I wanted to tell him that big muscles didn't have anything to do with throwing. That it was the way a person used the muscles that he had. But there was no way I could ever figure out a way to say all those words without using tons of Gentle Air.

The grown-ups drank wine from fat bottles wrapped in little ropes and talked about business and houses and other stuff that didn't mean anything and they laughed at what the other one said even though it wasn't funny. They left me alone eating little sticks of hard bread and drinking lemonade that was sour because all the sugar was caked in the bottom. I knew with my parents talking to their friends there was a good chance that they would forget to order for me. I couldn't stop worrying about it as the waiter went around the table in his white coat with a towel on his arm.

I decided that since my parents were making me eat with all the grown-ups I was going to order something I liked no matter what. Spaghetti.

The S sound would be easy enough for starters but the P sound that backed it up would give me a problem for sure. Just before the waiter got to me I figured out how I could change Spaghetti to make it come out of my mouth easier. That was a trick I used sometimes when I only had to say one word and when I could feel the word getting stuck in my throat ahead of time. The word would only have to be changed a little to make it come out and that was better than tossing a knife or fork in the air to start my word because somebody could get hurt if I did that.

It was my turn. The waiter stood over me with his pencil and pad.

And what for you, young man?

Shplishghetti.

The word had seemed okay when I was going over the sound changes in my head but it sounded first-grade stupid when I said it out loud. The waiter smiled like I had told some kind of a joke. The woman at the table sitting next to my mother laughed. Her husband had been lighting cigarettes for her all night like she was too dumb to know how to use a Zippo. When she blew smoke out of her mouth she would lift her head and blow it up in the air like she was proud of herself.

Your son is such a daw-w-w-w-ling.

The woman put extra Ws in the word like she was trying to make it up to my parents for laughing at me.

My face felt hot with everybody staring at me like I was Clarabell the Clown on a stage without a horn to honk. The burning in my face and neck wouldn't go away. The grown-ups finally stopped looking at me and started talking and smoking and drinking their wine like everything would be hunky-dory if they just ignored me.

I didn't feel like eating when the waiter put the plate of spaghetti in front of me but I figured there wasn't anything else to do. My face was still burning and I was hoping the spaghetti might calm me down.

The spaghetti didn't taste good when I put it in my mouth but I kept eating it just so I would have something to do. I started eating more bread sticks and drinking the sour lemonade to get rid of the bad spaghetti taste but it just got worse.

Spaghetti. Wine. Cigarette smoke. Zippo fumes. Perfume. All the smells in the restaurant started to glom together inside my nose. I got dizzy like the night on Mr. Spiro's porch. The spaghetti wasn't going to stay down for much longer and there wasn't anything I could do to stop it. My eyes felt it coming.

My mother looked at me like I should do something quick but my mouth jerked open before I could grab the red cloth napkin in my lap. Spaghetti and everything else inside me-the whole shootin' match as Rat liked to say-was set free with an air that wasn't the least bit gentle. I let go all over the table.

My parents and their friends jumped up to try to get out of the path of the flying spaghetti. Waiters started running around with towels and mops and my mother began apologizing to everybody and saying they needed to get me home because I probably was Coming Down With Something.

The Something I Was Coming Down With was the same thing I had been coming down with every minute of my talking life.

My parents tried to have a conversation with me on the way home but I didn't have anything to say. They knew when to give up. I sat in the backseat and watched all the people on the streets of downtown Memphis. At the bus stops. At the train station. Sitting on porch steps. They were all talking. Talking up a storm. I couldn't get out one simple word without ruining everybody's night out.

When we got home I went upstairs to brush the bad taste out of my mouth and get in bed even though it was only eight o'clock. It was hard to get the restaurant out of my head and then I started feeling even worse that I had messed up supper for everybody. They hadn't done anything wrong. My parents and their friends should have been able to eat at a restaurant if they wanted to without getting spaghetti spewed all over them. Even the woman who laughed at me and didn't know how to use a Zippo.

I decided the right thing to do was to go downstairs and tell my parents I was sorry. I also needed to see if Mam had put anything in the icebox before she left because my stomach was growling and telling me it needed something in it where the big pile of spaghetti should have been.

My mother and father were talking in the breakfast room as I eased down the back stairs. I sat on the landing step to hear what my mother was saying.

His therapist said that stammering is likely generic but no one in my family stammers.

I think you mean genetic.

My father was all the time correcting my mother on her words. She would get close to the right one but close doesn't cut it when it comes to words. And she always had to say that the way I talked was Stammering. Maybe it sounded better to her than Stuttering.

My father spoke again.

I wish he wouldn't pretend that he doesn't have a stutter. He needs to realize it's not something he should be ashamed of.

Do you think his therapist knows what she's doing?

She came highly recommended from the school, didn't she? She seems ...

I didn't want to hear any more talk about me.

When I tiptoed back up the stairs I knew I had heard something important but I couldn't figure out exactly what. I kept going over what my mother said about stammering not running in her family and that made me wonder if stuttering ran in my father's family. And why he didn't say anything about that.

My mother said I could have whatever I wanted when I came down for breakfast the next morning but I told her that cereal was fine. She asked me if my stomach was feeling better.

s-s-s-s-It's o-s-s-s-s-kay. Sorry for s-s-s-s-last s-s-s-s-night.

Don't worry. Everybody gets a bug now and then.

Stuttering is not a bug. AND I DIDN'T JUST COME DOWN WITH SOMETHING. I screamed the words inside my head but that was where they stayed.

I crunched my cereal as hard as I could so the sound would take the place of the talking in my head. My mother sipped her coffee and turned the pages of the morning newspaper.

They've announced the lineup for the Mid-South Fair. It'll be here before you know it. I guess you'll want to go this year again with Art.

I nodded.

I don't know if I approve of the aurora of the fair ... I mean aroma ... Oh I don't know what I mean.

I nodded.

She probably meant the Aura of the fair and I didn't have any problem with it. I liked to throw b.a.l.l.s at the lead milk bottles because I could usually knock them over and get a prize. Rat and I would walk up and down the midway and try to figure out what was in all the sideshows. We stood in line last year to get into the hypnotist's tent. We were going to tell the Great Something or Other to put me under a spell so I could talk right and then Rat wouldn't let anybody clap their hands to snap me out of it. But we chickened out when it came time to go in because Rat said the guy might make a mistake and turn me into a barking dog.

After breakfast my mother said she had to go to one of her meetings at the country club and that I should stay in my room and read since Mam was still gone.

s-s-s-s-Where's Mam?

She called this morning to say she needed a little more time off. She deserves it, don't you think.

I nodded.

From the kitchen I watched my mother get in her car and back it down the driveway. She stopped at the street and reached into her handbag for a cigarette. She pushed in the lighter on the dashboard and rolled her window down. She put the lighter to her cigarette and then blew the smoke out the window.

My mother had told me at the beginning of the summer that she had stopped smoking and made me promise that I never would start. I knew she hadn't quit because I could smell it on her clothes. But I didn't care if she smoked or not. My father smoked and he never made any bones about it.

I headed upstairs.

When I pa.s.sed my parents' bedroom I noticed that one of the doors to the big closet was open a few inches. Most closets in the house were small but my father had paid some men to knock a hole in the wall and turn the smaller bedroom next door into their closet. It was so big that it had two doors going into it. I was not allowed inside because that was where my father kept his shotguns for hunting. I felt creepy going in but I did anyway. I pushed the light switch on and closed the door.

I remembered once seeing my mother get out a big round hatbox she kept in the closet. It had a bunch of papers and pictures in it and I could tell by the way she handled them that they were special to her. I had been meaning to take a look inside the box ever since and I decided that the right time had come.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of mothb.a.l.l.s. My mother put mothb.a.l.l.s everywhere. In all the closets. In all the chest of drawers. In the attic. A moth would be committing suicide if it came near our house.

My father's suits were lined up on one side and my mother's dresses on the other. My father's guns were standing up in the corner in a long rack that had a lock on it. I saw the big hatbox on a high shelf. I piled some suitcases on top of one another and climbed up to get the box.

The first batch of papers I came to was all my report cards from the first grade on. Tied up with the report cards was a letter to my parents from the school princ.i.p.al with Private written on the envelope in red ink. I knew what was in the letter. It had to do with the time after the first grade that the princ.i.p.al said I was reading and writing like a third grader or even a fourth grader which meant the school would let me skip a grade but he didn't think I should because of the way I talked. My mother went to see the princ.i.p.al and told him with me sitting there that he had better not hold her son back because letting me skip a grade would show her friends that I was just as smart as their kids even though I couldn't talk right. Before I knew it I had been moved up to the third grade.

Next in the hatbox was a thick book with heavy black pages full of photographs. My father was in a bunch of the pictures. He was easy to pick out because he was so tall and thin and had blond hair.

I went through the rest of the papers and folders as fast as I could. Just a bunch of diplomas and newspaper clippings and other stuff with my father's name on them. At the very bottom of the box I came to a brown envelope without any writing on the outside.

Inside was a small piece of paper that said "Birth Certificate Of" and the name written in longhand was "Baby Boy." The date on it was my birthday. My mother's name before she got married was written in at the bottom of the paper on the left beside MOTHER. On the right side next to FATHER was a word I wasn't expecting.

Unknown.

I put everything away in the box like I had found it and went to my room to lie down on my bed and start some serious thinking.

When I heard my mother's car in the driveway and the car door close I slipped out of my hard thinking and ran to the big closet to make sure I had turned off the light and shut the doors.

Both closet doors stood open and the light was on which let me know I had been in there for sure and I wasn't just dreaming about what I had seen. I turned off the light and fixed the doors like I had found them and ran to the bathroom to run water in the tub. I didn't usually take a bath that early in the day but I decided I smelled too much like mothb.a.l.l.s.

Chapter Eight.

I probably get over things that hurt faster than most kids. I don't have much of a choice seeing as how my stuttering hurts me so many times during a day.

Rat has a big scar on his left arm from the time he crashed his bike trying to ride down the concrete steps at Crump Stadium. He tells anybody who listens about how the doctor had to sew sixteen st.i.tches in his arm. He likes to show off to guys and make girls scream by sticking a safety pin in the scar. He says he can't feel the pin but I can tell he's careful not to push it in too far.

I used to have my own secret trick but I used a thumbtack instead of a safety pin. If I knew I was going to have to read or recite in cla.s.s I would keep a thumbtack in my hand and push it into my palm when I started to talk. I kept hoping the pain would make me forget about stuttering but it never did. I decided it didn't make much sense to keep sticking myself and I got tired of always having a b.l.o.o.d.y hand when cla.s.s was over. You can't replace one hurt with another one. You just end up with double hurts.

Walking the paper route each day gave me time to think about what I had found in the closet.

Here was the toughest part to figure out. If some other man and my mother got together to make me then why did I like being around my father more than my mother? I liked to talk to my father a whole lot more than I did my mother. My father never seemed to mind that I stuttered so much. He even said when I turned thirteen he would be buying me a shotgun and he wanted to take me hunting with him and his friends. I knew he was always tired when he got home from work and he really didn't like to pitch and catch much but he always took the time to do it if I asked him.

Finding out my father was Unknown answered one big question. I had always tried to figure out how I could have such a good arm on me when my father threw so soft. Almost like a girl. I had always wondered if I was going to be tall and thin like my father when I got older. I guess I knew the answer to that question unless the other man who made me was tall too. But I didn't have the first notion of who that man was or if he was short or tall.

I thought so much about what I had seen in the closet that week that I would come to the end of my route and look down in my newspaper bags and wonder where all the papers had gone. But I don't think I ever missed a house because I never got a complaint. My arms and legs could do things without my mind knowing about it.

Friday morning my father surprised me by saying he was going to take off work that afternoon and we could have lunch anywhere I wanted and then take in a matinee.

I told him I had to be at the paper drop by three o'clock and he said he would make sure I got there. We checked the paper and the only movie time that worked out was a western called Shane playing at the Crosstown Theatre. He said he saw the movie years ago when it first came to town but it was good enough to see again and he thought I would like it. He said for me to be ready at noon. We would eat at Britling's Cafeteria and then go to the movie.

At noon I was waiting on the back steps with my newspaper bags when my mother came outside to tell me that my father's secretary had called to say that he had gotten caught in a meeting and was running late. My mother said she would fix me a pimento cheese sandwich for lunch and then my father and I could go straight to the movie.

s-s-s-s-Could I have just s-s-s-s-cheese?

You can't have a pimento cheese sandwich without pimentos in it.

I wanted to tell my mother that Mam never put pimentos in my cheese because I thought the red specks looked like pieces of gla.s.s but sometimes it was easier to eat gla.s.s than explain things to my mother.

Mam wasn't at home to fix my lunch because she had called to tell my mother that she needed a little more time off. I couldn't remember the last time Mam had been gone more than one night. Something didn't feel right that she would be away for so long without me knowing where she was.

My father's Buick screeched into the driveway about the time I swallowed my last piece of gla.s.s. He motioned for me to jump in.

I'm sorry about lunch, son. The meeting was important.

I nodded.

I wanted you to have a nice lunch of your choosing. I know the dinner the other night wasn't much fun.

I nodded again. I thought about saying that eating gla.s.s wasn't too much fun either.

Your mother and I are proud of you for taking on Art's paper route. It shows how responsible you're becoming.

I nodded and then thought my father deserved more than a nod for what he had said.

s-s-s-s-Thanks.

When the movie was about half over I whispered to my father that Shane was going to ride into town and take care of the bad guys so that the mother and father and their boy could be safe on their farm even though Shane was in love with the boy's mother. I don't stutter as much when I whisper so I was able to say all that without much trouble. My father slapped me on the knee and whispered back.

How'd you know that?

I smiled at my father. Sometimes I could see endings to movies in my head like the beardy old man in Coldwater could see what was going to happen to Mam's brother.

When the lights in the theater came on my father said we had to hurry so I could start my route on time. I didn't say much when we got in the car because I was working on a question. It took a lot of planning ahead on the words.

s-s-s-s-Do you think the s-s-s-s-boy looked more like his s-s-s-s-father or like Shane?

I guess his father. Why?

s-s-s-s-Do boys always s-s-s-s-look like their fathers?

More often than not ... but it's not always a given.

I was looking out the windshield but I felt my father glance over at me when he said it wasn't a Given. I thought about asking him if Shane could have been the boy's father because it was plain that Shane had an eye for the mother but then I started getting confused about what was in the movie and what was in the story in my head.

We got to the drop about the same time as the newspaper truck.

Made it right on time. Don't forget your bags in the back. I enjoyed the movie.

s-s-s-s-Me too. s-s-s-s-Thanks for s-s-s-s-taking off work.

Next time we eat out it will be at Britling's. I promise.

My father pulled his car out on Bellevue and headed back downtown toward his office.