“You'll be able to answer these questions because they're not about the book.”

Chuck glanced up. “Not about the book? Then why ask em? I thought…”

“Just humour me, okay?”

Johnny's heart was pounding hard, and he was not totally surprised to find that he was scared. He had been planning this for a long time, waiting for just the right confluence of circumstances. This was as close as he was ever going to get. Mrs. Chatsworth was not hovering around anxiously, making Chuck that much more nervous. None of his buddies were splashing around in the pool, making him feel self-conscious about reading aloud like a backward fourth grader. And most important, his father, the man Chuck wanted to please above all others in the world, was not here. He was in Boston at a New England Environmental Commission meeting on water pollution.

From Edward Stanney's An Overview of Learning Disabilities:

“The subject, Rupert J., was sitting in the” third row of a movie theater. He was closest to the screen by more than six rows, and was the only one in a position to observe that a small fire had started in the accumulated litter on the” floor. Ru pert J. stood up and cried “F-F-F-F-F -” while the people” behind him shouted for him to sit down and be quiet

.

“How did that make you feel?” l asked Rupert J

“I could never explain in a thousand years how it made me feel,” he answered. “J was scared, but even more than being scared, 7 was frustrated. I felt inadequate, not fit to be a member of the human race”. The stuttering always made me feel that way, but now I felt impotent, too.”

“'Was there” anything else?”

“Yes, I felt jealousy, because” someone” else would see” the” fire and you know -'"Get the glory of reporting it?”

“Yes, that's right. I saw the fire starting, I was the only one. And all I could say was F-F-F-F like a stupid broken record. Not fit to be a member of the human race” describes it best.”

“'And how did you break the block?”

“The” day before had been my mother's birthday. l got her half a dozen roses at the florist's. And I stood there with all of them yelling at me and l thought: I am going to open my mouth and scream ROSES! lust as loud as I can. I got that word all ready.”

“'Then what did you do?”

“'I opened my mouth and screamed FIRE! at the top of my lungs. "”

It had been eight years since Johnny had read that case history in the introduction to Stanney's text, but he had never forgotten it. He had always thought that the key word in Rupert J. “s recollection of what had happened was impotent. If you feel that sexual intercourse is the most important thing on earth at this point in time, your risk of corning up with a limp penis increases ten or a hundredfold. And if you feel that reading is the most important thing on earth…

“What's your middle name, Chuck?” he asked casually. “Murphy,” Chuck said with a little grin. “How's that for bad? My mother's maiden name. You tell Jack or Al that, and I'll be forced to do gross damage to your skinny body.”

“No-fear,” Johnny said. “When's your birthday?”

“September 8.”

Johnny began to throw the questions faster, not giving Chuck a chance to think-but they weren't questions you had to think about.

“What's your girl's name?”

“Beth. You know Beth, Johnny…

“What's her middle name?”

Chuck grinned. “Alma. Pretty horrible, right?”

“What's your paternal grandfather's name?”

“Richard.”

“Who do you like in the American League East this year?”

“Yankees. In a walk.”

“Who do you like for president?”

“I'd like to see Jerry Brown get it.”

“You planning to trade that Vette?”

“Not this year. Maybe next.”

“Your mom's idea?”

“You bet. She says it outraces her peace of mind.”

“How did Red Hawk get past the guards and kill Danny Jupiter?”

“Sherburne didn't pay enough attention to that trapdoor leading into the jail attic,” Chuck said promptly. without thinking, and Johnny felt a sudden burst of triumph that hit him like a knock of straight bourbon. It had worked. He had gotten Chuck talking about roses, and he had responded with a good, healthy yell of fire!

Chuck was looking at him in almost total surprise.

“Red Hawk got into the attic through the skylight. Kicked open the trapdoor. Shot Danny Jupiter. Shot Tom Kenyon, too.”

“That's right, Chuck.”

“I remembered,” he muttered, and then looked up at Johnny, eyes widening, a grin starting at the corners of his mouth. “You tricked me into remembering!”

“I just took you by the hand and led you around the side of whatever has been in your way all this time,” Johnny said. “But whatever it is, it's still there, Chuck. Don't kid yourself. Who was the girl Sherburne fell for?”

“It was… “His eyes clouded a little, and he shook his head reluctantly. “I don't remember. “He struck his thigh with sudden viciousness. “I can't remember anything! I'm so fucking stupid!”

“Can you remember ever having been told how your dad and mom met?”

Chuck looked up at him and smiled a little. There was an angry red place on his thigh where he had struck himself. “Sure. She was working for Avis down in Charleston, South Carolina. She rented my dad a car with a fiat tire. “Chuck laughed. “She still claims she only married him because number two tries harder.

“And who was that girl Sherburne got interested in?”

“Jenny Langhorne. Big-time trouble for him. She's Gresham's girl. A redhead. Like Beth. She… “He broke off, staring at Johnny as if he had just produced a rabbit from the breast pocket of his shirt. “You did it again!”

“No. You did it. It's a simple trick of misdirection. Why do you say Jenny Langhorne is big-time trouble for John Sherburne?”

“Well, because Gresham's the big wheel there in that town…”

“What town?”

Chuck opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Suddenly he cut his eyes away from Johnny's face and looked at the pool. Then he smiled and looked back. “Amity. The same as in the flick Jaws.”

“Good! How did you come up with the name?”

Chuck grinned. “This makes no sense at all, but I started thinking about trying out for the swimming team, and there it was. What a trick. What a great trick.”

“Okay. That's enough for today, I think. “Johnny felt tired, sweaty, and very, very good. “You just made a breakthrough, in case you didn't notice. Let's swim:

Last one in's a green banana.”

“Johnny?”

“What?”

“Will that always work?”

“If you make a habit of it, it will,” Johnny said. “And every time you go around that block instead of trying to bust through the middle of it, you're going to make it a little smaller. I think you'll begin to see an improvement in your word-to-word reading before long, also. I know a couple of other little tricks. He fell silent. What he had just given Chuck was less the truth than a king of hypnotic suggestion.

“Thanks, Chuck said. The mask of long-suffering good humor was gone, replaced by naked gratitude. “If you get me over this, I'll… well, I guess I'd get down and kiss your feet if you wanted me to. Sometimes I get so scared, I feel like I'm letting my dad down…”

“Chuck, don't you know that's part of the problem?”

“It is?”

“Yeah. You're… you're overswinging. Overthrowing. Overeverything. And it may not be just a psychological block, you know. There are people who believe that some reading problems, Jackson's Syndrome, reading phobias, all of that, may be some kind of… mental birthmark. A fouled circuit, a faulty relay, a d… “He shut his mouth with a snap.

“A what?” Chuck asked.

“A dead zone,” Johnny said slowly. “Whatever. Names don't matter. Results do. The misdirection trick really isn't a trick at all. It's educating a fallow part of your brain to do the work of that small faulty section. For you, that means getting into an oral-based train of thought every time you hit a snag. You're actually changing the location in your brain from which your thought is coming. It's learning to switch-hit.”