Paperboy.

Vince Vawter.

To the memory of my father, Vilas V. Vawter Jr.

Chapter One.

I'm typing about the stabbing for a good reason. I can't talk.

Without stuttering.

Plus I promised Mam I would never tell what happened to my yellow-handle knife. Mam might say that typing is cheating but I need to see the words on paper to make sure everything happened the way my brain remembers it. I trust words on paper a lot more than words in the air.

The funny way I talk is not so much like fat pigs in cartoons as I just get stuck on a sound and try to push the word out. Sometimes it comes out after a little pushing but other times I turn red in the face and lose my breath and get dizzy circles going around in my head. There's not much I can do about it except think of another word or keep on pushing.

The lady my parents hired to show me how to talk is teaching me to use a trick she calls Gentle Air which means letting out a little of my breath before getting stuck on a word. So when I feel like I'm going to have trouble saying a word I try to sneak up on it by making a hissing noise.

s-s-s-s.

When you're eleven years old it's better to be called a snake than a r.e.t.a.r.d.

Some days if I've gotten stuck on a bunch of words at school I'll come home and put a piece of notebook paper in the typewriter that someone from my father's office brought to our house a long time ago and forgot to take back. The same one I'm typing these words on now. I peck out the words that gave me the most trouble for the day. My hands know where the letters are and I don't have to think up different tricks to help me push out a word.

I like the sound the typewriter key makes when it smacks the black ribbon because it's always the same. I never know what kinds of sounds are going to come out of my mouth. If anything happens to come out at all.

Just so you know. I hate commas. I leave them out of my typing any time I think I can get away with it. My composition teacher said a comma meant it was time for a pause. I pause all the time when I'm trying to talk whether I want to or not. Humongous pauses. I would rather type a gazillion ands than one little comma.

I type so much in my room that the white letters are wearing off the typewriter keys. But the key with the comma on it looks brand-new and it can stay that way if you ask me.

Mam came to Memphis from Mississippi when I was five to live with us and help take care of me and one thing's for sure. I wouldn't have made it this far without her.

Mam's real name is Miss Nellie Avent. My mother told me to call her Miss Nellie but that didn't work for me because of the N sound coming after the M sound. Mam was as close as I could come to saying her name and she allowed as how that suited her fine.

She said that we made a good pair because she couldn't write very well and I had the best handwriting she had ever seen for a little man. That's what she called me from the first day that she came to live with us. Little Man.

Mam is my best friend in all the world except when it comes to playing ball and then Rat takes over. His real name is Art.

He had it written in easy-to-read letters on his catcher's mitt on the first day of third grade but I had to nickname him Rat because the A sound wasn't going to come out of my mouth that day without giving me a bunch of trouble. He allowed as how Rat was okay with him and that made me like him from the start. He didn't even look like a rat but he understood quicker than most kids that Rat was the best I could do on his name because of the easy R sound. Mam calls him Mr. Rat which always cracks me up.

My stuttering probably makes me the best nicknamer in Memphis.

One of my hard baseball throws busted Rat in the mouth on the last day of sixth grade. That's the reason I told him I would handle his paper route for July so he could visit his grandparents on their farm outside Memphis. I didn't much want to take on the route but I thought I owed it to Rat for busting his lip. Rat says I show off too much with my hard throws and I guess he's right and I needed to pay for it.

The paper route was where I met all the new people in my life and where all the bad stuff happened. And some good stuff too. At least I think it was good. I'm still trying to figure all of it out and I'm hoping that putting the words on paper will help.

I knew I would like the throwing part of the paper route because throwing is what I do best. Baseb.a.l.l.s. Rocks. Dirt clods. Newspapers. Anything.

But it was no big secret that the thing worrying me the most was collecting the money for the newspapers each week on Friday night. The idea of going up to a house and ringing a doorbell was swelling my insides. The reason I hate talking to people who don't know me is because when they first see me I look like every other kid. Two eyes. Two arms. Two legs. Crew-cut hair. Nothing special. But when I open my mouth I turn into something else. Most people don't take the time to try to understand what's wrong with me and probably just figure I'm not right in the head. They try to get rid of me as fast as possible.

The best thing I could do when my insides got nervous was talk to Mam who lives over the garage in back of our house.

From our kitchen I saw that her light was still on. I knew she was probably reading her Bible except she really didn't read it as much as just look at it. She had taught me to say the twenty-third psalm with her and she would move her finger along the sentences but it never came out exactly even with the words we were saying.

I climbed the steps and knocked my special knock on her door. The one that sounds like Shave and a Haircut Two Bits.

What you want, Little Man?

s-s-s-s-Need to s-s-s-s-talk.

We'll talk a spell but then you have to get back on to the house for bed.

Mam knew that collecting for the paper route was a heavy weight pushing down on me but she also knew that I liked to beat around the bush before talking about something important.

s-s-s-s-Do you ever have a s-s-s-s-feeling that something bad is s-s-s-s-going to happen?

Some, Little Man. Where I growed up in Coldwater we had an old man who made a livin' out of telling the future.

s-s-s-s-Tell s-s-s-s-bout him.

This old man with a curly white beard told the future by pitching animal bones and then paying mind to how they landed. Folks said it was blasphemy to heed that beardy old man but he never told me wrong.

What s-s-s-s-did he s-s-s-s-tell?

He told me my elder brother was going to come to harm. That summer my brother John drowned in Coldwater Creek with not a teacup of water in it.

How s-s-s-s-did he s-s-s-s-drown?

n.o.body knows. The doctor said they was more water in that sweet boy's lungs than in that ditch.

I finally got around to telling Mam that I thought I would like the throwing part of Rat's newspaper route but the collecting part on Friday nights was messing me up on my insides.

I'll go collectin' with you.

s-s-s-s-Need to s-s-s-s-do it on s-s-s-s-my own.

You be growing up, Little Man. I's proud of you.

Mam said she had to do a little more cleanup in the kitchen and that she would go back to the house with me. I knew the only reason she said that was because she wanted to make sure I didn't get too down in the dumps.

My father's Buick was coming up the drive as we went in the kitchen door. Mam waited for him and held open the door when she saw he was getting his big briefcases out of the backseat.

What you think about Little Man's paper route, Mr. V.?

My father looked at me and smiled.

I'm sure he'll throw those newspapers as well as he throws a baseball.

I had told my father earlier that I thought I might take on the route and he said it was good that I was going to help out a friend.

Mam and I went up the back stairs and down the hall past my mother who was putting white stuff on her face and things in her hair like she always did at night at the dresser in her bedroom.

Good night, sweetie.

I started to say good night back but I got stuck on the hard G and I knew if I ever got the G out the N would also give me trouble. So I just kept on walking down the hall to my room with my breath stuck in me and not feeling like fooling with a bunch of s-s-s-s tricks seeing as how it was at the end of the day and I was tired.

Mam put my dirty clothes and towels down the laundry chute when I had finished in the bathroom and then came to my room. She patted my foot when I got in bed and turned out the light on her way out.

Mam had stopped giving me goodnight kisses on the top of my head a long time ago without me asking. You never had to tell Mam what you were thinking like you did with regular grown-ups. She always knew on her own.

Chapter Two.

On the first Monday of the route the regular carriers started getting to the newspaper drop a little before three o'clock.

I already had the two Press-Scimitar canvas bags hanging on a wooden fence in the alley like Rat had showed me.

Most of the carriers were about my age but a few grown-ups had routes which kept the kids from horsing around too much. I knew some of the guys from school but most were from parts of town I didn't know.

An older boy in cutoff jeans and a black T-shirt spread out his bags on the fence next to me.

Where's Art?

s-s-s-s-Gone ... for s-s-s-s-July.

He looked at me funny. I was saying in my head that Rat was taking off the month of July so he could spend it on his granddaddy's farm. That's what I was thinking but I had to choose words that felt like they had some kind of a chance of coming out of my mouth. I always picked my way around words and sounds in sentences like I walked around broken bottles and dog t.u.r.ds in alleys.

Where's he gone to?

Saying grandparents' wasn't going to work. I could feel the G sound balling up in my throat when I just thought about saying the word.

Farm.

The word came out of my mouth without much of a pause or a hiss because I could slip up on the F sound if I went at it just right.

What farm?

Just then the white Press-Scimitar truck rolled into the alley and the back door opened. I moved to the truck to get the first bundles so I wouldn't have to keep talking to the kid.

With all my bundles in one spot I pulled out my yellow-handle knife to try to cut the heavy cords around the papers. The knife had a long single blade that was so dull I could close it on my finger and it wouldn't cut me. I had been meaning to have it sharpened because I didn't want to spend extra time sawing through the bundle cords and I didn't want anything slowing me down. Soon I had all my papers folded extra tight.

I had gone with Rat so many times that I was sure I knew all the houses but just to be safe I had his route book in the back pocket of my shorts.

In the part of Memphis where I live all the street names are sunk in the concrete on every corner in nice blue tile. I know all the streets but I like to read the name in my head each time I come to one. Vinton. Harbert. Carr. Melrose. Goodbar. Peabody.

The streets are like friends that I don't have to talk to.

The teacher my parents hired to help me talk had given me some drills to work on during summer recess. She explained that I had extra trouble with words that started with a B sound or a P sound because those words meant I had to put my lips together and let the air build up a little inside my mouth.

She said the problem was that my lips tightened like a clenched fist and the air couldn't get through. The more I tried to say words that started with B and P the tighter my lips would close up on me.

My plan for practicing the drills was to try to say a hard word just before I threw a paper on a porch. It was a kind of a game choosing the words and then hearing them come out of my mouth as I chunked a Press-Scimitar.

I had picked out a good word to say at the next house on Harbert. The two-story was white brick with thick hedges growing up over the porch railing. I didn't want to take a chance on throwing the paper in the tall bushes so I walked up close to toss it underhanded and in a normal voice I said Pitch.

A chain on a porch swing clanked and soon a lady in a green housecoat was standing at the top of the porch steps with one hand on her hip and looking straight at me. Her other hand held a gla.s.s with ice in it. She had long red hair that was piled up on her head every which way. Her legs were spread out wide on the porch like she was taking a lead off first base. The way she was standing didn't let the flaps of her housecoat cover her up like they should have been doing. She wasn't wearing shoes.

What did you call me, young man?

I felt like turning and running but my legs wouldn't move. Much less my mouth. The lady walked down the porch steps.

I heard you call me a b.i.t.c.h.

I stood in the yard shaking my head side to side.

Don't shake your head at me, young man, and tell me you didn't.

She moved toward me with the gla.s.s in her hand. She swirled the gla.s.s around and around which made the ice cubes clink. I had never seen her before even though she only lived a few streets over from me. I couldn't remember the customer's name from Rat's route book.

What's the matter with you? Can't you talk?

The red-haired lady stared and made sure that I knew she wasn't going away until I gave her an answer.

s-s-s-s-Just s-s-s-s-p I had made a mistake to try to say practicing. A bad P word for me. I started over.

s-s-s-s-Just s-s-s-s-rehearsing saying s-s-s-s-words.

My answer was so soft I wasn't sure she heard me.

What? Rehearsing? Calling me a b.i.t.c.h?

My head kept shaking from side to side like one of those brown toy dogs in the back windows of cars.

s-s-s-s-Not what s-s-s-s-I said ma'am. Sorry.