Going Where It's Dark

  “I’ve g…got English….”

  “This is only a preliminary interview,” the earring woman said. “She just wants to set something up for next year. Then you can go.”

  Buck shuffled over to the orange plastic chairs and dropped his backpack. Maybe he’d hoped they’d forget about him. Maybe he’d figured he could deal with the stuttering himself, though nothing had worked so far. But this meant he’d be called out of class all through eighth grade to work with a speech therapist, as though he couldn’t even manage one of the basic abilities of being human.

  He sat with elbows resting on his knees, remembering the therapist who had seen him periodically back in third grade. She was a slim young woman named Miss Saunders, with a thin face and a smile that exposed her upper gums.

  Buck had seen her only a half-dozen times before the county cut off funds for speech therapy. They had spent much of their sessions trying to get Buck to relax. Miss Saunders said that stuttering was caused by the vocal cords clamping shut, and she had tried to teach him the airflow method of speaking—to sigh inaudibly just before saying a difficult word, and letting the word sort of slide out on the rush of air—“A free ride,” she had called it.

  Except sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t, and Buck had other tricks of his own. Sometimes if the word was in the middle of a sentence, he’d just back up and use a different word. Sometimes he’d cough to hide the stutter.

  “Buck?” Another woman was facing him now from the doorway of the conference room. She had a wide smile that matched a wide body and was wearing a crazy pin on her shirt with googly eyes and the words Try me. I don’t bite.

  “You can call me Connie,” she said as she led him into the room and closed the door after them, motioning for him to take a seat. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t get to you before this, but as you probably know, the county budget has been cut, and I can’t see any of my referrals nearly enough. But you are definitely on my radar for September. We can meet over your lunch period if that will help.”

  Buck shrugged. “I guess.”

  “They tell me you’ve been stuttering for some time, and I plan to help you with that. But I’d like to get to know you better.” She leaned back in her chair and smiled at him. “Tell me something exciting about yourself. What do you do best?”

  I should be in English class, Buck was thinking. I’ll have an assignment to make up. “I d…don’t know,” he said. He found he had turned one foot sideways and was resting the other foot on top of it. He put both feet flat on the floor.

  She tried again. “What do you enjoy doing the most?”

  As though he’d tell her. Buck shrugged again and glanced at the clock.

  •••

  He was already thinking of going back into the Hole, even though he had vowed he wouldn’t go again without a good headlamp. There could be all kinds of things he might miss in the beam of an ordinary flashlight—rocks about to fall, places he shouldn’t step, creatures he shouldn’t disturb, formations he shouldn’t touch. And, most important, he needed both hands free to steady himself.

  But how could he stay away for days? Weeks, even? Summer would be over. If he didn’t go farther than he’d gone before, if he just went back to check it out more carefully, the part where he’d already been, what could be the harm?

  On the bus that afternoon, Buck was one of the first on board, and took a seat only halfway back. Katie was in a huddle with her girlfriends, all of them excited about something, and when she and Buck got off at the mailbox and started the long walk up the lane to the house, she said, “Guess what?”

  Buck glanced over.

  Katie gave him a secretive smile and her eyes sparkled.

  “Yeah? What?” he asked.

  She giggled. “Somebody asked me out.”

  “Well, hey!” said Buck. “Who’s the g…guy?”

  Katie tossed her head and her long brown hair flew around and covered one cheek. “You don’t know him.”

  “M…maybe I do.”

  She brushed her hair back. “He’s an eighth grader.”

  “Who?”

  “Colby Leisinger.”

  Katie was right. Buck didn’t know him.

  “He’s on the basketball team. Second string,” Katie said. She was walking slightly ahead of Buck now, avoiding his eyes. Born seven minutes apart, Katie was about an inch taller than Buck, and heavier, but because he was born first, she sometimes referred to him as her “older brother,” and that made them laugh.

  Buck was grinning now too. “How’d you meet him?”

  “After practice once. When the cheerleaders were rehearsing. He seems nice.”

  “So where you g…going?”

  “I don’t know. He just asked if I’d go out with him sometime, and I said yes.”

  “Mom know?”

  Katie came to a dead stop and faced him, then moved on again. “No, and you’d better not tell her. Dad either.”

  “Course not.”

  Buck had no problem keeping Katie’s secret. Somehow they’d always gotten along, probably because the Andersons never treated them as twins. Katie usually took his side in arguments at the dinner table, and Buck had earned more than one bloody nose defending her on the playground when they were younger.

  One of the ways Buck and his twin were alike was also one of the things that made them different: Buck was a risk taker when it came to crawling into places he shouldn’t be, jumping boulder to boulder, or crossing a river on a slippery log.

  Katie took chances too, but not physically. She liked to write and draw, to try out for plays and enter contests. The risks she took were being rejected or laughed at in public. Buck had enough of that without half trying. She especially enjoyed designing things: houses, parks, malls—these were her specialty. Her walls were covered with sketches of Katie’s Condo.

  Their large white farmhouse sat on eighty acres of land. The old Anderson farm had been subdivided decades ago, and four homesteads now occupied the ground where the first Andersons had raised cattle. Much of the land was too hilly for farming, and Gramps leased out the south pasture for grazing.

  The asphalt on the long lane was worn thin, and Buck was so familiar with the location of bumps in the paving that he could probably have walked it blindfolded.

  Katie, in fact, was walking backward now, facing him on his left, and suddenly she sniffed the air and said, “Are the lilacs blooming? I can tell without even looking.”

  Buck glanced over at the bushes Mom had planted two years ago. There were alternate white and lavender clumps that seemed to have blossomed overnight. “Yep,” he told her.

  “I love spring!” Katie gushed, throwing her head back, her arms wide. “It is totally my favorite season!”

  “B…because you’re in LOOoooove!” Buck crooned.

  She gave him her look. “Okay. Your turn. I told you a secret. Now you have to tell me one.”

  “Why?”

  Katie grinned. “Blackmail, what else? In case you tell mine.”

  “Have I ever?” He grabbed her arm. “Watch out. Pothole.”

  Katie turned back around and fell in beside him. “I never had an important secret before. When Mom said no boyfriends till sixteen, she meant it.”

  Buck made a zipping motion across his lips with one finger. “Sealed,” he said. “Thumbscrews? The r…rack? I’ll deny it to the death.”

  They cut across the clearing, heading for the back porch. The Andersons still lived in the original house, which had been there since 1905. Now the barn was used for storing sawmill equipment, the family’s livelihood for three generations.

  Buck had just started up the steps, one hand on the screen, when suddenly Katie asked, “Buck, how come you don’t stutter much when you talk to me? I mean, when there’s just the two of us? Like now. Just wondering….”

  He was blindsided by the question. They’d never talked about it before. Not ever that he could remember. Of course, he’d wondered about it too in p
rivate. He tried to treat it as a joke.

  “S…s…s…s…s…search m…m…m…me,” he said.

  Katie punched his arm and gave him a crazy cross-eyed smile.

  But things would never be quite the same again.

  Why had she brought it up now? He had always felt that with Katie, she didn’t care. In second grade, he remembered, he’d been trying to tell some kids where he’d found his airplane, but couldn’t say the word radiator.

  “I f…found it on the r…r…r…,” he stuttered.

  “Refrigerator?” someone guessed.

  He shook his head.

  “Road?”

  “The roof?” said someone else.

  “Just wait!” Katie had demanded, hands on her hips, and their playmates had dutifully waited Buck out.

  But now, because of a boyfriend, maybe, she’d made it official: it wasn’t just other people out there who were uncomfortable with his stuttering. Now it was Katie too.

  And then there was that Sunday evening last month when he’d been reading the sports pages on the back porch until it got too dark to see. He’d leaned his head back, half dozing as night closed in, aware of his parents discussing supper options through the open doorway. Then Joel had come out in the kitchen.

  “I found that website about a stuttering program in Norfolk,” he had said, and Buck’s eyes opened wide. “It’s expensive, almost four thousand dollars for twelve days….”

  “What?” Mom’s exclamation. “Is that for millionaires?”

  “Norfolk’s clear across the state!” Dad had said.

  “Yeah. And Buck would have to stay in a hotel,” Joel finished. “I’m just telling you what I found.”

  “Don, how would we ever afford that this summer, and which of us could stay with him for twelve days?” Buck remembered his mom saying.

  “You know, if I thought it would cure the boy, I’d do it somehow” was Dad’s reply. “Is that all you could find online, Joel?”

  “Lots of other stuff—books on how to stop stuttering—I think he’s got some of those. Then there are electronic devices, things you wear….”

  Buck had found he was gripping the glider armrests—could remember that even now. Remembered how he had gotten to his feet and marched stiffly into the kitchen—surprising everyone there—and saying, “I’m not gggggoing to Norfolk. And I’m not going to wear any k…k…kind of electronic stuff either. Just fffforget it!” And he’d walked on through the kitchen and started upstairs.

  But he had lingered long enough to hear his dad say, “Well, nothing’s going to work if he’s not willing to put in the effort….”

  And even now, just thinking about it, the familiar panic and heaviness rose up in Buck as he followed Katie inside. The feeling that if he didn’t stop stuttering he was letting the family down, and they didn’t realize—they just didn’t know—that when he tried hard—really, really hard—to stop stuttering, the words clogged up his throat even more.

  Uncle Mel had only been home four days when he was off again, this time all the way to Idaho. He used to joke that there were places in the United States he could get to before he’d even started out. That was when Buck was five and didn’t know about time zones.

  Buck wished he were in a big semi with his uncle right now, going anywhere except down the road toward Jacob’s. He’d rather be doing almost anything than this. He stopped at the mailbox, then wheeled his bike up the gravel driveway and leaned it against the grimy car. Uncle Mel had dropped by there on Tuesday before he left, so Buck was doing Friday solo.

  A bumblebee was making slow irregular circles in the air just outside the screen as Buck went up the concrete steps. He rang the bell and waved the bee off as he stood there in his cutoffs and a Ravens T-shirt. He waited ten or fifteen seconds, glancing out at the Volvo and wondering when Jacob had driven it last, then rang again and waited some more.

  He hoped Jacob wouldn’t have a long list of jobs to do. Hoped, in fact, that Jacob wouldn’t want him today at all. He’d dropped his book bag home right after he’d gotten off the bus, grabbed a handful of Oreos, and wished now he’d had a soda too.

  Buck rang the bell a third time, letting up on the button almost as soon as he’d pressed it as the door handle moved. And when Jacob Wall appeared at last, leaning heavily on his cane, he stared down at Buck as though he were a complete stranger. He was wearing a faded army-green T-shirt with two eagles facing each other on the front.

  “Mr. Wall?” Buck said. “It’s F…Friday, and my uncle’s out of t…t…town.” He hated the way the word stuck in his throat, as though the sharp edges of the T caught on the back of his tongue, and he felt his face redden as he tried to spit it out. The harder he tried, it seemed, the more he stuttered. It made him look as though he was afraid of the person in front of him, and that wasn’t the case.

  Jacob made no reply. His eyes, half hidden beneath his bushy white brows, continued to stare down at him, and Buck realized he was still holding the man’s mail.

  “I b…b…b…brought your m…mail,” he said, opening the screen and handing over the clutch of envelopes and advertisements.

  Mr. Wall accepted it wordlessly in his free hand, then turned away, leaving the door open behind him. Buck entered and stood just inside the screen.

  “There’s the garbage,” Jacob called gruffly from the kitchen, pointing to an overflowing trash basket by the wall. “Goes out to the can by the side of the house.” And when Buck started forward, Jacob said, “And there’s an olive pit or something down the disposal. See if you can get it out, take it with the garbage.”

  In the kitchen, Buck warily thrust his hand through the slimy rubber opening in the sink and felt around. He couldn’t help imagining the man with the piercing eyes putting his own hand on the switch and turning it on while Buck’s fingers were probing the blades. But a few seconds later, he fished out the olive pit and a small piece of bone. “Pukeman Repairs a Garbage Disposal,” he thought, and pictured digits flying through the air. He’d remember that when he drew his next comic strip.

  He took the sack of garbage outside and, when he returned, surveyed the dirty dishes on the counter. It was Friday, and if he expected to be paid…

  “I could do those d…d…d…dishes for you,” he said.

  Jacob gave an almost imperceptible nod and laboriously sat himself down at the small table, reaching for his coffee mug. Out of the corner of his eye, Buck saw that the man was watching him, and he began to resent the audience, the silence. Then suddenly:

  “How old are you?”

  The question shot through the air unexpectedly.

  “Thirteen,” Buck answered.

  “Go to school?”

  What did the guy think? That he was stupid or something? “Of c…course,” Buck said.

  “Public?”

  “Yeah.” Buck gave an impatient glance over his shoulder.

  But Jacob looked irritated too. “Your uncle set this whole thing up, didn’t he?”

  This time Buck turned and stared at Jacob. “Yes! Like he t…told you, he’ll be d…d…doing m…more long-d…distance hauls. Asked if I wanted to t…t…t…take over while he’s g…gone.” What he wanted to say was Look, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me. I’m doing this for Mel, not you. And for the five bucks, if you really want to know.

  There was a longer silence now in the kitchen when Buck turned back to the pots and pans. He focused on the grimy faucet handles of the sink, the grease spots on the wall above the stove top. Jacob’s place had the kind of dirt that accumulated because there was simply too much for one person to do. Even when Jacob used his cane, he had to lean against something when he was standing, Buck noticed, but as far as accepting help, he sure didn’t make a person feel welcome.

  “You can go when you’ve finished up here,” Jacob said.

  “Fine,” said Buck through clenched teeth. The guy was lucky Uncle Mel had ever stopped by at all. Lucky that anybody cared about him. Buck s
ure didn’t.

  He poured bacon grease from a skillet into a tin can on top of the stove, then wiped the skillet out.

  “Okay, I’m off,” he said.

  Jacob made no move to stand up and didn’t acknowledge Buck’s leaving. Buck let the screen door slam behind him and got on his bike. He was already past the mailbox when he realized he hadn’t been paid. A deal was a deal, and the old man had stiffed him. No way, however, no way was he going back.

  Bealls’ Country Store stood at a crossing, and the smaller room just off the entrance served as post office for the town. Mrs. Beall was the official postmistress, but most of the time she was helping out in the store.

  Buck wheeled into the dirt lot and rested his bike against the porch. Then he stomped up the wood steps and lifted the lid of the giant cooler. Frosty cans of Pepsi and Mountain Dew, of 7UP and Orange Crush rested in disarray in the ice. He selected his drink, then stepped inside where Mrs. Beall was talking with two women at the cash register. He raised the can so she could see it, and when she nodded, placed his dollar bill on the counter and went back out to his bike.

  He drank as he rode, one hand lightly on the handlebars. Jacob should have paid me and I should have asked. The chilly liquid cooled his mouth but not his temper. Finally, however, when the drink was almost gone, his feet moved more slowly on the pedals, and he let his shoulders relax, liking the feel of going in and out of shade.

  He had just about concluded that maybe Jacob had been in the army once, and was used to bossing people around. But then he remembered the paperweight on his desk with an anchor imprinted on it. And the photograph of a ship in the hallway, with two signatures at the bottom. Maybe Jacob had been in the navy. Maybe the ship had gone down with his two best friends on board, and Jacob hadn’t been the same since.

  Oh, to heck with Jacob anyway, he decided. He had better things to think about. And the first one that came to mind was the Hole.

  •••

  The sawmill sat in a clearing off the old county road among the oaks and poplars. The sign, back at the turnoff, read ANDERSON MILL AND LUMBER, and the A, the M, and the L were spelled out with little logs, Mom’s idea, when the sign was changed seven years ago. It used to read simply SAWMILL in big black letters, and that was all anybody needed to know.