The first tape I played was dated June 14, 1978, and labeled “Eddie.” For almost a minute there was nothing but the hiss of the cassette and Warren sweeping the shop. Then a man began talking. He said he had come home from Vietnam four years earlier and still hadn’t told his wife what happened during his last week there. Warren never interrupted. I could hear scissors opening and closing, the radio murmuring underneath, and finally my uncle saying, “You don’t have to carry it alone just because you survived it.” The man started crying. Warren turned the radio louder.
Every tape was like that. Seventeen men, seventeen things they apparently couldn’t say anywhere else: a father admitting he had a daughter nobody knew about, a teacher confessing he was terrified he was becoming like his violent father, a widower saying he talked to his dead wife every morning before work. Warren recorded them only after asking permission, his old friend explained. The tapes were never meant as gossip or evidence. Warren kept them because each man had asked him to remember the truth somewhere, in case one day they were brave enough to tell it themselves. The radio was his curtain. Whenever a customer began saying something that wasn’t meant for the other chair, Warren reached over and turned the volume up.
The last cassette had my father’s name on it. August 3, 1989 — eleven days before Dad’s funeral. I almost put it back. Instead, I pressed play and heard my father’s voice say, “Warren, if something happens to me, there’s one thing the boy can never know.” There was a long silence, then my uncle asked, “Even when he’s grown?” My father answered so quietly I had to rewind it twice. “Especially then. Because Warren… he thinks I’m his father.” And for the first time on any of the tapes, I heard my uncle begin to cry.
