Free A Man Melting by Craig Cliff

and making a br-br-br-br noise, so he didn’t hear me catch up to him.
    ‘Do you speak another language?’ I asked when the corrugated iron ran out.
    Marcus jumped a little. When he turned around, he looked surprised, like no one had ever spoken to him on the way home before. He didn’t talk for a while, although it looked like he was about to try. ‘Nnno,’ he finally said, which wasn’t really a stutter; it sounded as if the word weighed a hundred kgs and he had to heave it out of his mouth and push it all the way to my ears.
    ‘Bummer,’ I said.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because I want to know if you would stutter in another language. What about Maori?’
    ‘What about M-maori?’
    ‘Say kia ora.’
    ‘Kia ora.’
    ‘You didn’t stutter!’
    ‘I don’t always stutter,’ Marcus said, proving his point with a stutterless sentence.
    ‘Oh. Why don’t you say something longer in Maori?’
    ‘Like what?’
    I thought for a moment, then asked, ‘What about the haka?’
    ‘You mean ka mate, k-ka mate?’ It was only a small slip but his face sank.
    ‘You stuttered!’ I was excited by my discovery, but Marcus must have decided I was doing this to tease him.
    ‘I’m going home,’ he said and walked off.
    So Marcus stutters in Maori too, I thought, and walked back up the alleyway because my house was in the opposite direction.
    ‘Dedo, do you really stutter in Serbian?’ I asked my grandfather when we visited the next weekend.
    He nodded.
    ‘Say something in Serbian.’
    ‘You won’t understand. How will you know if I stutter?’
    I looked around for someone to help. It was just me and Dad visiting again, even though Dad promised Daniel was better. He was in the kitchen helping Baba do the dishesand it was just me in the lounge kneeling in front of Dedo’s La-Z-boy.
    ‘Do you stutter in other languages?’ I asked.
    ‘I only know English.’
    ‘And Serbian,’ I added.
    ‘Yes, and Serbian.’
    I desperately wanted him to tell me a story like my other grandfather, my mum’s dad, but Dad’s dad never seemed interested in stories.
    ‘Did you learn English at school?’ I asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you found out you didn’t stutter in English?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And you moved to New Zealand because we speak English here?’
    He nodded.
    ‘You must have stuttered pretty bad if it made you move.’
    My grandfather said nothing.
    ‘But you miss Yugoslavia,’ I said.
    My grandfather said nothing.
    On the way home from Baba and Dedo’s house, I asked my dad why Dedo never told stories.
    ‘I guess he doesn’t like stories.’
    ‘Everyone likes stories,’ I said.
    ‘Maybe he only knows sad ones.’
    ‘Oh,’ I said, and thought about how my grandfather must have been the Marcus Collins of his school, and how this would make me sad.
    The next week at school I decided to be nicer to Marcus Collins. At first Marcus was worried that I was setting himup so I could make him stutter, but when I talked about cricket and Malaysian sun bears, he decided I was okay. I actually ate lunch with him and Ricky Wong on Tuesday.
    Ricky Wong hung out with Marcus because he sniffed everything before he ate it. Back in the new entrants he ate a sandwich which had been in the bottom of Joanna Richardson’s school bag since kindergarten and got really sick. So now he sniffed everything and no one except Marcus would be his friend.
    Ricky said I should go to choir with them on Friday lunchtime, and I said okay because I wanted to see if Marcus stuttered when he sang.
    On Friday, Mrs Green, who ran the choir, stood at the door to the school hall greeting everyone as they came in.
    ‘James,’ she said with a big smile when she saw me. I was surprised she knew my name because she taught standard three and I didn’t have any older brothers or sisters she could know, but then she said, ‘Marcus told me you were coming.’ Mrs Green smiled at Marcus and he smiled back.
    As we entered the hall, the older kids all said hi to