At first, he thought it might be a radio. It was up on legs, the bottom of them looking like eagle claws holding a wooden ball. It wasn't a sewing machine cabinet, or a table. It might be a liquor cabinet, but there wasn't a keyhole. It was the second day at Aunt Joanie's and he was already cranky. Irene had had a crying jag the night before and their aunt had given them some ice cream. He was exploring. He already knew every room; there was a basement and an attic. The real radio was in the front room; this was in the sitting room at the back. One of the reasons they hadn't wanted to come to Aunt Joanie's was that she had no television, like their downstairs neighbors, the Stevenses, did back in the city. They'd spent the first part of summer vacation downstairs in front of it, every chance they got. Two weeks at Aunt Nonie's without television would have been great, because she wouldn't have given them time to think, and would have them exhausted by bedtime anyway. But two weeks at Aunt Joanie and Uncle Arthridge's without television was going to be murder. She had let them listen to radio, but not the scary shows, or anything good. And Johnny Dollar and Suspense weren't on out here, she was sure. So he was looking at the cabinet in the sitting room. It had the eagle-claw legs. It was about three feet wide, and the part that was solid started a foot and a half off the floor. There was two feet of cabinet above that. At the back was a rounded part, with air holes in it, like a Lincoln Continental spare tire holder. He ran his hand over it -- it was made out of that same stuff as the backs of radios and televisions. There were two little knobs on the front of the cabinet though he couldn't see a door. He pulled on them. Then he turned and pulled on them. They opened, revealing three or four other knobs, and a metal toggle switch down at the right front corner. They didn't look like radio controls. It didn't look like a television either. There was no screen. There was no big lightning-bolt moving dial like on their radio at home in the city. Then he noticed a double-line of wood across the top front of it, like on the old ice-box at his grandfather's. He pushed on it from the floor. Something gave, but he couldn't make it go farther. Eldon pulled a stool up to the front of it. "What are you doing?" asked Irene. "This must be another radio," he said. "This part lifts up." He climbed atop the stool. He had a hard time getting his fingers under the ridge. He pushed. The whole top of the thing lifted up a few inches. He could see glass. Then it was too heavy. He lifted at it again after it dropped down, and this time it came up halfway open. There was glass on the under-lid. It was a mirror. He saw the reflection of part of the room. Something else moved below the mirror, inside the cabinet. "Aunt Joanie's coming!" said Irene. He dropped the lid and pushed the stool away and closed the doors. "What are you two little cautions doing?" asked Aunt Joanie from the other room. The next morning, when Aunt Joanie went to the store on the corner, he opened the top while Irene watched. The inner lid was a mirror that stopped halfway up, at an angle. Once he got it to a certain point, it clicked into place. There was a noise from inside and another click. He looked down into it. There was a big dark glass screen. "It's a television!" he said. "Can we get Howdy-Doody?" "I don't know," he said. "You better ask Aunt Joanie, or you'll get in trouble." He clicked the toggle switch. Nothing happened. "It doesn't work," he said. "Maybe it's not plugged in," said Irene. Eldon lay down on the bare floor at the edge of the area rug, saw the prongs of a big electric plug sticking out underneath. He pulled on it. The cord uncoiled from behind. He looked around for the outlet. The nearest one was on the far wall. "What are you two doing?" asked Aunt Joanie, stepping into the room with a small grocery bag in her arms. "Is . . . is this a television set?" asked Eldon. "Can we get Howdy-Doody?" asked Irene. Aunt Joanie put down the sack. "It is a television. But it won't work any more. There's no need to plug it in. It's an old-style one, from before the war. They don't work like that anymore. Your uncle Arthridge and I bought it in 1938. There were no broadcasts out here then, but we thought there would be soon." As she was saying this, she stepped forward, took the cord from Eldon's hands, rewound it and placed it behind the cabinet again. "Then came the War, and everything changed. These kind won't work anymore. So we shan't be playing with it, shall we? It's probably dangerous by now." "Can't we try it, just once?" said Eldon. "I do not think so," said Aunt Joanie. "Please put it out of your mind. Go wash up now, we'll have lunch soon." Three days before they left, they found themselves alone in the house again, in the early evening. It had rained that afternoon, and was cool for summer. Irene heard scraping in the sitting room. She went there and found Eldon pushing the television cabinet down the bare part of the floor toward the electrical outlet on the far wall. He plugged it in. Irene sat down in front of it, made herself comfortable. "You're going to get in trouble," she said. "What if it explodes?" He opened the lid. They saw the reflection of the television screen in it from the end of the couch. He flipped the toggle. Something hummed, there was a glow in the back, and they heard something spinning. Eldon put his hand near the round part and felt pulses of air, like from a weak fan. He could see lights through the holes in the cabinet, and something was moving. He twisted a small knob, and light sprang up in the picture-tube part, enlarged and reflected in the mirror on the lid. Lines of bright static moved up the screen and disappeared in a repeating pattern. He turned another knob, the larger one, and the bright went dark and then bright again. Then a picture came in. They watched those last three days, everytime Aunt Joanie left; afraid at first, watching only a few minutes, then turning it off, unplugging it, and closing it up and pushing it back into its place, careful not to scratch the floor. Then they watched more, and more, and there was an excitement each time they went through the ritual, a tense expectation. Since no sound came in, what they saw they referred to as "Mr. Goober's Show," from his shape, and his motions, and what went on around him. He was on anytime they turned the TV on. They left Aunt Joanie's reluctantly. She had never caught them watching it. They took the train home. Eldon was in a kind of anxiety. He talked to all his friends, who knew nothing about anything like that, and some of them had been as far away as San Francisco during the summer. The only person he could talk to about it was his little sister, Irene. He did not know what the jumpiness in him was. They rushed into Aunt Joanie's house the first time they visited at Christmas, and ran to the sitting room. The wall was blank. They looked at at each other, then ran back into the living room. "Aunt Joanie!" said Eldon, interrupting her, Uncle Arthridge and his father. "Aunt Joanie, where's the television?" "Television . . . ? Oh, that thing. I sold it to a used furniture man at the end of the summer. He bought it for the cabinetry, he said, and was going to make an aquarium out of it. I suppose he sold the insides for scrap."

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