Chapter 1, Scene 4
Date: February 15, 1936
Location: East Side of Detroit, Michigan
The radio crackled beside the sink. Not music, not the Tigers game Elijah wanted—just voices again, distant and stern, like two old men arguing behind a closed door.
He sat cross-legged on the linoleum floor, elbows on his knees, chin in his palms. The radio sat on the counter above him, a chipped black box humming with news he didn’t understand.
“—and if the President diverted WPA funds to unauthorized projects—” “—what constitutes private directive versus executive discretion—”
Elijah twisted the dial. More static. He twisted it again.
“—House hearings continued today—”
He sighed and sat back. “They never talk about the score.”
From behind the partition curtain, his cousin Nadine’s voice floated: “You think baseball matters more than the government?”
Elijah didn’t answer. Nadine was thirteen and always acting like thirty. She read Harper’s Weekly and told him things like, “Eleanor Roosevelt had her own radio show once, and I bet Lindbergh’s wife can’t spell diplomacy.”
“Baseball is the government,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Their house was small—two rooms, one stove, one bathroom with a door that didn’t close all the way. But the radiator clanged when it was supposed to, and their father always said “we got floors that hold and windows that shut, which is more than I had growing up.”
Elijah’s father, Henry Booker, was late getting home. Again. He was out working the Columbus stretch—part of the new highway project. Fifty miles of poured concrete, graded shoulders, rebar so tight it sang when you walked across it. He came home with cement dust in his hair and calluses like old leather.
When he got home, he’d slump at the table, eat with both hands, and fall asleep in the chair. On Sundays he brought stories: “Today we laid seven miles in a snow flurry and nobody quit. One fella passed out, and when he came to, he asked if lunch was still hot.”
Elijah loved those stories. They made the world sound heavy and real, like it needed men to hold it up.
The front door creaked.
“Elijah? Nadine?”
It was Mr. Gardner from next door, wearing a brown coat dusted with salt and a fedora two sizes too big. He had the limp of a man who’d fought in France, and the soft voice of someone who hated remembering it.
“Elijah, you want to see something?”
Elijah popped up. “Sure!”
They walked outside into the chill. The snow had turned to crust, crunching under their boots. Mr. Gardner led him around the corner to where a small shed stood with the door open.
Inside, a wooden table. On the table: a radio—taller than the one in Elijah’s kitchen, with a smooth walnut finish and glowing dials.
“Built this myself,” Mr. Gardner said. “Got it tuned straight to Canada. Sometimes I hear French jazz.”
Elijah touched the side. “Can it do baseball?”
“Only if they speak French and hit with umbrellas.”
He laughed, and Elijah laughed too.
“Want to help me wire a new antenna next weekend? Might reach Chicago.”
Elijah nodded, eyes wide. “Do you think the President really stole money?”
Mr. Gardner looked surprised. “Who told you that?”
“The radio.”
Mr. Gardner’s mouth twitched. He crouched—his bad knee cracking.
“I don’t know, son. I think the President wants to build roads. Some folks don’t like the way he’s doing it. But most of the men I know are just glad to be building.”
“Like my dad,” Elijah said. “He says building things makes the world quieter.”
“Smart man.”
They looked up at the sky, gray and steady. Somewhere a freight train moaned. The air smelled like iron and chimney smoke.
“Elijah!”
It was Nadine, waving from the stoop.
“Dad’s back!”
Elijah ran.
Inside, Henry Booker stood in the doorway, a silhouette of concrete-stiffened denim and steel-toed boots. His hands were gray from dried mortar. His eyes were red with wind.
“Hey, little man.”
“Did you pour seven miles again?”
“Only four,” he said. “And two of them were uphill.”
He sat heavily at the table. Nadine brought him a cup of chicory coffee.
“The President’s in trouble,” Elijah said.
Henry blinked. “What now?”
“The radio says maybe he took money. For his own highway.”
Henry snorted. “Then I want my share.”
Nadine rolled her eyes. “Don’t joke. It’s serious.”
“It’s politics,” Henry said. “That’s serious to people who’ve never worked in the cold.”
He peeled off his gloves. “That man may be strange, but he’s got men digging ditches who didn’t have boots a year ago. That’s something.”
Nadine sat at the table. “But it’s not justice.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “But it’s bread. And justice don’t fill a lunch pail.”
That night, Elijah sat at the window, watching headlights flash across the street. He imagined roads stretching out like rivers. Men like his father pouring slabs straight into the horizon. Maybe someday he’d help. Maybe he’d fly a plane over it. Maybe he’d fix a radio on a hill and hear the game from twenty states away.
He closed his eyes and dreamed of electric skies and green fields, with a crowd cheering somewhere far away.
