and always there were the silver signals , bounced by hucksters and amateurs alike across the invisible skies - the breath of angels , the news or dreams or bragging of a ham radio operator in enid or sydney or sioux city or cleveland or st. louis , and the soap-sponsored radio crooners and the comedians with their guffawing but doubtless genteel audiences in some unseen new york auditorium , all laughing , the jokes like razor-thin silver signals a morse code of surrender and defiance in the blackness , leisure and desperation , a silver stab easy yet resolutely made at the thing closing in , a signal fading in and out while the boy hears the distracting noise of his brother 's buzzing and the prowling of just-awakening cats in the field in the alley on the fire escape down on the porch getting into the garbage cans or the milk pails below , oh shut up just get to the punch line this time please and yes , the line then the laughter , crackling like tinfoil or popguns or static and the darkness pushed back for an instant , the link made with the people all of us laughing , and maybe out there one who laughs at a lot of things that he does , and maybe out there someone who wants to know him , before the sponsor 's slogans send him off to fight for banks and brand names and freedom .