Messenger

by Lowry, Lois

  Mentor’s arm fell from Matty’s shoulders and the schoolteacher’s attention turned eagerly toward the stage, where Trademaster was now standing.

  “Trade Mart begins,” Trademaster called. He had a loud voice with a slight accent, as many in Village had, the traces of their former languages lingering with them. The crowd fell absolutely silent now. Even the slightest whispering ceased. But over on the edge, Matty heard a woman begin to weep. He stood on tiptoe and peered toward her in time to see several people lead her away.

  Mentor didn’t even look toward the commotion of the weeping woman. Matty watched him. He noticed suddenly that Mentor’s face looked slightly different, and he could not identify what the difference was. The evening light was dim.

  More than that, the teacher, usually so calm, was now tense, alert, and appeared to be waiting for something.

  “Who first?” Trademaster called, and while Matty watched, Mentor raised his hand and waved it frantically, like a schoolboy hoping for a reward. “Me! Me!” the schoolteacher called out in a demanding voice, and as Matty watched, Mentor shoved the people standing in front of him aside so that he would be noticed.

  ***

  Late that night, the blind man listened with a concerned look on his face while Matty described Trade Mart.

  “Mentor was first, because he raised his hand so fast. And he completely forgot me, Seer. He had been standing with me and we were talking, just as we always have. Then, when they started, it was as if I didn’t exist. He pushed ahead of everyone and went first.”

  “What do you mean, went first? Where did he go?”

  “To the stage. He pushed through everyone. He shoved and jostled them aside, Seer. It was so odd. Then he went to the stage when Trademaster called his name.”

  The blind man rocked back and forth in his chair. Tonight he had not played music at all. Matty knew he was distressed.

  “It used to be different. People just called out. There was a lot of laughter and teasing the time I went.”

  “No laughter tonight, Seer. Just silence, as if people were very nervous. It was a little scary.”

  “And what happened when Mentor got to the stage?”

  Matty thought. It had been a little difficult to see through the crowd. “He just stood there. Then Trademaster asked him something, but it was as if he already knew the answer. And then everyone laughed a bit, as if they did, too, but it wasn’t a having-fun kind of laughter. It was a knowing kind.”

  “Could you hear what he asked?”

  “I couldn’t hear that first time, but I know what it was because he asked it of everyone who came up. It was the same each time. Just three words. Trade for what? That’s what he asked each time.”

  “And was the answer the same from everyone?”

  Matty shook his head, then remembered that he had to reply aloud. “No,” he said. “It was different.”

  “Could you hear Mentor’s reply?”

  “Yes. It made everyone laugh in that odd way. Mentor said, ‘Same as before.’”

  The blind man frowned. “Did you get a feel for what that meant?”

  “I think so, because everyone looked at Stocktender’s widow, and she blushed. She was near me, so I could see it. Her friends poked at her, teasing, and I heard her say, ‘He needs a few more trades first.’”

  “Then what happened?”

  Matty tried to remember the sequence of things. “Trademaster seemed to say yes, or at least to nod his head, and then he opened his book and wrote it in.”

  “I’d like to see that book,” the blind man said, and then, laughing at himself, added, “or have you see it, and read it to me.

  “What came next?”

  “Mentor stood there. He seemed relieved that Trademaster had written something down for him.”

  “How could you tell?”

  “He smiled and seemed less nervous.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then everyone got very silent and Trademaster asked, ‘Trade away what?’ “

  The blind man thought. “Another three words. Was it the same for each? The same ‘Trade for what?’ and then ‘Trade away what?’ “

  “Yes. But each one said the answer to the first quite loudly, the way Mentor did, but they whispered the answer to the second, so no one could hear.”

  “So it became public, what they were trading for…”

  “Yes, and sometimes the crowd called out in a scornful way. They jeered. I think that’s the right word.”

  “And he wrote each down?”

  “No. Ramon’s mother went up, and when Trademaster asked, ‘Trade for what?’ she said, ‘Fur jacket.’ But Trademaster said no.”

  “Did he give a reason for the no?”

  “He said she got a Gaming Machine already. Maybe another time, he said. Keep trying, he told her.”

  The blind man stirred restlessly in his chair. “Make us some tea, Matty, would you?”

  Matty did so, going to the woodstove where the iron kettle was already simmering. He poured the water over tea leaves in two thick mugs and gave one to Seer.

  “Tell me again the second three-word thing,” the blind man said after he had taken a sip.

  Matty repeated it. “‘Trade away what?’” He tried to make his voice loud and important, as Trademaster’s had been. He tried to imitate the slight accent.

  “But you couldn’t hear any of the answers that people gave, is that right?”

  “That’s right. They whispered, and he wrote the whispers in his book.”

  Matty straightened in his chair with a sudden idea. “How about if I steal the book and read you what it says?”

  “Matty, Matty…”

  “Sorry,” Matty replied immediately. Stealing had been so much a part of his previous existence that he sometimes still, even after years, forgot that it was not acceptable behavior in Village.

  “Well,” said the blind man after they had sipped their tea in silence for a moment, “I wish I could figure out what things people are trading away. You say they came empty-handed. Yet each one whispered something that was written down.”

  “Except for Ramon’s mother,” Matty reminded him. “Trademaster said no to her. But others got their trades. Mentor got his.”

  “But we don’t know what.”

  “No. ‘Same as before,’ he asked for.”

  “Tell me this, Matty. When Mentor left the Trade Mart, he hadn’t been given anything, had he? He wasn’t carrying anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Was anyone given anything to take away?”

  “Some were told delivery times. Someone got a Gaming Machine.

  “I’d really like a Gaming Machine, Seer,” Matty added, though he knew it was hopeless.

  But the blind man paid no attention to that. “One more question for you, Matty. Think hard about this.”

  “All right.” Matty prepared himself to think hard.

  “Try to remember if people looked different when it was over. Not everyone, but those who had made trades.”

  Matty sighed. It had been crowded, and long, and he had begun to be uncomfortable and tired by the time it ended. He had seen Ramon and waved, but Ramon was standing with his mother, who was angry at having been turned down by Trademaster. Ramon hadn’t waved back.

  He had looked for Jean, but she wasn’t there.

  “I can’t remember. I wasn’t paying attention by the end.”

  “What about the person who got a Gaming Machine? You told me someone did. Who was it?”

  “That woman who lives over near the marketplace. You know the one? Her husband walks hunched over because he has a twisted back. He was with her but he didn’t go up for a trade.”

  “Yes, I know who you mean. They’re a nice family,” the blind man said. “So she traded for a Gaming Machine. Did you see her when she was leaving?”

  “I think so. She was with some other women and they were laughing as they walked away.”

  “I thought you
said she was with her husband.”

  “She was, but he walked behind.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “Happy, because she got a Gaming Machine. She was telling her friends that they could come play with it.”

  “But anything else? Was there anything else about her that you remember, from after the trade, not before?”

  Matty shrugged. He was beginning to be bored by the questioning. He was thinking about Jean, and that he might go to see her in the morning. Maybe his puppy would be ready. At least the puppy would be an excuse for a visit. It was healthy now, and growing fast, with big feet and ears; recently he had watched, laughing, when the mother dog had growled at it because it was nipping at her own ears in play.

  Thinking of the puppy’s behavior reminded Matty of something.

  “Something was different,” he said. “She’s a nice woman, the one who got the Gaming Machine.”

  “Yes, she is. Gentle. Cheerful. Very loving to her husband.”

  “Well,” said Matty slowly, “when she was leaving, walking and talking with the other women, and her husband behind trying to keep up, she whirled around suddenly and scolded him for being slow.”

  “Slow? But he’s all twisted. He can’t walk any other way,” the blind man said in surprise.

  “I know. But she made a sneering face at him and she imitated his way of walking. She made fun of him. It was only for a second, though.”

  Seer was silent, rocking. Matty picked up the empty mugs, took them to the sink, and rinsed them.

  “It’s late,” the blind man said. “Time to go to bed.” He rose from his chair and put his stringed instrument on the shelf where he kept it. He began to walk slowly to his sleeping room. “Good night, Matty,” he said.

  Then he said something else, almost to himself.

  “So now she has a Gaming Machine,” the blind man murmured. His voice sounded scornful.

  Matty, at the sink, remembered something. “Mentor’s birthmark is completely gone,” he called to Seer.

  8

  The puppy was ready. So was Matty. The other little dog, the one who had been his childhood companion for years, had lived a happy, active life, died in his sleep, and had been buried with ceremony and sadness beyond the garden. For a long time Matty, missing Branch, had not wanted a new dog. But now it was time, and when Jean summoned him—her message was that Matty had to come right away to pick up the puppy, because her father was furious at its mischief—he hurried to her house.

  He had not been to Mentor’s homeplace since Trade Mart the previous week. The flower garden, as always, was thriving and well tended, with late roses in bloom and fall asters fat with bud. He found Jean there, kneeling by her flower bed, digging with a trowel. She smiled up at him, but it was not her usual saucy smile, fraught with flirtatiousness, the smile that drove Matty nearly mad. This morning she seemed troubled.

  “He’s shut in the shed,” she told Matty, meaning the puppy. “Did you bring a rope to lead him home?”

  “Don’t need one. He’ll follow me. I have a way with dogs.”

  Jean sighed, set her trowel aside, and wiped her forehead, leaving a smear of earth that Matty found very appealing. “I wish I did,” she said. “I can’t control him at all. He’s grown so fast, and he’s very strong and determined. My father is beside himself, wanting such a wild little thing gone.”

  Matty grinned. “Mentor deals with lots of wild little things in the schoolhouse. I myself was a wild little thing once, and it was he who tamed me.”

  Jean smiled at him. “I remember. What a ragged, naughty thing you were, Matty, when you came to Village.”

  “I called myself the Fiercest of the Fierce.”

  “You were that,” Jean agreed with a laugh. “And now your puppy is.”

  “Is your father home?”

  “No, he’s off visiting Stocktender’s widow, as usual,” Jean said with a sigh.

  “She’s a nice woman.”

  Jean nodded. “She is. I like her. But, Matty…”

  Matty, who had been standing, sat down on the grass at the edge of the garden. “What?”

  “May I tell you something troubling?”

  He felt himself awash with affection for Jean. He had for a long time been attracted to her girlish affectations, her silly charms and wiles. But now, for the first time, he felt something new. He perceived the young woman behind all those superficial things. With her curly hair tumbling over her dirt-streaked forehead, she was the most beautiful person Matty had ever seen. And now she was talking to him in a way that was not foolish and childlike, designed to entrance, but instead was human and pained and adult. He felt suddenly that he loved her, and it was a feeling he had never known before.

  “It’s about my father,” she said in a low voice.

  “He’s changing, isn’t he?” Matty replied, startling himself, because he had not spelled it out in his mind before, had not said it aloud yet, yet here it was, and he was saying it to Jean. He felt an odd sense of relief.

  Jean began to cry softly. “Yes,” she said. “He has traded his deepest self.”

  “Traded?” That part took Matty by surprise because he had not thought it through to there. “Traded for what?” Matty asked in horror, and realized he was repeating the phrase from Trade Mart.

  “For Stocktender’s widow,” she said, weeping. “He wanted her to love him, so he traded. He’s becoming taller and straighten The bald spot at the back of his head has grown over with hair, Matty. His birthmark has disappeared.”

  Of course. That was it. “I saw it,” Matty told her, “but I didn’t understand.” He put his arm around the sobbing girl.

  She caught her breath finally. “I didn’t know how lonely he was, Matty. If I had known…”

  “So that’s why…” Matty was trying to sort through it in his head.

  “The puppy. Once he would have loved a naughty puppy, Matty, the way he loved you when you were a raggedy boy. I knew it all for certain yesterday when he kicked the puppy. Till then I only suspected.” Jean wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and left another endearing streak of dirt.

  “And the petition!” Matty added, thinking of it suddenly.

  “Yes. Father always welcomed new ones. It was the most wonderful part of Father, how he cared for everyone and tried to help them learn. But now…”

  They heard a loud whimpering from the shed, and a scratching sound.

  “Let him out, Jean, and I’ll take him home before your father gets back.”

  She went to the shed door, opened it, and though her face was tear-streaked now, she smiled at the eager, ungainly puppy who bounded forth, jumped into Matty’s arms, and licked his cheeks. The white tail was a whir.

  “I need time to think,” Matty said, subduing the puppy with a rhythmic scratch below his chin.

  “What’s to think about? There’s nothing to be done. Trades are forever. Even if a stupid thing like a Gaming Machine breaks down, or if you tire of it—you don’t get to reverse.”

  He wondered if he should tell her. She had seen the effect of his power on the puppy and its mother, but hadn’t understood. Now, if he chose, perhaps he could explain. But he was uncertain about this. He did not know how far his power went and he did not want to promise this beloved girl something impossible. To repair a man’s soul and deepest heart—to reverse an irreversible trade—might be far, far more than Matty could possibly undertake.

  So he stayed silent, and took his lively puppy away.

  ***

  “Look! He sits now when I tell him to.” Then Matty groaned and said, “Oh, sorry.”

  When would he ever learn to stop saying “Look” to a man who had no eyes?

  But the blind man laughed. “I don’t need to be able to look. I can hear that he sits. The sounds of his feet stop. And I don’t feel his teeth on my shoes.”

  “He’s smart, I think,” Matty said optimistically.

  “Yes, I think you’re right. He’s a goo
d little puppy, Matty. He’ll learn quickly. You don’t need to worry about his mischief.” The blind man reached out his hand and the puppy scampered to it and licked his fingers.

  “And he’s quite beautiful.” In truth, Matty was trying to convince himself. The puppy was a combination of several colors, big feet, a whirligig of a tail, and lopsided ears.

  “I’m sure he is.”

  “He’ll need a name. I haven’t thought of the right one yet.”

  “His true name will come to you.”

  “I hope I get my own soon,” Matty said.

  “It will come when the time comes.”

  Matty nodded and turned back to the dog. “First I thought of Survivor, because he was the only one of the puppies that did. But it’s too long. It doesn’t sound like the right one.” Matty picked up the puppy and scratched its belly as it lay on his lap.

  “So then…” Matty began to laugh. “Since he was the one that lived? I thought of Liver for a name.”

  “Liver?” The blind man laughed as well.

  “I know, I know. It was a stupid idea. Liver with onions.” Matty made a face.

  He set the puppy on the floor again and it dashed off, tail wagging, to growl at the logs piled beside the stove and to chew at their edges where raw wood curled.

  “You could ask Leader,” the blind man suggested. “He’s the one who gives true names to people. Maybe he’d do it for a puppy.”

  “That’s a good idea. I have to go see Leader anyway. It’s time to take messages around for the meeting. I’ll take the puppy with me.”

  ***

  Clumsy with his stubby legs and oversized feet, the puppy couldn’t manage the stairs at Leader’s homeplace. Matty picked him up and carried him, then set him on the floor in the upper room where Leader was waiting at his desk. The stacks of messages were ready. Matty could have taken them and left on his errand without pausing. But he lingered. He enjoyed Leader’s company. There were things he wanted to tell him. He began to put them in order in his mind.