Student Servant Seller I took the fourth piece from the envelope.

Seeker Mr. Spiro's dollar was complete. I was glad the word started with an S like I knew it would.

I found my cellophane tape in another drawer and taped the dollar bill to make it whole. The four pieces of the dollar bill fit together perfectly. I put it in under a flap in my billfold that was supposed to be a secret compartment. Most billfolds had them so it wasn't much of a secret anymore.

The last thing in the envelope was the piece of paper I had typed my poem on. Mr. Spiro had written something on the other side.

Dear Brave Traveler, I am disappointed we missed our business transaction last night. When I return after the autumnal equinox, we will explore more in depth what I have found in my studies. Until then, Messenger, continue to raise your unique voice and write your poetry as you seek to understand the quartering of the soul.

Constantine Spiro P.S. Please have Arthur hold my newspaper until my return.

I read the letter three times. I knew Mr. Spiro was trying to give me a clue to the four words on the dollar bill. Mr. Spiro's leaving felt better because he had left me something to work on and because he told me when he would be coming back. I also liked that he talked about the Soul because I was going to spend a lot of time thinking about that.

The back door buzzer sounded and soon Rat came clomping up the back stairs.

He was tan without any sun lines on his neck or arms. Going without a shirt was another treat on the farm except at hay baling time and then you better have your shirt on or you would have to take a dip in the pond with the cows to stop the itching.

Rat told me about the dirt-clod fights with his cousins and trying to catch baby rabbits while his grandfather cut hay with the tractor. I listened and tried to think about what he was saying even though I was having a hard time keeping my mind on his stories.

How'd the route go?

Good-good.

Why don't you throw the route with me today? We can each take a bag and I'll walk instead of ride.

I didn't want to disappoint Rat on his first day back home. Rat would be telling stories about the farm and I would try to be excited with him even though I had an idea that stories about dirt-clod fights and catching rabbits wouldn't be that interesting anymore.

When we reached the paper drop the bundles were already on the ground and carriers were loading their bags. Rat pulled out his double-bladed Barlow to cut a bundle cord.

Where's your knife?

s-s-s-s-Lost it ... somewhere.

Maybe you'll get another for your birthday.

He tried to wink like he wanted me to know that he might be planning on giving me a new knife from his father's hardware store. But he wasn't very good at winking with one eye.

We each put a newspaper bag across a shoulder. I gave Rat the route money for the last week and we went over his collection book as we walked. I wanted to make sure he knew where everybody stood on their newspaper bill. When we got to Mr. Spiro's house I told Rat that he was paid up and that Mr. Spiro didn't want a newspaper delivered again until the autumnal equinox.

When the h.e.l.l is that?

Rat always cussed a lot when he got back from being with his farm cousins but he would stop right quick the first time his father heard him.

September twenty-second.

He scrunched his nose at me.

s-s-s-s-Looked it up.

When we reached Mrs. Worthington's house I told Rat that the address was paid up but that she wanted the paper stopped.

Why?

s-s-s-s-Don't s-s-s-s-know s-s-s-s-but I got a tip.

Good. I never got anything from those cheapos.

s-s-s-s-Lucky me.

I looked back at 1396 Harbert with the overgrown privet around the porch and wondered if I would ever be able to tell Rat about Mrs. Worthington. I don't know what I would tell him. I didn't understand it myself except I thought Mrs. Worthington was the prettiest woman I had ever seen. And the saddest.

When we finished the route Rat asked if I wanted to throw ball but I told him that my mother always expected me to take a bath before they got home from a trip.

I wanted to tell Rat all that had happened to me and how his paper route had changed me but the parts of the story I could tell didn't make sense without the parts I couldn't tell.

When my parents came home later that afternoon I was on my bed reading the Press-Scimitar about the Yankees beating the White Sox 3 to 1 with Ryne Duren getting the save. A picture in the paper showed my favorite pitcher lighting a cigar for Casey Stengel the manager who was having a party on his sixty-ninth birthday. Ryne Duren was having a good summer on the mound.

My mother came upstairs first. She handed me a small box with see-through plastic on top.

I brought you your favorite. Pralines with pecans.

She always made a big deal about buying me pralines even though I didn't like them. I guess she thought if she liked them then I must like them too.

She asked how my last week on the route had gone and I told her the heat had been pretty bad. She said the heat in New Orleans had been Unrepenting. I guessed she meant Unrelenting.

She went on about how their hotel in New Orleans was air-conditioned and said that she and my father had been talking about having someone build us a new house way out in East Memphis with air-conditioning. She said it would be near a private school that I would like and that the house might have a swimming pool.

I told her the attic fan suited me just fine so she said we'd talk about it later. That was the code for We Won't Talk About It Later.

I had made up my mind to crumble up the pralines and throw them on the roof for the pigeons to eat but when she was about to leave I handed her the box.

s-s-s-s-Thanks ... but ... don't like s-s-s-s-pralines.

But I always thought ...

s-s-s-s-Never have liked s-s-s-s-pralines.

She gave me a strange look. I was expecting her to say Everybody Likes Pralines and I was going to say I'm Not Everybody. But she took the box and left the room.

My father came up the stairs carrying his heavy suitcases with Mam behind him carrying my mother's. My father never let Mam tote his suitcases even though she probably could have lifted more than he could. My mother told Mam to come in the bathroom and help her sort dirty clothes. Mam would be washing and ironing for the next two days. I walked down the hall a ways.

What's gotten into that boy of mine, Nellie?

What you mean?

He seemed upset that I brought him pralines. I thought he liked them.

He just be growing up, Mrs. V. Don't worry 'bout him. He's gonna be fine.

My father came into my room after he had finished unpacking. His right hand dug into the front pocket of his suit pants.

Is the bank open on Sat.u.r.days?

I opened my desk drawer and watched him dump in a week's worth of loose change.

How did your week go, son?

s-s-s-s-Hot. s-s-s-s-But okay.

How about the collecting?

He didn't ask the question just to be talking. I could hear the real question in his voice.

s-s-s-s-Everything worked out okay.

Hard work deserves a bonus ... and I believe you have a birthday soon.

He pulled some folded paper money out of his front pocket and took a twenty-dollar bill from the top. He stuffed the bill into my billfold. He didn't see Mr. Spiro's taped-together dollar in the secret compartment.

Wow. s-s-s-s-Thanks.

I started thinking Ara T had missed a pretty good payday by just a day. Twenty bucks would probably have kept Ara T in whiskey and Vienna sausages and red onions for a good long time. Then I remembered I wasn't supposed to be thinking about Ara T.

My father picked up my ball glove from my bed.

Rain's about stopped. How about some pitch and catch before dark?

I knew the last thing my father wanted to do after flying his plane all day was pitch and catch with me. I wasn't much interested in throwing ball either. I still felt empty with all my tears gone. But I pretended that pitching ball was just what I wanted. So both of us ended up doing something we didn't really want to so we could make the other feel good.

We put on our ball gloves and started throwing in the back driveway trying to keep off the wet gra.s.s.

I had been coming around to a new way of thinking about the man playing pitch with me.

If he had been the man that made me with my mother then he would have had to be a father to me no matter what. Even if I stuttered or looked like the Lizard Boy on the midway at the Mid-South Fair. But since my father wasn't the one who made me with my mother he could have said I wasn't of his doing and he wouldn't have had to raise me or make time for me. It seemed I owed him a lot more than I owed somebody who I didn't even know. I wasn't sure I even wanted to learn anything about the other man because he didn't want to know anything about me as far as I could tell. I figured there was a good chance that he didn't even know he had a part in making me.

My father on the birth certificate might have been Unknown but the tall man throwing ball with me in his white shirt with his necktie stuffed between the b.u.t.tons was my father as far as I was concerned. He got his shiny dress shoes muddy when he stepped in the flower beds to get a ball. He always tried to do about everything in the world for me and he didn't even have to if you wanted to be official about it.

The speech teacher my parents hired had told me that stuttering was what happened when a person tried extra hard not to stutter. I wondered if that was why I stuttered around my father more than anybody. I could tell he worried about me and I wished I could get over my stutter for him as much as for me.

I picked through a couple of words that started with an easy H so I wouldn't have to hiss out a bunch of Gentle Air.

Handle some hard ones?

You bet, son. Let me have 'em.

Then I did something strange. Even for me. I threw my father four good pitches without him even having to move his glove so much as an inch. With each throw I called out one of Mr. Spiro's four words.

Student.

Servant.

Seller.

Seeker.

My father put his hand to his ear after I made the last throw.

What's that?

s-s-s-s-Just some s-s-s-s-good words.

Looking back I guess I was trying to tell my father about the four special words in the best way I could think of. If Mr. Spiro's words were going to help me to figure out things that I needed to do then maybe the words would help me pay back my father for being so good to me. I had it in my mind that if I put each word on a ball and sent it flying straight to him that my father would have them forever the same way I would have them in my billfold.

I know it sounds stupid but I'm glad I did it.

Chapter Twenty.

The best thing about junior high school is that I get to change cla.s.srooms for every subject.

My math teacher told us on the first day that we'd be working with Unknowns. It doesn't seem fair to pile more Unknowns on top of all the Unknowns I already have. But that's the seventh grade for you.

On the second day of school Rat was in the cafeteria line with me when I saw the meat was Vienna sausages wrapped in bread. The menu on the blackboard called them Pigs in a Blanket. I told Rat I wasn't about to eat one.

Why?

Just s-s-s-s-can't eat s-s-s-s-those things.

Why not?

s-s-s-s-They look like s-s-s-s-dog t.u.r.ds in a s-s-s-s-blanket.

Rat told another guy at our table what I said and the guy sneaked up to the blackboard and erased Pigs and wrote in Dog t.u.r.ds. Soon every guy in the lunchroom was laughing and woofing like a dog. Not me. I didn't want to think about Vienna sausages anymore.

I've only walked down the alley behind Harbert one time since school started. The door to the secret shed was leaning up against the fence and everything was cleaned out down to the smallest piece of junk. I wondered if the rats ate the red onions.

I didn't go to the Mid-South Fair even though Rat and Freda wanted me to win a big stuffed animal for them on the midway by knocking over milk bottles with my throws. Rat has started dating Freda except he calls it Going With Her. I think that's funny because Rat's father has to take them everywhere they go.

Rat thinks Freda is some kind of a hot tamale even though she's lived three doors up from him all his life and he never paid much attention to her before. Rat said Freda wanted me to start calling him Art and she wants him to get rid of his crew cut and start growing his hair long like Elvis did before he left Memphis last year and went into the Army. Rat said I should grow my hair long too and I told him I would keep my crew cut because I had plenty of things to think about instead of combing my hair all day.

I've started spending time with TV Boy in the afternoons when he gets home from his special school. His mother taught me how to say a few words with my hands but TV Boy and I don't really need to talk when we're around each other. We like to look at baseball cards and play Pick-Up Sticks since we're both pretty good with our hands.