David Sunshine: A Novel of the Communications Industry

© 2012 Morrow Wilson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 9/13/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5189-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5190-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-5191-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012913134

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Contents

PART  

 ONE

 1

 2

 3

 4

 5

 6

 7

 8

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PART  

 TWO

1

2

3

4

5

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Also by Morrow Wilson:

M.I.M.

In loving memory of my beautiful wife, Rue McClanahan,

who had her share of television success

Heroism is a profession.

PART  

 ONE

I invite you to sit down in front of your television set. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

Newton Minow

 1

Gather round and settle down, and this book is going to tell you a story about a hero. You folks who don’t believe we have any heroes nowadays, you pay special attention. And you folks who believe we do have heroes, you are going to find out just how right you are.

Just tell them, Book, about how every single year of creation hundreds of heroes — heroines, too — come down out of the hills and off the rolling prairies and away from the lakes and head straight as a shiny bucket dropping into a dark well for New York City, for fame and fortune, for the burning hot morning and the city just lying there under a blue bank of putrid air and the sun shining and so weak, people down below can hardly get the signal. Tell about them, Book, about how they forsake the past, throw up the present, searching and seeking and rushing headlong and hell bent after that big future. Tell about one of them, walking eastward into the thick haze that just gets thicker around him the further he walks. Tell them, Book, tell them about the hero of our story, walking bold as brass. Tell about young T.J. Brinkman.

What, now? Just what makes young T.J. qualify as a hero? Well, that is a big subject. And that is part of what this book is all about. There will be plenty about it, too, before this story is over. Why don’t we just start off by saying that one of the things that makes him a hero is that he was raised up to be one.

T.J. Brinkman of Sweet Dreams, Arkansas, was born and bred in Paradise County. He was brought up on good food, good neighbors and the Good Book. All of which is just what a hero needs to begin with. As a boy, he read funnybooks with all their western heroes, and Batman and Green Arrow and Superman. That made him dream of being a hero. He listened to the radio during a time when it was just one heroic adventure after the other. Captain Midnight. Tom Mix. Jack Armstrong. The Green Hornet. Sergeant Preston. Gene Autry. Roy Rogers. The Lone Ranger. That made him aspire to be a hero, He went to the show Saturdays and saw the westerns with John Wayne and Gary Cooper and Randolph Scott and Audie Murphy and Tim Holt and Sunset Carson and he watched the swashbucklers with Errol Flynn and Cornell Wilde and Burt Lancaster and Sterling Hayden and Rock Hudson and the color cartoons with Popeye the Sailor and Mighty Mouse and the serials with Hop Harrigan and Captain Marvel and King of the Rocketmen. And that showed him how to be a hero. He went to grade school in a two-room County School, read about the great men of history and literature and got good grades and played hardball and football and he even joined up with the Boy Scouts for a little while there. And those things let him act like a hero.

Why, the older he got, the more he admired heroes. He believed in the Good Book and the funnybooks, too. He listened to those radio adventures as if they were going out of style (which, as it happened, they were). And he paid closer and closer attention to those picture shows. And he went off to junior high school and high school, too, in the town of Sweet Dreams, where he studied more and more books, and hit that hardball farther and farther and ran that old football faster and faster.

He worked hard and told the truth and never smoked a cigarette nor took a drink and eventually he went off to Pearly State Teachers College up in the County Seat of Pearly on an athletic scholarship and, after four years of starting team athletics and honor roll grades, why, young Mr. T.J. Brinkman had just had himself twenty-one years of training at being a hero.

And that is part of why and how it came to be that Thomas Jefferson Brinkman of Sweet Dreams, Arkansas, blond, blue-eyed, tall, broad-shouldered and raw-boned, left Paradise County one warm early spring morning and came busting up to New York City with money in his pocket, hope in his heart and a crooked grin on his face to make his fame and fortune. The place he wanted to do that in was television. And his attitude toward the television industry, why, just like every hero you ever heard of, strong and benevolent, fearless and bold, he came to conquer.

Now, those three giants, the Anteaus Broadcasting Company, the Cyclops Broadcasting System, and the Goliath Broadcasting Company just kind of stomped back and forth, sort of sluggish, throwing their weight around, and every day they made their wars one upon the other, drowsy and sleepy and no more idea than the Man in the Moon that young T.J. Brinkman in his warm and open heart had set out to conquer them all three — just as surely as Hercules and Ulysses and David the Shepherd Boy had conquered their adversaries.

Why, right now as he comes walking out of the blue fumes of the burning street and through the revolving door of the Communications Tower, that fancy Madison Avenue office building which is just busting with magazine and book publishers and public relations firms and advertising agencies, and into the lobby there, right now, good humored as that boy may appear and innocent as he may be, he is stalking those adversaries right this very minute. How is he doing that? Well, he is just on his way to get acquainted with the famous Mr. David Sunshine. That’s all.

 2

High up in the Communications Tower, T.J. sat low down on a couch in the reception room of Mr. David Sunshine’s company, Brilliance, Ltd., sat right there, surrounded by air-conditioned air and four walls full of pictures of television celebrities, and cooled his heels. He had been there enough times before that the receptionist lady knew him by sight. And she had said hello to him when he came in and announced him right off, first thing. So now he sat there, visiting with her, which was hard enough to do anytime because that switchboard she was tending kept buzzing and lighting up all the time, but it was even harder to do today because she was suffering from a bad case of laryngitis. He leaned forward a little bit to hear her.

It’s the smog, she said in a voice that was thin and hoarse, both. You know? The air pollution.

Yes, ma’am. She sort of reminded T.J. of his mother. She was about the same age, and a little like her, with ginger hair and a smile sort of like hers, and the same way of taking pleasure in talking and gossiping, and complaining about one thing and another. And T.J. could tell she enjoyed visiting back and forth with folks the same way his mother did.

I’ve got to answer the phone and talk to all these people who come in and out all day. You know?

Yes, ma’am. And you can just barely squeak, he said.

"That’s right!" she said and gave a croaky little laugh. Brilliance, Ltd. She talked into the headset, but, apparently she did not talk loud enough. Brilliance, Ltd., she said again, louder than she had before. Thank you. She connected the call. Then she turned around to T.J. again. I think you’re going to get the job, she said, which startled T.J. somewhat. You know, dear?

That so?

You’ve been back for so many interviews with Miss Hollow. You know?

Oh, my, said T.J. and heaved a little sigh. "I sure do hope so. I just want to tell you, I’ve been to all three of the networks and all three of the local stations and there’s not a news department job open anywhere. Why, if I don’t get me some work pretty soon, I don’t know what’ll become of me. I’m about broke."

You had a newspaper job back in—? You know.

Arkansas.

Arkansas.

"Yes, ma’am. I did. I was the sports reporter on the Sweet Dreams Daily Avenger. I did that every summer when I was in college, and then nearly a year afterwards."

Brilliance, Ltd. Thank you.

You say the smog’s what caused you to have a sore throat?

The receptionist lady nodded. Air pollution.

"I didn’t know it’d do that."

"Wouldn’t you think they’d do something about it? Awful." She gave a cough.

Just terrible, said T.J.

"Brilliance, Ltd. Thank you. Oh, this is terrible; I can’t even talk. You know, dear?" She pointed at her throat.

Yes, ma’am. T.J. looked up at the pictures. And most of them looked right back down at him. It was just amazing to him to think that all those people in those pictures had jobs, and that all the people in the Brilliance, Ltd. offices behind the inner door of the reception room did, too, and all the people in all the offices in that whole big building, and everybody in all the buildings all up and down the street and all the people on the crowded sidewalks too. Eight million of them, and to think all of them had some kind of work; most of them, anyway; millions of them, anyway.

Mr. Brinkman. It was Jane Hollow’s secretary, standing in the inner doorway.

Yes, indeed, he said, very cheerful and smiled and stood up and followed after her down the hall. But he was walking quite a bit faster than she was and, in no time, he was walking along beside her.

How are you? she said and smiled a sweet little smile. She wore a hearing aid and whenever you said anything to her, her face reacted kind of slowly, but very sweet. She was a funny-looking little thing with a white dress and her hair straight and dyed white as well so that she made T.J. think of an angel in a grade school Christmas play.

"Aw, I’m all right, said T.J. with a big grin. How’re you doing?"

She started to answer him, but they had already come up to Jane Hollow’s office.

Come in, Mr. Brinkman, said Jane Hollow from behind her desk in that dark office. Sit down.

And T.J. did, sat down across the desk from her and looked at her and then looked around the dark office and saw the venetian blinds drawn closed at the windows and the empty brown desk across the room where Jane Hollow’s secretary usually sat, and looked at her again and saw her short brown hair and how she did not have any make-up on except lipstick. She was a beautiful-looking woman with a thick midsection. And T.J. could tell she was uncomfortable about something or other. She was a beautiful-looking woman with a thick midsection and she took a bright piece of candy corn from the jar on her desk and chewed it up in a melancholy way and never raised her eyes to look at him.

Finally, she did start to talk to him. She still kept looking at the blotter on her desk and she started off talking in a hesitant kind of a way, as if it was hard for her to say what it was that she had on her mind. Quite honestly, she said. "Quite honestly, Mr. Sunshine wants… he… Mr. Sunshine…wants a…kind of… She snuck a look at him now, a quick look, and T.J. saw her wet, beautiful, sad-looking eyes. Quite honestly, a firebrand."

Well, T.J. did not know what to say. So what he did was, he did not say anything. Dark office. Venetian blinds drawn closed. Two desks. One empty. Brown, wet eyes. Short brown hair. No make-up.

Jane Hollow sighed and went on talking, her voice getting softer and farther and farther off. "He knows I’m…impressed with you… and your… ideas… qualifications… A young firebrand… quite honestly…quite honestly, I hope you’ll remember that when you… we go in to… see Mr. Sunshine. A young firebrand, quite honestly…" She looked up at him from her desk blotter, but those sad, embarrassed eyes of hers still could not seem to meet his eyes.

Yes, ma’am, said T.J. Only, there’s one thing.

After a little pause, she said, very far away, Hmmmm?

"Ma’am, I don’t know what a firebrand is." T.J. had never seen such sad-looking eyes in his life. They had been sad before, but right now they looked downright hopeless.

A firebrand is a…very dynamic person…

She had said it so softly, he had not been able to make it out. What’s that, ma’am?

"A very dynamic person. A very, very aggressive person."

Aggressive? I see. Dynamic. That’s a firebrand.

"Yes. Very aggressive… very, very… dynamic. I hope you’ll remember that… when… you’re… talking to…"

Mr. Sunshine? Yes, ma’am, I won’t forget.

Well, then, Mr. Brinkman, she said to him and took a deep breath, just follow me, please. And she stood up and gave him a short-lived little smile in an absent kind of a way and then she looked at the floor for a minute. And then she said, It’s right this way.

‘Thank you, ma’am," said T.J., and followed along after her, into the little outer office next door, where the thin blonde secretary did not even look up, and through the door into the office of David Sunshine.

But there was nobody in there.

"I’ll be