Shatterday Read Online Free Page B

miracle Jeffty had in his hand. A miracle that simply could not exist.
    "Jeffty," I said softly, with wonder in my voice, "where'd you get that?"
    "Came in the mail today. I sent away for it."
    "It must have cost a lot of money."
    "Not so much. Ten cents an' two inner wax seals from two jars of Ovaltine."
    "May I see it?" My voice was trembling, and so was the hand I extended. He gave it to me and I held the miracle in the palm of my hand. It was wonderful .
    You remember. Captain Midnight went on the radio nationwide in 1940. It was sponsored by Ovaltine. And every year they issued a Secret Squadron Decoder Badge. And every day at the end of the program, they would give you a clue to the next day's installment in a code that only kids with the official badge could decipher. They stopped making those wonderful Decoder Badges in 1949. I remember the one I had in 1945: it was beautiful. It had a magnifying glass in the center of the code dial. Captain Midnight went off the air in 1950, and though I understand it was a short-lived television series in the mid-fifties, and though they issued Decoder Badges in 1955 and 1956, as far as the real badges were concerned, they never made one after 1949.
    The Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph I held in my hand, the one Jeffty said he had gotten in the mail for ten cents ( ten cents!!! ) and two Ovaltine labels, was brand new, shiny gold metal, not a dent or a spot of rust on it like the old ones you can find at exorbitant prices in collectible shoppes from time to time … it was a new Decoder. And the date on it was this year.
    But Captain Midnight no longer existed. Nothing like it existed on the radio. I'd listened to the one or two weak imitations of old-time radio the networks were currently airing, and the stories were dull, the sound effects bland, the whole feel of it wrong, out of date, cornball. Yet I held a new Code-O-Graph.
    "Jeffty, tell me about this," I said.
    "Tell you what, Donny? It's my new Capt'n Midnight Secret Decoder Badge. I use it to figger out what's gonna happen tomorrow."
    "Tomorrow how?"
    "On the program."
    " What program?!"
    He stared at me as if I was being purposely stupid. "On Capt'n Midnight ! Boy!" I was being dumb.
    I still couldn't get it straight. It was right there, right out in the open, and I still didn't know what was happening. "You mean one of those records they made of the old-time radio programs? Is that what you mean, Jeffty?"
    "What records?" he asked. He didn't know what I meant.
    We stared at each other, there under the porch. And then I said, very slowly, almost afraid of the answer, "Jeffty, how do you hear Captain Midnight?"
    "Every day. On the radio. On my radio. Every day at five-thirty."
    News. Music, dumb music, and news. That's what was on the radio every, day at 5:30. Not Captain Midnight . The Secret Squadron hadn't been on the air in twenty years.
    "Can we hear it tonight?" I asked.
    "Boy!" he said. I was being dumb. I knew it from the way he said it; but I didn't know why. Then it dawned on me: this was Saturday. Captain Midnight was on Monday through Friday. Not on Saturday or Sunday.
    "We goin' to the movies?"
    He had to repeat himself twice. My mind was somewhere else. Nothing definite. No conclusions. No wild assumptions leapt to. Just off somewhere trying to figure it out, and concluding—as you would have concluded, as anyone would have concluded rather than accepting the truth, the impossible and wonderful truth—just finally concluding there was a simple explanation I didn't yet perceive. Something mundane and dull, like the passage of time that steals all good, old things from us, packratting trinkets and plastic in exchange. And all in the name of Progress.
    "We goin' to the movies, Donny?"
    "You bet your boots we are, kiddo," I said. And I smiled. And I handed him the Code-O-Graph. And he put it in his side pants pocket. And we crawled out from under the porch. And we went to the movies. And neither of us said anything