The Needle

You sit on the stool with your hands between your knees. The light in the one high window goes from white to yellow. The radio hisses. The needle sits at zero.

Then the hiss drops out all at once, the way it does when something takes the station, and the needle is already moving. It climbs past the middle of the scale and holds. A voice on the sill begins to read, unhurried. Ladder wanted. Ladder returned, thank you. Dog found, answers to a whistle.

It reads for eleven minutes. You watch the needle for all of them, and it does not waver. When the voice stops the hiss comes back, and the needle goes down.

You unfold the last leaf. One line by itself, ruled off above and below: Monday, 40, 11 min, and in the margin, Central.

You breathe on the film. The needle lifts a hair and settles.