I had looked for Mrs. Worthington every day but she was staying inside with the door closed even in all the heat.

I was full of good throws on my last day of the route. End over end. Side arms. High shots. Low shots. Curves around posts. I even threw one through a porch railing. The folded newspaper split the small opening slick as a whistle and came to rest against the house. I didn't miss one porch.

I was counting on my last night of collecting being just as good as my last day of throwing.

In my room I picked out my best shorts and a clean shirt in case I might get to see Mrs. Worthington.

I knew Mam had gone to the grocery store because her little black hat and parasol were gone from the hall tree at the foot of the back stairs. It felt strange to leave the house without Mam there but strange feelings had been coming in bunches the whole month of July.

The first surprise of the night was seeing TV Boy out on the porch swing when I skipped up the concrete steps to his house. I figured it must be too hot for even him to be inside with his nose stuck to the screen.

When I rang the doorbell his mother told me to wait on the porch while she got some change. TV Boy was swinging and looking straight ahead into s.p.a.ce.

s-s-s-s-Nothing on s-s-s-s-television?

He acted like he didn't hear me.

What s-s-s-s-do you watch all the s-s-s-s-time?

Not one word from TV Boy.

His mother came out of the door about that time and handed me the correct change. Then she did something that knocked me off my rocker. She turned to TV Boy and started moving her hands fast like she was a third base coach giving him signals.

She was talking to him with her hands.

TV Boy said something back to his mother by moving his hands and then got out of the swing to go inside. When he stepped through the door he turned around and smiled at me. I smiled back. Two kids don't have to say words because they can say all they need to sometimes with their smiles.

I remembered going with my father to his office and riding up on the elevator to his floor. The elevator man looked at my father when we got on and then my father pointed at me and back to himself without saying anything and the elevator man smiled at me. When we got to his office my father said the man was a Deaf Mute meaning that he couldn't hear or talk. My father told me that he was a nice guy and if I ever met anyone like him I should never call them Deaf and Dumb. He said this guy was just as smart as everyone else except that he was born not being able to hear or talk.

I thought about TV Boy as I walked from house to house and felt bad about getting mad at him the week before. Just like I couldn't help it that I stuttered it wasn't his fault that he couldn't hear or talk. Being able to hear is nice but I wanted to tell him that he wasn't missing anything by not being able to talk.

I decided TV Boy would make a good friend. He wouldn't have to hear my bad talking and he could teach me how to say things with my hands instead of my mouth. I was pretty sure I would be good at that kind of talking because my baseball coach always said I had good hands.

The street names in blue tile on every corner left me with a lonely feeling as I walked my route for the last time. It was like saying goodbye to friends.

I thought about how Mr. Spiro's route had taken him to countries all over the world but these few Memphis streets had been my whole world up until now.

I was an eleven-year-old kid standing on a street corner in Memphis in short pants. I felt like I was so small that I would be blown away if the slightest puff of wind came up.

But you didn't have to worry about any kind of a breeze showing up on a late July afternoon in Memphis.

Chapter Fifteen.

When I had delivered Mr. Spiro's paper earlier in the day the front door had been closed as usual but at collection time it was propped open with a crate of books.

Mr. Spiro's old bicycle with the rusted handlebars was on the porch leaning up against the house. The basket on the front of the bicycle held something that looked like a canvas sack with straps on it. I stuck my head in the door and called out for him instead of ringing the doorbell.

Mr. Spiro answered from the back of the house.

Be there in a moment, Messenger. Do come in.

I listened in my head again to the way he put the Do before the Come In. He could add one little word to a sentence and that word would make all the words more important.

Inside the house some of the crates of books had been moved around with more crates sitting in the middle of the floor.

But the room didn't feel right to me.

A white duffel bag like the one our team carried bats in was on the floor with clothes and books beside it. CONSTANTINE SPIRO was printed on the white bag in faded black square letters. Beneath the name was SS Patrick Henry.

I didn't like what I saw. My father's packed bags on the bed always made me feel bad and Mr. Spiro's duffel bag was giving me a double whammy to the stomach.

Mr. Spiro came into the room with a small green bottle in his hand. He poured a little of what was in the bottle in his other hand and began patting his face and neck. He was in khaki pants and a T-shirt so white and clean that it looked like Mam had just washed and ironed it.

Lilac de France. The best antidote in the world for close quarters belowdecks.

Mr. Spiro was smiling and his voice had an excited sound.

You're going away?

The words spilled out of my mouth before I could think about stuttering. Even the G sound that usually stopped me dead in my tracks.

An investigative reporter you are. Yes. I'm going on a short excursion but I'll be back in the fall.

Where?

Early tomorrow I'm catching a tow headed up the Mississippi and then I'll take my bicycle and jump ship somewhere in the Badger State. Wisconsin.

I felt like being a smart mouth and telling Mr. Spiro that I had learned all the way back in the fourth grade that Wisconsin was the Badger State but I could feel myself getting upset and everything clogging up inside of me. When I didn't say anything Mr. Spiro kept on talking.

The Seven Seas and the Seven Continents have long been my ports of call and now I want to explore the Seven States of the Great Lakes.

I didn't like the way Mr. Spiro kept saying Seven. Seven was my favorite number and a number I could say most of the time. Mickey Mantle wore No. 7. I saw a green scoreboard with a seven beside Mr. Spiro's name and a big fat zero beside my name. I tried to keep myself from looking too down in the dumps because it was plain to see that Mr. Spiro was excited about his trip and all his sevens. But covering up my feelings when something got sprung on me was another thing I wasn't very good at. He stood in the middle of the room studying me and patting his face with a white towel he had pulled out of his bag.

I had considered leaving earlier in the week on another tow up the Mississippi but I wanted to make sure we had a good conversation before I left. And ... we have some unfinished business.

My stutter always got worse when someone threw me a curve like Mr. Spiro had just done with his packed bags. Sure I wanted to know about the fourth word but I wanted to calm down inside and wait until I could talk better.

s-s-s-s-Could I s-s-s-s-do the rest of my s-s-s-s-collecting and then s-s-s-s-come s-s-s-s-back?

Certainly, Messenger. That'll give me a chance to get shipshape here. I'll be expecting you forthwith.

I gave him the best smile I could come up with and backed out the door.

I had come around to thinking that Mr. Spiro was the only person I could talk to about my father not being the man who made me with my mother. I had planned on asking him if I could still visit him each week even after I was done filling in on the route. And now Mr. Spiro was packing a bag on me.

I put down check marks in the collection book at each house but my marks weren't as neat as they had been at the start of July. If Rat didn't care about throwing papers the right way or keeping his route book neat then I didn't care either. I had thought that my last Friday night would be my best night but it wasn't working out that way.

At Mrs. Worthington's house the driveway was empty but the porch light was on which made me think she might be waiting for me. I wanted to talk to her one last time or maybe not talk so much as look at her again up close.

As I reached the top step I saw a white envelope clothespinned to the screen door. Written on the outside of the envelope in a nice hand was the word Paperboy. My hands were shaky like just before throwing the first pitch of a game because I had the feeling that whatever was in the envelope would either be All-The-Way Good or All-The-Way Bad.

I didn't have my knife to slit the envelope so I sat down on the porch swing and opened it as neat as I could with my fingers.

A five-dollar bill was folded around a note written in a woman's curvy hand with big loops on the capital letters.

Please cancel our newspaper. This should cover what we owe.

Thank you for your excellent service.

1396 Harbert I put the note in the collection book and the five-dollar bill in my back pocket.

All the grown-ups around me were making things hard for me all at once like they had gotten together and planned it.

Before I could think what I was doing my finger pushed Mrs. Worthington's doorbell. The chimes gave me a start when I heard them and I jerked my hand away. My feet wanted to run but I needed to see Mrs. Worthington. I rang the doorbell again. No lights came on inside. The house was dark and quiet.

I sat down on the porch swing and looked at Mrs. Worthington's note again. Her handwriting was nice with even s.p.a.cing between the words and the sentences didn't go uphill or downhill even though there weren't any lines on the paper. I had the feeling that she had taken a lot of time writing the note but I knew it wasn't really what she wanted to say to me. I think she was apologizing for inviting me into her house. She was disguising what she wanted to say just like Mr. Voltaire said.

I got up from the swing and started home.

Halfway home I picked up a good throwing rock. There were plenty of gla.s.s streetlamps shining at me. The fat lights made good targets and I could feel my arm getting ready to haul off and bust one and make the gla.s.s come down like rain but there was also the Man in the Moon peeking out through the clouds and the heat. The Man in the Moon was giving me a suck-egg smile.

I threw the rock at the moon. As hard as I could throw. I found another rock. And another one. I threw so many rocks that I was out of breath and my arm was hurting.

The Man in the Moon was still smiling and laughing at the boy way down below who thought he could hit the moon with a rock.

Chapter Sixteen.

When I started up the driveway to my house my head finally got back to the business of the paper route.

Rat's mother was expecting me to come by with the collections so Rat could pay his monthly newspaper bill when he returned the next day. I hadn't collected Mr. Spiro's money yet so I needed change to make up the difference. I also needed some money to pay for the bags Ara T had stolen. I could have used Mrs. Worthington's five-dollar bill but I wanted to keep it in my pocket a little longer.

Mam was stirring a pot on the stove. The kitchen was sticky hot even at seven o'clock at night.

s-s-s-s-Need to get some s-s-s-s-change. s-s-s-s-Going to Rat's and s-s-s-s-then I'll s-s-s-s-be back to eat.

I was using Gentle Air to beat the band. It was the only way I could get my words out with my head dancing around so much. Mam looked at me.

Everything okay, Little Man?

s-s-s-s-Just tired of the s-s-s-s-p ... s-s-s-s-Tired of the route.

You hurry and gets your change and then get on back from Mr. Rat's 'fore dark.

I was so out of sorts I didn't even look to see what Mam was cooking.

The best breeze in the house late in the day was on the back stairs when the attic fan sucked the air up the dark stairway.

I sat down on the landing and switched my thinking to Mr. Spiro. His packed duffel bag was stuck in my head. I still couldn't believe he was leaving on his trip. I wanted to ask him questions about my Unknown father and hear him talk about his books and things he had seen while he was traveling around the seven continents. Everything he talked about was new and soap-clean. And he was going away on a towboat for more adventures and I was stuck in this hot stove of a city with only Rat who would tell about what a great time he had on the farm and how many dirt-clod fights he had with his cousins and how he wished I had been there to help him.

I was glad for Rat but all the work I had done on the paper route for the month had left me with nothing but three words on a cut-up dollar bill. I did want to know what the fourth word was so I hurried on up the stairs. I knew Mam was still worrying about her Haints and she wouldn't let me leave the house after dark.

The curtains in my room blew toward me as I walked down the hall but even with the fresh air coming in the room I could tell that the smell wasn't right.

My room was all out of whack. The drawers under both of my twin beds were pulled out. That didn't make any sense because the only stuff in them was blankets and sheets and winter clothes. The next thing I saw was the chair pulled away from my desk and all the drawers hanging open. Mam had taught me never to leave drawers open. Especially the middle drawer with all of my money in it. It was pulled out so far that it was tipping down in front.

A bad feeling came over me like it did at school when the books under my desk were not in the same order I had left them.

The money was gone from the drawer. All of it. My billfold and my wrist.w.a.tch too. The air from the attic fan coming through the window was hot but I let it blow over me until I could get what had happened in my room straightened out in my head.

When I went to the top of the stairs and yelled for Mam she heard something in my voice more than just my words because she came up the stairs two at a time. We ran down the hall together.

s-s-s-s-Gone. s-s-s-s-Money's gone.

Mam stopped in the middle of the room and breathed heavy.

Even though her nose was busted. Even though my mother's mothb.a.l.l.s from the attic smelled. Even though the air coming through the window was new and hot. Mam smelled the same rotten smell I did. Ara T.

Mam went to the desk and jerked it away from the window like it was made out of model-airplane wood. She leaned out the window and looked at the flat roof.

Did you leave that ladder up?

I nodded.

When I s-s-s-s-got my s-s-s-s-ball yesterday.

Mam pulled her head in and jerked the window down so hard that the weights on the ropes banged inside the wall.

Mam untied her ap.r.o.n while she walked down the hall. She may have been walking but I had to run to catch up with her. She draped the ap.r.o.n on the post at the bottom of the stairs which was the first time I had ever seen it not hanging in its place on the back of the pantry door.

I can't leave you here, Little Man. You get right on up to Mr. Rat's house and wait for me there.

She looked at me for a nod.