Paperboy (15 page)

Thinking about somebody hurting Mam and then remembering all the stupid rules that Mam had to live by just because of her color
made going to sleep a hard job. I guess I had a Vengeful Heart because I could feel it busting like when the stuffing came out of an old baseball.

I put my pillow on top of me to give it a hug but that trick didn’t work anymore.

My parents had left extra money for the week so Mam asked me if I wanted to ride the bus to the Overton Park Zoo.

I didn’t like going to the zoo as much as I did when Mam first started taking me but I knew she still enjoyed it.

Mam could get into the zoo for free after noon on Wednesdays if she wore her white uniform and went in the gate with me. She couldn’t go to the zoo on any day that she wanted to like I could. More silly rules by grown-ups.

We waited on a bench for the No. 5 Crosstown. I didn’t beat around the bush.

Why s-s-s-s-can’t you s-s-s-s-go to the zoo when you want?

They wants us to be a pair, Little Man. And you know I likes to go with you.

s-s-s-s-Do you s-s-s-s-think it’s right?

Not my place to be thinking right or wrong.

s-s-s-s-Don’t you get s-s-s-s-mad?

I could tell I had asked Mam a tough question. She was having a time coming up with an answer so I helped her.

I s-s-s-s-get mad when s-s-s-s-kids laugh at me ’cause I s-s-s-s-can’t help how I s-s-s-s-talk.

Do it help to get mad?

s-s-s-s-No. s-s-s-s-But I can’t help it.

I was going to pester Mam some more with questions but she stood up when she saw the bus coming two blocks away. Mam didn’t like to talk about certain things. I guess I didn’t either but it was starting to come to me that not talking about something didn’t make it go away. The doors to the bus unfolded.

Where you want to sit?

I didn’t mind sitting in the back but it seemed to me that it was time for Mam and me to sit up front. I plopped down on the first seat and Mam slid in to the seat beside me. I watched the bus driver to see if he would say anything to us but he kept his eyes straight ahead.

Mam’s favorite thing to do at the zoo besides watching the peacocks with the long tails prance around and squawk was to sit on a bench near Monkey Island and watch the monkeys play on trees made out of concrete with fat ropes hanging between them. Somebody who
knew what monkeys needed put old rubber tires on the island for them to roll around in.

Mam made up her own names for the monkeys like Mush Melon or Mr. Butterbean so we could talk about what they were doing. When one of the big monkeys chased a little one with a stick to take a piece of watermelon rind away I told Mam that we should name that monkey Ara T. I thought that would make her laugh but she told me not to name monkeys after real people even if it was that no-count Ara T.

Mam knew a lot of the other colored ladies walking around the zoo looking after kids. Most of the ladies wore white uniforms and carried parasols even though they knew it wasn’t going to rain. Mam told me how women carried parasols to keep the sun off their heads. The ladies would wave and nod to Mam and call her Miss Avent or Miss Nellie and she would call them Miss Something or Other. Some of the ladies were from Mam’s church but they didn’t act the same as they acted in church. At choir practice the ladies laughed out loud and joked and cut up but they didn’t laugh much when they were in their uniforms at the zoo hanging on to white kids. Mam was the only lady who didn’t change. She was Mam all the time no matter who she was with or what she was wearing.

Some of the ladies Mam talked to couldn’t have seen her since she got her face busted up and I kept expecting one of them to ask her how it happened or at least how her face felt but not one of them said a word about it. It made me think that they all somehow knew what happened but everybody kept a zipped lip.

We were watching people feed the giraffe when Mam caught an older kid who was by himself trying to feed Mr. Longneck a wadded-up paper cup instead of a handful of giraffe food that you could buy for a nickel at a gumball machine close by. The kid kept waving the cup in front of the giraffe trying to make it stick out its long tongue and take the cup so Mam reached over and jerked the cup out of the kid’s hand before he knew what happened.

Mind your own business, old woman.

The kid took a step toward Mam but she put the cup in her handbag and took a step toward him.

You’ll not hurt God’s animals with me watching. You best be off.

The kid was bigger than Mam. He started not to move but Mam was staring him down and letting him know she wasn’t going anywhere. Then he called Mam a bad word.

He said it under his breath but we both heard it. I don’t know if I could ever say the word because it started with a hard
N
sound. But I know I never would try. Mam gave him a long look. I felt my right hand opening and closing for a baseball to throw. She stared him down until he had moved on a far piece from Mr. Longneck.

s-s-s-s-Sorry he said that.

Names is all it is. Don’t mean nothing.

Mam watched the boy until he turned the corner at the zebra pen and then she dropped her head down and snapped her handbag open and shut a few times. She didn’t like being called that word.

s-s-s-s-He’s a dumb …

I couldn’t think of how to finish the sentence so I just let it disappear in the air.

Besides the kid calling Mam the bad word he had also called her Old. He would have known better than to call her that if he had seen her last summer when I had gotten stuck in a storm drain near my house.

I had crawled down in the drain to get a ball Rat had thrown over my head. The drain was slimy and I couldn’t climb out. The more Rat tried to pull me out the deeper down I slipped. When Rat couldn’t budge me he started yelling for neighbors to call for help. Before the fire trucks and police cars could get there Mam had gotten down on her belly and jerked me out of there like I was a puppy dog. The kid trying to hurt Mr. Longneck had been smart to move on.

On the way out of the park I told Mam that we had enough money to get our picture made at the photographer’s booth near the ice cream stand. She said for me to go ahead and have mine done if I wanted. When I kept pestering her she told me that the people in charge at the zoo wouldn’t allow her to have her picture made with me.

I decided I could stand my ground too. If there was anything good about being a kid who stutters it’s that sometimes people felt sorry for me because they thought I had a simple mind and they did things for me they wouldn’t do for somebody else.

I went up to the guy that ran the booth and told him that Mam was going to have to go back to her home in California and I needed a picture to remember her by because she had nursed me back to
health after me being about to die. I stuttered up a storm when I was telling the tale and didn’t even have to make up what kind of sickness I had or why Mam had to come all the way from California. The guy took it hook and line and sinker as Rat liked to say.

I wasn’t too proud of using my stutter to trick the guy but it seemed to me every now and then I should be able to get some good out of it.

The man even asked if we wanted to wear some of his costumes he had hanging on the wall so I told Mam to take off her little black hat and I swapped it for a big floppy hat with peacock feathers. I put on a black cowboy hat that came down over my ears. Just like the bad guy in
Shane
wore. The photographer man strapped a double holster on me with fake six-shooters.

Mam looked at us in a mirror.

Ain’t we a sight for sore eyes.

s-s-s-s-That’s good s-s-s-s-because you still have one.

Mam laughed at my joke and straightened the big hat on my head. Mam hadn’t been laughing much since she came back from what she called her Accident. I liked to hear Mam laugh more than anything.

We sat down on an iron bench to have an ice cream cone while we waited on the photograph. When Mam finished her ice cream she pulled out a needle story from her handbag to work on. Mam could sew with a needle and colored thread on cloth like other people drew on paper with a pencil.

The needle story was one she had been working on a long time and the one she always brought to the zoo because it told about Noah and the ark. Even though Mam’s animals didn’t look exactly like they were supposed to you could tell if they were bears or lions and there was always two of them.

I could see the real lions in their cages from where we were having our ice cream. They paced back and forth behind the bars like they were worried about something or thinking about how to escape.

I had something I wanted to beat around the bush on with Mam.

s-s-s-s-Are you ’fraid of s-s-s-s-lions?

Mam kept her needle going in and out while she talked.

We had us panthers at home when I was a young’un. They got a few of our pigs and hens but they never bothered me.

s-s-s-s-I’m more ’fraid of s-s-s-s-words than lions.

Mam kept going on her needle story but I could tell she was thinking about what she should say to me. She never would let the questions I asked throw her off like it did most people.

Prophet Daniel went down in the lions’ den and his faith kept those lions’ mouths shut tight. God will see to it that you find your words.

I had asked for it. And I got it.

s-s-s-s-But you put s-s-s-s-everything on s-s-s-s-God.

She stuck her needle in the cloth and the cloth went in her handbag and she turned her eyes hard on me like Superman seeing through a brick wall.

I do and will for all my days.

Mam got up from the iron bench and headed for the gate in her fast walk. I ran to the photographer’s window to get the picture and then ran after her.

I hadn’t meant to upset Mam but I had done a good job of it. I started to tell her I was sorry but figured she knew that without me trying to say it.

On the Crosstown bus headed back home I pulled from my back pocket the picture of the two of us and put it in Mam’s hand. I smiled at her. She smiled back and soon enough we were laughing up a storm at the picture. Me with that stupid cowboy hat coming down over my ears and Mam in her hat with the black and green feathers sticking out. I kidded Mam that she looked like a peacock. When Peacock tried to come out of my mouth I forgot to start off with Gentle Air and had to scream the word to get it out. I guess I sounded pretty much like a peacock squawking.

Everybody on the bus turned to look at me but Mam and I were laughing so hard that I didn’t take the time to stop and think about getting embarrassed.

When Mam and I got home it was time for me to change into paper-throwing clothes.

I hadn’t been paying attention to how hot it was at the zoo. My shirt was soaked through. Mam turned on the attic fan as soon as we got inside the house but the air blowing through my window was like sticking your head out of a slow-moving hot car. I laughed out loud again when I put our good zoo photograph under my billfold and wristwatch in my desk drawer. Mam smiling with her peacock hat on sure enough was a sight for sore eyes.

On my way out the back door Mam was at the kitchen sink washing pots. I tiptoed up behind her and grabbed to untie her apron strings. I yelled as loud as I could so there wouldn’t be a chance of any stuttering.

MAM’S A PEACOCK.

Mam whirled around acting like she was surprised when I knew she really wasn’t. She flicked her wet hands at me.

I’m gonna whup me a peacock if you don’t behave.

Mam was always saying that she was going to whup me but she would have walked barefoot across Egypt before she even thought about spanking me. I liked to hear her say it anyway and I made a promise to myself that I was going to listen in my parents’ church and try to understand about how God went about doing things.

When I first learned about praying to God I prayed every night that I would wake up the next morning and be able to talk right. The next day would always come with me stuttering on the first word I tried to say. So I finally gave up on God helping me. I never told Mam I had given up on God helping me because I knew it would upset her.

Thursday afternoon when I got to the ball field our coach surprised us by calling off practice because he said he had heard the man on the radio say the temperature was going to be over a hundred degrees.

Coach had never called off our practice because of hot weather before. He told us to go home and stay in the shade and drink plenty of water. The afternoon was hot all right but not too hot to throw a tennis ball against the garage and get back to the business of thinking more about Mr. Spiro and Ara T and Mrs. Worthington.

All week my head had been going back to Mr. Spiro’s house where the walls were filled with books and then going back to Ara T’s shed filled with junk and stolen stuff and all those cans of Vienna sausage and the rat eating a red onion.

Ara T’s junk was easy to figure out but Mr. Spiro’s books were like a giant jigsaw puzzle when you didn’t even know if all the pieces were
there. I had remembered how to spell Heidegger but the name was not in the
H
volume of the encyclopedia at home. Mr. Spiro had said Mr. Heidegger was still alive and I figured you had to be dead to get in the encyclopedia.