I had trouble cutting the cord again on the newspaper bundles that afternoon. It had been almost a week and Ara T still hadn't given my knife back. I had seen him from far away on the streets a few times and I knew he had seen me. I didn't know if he was avoiding me or I was avoiding him.

On that second Friday night of collections the envelope was clothespinned on the screen door at 1219 Vinton like it was supposed to be.

Through the screen I could tell that TV Boy was in his usual place in front of the television without the sound on. I took the envelope and counted the change. I marked the collection book and pinned the empty envelope back on the screen door. TV Boy was watching one of those stupid game shows where they asked questions that you would only know the answers to if you read encyclopedias all the time.

You sure wouldn't catch me near a show like that because if I was lucky enough to know the answer I wouldn't be able to get it out before the buzzer sounded. Buzzers and timers and watches made me nervous.

I was riding my bike for collecting because I wanted to get to Mr. Spiro's house early in case he had extra time to talk to me about the piece of the dollar bill he had given me. I pedaled up to his porch and pushed the kickstand down and went to ring the doorbell. Before I could get to the door it opened and there was Mr. Spiro with a book in his hand and a smile like he was glad to see me. His gla.s.ses were so far down on his nose that they didn't hook behind his ears.

Good evening, News Messenger. Is that fastball of yours giving the Heater from Van Meter a run for his money yet?

I knew he was talking about Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians and I could have said a plain Yes and that would have been the end but I wanted to try to have a conversation with Mr. Spiro.

s-s-s-s-My favorite s-s-s-s-p I started over so I could subst.i.tute the word player for pitcher. Even though both words were P words the L changed the way I made the first sound and that was all I needed sometimes to get started.

s-s-s-s-My favorite player is Ryne s-s-s-s-D I promised myself not to pa.s.s out this time. I was careful to take a breath before trying to say Duren again. Just because Ryne Duren was my favorite baseball pitcher didn't mean I could say his name. Mr. Spiro was still smiling and looking straight at me.

s-s-s-s-D No luck. The D sound stuck tight in my throat like a tennis ball in a chain-link fence. There wasn't any way to subst.i.tute a word.

If I say your player's full name do you think we might be able to say it in unison?

I nodded.

Mr. Spiro tilted his head back and rounded his lips and said Ryne Duren in a regular talking voice. The words came out of my mouth perfect at the same time they came out of his. Mam and Mr. Spiro were the only people who knew how to get me through a bad block and I had only known Mr. Spiro for a week.

Ah yes. The nearsighted Yankee reliever who makes batters tremble with his fastball.

How s-s-s-s-did you s-s-s-s-know to help me like that?

Mr. Spiro stepped down on the porch from his doorway.

Speech pathology is certainly not my field of expertise but it is an interesting subject that I've read a tad about of late. My guess is that you are also in control of your speech when you sing. Is that correct?

I nodded.

I'm glad you can share your song, Young Messenger. The proverbial bucket has not been constructed that would carry my pitiful attempts.

Mr. Spiro put his hand in his pocket and brought out a handful of coins. He began counting out the ninety-five cents. I could feel words lining up in my head but it surprised me when they started to come out on their own without me doing a lot of planning and switching words ahead of time.

s-s-s-s-Would you have s-s-s-s-time to sit on the swing?

Certainly. I always have time for a Messenger of the News and this is porch-swinging weather if ever I've felt it.

Mr. Spiro went to the swing and sat on the side nearest the house. I sat down beside him and we started to swing. Easy.

I had another talking trick that worked almost the same as tossing a pencil in the air or saying the words at the same time somebody else did. Talking was easier for me in a swing if I got the timing right and pushed off at the same time I started to say a word. I did this with Mam some and she said I ought to practice swinging and talking more because it smoothed my words out but there usually weren't many swings handy when I needed to talk to somebody.

Mr. Spiro waited on me to start the conversation.

How did you s-s-s-s-know what happened to me last s-s-s-s-time ... and why did you s-s-s-s-talk to me s-s-s-s-bout it?

The sentence was double the length I usually tried to get out but the words came easier on the swing. Mr. Spiro studied my question.

It occurred to me during what I a.s.sumed was a vocal block that you probably had encountered people who would not take the time to understand your situation. They would pretend to ignore it and that only leads to more confusion ... for the speaker and the listener.

I liked the way Mr. Spiro didn't beat around the bush. Answering the question without any extra words and talking to me like I was a grown-up. He could have just said Lucky Guess but Mr. Spiro seemed like a guy who respected a kid enough not to lie or give a short answer.

I wanted to make certain you knew that your verbal blocks were of no bother to me. I'm interested more in content rather than how well one might vocalize it.

Most grown-ups and especially my relatives and friends of my parents treated me about as well as could be expected without them knowing exactly what I was going through when I tried to talk. Some people tried to finish sentences for me and mostly would get them wrong. Some people just smiled a fake smile and waited on me to get my words out while they were looking around the room. Some got confused and just wandered off as quickly as they could.

I knew that people didn't mean anything by it. If the way I talked was confusing for me it was bound to be confusing listening to me. But not one time had a grown-up except for Mam and my speech teacher talked to me about my stuttering. It's like I walked into a room with an organ-grinder's monkey sitting on my head and everyone pretending the monkey wasn't there. I barely knew Mr. Spiro but we were on his front porch having a talk about my stuttering.

I a.s.sume you are in the hands of a capable speech pathologist?

I nodded.

Do you think it's helping? Are you doing all that this person asks of you?

s-s-s-s-Most of the s-s-s-s-time.

From what I can understand, modern speech therapy is based on the Aristotelian logic that nonfluent speech is a product of improperly learned motor skills and has nothing to do with Freudian bugaboos.

Usually I could make out the meaning of what somebody said even if I didn't understand all the words but Mr. Spiro could tell he had lost me.

Putting it simply. Listen to your speech teacher. Practice what is taught and you will find your voice. It may not be the voice of your choosing but you will do well by it.

That was the first time anybody had ever told me that I had a fighting chance. Even my teacher. The day I first met her I asked how long it would take for her to teach me to talk like a regular kid and she said just to do my exercises and not worry about the future. How could I not worry about my future if I was going to be stuttering all the time in it?

I wanted to hear more from Mr. Spiro. His answers made me feel better no matter what my question was.

Why s-s-s-s-can most kids talk without any s-s-s-s-trouble and not s-s-s-s-me?

It was a simple question I had wanted to ask someone for as long as I could remember. Someone who would tell me the truth. I did ask Mam one time but she said it was just G.o.d's plan. That didn't make any sense to me because a G.o.d who would play dirty tricks on a kid like that didn't know very much about being a G.o.d.

Mr. Spiro changed his smile. He had different smiles for different parts of a conversation.

I will play Socrates and ask you a question. Why can't everyone in the sixth grade throw a ball as hard and as straight as you can?

s-s-s-s-Because ...

I didn't have a good answer. I didn't have any answer. He kept looking at me and waiting like I was going to have to come up with something before he would let me ask another question.

s-s-s-s-Because ... they're not me.

Exactly, Messenger. So it follows that you are not them. Correct?

I nodded.

Your questions are filling our sails. We are making grand headway. Another one, if you will.

Why do s-s-s-s-people who can talk right waste so s-s-s-s-many words saying s-s-s-s-nothing?

Mr. Spiro smiled again. I was proud of my question because I thought it was one that he could really haul off and take a poke at.

Perchance do you know the name Voltaire?

I hadn't heard of the name but it started with the same sound as my name and so I didn't care much for it. I shook my head.

Voltaire was a French philosopher of two centuries past. He answered your question quite well. La parole a ete donnee a l'homme pour deguiser sa pensee.

Mr. Spiro moved his mouth the same as always but what came out was strange and exciting like if you turned on the kitchen faucet to get a drink of water and sweet lemonade came out instead.

Mr. Spiro smiled another new kind of smile.

Tis rude of me to go out of country but it's a favorite quote of mine that rings more true in the original French. It translates: Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts.

I burned that sentence on to my brain like Ted Williams's name was burned on to my Louisville Slugger baseball bat.

I was the one smiling now. Whoever this Voltaire guy was he threw a hard one right down the middle when he said that. I guess people were using words to keep you from knowing what they were thinking when Mr. Voltaire lived in France and they were sure doing it big time in Memphis in 1959.

So many questions started whirling around in my head that I didn't know which one to pick. The question that came out didn't make any sense and I couldn't finish it because I didn't know what I was trying to ask.

Who s-s-s-s-thought up the letters and sounds that s-s-s-s ...?

My Gentle Air faded into thin air. Mr. Spiro looked at me until he knew my brain had completely stopped working.

If I understand your question, I believe you have Napoleon Bonaparte to blame.

s-s-s-s-The short s-s-s-s-guy?

A good laugh from Mr. Spiro.

While the short guy, as you refer to him, didn't invent the modern alphabet, he did help us preserve it.

I waited without saying anything because Mr. Spiro wasn't blinking and I knew he was getting ready to tell a good story.

Almost two hundred years ago our diminutive Napoleon was out and about doing his conquering in Egypt when one of his lieutenants brought him a large stone with writing on it. His army had found it near a town named Rosetta. They deduced the stone to be centuries old. When the British defeated Napoleon they took the Rosetta Stone to London. Archaeologists studied the writing and decided that our modern alphabet and the corresponding sounds actually came from Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Mr. Spiro could put so much information into his sentences that it hurt my head trying to keep up.

Hieroglyphics is tantamount to writing with pictures.

I remembered seeing the word hieroglyphics in My Weekly Reader but I had never heard it said out loud.

s-s-s-s-But words and letters can't be s-s-s-s-pictures.

He came back with questions that sent my mind off to the races.

Does W remind you of waves of water? Does a capital H remind you of the columns of a house? Does an O resemble the face of an owl? Does an S look like a snake?

I juggled the letters and waves and owls and snakes around in my head. How come n.o.body had ever told me that letters were more than sounds you made?

Mr. Spiro got to his feet. He took his gla.s.ses from the tip of his nose and slid them on top of his head.

Memory serves that I owe you the second installment of the incentive compensation I promised last week.

He reached inside the door and handed me another piece of a dollar bill. It was the lower left-hand corner. On it was written the word servant in the same careful hand that student had been written in the week before.

You now have one half of your golden fleece.

With Egyptian hieroglyphs and My Weekly Reader pictures of Cleopatra and snakes crawling around in my head I knew I was going to have trouble saying much more. When I got excited about something my talking went all the way haywire. I started thinking about what I was going to say three sentences ahead and then I got stuck on the sentence I was trying to get out. Words stirred around in my brain like the propeller on the milk shake machine at the drugstore.

I s-s-s-s-know about Jason and the s-s-s-s-A ... and his gang.

There had been a story in My Weekly Reader called "The Golden Fleece" about Jason and the Argonauts who lived a long time ago trying to find a sheep with its wool made out of gold.

Good for you, Young Messenger.

s-s-s-s-Can I ask ... was s-s-s-s-Jason real?

If you are asking if the story of Jason and the Argonauts is fiction or nonfiction, I will answer that there is no difference between the two in the world I inhabit. Therefore the question does not have a valid answer.

I felt like I was falling off a cliff and trying to grab for tree limbs or anything to slow me down like cowboys do in television shows.

s-s-s-s-But fiction is a story and s-s-s-s-nonfiction is the s-s-s-s-truth.

And I reply that you are referring merely to the rule of law. I contend that one is likely to find more truth in fiction. A good painting after all is more truthful than a photograph. Remember that, Young Messenger, for all your days.

I kept his words rolling around in my head until I was sure I had everything put away in the right place.

We'll have plenty of time to explore your queries at a later date but let's drop our sails for now.

One s-s-s-s-more question s-s-s-s-today. Do you s-s-s-s-know about s-s-s-s-Demosthe-s-s-s-s-nes?

I had wanted to say that name out loud ever since I had read in My Weekly Reader about this guy who lived a long time ago and had to put pebbles in his mouth to keep from stuttering.

Mr. Spiro smiled another kind of smile and then his head went back and he laughed a real honest-to-goodness laugh for the first time. It was a loud laugh. Almost like one of Mam's field whoops that she used to call me from my room.

Yes. But I suggest you not try putting pebbles in your mouth. You might accidentally swallow one.

Too late I wanted to tell him. I had already swallowed two of my shootin' marbles trying to copy Demosthenes. It might have worked a long time ago but not anymore. At least not with shootin' marbles.

Mr. Spiro started back into his house.

Thanks for your excellent service and good conversation, my young Candide. We have a date next Friday when we will continue to cultivate our garden.

He closed the door.