Free Paperboy by Vince Vawter

started running around with towels and mops and my mother began apologizing to everybody and saying they needed to get me home because I probably was Coming Down With Something.
    The Something I Was Coming Down With was the same thing I had been coming down with every minute of my talking life.

    My parents tried to have a conversation with me on the way home but I didn’t have anything to say. They knew when to give up. I sat in the backseat and watched all the people on the streets of downtown Memphis. At the bus stops. At the train station. Sitting on porch steps. They were all talking. Talking up a storm. I couldn’t get out one simple word without ruining everybody’s night out.
    When we got home I went upstairs to brush the bad taste out of my mouth and get in bed even though it was only eight o’clock. It was hard to get the restaurant out of my head and then I started feeling even worse that I had messed up supper for everybody. They hadn’t done anything wrong. My parents and their friends should have been able to eat at a restaurant if they wanted to without getting spaghetti spewed all over them. Even the woman who laughed at me and didn’t know how to use a Zippo.
    I decided the right thing to do was to go downstairs and tell my parents I was sorry. I also needed to see if Mam had put anything in the icebox before she left because my stomach was growling and telling me it needed something in it where the big pile of spaghetti should have been.
    My mother and father were talking in the breakfast room as I eased down the back stairs. I sat on the landing step to hear what my mother was saying.
    His therapist said that stammering is likely generic but no one in my family stammers.
    I think you mean
genetic
.
    My father was all the time correcting my mother on her words. She would get close to the right one but close doesn’t cut it when it comes to words. And she always had to say that the way I talked was Stammering. Maybe it sounded better to her than Stuttering.
    My father spoke again.
    I wish he wouldn’t pretend that he doesn’t have a stutter. He needs to realize it’s not something he should be ashamed of.
    Do you think his therapist knows what she’s doing?
    She came highly recommended from the school, didn’t she? She seems …
    I didn’t want to hear any more talk about me.
    When I tiptoed back up the stairs I knew I had heard something important but I couldn’t figure out exactly what. I kept going over what my mother said about stammering not running in her family and that made me wonder if stuttering ran in my father’s family. And why he didn’t say anything about that.

    My mother said I could have whatever I wanted when I came down for breakfast the next morning but I told her that cereal was fine. She asked me if my stomach was feeling better.
    s-s-s-s-It’s o-s-s-s-s-kay. Sorry for s-s-s-s-last s-s-s-s-night.
    Don’t worry. Everybody gets a bug now and then.
    Stuttering is not a bug. AND I DIDN’T JUST COME DOWN WITH SOMETHING. I screamed the words inside my head but that was where they stayed.
    I crunched my cereal as hard as I could so the sound would take the place of the talking in my head. My mother sipped her coffee and turned the pages of the morning newspaper.
    They’ve announced the lineup for the Mid-South Fair. It’ll behere before you know it. I guess you’ll want to go this year again with Art.
    I nodded.
    I don’t know if I approve of the aurora of the fair … I mean aroma … Oh I don’t know what I mean.
    I nodded.
    She probably meant the Aura of the fair and I didn’t have any problem with it. I liked to throw balls at the lead milk bottles because I could usually knock them over and get a prize. Rat and I would walk up and down the midway and try to figure out what was in all the sideshows. We stood in line last year to get into the hypnotist’s tent. We were going to tell the Great Something or Other to put me under a spell so I could talk right and