Part 4 – The Radio Still Works
I hadn’t touched the old transistor in years — but the day it crackled back to life, it brought a piece of Mary with it.
It was Sunday. The kind of clear blue sky they used to paint on postcards, back before everything turned digital and soulless.
Diesel had taken to snoozing under the porch swing, nose twitching like he was chasing rabbits in dreams. I let him be. He’d earned it.
I was in the garage, sorting through a box labeled CAMPING STUFF – 1986. Most of it was junk: rusted lanterns, tangled fishing line, a cracked coffee percolator that probably hadn’t worked since Reagan. But at the bottom, wrapped in an old dish towel, was Mary’s radio.
The one she used to bring on road trips. The one she refused to replace, no matter how many knobs fell off or how many buttons stuck.
She called it The Companion.
Said it “sounded like home.”
I brushed it off.
Yellowing plastic. Missing battery cover. Antenna bent like a question mark.
I almost tossed it. But something in my chest said don’t.
I grabbed a couple of D batteries from the junk drawer, jammed them in.
Nothing.
I smacked the back once with the palm of my hand. Not gently. The way you’d knock sense into a stubborn friend.
And it whined.
Crackled. Coughed.
Then — like a whisper through a keyhole — music.
Patsy Cline.
“Walkin’ After Midnight.”
I stood there frozen.
Not because it sounded perfect — it didn’t.
But because it still worked.
After all these years. After Mary. After Buck. After diesel prices and broken dreams and birthdays I’d stopped counting.
It still worked.
I brought it inside.
Set it on the table like it was made of gold.
Diesel lifted his head, ears perked.
We sat there, man and mutt, while that little radio spit out scratchy tunes and local weather reports like it hadn’t skipped a day since 1992.
I remembered a night in the Smokies, thirty years back. Me, Mary, and a borrowed tent. Rain coming down in sheets. The truck parked uphill, just in case the creek swelled.
She had the radio propped on a cooler, playing oldies while she fried Spam in a cast-iron skillet.
“I ever go quiet on you,” she said, “you play me this station.”
I laughed back then. Told her I’d go deaf before I let her go quiet.
But time plays dirty.
The song changed. Some George Jones classic I hadn’t heard in forever.
I poured myself a cup of instant coffee. Sat in the chair she used to read in. Watched the light hit the chipped paint on the window frame.
Everything was older now. Even the shadows.
But that radio?
Still had stories in it.
Still had life.
I took it with me on a drive that afternoon.
No destination. Just the kind of wandering that used to be easier when gas was $1.12 and your knees didn’t sound like gravel.
We ended up at the lake.
The same one where Mary and I used to watch the fireworks every Fourth. We’d park by the water, set out lawn chairs, and pass a thermos of spiked sweet tea while the kids waved sparklers and got sand in the truck bed.
The dock was mostly gone now.
But the breeze was the same.
And the sky?
It still remembered how to be beautiful.
Diesel trotted to the edge of the water, sniffed a rock, then flopped into the grass like it was his backyard.
I sat on the tailgate, tuned the radio again.
It played something cheerful this time. Something new. I didn’t know the words.
But it didn’t matter.
Because the sound filled the space Mary used to fill — not completely, but honestly.
An older couple pulled up in a battered Buick. She wore curlers. He wore a fishing hat that had seen better decades.
He held her hand as they walked to the shoreline.
Didn’t say much.
Just sat on a bench and let the wind talk.
It reminded me: there’s still good in this world. Quiet good. The kind you have to sit still long enough to see.
Later, back home, I put the radio on the windowsill.
It played through dinner. Through dishes. Through a quiet game of fetch Diesel started and quit halfway through.
That night, I lay in bed — and for the first time in months — I didn’t think about loss.
I thought about music.
About old laughter.
About Spam in the rain.
About how some things — no matter how small, or cracked, or forgotten — still matter.
ENDING:
Sometimes, it’s not the big things that keep you going.
It’s a porch breeze.
A dog’s breath.
And a dusty old radio that still knows your song.
