Eleven Minutes

The transmitter room is down the stairs from the roof garden: a desk, a microphone, a switch with a red lamp over it, and a window with the antenna in it, sixty grackles on the crossbars, shouting. The chair is pushed back from the desk. On the desk is one typed sheet. At the top, in pencil: Switch on when they go.

An hour before dusk the grackles go up all at once and down to the creek. You throw the switch, and the lamp comes on.

You read what the sheet says. Pole beans wanted, chile pequin to trade. A brown dog on Rosewood that answers to a whistle. The time of tomorrow's water truck. At the bottom, in the same pencil: If anyone is listening east of the highway, we'd like to know you're there.

You read slowly. It takes eleven minutes. The grackles come back in the order they left, and the one with half a tail takes the top of the antenna, and the lamp goes out.

East of the highway, someone writes down the time.