Cobra Strike (6 page)

Eldon Mawther stood up when I walked in. Unlike his younger self in the photos, he was now nearly bald. He grew the hair on the side of his head long, greased it, and combed it over the top. He always wore dark pants with suspenders and a white shirt and a bow tie. He had worked for the newspaper for nearly forty years. I knew all that because he came to every Cobra football game, and he spent more time telling us things than he did asking us questions.

“Roy Linden,” he said in a booming voice with fake friendliness, “how's our star receiver?”

I smiled. This was one of the few times I was grateful I couldn't speak my thoughts. Two weeks ago, he wouldn't have been this friendly. Two weeks ago, I was just another high school football player to him. But that was before Whalin' Waymen Whitley showed up and threw me three touchdown passes in one game. If Eldon Mawther wanted to be my friend just because he suddenly thought I was a star, he wasn't much of a friend worth having.

And there was another reason I smiled. I had something important to say, and I didn't want to mess up how I said it.

I'd been thinking a lot about my stuttering since Waymen's sister had caught me quoting Shakespeare. I had surprised myself by quoting him in front of her.

It was another of the mysteries of stuttering. A famous country music singer named Mel Tillis can sing perfectly, but when he speaks, he stutters.

For me, I wondered if speaking from a memorized script got me past my stutter. And I was about to find out.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Mawther,” I said. “I've got some interesting news for you.”

Hah! It worked!

I had written my own script and pretended it was a scene in a play where a kid talks to a newspaper reporter. I had memorized the words and acted them out in front of a mirror, just like I had done with Shakespeare's work. And now, I was actually following my script without stuttering!

“Let me tell you, son,” he said, chuckling, “you don't need to bring me the news. You and Whalin' Waymen just keep playing like you did this weekend. That kind of news will take care of itself. And I'll keep on writing it the way I see it.”

He scratched his belly. “You like that story I wrote about Waymen Whitley?”

“Sir,” I said, still playing my part. I held up the jar. “There's something wrong with this water.”

He frowned. “What's water got to do with my story? I'm thinking it was good enough to sell to
Sports Illustrated
. Jed down at the barbershop says the same thing. Did Waymen Whitley happen to mention whether he had read it? I didn't get a chance to ask him after Friday's game.”

“Fact is, sir,” I continued, setting my jar of water on his desk, “I believe the story goes beyond that.”

“Me too,” Eldon Mawther said, no longer scratching his belly, but rubbing it like it was a cat. “I've always said I could do some good writing if there was anything worth writing
about in this town. And Whalin' Whitley fits the bill, all right. So tell me what you thought of my story.”

“Down at the county offices, an inspector told me there was nothing wrong with the water, but—”

“Water?” Eldon Mawther wrinkled up his round face, looking like he might sneeze. “Water? We're talking football, boy. What's water got to do with anything?”

Actually
he
was talking football.
I
was sticking to my memorized script. I was afraid I'd start stuttering if I answered his questions.

I held up my notebook. “And sir,” I said, “here are my notes on my own testing of the water.”

“Boy, did a tackle knock a nut loose in your head?”

I had my script, and I was sticking to it. “The water sample was taken from a spring on Claire Linden's property. While I could not discover exactly what chemical is in it, it has killed birds and fish. Somewhere, something is leaking into that water.”

Eldon Mawther had stopped rubbing his big belly. I noticed rings under his armpits where old sweat had dried.

“There is a story here,” I finished. “A story about the chemicals. And a story about why the county health inspector tried to make me believe there is nothing wrong with the water.”

I set the notebook beside the jar filled with water on his desk. “The story is yours, sir. Take the water and the notebook. It's all you need to get started.”

I let out a deep breath. It had taken a lot of concentration to follow my script.

The reporter eased himself onto the corner of his desk. He stretched out his suspenders with his thumbs. He stared at me for nearly half a minute.

Finally he spoke. His voice was flat, not at all friendly. “There ain't no story, boy.”

Of all the things I had prepared for, this answer was not one of them. No story? I had seen crystals form in the water. And while I had seen the county health inspector drink it, I wondered if he had switched the
samples first. I had all my test results in the notebook. What did this man mean, there was no story?

“Listen to me good,” he said. “There ain't no story. And if there was a story, there still ain't no story.”

“B-but how can you say th-th-that?” No script to follow. My stutter was back. “Th-th-ere is s-something wrong with th-th-th-the water. I kn-know it.”

“Didn't I just say listen to me good? Let it drop.”

Let it drop?

I repeated my thoughts out loud. “L-l-let it dr-drop?”

He stood and pushed me to the door.

“Stick to football, boy,” he said. “You've got a future there. Now if you don't mind, I have deadlines.”

“B-b-but—”

“Good-bye,” he said. “Don't visit again unless you want to talk football.”

I walked back to my truck, head down and face burning red with anger.

What did he mean, there was no story?

I had seen the dead birds. I knew there was something in the water. My tests in the chem lab had proven that. I wished I was able to pinpoint what was in the water. The high school chem lab didn't have what I needed to do that.

The county health inspector had told me there was nothing wrong with the water. But I knew he'd either done a bad job of testing it, or he had lied to me.

And now the
Journal's
reporter was doing his best to ignore what I had to say too.

Something strange was happening. This was a story.

The trouble for me was I didn't know where else to go. If the county health inspector wasn't interested, and the
Johnstown Journal
wasn't interested, who could I get to help me find out what was going on?

By the time I got back to my truck, I was mad enough to know the answer.

Who could find out what was going on?

I could.

The next day, I had a study period just before lunch. That meant I could leave school early if I needed to, which I did.

Again, the sky was a perfect blue; the leaves had just started to turn colors. A small breeze pushed at my hair as I walked across the parking lot to my truck.

It was a good day to go for a drive in the hills and visit Gram, a good day to spend some peaceful time at her cabin.

Unfortunately, I couldn't. Because if I didn't do something about her poisoned water, her small part of the world would no longer be as beautiful.

Halfway across the parking lot, I heard someone call my name.

I stopped and turned to see Waymen Whitley running toward me, tall and lean and graceful like the star quarterback that he was. Because most kids were still in class, he was the only other person in the parking lot.

I waited for him.

“Hey,” he said, when he caught up with me, “where you going?”

If anyone else had asked me, I might have shrugged to try to get out of answering. But Waymen seemed to really care about people, including me.

“J-j-johns C-c-corporation.”

“No kidding,” he said. “That's where my dad works. Yours too?”

I shook my head. “My p-p-parents d-died when I was th-three.”

“Sorry to hear it, man. That must have been pretty awful.”

“Y-yeah.” But he wouldn't want to hear how I cried myself to sleep all those nights when I was little.

For a moment it was awkward, with neither of us knowing what to say.

“So,” he finally said, “you want company? I don't have another class until two.”

Usually I kept to myself. I preferred the quiet conversations in my head to the stumbling conversations I had with other people. But there was no way to say no without looking like a jerk. And I remembered how much I'd liked it when he called me a friend in front of Powell and Jones at his first practice.

“S-sounds g-g-good,” I said.

And I hoped it would be.

We were at the stop sign at the end of the parking lot when Waymen spoke.

“No one in school or on the team knows it,” Waymen said. “But for a long time I could hardly read. It's still kind of hard. And it drives me nuts.”

I looked over at him, not sure why he was telling me this or what I should say back to him. He was resting easy, his big hands on his knees.

“When I was a kid,” he continued, “I hated it when teachers would ask me to read something out loud to the class. It would take me forever to get through a sentence. Even then, I'd get half the words wrong. Still sometimes drives me nuts, trying to get through some of my homework assignments. ‘Specially now in high school.”

Our windows were down, and the wind felt good against my face. I listened to him carefully.

“Anyway,” Waymen said, “people made me feel stupid because I couldn't read. Then we figured out I have dyslexia. Something in my brain makes me see letters and words backward. I had to learn other ways of looking at letters and letter patterns to see words. I still can't spell very well.”

“I'd h-hate that,” I said. “R-reading is one of the b-best th-things that's happened to me. I c-can get lost in a g-good book and not c-come out for hours.”

“Because it's easier to read than talk?” he asked me.

I slowed down for a traffic light. I waited until the truck had stopped to look at him.

He smiled before I could get mad. “Hey,” he said, “for me it's easier to talk than read. And if you and I have to pretend you don't stutter, it's going to be tough to be friends.”

“Wh-wh-wh-why do you th-th-think w-w-we're going to be f-friends?” I didn't ask it in a mean way, but in a curious way. And he understood.

He grinned. “One, you're the best receiver I've ever seen. No one in the state can catch and run like you. I'd be a dumb quarterback not to make friends with the guy who's going to help us both set a single-season record for touchdowns.”

He wasn't being cocky. He really believed we would set a record and I should believe it too.

His grin turned serious. “And two, I'm like you. Words mess me up. And people have hassled me about it. Why do you think I got so mad at Powell at my first practice? For what it's worth, I'd seriously think about
trading. You take my dyslexia and I'll take your stutter. I mean, it's a lot easier to get a university degree with a stutter than it is with a reading problem.”

“Wh-why would you n-need a degree?” I joked. It was becoming easier to talk to him now that I knew he didn't care about my stuttering. “You can m-make m-millions as a pro quarterback.”

He pointed. I looked up. The red light had turned green. I hit the gas and the truck moved through the intersection.

“What if I get hurt?” he said. “Then what? All my life, I've watched my mom and dad struggle because they couldn't make much money. I promised them I would get an education, and I aim to deliver.”

I remembered what Elizabeth, his sister, had told me about her dad getting a new job.

“Your s-sister s-said the Johns C-corporation offering your dad a job was like w-winning a lottery.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “It's unbelievable. Dad is making triple what he was before.”

Waymen frowned. “When did you talk to my sister?”

“In th-the science lab one m-morning.”

He slapped his leg. “That was you? The guy quoting Shakespeare? She told us all about it.”

“L-long story,” I said. We were getting close to the Johns Corporation.

“But you...”

“S-stutter?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

I took a deep breath. “‘To be or not to be. That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them.' “

“I don't get it,” he said. “How do you do that?”

“I'm n-not sure,” I said. I explained how stuttering is a mystery to doctors and to people who stutter. “Acting, r-reciting lines, is d-different for m-me from sp-speaking, I guess.”

He grinned. It was an easy grin to like.
“Then do more acting,” he said. “I wish my dyslexia was as easy to beat.”

I flicked my turn signal and drove into the Johns Corporation parking lot. “M-more acting,” I said. “R-right.”

As if it would ever happen. Me, speaking in front of an audience full of strangers?

I pulled the truck into a parking spot near the shiny glass and brick of the main building.

“I never did ask,” he said. “What exactly are you doing here?”

“Another l-long story,” I answered. “N-not a b-big deal.”

It was, of course. But it wasn't something I figured would be a big deal to him.

Later, I would find out how wrong I was.

The main offices of the Johns Corporation were in a two-story building a block long. A wide sidewalk led to a broad set of steps. At the top of the steps, just before the glass doors, a decorative fountain burbled. Altogether it was an impressive building for a town as small as Johnstown.