“The Microphone”
“Anyone see us?”
“No one even knew about it.”
“How are you so sure?”
“It was on a broken lectern with a pile of junk around it.”
Sam knew microphones. That’s for sure. But he didn’t seem to know a thing about stealing. I, on the other hand, had been in and out of custody so many times I still woke up in the middle of the night thinking the toilet would be next to my bed.
The microphone in question, an “Electro-Voice 664 high fidelity cardioid dynamic,” as Sam was always saying, was an old vocal mic with a streamlined 1950’s style space-age design. They weren’t usually worth much, according to Sam, but he said the one we nabbed was special. It had a slightly different shape – an extra notch in the middle where the engineer’s initials had been etched: “LB” for Lou Burroughs. It was a prototype. One of its kind. That alone wasn’t enough to make it real valuable, but Sam knew something else about it, too. Namely, that it had been used by Hank Williams Sr.
The only “proof” I saw before agreeing to look for the thing was a grainy black and white photo Sam showed me of Hank at the Skyline Club in Austin just before he died. The mic in the picture looked similar enough, and like I said, Sam knew his stuff when it came to microphones. I guess what convinced me, though, was finding out the Electro-Voice 664 didn’t hit the market ’til 1954. The picture of Hank was from December ’52.
“The question will be finding the right buyer.”
He got that part right. I knew fences, but no one I’d trust with that piece.
We drove to my place since I lived closest to the college. I knew better than to risk my janitor job, let alone a parole violation, but Sam said it was worth fifty grand, minimum. I guess I believed him. At least I wanted to.
When we got to my apartment I put on a pot of coffee. I like the dark stuff, Bustelo. Got the habit from a Puerto Rican chick I dated in Humboldt Park last time I was out. Sam started looking out the window. It was almost like he was expecting someone to follow us. I closed the blinds and laid the mic on the desk I use for a table. Sam sat down and stared at the thing like it was a crystal ball or something.
I drank my mud, thinking about how me and Sam had come to know each other in the first place.
I’d been pushing broom at the school for about three months when he came on crew. I ignored him in the beginning. He didn’t ignore me.
I’m not sure how many people at the college knew I was an ex-con. My jailhouse sleeves poked out at the cuffs a bit and I suppose my neck tattoo saw light of day when I bent over, but I didn’t think the average Joe would notice or care about a janitor’s tats. Sam went right in on it.
“You get those inside?” he asked me his first week there. I asked him what he knew about it. He said he’d known people who’d done time, that’s all.
You’d never guess Sam was into opiates by looking at him. The guy was all right angles, square as they come – at least on the outside. When he offered me a taste one day I was a little surprised, but not at all interested. I had stopped messing with stuff years before that. He got high at lunchtime most Fridays. Sometimes I’d hang with him in the auditorium when he came out of the john half on the nod. He liked to talk about sound equipment. It was boring, but less boring than eating lunch alone, I guess. Then one day he brought in a picture of an old Electro-Voice. He said they used them in schools like this once upon a time and asked if I’d keep a look out for one since I cleaned the whole fine arts department, including the auditorium. I didn’t bite. After a while he told me about the prototype, brought in the picture of Hank, and said he had “reason to believe” it was in the school somewhere. That’s all there was to our friendship, if you’d call it that. I didn’t know if I could trust him or not.
While I was pacing my apartment thinking about everything, Sam pulled out his gear and started cooking a bag at my desk without even asking. That pissed me off. Just as I was about to say something he blurted out,
“Ernie, you’re the only one I can tell this to…”
He found a vein, registered blood, and slammed his dope real fast like a pro. I watched his pupils turn into to pinholes and then noticed the tracks on his arm. The guy was more than the weekend warrior I’d made him out to be.
“Not just Hank…”
His eyelids folded down.
“There were others.”
He was getting pale.
“Their souls, Ernie…”
His lips were turning blue around the edges. I got scared and slapped his face. He opened his eyes again.
“Their souls are trapped inside of it.”
“Sam!” I yelled, as he slumped forward. I got ice cubes and put them down his pants. I did everything I could.
When a guy ODs in your apartment and you’re on parole with a stolen microphone lying on the desk you use for a table I guess you don’t call 911. I didn’t anyway. But even if I did it would’ve been too late.
I paced my apartment drinking Bustelo and cursing Sam. I could see myself back in the joint shitting next to my bed again. I tried to make sense of what he’d said before he croaked, wondering if he was totally off his rocker or what.
My first problem was getting Sam’s body out of my place. It was a clear enough case of overdose, but I didn’t want it coming back on me. As I got his gear together I noticed the glassine baggie the dope came in. There was a brand name stamped on it like the stuff they sell in New York. It said “Fireball.” I smelled it. It was strong to the nose.
When it got dark out I zipped Sam into a sleeping bag. I waited until the whole building was asleep before pulling my van around back. He wasn’t a big guy, but damn he was heavy. The best thing I could figure was to drop him on the Westside near a major drug zone. I drove ’til I found an empty alley, hauled him out, and dropped him on the ground. The zipper was stuck on the sleeping bag. I kept yanking at it, only making it worse. I finally had to wrestle the bag off him. When I did that an envelope fell out of his clothes. That fucked with my head. It hadn’t occurred to me to check his pockets. I stuck the envelope down my pants, leaned Sam against an abandoned building, put the needle in his hand, and got the hell out of there.
When I was back at my place I emptied the envelope onto the table. It was full of photos but not as grainy as the one of Hank. They were promo pictures. Headshots. I recognized the people. Billie Holiday. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. They were all singing into an Electro-Voice 664. When I looked real close I could see the little notch with initials etched into it – definitely the same mic lying on my desk at that very moment.
On Monday I was back to sweeping floors and plunging toilets. No one seemed to notice about the microphone, or Sam, for that matter. Even so, I worried people were looking at me funny. Two days later the boss called us in at lunchtime and said he’d gotten a call about the overdose. There was no mention of a memorial or anything. The cops never came around, or if they did, I didn’t see them.
I didn’t know what to do with the mic, but I didn’t want it at my place. The only thing I could think was to take it back to the college and stash it in a bathroom air vent while I figured my next move.
A couple weeks later, and still no heat on the Sam situation, I went by his apartment in Bridgeport. I had dropped him off there a couple times but had never gone inside. There was an open transom window over the back door. I wasn’t so slim anymore, but I made it through. The first thing I noticed were the bare, white walls. It was completely undecorated. No pictures. No plants. Nothing personalized at all. The only furniture was a table, two chairs, a bed, and a dresser. I went through the drawers. Socks, underwear, t-shirts. Not much. But underneath the dresser I found another envelope with pictures inside. In one of the shots there was a medieval-looking, wavy blade knife enclosed in a glass case. It had the same insignia, the “LB,” that was etched on the mic. Another photo showed an old book bound in leather, also inside a glass case. It was titled Libertas Bestiae. I knew then that the letters on the Electro-Voice weren’t Lou Burroughs’ initials after all. I also knew that if Sam was crazy he was part of a bigger crazy, and I wanted nothing to do with it.
I tried to put it all out of my head. I even considered quitting my job, but the terms of my parole required gainful employment, and I didn’t have any other prospects. I stuck it out.
Every time I scrubbed the john where the mic was stashed I thought about Sam. I also thought about spending fifty thousand bucks. One day when I was in there cleaning the mirror I decided to lock the door and pull the Electro-Voice out of the vent. It felt heavier than I remembered. For some weird reason I looked back in the mirror and held the mic up to my mouth. I was just goofing off, because believe me, I’m no singer, but all of a sudden a beautiful melody came out of me. It was effortless. I could see my lips moving and hear myself singing, but it wasn’t my voice at all. A knock came just then.
“Yeah, I’ll be right out,” I said.
I flushed the toilet and put the mic back quick. When I opened the door the director of the theatre department was standing on the other side.
“Oh… hi. I thought you were one of our performers when I heard you in there.”
I had to think fast.
“Me? No. Never. It was only my radio.”
“Really? It sounded so live. So heartfelt. What’s the name of that song?”
“Oh, man. I don’t know. I was just flipping the dial.”
I got out of there before he could dig any deeper. I moved past the young actors doing vocal warmups and started rolling my mop bucket back out to the hall. I kept my head down and did my job ’til the shift was over.
When I walked out of work that day two big guys came out of nowhere and hustled me into a black sedan. I figured them for undercover cops. I figured it had to do with Sam. One pushed me in the back and climbed in next to me. The other got behind the wheel and started driving. There was a well-dressed old man wearing purple glasses sitting in the passenger seat. He was no cop.
The old guy leaned over and asked, “where is it?”
When I didn’t answer him the big dude on my right punched me in the side of the head. Hard.
“Where is it, Ernie?”
When the old guy said my name I thought I was gonna puke. I knew I was about to get thumped again, too. Just then an idea flashed in my mind.
“Libertas Bestiae!”
I don’t know if I said it right, but when those words came out of me they were loud and musical like something from an opera. It was the same voice from the mirror, only more powerful. The old man looked shocked, almost pained when he heard it. The guy next to me looked stunned too. I took advantage of the confusion and jumped out of the car, doing a barrel roll into oncoming traffic. Cars slammed on brakes in both directions. I was on my feet and deep into the neighborhood before they could get to me.
I hid in a gangway ’til sundown, knowing it wasn’t safe to go home or go back to work. When I got up the nerve I ran to the L and caught a northbound train to Uptown. I spent my last few bucks on a chickenwire room at The Wilson Men’s Hotel. The place was full of vagrants, winos, and day laborers. Seemed like as good a place as any to hide.
The next day, with no money and no other options, I went back to my old ways: breaking and entering. I had always been a good burglar. In and out. No muss, no fuss. I could tell by a person’s furnishing style where they were liable to hide valuables. My specialty, though, was lifting tchotchkes – “tacky treasures,” as my ma used to call them. I knew which doo-dads were worth something, and those little items were usually hiding in plain sight.
The other thing I took up again was shooting dope. I went from zero to dopefiend in a week. I guess the shit on the street had gotten stronger since the days when I was chipping. Pretty soon I didn’t care if I had a roof over my head or not. I slept on loading docks, alleys, anyplace I could score a bag in a hurry when I woke up.
Stealing and slamming wasn’t what I planned to be doing at forty-five years old, but what I really hadn’t counted on was the singing. It wasn’t as good as the day I did it in the mirror, but I could carry a tune better than most. They were made-up songs, I guess. At least I didn’t recognize them when they came out of me. The weirdest part was that I wasn’t trying to sing. I didn’t even want to do it. But I had to. It felt like I needed to get something out of my system – something other people had to hear before I could let it go. The problem was no matter how many songs I sang more kept coming. Guys on the street started calling me “Smack-head Sinatra.” It stuck.
The heavier my habit got the bolder the burglaries became and the lazier I was about where I did them. Pretty soon I was pulling jobs in the middle of the day, up and down the same blocks I’d already hit.
One day when I was coming out a window with a pillowcase full of knick-knacks I got nabbed. I was almost relieved to see the men in blue waiting on the sidewalk. Maybe I had even been trying to get caught. I started singing while they cuffed me.
“Looks like Smack-head Sinatra is our Bric-a-Brac Bandito,” one of the coppers said. I didn’t know my moniker had made it all the way to the precinct.
I was given the max, seven years, for the breaking and entering. They tacked on another five for the parole violation. I copped a plea so I wouldn’t have to sit in Cook County Jail awaiting trial. That gladiator school is no place for an old con.
Pretty soon I was back in the pen with a toilet next to my bed, which, incidentally, comes in handy when you’re kicking dope. It’s not that I couldn’t get drugs inside, I just lost the appetite once I was back in the big house. Funny thing, you can get heroin in prison but not Bustelo. I would’ve paid plenty for that dark roast. I made do with the generic instant they sold at commissary.
As soon as the junk was out of my system the singing stopped too. I couldn’t’ve made a melody if I tried. No more smack-head, no more Sinatra. Just plain old Ern. Inmate number A17589. Another poor bastard behind bars. I got back into the routine soon enough. Keeping my head down. Killing time. Shooting the breeze with a couple guys I knew from previous incarcerations. I never talked about the mic – not that any of those clowns would’ve believed me anyway.
About sixteen months into my stretch I was watching the tube and saw a clip on the local news. It was a hometown girl makes good kind of thing. I recognized her right away. She was one of the pretty students from the college’s theatre department. The anchorman said she’d just won big on a music competition show and had scored a contract with a major label. They showed her rocking out hard for the judges, and, yeah, she was singing into the Electro-Voice.
Anyone could tell by the way she moved and sang she was about to become a star. Those of us savvy to a junkie’s ways could’ve seen she was on stuff. The deep circles under her eye makeup gave that away. But I’ll bet I was the only one who saw the total desperation in her face.
By now everyone knows Shawna Bolton. People walk around singing her songs everywhere in here. I got myself sent to the hole just so I wouldn’t have to hear them anymore. But this new guard, he whistles when he makes his rounds. And yeah, only her songs. I tried stuffing my ears with toilet paper and covering my head with a pillow, but everything I do seems to amplify the sound instead of drowning it out. Now I hear the songs every day and night. They call this solitary confinement, but I have so many cellmates. Hank, Billie, Janis, Jim, Shawna, and others whose names I don’t know. Each one trying to sing louder than the rest. Each one trying, impossibly, to sing their way out of here.
Jake La Botz is a touring musician and meditation teacher. His songs, and sometimes acting, have been featured in film and television, including True Detective, Shameless, Rambo (yes, Rambo) and more. La Botz’s fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Inquisitive Eater, Metonym Literary Journal, and The Museum of Americana. www.jakelabotz.com
REVOLUTION JOHN. 