The Heartbeat Collector

We inherit more than genes from our fathers. Mine passed on his love for heartbeats. Together, we’d cruise into the city to scour used record stores to find them. Although he never explicitly declared it, he was a heartbeat collector.

The drive was just over an hour. We left the stillness of his countryside house and traded fresh air for traffic fumes, birdsong for honking horns, patience for urgency. The journey was a crescendo, the car windows throbbed; we were soon in the veins of it all.

He would park in the same lot, often the same space. I heard the city most acutely during the brief pause after the engine cut out. I’d crack open my door, and the sounds would appear crisply, like a quick adjustment in binoculars. I’d hop out and knew at the clunk of our closing car doors, the search was on. My footsteps joined the soundtrack.

We walked the same route always, and I came to know every crooked slab of the pavement. Which ones jolted as you stepped on them, which ones had cracks, and the few that had been perfectly laid. I felt pleased that some had been given the care and attention they deserved, but sorry for all the broken and wonky ones. I thought of people tripping on their protruding lips, muttering curses at them. They met my thin rubber soles at every step, each wobble and dip a familiar greeting. I would guess my dad was looking at the changing leaves on the scant trees, or the changes in shop fronts.

The door pushed against me as I shouldered it open, teasing me, making me struggle. The door opened, the bell, the old cardboard smell, the dust, the quiet.

A record store may seem like an odd place to look for heartbeats, but it’s the only place my Dad knew where to find them. I had no clue; I was young, and the world was mostly questions with answers scarce, often crumbling on closer inspection.

Our fingers stood on the edges of each cover, kicking them over one by one. We combed through faded artwork and yellowed sleeves. My Dad knew a lot about music. He knew a good record when he found one. I would glance up from my search to see if he had that look on his face. We struck gold when his features softened and his eyes creased. Whether it had the heartbeat we were searching for was unknowable. I saw the same look once elsewhere. He’d just bumped into an old friend, wordless with so much to say, not enough time to truly retrieve the moments lost.

The search ended once we had committed to a record each. He never told me what to buy or to choose something else; he always treated my record as if it could be a winning lottery ticket.

We would walk to the counter, and he’d let me buy them with his money. I gave it to the cashier, received the change, and gave it back to him. I knew deep down I wasn’t really buying them. I was proud that he trusted me to handle this part of the process. I felt like a negotiator, not the unnecessary middle party in the exchange that I really was. We would thank the cashier and leave with our treasures tucked snuggly under my arm. I felt a responsibility to protect them from harm. I’d keep them resting carefully on my lap all the way home. It didn’t matter that they were already worn. I still felt it my duty to protect them. As we drove, the outside world grew quieter again, leaving us gently smiling, alone with our records. We were anticipating what awaited us at home in our living room.

We would arrive home. I’d start preparing in the living room while I heard the familiar sounds. The thud of the closing door, metallic crunch of the latch, keys dropped in the ceramic bowl, zip on my Dad's coat. Then his soft padding on the kitchen’s wooden floorboards, the kettle being flicked on, and the gentle rumble as the water began to boil. I heard these noises every time we returned, in the same predictable order. Each sound in the sequence a layer of calm, muffling the sharp edges.

I would turn on my Dad’s sound system the way he had taught me, and wait for him to return with our steaming cups of tea. I’d free the heavy vinyl records from their cases and wipe them down.

My Dad taught me that every record has the potential for a heartbeat, and finding one is like finding magic. They can be hard to find; they’re random imperfections after all. A heartbeat is found after the last song on a side ends. In that dead, repeated space. The needle caught in the final, looping revolution. Is it a perfect, undisturbed journey, or are there two bumps in the road? We’d go a while without finding one, which made the catch all the more special. We would listen for the thudding that told us there was life running through the wiring of our speakers.

The moment before hearing one was almost as exciting as actually hearing it. When we heard those two random thuds, close together, laid on a soft static hum, sparkling in the vinyl’s crackle - we would catch each other’s eyes, wide, brows pushing up. We’d sit back on the sofa, sinking into the cushions, and let those final seconds play over and over, listening to the heartbeat, basking in the audible life that slowly filled our living room. It was as if the sound patrolled the room, sniffing out each corner, scaled the walls and perched on the ceiling. A guardian watching over us.

My Dad said, “It’s like listening to the ocean draw in and out, repeating the same motions, living, breathing. Something is alive in the speakers, waiting to play the next song, resting between flipping sides.” We would let our records rest a lot, hearing their heartbeat. Those with a heartbeat on both sides were rarest.

I would rest my head on his chest. I could feel his warmth through his jumper, hear his heartbeat. It would vibrate my eardrum. I listened intently to see if it lined up with the record's heartbeat, but I always fell asleep before I could find out. His chest would rise and fall like a barrel bobbing in the ocean, lulling me. Sometimes I’d wake up just as my mum arrived to pick me up, and the time would be whipped away from me. I would cry and beg for more time, but there was always something to do. I loved my Mum. I wasn’t sad to go with her, but I was sad to leave my Dad.

I remember the first heartbeat we found together. It was a Jonny Cash album. At first, I thought his face looked mean, maybe even scary. But after hearing his voice, flecked with scars, I knew he was just in pain with stories to tell. I loved those stories; they made me smile, even when some were dark. They were like the stories my Dad would tell me before bed. Not that his were dark, but that they seemed real. They didn’t talk down to me as many children’s stories do.

I barely had one foot in adulthood when my Dad died. I walked the border between adolescence and adulthood. One felt like home, shrinking; the other felt foreign, expanding. His death was a sudden rift, a crevice, a crack widening with no visible bottom. An instant, unfillable canyon. The only option was to leap and learn fast.

After the funeral, I visited his home. Technically, it was now mine, though it would always be his to me. I opened the old tin box we kept all our heartbeat records in, lifted out that weathered Jonny Cash album, and let it play to the end. I must have laid on the floor for over an hour, hugging the sleeve to my chest. The April sun poured in through the window, keeping me warm on what had been a cold morning.

Every Sunday is the same; I still go searching for heartbeats. In the daytime, he can feel far away, further than the other side of the world, wandering another planet, drifting away into space. But in those moments, he’s close again.

I drop the needle on a heartbeat record we found together, play it to the end, and sit for a time. My head on his chest, listening to the record’s heartbeat and his, in sync, he’s there. He’s never left. He’s sitting in the imperfect groove of the vinyl, waiting for me.