Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

picked up a platter and a shammy to swaddle it in and cradled it in his hands like it was his firstborn. »Ever seen one?«
    Poor cynic me; before I scoped I figured it was something I had – I didn’t make much of my holdings that often, bragmasters wear on everybody’s nerves – but I was wrong. I nearly dropped on the spot. It was like seeing ghosts. A plain kraft paper sleeve insulated an Okeh labelled platter, serial number 847.773. Said Goodbye to My Baby backed with Black Harvest Blues. 1944. Performer, T. E. Barnstable, lay preacher in the Reformed Christian Church of Jesus, onetime performer in crow’s nests up and down the Pacific coast, onetime escort on the Underground Freeway; and most notable to the majority, perpetrator of the Crime of the Century. Everybody knew his name, nobody said it. When it came to his kind of action, Nat Turner and Caesar Blanchard were pikers, compared. I stared at the label as if I was staring into the sky and saw the Sons of Light descending, ready to rumble with the archons one last time. Now hear me, my brothers; you know well as I do that no group can be completely wiped out, no people absolutely erased. There’s always traces left on the paper, a scent left in the air, the memory of a memory of a memory. Never mind the records; if that was the case, I wouldn’t be here not letting loose on your ear. But when it comes to individuals, though, that’s something else entirely. Judging from what was left of Theodore E. Barnstable, you’d have thought he lived a thousand years ago.
    »Is it legal to own one?« I asked, unnaturally fretful.
    »Maybe, maybe not,« he said. »Can’t say I’m overly concerned.«
    »You’ve listened to it?«
    »Not yet. Going to when I get home. Want to join me?«
    It was closing time, and he slid the disc in a Halliburton case, the kind with the hard vanadium shell and padded inside; the kind of accoutrement only Kennedys can afford. After locking up we flagged down a cab at the corner of Columbus. As we hopped in it struck me that I had no idea where Jim lived.
    »Dakota,« he told the hack. Only about eleven blocks from store to home – well, Jim was big, but he wasn’t big on exercise.
    »So where’d you get it?« I asked.
    He smiled. »Guy came in this morning, used book dealer I know. Usually picks for Pageant and Abbey down on Fourth Ave. Knows as much about records as we know about rocket science. He’d gone through the collection of a dead rabbi out in Flushing. Nothing but religious books and male pornography. The sacred and the profane.«
    »Horse and carriage,« I offered.
    »He lugged in a boxful. Didn’t know how to pack ’em, so some of the ones on the bottom were broken. You know to expect that. Started going through the batch. Some nice cantorial stuff, a few Hungarian cymbalon pieces. Then some of the old Negro preachers. The usuals, McGee, Rice, Reverend Gates of course.«
    »The guy was a rabbi and he had these?«
    »Maybe trying to hedge his bets,« Jim said. »Then I spotted this. Thought I’d have a stroke but I kept a straight face. Offered him a dollar per record. He said great, I gave him the money and he went out the door a happy man.«
    »You’re keeping it?« I asked, hoping he wouldn’t but knowing he would. He was considerate enough not to rub it in by answering me.
    »Wasn’t even officially issued, you know. Month it was pressed he –«
    »Yeah.«
    »Somebody always walks away with a few under their coat, though.«
    We pulled up on 72 nd in front of Jim’s building. I’d passed by this joint a million times, but like most New Yorkers had never gone inside. Upper West Side’s full of those old Victorian monsters with dragons on the fence and demons over the door and old possessed women staring out the windows, cackling, but the Dakota was the biggest monster of all. »Keep the change,« Jim said, handing the hack a bet to place, and we clambered out. The little brass house nodded as we walked into the dark courtyard. Jim lived in a corner apartment on the fifth floor. From the windows you could watch people getting mugged in the park. It was nominally three-bedroom, but all three were full of records and Jim slept – apparently – in a murphy he’d installed off the living room. As I looked around I started wondering how he could even have noticed his family, growing up. He had maybe twice as many records as I did, and he wasn’t really much older than me. Most of his furniture looked