Paperboy (22 page)

Rat’s mother came by yesterday afternoon. It was the first time she had ever been in our house so I knew I needed to listen in from the landing on the stairs even though I had promised Mam I would stop eavesdropping so much.

Rat’s mother had a copy of the
Press-Scimitar
which had a story on the first page about how more schools in Arkansas were going to start making all kids go to class together no matter what color they were and even though it caused such a big problem two years ago that the Army had to be called in. My mother said it wouldn’t be too long before all the schools in Memphis were Segregated. Rat’s mother allowed as how she meant Integrated and my mother told her it was all the same thing. I felt sorry for my mother. I don’t know if it’s worse not being able to say words at all or being able to say them and not know what they mean.

When they were walking to the door Rat’s mother said she and Rat’s father had started thinking about moving out to the country so Rat could go to a school that they knew would be full of only white kids.

I still don’t see why it’s such a big deal to have everybody going to the same school. You can’t tell what a kid is like just by how he looks. Or how he talks.

I’m almost finished but I have one last thing to type.

This morning my homeroom teacher said that since there were so many new kids in class she wanted each of us to stand up row by row and say our name and tell something interesting about ourselves.

We sat in alphabetical order so that meant I was one of the last kids to stand. I was expecting to start getting nervous about saying my name and then commence with all the twitching and sweating and maybe running out of the room pretending I was sick or shaking my head and refusing to say anything. But all on its own my brain took off and started doing something new.

My mind floated up out of my head and I could see myself down below standing in front of the class like I was the teacher. Sitting in the desks were the people from my summer.

Mam. Mr. Spiro. My father. My mother. Rat. Willie. TV Boy. Big Sack. Mrs. Worthington. All of them listened to me while I talked.

I told Rat I was going to start calling him Art like Freda wanted.

Mr. Spiro was sitting at the front with his eyeglasses down on his nose and I was saying a poem for him. He was directing me with his hand like I was in Mam’s choir. But Mr. Spiro wasn’t saying the words with me.

I told my father and mother that I was glad I belonged to them no matter how I got there. I told my father I wanted us to try to work on what Mr. Spiro’s four words meant. Just the two of us. We could do that instead of playing pitch and catch so much. I told my mother that I wouldn’t get mad at her anymore and I would help her find the right words to say if she wanted me to.

Willie was combing his hair and I told him that we were Copacetic. He laughed and then pointed down to what he was wearing. Short pants and tennis shoes.

I told TV Boy that he was my best friend behind Art. Paul understood every word I said.

Big Sack was standing beside his school desk because he was way too big to sit in it. I told him I trusted him to take care of me as much as I trusted my father and Mr. Spiro. He called me Little Brother again in his quiet voice.

Mrs. Worthington was putting her hair up on top of her head in swirls. It was longer and brighter red than ever. I told her I knew that the only reason she talked to me so much was because she had been lonesome and needed somebody to talk to. I told her I knew exactly what that felt like and that she was still the prettiest lady I had ever seen and I wanted her to be happy even if I couldn’t be her paperboy anymore.

Mam was on the back row in her starched white uniform and wearing her round black hat but when I looked at her she got her pocketbook and came to stand with me at the front. I told her how glad I was that she had come to live with us and I thanked her for saving my life.

Just before it was my turn to introduce myself to the class my mind dropped back down into my head.

When I got up from my desk seat, all my classmates turned to look at me.

My       ​name       ​is       ​Victor       ​Vollmer       ​the       ​Third.       ​I       ​stutter       ​when       ​I       ​talk       ​but       ​I       ​like       ​words       ​anyway.       ​I       ​also like       ​to       ​play       ​baseball.

I stuttered about the same as always with all the gigantic pauses and funny sounds coming out around the words but I didn’t pay any attention to how my classmates looked at me and didn’t try to figure out what they were thinking. And I said exactly what I wanted to.

I sat down. Art was looking back at me and smiling from his desk in the front of the room. The real live Art. He gave me his funny wink with two eyes.

Mam had a plate of peach fried pies waiting for me when I got home from school. I put my books on the back stairs and went to the icebox and got a bottle of milk. Mam had my glass on the table and I poured it full.

How’s school today?

s-s-s-s-Good. Want to s-s-s-s-know what I learned?

Sure do.

s-s-s-s-It’s more important what I say than how s-s-s-s-I say it.

You right about that, Little Man.

s-s-s-s-And my soul doesn’t s-s-s-s-stutter.

Mam smiled and went back to her cooking. Humming a choir song. She didn’t say anything but I knew she understood.

I’m done typing now.

I’m going to tie up these pages tight with newspaper cord and go out back and bury them under the loose bricks in the patio under the Wicked Furniture.

I know I’ll have to dig a deep hole to keep the Hounds of Hell from getting to them. Words in the air blow away as soon as you say them but words on paper last forever.

“One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can’t utter.”

James Earl Jones, noted actor and the resonating voice of Darth Vader, spoke those words because he knew the pain of a stutter as a young person. Through hard work and perseverance, he was able to gain control of his speech, turning his voice into a magnificent tool.

The names of famous people with speech problems are legion, but for every well-known actor or world leader who has battled a stutter, there are millions of us who live the drama on our own small stages. The Stuttering Foundation of America estimates that more than 3 million Americans and 68 million people worldwide deal with speech impediments. Stuttering affects three to four times more males than females.

Stuttering manifests itself most cruelly during childhood, creating a lonely and baffling existence just at a time the world is beginning to open and expand.

My first recollection of my stutter is just before I was five. I have been stuttering—sometimes fiercely, sometimes gently—for more than sixty years now. Despite my impediment, I had a rewarding career in newspapers, and to my continued amazement, I enjoy telling my story to audiences, especially young people.

Have I been cured of my stutter? No. Have I overcome it? Yes.

Paperboy
takes place in 1959, when modern speech therapy techniques were in their infancy. Great strides have been made in this field over the last fifty years, but there is much more work to be done; there are many more questions to be answered and a wealth of confounding riddles to be solved. Through the wonders of DNA exploration, scientific evidence is mounting that stuttering is hereditary.

For those who want to learn more about this disability, I offer three excellent resources:

I also invite you to read my
Notes from a Stuttering Expert
. This paper, written for the Fourteenth International Stuttering Awareness Day Online Conference, speaks to those who stutter, as well as to their parents, friends, and family and to speech clinicians and pathologists (
mnsu.edu/​comdis/​isad15/​papers/​vawter15.​html
).

Paperboy
is my story, then, certainly more memoir than fiction. While the novel’s protagonist deals with an all-consuming speech difficulty, he also learns that life is about much more than stuttering.

Questions and comments are welcome at
vincevawter.com
.

Vilas Vincent Vawter III, age eight

Vince Vawter, a native of Memphis, retired after a forty-year career in newspapers, most recently as the president and publisher of the
Evansville Courier & Press
in Indiana. He lives with his wife in Louisville, Tennessee, on a small farm in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Paperboy
is his first novel.