Go give Big Sack his three dollars.

When I went in the entrance hall Big Sack was standing at the front door that was mostly gla.s.s. His body blocked out the light coming in. I opened the door and handed him the three dollars. I was about to close the door when he took his hat off.

Reckon I could speak to Miss Nellie?

Sure. I'll s-s-s-s-get her.

Mam was finishing up the pancakes in the kitchen.

s-s-s-s-Big Sack s-s-s-s-needs you.

Start b.u.t.tering your cakes. I be right back.

I was pouring syrup on my pancakes when Mam came into the kitchen. She sat down at the table across from me and gave me one of her straight looks that meant she had some business with me.

You been talkin' to Ara T?

I s-s-s-s-loaned him some s-s-s-s-quarters to s-s-s-s-buy- Mam usually let me finish my sentences no matter how long it took me but she was ready to get on to me but good.

You know you're not supposed to be hanging 'round that man.

s-s-s-s-I ran in-s-s-s-s- to him in s-s-s-s-alley and- Don't you be running into him. You hear me? You best be running the other way.

s-s-s-s-What's so s-s-s-s-bad about Ara T?

We're not talking 'bout that man no more. You stay away from him. Far away.

Mam hardly ever talked down about anyone but she never had anything good to say about Ara T. I asked her once if she had known him before she came to Memphis and all she said was As Little As I Could.

The first thing Mam would do if anything went missing in the neighborhood was to say she was going to check out Ara T and his junk cart. The reason I have my new Schwinn Black Phantom is because my old one with the big shiny headlight on the handlebars was stolen one night when I forgot to roll it in the garage. A while later Ara T showed up with a pushcart with new wheels on it. Mam said she checked the cart out but the wheels and tires didn't look like the ones from my stolen bike. Mam said that didn't mean Ara T couldn't have swapped wheels with another junkman from another part of town. Mam said she trusted Ara T about as far as she could heave him.

I pitched two innings that morning until the umpire called off the game because of the wet field. No one had gotten a hit off me yet so stopping the game usually would have bothered me but I had the paper route on my mind.

The newspaper truck came at one o'clock on Sat.u.r.days. Two hours earlier than the other days. The rain had slacked off to a drizzle.

While I was waiting on my bundles I saw Ara T a few houses down in the alley where he was checking garbage cans. There was no mistaking Ara T's cart with everything from broken toy guns to old car mirrors fastened to it. An old doll's head was tacked to the front. The handles of the cart were wrapped with different kinds of wire and cord.

I walked up to Ara T and stood by the metal garbage cans he was picking his way through. I was going to get my knife back and then I was going to mind Mam and stay away from him.

s-s-s-s-Got my s-s-s-s-k ...? My ... s-s-s-s-k ...? s-s-s-s-Got my s-s-s-s-yellow handle?

He didn't turn around even though I was sure he had heard me. I stepped closer and changed to a louder voice.

s-s-s-s-You s-s-s-s-got it?

Still not paying any attention to me he rooted around in one of the cans he had already gone through. Then he swung around and gave me a mean stare like a teacher did when somebody was acting up in cla.s.s.

Can't have it, boy, till you calls it what it is.

I smiled at first because I thought he may have been just kidding with me but any time Ara T came close to smiling you could see his gold tooth. I didn't see any gold. He was puffing on his crooked cigarette and trying to make like I wasn't there.

s-s-s-s-Do you s-s-s-s-have it?

Told you, boy. Can't have it till you call its name proper.

Ara T moved on to another bunch of cans behind the next house. Still not looking my way. I stood in the middle of the alley with my newspaper bags in my hand. Ara T wanted me to say Knife. I didn't know what game Ara T was playing but I didn't like it. I thought about yelling KNIFE at the top of my lungs because I never stuttered when I said words in a yell.

But Ara T moved on down the alley.

The carriers had started leaving on their routes. I waited until everyone was gone and then took my bundles over to my bags hanging on the fence. Picking my way along the alley I found an old tin can with a jagged top that wasn't rusted too bad. I twisted on the top until it came off and then took it to my bundles to start sawing on the heavy bundle cords as best I could. I decided I should have just kept my knife because even a dull knife that wouldn't cut b.u.t.ter was better than using the top of a tin can.

I knew if I told Mam that Ara T had my knife and wouldn't give it back that she would search him out and get my knife back in nothing flat. But I couldn't tell Mam I had talked to Ara T again. Anyway. If I was going to be collecting and handling the route on my own then I needed to start figuring how to solve my own problems.

Throwing papers wasn't any fun in the yellow raincoat Mam made me wear but I wasn't in so much of a hurry because it was Sat.u.r.day.

More people were out on their porches on weekend afternoons and they gave me some big waves when I threw their papers that slid right up to their doors. I figured the route would take me to only a little after three o'clock.

On Vinton I walked up to the house where I had made my first collection the night before. The father and mother and a little girl were sitting in chairs out on the porch. Instead of making a throw I skipped up the steps to hand the paper to the father who had tipped me a nickel. As I pa.s.sed the screen door I took a quick peek inside and there was TV Boy with his face stuck in front of the screen with the sound turned off just like the night before. How could TV Boy be so interested in something that took him away from the world like that? I could sit in front of my window sometimes and get lost staring out into s.p.a.ce but the tiniest noise would usually bring me back to earth.

The times I sat down and watched television I found myself thinking about everything except what was happening on the screen.

Like on The Howdy Doody Show. When Howdy Doody was talking to Buffalo Bob I would forget what they were saying and start pretending that I was a puppet and wishing that somebody would pull the strings to make my mouth move so I didn't stutter. One time I didn't hear my mother when she came into the room and I was moving my mouth up and down like Howdy Doody with my hands over my head like I was pulling the strings. It must have scared her because she grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and told me never to do that again.

My favorite person on the show was Clarabell the Clown. He couldn't talk but all he had to do to answer a question was honk the horn on a box he wore on the front of his clown suit. Buffalo Bob always knew exactly what Clarabell was saying with his horn. I could usually tell myself by the way he honked. I could tell if it was a quick happy honk or a long sad honk. Sometimes if I've had a bad stuttering day I'll start thinking how good it would be if I just had a horn to honk. Me honking the horn all the time would look stupid but not as stupid as some of the things I did when I tried to say words.

I stopped watching The Howdy Doody Show when I started playing baseball. It was better for me to spend time practicing my pitching instead of figuring out how to honk like a clown.

The drizzle had almost stopped when I got to Mr. Spiro's house on Vance. I couldn't tell if he was home because there was never a car in the driveway and he usually kept his front door closed even in the summer. I wanted to thank him for taking care of me after I bit into my lip trying to say my name but I really didn't feel like standing in that same spot again on the porch. Whenever I stuttered a lot in a certain spot I tried never to stand there again.

A good idea came to me. I would write him a short note and stick it inside his Sat.u.r.day newspaper.

The only piece of paper to write on was a blank page from Rat's collection book. I sat down on a stoop across the street and sharpened the point of my pencil by rubbing it back and forth across the concrete. The page was small so I wrote in my smallest hand.

Dear Mr. Spiro, Thank you for helping me when I did that dumb thing last night. I like the way you talk to me. Thank you for the piece of that dollar bill you gave me.

Your Subst.i.tute Paperboy I put the page from the collection book into the fold of Mr. Spiro's newspaper and laid the newspaper on the porch in front of his door.

Mrs. Worthington's house was going to be the last house on my route for the day. Just the way I had planned.

A blue Ford I had never seen was in her driveway but it was worth taking a chance on ringing the bell. If she came to the door I had figured out a way to say that I was collecting for the night before when she wasn't at home. My pencil was in my hand in case I needed to make another emergency pencil toss to start a word.

I rang the doorbell and waited and was almost ready to leave a newspaper and walk on home when I saw somebody through the thin curtain over the gla.s.s door. He looked at me for a bit from back in the house and then walked to the door and opened it.

Help ya?

The man had a cigarette hanging from his lips and was in his stocking feet. I had only seen Mr. Worthington once or twice and he had always been in a suit and tie but this guy didn't look like Mr. Worthington. Then I saw that his name was Charles because it was on a patch sewn on to his dark blue shirt. He had slicked-back black hair and long sideburns. Rat would have called him a Greaser. I started to ask if Mrs. Worthington was home because I needed to collect for the paper but I decided the fewer words the better knowing how my luck was going and being that my lip was still a little puffy. I held out the newspaper for him.

He looked at me funny but opened the screen door and took the paper. His hands weren't exactly dirty but they looked like my hands after I had put a chain on my bike and then tried to scrub the oil off with washing powder.

Thanks. Uh. I'm Faye's cousin. Just helping out with a few things.

He closed the door while he was still looking me over.

If that Greaser Charles was Mrs. Worthington's cousin then I was a monkey's uncle. When grown-ups lie to kids they don't even try very hard. They think we're too dumb to know the difference. I didn't care who he was or what he was doing there. Then I thought about it more and decided that maybe I did care.

The only thing good that came out of me ringing that doorbell was learning that Mrs. Worthington's first name was Faye. That was a good name for me. That would be a Half-and-Half Word meaning I could probably say Faye about half the time without stuttering. Of course I could never call her Faye to her face but it was a good name in my book just the same.

I finished the route early and didn't know what I was going to do the rest of the afternoon when I saw Ara T pushing his cart across Melrose into the alley between Harbert and Peabody.

Mam liked to say that Ara T only had two speeds. Slow and slower. The cart jangled and rattled as he made his way to a bunch of garbage cans. The more the cart rattled the more the neighborhood dogs barked.

A second good idea for the day came to me.

Ara T would have to knock off from his junk collecting sometime and I could follow him at least until it got dark and maybe get to see where he kept his cart. He had to keep it somewhere at night. If he wasn't going to give me back my knife then I might be able to come up with a way to take it when he wasn't around.

The first thing I had to do was stash the yellow raincoat that made me stand out like one of those crossing guards at school. It wasn't raining and the raincoat was too hot anyway. I stuffed the yellow coat and one newspaper bag into my second bag.

I remembered the thick privet hedges around Mrs. Worthington's porch. That would be a good place to hide my bag. I could never get Rat to call them anything but Private Hedges even though I spelled out Privet for him. He told me not to be always worrying so much about words. But I did.

I went back to Mrs. Worthington's and pushed the bag under the hedges snug up to the porch. I sat behind the privet next to the porch which gave Ara T time to get up the alley a little ways. Being close to Mrs. Worthington's porch made me feel special like somehow I belonged there.

Following Ara T wasn't going to be easy because he was always looking up and back and to both sides when he was collecting junk. Ara T had a steady routine. He would push his cart up to a bunch of cans behind a house and take off all the lids first thing. He would then start picking through one can and put junk from that can in another one that didn't have as much in it. He would go through all the cans one at a time like that. I'll say this. He was neat. He put whatever he wanted in his cart then put the lids back on all the cans like he had found them. He didn't throw stuff around like you would think a junkman would do. Anytime he found a whiskey bottle he would hold it up and shake it. If it had even a little whiskey left in it he would put the bottle in a wooden crate in the back of his cart.

I let Ara T get about a dozen houses ahead of me and then I started creeping down the alley behind him.

Rat sometimes made me watch a detective show on television where this guy with a moustache named Boston Blackie would follow people around but they never saw him even though he was creeping only a few steps behind them in leather street shoes. Not even tennis shoes. Even a kid has enough brains to know that you can't follow somebody like that without them seeing or hearing you. I knew I was going to have to be careful following Ara T.

Every time Ara T would push his cart up to a bunch of cans I ducked behind a fence or into a garage that opened out to the alley. He looked back down my way a few times but I made sure he didn't see me. This went on for a long while. The muscles in my legs started hurting from scrunching behind so many cans.

Ara T didn't miss one can. Other than whiskey bottles he collected a few old shirts and a pair of old brown dress shoes and something that looked like an old toaster with a long cord. He also picked through magazines when he found a stack and put a few in his cart. He managed to grab the head of a wet mop that was hanging over a high fence and then hid the mop under the canvas tarp in his cart.

It was getting late and almost time to head back to Mrs. Worthington's to get my newspaper bags when Ara T stopped in back of a big three-story house that faced on Peabody. In the back of the house was a garage and some smaller buildings connected by a solid wooden fence that was taller than the other fences.

Ara T reached down to the bottom of the fence and pulled something out sideways that looked like a big nail. He did the same thing at the top of the fence. He then reached in his cart and got out what looked like an old car antenna. He stuck the antenna into a small hole in the fence and jiggled it. A big door screeched open. He took the handles of his cart and backed into the opening. The cart looked like it barely fit but then the door creaked to a close.

Without a handle or a k.n.o.b the door looked like it was part of a plain fence. When I eased up closer I saw that it was probably the door to an old coal shed. I had found where Ara T kept his stuff.

My newspaper bags and raincoat were where I had left them under the hedges at Mrs. Worthington's house. I crawled up to the porch to get the bags and that was when I heard the sobbing.

I knew it was Mrs. Worthington because I also heard the ice in her gla.s.s clinking. She wasn't very far from me on the porch swing but it didn't sound like she was swinging. She was crying like when a girl falls off a playground ride and she isn't really hurt but just keeps on sobbing under her breath.

There was no way I could prove it but I knew Mrs. Worthington was crying on account of Greaser Charles.

I couldn't make myself leave Mrs. Worthington even though I couldn't figure out anything to do to help her. My legs were cramping again from squatting under the hedges. About the time I was getting ready to crawl out and head home a gla.s.s crashed on the concrete floor of the porch. I thought I would hear Mrs. Worthington get up from the swing but I didn't hear her moving.

I waited longer and listened harder. After a while lights started coming on at houses on both sides of Harbert. I pushed my newspaper bags from under the hedges with my feet and crawled out thinking I should just head on home but instead I gathered up my bags and eased around the corner of the porch. The blue Ford was gone. I climbed the steps.

Mrs. Worthington was lying on the swing with her head resting on one arm stretched straight out. She was wearing her green housecoat. Same as the first time I had seen her. I could smell the whiskey from the broken gla.s.s. She didn't have on shoes and she wouldn't be able to stand up without cutting her feet so I squatted down and started picking up the bigger pieces of gla.s.s one at a time. After putting them in a little pile beside the front door I brushed away the gla.s.s slivers with my newspaper bags.

Mrs. Worthington didn't move.

The other times I had looked at Mrs. Worthington it was her eyes and mouth mostly that I paid attention to but now I could see her skin was about as white as skin could get. As white as a new baseball right out of the box.

Talking is hard for me but listening and looking when you know things aren't the way they should be can be hard on me too.

I wanted Mrs. Worthington to get up from the swing and talk to me. Even ask me a question as long as it wasn't what my name was. I wanted to know why she was crying and if Greaser Charles had been mean to her. I wanted to see her pretty mouth move even if she didn't have on her red lipstick. I wanted to see her eyes looking at me again like she was glad I was standing in front of her. I wanted her to try to close the flaps of her housecoat. I looked at her until my neck started tightening up on me from being in one spot for too long and then I picked up my newspaper bags and shook out the gla.s.s slivers over the railing of the porch.

Mrs. Worthington squirmed a little and then moaned but she didn't wake up.

The first part of the way home I walked with my bags under my arm and then I took off running. I ran from lamppost to lamppost without stopping like I was running the bases. I touched each concrete post with my hand. I had always liked the big posts with the big gla.s.s globes sitting on top like a tall hat but when I wasn't feeling right inside the lampposts were like first bas.e.m.e.n trying to tag me out.

At the last lamppost before I got to my house I made sure I stopped to catch my breath.

After I brushed my teeth I went to my parents' bedroom to tell them good night but my mother was at her dresser talking on the telephone to one of her friends about New Orleans. She blew me a good-night kiss. I went to find my father but he was in his office downstairs talking on the phone that he only used when he wanted to talk to people about what they should do with their money. No one in the house was supposed to answer my father's office phone except him and that was okay with me. My mother always said that I would as soon pick up a snake as a telephone and she was right about that. The only newspaper comic I didn't like was d.i.c.k Tracy because he talked on that phone on his wrist all the time.

Mam came into my room to pick up clothes and towels and tuck me in. She asked me why I had been so quiet after supper and I told her I was just thinking about the paper route and how I could change it up so I could finish it quicker each day. She didn't much like my answer. I can't lie very well when there are a lot of words to say or things to explain.

If I could have told her the truth I would have said that my mind was bouncing back and forth between Mrs. Worthington and Greaser Charles and Ara T and Mr. Spiro the way the pinball in the machine at Wiles Drug Store bounces off all the different colored lights. The pinball wouldn't stop.

Chapter Five.

On Friday morning during the second week of my route I pitched the first inning in a practice game and then the coach told me he was taking me out because he wanted our team to get some fielding practice and that wouldn't happen if I was on the mound for the whole game.

When the coach said things like that it made me feel like I was a somebody instead of just a kid who couldn't talk right.

A guy I had nicknamed Racer had taken Rat's place as my catcher. He had to stick one of his mother's washrags inside his mitt so my hard throws wouldn't hurt his hand. Racer came over to me in the dugout.

You don't need to be throwing so hard in a practice game.

s-s-s-s-Only way I s-s-s-s-know how.

And why do you call me Racer?

I had to come up with something quick.

s-s-s-s-'Cause you run s-s-s-s-bases so fast.

Racer looked at me funny because he was one of the slowest guys on the team but at least it gave him something to think about besides talking to me.

I missed Rat every time I had to talk to somebody who didn't know me but it didn't do any good to think about Rat because I would just miss him more.