Short Story / Matty Be Good
-—-One-—
I didn’t argue none when daddy told me Matty weren’t no good.
Wouldn’t have helped—he wouldn’t have believed me.
“Demons got hold of that boy,” Daddy said, then swore a lot while putting the instruments away. Daddy’s band was playing down at the Divine, and Matty’d ‘bout ruined the show.
I didn’t add that the demons possessing him were kind of literal like, neither.
“I took his trumpet as payment,” said Daddy, ”’cause it was what’d hurt him the most. Trumpet’s about the only thing that matters to that boy more than the drinking.”
Daddy was wrong there, too – ‘bout the trumpet being the only thing. But there was truth in taking it hurting Matty- that boy loved to play. Lived to pay. He played like no creature born of this world could ever. That’s ‘cause he wasn’t. Not born of a momma and a daddy like the rest of us, not come up out of no womb.
I didn’t tell Daddy how he himself had wished Matty into being that stormy December, when we near starved to death, ‘cause the band wasn’t so good. No one wants to swing and jive to a band ain’t got no good horn player. That’s just how it is. Daddy wanted his band to get a gig so bad, he’d given a piece of his soul as the bargain.
Wouldn’t have done no good to tell him, ‘cause then I’d have to explain that I’d gotten my gypsy momma’s gift. That would have just added to his burdens.
So after Daddy’d packed Matty’s shiny trumpet away with the other instruments, locked it up tight as a drum, I marched straight on down to the gin joint my Daddy couldn’t keep Matty outta. Matty was still there, slobberin and crying like a kicked dog. Fell right offa his chair when he seen me, and I picked him right up again (I’d inherited more than momma’s sight, I’d also taken after her curse. Another thing that Daddy didn’t need to know).
Anyhow, I looked him straight in the bleary eyes and I said “Matty Parker, you get yourself outta this joint and clean up, right now!”
“Lemme be, Amy,” he muttered. “I ain’t no good.”
Hearing him talk like that hurt worse than anything. My father’s words had bit right through Matty, and he was believing them at heart.
“Ain’t none of us no good, Matty Parker. Ain’t none of us no bad, either. We only is what we are. And right now, you is more’n a little drunk – and you smell kinda bad, too.”
“Miss Amy, I love you,” he sobbed into my shoulder as I drug him toward the door.
“I know Matty, I know.” I didn’t tell him just then that the feeling was mutual like. “Ain’t your fault you got a demon soul.”
“I know, I know,” he echoed back at me as we staggered out the door and into the sun.
“That just means you gotta be like me. You can do what’s right, Matty. You just gotta work a little harder to figure out what that right thing is.” Was a disability, that’s all. Like how in school where sometimes I wouldn’t pick up on things as quick as the other kids. I just kept right on trying ‘till I ‘ventually caught on.
“My head hurts powerful bad, miss Amy,” Matty complained, squinting hard against the sun. “And your father fired me from the band. What’m I gonna do?”
The answer was clear as churchbells. “You’re gonna run away with me, Matty Parker.”
“But Miss Amy!” he protested, holding his head from the effort, “Your father’s been kind to me. Kinder than I ever deserved.”
“You ain’t got no idea what you deserve, or what Daddy’s got commin’, neither,” I said. However unintentioned, Daddy’d called a demon into being and he was getting the threefold payback it cost. Weren’t no evil in the intent, or the purchase – but that didn’t matter any more than the use for an omelette or an egging mattered when you bought eggs from the grocery store.
“But what’ll we do?” he whined, still drunk enough to be shrill.
“First we’re gonna get your trumpet back,” I said, ” and we’re gonna get away from this town. And then, Matty Parker, then you’re gonna learn to be good ‘cause I won’t have you any other way.”
His eyes got real wide like. “Have me? Amy, I can’t. I mean, how are we gonna… you love me, huh? You love me, don’tcha?”
I turned away and that was all the answer he needed. He slipped his pale hand, smooth as a baby’s ’, into mind. One of the peculiars about Matty, having never been born, was that his hands was real soft and white, and didn’t have no swirls and whirls like most fingers have neither.
“You’ll see, Amy,” he said, sobering up from the serious talking. “I’m gonna learn. I’ll show your Daddy, I’ll show all of ‘em. I’ll learn to be good.”
“Ain’t a matter of being good, Matty Parker. It’s just what’s right.” I was gonna have to keep saying that until he understood. He had no idea of the journey he’d just begun with that one step, the one we were gonna take together – but I knew. I knew the road ahead of us was unpaved and long, that we weren’t gonna get where we were goin easy.
“Amy,” he said, his face paler than his hands, “What about my trumpet?”
“What ‘bout it?” I asked.
“Your father took it,” he said. “Said I owed him that much, on account of he’d lost money on me…”
“We’ll get it back,” I said, squeezing his hand.
“How? He won’t give it up. We’d like to have to kill your daddy before he goes back on his word…”
“I know,” I said, without regret. I saw my daddy’s eyes, already cold with the grave. Weren’t no evil in it, just the repayment. Just what he deserved.
“Amy! I don’t wanna kill your daddy…”
“Hush up, Matty. ” There were people walking down the street who wouldn’t understand. Same kinda people who had shunned momma every time the curse came on her, every time she did what she hadda do. They’d do the same to Matty and me, or maybe worse.
“Amy, Amy please…” I saw in his eyes that he feared for the little piece’o soul he had in’em.
“Ain’t no thing. Just what we gotta do. You want your trumpet?”
“More than anything,” he admitted. “Well, anything, ‘cept you..”
“Then be good, Matty Parker. Matty, be good…”
-—-—Two -—--
I kinda expected Matty to look fierce with the axe in his hands, but he just looked stupid like. Dumbfounded.
“It’s an axe,” I explained for the fifth time. “You just chop with it.”
“Chop…”
He didn’t finish what he was speaking, just flapped his mouth a while like he was saying some kinda silent sentence in his head. I sighed.
“You ain’t making this killing thing easy, Matty Parker.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Amy.” He hung his head and looked even more pathetic. “But I can’t just axe your Daddy.”
“Gimme that,” I snapped, and tore it from his hands. The weight was heavy, like a burden. Weren’t so sure I wanted it neither, but someone had to do the killing and it sure wasn’t ‘bout to be Matty. “You’re like a little schoolboy.”
“Ain’t never been to school,” he said, hanging his head lower. Like I needed to be reminded of that.
He looked so sad that I was sorry I yelled at him. I set the axe down, and gave him a kinda hug, one arm around his sagging shoulders. “Killing’s hard, I know. Ain’t like I want to do it either.”
“So why we doing it?” he asked, leaning in to the hug like he could support himself on it.
“Already explained that. If we don’t… if we just run off.. Daddy’s gonna die alone. Slow and painful like. I can’t leave him like that, wouldn’t be right. And we can’t stay. He’d run you off, then where would any of us be?”
Sometimes life got complicated. Matty, being all new-born despite looking about twenty, was just starting to learn that. Couldn’t fault him none for being slow with the taking.
“I don’t like this. Ain’t right, Amy, ain’t right…”
He was getting to repeating himself now, so I just picked the axe back up and started creeping towards the back door with it. The same back door I used to swing offa when I was a kid, the same one my Momma used to hang outta when she called me and Daddy in for supper. I stopped, wiggled in my shoes a little, toeing some clod of dirt in my way. My shoes still had some good leather left in ‘em, so I weren’t scared they’d wear out before me and Matty got where we were going. But I kinda lost my nerve for the killing.
“You sure you can’t do it?” I called back to Matty. But he was just wrapping his arms tight around himself, like he wanted the ground to eat him back up just like it’d spit him out a year ago. Maybe it woulda even, if the door hadn’t swung open right then.
My Daddy opened up the door, saw Matty first, and curled his lip down into a deep frown. Then he saw me- and his jaw dropped right down. “Amy,” he said. “What you doing with that axe? What’s Matty doing back here? What’s going on?”
There was fear catching in his eyes, and making his voice shake. He already sounded sick. Maybe he’d been sicker longer than I’d knowed.
“Don’t do it, Amy!” Matty cried, and came rushing at me. He hit me square on in a tackle, I grabbed a handful of his hair, and we both went tumbling into the dirt.
The axe clattered against the back step, and my Daddy bent down to pick it up. He looked from it to where me and Matty were wrestling in the dust like a pair of pups.
“I said, what’s going on here!” he boomed, his voice carrying over the fight me and Matty was having.
Matty was winning, likely on account of his demon soul. He sat right on me, and looked straight up at my Daddy, unafraid. “Sir, I’m gonna marry your daughter,” he said. Just like that.
Weren’t what either me or Daddy was expecting to hear, so we just kinda stared at Matty, both. Matty stood up offa me, and offered his hand. I took it, got back up with as much dignity as I could catch again. Weren’t easy with a mouth full of mud and my torn dress. Gave me a little satisfaction to see I’d scratched Matty’s cheek. A trickle of blood ran down and stained his dirty collar, but he didn’t pay it no mind as he kept on speaking.
“And I need my trumpet, ‘cause I want to support us, sir. I ain’t going to mess it up again. I’m gonna stay out of the gin joints, and take care of her…”
Daddy looked from Matty to me. “You going to marry this boy?”
I nodded. “I’m gonna. “
Daddy grunted, looking from us to the axe. “And you thought to sneak on in, and break the trumpet out without so much as asking, did you?”
I didn’t answer, just looked down like. Explainin the truth weren’t going to help nothing any.
“That’s low down, Amy. That’s real low. Matty Parker, ‘least you got some sense in you, trying to stop her. I can’t go back on my word, though. I said you were out of the band, and out you are. I can’t look weak in front of the boys. Besides, most of the clubs won’t let you back. You got a bad reputation in this town.”
Matty squared his shoulders up. “I know, sir. Don’t expect you to. Me and Amy, we’re going to go make our fortune in the city.”
He’d been readin’ those books again. Fortune in the city – kinda talk was that? We were just going to survive, was all.
“You’ll need your horn, then,” Daddy said. “You can’t make much of a living without it, God knows.”
Daddy let us in the house, and unlocked the instrument trunk. He took out Matty’s trumpet and handed it back careful like. Matty cradled his horn like a baby, held it close to his chest before lifting it to his lips and sounding a pure, perfect note that seemed made of sorrow.
Daddy and me both shivered. He came on over to me, and looked at me like it was going to be the last time he set eyes on me. Didn’t tell him that I knew it was.
“It’s gonna be the death of me, worrying about you, child,” he said and hugged me tight.
I hugged him back with all my might, and choked back the lump in my throat to whisper. “I know Daddy, I know…”
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I enjoyed the dialect a great deal. The only thing I didn’t understand was one phrase :
” but that didn’t matter any more than the use for an omelette or an egging mattered when you bought eggs from the grocery store.”
Maybe I’m not familiar with Gypsy folklore… but I didn’t get how having a taste for killing was connected to being Gypsy.
Thank you this writing is so refreshing for this site. I will be reading more.
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