Buck glanced over to see a tear slide out of the corner of her eye and make its slow way down her cheek. Her hand came up quickly and brushed it away.
“We want to do whatever we can to make it up to Dad and prove that we’re sorry. We’d like to start putting a little of our money in his bank account every month, but we don’t even know what bank he uses, or if he’d allow it. Most of all, we just want him back in our lives, to take care of him if he ever needs it, but he won’t take my phone calls, won’t read my letters, and won’t even answer the door. He’s furious about what happened, and I don’t blame him.”
“That sssssssounds…really bad,” Buck said.
For a while they sat without saying anything, and then Karen turned again to Buck.
“Do you have any suggestions? I mean, is there something he really wants or needs that we could buy for him—that you could give him for us?”
Buck shook his head. “He’d know.”
“Yes, I suppose he would.” Karen adjusted the bag on her shoulder. “Well, I shouldn’t be bothering you with all this, and I just appreciate your listening. I simply can’t bear the thought of Dad getting older and more crippled—not having people around who love him. It was awful what we did. What…Gary did. He lost his job over it too and is working somewhere else.”
She stood up, and so did Buck.
“Well, again, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy the rest of your vacation. Guess school starts pretty soon?”
“Yeah,” Buck said. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
•••
He couldn’t help but think about it when he went to Jacob’s the next morning. Only a few days left before school started, and Jacob was working him hard—not in chores but his speech.
It had changed, he knew that. He had changed, and when he recited stuff aloud in front of the big mirror still propped against the wall at Jacob’s, he was pleased that he looked like a guy named Buck Anderson, not a guy in a Halloween fright mask, his mouth pulled to one side, his jaw clenched, eyes blinking like a tavern sign.
Crutches, Jacob called them, used to help get the words out. Except that they didn’t. No more decoys either, the pulling at one ear, the scratching of the head, the shifting of the feet, all the little things he might have hoped, unconsciously, would distract the listener from his stuttering.
Jacob even relented and played a DVD that he’d made for his patients at the military hospital, parts of speeches by famous people—a president, a general, a senator, a movie star—each one demonstrating “normal disfluency,” as Jacob called it, showing that everyone is disfluent once in a while. “They just don’t have a fit when it happens, that’s all.”
But today, because Buck’s mind was on Karen, he wondered if Jacob could possibly be happy, cutting her out of his life. He wasn’t paying enough attention to his stuttering, and when he made phone calls and Jacob raised a finger, he sometimes reverted back to his choking repetition of a sound before he said a word, instead of letting the stutter come out slow and natural.
“Running backward again,” Jacob told him. “You fight it like that, you’re stuck in the same old rut you used to be.”
Buck turned toward the mirror and saw the weird set of his jaw, and relaxed it, but he felt on edge, and saw that Jacob was too. He was wasting his time today, and Jacob’s as well.
When the session was over at last, Jacob slowly got to his feet and said, “You want to come maybe once a week after school starts and we’ll work on it? You’ve got to do your part, though, Buck. Practice at home. Practice on friends.”
“Yeah, well…,” Buck said, and picked up his jacket. It was the same jacket he used to wear searching for caves, he and David, only reminding him that the cold spell was sticking around, cheating him of some last warm days of vacation, and it didn’t help his mood any.
He walked over to the door without saying good-bye, and pulled it open, and there stood Karen, staring past him at her dad.
“Dad…?” she said, pleading.
“Get out!” Jacob yelled, hobbling his way across the room.
“I just want to talk with you, please!” she begged, still blocking the doorway.
“Don’t let her in, Buck!” Jacob bellowed, waving one arm. “Close the door! Now!”
But Buck couldn’t. Wouldn’t. And suddenly he wheeled about and faced Jacob. “Who’s running backward nnnnow?” he shouted. “All she wants you to do is listen to…”
But Jacob’s free hand gave him a push and Buck almost collided with Karen as he tumbled to one side, the door banging shut behind him.
Karen stood with one hand over her mouth, eyes brimming, and Buck didn’t know what to do. He’d almost knocked her down.
“I’m sssssorry,” he said.
She nodded as she turned and went back down the steps, and Buck watched as she slowly got in her car and drove away.
The old fool! Buck was thinking as he pedaled home. Serves him right to spend the rest of his life alone with his anger. Buck had a notion not to show up for the next session. Now that the carnival had moved on, he was determined to go back in the Hole again whether he had the headlamp or not. Also, there were two movies showing at the Palace on Saturday, and he and Nat, and probably Katie and Colby, would be going. He’d tell Jacob his dad needed him to crate up the last of the vegetables for market, which was also true.
He spent the rest of Friday morning packing lima beans, a pound to a plastic bag, and placing them in a box. Then the last of the pole beans, and finally carrots.
“How’d we do this year, DDDDad?” he asked as he lifted a heavy box to make room for another.
“Better than last year,” Don Anderson said. “Be nice to have a job that pays year-round, but then it’s nice to have some time off too. Not that I get much time off at the mill.”
Buck found his dad giving him a sideways glance. “How was your summer? You know, Buck…seems to me your…stuttering’s…well, better. Have you seen a difference yourself?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t bother me like it used tttto,” said Buck. “I just…lllllllllet it come,” and he purposely stuttered on the L and grinned at how easily he could do it.
His dad returned a quizzical smile. “Whatever works,” he said.
And that afternoon, after a big ham sandwich and one of Katie’s homemade milk shakes, Buck walked down to the mailbox, the early autumn wind whipping his hair, making goose bumps on his arms, and found that the headlamp had come. And because he had Joel’s permission to open the package, he raced back to the house and up to his room to rip the package open.
He stood in front of his mirror and slipped the harness over his head—one strap going around the front like a headband, the other strap beginning at the lamp in front, then going backward over the top of his head and connecting with the strap around in back. It was loose now, but would be nice and snug over his bicycle helmet.
Then, his shoulders erect, eyes on the mirror, he flipped the switch.
Nothing happened. No light.
How could this be? After weeks of waiting…! Yanking off the harness, Buck checked the little folded slip of instructions and found that batteries were not included. He realized that it was the more expensive headlamp he’d wanted first that came with batteries, but not this cheaper model.
No problem. He still had money from his work that summer. He grabbed his jacket, took money from his top drawer, and stuffed it in one zipper pocket. Then, unable to let the headlamp out of his sight, he folded it up the way it had come and stuffed it in the other pocket, zipping it closed.
“Want some?”
Buck jumped at the sound of Katie’s voice in the doorway, and turned to see her holding out a giant bag of M&Ms, in tiny chocolate-colored packages.
“Sure,” he said, and took a handful. “Halloween already?”
She giggled. “My favorite holiday. Where you going?”
“To BBBBBealls’,” he said nonchalantly. “Want anything
?”
“No. We just got a ton of groceries yesterday,” she said, and went on down the hall to her room. Then, “Close the door when you go out, will you? Dad doesn’t have the furnace running yet, and it’s freezing in here.”
“Sure,” Buck said.
He whisked up the wrapping paper and went downstairs, careful to close the back door after him, stuffing the wrapper in the trash can by the side of the house so there would be no questions from Mom or Dad or Mel: What the dickens do you need a headlamp for? You shouldn’t be out on your bike after dark, and you know it. And then, fastening his helmet under his chin, he was riding his bike to Bealls’, the afternoon shadows lengthening on the dirt lane before him.
He needed two double A batteries, and for one brief moment he imagined Mr. Beall saying, “Well, dang it, Buck! I was sure we’d ordered some more, but I don’t see them around here.” Don’t even go there, he told himself. You worry like David.
There were few people in the store, and the Bealls were using the free time to restock their shelves.
“Hi there, Buck. Be with you in a moment,” Mr. Beall called from a rolling ladder suspended from a rail that ran all along one wall under the ceiling. He had carefully rearranged some large packages of paper towels to make room for others. “Now what can I do for you?” he asked, climbing down, one scuffed brown shoe following the other.
“I’d like a ppppackage of double A batteries,” Buck said.
“Sure thing.” Mr. Beall turned and faced the battery case, running his finger along each tiny row. His fingernail had dark vertical lines on it. “A two-pack, four-pack, or six?”
“Uh…make it four,” said Buck.
“There you go.” Mr. Beall placed them on the counter, and Buck’s heart did the little pleasure jump. As he rang up the sale, the man said, “You seem to be doing all right these days, Buck. Glad to see it.”
Buck gave him a puzzled smile, then realized he meant the stuttering. Weird that people didn’t come right out and say the word, like it might be catching or something.
“Yeah,” he said, and then, mischievously, “I’m dddddddoing okkkkkkkkay.”
•••
He pedaled along the road, wild to get home and try it out—in some really dark place, and he wasn’t about to wait until evening. A closet, maybe. Or the basement. Yeah, that was it. In the old windowless coal bin that hadn’t been used for maybe eighty years.
Was it really as powerful as the advertisement said? Would it shine light eighty yards out in front of him? Think what the inside of the Hole would look like if he came to an opening in the rock and could really see all around him. It hadn’t rained now for over a week. So, tomorrow? Could he possibly sneak off tomorrow? Mel was coming home, but that shouldn’t matter. And maybe Dad would be at the sawmill helping Gramps and Joel. It might work….And Jacob? To heck with Jacob.
He was riding down the long stretch of pavement bordered by tall pines on either side, making it seem as though evening had come already, when he heard an engine noise from behind. He edged over to the right, carefully steering his way along the narrow strip between the white line and the edge of the paving, waiting for the vehicle to pass.
But it didn’t.
Buck could tell by the sound that it was slowing as it came alongside him, and suddenly it was so close that he struggled to steady his bike.
He glanced over to see who was driving and saw Pete Ketterman at the wheel of his dad’s Nissan pickup, an old 1990 model. The next thing he knew, his bike was bumping and bouncing along the shoulder of the road, and then he was tumbling down into the gulley, his bike on top of him.
“Oh, gee, looks like you had a little accident!” Pete called, getting out and coming around. “And here we are, ready to help.” Then, looking quickly up and down the deserted road, he said to the others, who had climbed out too, “Get him in the truck, guys, and throw the bike in back. We’ll give him a ride.”
“No, I cccccan get home myself,” said Buck, his leg entangled in the frame of his bike, one pedal still spinning.
“Hey, what are friends for?” Pete said, and to the others, “C’mon, hurry.”
“Where are we supposed to put him?” asked Rod. “In the cab?”
“Where else? Sit on him, if you have to. Hurry.”
And suddenly four sets of hands were grasping Buck’s arms and legs. “Get away from me!” Buck yelled, kicking. But with eight hands on him, yanking him up out of the weeds and carrying him to the truck, it was no use.
He was wrestled to the small floor space between the back of the front seats and the two jump seats in the rear of the cab. Buck heard the clunk of his bicycle as it was tossed in the bed of the pickup, and then he felt knees and feet stepping on and over him as Rod and Isaac worked their way into the jump seats.
He heard Pete climb back into the truck, heard Ethan’s laughter coming from the passenger seat, and he lay facedown, scrunched into an awkward position, legs bent backward at the knees, feet over his rump.
The engine started up, but the pickup didn’t move, waiting for another car to pass, and then it shot forward with a squeal of tires and headed up the road.
“So, where we going?” asked Isaac above the truck’s rumble.
“I’m thinking,” said Pete, and drove on. And then, in a falsely cheery note, he called to Buck, “Hey, Buck-o, we’re your friends, remember? The nice guys whose duck blind you demolished? Just going to help you out, buddy. One good turn deserves another, right? Going to give you a little sp…sp…sp…sp…speech lesson, that’s all.”
Frightened as he was, and smushed beneath two pairs of dirty sneakers, Buck managed to say, “Wasn’t your plywood.”
“Yeah? Wasn’t your land either. You know how long it took us to make that duck blind?”
Buck could have made a comment about how it sure didn’t look like a duck blind to him and Mel, and did they have hunting licenses, but he didn’t.
“Eleven weeks! Yup! Eleven weeks of hard labor, all torn down in one afternoon, by El Creepo and his big bad thug of an uncle.”
How did Pete manage to be driving his dad’s pickup? Buck wondered. And with all his friends onboard? You couldn’t get a driver’s license in Virginia until you were sixteen, but you could get a learner’s permit at fifteen and a half. Most kids entering high school were thirteen or fourteen, but if you’d been held back a year somewhere along the way, usually kindergarten if your birthday didn’t quite make the cutoff for first grade, you could end up the oldest, strongest, tallest, and possibly brightest kid in class from then on. Buck didn’t know about smartest, but Pukeman was probably one of the bigger, stronger boys going into high school. Still, he wasn’t just running a quick errand for his dad. He had all his friends on board.
He wondered about his bike, if anything was broken. Where were they going? They sure weren’t taking him home because they’d have reached his road by now, and he had felt the truck making no right turns.
There was no point in wrestling with them. No way he could reach the windows to signal for help, and he could yell all he liked, but no one would hear.
They were probably going to pour beer down him again, and leave him way out in the country to make his way home, royally drunk. What if he refused to swallow, and just let the beer pour down his chin? Could they force someone to swallow? He didn’t think they’d beat him up. Not even Pukeman would stoop so low as to put one guy up against four. But one at a time?
Another stab of fear coursed through him, and his breath came in short hurried gasps, keeping time, it seemed, with every other beat of his heart. He inhaled the dust and dirt on the floor, the smell of Isaac’s sneakers.
“Where we going, Pete?” Rod called after five minutes or so of winding around and around. If they had skipped the turnoff to the Andersons’ place, then they must have missed the turnoff to the Kettermans’ as well, and were heading out into more rocky terrain. Every bump in the road made Buck’s forehead bounce. He turned his head o
ccasionally to work out the crick in his neck, but it didn’t help. There were Hostess cupcake wrappers on the floor, and an empty pop can that rolled and lodged against his face from time to time.
“Yeah, where we heading? The boondocks?” said Ethan.
“Got an idea,” Pete told them. “A really good idea. Little Buck-o’s going to get a super-duper lesson. Heck, we might even cure this guy in a single afternoon. Now wouldn’t that be something? He might even learn something about not messing with other people’s stuff.” Over his shoulder, he asked, “Did anyone notice if there was rope back there along with the other stuff we picked up for my dad?”
Isaac twisted himself around, one foot digging into Buck’s back as he turned to look out the rear window. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s rope. Whole coil of it.”
“What are you going to do with it?” Rod asked, and Buck could tell that even he sounded wary.
“You’ll see,” said Pete, and there was a steel cold tone to his voice that didn’t sound like kidding any longer.
A few minutes later the truck turned sharply and the road was definitely rougher, if it was road at all. It seemed to go on forever.
“You know where you’re going, Pete?” asked Ethan.
“Almost there,” Pete answered. And suddenly the pickup came to an abrupt stop with a jerk, and everything shot forward, including Buck’s head against the base of the driver’s seat.
“Okay. Everybody out,” Pete said. “See if the creep has peed his pants yet.”
“What is this?” asked Isaac. And then, “The Pit!”
“Listen, man…!”
Buck couldn’t tell whose voice it was this time, but Pukeman wasn’t listening. “C’mon, drag him out, we’ve got to take off pretty soon. Ike, get the rope.”
The thump of Buck’s heart was almost as loud in his head as it felt in his chest, and he broke into a sweat, even though he’d been too warm down there on the floorboards in his fleece-lined jacket.