MORE THAN A MONTH WENT BY before I finally played back the recording of the chess players in Washington Square. We had an old Roland Space Echo that sounded beautiful while it was working, but kept cutting out. It was a simple problem, a loose connection in the power supply. I wasn’t going to trust it to the clowns at the repair place. We (I had fallen into saying “we”) had rented a loft in Greenpoint, in a building that had once been a Catholic church. We watched TV in a room whose floor was spangled rainbow colors by old stained glass. I sat up on the roof with my soldering iron, wearing headphones and shades, the heat reflecting off the cladding, baking my shirtless back red as I retraced the meandering path I’d walked that evening, up Orchard and into Chinatown. I heard Cantopop songs and electronic jingles, fading in and out as I turned off Canal and crossed that little park behind the court buildings where all the old Chinese people go to gamble. Dominoes slapping down on tables, buskers sawing and plucking at stringed instruments with plaintive tunings. Back across Canal. Traffic noise and a cop shouting at someone. On Mott I had passed two women having an argument. At the time I couldn’t hear what it was about. Now I could. One was accusing the other of taking something from her purse; coupons, it sounded like. She’d stolen coupons her friend was saving to get groceries. One-fiddy on Huggies, shouted the victim. And a dollar off motherfucking Cheerios. They were drowned out by a fire engine, ten seconds of distortion that took me into the echo of an empty loading bay, a guy talking Spanish on his cellphone, then silence, more traffic noise as I crossed Broadway, someone’s comedy ringtone and one side of a conversation. Dude, she said she would so she gotta. You tell her. Washington Square had been full because of the heat. By the fountain there were breakdancers drumming up a crowd, yelling, applauding themselves, doing backflips to “Billie Jean.” Under the arch a young busker was ineptly singing Dylan. Then the chess game, the crowd grumbling as PJ lost to the stranger. I stopped soldering, a sudden nervousness in the pit of my stomach. When the voice came, I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t heard it the first time, when the singer was in front of me.
Believe I buy a graveyard of my own
It was a pure voice, quite high, with a rasp when driven, as the singer did on “buy,” a word he made into three tones, the middle one spiking into a piercing falsetto buzz.
Believe I bu—u—uy me a graveyard of my own Put my enemies all down in the ground
Surely, in the presence of such a voice, I’d have paid attention. It would have been impossible to do anything else. But I had a clear memory of a girl skater. Sure enough there came the rumble of skateboard wheels, but no shift in orientation. I hadn’t turned to watch her. How could I remember what she looked like if I hadn’t turned round? The singer was still in front of me. After the first two lines his words were slightly muffled, as if something that absorbed sound had moved between us. What it was I couldn’t tell. But he kept on singing. How was that possible? My memory was clear. Two lines only. Maybe one line. I had been facing in the opposite direction for a few seconds. When I turned back, the tables were empty and the players gone. But this audio recording captured an entire performance, lasting several minutes. Phrases of the lyric jumped out, less muddy than the others. Put me under a man called Captain Jack. Something something down my back. And a third verse, went to the captain something something, something have mercy on something. It went on. Several verses.
That evening, I played it for Carter. He listened casually at first, but soon adopted a prayerful posture, hunched forward, his hands cupped over the headphones as if to press the voice further into his head.
—This, he said when it was finished. You actually heard this.
—Some guy who just won a chess game over at the tables in Washington Square. I swear I thought he only sang a few words.
—Jesus, man.
We listened to it again. And a third time, and a fourth. The voice was mesmerizing. We stayed up until six in the morning, cleaning up the recording and deciphering the words. At a certain point, this stops being an aural task and becomes a visual one. You abstract the sound into shapes, start selecting, magnifying. Then it’s just a matter of smoothing curves, taking slices out, pasting other slices in. I edited out the skater. I filtered the background noise, brought up the vocal until we had a clear a cappella. Carter was enchanted. “It’s beautiful,” he kept saying. “Incredible.” He was right, but all the same as I worked I had an instinct to cover my ears, to unhear what I was hearing. Several times, I let my finger hover over the delete button, willing myself to press it.
Believe I buy a graveyard of my own
Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own
Put my enemies all down in the ground
Put me under a man they call Captain Jack Put me under a man they call Captain Jack Wrote his name all down my back
Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand Went to the Captain with my hat in my hand Said Captain have mercy on a long time man
Well he look at me and he spit on the ground He look at me and he spit on the ground
Says I’ll have mercy when I drive you down Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep Don’t get mad at me woman if I kicks in my sleep I may dream things cause your heart to weep
We played it one more time, then, in our very different moods, we powered down the equipment and went to bed.