The flood took the bridge, the football field, and most of the town’s electricity. It left the school’s music room oddly dry, and in its cupboard, a battery radio that still worked. Tomas, fifteen, had never spoken into a microphone before. On the third night, he pressed the button and said the only useful thing he knew: which streets had water and where the bottled water was.
洪水冲走了桥、足球场，以及镇上大部分电力。它却奇怪地让学校的音乐教室保持干燥，而教室的柜子里有一台仍能工作的电池收音机。十五岁的托马斯以前从未对着麦克风说过话。第三天夜里，他按下按钮，说出了他唯一知道的有用信息：哪几条街还有积水，以及瓶装水在哪里。
His first broadcast lasted ninety seconds and reached, he later learned, eleven households. By morning, people were knocking on the music-room window with questions: Was the pharmacy open? Had anyone seen the brown dog? Could someone read the bus notice aloud? Tomas wrote the questions on the back of a music sheet and answered only the ones he could check himself.
他的第一次广播持续了九十秒；后来他才知道，只有十一户人家听到。到了早上，人们开始敲音乐教室的窗户提问：药房开门了吗？有人见过那只棕色的狗吗？能不能有人把公交通知念一遍？托马斯把问题写在乐谱背面，只回答那些他能亲自核实的。
On the fifth day, a voice in the queue said the reservoir had broken and the town would be evacuated by noon. Tomas repeated it before he thought. Within an hour, three families had loaded their cars, and the queue at the water point turned angry. The rumor had traveled farther in ten minutes than his verified notices had in two days.
第五天，队伍里有个声音说水库决口了，全镇中午之前要撤离。托马斯没多想就重复了这句话。不到一小时，三户人家已经装好车，取水点前的队伍变得怒气冲冲。那个谣言十分钟内传播的距离，比他核实过的通知两天内传的还远。
He went to the emergency office and asked, awkwardly, for permission to say only what they confirmed. The officer gave him a stamp and a rule: read it, date it, name the source. That night Tomas began each broadcast with the same sentence — “This is what we know, and this is what we do not” — and the silence after it felt, for the first time, like attention rather than fear.
他去了应急办公室，笨拙地请求允许：只播他们确认过的内容。那位官员给了他一个印章和一条规则：先读一遍，标上日期，写明来源。那天晚上，托马斯每次广播都以同一句话开头——“这是我们知道的，这是我们不知道的”——而那句话之后的沉默，第一次让他觉得像是关注，而不是恐惧。
The brown dog was found on the ninth day, under a boat, by a girl who had heard Tomas describe its crooked ear. She carried it to the music room while he was live. He did not announce it immediately. He waited until the end, then said the dog was safe, and gave the girl’s name because she had agreed.
第九天，一个女孩在一条船下面找到了那只棕色的狗；她是因为听到托马斯描述它歪着的耳朵才去找的。她在他直播时把狗抱到了音乐教室。他没有立刻宣布。他等到节目最后才说狗很安全，并说出了女孩的名字，因为她同意了。
When the electricity returned, the town did not need the radio anymore. But the school kept the cupboard, the battery, and a handwritten sheet titled “What We Know.” Tomas sometimes reads it and remembers the eleven households, then thirty, then the whole valley. He had thought a radio was for sending a voice out. It turned out to be a way of listening together, one frequency at a time.
电力恢复后，镇上不再需要那台收音机了。但学校保留了这个柜子、那块电池，以及一张手写的纸，标题是“我们所知道的”。托马斯有时会读它，想起那十一户人家，然后是三十户，然后是整个山谷。他原以为收音机是用来把声音送出去的。后来才发现，它是一种一起倾听的方式，一个频率接着一个频率。