A Night of Hot Wax | Haunted Records and an Occult Recording Session

Story transcript, edited from an automatic transcription. Minor transcription errors may remain; not checked word for word against the audio. Separate host segments and advertising omitted.

A Night of Hot Wax by John Oak Dalton. Etheridge and August needed summer jobs, but they didn't know if they needed one bad enough to work for old man Baldwin, who nobody wanted to work for. Their older brothers and sisters and some of their friends had already had their turns under Mr. Baldwin's eye. You worked hard in his garden and yard with no breaks. You weren't allowed to be caught standing around talking or worse yet, you couldn't be caught listening to music.

Mr. Baldwin hated music worse than he hated laziness. And he hated laziness in the way that most people feared death. But every ice cream stand and lifeguard post and backroom can stocker and really any odd job in the neighborhood was already spoken for. So Etheridge and August went to Mr. Baldwin's little brick house on its big green lawn and knocked quietly on the door. Mr. Baldwin answered and stood there glaring at the two boys like a statue staring down at people in a town square.

He looked like he was cast in bronze and about as hard to move as a real statue. Have you hired anyone to work on your yard this summer, Mr. Baldwin? Etheridge asked. Mr. Baldwin frowned at August. I usually don't speak to young men who don't take their baseball hats off. August's hand immediately went to his head. But I'll make an exception since that is a Homestead Grey's hat. I got it from my brother, mumbled August.

Mr. Baldwin fixed him with a laser eye. But you do know who the Homestead Greys were. Yes, sir, August mumbled, but Etheridge knew he didn't. Josh Gibson was the greatest player on the greatest baseball team the Negro Leagues or maybe any other team had. He was the catcher, so I'm going to call you catcher. Yes, sir, mumbled August. Now his eyes fixed on Etheridge. and what is your name young man he asked Etheridge the child said and he tried to talk in a clear voice obviously you were named after the great poet named Etheridge so I'll call you poet Etheridge was named after the poet so he said nothing Mr.

Baldwin pointed a long finger at a garage at the side of his house Etheridge was surprised because even though he had a stern face he had long fingers and soft hands. You can start by cleaning out that garage and leave that garage door open and I'll watch your progress from an upstairs window. Etheridge was just happy that they weren't starting on that big green yard. August got fired the next day. He thought he could sneak a Bluetooth earpiece in under his homestead graze hat and Mr.

Baldwin wouldn't notice. He did and then Etheridge was working alone. It was hot, sweaty work cleaning the garage. Etheridge had started zoning out and just throwing junk in trash bags when he came across a big closed chest with brass hinges. It looked too good to be trash, so Etheridge decided to pull it towards the open garage door where Mr. Baldwin could look at it. The chest was heavy, too heavy to pull.

Remembering how Mr. Baldwin's face looked like it was carved out of rock and about as friendly, he thought about this chest for a long time, but he couldn't resist taking a peek. If it had been full of the bones of neighbor kids who everyone heard had moved away, he wouldn't have been more surprised. The old chest was filled with vinyl records. Etheridge did not recognize any one record, but knew them to be jazz, blues, and classical just by the images and the names of the songs.

His own grandmother loved this music, and this love had come down to him. Because of it, he was learning violin for the school orchestra. He thought he'd gotten pretty good. He wanted to be very good. I see you stopped working. The voice came from the open garage door. Etheridge jumped and turned. Mr. Baldwin was standing there, his face in shadow, the hot sun behind him, blinding Etheridge. I am working. I was just seeing what was in this old chest. they're uh old records my wife was supposed to throw away she didn't and now she's passed and i won't speak against her etheridge craned his neck but mr baldwin's face was still in shadow so that was all that gave him the bravery to ask what he asked next i thought you hated music mr baldwin i do not i do hate the playing of music and more so the recording of music that pretty much covers all music, said Etheridge.

Then Mr. Baldwin stepped one foot more into the garage, and Etheridge's mouth clapped shut. But when Etheridge looked closer, Mr. Baldwin did not look as mean as he usually did. No, it doesn't, because there is the music in your imagination, poet. Mr. Baldwin sat on an old crate that groaned under his weight. Etheridge watched him carefully. Did you know, uh, I was a music teacher once. Etheridge was not very surprised to hear he was a teacher long ago, because he seemed like he once had a job telling people what to do, and maybe even yelling at people sometimes.

He still seemed to like yelling at kids. When you teach music, you learn every instrument. And then every summer, you don't have a job. so I played in little bands all over the city. There were a lot of places to play back then and I would go out to the old plastics factory and record music. Etheridge frowned. The what? Mr. Baldwin gave a small smile. It's funny how nobody remembers the plastics factory which used to be the biggest employer in town.

That does seem funny but why was there music at the plastics factory? Mr. Collins was the owner there, and he had a lot of good ideas and one really bad one. But one good idea he had was to make his own records. The factory pressed records for all kinds of record companies, hot wax and hot stacks. What? We called records hot wax. I thought this was a plastics factory. do you go to school child yes sir then listen to an old teacher mr collins thought he could record old-time music himself with his own orchestra so he paid a bunch of us by the hour to make music for him to record and sell on his own for cheap and cut out the middleman we were called the kioga chamber orchestra but there was no chamber just a room off the factory floor with a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and people from all over other music teachers old ladies who taught piano in their own homes guys that played in other bands on the weekends but we had fun until one late night mr baldwin did not say anything for a long time etheridge did not move until one night when Mr.

Collins said we had a special request. We all stayed very late waiting and wondering, and then a man in a red robe came in. He was leading a goat on a rope. Etheridge did not say anything. He knew the time for asking questions was over for now. Mr. Baldwin was thinking about the past. The man brought his own music. It was on very old, very yellow and crinkly paper. We all looked at our parts.

I had a funny feeling when I looked at it. Etheridge started wondering why somebody would be bringing a goat to a music recording. I was staring at the music so hard I did not see the man in the robe get out a... a big silver knife with a strange handle. Etheridge was thinking about knives and goats and music and how that might go together on some late night. I don't believe in men and robes and knives and goats that aren't for milking, but all I thought about then was that I wanted to play that music and see what it was.

Mr. Baldwin was flexing his fingers, his face thinking about the past. we started playing the music it went all through my body but the man in the robe acted like he wasn't even listening he was drawing a circle with chalk in the middle of the floor well it sort of looked like chalk and it sort of looked like a circle but all that was in my mind was that sweet terrible music it was in my fingers and in my in behind my eyes it filled my whole body I can see you wonder what it sounded like.

It sounded like a hundred babies crying and a knife hitting a bone in cold air over a gravestone. Etheridge tried to imagine what that would sound like and how you could play it. But then I heard my own grandmother's voice. Etheridge sat up straight. What was she doing there? She was not there. She was dead. Etheridge swallowed She was singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot So I stopped following the music that was in front of me And started playing along with my grandmother and then the bulb above my head exploded and then I realized every other bulb in that entire factory had broken out so I took that time in the darkness to get up and run away Etheridge held his breath the next day I learned Mr.

Collins had had a heart attack the day after the factory closed for a little while and never reopened and then I put all these records in this crate and told my wife to throw them away and that was uh 45 years ago mr baldwin's fingers were twitching as if playing an unseen instrument that's enough work for today poet come up to the house for some lemonade it was the last surprise of the day and forever as old man baldwin himself died a few days later after taking sick quickly and Etheridge wondered if telling this terrible story was too much after all these years.

As it turned out, August's older brother had more lawn mowing than he could do alone, so both Etheridge and August had work to do, but Etheridge kept thinking about that music. Etheridge went back to Mr. Baldwin's house when his children, all old people themselves, had a big yard sale. Etheridge did not have money to buy every record in the old chest, but he wanted to go through them and maybe pick one out, especially if he could find one that might make the strange sort of music Mr.

Baldwin had talked about. He walked past everything set out in the big yard and looked in the garage, but the chest and everything in it was already gone. Etheridge let his mother get him a violin tutor after all that summer, even though at the beginning of the summer he had said he didn't want one. He wanted to be good, better than good, and to hear music the way he saw Mr. Baldwin did. and he started asking where the old plastics factory was.

His parents gave him blank faces, and so did his grandparents, who were almost as old as Mr. Baldwin anyway. One day, Etheridge started thinking about the railroad that used to go through town and had been turned into a bike trail. In big factories, sometimes raw material came in on train tracks. He talked to August about it one day after they got done mowing the one yard they hated, the backyard that went on so far it was actually the outfield of the baseball diamond at their school if we follow the bike trail we might just see some sign of it said Etheridge aren't you getting enough exercise said August and wiped his sweat away with his arm I'd just like to see that old factory said Etheridge if you want to see an old building we can go by that closed department store, said August.

Etheridge shook his head. It's not just any old building. I want to see this one. It can't be much. If it was, somebody would have heard about it. I just want to know if that story was true. August just looked at Etheridge. Do you think that was the first time old man Baldwin told a story to scare a little kid? Etheridge tried to work on August a little bit longer, but it was no use, so Etheridge got his violin case and balanced it on his handlebars and set out early on a Saturday when the grass was getting brown and there weren't as many lawns to mow.

After a long, hot few miles, he saw a crumbling brick smokestack poking out of some trees, and he parked his bike there and right away saw a little path that winded off into the dark woods. He might have been this far on the bike trail before, but he wasn't sure. He was sure he had never seen that old brick smokestack before. Etheridge followed this little path, and it went past an old chain-link fence that was knocked down and opened up into a clearing where a big brick building sat.

This building had every single window broken out, and dirt on every brick, and every metal window frame, and every metal door was covered in rust, and the roof kind of bowed in on itself like it had leaked a long time. It could have been any kind of building in any kind of city that nobody cared about anymore. But Etheridge knew that he was in the right place. So he sat cross-legged and got his violin out and started thinking about that old sheet music Mr.

Baldwin had seen and what it must have sounded like and waited for the feeling to take over his hands. He waited a long time as the cold wind that tells you fall is coming started to pick up around his bare arms and legs. He didn't hear any music, but instead he had that prickling feeling on his neck that somebody was watching him. And somebody was. He saw a man looking at him out of a second-story window.

At first he thought this might be a security guard, but no security guard wore a black dress coat and a black hat. This man looked very ordinary, not like a person who might have worn a red robe would look like, but he dressed in an old-fashioned way that Etheridge had only seen in pictures, and that made it scarier than if he had looked totally strange. This man stood there very still, as if he was waiting for Etheridge to do something.

Etheridge was very, very nervous, but he started to play. He played from memory as best he could, waiting to feel something. The shadows were long in the clearing, longer than they should have been for that time of day, even as the season turned to fall. And when that shadow that meant fall was coming touched him, his playing began to change. It was as if the cold shadows jumped right up next to him, and then he saw that the man in the black coat was in the big rusty garage door at the loading dock, by the big concrete pad with all the faded stripes painted long ago, the one that was hanging by just one hinge and creaking like a crow in the cold wind.

The man was watching him very closely and listening Even from this far away it looked like the whites of his eyes and the whites of his teeth were gleaming His smile was no warmer than the cold wind that seemed to be pushing at Etheridge harder and harder Etheridge had wondered since that day with Mr. Baldwin what playing music like that would be like And as his fingers took on a life of their own, then he knew And he was sorry and there was no grandmother to sing swing low sweet chariot his grandmother was still alive listening to her own records down in the town Etheridge wished he was there with her but now somebody was standing next to the man in the black coat Etheridge hoped it was Mr.

Baldwin but if it wasn't he hoped he was a friend his own music was getting louder out of his control and he couldn't see the man in the old-fashioned clothes and his smile that wasn't a smile and he couldn't feel the cold air or see the long shadows that were cast from something Etheridge couldn't see. There was something in the firm and purposeful way the other man reached for the man in the black coat.

There was something sure and true about him, and maybe that was Mr. Baldwin after all. Despite what Etheridge thought before, he knew now that Mr. Baldwin had loved music and children in his life, and he remembered that he had called him poet. Etheridge did not know swing low sweet chariot but he did know amazing grace so with all his effort he switched to playing amazing grace and it didn't sound great but it sounded good enough good enough to help that figure wrestling with the man in the black coat whether that was mr baldwin or not it did not matter now as etheridge began to come back away from the long shadows in the cold wind sparks showered out of the window in the garage door as if every light in the building was exploding But Etheridge knew there couldn't have been any electricity on in there.

Not anymore. There were pallets that were more mold than wood on that big concrete pad, but they caught fire anyway. The figures wrestled on as the fire jumped to the dry grass and kept going. When the flames started rising around him, Etheridge dropped his violin and ran away. Etheridge stayed awake all night as the fire trucks raced through town. The next day he found out the forest fire burned itself out when it hit the asphalt bike trail and ran out of fuel.

But by then it had raced in every direction and smoke hung over everywhere. Etheridge stayed in his room even when August and the other kids rode their bikes all around to take it in. Etheridge! His mother came to the door, home in the middle of the day from work, looking into his room. Two policemen were behind her. The police had come to the house that day because Etheridge was seen on some security cameras along the bike trail after the woods caught on fire.

Etheridge couldn't explain what he was doing there exactly, and nobody understood when he talked about the factory. Everything happened very fast after that, and he ended up in the juvenile detention center and would be there until he turned 18. He was told it would not go on his permanent record when he became an adult, and he thought the fact that it was called a permanent record was the strangest thing he ever heard, but he didn't tell his lawyer that.

In fact, Etheridge said less and less about anything as time went on, but he did get his GED. They asked him to join the Juvenile Detention Center's pep band, but he decided to work in the library instead.