He knows he's not smart. He hears the whispers - even the ones that aren't meant to reach his ears.
When he has to read out loud, he stumbles over the words. His voice trembles like a leaf and a flush of shame colors the skin from his face to his toes.
Matty says, "He's my brother! Don't you say nothing bad about him!" and tells him stories that they can't read in books.
He's hopeless at math. He's all right with sums and subtractions 'cause he just pretends it's money and if he doesn't get it right, he won't have any to buy food. Anything more complicated than that and his brain shrinks up like a cobweb.
Pa says, "Don' worry none - jist know 'nough so's ya don' git cheated," and ruffles his hair with the hand that's not holding a bottle.
Sometimes he pretends that the class is just a race and he's the tortoise and if he just keeps plodding along, he'll beat all those kids who point and laugh at him.
Ma says nothing, but she hugs him close and whispers, "My precious baby," in his hair.
He can field-strip Grammy's revolver in less than a minute and he's getting faster all the time but that's not any kind of learning that makes you smart.
Grammy says, "There's all kindsa learnin' an' not knowin' how t' take care o' you and yours is just plain dumb."
When a man offers him a job a week after his fourteenth birthday, he tells the teacher he's done and walks away. He holds his head high and uses the money to buy cotton yarn in all the colors of the rainbow.
He knows he's not smart, but all the books in all the worlds couldn't do what he does. If there are whispers now, he never hears them.
