Jeff Jackson - Mira Corpora

Now there’s nothing to do but wait. The house is eerily still. The rain pounds a frenetic tattoo against the windows. Droplets of water accumulate in a remote corner of the attic. Mice burrow deeper into the soggy folds of insulation. The wooden planks groan in concert with the barometric pressure. Dust motes gently blanket the furniture, moldings, and floorboards. After a few minutes, my vision starts to cloud and the edges of the storage room whiten. At first I think I’m going blind, but then I realize there’s nothing to fear. A veil is being lifted. I watch as the house transforms itself around me. The paint on the walls, the furrowed lines of my palms, the oracles huddled in the hallway with their twitching shoulder blades — everything is slowly becoming blank.

I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I’m not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn’t matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper. The thick gob slowly dissolves a small circle in the text and turns the words translucent. The ink starts to bleed. The fibers loosen. If you run your fingers along this paragraph, you’ll feel the site where I stabbed my thumb straight through the page. There is an entire world in that hole.

(14 years old)

“All true freedom is dark.”

— Antonin Artaud

THERE’S THIS TAPE. IT ARRIVES ONE MORNING IN the mail, which is surprising because I don’t have an address. I’m between places, as they say. Specifically, I’m shuttling between a cardboard refrigerator box in the alley next to the Emerald Mountain Chinese restaurant and a wool blanket on the concrete floor of the municipal shelter. But the mailman hand-delivers the package to me just the same. I’m coiled half-asleep in my box and he leaves it at my feet.

This is just the latest in a string of strange happenings in the neighborhood. The Luchos have relocated to these scabby streets and started marking their territory. Every morning freshly shattered glass shimmers on the sidewalks like dew. Kids casually cross the avenue with newly stolen car batteries tucked under their arms like purses. There are stories about winos waking up to bloody incisions and missing kidneys. Someone set a pack of wild dogs loose to roam the rooftops. At night, you can hear them hunting the local cats.

When I spot the package, I let out an involuntary yelp. But it’s nothing more than a small parcel wrapped in brown paper and addressed in a blue magic marker scrawl that reads: “The Kid in the Alley behind the Chinese Place on 1st Avenue.” I can’t recall if I’ve ever received mail here before. I’m curious but hesitate to pick it up. For the months I’ve been living in the city, I’ve been trying to avoid any intrigue. I’m still struggling to navigate these streets. My world consists of a few square blocks and ritual activities. My focus is keeping body and soul intact.

I open the package with shaky fingers. This cassette tape is a genuine audio relic, tattered and beat-up, but someone decorated it with obvious care. A piece of notebook paper is neatly folded inside the plastic case and a dozen song titles are inscribed in a barely legible hand. Despite myself, the gesture touches me. It isn’t some menacing totem, it’s a gift. The first present I’ve received in ages. Of course I don’t have any way to play it. So I depart straightaway to see Mister Pastor, the man with all the gadgets and a heart large enough to share them with the likes of me.

The park is nearly vacant. The sky is pitch gray. A chill wind blows loose litter over the concrete pavers, spreading it in even coats. A few homeless have bothered to climb the chain-link fences that protect the partitions of dead grass from the public. They lie sprawled on the ground like neglected sculptures, blackened by the elements. I make my way toward the band shell, a scalloped steel structure as rusted as everything else. Mister Pastor always camps next to the stage in an elaborate compound assembled from shopping carts, cardboard, and plastic sheeting. I kick the side to announce my presence and wait.

The only person nearby is a skeletal old man in a frayed long-coat and stained polka-dot bandana crouched in front of a baby stroller. He makes faces at the child, popping out his yellow dentures with his tongue, and contorting his features into a hideous rictus. The kid somehow remains silent. There’s no parent in sight. This is a typical vista.

It takes a few minutes for Mister Pastor to appear. He’s decked out in the usual: black knit hat that barely corrals his not-so-natty dreads, mirror sunglasses, and rumpled tan raincoat. Apparently I’ve woken him because he’s launched into a diatribe that isn’t quite under his breath. “Damn it, Jeff,” he mutters. “Why the ofays always bothering the Pastor.”

“Somebody sent this to me,” I say. I lay the cassette in his massive hand for inspection. He turns it over several times, measuring its heft and testing its tactile properties.

“You know who it’s from?”

I shake my head.

“And you’re not concerned about that?”

“It’s a gift,” I say.

Mister Pastor looks at me incredulous. Like: How stupid can you be? I blankly return his stare: Pretty fucking stupid.

He shakes his head and trains his gaze back on the tape, probing the thing like it’s some sort of voodoo totem, careful not to disturb its latent powers. “I’d throw this away if I was you,” Mister Pastor says. “Right now.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I kind of want to hear it first.”

Mister Pastor purses his lips so hard that his whole face seems to pucker as if what he has to express could barely be contained by all that bunched flesh. “Guess you must be the boss of you,” he says finally. “So what do you need from me?”

“Walkman,” I say. “So I can listen.”

He sighs and ducks back inside the mouth of his compound. While he rustles through his array of cinched plastic bags and canvas totes, I turn away so I won’t see where he stores his treasures. Etiquette. He reappears with a decrepit-looking walkman, both headphones missing their foam casings. “Plays fine,” he says. “Just can’t fast forward or rewind.”

I want some privacy so I amble toward the green benches next to the empty dog run. The wind swirls some grimy black condoms and muddy supermarket fliers round my feet. I sit under a clump of bare trees, slide the tape into the player, and place the plastic headphones against my chilly ears. I look closer at the handwriting on the case — the series of curlicues, dashes, odd slants and sudden emphases — and for the first time truly begin to wonder who sent this.

I press play. It takes about fifteen seconds. The first strums of the acoustic guitar and then the onslaught of rattling drums and ragged horns all at once. And that voice. Oh my God, that voice. I sit transfixed. By the time the majestic echoing chords of the last song fade, something inside me has permanently shifted. Listening to this music is like being turned inside-out and finding the story of your life written on your inner organs. It’s like having your blood leeched to remind you that you have blood. It’s like—

The tape ends. I flip it over and play it again. And again. The singer sings with an inhuman urgency. He tells his story running and you can almost hear the clip of hooves in pursuit. He spins out tales of drunken fathers too scared to commit suicide, mute twins in white dresses spilling their parents’ ashes over a frothing ocean, dead girlfriends reincarnated as black swans, or blue orchids, or flaming pianos. After a while, it’s hard to keep it all straight.