Going Where It's Dark

  Mel dropped the subject then, as Buck knew he would, because his uncle was never one to get in an argument with Mom or Dad, never forgetting for one minute that this wasn’t his house and that Joel and Buck and Katie weren’t his kids.

  Katie came to the front door. “Could you guys do me a favor? The last load is sheets, and Mom likes them dried on the line. When the washer stops, could you hang them for me? Amy and Sarah and I want to see the first show at the Palace.”

  “We’ll do it, Katie. You run along,” said Mel.

  Buck was glad when they’d finished the wall and windows—when they could pour the bucket of water over the porch and, sloshing around in their bare feet, mop the floorboards, pushing the water toward the edge where it ran off down into the azalea bushes.

  “I’ll take care of those sheets,” Mel told him, “but unless you’re planning to get to that weeding right away, think you could go to Bealls’ and get me a package of Tums? I’ve got to pick up my rig at four this afternoon and head out, and the older I get, the less my stomach can take some of that truck stop chili.” He reached in his pocket and handed Buck a few dollars. “Buy yourself a candy bar while you’re at it.”

  •••

  Buck didn’t want a candy bar as much as he wanted the feel of riding around on the first day of summer vacation with no destination other than the country store. And the bike was only six months old, a Christmas gift from his parents.

  If all the land around was as flat as this little valley, he was thinking, he could explore on his bike for miles without ever having to get off and walk his bike to the top of the steepest hills. With this multispeed bike, though, he’d only had to do that once. Of course, if the land was all flat, and not the hilly countryside that surrounded him now, there probably wouldn’t be many caves to explore.

  He had only been in two caves other than Luray Caverns. Unless you counted a couple of so-called caves that charged five-dollar admissions, and then you discovered, after you went behind a curtain, that they only went back about fifteen feet. Mostly they were souvenir shops, with postcards showing the caves photographed in blue light, red light, and green light, plus fake emerald bracelets and even rosaries.

  Mel had taken him and David once to a local cave called the Tube, because worming your way through it felt like crawling through a tube of toothpaste, and you came out covered with gray-white mud. After that, Mel said he wasn’t cut out for cave crawling, but it only made Buck and David want to go exploring even more.

  Just for the fun of it, Buck detoured onto Center Street where he entered the town limits and drove down beyond the B&I to see what was playing at the Palace. Temptation Summer, the marquee read, and the movie poster showed three young women in bathing suits, walking boldly along the boardwalk at the ocean. He’d pass, Buck decided.

  He started to ride on when Nat came out of the drugstore.

  “Buck!” Nat called, his eyes squinting against the sunlight, and Buck braked. “There’s a spy movie showing at the Wednesday matinee. Want to go?”

  “Sure!”

  “Okay. See you,” Nat said, and climbed in a car where his dad was waiting.

  Just like that. He guessed they were still friends. He didn’t know how much they had in common, but what was the hurry? In some ways even he and David were as different as…yes, a sheepdog and a Chihuahua, but so what?

  Turning at the corner, he rode over to Fourth Street, passing the old Ambassador Hotel that had stood empty now for the past seven years. Buck remembered that it was shabby even when it was open for business, and now the missing window on the top floor had only pigeons for guests. The rumor had spread that because someone had died there in a top-floor fire, the hotel was haunted. Buck and David had both dared the other to crawl in a downstairs window some night and take the stairs all the way up to the third floor, but neither had ever tried it.

  When he finally got to Bealls’, Buck parked his bike beneath one of the sycamores out front and went up the planked steps, nodding to the two elderly women chatting in the rockers.

  The minute he stepped inside, he saw them: Pete, Rod, Ethan, and Isaac, waiting in line at the cashier’s counter.

  He couldn’t turn and leave; they’d already seen him. So he took the far aisle and headed to the back of the store, where the arrow pointed to Paint, Garden, Housewares, none of which were of any use to Buck.

  The aisles at Bealls’ were scarcely a yard wide, and the upper shelves were so high that if customers needed something from up there, they had to ask Mr. Beall for help. Soup bowls and saucepans were stacked helter-skelter next to two-gallon containers of glossy white paint.

  Coming back here was a bad idea—a great place to be cornered, Buck thought. Pretending to look at paint samples, he could see Pete watching him from the other end of the long aisle. But Buck decided to wait them out, and finally, after two or three minutes, Pete and his buddies paid for their colas and cheese puffs and went out the door.

  Still, Buck waited five minutes more before he paid for Mel’s package of Tums and a Payday candy bar. Even then, he checked out the front window before he left, but the porch and yard were empty except for one of the elderly women, and she was asleep.

  Buck opened the screen and stepped out. As he started to unwrap the Payday, he realized his bike was missing.

  Pete! Then he saw it parked against the far sycamore. His forehead wrinkled in confusion as he replayed getting off the bike and parking it closer to the store. But there it was, almost as far as the road. He shrugged and went on down the steps, then set out across the bare dirt lot.

  There were sudden footsteps behind him, and before he could turn around, he felt an arm around his shoulder from the left, another arm around him from the right, and then Ethan’s voice saying, “Buck-o! Buddy! Whuzzup?” and the arms were moving him off toward the side, and into the woods that lined the edge of the Beallses’ property.

  “H…hi,” Buck said, trying to steer them back toward his bike, but the other two boys were behind him now, hands against his back, and their fake cheery voices rang out across the lot.

  “Long time no see!” said Pete. “How you doin’, buddy?”

  “H…hey!” Buck said, both feet coming to a dead stop. “I’ve g…got to g…get…”

  But he was propelled forward whether his feet cooperated or not.

  “Whuzza matter?” Pete said. “Good to see you! Got a little something for you.”

  They were half lifting him as they entered the trees. Buck turned his head, looking to see if anyone might be watching, if it would help to yell, but no other customers were coming out just then, and the lone driver who passed by on the road didn’t even glance their way.

  Maybe he should just play along, be a good sport, Buck thought. If he went totally limp, nothing would stop them from carrying him, and this was humiliating enough. Pete had never been known for beating anyone up, but there was always a first time. Was a big, overgrown guy like Pete, big man on campus, really so upset about what Buck had called him?

  “Almost there,” Rob said.

  “Relax,” Isaac told him. “Just doing you a favor, that’s all.”

  Puzzled, Buck stopped resisting. They reached a spot where they were surrounded on all sides by pine trees, and the boys loosened their grip a little on his shoulders.

  Pete moved around in front of him and looked down, a semi-serious expression on his face, though the other boys were grinning. Pete’s face was so close to Buck’s, in fact, that Buck could see the yellow specks in his hazel eyes, the little sore at one corner of his mouth, and definitely the gap between his two front teeth.

  “Here’s the deal, see,” Pete began. “We’ve sort of noticed that our little Buck-o here has a speech problem. And we thought of a way we could help. Can you guess how?”

  Buck didn’t respond.

  “No? Okay, here’s what you do: open your mouth wide and repeat after me—slow-ly now—I…am…a…creep. Got it?” The other boys laughed alo
ud. “Come on. Just four words, Puke Face, I mean, Buck-o.” And he exaggerated each one: “I…am…a…creep.”

  Buck knew he was in for it now. How could he ever have imagined that he could call Pete Ketterman a name—any name at all—and think that Pete would let it pass?

  “What do you think, guys? He need a little lubrication first?” Pete asked the others.

  “Yeah, that’s it!” said Isaac. “His vocal cords are dry.”

  Pete reached into the paper bag he’d gotten at Bealls’ and pulled out a can of Budweiser. Buck knew right away that the boys had shoplifted the can, because Mr. Beall wasn’t about to sell beer to minors.

  Ethan moved around behind Buck and grabbed his head in his hands, holding it like a vise, and it was Sister Pearson all over again, Buck thought. Rob and Isaac, on either side, pinned Buck’s arms to his body.

  Slowly Pete held the can in front of Buck and pulled the tab, making a ssssspop sound.

  “Mmmm! Good!” said Pete, taking a swig. He held the can close to Buck’s face as Ethan tipped Buck’s head backward. “Now open your mouth and say, ‘I’m sorry, Pete, for calling you Puke Face.’ ”

  Buck tried to turn his face away, but he could scarcely move it at all. And no way was he sorry about Puke Face—just sorry he was where he was now. Maybe he was stubborn, like Dad said, but Pete would get no apology from him.

  “C’mon,” Pete said. “I’m…sorr…y….”

  Buck pressed his lips together even tighter.

  “How you going to stop stuttering if you won’t try?” said Pete, and he wasn’t smiling anymore. And suddenly he tipped the open can against Buck’s lips and the beer dribbled out onto his chin and down the front of his shirt.

  “C…cut it…out…,” Buck stammered, but he’d opened his mouth just enough that Pete could press the can against his lips, hard enough to keep them apart, and the beer came pouring out in a steady stream.

  It was filling Buck’s mouth and throat and he had to swallow, swallow again, and still the beer kept coming. It ran down his cheeks and trickled into his ears. Isaac had tilted his head so that the beer had nowhere else to go, and then Buck was coughing and choking, and finally Isaac let go.

  Pete stepped back and dropped the empty can on the ground. He looked down at Buck and shook his head in disgust.

  “Anyone’s gonna puke, weirdo, it’s you,” he said. “You just watch who you’re calling names.” And then, to his friends, “Let’s go,” and they pushed back through the pine branches and soon were out of sight.

  Buck wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He reeked of beer, and there was a huge wet stain on the front of his tee. He ran his tongue over his upper lip and felt a cut from the edge of the Budweiser can. He blotted the blood on his arm, then made his way back to the parking lot.

  At least his bike was still there. The jerks! Buck could almost taste the anger in his mouth. For a moment he thought he really might throw up, but then it passed.

  •••

  He’d hoped to get upstairs to wash and change shirts. He went around the side of the house and zigzagged between the wet sheets hanging from the clothesline. But when he came in the back door, Mel was there at the table, eating a sandwich.

  Buck laid the package of Tums and his change by Mel’s plate and started toward the stairs, but Mel grabbed his arm. “Hey!”

  Buck stood without turning around. “What?”

  “Whaddya mean ‘what’? You smell like a brewery.”

  Buck shrugged but still averted his face.

  “You been drinking, Buck?”

  “No. Some g…guys from school were h…h…horsing around and p…poured beer on me.”

  Mel still didn’t let go of his arm. “Why?”

  Buck gave another shrug. “F…first day of v…v…vacation. Just acting c…crazy.”

  Mel reached up and grasped Buck’s chin in one hand, studied his face. “You been fighting?”

  “No! Just cut my lip on the c…can when they p…poured it on me.”

  Mel frowned. “Well, go change before your dad comes home for lunch. You’re not lying to me now, are you?”

  “No,” said Buck, and went on upstairs. He just wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  “What I want you to do,” Jacob said on Tuesday, sitting across from Buck in one of the two leather armchairs, so close that their knees almost touched, “…won’t sound so hard as it sounds silly.”

  Here it comes, thought Buck. Imagine yourself in a field of daisies with fluffy white clouds overhead…something the first therapist had suggested.

  “Find a comfortable position….”

  Yep.

  Jacob waited while Buck made some adjustments. “Test each arm, each leg, to see if there is any tension at all….Now imagine that someone is gently pouring thick, warm oil on the very top of your head.”

  “What?”

  “Go on.” Jacob was speaking slowly. “Close your eyes…and try to feel all the nerves and muscles in your scalp relax as the oil slowly…slowly…makes its way down. Can you feel your scalp relaxing? Try to feel that.”

  I feel that you are a nutcase and I know now why you live way out here by yourself, Buck thought.

  Jacob was speaking more slowly still. “Now…it’s sliding…down your forehead…feel those muscles relax…your temples…your eyelids…the length…of your nose…the space between your nose and mouth….”

  Buck sort of got it when the imaginary oil reached his eyelids. He was conscious of that almost imperceptible relaxing of fibers so small he didn’t even know he had them. Good thing Jacob’s air conditioner was working and the house was on the chilly side. Otherwise this would be torture.

  “Now the upper lip…The warm oil is sliding down your top lip…the bottom lip…your chin….”

  This was just another version of relaxing the facial muscles, Buck thought—what the therapist had been talking about at school. But…if soldiers and sailors could do this, so could he. Didn’t see the sense of it, though.

  “Now let your shoulders relax as the warm oil slides down your back….”

  Finally, his legs and feet gave way and Jacob told him to open his eyes.

  “Now…watch. I want you to flop your jaws like this….” Jacob’s lips parted and he let his mouth open and close, open and close, as though they were fastened with a loose hinge. They made a ploh…ploh…ploh sound.

  “Go ahead,” Jacob said. “So we both look stupid. Who’s to see?”

  Pla…pla…pla, went Buck, hating the session already.

  “No! Unhinge your jaws. You’re still holding them tight. Pretend your jaws are mops. Let them shake, let them flop.”

  Buck tried again. Ploh…ploh….ploh…

  “Okay,” said Jacob. “N…nnnnnnow w…wwwwwatch mmmmmme ssssssssstutter.”

  Buck stared. “I d…didn’t know you st…stuttered.”

  “I don’t. But I can. Don’t you see how easily I sssssslide into a wwwword? I don’t fight it. I don’t care.”

  But Buck cared. The only way he could imagine doing stuff like this was in his room with the door locked. They had talked awhile, he and Jacob, before the session began—about how long Buck had been stuttering (most of his life that he could remember). What kind of therapy he’d had, what were the most difficult sounds for him to say, what kinds of hobbies he enjoyed, what he did with friends (Buck never mentioned caving, and nothing at all about Pukeman and his gang).

  He would have liked to ask some questions of his own: Where did you come from? Why did you move clear out here with all this furniture? Why do you seem so grumpy all the time? And, most of all, Why do you want to help me?

  Jacob placed his elbows on the arms of his chair and leaned forward. “Now,” he said, “letting your jaws stay as relaxed as possible, I want you to say, ‘Now I’ll let you watch me stutter.’ And I want you to purposely stutter on as many of those words as you can.”

  “N…now I know you’re c…crazy,” Buck said instead, and for the
first time since he’d met Jacob, he got a full smile from the man.

  “Maybe so. That’s what all the soldiers said at first,” Jacob told him. “But they didn’t say it quite as delicately. Come on. Let’s hear it.”

  Odd how when he tried to stutter, he messed up all the more. “N…n…now I’ll w…w…watch I m…mean I’ll l…let y…ou see m…me stutter.”

  “Again,” said Jacob.

  Buck repeated the sentence.

  “Again. This time, stutter on every word.”

  “N…now I’ll l…let…”

  “Stutter. Every word.”

  Over and over.

  By the end of the session, Buck’s jaws ached.

  “They shouldn’t,” said Jacob. “If your jaws, your throat muscles, your tongue are relaxed, the stuttering should come as easily as the way you talk to yourself when no one’s around.”

  Buck looked at Jacob in surprise.

  “You do, you know,” Jacob told him. “You test yourself sometimes. That’s what the soldiers tell me. They think if they practice long enough—the way words come out smooth and easy when they’re alone—it will carry over later. And then—just let one other person enter the room—and all bets are off.”

  “Why?” asked Buck. He’d always wondered about that. The very second he knew someone was listening, he stuttered.

  “Anxiety. Fear of stuttering. That’s all it takes to get the muscles tightening, the tongue stiff, the jaws rigid. And that’s what we work on here. The fear.” Jacob studied Buck intently. “You with me?”

  “Okay,” said Buck.

  “One o’clock Thursday?”

  Not Thursday! Dad and Joel would be out cutting timber, and Mel wasn’t expected back till that night. Buck planned to go to the Hole.

  “C…could I c…come Friday inst…st…stead?”

  Jacob nodded. “That’ll work, as long as you come here three times a week.” As they stood up, Jacob handed him a clutch of envelopes. “Put these in the mailbox for me, would you? And stick up the red flag so the postman will stop.”