This record came in a wooden box. When I opened it the hinges creaked.
Inside there was an old phonograph and a dusty 78, cracked. The label said
"Modern Times." Next to it was a cowboy hat with a snakeskin band. And a
green Bible with a passage marked, dealing with the Nazarene in the garden
before he was kissed. A pin-up of the singer Alicia Keys lay curling and
grimy. On the back someone had written "Tennessee." Beside it was a small
drum, of the kind a boy might have once played as he marched into war. There
were stranger things I found it hard to give credence: the sound of an old man's
rasp floating in the air like wet sugar or sand. Whence this sound came
I could not determine. An old film reel whirred when I touched it, and in my
mind I saw couples in a well-lit barn moving to a country waltz. I withdrew
my hand, but for a moment only. There were love letters too, but like most
collected love letters they were confusing and without date: one minute
loving, another lusting, another hating ("some young lazy slut has charmed
away my brains"). It was not clear if they were to the same woman, or if
such a woman existed at all. There was also a drawing of a man, his face
thin yet jowly, his moustache thin, eyes slitty and radioactive, something
like a smile playing on his face. Underneath it were the words "Song and
Dance Man, Duluth Minnesota, 24 May 1941." A New Orleans newspaper lay there
too, badly yellowed and stained. It showed a picture of a black man with an
electric guitar. As I leant into the wooden box to read the story below it I
saw water marks had washed the print into a fog of dark type. I also began
to hear, as if my ear was pressed to some kind of shell, the sound of a bar
band playing far off down a street of laughter and partying. At this point
my bones left my body and began to dance on their own. I continued to
climb into the box and lay down, and eventually those bones rejoined me as
the song subsided. I closed the lid and, even though it was dark, closed my
eyes as well.
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