Going Where It's Dark (11 page)

Jacob came back with a calendar and a pair of eyeglasses. He lowered himself in the chair again and adjusted the glasses on his nose. “If you sign up with me, I want to see you three times a week, about forty minutes each time.”

Three times a week! Buck stared at him, openmouthed. “How c…can I pay you for that?”

“All you have to do is show up. You don't show up, it's over.”

“You wouldn't charge?”

“No, I wouldn't. I can't. I let my certification lapse when I retired. So I'm working with you as a friend, not a professional.”

“H…how do you think it w…w…will help?”

“I want to get you to the place where you can glide in and out of a stutter easily, naturally, without all the drama that gets people's attention—the tongue twisting and jaw tightening and eye blinking and stuff. You're not getting anywhere doing that. The words don't come out any easier. All you're doing is running backward.”

They sat for fifteen or twenty seconds staring at each other. Was this a game? Buck wondered. Was he supposed to believe in this guy any more than he could believe in Sister Pearson? What kind of therapy was this? Still…

“Think for a minute what your life would be like if you lost your
fear
of stuttering, Buck. Just the fear. Not have that sick-to-the-stomach feeling when the sergeant—I mean, teacher—asks you a question. Not have to change a sentence around to keep from saying a word that usually gives you trouble. To be able to tell your friends a joke without your mouth drying up…”

For a long minute, Buck didn't answer. He was thinking about that last day of school—
To be or not to be.
How he couldn't even read that out loud.

“I guess…I'd b…b…be like everyone else…except I st…st…stuttered.” He
made
himself say the hated word.

“That's it, Buck. You've nailed it. Except that if you were like most other people you'd stumble right over a word and not even stop.”

No. That was too easy, or too hard. Buck felt confused. It seemed as though Jacob was saying that the whole problem was being
afraid
to stutter. Wasn't it the stuttering that made him afraid in the first place? But what did he have to lose by trying Jacob's way? Correction: what
other
way did he have? School began again in three months. Did he want to go back the same way he was before?

“We'll work on things together here and you can work on some of it at home,” Jacob said. And before Buck could ask, he added, “No one has to know we're doing this, but it's okay if you want to tell them. In fact, it might be a good idea to let your parents know.”

Buck shook his head. The last thing he wanted was everybody watching to see if he was improving. And if he failed, why let his family in on it? Just another disappointment they could do without.

He realized that Jacob was waiting for his final decision. The shaggy-haired man was leaning forward, hands on his knees, signaling that it was time for Buck to leave. “You don't have to decide now,” Jacob said. “Tell me when you come by on Tuesday. But here's the deal….” He paused to make sure Buck was listening. “If you quit on me…even once…we're done. Just like in the military. You don't stop when the going gets tough. Once you say you've had it and walk out that door, it's over. Understood?”

“Yeah. I want to d…do it.”

“Okay, then. I'm flexible about the day and time, as long as you get in three sessions a week. Name the day.”

“Uh…Tuesday?” Buck said.

“What time?”

Buck thought. “One o'clock?”

“All right. Call me if we need to change it.”

“I'll be here,” Buck said.

He was amazed at Jacob's offer. Amazed at Jacob, period! A different personality than he'd seen so far.

What was he getting himself into? Buck wondered as he pedaled home—Jacob getting all military on him. How hard could it possibly be? He didn't have to do push-ups, did he? Slog through mud on his stomach? Still, he wished he were more enthused about it, not considering it a last resort.

At home, he could hear
60 Minutes
coming from the living room. He was getting ice from the fridge when his dad called to him. “Buck? That you?”

“Yeah?”

Don Anderson came to the doorway of the kitchen.

“Wondered where you went,” he said cheerfully. “I've been meaning to tell you that Joel and I will probably be cutting some timber over near Coalsville next week—Thursday, maybe.”

At last! A day when he could count on everyone being gone—Mom at work, Gramps at the sawmill…Mel had already said he had a run all the way to Kansas and back, and Katie was no problem. She was at Amy's so much it was a wonder she didn't pack a suitcase and move in with her. Buck liked Katie's best friend, mainly because she never said much to him.
Hi, Buck!
she'd say when she came over.
Hi,
he'd answer. But what kind of friendship was that—liking someone because she left you alone?

And then he heard his dad say, “You want to come along, we'll find something for you to do.”

“What?” Buck said.

“Coalsville on Thursday. We'll be cutting timber.”

“Uh…I don't know,” Buck said.

“Come on! Be glad to have you.” Now it was
Be Nice to Buck
week. When he still didn't answer, his dad gave him a quizzical look. “Thought you were wanting a chance to see us down some trees. Dad said you were asking about it the other day.”

“Yeah, well…maybe. Got a lot of things I w…want to do this summer.”

“Glad to hear that,” said his dad, and there was a gentleness to his voice. “Hope some of those things involve friends, not just going off by yourself all the time.”

“D…don't worry. I got friends,” said Buck.

The hardest part of going back into the Hole, he realized, was not the actual going, but keeping it secret from everyone except David.

H
e didn't even tell David about Jacob, however. David texted him that night.

David:
so school's out, and mom's already programmed the next 3 months

Buck:
yeah? doing what

David:
relatives, trip, relatives, science camp, relatives, survivor camp

Buck:
whats that? u moving 2 the jungle?

David:
learning 2 live without ur cell phone and stuff u should c the list
of things they confiscate—electric toothbrushes, cameras, anything that
has a charger

Buck:
your mom hate u or something?

David:
she says she wants me 2 see how clever i am on my own she's going on
a trip with her girlfriend then and wanted something special 4 me 2 do

Buck:
tell her i can give u a job of caving assistant

David:
don't i wish how was ur last day of school? somebody released all the frogs in the biology lab here

Buck:
yay frogs

David:
in the library principal NOT happy

Buck:
LOL i called pete ketterman puke face

David:
!!!!!?????!!!!!????

Buck:
i know

David:
he hear?

Buck:
he heard

David:
u want 2 die young?

Buck:
guess i'm in 4 it now….

M
onday, the first official day of summer vacation, and Buck smiled at the sunshine that fell across his pillow. Then he closed his eyes and slept a half hour more.

By the time he came down for breakfast, Katie had already taken over the kitchen table with her drawing. At the start of each year, Gramps gave her the old calendar at the sawmill when he hung the new, and she used the backside of each large sheet for her creations. She had collected quite a few calendars now, and sometimes, like today, she taped some of the pages together to make an even bigger canvas.

“Well, look who decided to get up,” Katie teased, turning her pencil sideways to do some shading.

“Look who's showing off,” said Buck as he set his bowl on the table. “What are you d…designing now?”

Katie quickly covered the paper with her hands. “I'll let you see it when I'm done.”

Like Buck, Katie was barefoot, her flip-flops abandoned beneath the table. She waited until he was opening a box of cereal, then sat back and surveyed what she'd drawn so far, her uncombed ponytail dangling over the shoulder of her blue T-shirt.

“What are you g…going to do with all those? You've already c…covered half your walls,” Buck said.

“I don't know. It's just fun.” She nodded toward the fridge. “I saved you some strawberries.”

“Sweet,” Buck said, and got out the milk.

A cell phone buzzed from somewhere in the other room and Katie leaped up. “That's Amy,” she said, and ran to answer.

Grinning, Buck stepped over to see her drawing, but suddenly leaned in a little closer, still holding the milk carton. It appeared to be a diagram of an outdoor area, a large bank of trees in the background. The lower part of the paper was shaded to indicate earth.

Hole,
Katie had printed, an arrow pointing to a small opening at the surface, the start of a twisting underground passageway….

Buck stared in disbelief. How did she know? How could she possibly have…?

Katie came back in the kitchen. “Amy has an idea for…” She caught Buck studying her drawing. “I said
don't look
!” she cried, and ran over to shield the paper with her arms.

“What
is
this?” Buck asked.

“You
know
I don't let anyone see my stuff till it's finished,” she scolded. “People start criticizing before it's done and it ruins everything!”

“Okay, so I looked. But I'm not c…criticizing. I just…wondered what this is…,” Buck said, pointing.

Katie gave him an exasperated glare and sat down again. “If you must know, I'm designing a fantastic park and playground. I want all kinds of different stuff for kids to do. This will be an underground tunnel they can crawl through, but it's got to have a roof over it or water would collect inside.”

Buck's heartbeat began to slow and he could almost breathe again.

“And over here,” Katie said, now that she had his attention, “at this end of the park, I've got this big pond that turns into an ice rink in winter….”

Buck made sure that everything he said about the design was complimentary, and finally he sat down across from her to eat his breakfast.

Katie sighed and began drawing again. “I'm making a whole city. I've already got a layout of the town—the streets and the town center and parks and stuff. When you start something, you have to think of every little thing, you know?”

“Yeah,” said Buck. “I sure do.” There was an occasional clunk from the front of the house. “What's Uncle Mel up to?”

“I think he said he was going to scrub the porch or something,” Katie answered. “Did you ever notice how he always does some nice thing for Mom before he leaves on a trip?”

“Just b…being part of the family, I g…guess,” said Buck.

Katie got up to check the washing machine. “I'm going to start the last load. If you want anything washed, let me have it. That's all I have to do for Mom today.”

So much activity! Buck thought. Didn't anybody just kick back and enjoy a June breeze while there still was one?

After he'd gathered up some socks and underwear for Katie, he went out onto the front porch to find his uncle in shorts, barefoot too, a large scrub brush in hand, bringing it down hard on one side of the doorframe. One half of the porch wall was a lighter shade of white than the other.

Seeing Buck, Mel said, “Can't for the life of me see how a doorframe can get so smudged.” He wiped one thick arm across his face, the arm with the ship tattoo on it. “Come on. Pick up a rag there and help me out. Your mom might forget about painting this house again if the porch doesn't look so dirty.”

Buck grinned and picked up a rag. Mom and Dad wouldn't take any rent from Mel—after all, they were lodgers too, since it was Gramps's big farmhouse to begin with—but they all paid back his kindness in other ways—this, for one.

“So what you up to today?” Mel asked as they scrubbed.

“W…weeding. The usual,” Buck told him.

For a while they were working side by side. Then Mel climbed up the stepladder to wash the boards near the porch ceiling. The
swish
and
swash
of the rag and brush alternated sometimes with his grunts.

“Do you b…believe she can d…do it? Sister Pearson?” Buck asked suddenly, the question that had consumed him the day before.

At first he thought his uncle wouldn't answer. The brush just kept swishing away.

Finally Mel said, “Well, you notice any difference?”

“No.”

“Could be it takes a while….”

They went on working and Buck said, “C…couple times she called out s…something about a p…person she didn't even know, and she was r…right about what was wrong with him.”

“Huh.” Mel came down off the stepladder and dipped his brush in the sudsy water, knocked it against the side of the pail, then climbed back up again.

“Mom believes in her, though. M…Mom thinks it's all m…me not believing enough.”

“She say that?”

“N…not exactly, but I can tell.”

“Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, they say, but…I can't see him waiting to be begged to do something he already knows needs fixing. But don't you be telling your Ma how I feel, 'cause I don't have any business in it.”

“But do you think Sister P…Pearson's a fake?”

Mel gave a loud sigh. “All I can tell you, Buck, is I travel all across the country, and I talk to different people and hear things on the radio when I'm doing a run. The local stations, my CB radio, public radio…I listen to 'em all. I hear country music and truckers crabbing to each other. I hear folks on talk shows and book writers and college professors, and I heard this one program telling how con-men preachers can fool folks into donating lots of money that never goes to what the preacher says it will.”

“How?”

“By making them believe they have special powers. Sometimes the greeters out front find out things about folks when they show up for a healing service—like, the man in the blue shirt in the wheelchair, maybe, tells them he has kidney stones, and they'll get that fact to the preacher some way. And then the preacher will call it out during the evening like he's getting the message that very minute from God, and the man in the blue shirt can't figure how else he knows.”

“B…but if he doesn't get better?”

“By then the preacher's gone. Or the man just keeps waiting. Or the preacher will say that the man didn't have enough faith in him. Or maybe the man does get better, but would have anyway without all that fussing over him. But what's to say that Sister Pearson really does have the gift of healing? I don't know. That's not my department.”

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.