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1. Son of a B-word
When Matthew Murdock, Esq. was only Matty from apartment 8F, there was this PSA on most channels in New York at 10 PM asking parents to please remember where their children may be. Jack Murdock wasn't from television-owning people, and none of his gym friends were, neither. If it was ten on a Saturday, and Matt wasn't at home or somewhere on 46th street, it was Matt's own fault. He knew better.
He did, and that worked enough for them. Those times, nobody, no place liked children anyway, and wherever Matt and his friends from his building would go, they were refused or yelled at. It would be so shocking if someone accepted that they loiter, they'd end up offended and running off despite it all. The only place Matt and his friends from the building felt safe was a bodega owned by one of the kids' dad. It was a dirty old place filled with flies and hookers.
Tyler Scotto, a building kid from the first floor told him what a hooker was. Matt liked Scotto, 'cause he was like Matt, but instead of not having a mom, he didn't have a dad. He also tried to teach Matt all the swears, the B word, the F word. By then, Matt knew all of them, he just didn't know they were the elusive B-words and F-words.
When Matt first heard of a B-word he thought it meant Boxer.
"But what does bitch mean?" He asked, trying it out on his tongue. The word didn't fit in his mouth. "Does it just mean, like, a mean lady? Like a broad?"
"No, not at all, it means a female dog," Scotto said, sipping his Pepsi. He was so cool, he opened glass bottle caps by himself. "Are we near yet?"
In 1990, Jack Murdock was just starting to make it with more than the local chumps, and Matt was eight years old, so naturally Matt told most everyone in the building that his dad was a boxer. Not all of them believed it. Scotto's mom, a big woman always wearing big purple dresses, called Matt 'that triflin' little boy' to his face. They were walking down to Fogwell's because of her.
The gym was an avenue and a block, maybe two, over. The gym was an avenue and a few blocks over. There was this big illuminated advertisement on the cross-street right by the gym, Matt's North Star. It could be seen across any slurry of ugly brown cars and coats and street signs.
"Kinda. Do you see that ad?"
"Oh," Scotto said, after a second of Matt adjusting his pointer finger. "That's right next to the train."
"You take the train?"
"Yeah. With my brothers and stuff."
He tried not to show his amazement. "Um. I do, too. My dad lets me go alone too."
"Yeah, right."
The rest of the walk was centered around an argument about trains while swerving past drunk grown-ups. When they huddled together, arguing audacious as ancient Greek philosophers, they imagined themselves older and more contemplative than they looked. It made no sense to them why the older kids didn't want to play dice with them. They both ignored the fact they were too scared to actually go up to the pig-horses-- what Scotto calls the horses policemen ride-- that they spotted. The police gave a mean look.
Matt liked Scotto 'cause he saw his own toughness in him. The other kids were all sissys or kids Matt was only friends with so he didn't have to sit alone when Dad was doing confession. Church friends are lame. Scotto's mom was a dancer and she let him do whatever he wanted. Scotto wore pajamas all day and ate popcorn whenever he wanted. Scotto didn't call Matt Matty.
Once, Scotto boasted that he'd tried beer before. When Matt told him about the swigs of whiskey before fixing Dad's face, he didn't look like he wanted to put his arms around Matt. He smiled and said, cool.
By around ten that night, the two sticky-faced eight year olds made it to Fogwell's. Matt kind of distained that it wasn't fancy like the other gyms Dad showed him, uptown. It was an old hotel, no fancy glass doors or murals on the walls; it got two windows, a wooden door, and brick apartments above it. The only fancy thing about it was how bright it was, all yellow lighting and faded-white yellow walls.
Those bells at the door chimed-- another hotel-y thing about Fogwell's-- and Old Junior, the guy by the desk, smiled at him. Matt looked over at Scotto but he didn't seem to notice.
He lead him back to where the ring and all the chairs and equipment were, and Dad wasn't there. He passed the first walk over as a tour, then he began to actually look for him. No dice. They walked around the ring three times. Round the time Scotto started to squint at him, Matt decided aloud that he's probably showering or pissing. They pulled out sweaty old chairs.
Scotto, playing with his empty bottle of soda, said: "So, does your dad take you here a lot?"
Playing nice. "Yeah," he said with a little too much force. "All the time. I read comics here. My dad's friend buys me them."
"Is your dad's friend also a boxer?"
"Yeah."
Scotto scoffed. Matt was unbelievably offended. This was practically a slight against his character.
"What are you talkin' about? It's true."
"I didn't say nothing."
"Why don't you believe me?"
"I don't know, Matty, it's just that, that when someone says that he or she's dad's a boxer, and he could totally beat your dad up, and whatever, I just don't believe him. Or her. Not for nothing. Just saying."
"But I never said that--" Matt said, before he heard a loud, Motherfucker! coming from the bathroom. Both of them knew to hold their tongues. With his eyes, Scotto asked: did you hear that? Matt nodded.
Do you wanna see? Scotto eyed silently. Matt figured he'd be chicken if he didn't agree.
Tentatively, Matt and Scotto tiptoed to the bathroom, holding the door handle down to keep it from creaking. They peeked with their heads atop one another, and. It's Dad,
beating the shit out of some guy.
"You son of a bitch!" Dad said, sounding angry like he'd never heard before, "Fat fuck. Now, do you want to talk? Nothing to say, huh?"
Red all over the bathroom tiles, unmistakeably, unforgivably Blood. The guy Dad was beating made choked noises, wriggling around like a dying roach, around Dad. His face was red like butcher shop cow. This isn't a boxing match. The guy's on the floor. He can't tap out. It's like TV, but it's Dad. He looked like the devil.
Matt faced Scotto silent as a guilty man, taking his hand, scurrying out of the place, breathing loud. Still, they made sure to close the door silent as they could.
After they got out, trying not to face any grown-ups, Scotto said, "Was that your dad?"
"Yeah," Matt said, raw-voiced, head held low, trying to hide his watery eyes.
He smiled a yellow-toothed grin. "Cool."
2. Sharpshooter
Dad wasn't a drunk, never was a drink-or-five after work type of man, at least Matt never figured it. Though he was a true Irishman till his last bitter day on earth, he hardly drank more than two fingers of whiskey a week. The most he drank was an egg cream he shared with Matt, stirred with a silver spoon. That was all well and true until Matt went blind. Dad couldn't take it.
He heard it loud as anything, searing, stabbing, a pitched mic or guitar feedback, maybe both, maybe real, in his ear and his nose, somewhere, everywhere, in his mind. He heard it so loud and jumbled like blue, black and red wires, heard it enough to almost hear his own brain. He heard it from the news they put on low in his room and from the whispers from Dad, reading a letter aloud: the hospital bills are covered.
Once Matt believed he wasn't losing his mind, he felt relieved. Ever since Matt realised his poor-ness it was all he could think about. An eight year old boy checking over the taxes on a cashier's calculator. His eyes for some money, a deal he didn't like but could take anyway.
Life is a cheat playing three-card monte, is what Matt should have known. The hospital bills didn't cover much, big picture, not enough for Dad to go about his old money habits unaffected.
When Matt wasn't trapped in his head, confused about this input, thinking himself a martyr or a damned soul, he was alone. He'd listen to his own heartbeat, a hectic kind of meditation. Loud in his ears, throbbing, asking, what the hell's happening? He'd listen until he thought he couldn't breathe anymore, until he felt the long, low groan of his stomach.
Dad quit it with the school money (no school, sick leave) and the keep-the-change (can't run to the store no longer), which would be fine if he had time to buy groceries before Matt's blinding. The food lists he made in in those utopic days lay in the trash can, rotting with all the old food with it.
And so metallic canned beans felt like dozens of little worms, and the medicine tasted like the blood inside of Matt's cheek. Ten times worse than before. Bone-sinking hunger, hot ears and cold teeth, his first experience being so hungry. It was a sort of respite, eclipsing the air and radio.
He thought he heard Dad walking up the steps in their building, he thought he heard plastic grocery bags in his hand. Keys in the door, Dad had something unfamiliar on his tongue.
"You're still 'live," Dad slurred. More offensive than any insult, the alcohol from his tongue to Matt's nose. Alcohol, alcohol, his tongue, his collar; sweat, car gas, and blood all over where there was once the saccharine chocolate aftershave Matt used to know.
"Yeah. You didn't bring food?"
"What th'fuck did you say to me?"
"Dad, c'mon. I'm only hungry," he said, but without trying too hard as he knew the Little Bo Peep thing would work no longer on Dad.
He tsked, "Self-righteous little... don't you know how hard it is... to pay f'shit? It's fuckin' hard, Matty. Real hard, for... ah....."
"Dad, I'm hungry."
His breath grew stronger, his voice, louder, so much sound around that only Matt could hear. Sizzling intestines, gastric juices, spinal fluid, he heard every vocal chord pulled apart, the octaves of it, like a million pianos or a hundred men talking at once. "Don't act so uppity, y'ain't no one. You're no one. Understand?"
That was Dad, he wasn't no one, and he didn't try to be no one. He seemed to hate that Matt wanted to be a person of time, that he wanted for his dad to rise above the filth and blood they knew. To Dad it wasn't filth, it was all that life could be.
Matt didn't understand, at the time. "What does that got to do with anything?"
"Boy," Dad said, closer, closer still, grabbing his shoulder hard. "You never get it."
He said, pawing at Matt's face, squeezing hard at his hair, his cheek. This, he felt most of all. It's this kind of perception, pain, that a person can't call upon, tied up in a cave. Matt felt everything was made up but this very real truck-crash of pain.
"Dad, you need to buy groceries," and why he said that, Matt didn't know. A self-punishment for all the pain a child inflicts, and that he did get, he was hurting his own father.
"Shut up," Dad groaned, squeezing harder. "Shut up. I can't... ought to teach you a lesson."
Matt wanted to see his face so badly, at that moment, when he was hitting Matt's head like he's got the answer on Press Your Luck. If his face was screwed up, if he looked pained to do this, if he was somewhere far off, unknowing of what he's doing in real life. No father should want to make a victim of their son.
Well, it hurt enough for the sounds to silence, and all the intensity in New York seemed to funnel into the motorway of Dad's boxer thumbs. Then Matt's world became the blood on the bathroom tile, seeping mindlessly, born and born again through violence. A still pond of blood would surely leak if pressed hard enough. Dad must have really been sick in the mind, and by this action, the sickness would flow to from his heart to his mind by the thumbs on his temples.
The squeezing and the hitting and the pawing, it went on till Matt found some reality in the tears. Dad stopped with a big push, and Matt ran to his little room with clarity of mind and walls.
He heard in himself a voice, maybe sober Dad, maybe Saint Michael, maybe his own consciousness, but it said he was far too old to cry like that. It said, don't wait passively for help, all he had was himself. Though he had discovered this fierce wisdom he had no means of expressing it outside of his nine (and a half) year old brain. Scotto told him that cap guns were dangerous if you knew where to point it.
That was his thought, when he shot that little firecracker at his dad. And he didn't miss. Blindness be damned.
If he meant anything sinister by it wasn't a question that crossed Matt's mind for a year's time. Dad didn't think so. That made the whole memory a joke. He laughed with his head way back as Matt sheepishly dropped the toy gun to the carpet, hobbling his way to him like an old man, taking his son's shoulder in for a hug.
"You're a boy wonder, Matty. How'd you even find that thing?"
3. Mortem
What kind of a fucking cosmic joke is that?
One sad bouquet of bodega flowers, uncles he never met, a priest he don't know the name of, patting him on the back. His grandmother wept in a napkin like she didn't hate Dad's guts. Dad, who once joked and laughed about her; Dad smelling like a corpse; Dad, with that picture of blood everywhere; Dad, dead; Dad sleeping in a coffin in Staten Island, like he wouldn't curse the wretched land.
He felt so old, knowing this loneliness. The winter in his heart, freezing it, he felt cold inside, he felt he didn't understand the sun's yellow warmth nor could he ever see it again. He was destroyed and let down by the one person he had.
Matt's daddy's dead. It made sense, then, that Dad got shot and now he had to be strong and put on a suit and go to a funeral. He and Dad always found new ways to make it alright when it was hard to, so it made sense for a nonsensical life to be uprooted in this way. His whole life was only practice for that moment. Matt thought of himself a comic-book character.
God damn the Murdocks. It was Jack's own fault. Eulogies are never beautifully written for poor men anyway.
4. My Name is Mud
Saint Agnes's wasn't a proper orphanage, not like Saint Nick's in Brooklyn was. It was more of a halfway house for crooked children and teenagers, with overcrowded rooms and a shortage of beds. So when Matt heard his new roommate (cellmate), Patrick whisper to his sick mom over the phone; he wasn't surprised. He felt wronged. There went Patrick "Ponytail" Dixon, calling his mother, then sleeping a bunk bed over in the orphanage.
At the time, Matt was convinced his source of anger and his only issue with Ponytail's existence was his attitude. He was friends with the two other cellmates they had, but not with Matt. He wouldn't make fun of him like some other kids there, but he avoided him like he was contagious. Whenever someone said something sly about blind people while Matt was in the room, Ponytail would go stiff and follow his movements, as if he expected him to blow up like the demon he was.
Matt wanted to blow up, he wanted to shoot to kill, he wanted many violent imaginations to come to life. What Matt had were nuns all around him and a guilty conscience. He had an understanding that no one at the orphanage liked a kid with a mom or a dad.
No one liked the idea of a parented kid in their space, where everyone knew what they knew, had felt what they felt. Orphanage kids spoke with this strange flat lilt, almost like a new form of existentialists, and if someone unlike them copied their accent, their way of life, that person would be hateful.
Parented kids were only there because no one wanted them. Everyone felt this way. The sisters and Father Lantom may have scorned the idea of hating another because of experiences lacked, but that didn't change the kids' minds. Steven Glansburg involuntarily sat alone everyday. Ponytail made fun of the poor fuck with the cellmates everyday. He tricked everyone into believing they weren't the same.
It was pacifist to spread the truth about Ponytail. Love rejoices with the truth, that's Corinthians, God would've been on his side.
When Ponytail pushed him in the hallway, Matt pretended it was no big deal. Asked, "What's your problem?"
"How did you know?" he huffed. Matt relished in Ponytail's discomfort. Now you see, he thought, now you ache like I do.
"How'd I know what?" Matt said, "You know, you can't just push me, asshole, I'm blind. And you sound, like, mentally insane, by the way."
Ketchup so rancid on his breath, all Matt could smell, almost watering his eyes. "How did you know?"
He was proud Ponytail didn't know, proud he had the ability to make this kid he felt so powerless against angry. There was power, a good feeling in the active nature of turning the outrage of one into the resentment of many. A regular Nuremberg.
"What are you talkin' about? Know what?"
Instead of replying, he punched Matt's nose.
And that fatass could throw a punch, like most orphan kids, but Matt didn't expect it from him. And Ponytail, himself, didn't neither, judging by the tears in his eyes and how fast his heart went.
"Matt--"
"What?" Matt asked, furious. He didn't know who he was messing with. Matthew Michael Murdock, three Ms like devil's horns, the boxer's son. If Matt punched Ponytail, he could just have his mom come get him. You don't just punch someone and expect not to get punched back.
So Matt punched.
He punched one, two, three times, his fists, up and down on Ponytail till he's on the floor. It felt better than he had felt in months, years. It felt like vindication, something he was meant to do. He felt he was ridding the orphanage of this stain of a human. It was jubilating.
And it went more times, Matt as the hand of all righteous anger. His ears rang, he knew someone was yelling, but he didn't, couldn't stop. He didn't smell blood yet.
And Matt went, "Do you want to talk now? Huh?"
He felt hands try to lift him up, but Ponytail needed to learn his lesson. You don't push a blind person. You don't lie about your mother being alive. Stupid motherfucker. All his rage and hurt and confusion went into his kicks, and he kicked and he kicked until he got his hair pulled. He then realised where he was.
"Young man," some nun shouted. "What's the matter with you?"
"He punched me," Matt said to Sister Whatever. He was proud. "Can't expect me not to punch back. I'm the son of a boxer, what do you expect?"
Sister Whatever sighed and left him alone. Matt won. And Matt, a child of the American spirit, loved a winner, always played to win, never understood why he'd lose. He won, a blind kid against some older asshole with ketchup breath. He won, and now no one would mess with him again. Not the older kids or the younger kids, not the nuns, who didn't know how to deal with an aggressive blind kid. Punching got him something he couldn't get with words.
King of the bitch jungle, and his prize was a bleeding nose.
5. Visions of Saint Michael
What Matt learned from the Catechism greatly conflicted with Stick's terrestrial teachings. Old Saint Michael was the patron saint of soldiers from Christ's time. Stick thought a lot of thinking from that long ago was barbaric, and that nothing could help a soldier but the soldier's own mind. All that spiritual, esoteric bullshit- he thought was utterly illogical. Stick, the rationalist, infected Matt through blood contamination. Nothing saintly about being a soldier, a rational doctrine. God damn. It made sense.
It could have been the fact it was nearly a hundred degrees the summer of 95, but Matt was starting to see through the irrational dogma of the Catholic Church: self-flagellating and suffering for hopes of pure faith. Why do that? Matt was a student of reason, see, and there was no reason for that when it didn't get him nothing.
What Stick got him was ability and a calm spirit. Stick got him a head that kept itself up and could nod through anything the man said. Stick had this talent for talking his way outta anything but he chose to fight each time, and that was a part of it. That allure, the revelation of Stick. It's like he had the Holy Spirit in him, if the Holy Spirit was an asshole. He made any person second guess certainties they'd been born with.
Matt used to dream of a certain revolution of the mind, a new philosophy, maybe a cult, something that cuts all the bullshit. He'd dream of total delusion, a blind belief he knew he could never truly hold, unaware that the answer was Reality.
Reality held him by the ear after kicking him in the ass, said: you don't have time to sulk. Keep your fists up. Reality said he's not God's special creation, he's a poor chump who has a chance to win in the world. He can finally become Matt despite being told he was but a blind orphan with no chance of being saved.
So in Stick's Special Associate's car, Matt wasn't sulking, he was prepared and eager to fight. This would be the first time he'd fight in a cage. Cigarette smoke all around, the carnival of it all, people betting, sweaty men speaking in foreign languages. He knew it well, memorized the feeling from Dad's fights. Stars in his eyes, he was excited, he wanted it.
Next to Matt, Stick had been eyeing him, in a sense of the word. "You're excited?"
"No."
Stick could make Matt more embarrassed with every syllable spoken, it didn't even matter the content, it was just the scathing tone of his voice. Like it was beneath him to be excited. He didn't like emotion, said it's better if soldiers avoided it. Matt nodded.
"If you win this match, which I doubt you'll do, it'll be beginner's luck. Don't let it get to your head," he said. It only made him want to win more. He was going to beat the hapless fuck in the cage, then he was going to beat the next, and the next, and then Stick; he's going to beat everyone until he gets to the last president or monarch there is, and become the king of the world. Matt was a winner, he won Stick's attention, and he should expect to win the match.
Nervousness came down when they got to the venue, a dirty trap house. He's always seen his life as a long fable, and if he were to lose, it would set the stage for a long hard life, one that's maybe not even worth living. The symbolic value outweighed Stick's approval, something acquired by a struggle much more complex than a fight won.
He wasn't listening to what he should've been, instead focusing on sensation, the only solid ground he had. The room, pungent with blood, held a little girl in it. She had broken ribs and a heartbeat steady enough to tell him that they were from the same people. Her feet were dirty and bloodied but her hands were clean, clutching her midsection. Matt missed whatever Stick said to the door guy because he was staring at the angry little girl muttering to herself. As he walked past, she coughed an insult at him.
Stick lead him to a man who dressed and smelled normal. A bit gruff, but he could be a guy operating a hot dog cart. Not what Matt expected. Most the people he met by Stick's side were normal. It gave him a sort of feeling, like, who wasn't violent? It wasn't what Matt expected, and it made him nervous. He didn't expect Stick to call Matt, Mud.
He didn't expect Stick to leave him alone with the guy. Felt weird.
"Take y'shirt off. Then give me your hands."
He did. The mans hands were grubby, but softer than his. He swallowed at the stench of the hand wrap. Soaked in salty blood and sweat, all new, it didn't take years to accumulate. For a soldier, Matt couldn't stand the smell of metallic blood. When he finished with both his hands, he put his on the back of Matt's neck, a place where no finger should graze.
Matt forced his hand off. "Don't touch me. I can go myself."
"When you hear the beep, you will start fighting. No place is off-limits. Ten minutes, it's considered a draw if there's no knockout or tap-out. Three hits to the floor. Understand?"
"What's the beep sound like?"
The man didn't reply, shoving Matt into the other room. The doors flew open at his entry and Stick was well and truly gone. Not watching, not waiting. He was too hurried to perceive that it hurt. It was him and the man and the other fighter.
Sweaty men, some old, most foreign-smelling, were stood instead of seated, heads turned to Matt. He held his nervousness in his fist and knew what to do with it. Smoke and disease in the air. They cheered, as Matt thought they would, but something about it made him more nervous. Keep your head held high, he heard Stick say. It felt like a reckoning. The other, already in the cage, stood shorter. He could do this.
"5'3, 104 pounds, Mud from Clinton," the man hollered. Matt walked in himself. The other was a fig-smelling boy, about his age, standing like a jiu-jitsu fighter. At the time, Matt didn't know jiu-jitsu from aikido. At this point he felt more nervous than a man who didn't know he was dying.
he sound went, less of a beep, more of a loud ringing, almost deafening him. Exhale.
They lunged at each other like animals, in a hunger for a fight only found in those with no other choice. He was too frightened to focus through the whole dance. His neuroses fought harder against his senses than he did with the other, who vaguely skipped around his consciousness in blinking pulses of confused lumbers. Maybe he did get good punches in, maybe he was wandering in slack-jawed hollowness. Matt was oblivious.
Everything in him screamed for attention, his eyes screamed for him to look, his fists screamed for an order. And it was hard, it was a hard rain upon him. His attention only focused at--
Punched hard, Matt's chin, fuck.
His head whipped up, and in the null, that place no one but him could see, he saw in his eye Saint Michael looking down upon him, clear as the sky above the river of Jordan. Matt's mouth was agape with utter fear. He saw skin morphed with tunic, he saw the divine judgement of a saint unto him like magma dancing on Matt's clay flesh. He saw, yonder, in the face of Saint Michael the Archangel, null. And it was all a big nothing where he thought he saw eyes and lips. And it was all a big nothing, closer, closer yet.
As if discovering a new muscle he forced himself back into consciousness.
On the floor. He lost, and that was that. Somewhere, opaquely outlined, they stood ridiculing him.
On the floor, Matt lay asking Stick, Saint Michael, someone, to help. No one. He should have been thankful Stick wasn't there to add to the embarrassment, but Matt wanted him there. He felt, at last, the hunger in his stomach, the days in which he didn't eat because he was training, the days in which nobody noticed his absence in the orphanage. All the sisters looked away from the bruises on Matt's face. He was all alone in New York. He was a regular destitute chump, a son of a bitch, a heartbeat too stubborn stop, an orphan with no hand to help him off the floor.
So he got up himself, wiped the blood off his face, and stumbled out the cage.