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puppet and wishing that somebody would pull the strings to make my mouth move so I didn’t stutter. One time I didn’t hear my mother when she came into the room and I was moving my mouth up and down like Howdy Doody with my hands over my head like I was pulling the strings. It must have scared her because she grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me and told me never to do that again.
    My favorite person on the show was Clarabell the Clown. He couldn’t talk but all he had to do to answer a question was honk the horn on a box he wore on the front of his clown suit. Buffalo Bob always knew exactly what Clarabell was saying with his horn. I could usually tell myself by the way he honked. I could tell if it was a quick happy honk or a long sad honk. Sometimes if I’ve had a bad stuttering day I’ll start thinking how good it would be if I just had a horn to honk. Me honking the horn all the time would look stupid but not as stupid as some of the things I did when I tried to say words.
    I stopped watching
The Howdy Doody Show
when I started playing baseball. It was better for me to spend time practicing my pitching instead of figuring out how to honk like a clown.
    The drizzle had almost stopped when I got to Mr. Spiro’s house on Vance. I couldn’t tell if he was home because there was never a carin the driveway and he usually kept his front door closed even in the summer. I wanted to thank him for taking care of me after I bit into my lip trying to say my name but I really didn’t feel like standing in that same spot again on the porch. Whenever I stuttered a lot in a certain spot I tried never to stand there again.
    A good idea came to me. I would write him a short note and stick it inside his Saturday newspaper.
    The only piece of paper to write on was a blank page from Rat’s collection book. I sat down on a stoop across the street and sharpened the point of my pencil by rubbing it back and forth across the concrete. The page was small so I wrote in my smallest hand.
    Dear Mr. Spiro
,
    Thank you for helping me when I did that dumb thing last night. I like the way you talk to me. Thank you for the piece of that dollar bill you gave me
.
             
Your Substitute Paperboy
    I put the page from the collection book into the fold of Mr. Spiro’s newspaper and laid the newspaper on the porch in front of his door.

    Mrs. Worthington’s house was going to be the last house on my route for the day. Just the way I had planned.
    A blue Ford I had never seen was in her driveway but it was worth taking a chance on ringing the bell. If she came to the door I had figured out a way to say that I was collecting for the night before when she wasn’t at home. My pencil was in my hand in case I needed to make another emergency pencil toss to start a word.
    I rang the doorbell and waited and was almost ready to leave a newspaper and walk on home when I saw somebody through the thin curtain over the glass door. He looked at me for a bit from back in the house and then walked to the door and opened it.
    Help ya?
    The man had a cigarette hanging from his lips and was in his stocking feet. I had only seen Mr. Worthington once or twice and he had always been in a suit and tie but this guy didn’t look like Mr. Worthington. Then I saw that his name was Charles because it was on a patch sewn on to his dark blue shirt. He had slicked-back black hair and long sideburns. Rat would have called him a Greaser. I started to ask if Mrs. Worthington was home because I needed to collect for the paper but I decided the fewer words the better knowing how my luck was going and being that my lip was still a little puffy. I held out the newspaper for him.
    He looked at me funny but opened the screen door and took the paper. His hands weren’t exactly dirty but they looked like my hands after I had put a chain on my bike and then tried to scrub the oil off with washing powder.
    Thanks. Uh. I’m Faye’s cousin. Just helping out with a few