The Hilltop Transmitter
Lao Tian keeps the mountain-top broadcast tower on the night shift. Every few nights the backup frequency comes alive on its own, a woman's voice reading recipes. An old man says it is the tower-keeper who died in a landslide the snowed-in year, who spoke into the mic, the food is on the stove.
Lao Tian keeps the mountain-top broadcast tower and works the night shift. The mountain is high and the wind strong; at night the whole tower hums, like someone talking in your ear without stop.
His job is to watch the equipment and walk the tower. Up there is a small equipment room with an old radio wired to the backup station frequency, meant for emergencies.
The strange thing is that frequency.
Every few nights, deep in the small hours, the radio comes on by itself, and a woman's voice slowly reads out recipes: spareribs with tofu must be blanched first, fish should be scored to take away the smell, congee needs a low fire to draw out the rice oil. She goes on and on, afraid you might forget. Lao Tian changed the channel; turn it back and she is still there — not cross-talk.
He asked the old-timers down in the village. An old man was silent a long while, then said the tower was once kept by a young woman; the year the mountain was snowed in, a landslide took her, and her last act was to cut the song that was playing and say into the microphone, the food is on the stove, I can't get down the mountain, and then she was gone. After that, the frequency would come alive at her hour.
Lao Tian recorded it.
From then on, every time that hour came, he would heat a bowl of rice himself and say into the machine, I got it.
The young ones laughed at him, arguing with a radio. Lao Tian said: on her last breath the woman was still worrying whether her family had eaten; you hear it, you answer back — is that so hard?
Midnight Record note: Radio waves travel faster than a person, and outlive one too. The person is gone, but the voice is stuck on some frequency, living on for her a few extra decades. That tower-keeper, with her last bit of power, left the man below not a last wish but the most ordinary line, the food is on the stove. Lao Tian's nightly bowl of hot rice and his I got it are not answered to the radio, but to a woman who to her dying moment worried her family might go hungry: your words were heard. The strongest thread between people is often not some great matter, just a line about food on the stove, and an I got it in reply.