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My Daddy’s Accordion

My daddy’s accordion was his second set of lungs.
The first was for breathing,

He played it every night
between Jeopardy and his bedtime medicine.
He named it “Darla.”
Said it was the only lady
who never done him wrong
or maxed out his credit card.
Only thing that never
judged him after the incident
with the neighbor’s dog.

Daddy ever talked much,
but when he played,
his heart spilled out
like gravy on mashed potatoes.

He’d pull it tight like a hug,
this from a man who only showed emotion
at war memorials and Bass Pro Shops.

I used to fall asleep
to the sound of its beautiful,
soulful wheezing
and had to turn up
the Braves game on the radio
to drown it out.

When he played “Lady in Red”
on the back porch
with a Diet Dr. Pepper between his knees,
even the cicadas went silent.
Even Grandpa muttered, “Lord.”
Even the embers from the grill flared up.

It smelled like leather,
forgiveness,
and left armpit.

It was red once,
shiny as a cherry in love,
but over time, it faded,
like everything else in our family.

At Grandpa’s funeral,
Daddy played “Ave Maria”
on the front porch
because the church wouldn’t allow
outside instruments to be played inside
by people with visible tattoos.
He cried right into the bellows.
I remember the night Mom threw her meatloaf
at the fridge and called him
“a sentient barnacle with poor credit.”

He didn’t argue.
Just strapped the Darla  to his chest
and played “Achy Breaky Heart”
so slow it felt like a eulogy
for all things misunderstood.

That Sunday
Mama left
with the plumber from church,
he didn’t say a word.
Just opened the case,
strapped it to his chest like an emotional defibrillator,
and played “Mandy” till the raccoons cried.

At his funeral,
we placed the accordion
gently on his chest,
but the casket wouldn’t close –
the modifications cost too much.

We played a tape of him playing
over the loudspeaker in the fire hall.
Someone said it sounded like a dying robot
trying to get out of a well.
I said it sounded like love.
They nodded, out of respect.
or a lack of anything better to do.

Now, Darla sits in my basement
next to the treadmill he used once,
a painting of Elvis he bought in Branson,
and a box of commemorative Dale Earnhardt plates.

Sometimes I go down there,
lay my hand on her faded cherry red,
and swear I hear Daddy say,
“Don’t let the world change your key, son.”

Which never made much sense.
But Lord, it gets me every time.

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Tom Busillo’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, trampset, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He is a Best Small Fictions nominee and the author of the unpublishable 2,646-page conceptual poem “Lists Poem,” composed of 11,111 nested 10-item lists. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.