Part 15 (2/2)

He just be growing up, Mrs. V. Don't worry 'bout him. He's gonna be fine.

My father came into my room after he had finished unpacking. His right hand dug into the front pocket of his suit pants.

Is the bank open on Sat.u.r.days?

I opened my desk drawer and watched him dump in a week's worth of loose change.

How did your week go, son?

s-s-s-s-Hot. s-s-s-s-But okay.

How about the collecting?

He didn't ask the question just to be talking. I could hear the real question in his voice.

s-s-s-s-Everything worked out okay.

Hard work deserves a bonus ... and I believe you have a birthday soon.

He pulled some folded paper money out of his front pocket and took a twenty-dollar bill from the top. He stuffed the bill into my billfold. He didn't see Mr. Spiro's taped-together dollar in the secret compartment.

Wow. s-s-s-s-Thanks.

I started thinking Ara T had missed a pretty good payday by just a day. Twenty bucks would probably have kept Ara T in whiskey and Vienna sausages and red onions for a good long time. Then I remembered I wasn't supposed to be thinking about Ara T.

My father picked up my ball glove from my bed.

Rain's about stopped. How about some pitch and catch before dark?

I knew the last thing my father wanted to do after flying his plane all day was pitch and catch with me. I wasn't much interested in throwing ball either. I still felt empty with all my tears gone. But I pretended that pitching ball was just what I wanted. So both of us ended up doing something we didn't really want to so we could make the other feel good.

We put on our ball gloves and started throwing in the back driveway trying to keep off the wet gra.s.s.

I had been coming around to a new way of thinking about the man playing pitch with me.

If he had been the man that made me with my mother then he would have had to be a father to me no matter what. Even if I stuttered or looked like the Lizard Boy on the midway at the Mid-South Fair. But since my father wasn't the one who made me with my mother he could have said I wasn't of his doing and he wouldn't have had to raise me or make time for me. It seemed I owed him a lot more than I owed somebody who I didn't even know. I wasn't sure I even wanted to learn anything about the other man because he didn't want to know anything about me as far as I could tell. I figured there was a good chance that he didn't even know he had a part in making me.

My father on the birth certificate might have been Unknown but the tall man throwing ball with me in his white s.h.i.+rt with his necktie stuffed between the b.u.t.tons was my father as far as I was concerned. He got his s.h.i.+ny dress shoes muddy when he stepped in the flower beds to get a ball. He always tried to do about everything in the world for me and he didn't even have to if you wanted to be official about it.

The speech teacher my parents hired had told me that stuttering was what happened when a person tried extra hard not to stutter. I wondered if that was why I stuttered around my father more than anybody. I could tell he worried about me and I wished I could get over my stutter for him as much as for me.

I picked through a couple of words that started with an easy H so I wouldn't have to hiss out a bunch of Gentle Air.

Handle some hard ones?

You bet, son. Let me have 'em.

Then I did something strange. Even for me. I threw my father four good pitches without him even having to move his glove so much as an inch. With each throw I called out one of Mr. Spiro's four words.

Student.

Servant.

Seller.

Seeker.

My father put his hand to his ear after I made the last throw.

What's that?

s-s-s-s-Just some s-s-s-s-good words.

Looking back I guess I was trying to tell my father about the four special words in the best way I could think of. If Mr. Spiro's words were going to help me to figure out things that I needed to do then maybe the words would help me pay back my father for being so good to me. I had it in my mind that if I put each word on a ball and sent it flying straight to him that my father would have them forever the same way I would have them in my billfold.

I know it sounds stupid but I'm glad I did it.

Chapter Twenty.

The best thing about junior high school is that I get to change cla.s.srooms for every subject.

My math teacher told us on the first day that we'd be working with Unknowns. It doesn't seem fair to pile more Unknowns on top of all the Unknowns I already have. But that's the seventh grade for you.

On the second day of school Rat was in the cafeteria line with me when I saw the meat was Vienna sausages wrapped in bread. The menu on the blackboard called them Pigs in a Blanket. I told Rat I wasn't about to eat one.

Why?

Just s-s-s-s-can't eat s-s-s-s-those things.

Why not?

s-s-s-s-They look like s-s-s-s-dog t.u.r.ds in a s-s-s-s-blanket.

Rat told another guy at our table what I said and the guy sneaked up to the blackboard and erased Pigs and wrote in Dog t.u.r.ds. Soon every guy in the lunchroom was laughing and woofing like a dog. Not me. I didn't want to think about Vienna sausages anymore.

I've only walked down the alley behind Harbert one time since school started. The door to the secret shed was leaning up against the fence and everything was cleaned out down to the smallest piece of junk. I wondered if the rats ate the red onions.

I didn't go to the Mid-South Fair even though Rat and Freda wanted me to win a big stuffed animal for them on the midway by knocking over milk bottles with my throws. Rat has started dating Freda except he calls it Going With Her. I think that's funny because Rat's father has to take them everywhere they go.

Rat thinks Freda is some kind of a hot tamale even though she's lived three doors up from him all his life and he never paid much attention to her before. Rat said Freda wanted me to start calling him Art and she wants him to get rid of his crew cut and start growing his hair long like Elvis did before he left Memphis last year and went into the Army. Rat said I should grow my hair long too and I told him I would keep my crew cut because I had plenty of things to think about instead of combing my hair all day.

I've started spending time with TV Boy in the afternoons when he gets home from his special school. His mother taught me how to say a few words with my hands but TV Boy and I don't really need to talk when we're around each other. We like to look at baseball cards and play Pick-Up Sticks since we're both pretty good with our hands.

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