Paperboy

On the first Monday of the paper route, Victor approaches the newspaper drop with the other carriers, but he is unable to have a conversation with another boy due to his stutter. Receiving his bundlers, Victor cuts their cords with his yellow-handled knife. Victor starts heading along his route and explains that the tutor his parents hired to help him with his speech gave him speech drills to practice during summer vacation. Victor approaches a house, practicing one of the drills using the word “pitch.” However, a woman on the porch mishears him, thinking that he has instead called her a slur. Victor defends himself, but the woman doesn’t believe his explanation and instead demands to know where the regular paperboy is. Still angry, the woman lectures Victor on the proper way to give her the morning’s paper. When Victor gets home from his route, he writes a note to the woman, whose name is Mrs. Worthington, explaining what happened earlier. The following Thursday, Mrs. Worthington stops Victor again and tells him that she recognizes his father, who works as a pilot. Mrs. Worthington tells him that she wants to start paying for the paper weekly, and they set a time to meet the following day. Victor cycles away, excited for their meeting.

That night, Victor reads a book and tries to deal with his nervousness about collecting the customers’ money since it will require him to say the difficult word “paperboy.” A junkman whom Victor knows named Ara T. comes down the alley, and Victor gives him the yellow-handled knife to sharpen. The following day, Victor goes on his collection route, and while he does struggle with some speech, he manages to collect the owed money from his houses. He arrives at the house of Mr. Spiro, an elderly man with a strange way of speaking. He asks Victor his name. Victor’s own name is the most difficult word of all for him to pronounce, and when he tries, he passes out. When he comes to, Mr. Spiro is wiping his head, and he explains to Victor that “[his] inability to produce that sound due to [his] speech impediment caused [him] to interrupt [his] normal breathing pattern” (30), causing him to bite his lip and lose consciousness. Mr. Spiro instructs Victor to recover on the porch swing, and he tells Victor that he still respects him and doesn’t think any less of him due to his speech impediment. Once Victor feels better, Mr. Spiro sends him off, giving him a piece of a dollar bill with the word “student” written on it. Victor goes to meet Mrs. Worthington next, feeling nervous due to his stutter, but when he rings the doorbell, nobody answers. Victor finishes his route and goes home to his proud parents. As Victor goes to sleep, he contemplates his desire to keep talking to Mr. Spiro and Mrs. Worthington, and he worries about getting the knife back from Ara T.

Victor awakens on Saturday to the sound of a local man, nicknamed Big Sack, mowing his family’s yard. When he runs into Big Sack after breakfast, Big Sack tells Victor that he wants to speak to his nanny. Mam lectures Victor about spending time with Ara T. Later, Victor approaches Ara T. and asks him for his knife back. However, Ara T. refuses to give it to him until he can say the word “knife” without stuttering. Unable to get his knife back, Victor uses the edge of a rusty can to cut open the bundles. He considers talking to Mam about it but doesn’t want to get in trouble for talking to Ara T. in the first place.

Victor goes on his paper route. When he gets to Mr. Spiro’s house, he wants to thank him but doesn’t want to struggle to speak again, so he decides to write Mr. Spiro a note. At Mrs. Worthington’s house, the door is opened by a mysterious man who says his name is Charles. The man claims to be Mrs. Worthington’s cousin, but Victor doesn’t believe him. After finishing his route, Victor sees Ara T. again and decides to follow him to find out where his stash is so that he can steal back his knife. Heading back to retrieve his things, Victor overhears Mrs. Worthington crying, and he assumes that she’s crying because of Charles.

A week passes, and Victor goes on his second collection run for the newspaper. Mr. Spiro is sitting on his porch, and the two of them have a conversation about baseball, during which Mr. Spiro helps Victor overcome his lisp when saying a favorite player’s name. They sit on the porch swing together, and Mr. Spiro tells Victor to mind his 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” (61). They continue talking for a while. Victor appreciates that Mr. Spiro doesn’t ignore his stutter but instead talks to him like an adult and gives him hope for the future. Mr. Spiro also argues that fiction and nonfiction are equally likely to speak truth, arguing that “[a] good painting after all is more truthful than a photograph” (66). Victor leaves, promising himself that he’ll keep conversing with Mr. Spiro. Mr. Spiro hands him another dollar piece, this time with the word “servant” written on it.

Continuing his collections, Victor moves on from Mr. Spiro’s house to Mrs. Worthington’s. He hears arguing from inside, and when he rings the doorbell, Mr. Worthington answers. Victor tells him that he owes two weeks of payments to the newspaper, but Mr. Worthington tells him, “[G]et lost, kid” (70). Mr. Worthington slams the door in Victor’s face, and then the argument continues. However, it is worse this time, with the sound of smashing glass and things falling over. Victor flees to Rat’s house to give his mother the newspaper money and then heads home. Victor asks Mam what it feels like to be drunk, remembering the fight between the Worthingtons. He then admits to Mam that Ara T. has stolen his knife. To Victor’s surprise, Mam doesn’t get mad but rather tells him not to worry about the knife.

The next week, Victor approaches Mrs. Worthington’s house to ask about the money she owes for the newspaper. Mrs. Worthington doesn’t seem to want to speak and seems sad. Unable to utter the words that he wants to say, Victor tells her to wait to pay him until Friday when the next collections happen. Mrs. Worthington goes inside, and Victor feels disturbed by how upset she is. At home, Victor’s mother tells him that Mam has the night off and that the family is going out to eat at a sit-down restaurant. As the adults talk, Victor practices saying the word “spaghetti” for his order; however, he mispronounces the word on ordering, and an adult woman at the table calls him “daw-w-w-w-ling” (82), which Victor interprets as condescension. Victor doesn’t feel hungry but forces himself to eat anyway due to his embarrassment, and he ends up vomiting on the table. When Victor and his family head home, he runs straight up to his room in shame but then decides to head back down so he can apologize to his parents. On the way, he overhears a conversation between them, discussing Victor’s condition. Victor’s mother wonders if stuttering is genetic since nobody in her family stutters. Victor goes back up to his room, wondering why his father didn’t also state that nobody in his family stutters. The next morning, Victor notices an open closet door in his parents’ room. He goes through the various documents that he finds stored in the closet until he comes across an unmarked envelope containing his birth certificate. To his surprise, the certificate lists his father as “unknown.”