Going Where It's Dark (10 page)

Buck wondered if he really belonged there. All the others seemed so willing, so eager, almost—to go down front with everyone watching, and tell Sister Pearson about their troubles. The thing he couldn't understand was why God had to wait for Sister Pearson to come to Hillsdale to do anything for them. God knew that Buck stuttered. If He didn't hear Buck's prayers, He surely heard Mom's. But it didn't seem right to ask
What are you waiting for?
of God.

Mom nudged him and gave him a quizzical look that meant
When are you going to go up?
and Buck just looked away.

Occasionally Sister Pearson would stop right in the middle of placing her hands on someone's head and call out something like, “God tells me there's a man here from Maryland who's had heart issues for seven years. Wherever he's sitting, God wants him to come up here where I can pass along God's healing grace.” And once Buck heard a woman's voice say, “Howard, that's you! Go on! Go on up there!” And a man in a brown shirt and a bolo tie came down the aisle, surprise and wonder on his face.

How did Sister Pearson know that?
Buck wondered. He wasn't sure when he should go up, though. He definitely didn't want her calling out his name, or the fact that he stuttered. He looked around and there were still a few people in the aisle, waiting their turn.

“Go
on
!” his mother urged.

He shook his head and folded his song sheet in halves, then in fourths, then folded it still again until it was just a hard lump inside his fist. His knee bobbed nervously up and down. What would Sister Pearson say to him? How much did she know? This was a hundred times worse than being on the school bus with Pete Ketterman kicking the back of the seat. This was a whole tent full of people watching.

“The service is going to be over, and you'll be the last one left,” his mother whispered, nudging him again. “Is that what you want?”

Suddenly Buck propelled himself up out of his chair. He stumbled over the cane of the man sitting in the aisle seat and lurched down the aisle and onto one of the empty chairs in the first row. The two people sitting there turned and looked at him and so did Sister Pearson.

She closed her eyes again, however, and continued praying over the elderly man before her, willing God to cure his worsening eyesight.

Buck wished he were next. Wished it were over with and he was going back to his seat. Wished he and his mom were heading out to the car, and that on the way home he could talk a blue streak and the stuttering would be gone and finally he would be like everyone else. It could happen.

But there was still one more person between him and Sister Pearson, and the palms of his hands were so wet that he wiped them again on his jeans. The inside of his mouth felt like the dry fuzz on a tennis ball, and his jaws ached from the tension of holding them still. His whole body was trembling. Suddenly both the blind man and the man who had brought him down front were leaving, and the gray-haired woman with the piercing gray eyes was leaning over Buck.

“What do you ask of the Lord?” she said, and Buck tried to get his mouth open.

He jerked his head to one side, trying to fling the words out, but his jaws were like a clamp. For a moment he felt as though something physical might have happened and he had lockjaw. His eyes were wild as he flung his head again and again, and the next thing he knew Sister Pearson had his head in both her hands, pressing her palms harder and harder against his cheeks until his lips puckered. She smelled of camphor and roses, and was so close that he could see all the lines of her face, even the faint fine mustache above her upper lip.

“I…I…uh…,” Buck stammered, but now he couldn't even shake the words out, and embarrassment was swallowing him alive. The two men who had started to walk away stopped and turned around.

Sister Pearson released his head and put both hands on his shoulders, pressing down, harder and harder to hold him still. Her eyes were closed, her face pointed upward, and everyone could hear her asking God to make this young man whole, dispel his troubled thoughts and heal his mind. “Give him the peace that passeth understanding, dear Jesus, because we know that in you, all things are possible….”

B
uck slammed the car door hard the moment he got inside.

“W…w…why'd you m…make me come, Mom?” he bellowed, writhing in the passenger seat as he clicked his seat belt buckle. “She th…th…thought I was c…crazy! Now every…b…body thinks it.”

Mrs. Anderson was almost as upset as he was. “Buck, I'm
sorry.
I don't think she understood. Didn't you tell her you stuttered?”

Buck could only press his feet against the floorboards, his back stiff as a broom, then flopped himself against the door. “I t…tried b…but I couldn't s…say the w…words!” he said miserably. “I hate myself! I h…hate b…being me.”

“Buck, don't say that.”

“You're not me!”

“There's so much about you to like. You know I love you just the way you are.”

“That's a l…lie, Mom! If you d…did you w…wouldn't have t…t…t…tried to g…get that woman to p…p…p…pray over me.”

“I only wanted to help! I want you to be happy in eighth grade, Buck! I want you to have a good time in high school. I want you to be able to get any job you want when you're grown. I don't want your stuttering to hold you back.” She was crying, Buck could tell, and he hated himself all the more. Why
couldn't
he talk like other people when part of the time he could? Sometimes, he knew, teachers thought he didn't even try to control it. Or that he did it to annoy the other students and attract attention. He wished they could be him for just one day.

It was like a wall he couldn't climb over, he couldn't crawl under, and he couldn't get around. He didn't want to make his mother unhappy, always having to worry about him. And no, he didn't want to be teased or rejected either. He even imagined putting his mouth and jaws in some kind of primitive device all summer so his lips couldn't tremble, he couldn't make those awful sounds or stupid twisted faces when he stuttered that got people thinking he was weird or crazy. If there were such a device, he'd do it!

It just didn't seem fair. Not that he'd ever wish it on Katie, but they were twins. Why did he stutter and she didn't? He could remember back when he was four…maybe five…thinking that someone must have taught her how to speak correctly but had forgotten to teach him. How desperately he had wished that, just as sometimes he'd go to bed with his leg hurting him, but wake up and the pain was gone, that some morning he'd discover he didn't stutter any longer. But that never happened.

It had been a quiet supper.

The tension between Buck and his mom was like vapor that had settled down over the table; every time people inhaled, their voices seemed higher, tighter, as though they might cough at any minute. When anyone spoke, it was about something trivial, with a lightness that belied the pink of Mrs. Anderson's face, the mechanical passage of Buck's fork from his plate to his mouth and back again.

He was the first one to leave the table. He rinsed off his plate and silverware in the sink, put them in the dishwasher, and went upstairs, closing the door to his room with a thud and flopping onto his bed. Buck lay staring up at the fine crack in the ceiling plaster that resembled, he'd often thought, the highway Mel took from Roanoke to Boston when he made the north/south run. Buck wished he were on that highway now, going almost anywhere, he didn't care where. Anywhere but here.

Downstairs, he knew, they were talking about him—Mom telling what had happened at the faith healing that afternoon. For several minutes there seemed to be no sound at all coming from below, and then, finally, an indignant cry from Katie—and he knew the story had been told about Sister Pearson praying to heal his mind.

Buck rolled off the side of the bed and noiselessly opened his bedroom door. Putting most of his weight on the banister, he maneuvered himself down the stairs, avoiding the step that creaked, and sat down near the bottom. He was good at eavesdropping these days. Would make a good spy. If anyone needed a spy who never talked…

Katie's voice: “But didn't he
tell
her?”

And Mom's anguished reply: “He tried to, but he couldn't get the words out, Katie! He simply couldn't tell her that he stuttered. I almost got up and came forward myself to explain it, but I knew that would embarrass him even more.”

She was right about that, Buck thought. He remembered times people talked around him, even though he was standing right there!

Doctor to Mom:
“Is he having any pain in the other ear?”

Neighbor to Dad:
“Could Buck give me a hand with the trimming, do you think?”

Friend to Katie:
“Does Buck want to come with us?”

There were murmurs in the kitchen that Buck couldn't make out. Then:

“Well, he's got to learn to stand up for himself.” Dad's voice, a deep sigh in it. “Someone can't be following along after to explain him to other people.”

“I know, Don, I know. And that's the last thing on earth Buck would want. But it's so hard to watch his face get all twisted, the way he tries to speak sometimes and can't.”

Buck could actually feel the color rising in his neck.

Now Katie again: “He must have been so humiliated, Mom! Why did you ever take him there? Even if the woman realized he stuttered, how did you think it would help?”

Mom went on the defensive: “You can just get off your high horse, missy! Who was it came out here in the kitchen on Friday saying why didn't we
do
something about that boy's stuttering? Well, now I did something, and everybody's jumping on me for it.” Her voice wavered, and Buck swallowed.

“Look. Nobody's jumping on you, Mom,” said Joel. “We read all that stuff I found online, and he's told you he won't go to Norfolk….”

“Doris,” said Mel, “let me tell you, if I thought Buck had something physically wrong with his mouth or throat, I'd drive him to the best specialist there was—the Cleveland clinic or over to Baltimore—that Johns Hopkins place….I'd go in debt to do it. But if he doesn't want to go…”

No one spoke for a while. And then an exasperated burst from Gramps: “Let the boy alone, for heaven's sake. We know dang well there's nothing wrong with his mouth. He can talk right when he puts his mind to it. Don't drag him here, drag him there. He'll figure it out one of these days.”

“And what if he doesn't, Gramps?” asked Katie. “He hasn't so far. None of us knows what it feels like to be Buck. We have no clue what he's going through.”

More murmurings.

And finally, the squeak of chairs that meant the meal was over and so was the conversation. Everything was right back to where it had been, where it always was: nobody, including Buck, knew what to do, and even talking about it was painful.

Buck slipped out the front door before anyone left the kitchen. He climbed on his bike and took off, and when he reached the road, he didn't know whether to turn right or left. He didn't know where to go except back to the Hole, as deep and dark as he could get, but he wasn't stupid enough to do that. It would be night in another hour. Already the moon was out, faint over the poplars.

He was heading toward town, but he wasn't about to go to Center Street. A warm night like this, there would be a dozen or more kids hanging out in front of the B&I, going in and out of the Sweet Shop. The last thing he wanted to do was run into someone who had seen him over in Hillsdale that afternoon, unlikely as that was.

Everything he'd heard from outside the kitchen made him sick to his stomach. The pity in their voices, the way they predicted how the rest of his life would be. He hated his mouth, his throat, his tongue, his face. Hated himself for not being able to control anything, change anything, like there was a twin self inside him that took delight in every humiliation that came along.

He rode over a pothole on purpose and the bike skidded, almost knocking him off. He wished it had. Wished it had thrown him. Wished it had thrown him and landed on top of him, the chain cutting his stupid lips.

And then, because he didn't know what else to do, Buck turned a corner and rode straight to the driveway of Jacob Wall's house.

He wouldn't allow himself to just sit there. Even stopped himself when he started to turn and ride away. Leaving his bike by the Volvo, every step he took was full of disgust and embarrassment.

Finally the door opened, and there was Jacob. He didn't say anything. Just stood there looking at Buck. A dish towel was tucked into the belt of his pants, and Buck wondered if he'd interrupted a late night supper. He didn't care. It was now or never.

“W…what w…w…would I have t…to do?” Buck asked, and his throat hurt with the struggle.

The man's eyebrows twitched as they rose, and he stared intently down at Buck. He seemed on the verge of answering with a question, and then he checked himself, opened the screen, and said, “Come on in.”

Inside, Buck sat stiffly on one of the leather chairs, and Jacob settled himself in the other, facing him, wiping his hands on the dish towel.

“About your stuttering, you mean?” Jacob said.

Buck nodded.

Jacob thought a minute, then said, “Listen, Buck, I'm not sure I want to take you on. I don't play around. Either you're in or you're not. I've never worked with someone as young as you. All my clients were in the military, and I'll treat you like I would any soldier or sailor. But it's hard work; I'll tell you that up front.”

“I have to h…hold my b…breath or what?”

“You're doing enough of that already.” Jacob studied Buck some more. “What made you change your mind?”

In halting phrases, Buck told him what had happened at the healing service when he was prayed over by Sister Pearson. How the guys on the bus mocked him, how he had embarrassed his sister when he met her boyfriend, how the whole family worried about him and tried not to show it.

“So you've spent most of your life trying not to stutter, is that it?” said Jacob.

Wasn't it obvious? Again Buck nodded.

“And how's that working?”

“It's n…not.”

“Of course. The more you try to hold it back, the more your throat muscles tighten and the worse it gets. The worse it gets, the more you fight it, and this is something you worry about every time you open your mouth.”

Exactly.

“S…so, can you cure m…me or n…not?”

Jacob shook his head. “That's what's causing all the trouble—trying so hard to stop stuttering that you tense up, choke up, tighten your jaw, grind your teeth, blink your eyes, shift your feet—do all manner of things to force the words out.”

All true.

“If I work with you,” Jacob went on, “—big if—I'm going to teach you how to stutter more, not less. I'm going to show you how to let it come out easily, naturally, letting go of all that tensing up and holding back. You are going to learn to stutter like nobody's business.”

“But I d…don't want to do it at all!” Buck protested.

“You want to be normal, and normal people are disfluent sometimes. Everybody stammers occasionally, even presidents, and I have tapes to prove it. We just do it without thinking, and nobody notices. Nobody cares. It's when you start fighting it, making it a big deal, that the trouble begins.”

It made sense and yet it didn't. Jacob pulled himself to his feet to go to the kitchen and check on something he was heating for his supper, leaving Buck alone for a few minutes to figure it out. If most people stuttered occasionally and didn't even notice, Buck was thinking, what had made
him
start getting so upset about it? He couldn't even remember a time he didn't stutter. Couldn't remember a time he didn't feel different because he had this secret worry, this constant fear of stuttering.

What would it be like not to worry about a particular word? he wondered. How many times had he said
theater
because if he said
show
he'd probably stutter on the
S
sound? Or the other way around? How many times, because he had trouble with the
M
sound, he'd say
the day after tomorrow
instead of
Monday
?