Weird (from Villains from the Gallows Tree)

Dave loves the sound of his own voice; I hate the sound of mine.

That doesn't stop us from recording me, of course, and playing back for giggles.

Dave records everything and makes us guess what it is: crickets, cat purrs, a dog bark, even a burp

He even records songs he likes off the radio with a tinny microphone that makes them sound strange.

He records secret things he refuses to play to us, talking to the tape recorder the way I used to talk to the priest when I attended Catholic School,

It bugs the hell out of me that he won't tell me -- his best friend -- what he says or even his little brother Dennis, who’ll blab about anything if I threaten to beat him up.

Neither of us can imagine what a secret Dave’s age could possibly have that he needs to keep them to himself.

This only makes me, and Dennis think, he's talking about us. 

Dennis tells me he plans to steal the tape recorder some night when Dave is sleeping only Dave keeps it somewhere Dennis can't find.

Sometimes Dave asks us to record stuff for him not silly stuff though.

He asks me to talk about how we feel about things, not about school, he doesn’t want to hear about that, he wants to know what we feel when we get wet in the rain, or what we see when we look at clouds, stuff like that.

I tell him he's crazy and ask him why he needs to know things like that.

He doesn't answer; he just gets moody like he does when he's been up all night and can't reach any of the truckers on his CB radio.

I don't even know what he says to them when he does reach them

I don't know what he does with the tapes he records though I saw he had a cigar box once, he refuses to let me open.

The tapes don’t record much; they are just three in reels that flap loose when they're done. Then he takes the old one off and then threads another one on.

Dave’s good at things like that, threading tape or wire, putting things together or even taking them apart.

Sometimes when we're in the hall recording something stupid, he hears his mother and father fighting; then he flicks off the recorder carries it over to the door sticks the microphone near the gap then turns the recorder on again.

He never plays those back either; he just takes it off the recorder when he's done and puts another tape on for us to record on.

Louie the rich kid that lives two doors down from my house up the hill has another kind of tape recorder. He doesn't need to thread. You stick a cassette into the recorder and it does everything by itself and records more than the 7- and 1/2-minutes Dave's tape records.

I tell Dave I'm going to buy a recorder just like the one Louie has; Dave even comes with me to the radio store on Lakeview Avenue, across the street from Doctor Wallace's office, where he saw one in the window. It costs a lot a lot more than the reel to reel Dave bought in one of the cheap shops on Main Street downtown and even that was a lot.

Dave says maybe I should buy one like he has; but I don't want to. So, I put my money down on the lay away plan the way my mother used to do so she could buy things we needed when she and I live alone on Carroll Street and later in the Christopher Columbus projects.

I am not a patient person I hate waiting for anything. 

So, I brood over it, thinking the money I put away to buy the recorder is lost, and I have to try and figure out how to get more so I don't have to wait.

I don't even know what I wanted for.

I already got a pocket radio to listen to music on, and the fights my uncle's fight in my house aren’t things I ever want to hear again, and I don’t know of any deep secrets I need to record in the dead of night like Dave does.

I want it because I want it and I want it right away.

So, when Dave starts to record stuff again, I get annoyed.

I can't be funny for him; I refuse to tell him how I feel when it rains.

Dennis doesn't understand why I am grumpy. Neither does Dave. Maybe I don't even know why I just am.

And there's so much I want to know -- why Dave needs to record everything he hears; why he asked such strange questions; what he records when we're not there.

I know I will never know.

Though Dennis does tell me later, he found Dave's stash.

“Did you get to hear any of the tapes?” I asked when Dave's not around.

“No,” he tells me.

“Why not?” I ask.

“It's weird,” he says.

“What’s weird?”

“What he does with the tapes.”

“He puts them in that box of his,” I say.

“Yeah, he does that but later he burns them.”

“Burns them?”

“That's right,” Dennis says. “That box is filled with melted tape. It's weird.”