Fannie and the Back Fence Gang 1

Fannie Airs a Hot Topic

My coauthor-husband Bill Albert and I wrote this story in 1993 for Malice Domestic 3, an anthology of short mysteries now out of print. As I revised it for Short Reads, I kept the technology of that era (think car phones, talk radio), as well as football teams (anybody remember the Houston Oilers?) and  certain famous persons (the Texas governor with the white bouffant hairdo could only be Ann Richards). It’s an example of crowdsourcing, a dozen years before that word was coined. And for me, it’s an experiment in serial fiction. If you like Fannie, maybe she’ll come up with another story. Reading time for Episode One: about 11 minutes.

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It was ten minutes to eleven on a sunny Monday when Fannie Couch rolled her old red Ford into the parking lot—the witching hour, as Fannie thought of it, because eleven was when the magic began. Eleven to one, weekdays, two full hours of magic. Her favorite live radio call-in talk show.

Of course it was. Fannie stretched to see herself in the rearview mirror, patting her newly-rinsed silver curls and smoothing one eyebrow with the moistened tip of her little finger. If the Back Fence wasn’t her favorite show, she was in deep, serious trouble, because it was her show: Fannie’s Back Fence, beamed out over the airwaves on KPST-FM radio, Your Friendly Hill Country Family Station transmitting from Pecan Springs, Texas, twenty-five kilowatts of power at 1290 kilohertz on your radio dial. For the last five years, it has been sandwiched between Harriet Osterberg’s “Women’s Hour” (which was really only a half hour, and in Fannie’s opinion pretty much a waste of good air time), and the agribusiness news that came on at one.

Lots of folks listened to the Back Fence, which Henry Morris (the station manager) described as a combination of a Methodist potluck supper, a swap meet, and the lunch counter at Lila’s Diner, where all a person had to do was listen and pretty soon they’d know everything worth knowing about everybody in town. Back Fence regulars lived as far south as San Antonio and as far north as Austin, and included at-home seniors, truckers shuttling back and forth on the interstate, ranchers riding fence in their four-wheel drives, and on-the-go moms carpooling the kids to the swimming pool—all equipped with radios, transistor radios, car radios, and dial phones or car phones. It seemed that almost everybody in KPST’s broadcast area tuned in to find out what was on the minds of Fannie and her friends.

Which was gratifying, Fannie reflected as she walked down the hall. Looking through the control room window, she waggled her fingers at Henry, who was KPST’s operations manager, sound engineer, disk jockey, and newscaster, as well as advertising salesman, bookkeeper, and lawnmower. Henry, who was reading the eleven o’clock news, shook his head and jabbed vigorously at the clock, indicating that it was three minutes to the hour, and she should forget about visiting the ladies’ room.

It was also gratifying because at the advanced age of seventy-eight, when so many of her acquaintances were being trundled off to the nursing home, Fannie had become something of a celebrity. She had even been written up in Texas Monthly on the same page an article featuring the governor, whose white hair was even more bouffant than Fannie’s.

For Fannie, the write-up in Texas Monthly had been especially important because she had made up her mind in the very beginning that there wouldn’t be any nonsense at the Back Fence. She wouldn’t air local tittle-tattle, which you could get with your coffee at Lila’s or a shampoo and set at Bernice’s House of Beauty. She would take ten or fifteen minutes of swap-it-and-shop-it calls every hour from folks who had a power saw or a goat or a sofa they wanted to buy, sell, or trade.

And she would air local controversy—the more controversial the better. Fannie knew what buttons to push to get her callers to voice their opinions. Her radio personality was a cross between the rowdy, over-the-top Molly Ivins (Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?) and the low-key, acerbic Lily Tomlin (“It’s my belief that we invented language because of our deep inner need to complain”). Give Fannie a new listener on Monday and they’d be a fan by Tuesday.

Fannie went into her sound room, next door to the control room, with a glass window between. Today’s local controversy—dazzling in a fuchsia suit, neon pink blouse, and pumps and lips to match—was already seated in the visitor’s chair on the other side of Fannie’s desk.  She was Pauline Perkins, who had recently won an unprecedented fourth term as mayor. Victory was, Pauline was fond of saying, a measure of the trust the fine citizens of Pecan Springs placed in her competence as a civic leader. Not, Fannie thought, as she blinked at Pauline, in her sartorial competence. (“Sartorial” had come up on Fannie’s 365 Memorable New Words Calendar yesterday. This was her first chance to use it.)

But she shouldn’t be too hard on Pauline. In Pecan Springs, pink seemed to be the color of this season’s New Woman. The window of Doris’s Dresses was draped with a plethora (day-before- yesterday’s word) of pink suits, blouses, scarves, and accessories that had likely inspired Pauline’s reverberating choice. It was a darned good thing they weren’t on television.

On the other side of the glass window, Henry gave Fannie a grin and a thumbs-up. She seated herself on the needlepoint pillow that brought her to the right height and put her purse on the floor, reaching into it for her bottle of Dr. Pepper, which was invented just up the road in Waco, at the drugstore where her grandpa worked as a boy, sweeping up. She perched her headset carefully on her springy curls while Henry began running the pre-recorded commercial and then the Back Fence intro music, “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” Today’s edition of the perennial local controversy—growth versus no-growth—would light up the switchboard like the Courthouse Square the week before Christmas. It was a hot topic that had been on the boil for a couple of months.

Fannie pulled down the microphone boom, listened for Henry’s countdown, and then spoke brightly, softening her words with a little of her daddy’s Texas drawl. “Good mornin’, ever’body. Glad you could join us here at the Back Fence. Hope y’all got your chores done, but if not, well, it’s time to quit. It’s already gettin’ hot out there.” She paused for a beat and a wink at Pauline. “But you’ll have to turn on your fans and pour yourself a glass of iced tea because it’s gonna get even hotter in here. Mayor Pauline Perkins is visiting the Back Fence to tell us why she thinks Pecan Springs oughta annex that nine hundred acres on the west side of town, below Sycamore Canyon. This piece of land, which right now is pretty much just cedar brake, scrub oak, and snakes, is called Oak Hills Estate. It’s bein’ developed by George Armstrong Autry, President of George A. Audrey Real Estate Developers.”

Fannie wiggled her eyebrows at Pauline, signaling that it was her turn. “Mayor, why don’t you take a minute or two to tell us how come you and the City Council think Pecan Springs oughta annex all those snakes. And then we’ll turn the mike over to the Back Fencers to get their side of the story.”

Pauline leaned nervously toward her mike, while Fannie fiddled with the knob of the VU meter, modulating the volume of the mayor’s high-pitched voice. “Thank you, Fannie, and thanks for letting me talk about my favorite subject, Pecan Springs, the Friendliest Small Town in Texas. Of course, as we all know, growth isn’t a newcomer to our fair town. Granted, it may have taken just about a hundred years for us to get going good, but since the 1960s, we’ve been growing like a prairie fire. Our little college—Central Texas State University, of course—brought nine thousand students to town this semester. We’ve added a new wing to the hospital and several new outlet stores have moved into the mall. Tourism is blooming, up seventeen percent in the last year. Folks from Dallas and Houston just love to play in our cool, clear Pecan River and fish and swim in the beautiful lakes of our serene Texas Hill Country.”

Fannie sighed, wishing Pauline didn’t sound as if she were reading from a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet, but the mayor was speaking more easily now, warming to her task.

“Some of these visitors are settling down here. We need places for them to live. Which is why we need this development.” Pauline lowered her voice, making it sound confidential. “And to be a hundred percent honest, we need the revenue that property tax brings in. It’s a whole lot more reliable source of income than sales taxes. I’m sure you folks out there don’t want us to have to hike the sales tax another half percent just to pay for city services, do you?”

That sounded suspiciously like political blackmail to Fannie. It was time to play her favorite role as devil’s advocate. “But Pauline,” she objected, “this is the third annexation this year. Surely you’ve heard what people are sayin’. They worry that all this growth isn’t good for Pecan Springs. They say you can’t have a peaceful walk down the river without running into a hoard of tourists with cameras. Meanwhile, the new developments are ruining bird habitats and destroying the quiet life, while the water level in our aquifer drops lower and lower. Some people feel like the crowds are loving this place to death. They say we should slow down and figure out what kind of town we want to leave to our kids. What’s your answer to that?”

Invigorated, Pauline swung into her practiced rebuttal while Fannie sat back and watched the phone lines start blinking. When she had first gone on the air, Henry wanted to install a delay, so she could cut off an abusive caller or somebody who used four-letter words. But Fannie trusted her listeners to behave themselves. The calls that came in would be live, in real time.

Pauline took a breath, Fannie raised her hand and said, “Hold your ponies, Pauline, we’ve got a caller.” She toggled the phone switch and said, “Hey, there, you’re on the Back Fence.”

“Thanks, Fannie. I won’t take much of your time.” In Fannie’s headset, the man’s strong baritone was backgrounded by the sound of a car’s motor. He was speaking from a mobile phone. “This development the mayor is talking about, Oak Hills Estate. She and the City Council don’t have any idea what it’s going to cost. And I’m not just talkin’ money, either. If they knew what all has to be involved in developing that site, they’d drop it like the hot end of a branding iron.”

 Pauline leaned forward. “But that’s just not correct, sir,” she replied earnestly. “We do know what it will cost. According to the city planning office, the revenue projections from the expanded tax base look extremely good.” Fannie always had to smile when Pauline talked about the city planning office, which consisted of Leota McKinney, a street map, and a calculator. “Mr. Autry has already committed to the capital improvements,” Pauline added. “The roads, the sewer, the water—all that infrastructure won’t cost the city a dime.”

“Leota’s good with numbers,” the caller agreed. “But there’s something you’re not figuring on, Mayor. Sycamore Creek runs right smack down the middle of that nine hundred acres, as you know. I’m parked up here on Half-Mile Road right now, just south of Lookout Corner. I can look down and see the creek right below me.”

“Well, sure,” Fannie put in. “But Sycamore Creek is dry eleven months of the year. What you’re looking at down there is nothing but snakes and run-off from the canyon a mile or two up above.” She spoke briskly. It was time to move this one along. “What’s your point, caller?”

“My point,” the caller replied, “is that there’s something up here that most of you folks don’t know about.” He dropped his voice as if what he was about to say was confidential. “In fact, it’s something you’re not supposed to know about. I figure it’s high time we got all this out in public. I’m ready to tell you right here and  now. People need to hear—”

There was a sudden jarring metallic screech. “Hey, what the hell!” the caller exclaimed. “Stop that, you idiot! Don’t hit me! Stop—”

Fannie reached out to cut the caller off the air. But before she could flip the switch, a crash exploded into her headset and out onto the air waves. The needle on the VU meter bounced into the red. The crash was followed by a man’s tremulous scream and another ear-splitting crash, and then—

Disconnect. Nothing. Eerie silence. The needle on the VU meter dropped back into the normal range. Pauline’s eyes were as big as marbles and her mouth was a round O of horrified disbelief.

“Caller, are you there?” Stupid question. With a quick glance at Henry, Fannie followed it with a shaky, “So what do you say, folks? Time for a commercial break? Meanwhile, we’ll check this out and let you know what’s happened.”

With an effort, Fannie put a smile in her voice. “So don’t go away. We’ll be right back with Mayor Pauline Perkins and yours truly, Fannie Couch, right here at the Back Fence.” She cut the mike and leaned back in her chair.

What had just happened?

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Watch for Episode Two, coming to your inbox next Wednesday, November 1. And for a quick two-minute history of serial fiction, read my post on Short Reads.