Mornin', Little Man.

The way Mam said Little Man always made me feel good. It was a good way to start the day.

Why s-s-s-s-do you think these three words s-s-s-s-go together? Student. Servant. Seller.

Mam took a while to answer. She always tried to give me her best answer even though I could come up with some strange questions.

I reckon each can be a person.

What s-s-s-s-else?

They all starts with the same sound.

There's s-s-s-s-another word that s-s-s-s-goes with s-s-s-s-them. I'll find it out s-s-s-s-Friday.

Who you finding all this out from?

Mam was already out of bed. She could go from sleeping to wide awake faster than anybody. It wasn't time to tell Mam about Mr. Spiro. I had to sort things out a little more before I shared my new friend with her.

A s-s-s-s-friend ... in my s-s-s-s-head.

Mam knew that meant that I wasn't ready to talk about it.

When's Mr. Rat comin' home?

s-s-s-s-This Sat.u.r.day. When I s-s-s-s-collect Friday s-s-s-s-night I'm done.

You worked right hard on Mr. Rat's route. I'm proud of you.

I looked at Mr. Spiro's three special words again.

When I got the fourth word I was going to cellophane-tape all the pieces together and have a full dollar bill. I would always keep it in my billfold and never spend it because I knew the words were somehow more important than money. A plain dollar would buy a malted milk and a Baby Ruth at the drugstore. Mr. Spiro's dollar bill was meant for something more important.

Mam went to my parents' bathroom to put on her Sunday clothes even though she wasn't going to morning church. Mam would never take me to her church on Sunday mornings because she said that was when the preacher talked to the grown-ups. But we would go to the singing part that night. My parents took me to church sometimes but the people never seemed to be having as much fun as they did in Mam's church.

When I came down for breakfast Mam had on her black dress with a white collar under her ap.r.o.n. Her lips and eye were looking better but her puffy nose still made a whistling noise when she breathed.

Make us toast, Little Man, whilst I finish the bacon and eggs.

s-s-s-s-Do you want it s-s-s-s-cut?

You knows we do.

My job was always the toast because I liked to b.u.t.ter it after it came out of the toaster and then cut it on the bias like Mam had taught me. Bias was a word I thought a lot about but had never been able to say. Even with a truckload of Gentle Air. Bias has only four letters but my dictionary says it has five different meanings. If you get right down to it talking is more complicated than people think. One little word can mean five different things. Once I filled up a whole page of notebook paper by typing BIAS because I liked it so much. When I showed the piece of paper to Rat he said I was losing my marbles.

Mam and I were sopping up the last of our bacon and eggs when she said she hadn't seen my newspaper bags inside the back door where I usually left them.

I got that heavy feeling and bad spaghetti taste in my mouth again. I tried hard not to act out of sorts but Mam knew something wasn't right with me.

I had put down the bags in the alley the day before when I was trying to find something to poke into Ara T's shed door.

s-s-s-s-Left them s-s-s-s-under some hedges ... s-s-s-s-maybe.

I could tell Mam knew I wasn't telling the whole truth but she let me get away with it.

s-s-s-s-Need to go s-s-s-s-g-retrieve them ... s-s-s-s-p.r.o.nto.

I tried to walk out the back door and down the back drive like everything was hunky-dory but when I got to the street I took off running like I was stealing second.

I didn't slow down until the corner of Ara T's alley. My side was hurting and I thought my breakfast might come up. I leaned against a fence to get my breath and to try to calm down. Ara T's shed was about three houses from the corner of the alley. I peeked around a fence to see if the bags were still there on the ground. All the garbage cans in the alley had been moved around since the day before. The bags were gone. I eased forward for a closer look. Nothing.

When I got back home and told Mam that somebody must have taken the bags she asked first thing if I had seen Ara T hanging around where I had left them. I shook my head. Too hard and too quick. Mam gave me that extra long look of hers but I knew better than to open my mouth about anything else.

I would have to ask Rat's mother if I could borrow the extra bags that Rat kept at his house. Losing the bags was not a good way to start my last week on the route.

Knowing that Ara T had something else that belonged to me stuck in my mind and it would be the devil to get it unstuck.

That Sunday afternoon I figured that reading might help me stop thinking about Ara T so I got my Babe Ruth book and went to the back patio. I got more interested in the book after reading that Babe Ruth started out as a pitcher instead of a right fielder.

As I turned a page a granddaddy longlegs spider climbed on the arm of the Wicked Chair and then onto my book. I watched it do its herky-jerky crawl all the way across my open book and then onto the other arm of the chair.

I had gone with Rat to his grandparents' farm last summer where his cousins showed us how to play a game with the granddaddy spiders we always found in the hayloft. The cousins would pick up a spider by one of its legs and ask: Granddaddy Granddaddy which way'd the cows go? If it pointed with one of its legs they would put it down and let it walk away. If it didn't point they would smush it in their hands.

I never played the game with them because I knew I could never say two Granddaddys in a row and at the right time. Rat's cousins thought I was just afraid of spiders.

I picked up the granddaddy longlegs from the arm of the chair and walked over and put it on one of my mother's rosebushes. I liked the funny-looking spiders and was glad I had never smushed one even though it made Rat's cousins think I was a sissy. I made sure I busted Rat's cousins with a dirt clod every chance I got.

When I went back to reading my book a word in the middle of a paragraph almost jumped off the page at me. Unknown.

I had seen that word on my birth certificate and wasn't sure what it all meant but I knew I was going to have to change up my way of thinking about the man who I thought was my father.

I ran back over to the rosebush to try to find the spider. I was going to pick it up and whisper as best I could. Granddaddy Granddaddy. Which way'd my father go?

I wouldn't have smushed the spider no matter if it pointed or not. But the spider was long gone.

The only time on Sunday I could get my mind to be still was when Mam and I were at her choir practice that night.

Somebody had hurt Mam and she had been quiet and moving slow all week but she was smiling when she sang with her choir about angels with wings and about going to heaven. Seeing Mam happy always led me into a calmer way of thinking. I sat out on the wooden benches so I could watch Mam. She mostly kept her eyes on the man who was leading the choir but she smiled every time she looked over at me and I gave her back a good smile.

I thought about how Mam never got to go on trips or do anything special because she was always taking care of me and cleaning my parents' house and washing clothes and sewing on b.u.t.tons. When she did get to leave for a few days she came back with her face all busted up.

On the ride home on the bus I tried to trick Mam into telling me who hit her by asking if it was a sin to get mad at somebody because they had hurt you. All she would allow is how a Vengeful Heart didn't do anybody any good.

Another question I had been wanting to ask Mam came to me. I knew part of the answer but it didn't make any sense.

s-s-s-s-Why do they s-s-s-s-make you ride in the s-s-s-s-back of the s-s-s-s-bus?

We can ride up front if you's wanting to.

I knew that bus drivers would let Mam ride in the front as long as I was with her but that sounded even more stupid.

s-s-s-s-I like to s-s-s-s-ride in s-s-s-s-back but the s-s-s-s-rules don't make sense.

Rules is rules. Don't mean they don't need changing but best to abide by them till they is changed.

I know a kid is supposed to respect grown-ups who make the rules and also respect G.o.d who knows how everything is supposed to work but I couldn't get over the feeling that neither one of them was doing a very good job.

Thinking about somebody hurting Mam and then remembering all the stupid rules that Mam had to live by just because of her color made going to sleep a hard job. I guess I had a Vengeful Heart because I could feel it busting like when the stuffing came out of an old baseball.

I put my pillow on top of me to give it a hug but that trick didn't work anymore.

Chapter Twelve.

My parents had left extra money for the week so Mam asked me if I wanted to ride the bus to the Overton Park Zoo.

I didn't like going to the zoo as much as I did when Mam first started taking me but I knew she still enjoyed it.

Mam could get into the zoo for free after noon on Wednesdays if she wore her white uniform and went in the gate with me. She couldn't go to the zoo on any day that she wanted to like I could. More silly rules by grown-ups.

We waited on a bench for the No. 5 Crosstown. I didn't beat around the bush.

Why s-s-s-s-can't you s-s-s-s-go to the zoo when you want?

They wants us to be a pair, Little Man. And you know I likes to go with you.

s-s-s-s-Do you s-s-s-s-think it's right?

Not my place to be thinking right or wrong.

s-s-s-s-Don't you get s-s-s-s-mad?

I could tell I had asked Mam a tough question. She was having a time coming up with an answer so I helped her.

I s-s-s-s-get mad when s-s-s-s-kids laugh at me 'cause I s-s-s-s-can't help how I s-s-s-s-talk.

Do it help to get mad?

s-s-s-s-No. s-s-s-s-But I can't help it.

I was going to pester Mam some more with questions but she stood up when she saw the bus coming two blocks away. Mam didn't like to talk about certain things. I guess I didn't either but it was starting to come to me that not talking about something didn't make it go away. The doors to the bus unfolded.

Where you want to sit?

I didn't mind sitting in the back but it seemed to me that it was time for Mam and me to sit up front. I plopped down on the first seat and Mam slid in to the seat beside me. I watched the bus driver to see if he would say anything to us but he kept his eyes straight ahead.

Mam's favorite thing to do at the zoo besides watching the peac.o.c.ks with the long tails prance around and squawk was to sit on a bench near Monkey Island and watch the monkeys play on trees made out of concrete with fat ropes hanging between them. Somebody who knew what monkeys needed put old rubber tires on the island for them to roll around in.

Mam made up her own names for the monkeys like Mush Melon or Mr. b.u.t.terbean so we could talk about what they were doing. When one of the big monkeys chased a little one with a stick to take a piece of watermelon rind away I told Mam that we should name that monkey Ara T. I thought that would make her laugh but she told me not to name monkeys after real people even if it was that no-count Ara T.

Mam knew a lot of the other colored ladies walking around the zoo looking after kids. Most of the ladies wore white uniforms and carried parasols even though they knew it wasn't going to rain. Mam told me how women carried parasols to keep the sun off their heads. The ladies would wave and nod to Mam and call her Miss Avent or Miss Nellie and she would call them Miss Something or Other. Some of the ladies were from Mam's church but they didn't act the same as they acted in church. At choir practice the ladies laughed out loud and joked and cut up but they didn't laugh much when they were in their uniforms at the zoo hanging on to white kids. Mam was the only lady who didn't change. She was Mam all the time no matter who she was with or what she was wearing.

Some of the ladies Mam talked to couldn't have seen her since she got her face busted up and I kept expecting one of them to ask her how it happened or at least how her face felt but not one of them said a word about it. It made me think that they all somehow knew what happened but everybody kept a zipped lip.

We were watching people feed the giraffe when Mam caught an older kid who was by himself trying to feed Mr. Longneck a wadded-up paper cup instead of a handful of giraffe food that you could buy for a nickel at a gumball machine close by. The kid kept waving the cup in front of the giraffe trying to make it stick out its long tongue and take the cup so Mam reached over and jerked the cup out of the kid's hand before he knew what happened.

Mind your own business, old woman.

The kid took a step toward Mam but she put the cup in her handbag and took a step toward him.

You'll not hurt G.o.d's animals with me watching. You best be off.

The kid was bigger than Mam. He started not to move but Mam was staring him down and letting him know she wasn't going anywhere. Then he called Mam a bad word.

He said it under his breath but we both heard it. I don't know if I could ever say the word because it started with a hard N sound. But I know I never would try. Mam gave him a long look. I felt my right hand opening and closing for a baseball to throw. She stared him down until he had moved on a far piece from Mr. Longneck.

s-s-s-s-Sorry he said that.

Names is all it is. Don't mean nothing.

Mam watched the boy until he turned the corner at the zebra pen and then she dropped her head down and snapped her handbag open and shut a few times. She didn't like being called that word.

s-s-s-s-He's a dumb ...

I couldn't think of how to finish the sentence so I just let it disappear in the air.

Besides the kid calling Mam the bad word he had also called her Old. He would have known better than to call her that if he had seen her last summer when I had gotten stuck in a storm drain near my house.

I had crawled down in the drain to get a ball Rat had thrown over my head. The drain was slimy and I couldn't climb out. The more Rat tried to pull me out the deeper down I slipped. When Rat couldn't budge me he started yelling for neighbors to call for help. Before the fire trucks and police cars could get there Mam had gotten down on her belly and jerked me out of there like I was a puppy dog. The kid trying to hurt Mr. Longneck had been smart to move on.

On the way out of the park I told Mam that we had enough money to get our picture made at the photographer's booth near the ice cream stand. She said for me to go ahead and have mine done if I wanted. When I kept pestering her she told me that the people in charge at the zoo wouldn't allow her to have her picture made with me.

I decided I could stand my ground too. If there was anything good about being a kid who stutters it's that sometimes people felt sorry for me because they thought I had a simple mind and they did things for me they wouldn't do for somebody else.

I went up to the guy that ran the booth and told him that Mam was going to have to go back to her home in California and I needed a picture to remember her by because she had nursed me back to health after me being about to die. I stuttered up a storm when I was telling the tale and didn't even have to make up what kind of sickness I had or why Mam had to come all the way from California. The guy took it hook and line and sinker as Rat liked to say.

I wasn't too proud of using my stutter to trick the guy but it seemed to me every now and then I should be able to get some good out of it.

The man even asked if we wanted to wear some of his costumes he had hanging on the wall so I told Mam to take off her little black hat and I swapped it for a big floppy hat with peac.o.c.k feathers. I put on a black cowboy hat that came down over my ears. Just like the bad guy in Shane wore. The photographer man strapped a double holster on me with fake six-shooters.

Mam looked at us in a mirror.