SO
FAST HE CATCH'D UP WITH MAMA
Fast as fizz, Marty’s fingers when he played, pluckin at pa’s old
six-string guitar and takin new music out of somethin that had laid unseen for
seven years under pa’s bed. I said it was still too soon and that’s what pa’d
say. Marty singin also, like a cat moon-howlin, and that in a house that’d
heard no other sound but prayer for so long.
Marty couldn’t say where he learned to play like the devil. It just
come to him, he said, like he was born to it, like it was somethin he’d heared
his whole life. He said it was the first sound he could remember, listenin
through the dark wall of his mama.
Pa nodded and he was not cross with Marty, did not take the guitar
from the boy or put it back ‘neath his bed. Seven years mama had slept in the
ground out back, a stone for a pillow, flowers at her feet, and that day was
the first I saw pa smile. It was like the sun comin out after a black and
broodin storm has passed.
‘Play some more,’ pa said, and he took to his room and shut the door,
but we knowed he was listenin on the other side.
Fast as fizz or fireworks or flame, and once he’d started Marty
couldn’t stop, not though his fingers blistered and bled. And pa said nothin 'gainst the boy’s chores not done or his schoolbooks unopened. And we threw
wide all the windows in the house, so’s we could breathe at last, and the whole
neighbourhood heared the boy playin.
Old man Fordie said he thought it was pa at first. When he heared it
was Marty, well he slapped his thigh and called the boy a chip off the old block.
Years back that was, and now I do think on that time, believin it had
somethin to do with the devil after all. Marty joined a band and one day his
face was in all the newspapers, and they said he was fast and loose with women,
and his eyes in those pictures was heavy with drugs and drink so he was not
hisself. Too fast by half he was, and faster, and too soon in the ground with his mama.
These days pa’s all dark and silent and prayin again, though I don’t
rightly know what he’s prayin for.
