Joe and Jennifer made it in after talking for hours in the cooling evening air.
The talk endured for awhile but Jennifer eventually broke the conversation that swirled around the smoldering fire:
“Can we go inside your cabin or do I have to sleep outside another night?”
“My God, I’m sorry!”
Joe acted like one of NASA’s lead mechanics as a gasket erupted on a grand spaceship’s journey heading toward space.
At one time, Joe was one of NASA’s lead mechanics. The Challenger would go down, but not without Joe’s protestations. The politicians and bureaucrats wouldn’t listen, but the part froze, the ship erupted, the people died, and the country lamented and demanded inquiries. The NASA folks tried to pin it on Joe but he knew their game, throttled them with evidence and provided written and audio documentation of their avarice and greed; he walked away from the hearings a free man. After his wife died, he left NASA, fled for the woods, made home in his family’s cabin and never left.
Jennifer’s request jolted Joe from some far-flung memory.
“I’m so sorry, yes, ma’am, let’s head inside. I’ll get us a fire going.”
Despite her weak state, Jennifer was a strong woman. Despite Joe’s protestations, she helped load in the firewood and even left the porch to grab some kindling.
“I’m not some kind of Christmas tiger, you know?” she said.
“I don’t know what that means, but I get your point.”
Once inside, and with the fire going, they both nestled deeply within the soft crevasses of their respective seats. Joe didn’t peep a word when Jennifer sat in his recliner. He was glad to see her so comfortable.
The fire began to take light and the two found themselves in an awkward silence.
Jennifer looked around the walls of the cabin, tapping the sides of her crystal glass that was filled with one of Joe’s homebrewed concoctions. The walls were not bear. They were adorned with shelves of books, records and tiny artifacts, framed certificates from ages gone by. She loved books and sensed their smell; it was a comfort that reminded her of her own mother. What she didn’t quite understand were all the records. There were literally thousands.
“Did you ever buy a CD player?” she asked with a little bit of a joke mingled within.
“Hell, no. Don’t need the damned things. Have you ever heard a needle fall on a record and play the most glorious sound you can expect to hear this side of Heaven?”
Jennifer, almost startled by Joe’s new energy that revolved around his precious records, found herself curious.
“I thought not. Let this evening be one of education for you, young lady.”
She nodded her head like a little school girl and was willing to submit to any newfound sounds Joe could muster.
“OK, impress me with your great audiophile mind.”
Joe then felt challenged. He was a little nervous. He had all kinds of ideas. Would he grab the rare classics that turned out to be worth a small fortune? No, that music was a little boring, he thought. Would he start a musical odyssey, beginning with the early Appalachian soundtracks he had and swiftly move into the African-influenced music that eventually created the blues and made its way to Sam Phillips at Sun Records? Would he skip ahead to the forbearers of the early indie music sound, play the best songs of the Velvet Underground, or the quirky electronic experimentation of Karlheinz Stockhausen? He immediately went to work, pulling albums one at a time, building a playlist that would introduce Jennifer to music she had never heard. He assumed she already knew about Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. But had she ever heard the Flying Burrito Brothers or Big Star or the Cramps? There were so many rabbit holes and Joe had to control himself.
While Joe was feverishly pulling from various shelves, Jennifer interrupted.
“Where’s your bathroom? Is it working? After all that tea, I really need to go.”
Joe pointed down a dark, wood-paneled hallway.
“Thank you. Please, keep building your playlist.”
The hallway was dark and Joe, not used to a guest, worried over every tiny detail that could possibly emerge. In a different age he would have been described as someone with obsessive compulsive disorder, as well as a tinge of anxiety and depression. He was meticulous and cared for every tiny detail.
“Here’s a lamp for you,” he said, interrupting her walk down the hall.
“I know we have electricity, but I’m trying to get used to no lights if it all goes south in an instant.”
“That makes sense. Thank you.” She clutched the kerosene lantern and walked down the hallway, swinging it left and right until she discovered the bathroom was the first door on the right.
When she returned, Joe was grinning from ear to ear, a stack of records cradled beneath his frail arm, ready to blitz the player.
“Have you ever heard of Scott Walker?”
“The congressman?!”
“Heck, no. The artist. He had all these self-titled albums and numbered them. David Bowie was still in pajamas when this guy started. You should hear it. Can I play it for you?”
“Of course,” Jennifer said, realizing Joe was a little woozy at this point from a medical balm to go along with the evening’s music. Jennifer assumed this was a normal experience and part of an evening that served as a medical apparition to protect him from the most disastrous of days that could make life difficult for the dying. She didn’t judge.
The needle dropped. The song began. Jennifer kicked up the recliner and relaxed. Joe, yet unwilling to sit, leaned against the fireplace hearth.
It's raining today
and I'm just about to forget the train window girl
That wonderful day we met
She smiles through the smoke from my cigarette
It's raining today
But once there was summer and you
And dark little rooms
And sleep in late afternoons
Those moments descend on my windowpane
I've hung around here too long
Joe stood by the record player. He wiped away a tear as the music whirled. His music collection was vast. Most of his shelves were stuffed with records and books. His wife was the book collector. He was the record collector. But in her absence, he cradled the entire collection in his body and soul.
He read books that meant nothing to him, but knew they meant something to her — his late bride — so he kept reading, hoping there was some message she would send him in her unceasing silence.
He’d play albums they had danced to and pretend she was still there. For 30 seconds or so he felt alive. And then he realized she was gone and felt nearly as alone as Jesus on the cross. He sympathized with his master and pleaded for forgiveness. His prayers began anew.
When the Walker song ended, Jennifer noticed Joe’s lament. She assumed the song captured a memory from a former time, or he was just moved by the lyrics, the tune, the somber artistic beauty that erupted the equilibrium of the present time.
“Does that song mean a lot to you?”
“They all do,” he said, his eyes running over the shelves with the thousands of records arranged neatly and tightly.
“That is one of my favorites, but they all have their place, given the moment.”
“The world is so dark. Play me something happy,” Jennifer asked.
“Something happy, huh?”
Joe flipped through the stack he pulled earlier. He was always alone in his love for music. When he was younger, no one understood his crate-digging, not even Carla. Why on earth would you spend good, hard-earned money on plastic and the crackling, fickle sounds of some flailing dreamers? His musicianship started the whole mess. Initially, he played his instruments — drums, piano, guitar — because he was told to; as soon as he fell in love with them, he was told they were too loud, too annoying, and he stopped.
As Joe looked for something upbeat, his memories turned to an earlier time. When he was old enough to make something of himself he started buying records. He knew why. He was barely born when Elvis went to Sun Studios. He heard Sonny Boy Williamson on the A.M. radio dial late at night, when black artists weren’t heard much on the F.M. side of things.
He was raised in a rural backwater, but still knew when Bob Dylan was crooning about the changing times and the crippling theft of the human soul. He was in college when the world erupted into the war in Vietnam. His politics were murky and blinded by the cruel forces that did the same to everyone, but at least he was undrafted and free.
By the time the late ‘70s came around, he was already in his 30s. In that day, he was perceived as old when he entered a run-down nightclub and showed his I.D. to the bouncer. He was on a work trip and looked for something to do to endure the early darkening hours of the English countryside. The trip was for work for MIT. The town was a small English backwater, though one filled with kids like any American town that pleads for a cultural anchor despite their stilted existence.
Upon trying to enter, the bouncer, a rather small fellow, given the important nature of his job, seemed amused at Joe. “Come on in,” he said with a crawl-filled cockney accent. An American with a fake I.D., he thought. What a joke. He was the first pilgrim to show ID in ages. Most just gave the bouncer a hand gesture along with a few taught words and entered the club.
Upon entering the pub, an angry, dry, remorseless sound oozed forth. It was new, a transmission from a star that suddenly interrupted the atmosphere and displayed something completely different from another galaxy.
His curiosity purchased his ticket. Before approaching the stage, he bought a pint of a dark porter and instantly became transfixed.
The young man on the stage staggered and waved madly as he sang and murmured through the song’s lines. He stared into the distance, past everyone watching him. He saw no one.
Mesmerized, ghost-like, he seemed to break the bones in his elbows and shoulders with every pronounced lyric. There was no half-commitment, there was no lukewarm faith. Joe was quickly proselytized. An American, completely removed from the culture and the music he left back home.
The lyrics robbed Joe of his previous innocence. They told him to believe in something larger than himself; the lyrics told him he was alone and without hope; or perhaps they told him the opposite. He was a subject, an abject observer who would feel all the pains, all of the suffering from times of old and find a way to change. The Wilderness song rang out:
I travelled far and wide through many different times
What did you see there?
I saw the saints with their toys
What did you see there?
I saw all knowledge destroyed
I travelled far and wide through many different times
I travelled far and wide through prisons of the cross
What did you see there?
The power and glory of sin
What did you see there?
The blood of Christ on their skins
I travelled far and wide through many different times
I travelled far and wide and unknown martyrs died
What did you see there?
I saw the one sided trials
What did you see there?
I saw the tears as they cried
They had tears in their eyes
Tears in their eyes
Tears in their eyes
Tears in their eyes
Nothing broke Joe like those lyrics. When he first heard them he was a young man, committed to the duty of the motherland. A few months later, on the 18th of May, 1980, that young man who wrote those lyrics died, killed by his own hands.
“How’s this for upbeat?” Joe put on an early Stevie Wonder record. The snare drum kept time, the drums sounded like they were recorded in a silo. The keyboards, bass and guitars grew together, like the limbs of a child as it entered a walking life. Horns and strings stabbed and strutted. The harmonica burst onto the scene at the correct moments. Then the wonderful voice took center stage and a tambourine joined in. The song was just what was needed. It was loud and direct; Jennifer nodded along while sipping on some of Joe’s special elixir. The two clapped their hands and laughed along to the beats. Every song on the first side was welcoming; the songs freed Jennifer from her previous days’ torments. Joe’s coughing fits stayed away. The song invoked something even greater than happiness. It was mirth — a gladness and merriment that was connected both to body and soul, and also to things outside of Jennifer. For a brief moment, she wondered if the world was still a rotten place, or if it could be redeemed.
To be continued.