Operations, tell them we need an ambulance. Dunn can stay with this one.”

“What about you?” Travis asked.

“We’ll need wreckers to move that thing off the train. We got vehicles to unload.”

Travis gave him a mock salute.

With the delay of waiting for the wreckers — a heavy truck and an older tank, both with towing booms — it was dark before they could finish rolling the vehicles off the flatcars. The three of them walked tiredly back to the shell. None had the energy to bother about the cots.

Broome lit a lantern inside and unrolled his sleeping bag on top of his poncho and lay back on it with his travel magazine. Dunn helped Travis to drag one of the large wooden wire spools outside. Travis took a battered combination radio and cassette deck from one of his duffel bags and placed it on the spool and touched the power button. Static came from the speakers.

He extended the antenna and began to spin the dial idly, catching snippets of speech and music. “Never get anything out here,” he said. He turned slowly then, watching as a small orange light on the radio’s face would flicker progressively faster as he approached a station, to finally lock steady and static-free: the peaks of the superimposed waves approaching one another at a tightening overlap, condensing interstices until they meshed, congruent, true.

Dunn got up from his seat on the sand and walked towards the row of Porta-Johns. He stopped halfway, his head tilted in the direction of the training center, thirty miles distant. There was no hiss of traffic from I-15, and for a moment, he believed he could hear the faint thump of artillery. As if in response, there came the far-off howl of coyotes. Like counterpoint, he thought.

He stood a moment longer, and then continued.

When he returned, Travis had brought the empty milk crate out of the shell and was sitting on it, still adjusting the radio. “I can’t get anything local,” he said. He spat in the sand. “Nothing. Not even Fort Irwin.”

Dunn waited for him to go on.

“Talk radio from Maine,” Travis said. “Country from Florida. There’s nothing here.”

Dunn considered telling him about the ionosphere, hundreds of miles above them, about the way it drew back at nighttime, refracting, playing queer tricks with the frequencies, breaking and bouncing them far beyond their bounds.

After a while, he went inside and shut off the lantern and climbed into his sleeping bag. Outside, there was still the faint, whispery skip of Travis hopping from one station to the next.

Dunn quieted his breathing. He tried to listen beyond Travis, to hear what he had heard before, and the coyotes.