“What’s up?” Joel asked.
“You have a ccccccredit card, don’t you?”
“Yeah, why?”
Buck handed him six fives and ten one-dollar bills. “Bbbbbig favor,” he said.
“What’s this for?”
“I wwwwwant you to b…buy something online for me.”
“Must be pretty darn secret, you coming to me.”
“Sorta. I know for sure DDDDDad and M…Mom wouldn’t get it for me.”
“What the heck is it?”
“A headlamp. T…to wear in the dddddark.” He showed him the picture he’d printed out on Joel’s computer.
Joel pulled away from him a little and looked him over.
Before he could ask any more, Buck said quickly, “So I d…don’t have to hold a flashlight…you know…rrrrrriding my bike at night.”
“Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to buy a light for your bike?”
“Yeah, but…if it was on my head, I cccccccould use it other t…times too.”
Joel shrugged. “Well, I don’t see why Dad or Mom would care.”
Buck nudged his brother’s arm. “D…do they understand why you wwwwant to join the navy?”
This time Joel grinned. “Okay. Right. I’ll send for it. It’ll come addressed to me, but you can open it when it gets here.”
Later that night, however, when Buck was working on another Pukeman comic strip in his room, Joel stopped in the doorway.
“Hey, Buck. I started to place that order for you, and that model’s discontinued. You want to choose another one?”
Buck spent the next fifteen minutes in Joel’s room, looking at other headlamps on the computer, and finally chose a less expensive model. With the money he saved, maybe he’d get some really good knee pads later on, with Velcro fasteners.
He sat on the edge of Joel’s bed as Joel typed in the new model number.
“Okay,” Joel said finally, when Order received came on the screen. “They say it’s on back order, but that we should receive it in ten days to two weeks. Okay?”
No, but Buck was learning patience. He would have liked it to come tomorrow. He would have liked it to come tomorrow with everyone out of the house, Katie included—nobody to see him ride off with his backpack and everything he could possibly need in the Hole. And he would like tomorrow to be one of those incredible days where things went exactly the way they should.
“Tomorrow” was not that kind of day. In fact, it rained for the next two days. Both mornings Buck woke not to a blazing August sun, but to a gray sky, with air so heavy with moisture he could almost drink it. He was sweating before he even got out of bed. Finally, like it happened every year when summer was almost over, Gramps consented to turning on the air conditioner and leaving it on for the rest of the month.
“Never needed it when I was a boy, and you can’t tell me the weather’s changed all that much,” he’d say.
They humored him because it was, after all, his house, his land, and when you came right down to it, they were his tenants, even though they were family.
Buck had been spending more time with Nat, not only because his parents might think he was off with Nat the next time he disappeared for a day, but because he really liked him. Not as much as David, maybe, but for different reasons. David made him laugh. Nat kept him guessing about what he’d come up with next.
Now, with the water high after the rains were over, the boys decided to hike beside the swollen river that ran through the forest behind the sawmill and disappeared again into the mountain. They left their bikes in a thicket and teetered along the bank, trying not to fall in. Nat carried a sturdy stick for balance and used it to poke and prod at debris trapped among tree roots or washed up between the rocks.
As Buck watched him jam the long stick into the ground between himself and the water, and use it as a vaulting pole to leap across a crevice in the bank, he looked for a stick of his own. When he found one, Nat took out a pocketknife and carved one end of it smooth for a handle. Buck was impressed.
“You always ccccccarry that in a pocket?” he asked.
Nat rubbed his thumb over the handle and whittled a bit more. “Just stuff that’s useful. That and my cell phone.”
“Yeah?” Buck pulled out his own cell phone and flipped it open so Nat could see it. No service, it read, and they both laughed. Not surprising, here in the forest.
They continued tramping, Nat in the lead, one or the other stopping now and then to prod a toad or flip over a rock or study a branch with berries.
“You g…going to tttttry for a job at the carnival?” Buck asked him, wiping one arm across his forehead.
“I’d like to,” Nat said over his shoulder, “but I’m helping my cousin finish his basement. We’ve got it mostly done except for the walls.”
Buck plodded along, following the blue jeans in front of him. “Yeah? When d…do you think he’ll ggggggget it done?”
“I dunno. Needs more plywood, then some paneling. Depends when he gets enough money.”
For just a moment, Buck’s foot hovered above the ground before he slowly put it down. He didn’t want to think what he was thinking. Didn’t even want to imagine that he and Nat could be having this much fun, and then…he might find out….Not that Nat was in on it. He was trying to figure a way to phrase his next question without sounding suspicious. And perhaps, because they went so long in silence, Nat finally broke it with, as always, a question Buck didn’t expect: “Have you always stuttered?”
“Ummm, yeah. I guess.”
“Do you care when people ask about it?”
Did he? It happened so seldom he wasn’t sure. Generally, people just looked away. Talk about it, Jacob had ordered.
“Naw. Nnnnot really.”
“ ’Cause I don’t care if you do,” Nat continued. “Stutter, I mean. I just…sometimes…when you’re trying to say a word, and I know what it is, I want to help you along.” He was still talking with his back to Buck, but he slowed a little.
“Huh-uh.”
Nat glanced over his shoulder. “No?”
“Wait and mmmake me s…say it.”
“Really?” Nat started to grin. “But that could take all day.”
Buck grinned too. “So…tough,” he said, and poked Nat with his stick. For a minute or two, they had a mock sword fight with first one stick, then the other breaking in half, and they had to look for others.
Buck wasn’t offended by what Nat had said. In fact, it felt good to talk about it, even that little bit. There was so much more he could tell him. What he was really thinking about, though, was Nat’s cousin and his basement and the plywood he didn’t have. He didn’t want to suspect, but he did.
•••
Buck recognized the handwriting even before he turned the card over.
Standing at Jacob’s mailbox, he saw the postcard on top of the little pile of bills and circulars, and the blue ink and the large J and W of Jacob’s name gave it away.
Dad, it read, in big letters. Please! Jim and I are so sorry, but we’re hurting too. Johnny misses his grandpa. Please let us try to make this up to you in any way we can….
Buck stopped reading because he was almost up the driveway to the house, and he shouldn’t have been reading it in the first place. Only ten days ago, Jacob had handed him another unopened envelope, which he’d marked Return to Sender and had asked Buck to put it in the mailbox for him.
When the door opened, Buck thrust the mail into Jacob’s hand as he went inside, and if Jacob saw the postcard, he gave no sign.
“New assignment,” he said as they took their usual places in the living room. “Homework. Every day, you are to go up to somebody—anyone but family—and start a conversation. Someone on the street, someone at Bealls’. Even if it’s just to say, ‘What do you think about the weather?’ ”
“Ssssssome days the only p…people I see is family,” Buck told him.
“Then you make a phone call you wouldn’t have made
before. But I want to know about each one—how it went. And don’t make something up or I’ll work you twice as hard.”
Buck believed him.
When the session was over, Buck did his usual chores for Jacob. This time he changed the sheets, put one set in the washing machine, took out the trash, and washed the dishes in the sink.
“Anything else?” he asked when he’d finished.
“That’s about it,” Jacob said, and then, as Buck headed toward the door, he handed him the postcard, and Buck couldn’t help but see that in red marker, Jacob had printed REFUSED over the handwriting. “Drop this in the box for me,” he said, and turned away.
•••
When Buck got home, he pulled out a container of potato salad from the fridge and dug around some more until he found the coleslaw. Then a bagel from off the counter.
He’d just sat down to eat his lunch when Katie came into the kitchen, a puzzled look on her face. She was holding something in one hand, but he couldn’t tell what it was.
She sat down across from him. “Buck,” she said. “If I asked you a question, would you tell me the truth?”
He wasn’t sure he could promise that. “I’ll try,” he said.
Her green eyes on him all the while, Katie unfolded her fingers and gave him the slip of paper in her hand.
Mom and Dad, if I don’t come back, call David. He’ll know where I am.
“What does this mean?” she asked.
When is a lie not a lie? What if every word is true one way, but in another, it’s not?
“Wh…where did you find this?” Buck asked.
“In your room. Mom asked me to run the vacuum over the upstairs today, and this was under your bed. Did you mean to give it to Mom? To Dad?”
“Oh, that,” Buck said, laughing a little. “It’s old.” His mind was racing on ahead of him. Was it possible he’d forgotten to hide that note again after he’d used it once?
“Yeah?” Katie waited.
“You know that Ambassador Hotel?”
She stared at him with squinting eyes. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“David and I once made a bbbbbbbet with each other, that we wouldn’t dare go in that hotel at nnnnnight alone. All the way up to the third floor—where that man died—back again. And I decided that if I ever did, I’d leave this nnnnnnnote on my bed so if I never came b…back, David could tell them about our bet.”
There was a flash of hurt in her eyes, and he realized he was admitting he’d trust David with a secret before he’d tell her, but it passed. Still, the way she was studying him…
“Honest! We really did dddddddare each other. You can call David yourself.”
She dropped the note on the table beside him and sat down. “Okay, but that doesn’t explain the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?” Buck started to take a bite of bagel, but Katie’s eyes stopped him.
“Buck, you’ve been sort of strange lately, you know it? I see you riding off on your bike every day and you’re gone at least an hour. Where are you going?”
“N…not every day…” And then Buck realized that was already a confession.
“Several times a week, then. And that one time you came home late to dinner, all muddy. And you said your bike went down a ravine? But I went out after dinner and saw your bike and it wasn’t banged up or scratched or anything.”
“You tell Mom?”
“Of course not.” Katie was loyal. “But now…”
Buck pushed his plate away. “Katie, if I ttttttold you something, you’ve absolutely got to pppppromise not to tell anyone.”
Now her eyes were wide and she had that same trusting look she used to get when Buck confided in her. It made his chest hurt.
“I promise,” she said.
“Really?”
“Totally.”
“Okay. Jacob Wall is a…speech d…doctor. Used to be. And he’s helping me with my sssstuttering.”
Slowly her forehead wrinkled into the puzzled look he knew so well. “That old man in the yellow house?”
Buck nodded.
“The one you and Mel do jobs for?”
“Yeah…He offered to help me, and I’ve bbbbbbeen going over there three t…times a week.”
Katie raised both hands, then let them drop. “But…why are you keeping it secret? Why can’t Mom and Dad know? They’d be grateful.”
“You know how they are, Katie. Mom would be all the t…time on me asking if I was gggggetting better. And Dad would be embarrassed Jacob wasn’t charging us anything, like we couldn’t afford it or something. They’d have a mmmillion questions, like why he’s doing it at all, you know?”
Katie thought about it. “I guess so. But…it still doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not? Jacob used to work for the navy, and it’s a tttttttough course. He said some of the marines couldn’t handle it…that they…walked out.”
“You mean, like boot camp or something?”
“Sort of.”
“It sounds hard…the course, Buck. What does it have to do with stuttering? Is it helping?”
“I just feel different, Katie. Do I ssssound any different to you?”
She thought about it a moment. “You don’t get tensed up so much like you used to. What I mean is, when you stutter, I hardly notice it anymore.”
When you stutter, I hardly notice it anymore.
It was the first time anyone had ever said that to him. In the past, people only wanted him to stop stuttering. But now, if nobody noticed…Well, why should he care whether he stuttered or not?
The thought was so new to him it was like a fragile piece of china he had to protect. As though, if he examined it, it might slip from his hands and crack. Like a dream that after you’d dreamed it, you had to quickly remember or it would just disappear.
•••
The tomatoes hung heavy on vines that had already begun to wilt. Pole beans were picked every week to keep them producing, and the last of the beets and potatoes, the carrots and onions, called to be dug out of the hot soil.
Whenever Mel wasn’t on a run in his semi, he pitched in to help with the digging or crating, while Buck, and sometimes Katie, did the back-breaking job of straddling the rows of lima beans, the sun beating down on their heads, fingers sore from grasping the spiny pods and dropping them in the bucket.
For the last two weeks Buck had consoled himself with the thought that any day his headlamp would arrive. The longer he had to wait, the more desperately he wanted it, and the more he worried that it would be one big disappointment.
Nat stopped by on his bike that Thursday. He stood at the head of the lima bean row, waiting to see if Buck could join him, his Eagles cap low on his forehead.
Dad came out of the house just then from answering the phone.
“Buck,” he called. “Your mom left her glasses here this morning and decided she really needs them. You and Nat want to ride out to Holly’s and take them to her? You can take a couple hours off if you want.”
This must be what every convict feels when he goes on parole, Buck decided as he headed inside to wash up, Nat following behind.
“The carnival’s generator truck was in the lot behind Bealls’ this morning,” Nat told him. “That means the rest will be here soon. Heard they’ve got a new ride, the Wildcat.”
Buck reached the kitchen sink and turned on the faucet. “Yeah? What’s it d…do?”
“You sit at the end of those long poles, two to a cage, and it jerks you in and spins you around, then shoots you back out again, all the while it’s whirling around in a circle. Something like that.”
“Cool.” Buck leaned over, burying his face in a two-hand pool of cold water, then another, till his hair was plastered to his forehead in front. He followed it with a long drink.
“I’ve earned enough in the gggggarden to ride everything they’ve got this year, I’ll b…bet,” he said. He picked up his mother’s glasses case from off the counter, pu
t them in one pocket, and they went back outside and around to his bike by the shed.
“I’ll come help you pick beans if I run low on cash,” Nat joked.
Buck had been thinking all morning of a way to ask Nat about his cousin and the basement he was paneling—where he’d gotten the plywood they were using. But how could he ask that? Nat would wonder why he was so curious about plywood.
The boys were hot again by the time they got to Holly’s Homestyle, and found there were four other bikes in the rack out front. And before Buck could wonder whose they were, the glass doors opened and Pete and Isaac, Rod and Ethan, spilled out onto the steps, kidding around with plastic straws and their wrappers. Then they saw Buck.
“Well, look who’s here!” Pete said. “El Creepo himself.” He turned to the others. “Did you know he called my dad’s station the other day and wanted to know the price of super premium for his bike?”
The other three boys guffawed.
And then, mimicking Buck, Pete said, “ ‘Wh…wh…wh…what’s the p…p…p…p…price of s…s…s…s…super p…p…p…premium…?’ And when I told him to shove it, and hung up on him, the little creep called back.” He turned to Buck. “You know what? I think you just do it to bug the heck out of people, that’s all.”
Another customer was coming out of the door just then, so Pete and his buddies went on down the steps and Buck and Nat went in. They stayed inside the entrance, though, to make sure Pete didn’t do something with their bikes. He didn’t. The foursome pedaled away.
Nat didn’t believe any of it. “What a moron,” he murmured. “Aren’t you glad he’ll be in high school in the fall?”
“Rod won’t, though,” said Buck. He looked around for his mom and saw her at the far end of the counter, listening to a middle-aged woman in a straw hat loudly complaining about something. Mom glanced over at the boys, her eyes saying it all, and they slid onto stools near the pie display.
“…and another thing,” the woman said, both elbows on the counter, one hand holding half a sandwich, the other delicately pulling out pieces of bacon. “I’ve been getting my BLTs here for the last seven years, and if the bacon doesn’t crumble in my mouth, it’s not cooked enough. I shouldn’t have to tear it with my teeth. And the tomato…was that homegrown?”