Free Paperboy by Vince Vawter Page B

wasn’t expecting.
    Unknown
.
    I put everything away in the box like I had found it and went to my room to lie down on my bed and start some serious thinking.
    When I heard my mother’s car in the driveway and the car door close I slipped out of my hard thinking and ran to the big closet to make sure I had turned off the light and shut the doors.
    Both closet doors stood open and the light was on which let me know I had been in there for sure and I wasn’t just dreaming about what I had seen. I turned off the light and fixed the doors like I had found them and ran to the bathroom to run water in the tub. I didn’t usually take a bath that early in the day but I decided I smelled too much like mothballs.

Chapter Eight
    I probably get over things that hurt faster than most kids. I don’t have much of a choice seeing as how my stuttering hurts me so many times during a day.
    Rat has a big scar on his left arm from the time he crashed his bike trying to ride down the concrete steps at Crump Stadium. He tells anybody who listens about how the doctor had to sew sixteen stitches in his arm. He likes to show off to guys and make girls scream by sticking a safety pin in the scar. He says he can’t feel the pin but I can tell he’s careful not to push it in too far.
    I used to have my own secret trick but I used a thumbtack instead of a safety pin. If I knew I was going to have to read or recite in class I would keep a thumbtack in my hand and push it into my palm when I started to talk. I kept hoping the pain would make me forget about stuttering but it never did. I decided it didn’t make much sense to keep sticking myself and I got tired of always having a bloody handwhen class was over. You can’t replace one hurt with another one. You just end up with double hurts.
    Walking the paper route each day gave me time to think about what I had found in the closet.
    Here was the toughest part to figure out. If some other man and my mother got together to make me then why did I like being around my father more than my mother? I liked to talk to my father a whole lot more than I did my mother. My father never seemed to mind that I stuttered so much. He even said when I turned thirteen he would be buying me a shotgun and he wanted to take me hunting with him and his friends. I knew he was always tired when he got home from work and he really didn’t like to pitch and catch much but he always took the time to do it if I asked him.
    Finding out my father was Unknown answered one big question. I had always tried to figure out how I could have such a good arm on me when my father threw so soft. Almost like a girl. I had always wondered if I was going to be tall and thin like my father when I got older. I guess I knew the answer to that question unless the other man who made me was tall too. But I didn’t have the first notion of who that man was or if he was short or tall.
    I thought so much about what I had seen in the closet that week that I would come to the end of my route and look down in my newspaper bags and wonder where all the papers had gone. But I don’t think I ever missed a house because I never got a complaint. My arms and legs could do things without my mind knowing about it.

    Friday morning my father surprised me by saying he was going to take off work that afternoon and we could have lunch anywhere I wanted and then take in a matinee.
    I told him I had to be at the paper drop by three o’clock and he said he would make sure I got there. We checked the paper and the only movie time that worked out was a western called
Shane
playing at the Crosstown Theatre. He said he saw the movie years ago when it first came to town but it was good enough to see again and he thought I would like it. He said for me to be ready at noon. We would eat at Britling’s Cafeteria and then go to the movie.
    At noon I was waiting on the back steps with my newspaper bags when my mother came outside to tell me that my father’s secretary