When George got tightly wound up in a debate, the stutter would come out. The more eager he became, the worse it was. And when he felt he had an opponent dead in his sights, an intellectual sort of buck fever seemed to take place between his speech centers and his mouth and he would freeze solid while the clock ran out. It was painful to watch.
"S-S-So I th-th-think we have to say that the fuh-fuh-facts in the c-case Mr. D-D-D-Dorsky cites are ren-ren-rendered obsolete by the ruh-recent duh-duhdecision handed down inin-in... "
The buzzer would go off and George would whirl around to stare furiously at Jack, who sat beside it. George's face at those moments would be flushed, his notes crumpled spasmodically in one hand.
Jack had held on to George long after he had cut most of the obvious flat tires, hoping George would work out. He remembered one late afternoon about a week before he had reluctantly dropped the ax. George had stayed after the others had filed out, and then had confronted Jack angrily.
"You s-set the timer ahead."
Jack looked up from the papers he was putting back into his briefcase.
"George, what are you talking about?"
"I d-didn't get my whole five mih-minutes. You set it ahead. I was wuhwatching the clock."
"The clock and the timer may keep slightly different times, George, but I never touched the dial on the damned thing. Scout's honor."
"Yuh-yuh-you did!"
The belligerent, I'm-sticking-up-for-my-rights way George was looking at him had sparked Jack's own temper. He had
been off the sauce for two months, two months too long, and he was ragged. He made one last effort to hold himself in. "I assure you I did not, George. It's your stutter. Do you have any idea what causes it? You don't stutter in class."
"I duh-duh-don't s-s-st-st-stutterl"
"Lower your voice."
"You w-want to g-get met You duh-don't w-want me on your g-g-goddam team!"
"Lower your voice, I said. Let's discuss this rationally."
"F-fuh-fuck th-that!"
"George, if you control your stutter, I'd be glad to have you. You're well prepped for every practice and you're good at the background stuff, which means you're rarely surprised. But all that doesn't mean much if you can't control that-"
"I've neh-neh-never stuttered!" he cried out. "It's yuh-you! I i-if suhsomeone else had the d-d-deb-debate t-team, I could-"
Jack's temper slipped another notch.
"George, you're never going to make much of a lawyer, corporation or otherwise, if you can't control that. Law isn't like soccer. Two hours of practice every night won't cut it. What are you going to do, stand up in front of a board meeting and say, `Nuh-nuh-now, g-gentlemen, about this t-ttort'?"
He suddenly flushed, not with anger but with shame at his own cruelty. This was not a man in front of him but a seventeen-year-old boy who was facing the first major defeat of his life, and maybe asking in the only way he could for Jack to help him find a way to cope with it.
George gave him a final, furious glance, his lips twisting and bucking as the words bottled up behind them struggled to find their way out.
"Yuh-yuh-you s-s-set it aheadl You huh-hate me b-because you nuh-nuh-nuh-know... you know... nuh-nuh-"
With an articulate cry he had rushed out of the classroom, slamming the door hard enough to make the wire-reinforced glass rattle in its frame. Jack had stood there, feeling, rather than hearing, the echo of George's Adidas in the empty hall. Still in the grip of his temper and his shame at mocking George's stutter, his first thought had been a sick sort of exultation: For the first time in his life George Hatfield had wanted something he could not have. For the first time there was something wrong that all of Daddy's money could not fix. You couldn't bribe a speech center. You couldn't offer a tongue an extra fifty a week and a bonus at Christmas if it would agree to stop flapping like a record needle in a defective groove. Then the exultation was simply buried in shame, and he felt the way he had after he had broken Danny's arm.
Dear God, I am not a son of a bitch. Please.
That sick happiness at George's retreat was more typical of Denker in the play than of Jack Torrance the playwright.
You hate me because you know...
Because he knew what?
What could he possibly know about George Hatfield that would make him hate him? That his whole future lay ahead of him? That he looked a little bit like Robert Redford and all conversation among the girls stopped when he did a double gainer from the pool diving board? That he played soccer and baseball with a natural, unlearned grace?
Ridiculous. Absolutely absurd. He envied George Hatfield nothing. If the truth was known, he felt worse about George's unfortunate stutter than George himself, because George really would have made an excellent debater. And if Jack had set the timer ahead-and of course he hadn't-it would have been because both he and the other members of the squad were embarrassed for George's struggle, they had agonized over it the way you agonize when the Class Night speaker forgets some of his lines. If he had set the timer ahead, it would have been just to... to put George out of his misery.