Free Going Where It's Dark by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Charlie. “What am I supposed to do?” she asked.
    “Tell him he can’t sleep here, to move on,” Charlie told her, deadpan.
    Holly, watching from the kitchen doorway, agreed. “Not good for business, folks walk in, see that.”
    “You think we ought to pour some water on his head?” Pearl suggested.
    And suddenly the rumpled jacket moved, the cap rose up, and two hands reached out, one to grab Doris Anderson’s arm, the other, Pearl’s.
    The women screamed and stepped backward, and then the cap fell off.
    “Mel!” Buck’s mother cried, hitting at him, and she and Pearl both whacked him over the head with the menus while he roared with laughter, and Buck and Charlie joined in. Holly, trying to hide a smile, turned away with a shake of her head.
    “You
tramp,
you!” Mom said, laughing too now. “Where’d you get that dirty old cap and jacket?”
    “I keep ’em in the truck, case I have to change a tire in bad weather,” Mel said, wiping his eyes, and guffawed some more.
    “Well, I was about to call an exterminator to get rid of you,” Holly told him. “But now that you’re here, I suppose you’d like some coffee.”
    “If you please, ma’am,” Mel said, making her smile. “I’ll have that last piece of coconut cake too, and I’m paying.”
    Mom brought over the cake, the coffeepot, and some cups and sat down across from Mel. Buck took his bread pudding and joined them.
    “I don’t know how I tolerated a brother like you!” Mom said, reaching up to tuck a loose lock of hair under her small pleated cap. “Like to give me a heart attack, grabbing at us that way.”
    “Good for your reflexes,” Mel said. “Keep you looking young.”
    “Why didn’t you call and let us know you’d be home for dinner? I don’t have a single thing on my mind to cook tonight. Figured I might buy something here to take with me.”
    “Don’t you worry. Buck and I are going to pick up some ribs on the way back. We’ll even have the table set. All you’ll have to do when you get home is sit down.”
    “Now, that’s the best news I’ve heard all day,” said Mom. Then she looked at Buck and back to Mel again.“You guys!”
    •••
    He was heading downstairs in his stockinged feet that evening when he heard Katie talking about him to Mom in the kitchen. Buck paused in the hallway, one shoulder against the wall.
    “He just acts so strange sometimes, Mom. My friend Colby looked at me and said, ‘What’d I
do
?’ I had to explain it’s because he stutters. Buck didn’t even say hi. How can I introduce him to people if he acts so weird?”
    His mom murmured something—Buck couldn’t make it out—and then he heard her say, “I don’t know, Katie. I really don’t.” She sounded tired.
    Katie went on: “It didn’t use to bother me, but…but I see how it’s going to hold him back. What will happen to him when he gets to high school? Kids tease him on the bus—I hear it every day. I can’t go around apologizing for him forever.”
    “Buck’s going to see the therapist at school in September.”
    “Yeah? He’s been through that before. I
worry
for him, Mom. What kind of job is he going to get when he’s grown up if he can’t talk to anyone?”
    “Now don’t say he can’t. You’ve heard him talk as good as anybody.”
    “But not when he really needs to!” There was exasperation in Katie’s voice. Buck rarely heard it when she was talking with him, but he heard it now. “I want to help him, but I just don’t know how.”
    “I don’t know either, Katie. I don’t know the answer to any of it,” his mom replied wearily. “Each and every one of us will have a cross to bear before this life is over. Looks like Buck just got his a little early.”
    Buck turned and went back upstairs as softly as he had come. But when he sat down on the edge of his bed, he wheeled about suddenly and pounded the pillow. Again and again and again.

T hursday after school, Buck rode out to check on the