Vincent Vollmer is very excited to be taking over his best friend Rat's paper route whilst Rat is away in the country visiting family; the only thing about the route that Vincent is most certainly not excited about is having to knock on the doors of the homes on his route every week and ask for the money for the bill, not because he is shy, or socially awkward, but because of the stammer that he has that makes it hard for people to understand him, and therefore hard for him to express himself without feeling like he is being judged to be stupid or unintelligent in some way. Nonetheless, he decides to take on the route and very soon is enjoying seeing the neighborhood and meeting some of the people to whom he is delivering papers. He strikes up an early friendship with a man named Mr Spiro, who seems not to care about his speech impediment, and who encourages him to love words and to learn new ones. He also meets Mrs Faye Worthington, a lady upon whom he develops his first real crush.
In an effort to become a more efficient paper deliverer, VIncent decides to ask Ara T, a semi-itinerant man who is a constant presence in the neighborhood, to sharpen his yellow-handled knife for him so that he can cut the string around the newspaper bundles more quickly. Ara-T is the best at this around and promises to have the sharpened knife back to Vincent by the next day. However, when the next few days go by and the knife has still not been returned, Vincent realizes that he has been robbed and that Ara T has no intention of returning it to him. He tells Mam, the colored lady who is both housekeeper and childminder, what has happened. SHe tries to put things right by going to Ara T and demanding the return of the knife but all that this achieves is to get her beaten up by the itinerant and so badly that she is unabl to come to work for a few days.
Vincent decides to go to Ara T's hideout and try to reclaim the knife for himself. Until this incident he was unaware that Ara T actually stole from people in the neighborhood, believeing that all the man did was take whatever he felt he could use from people's trash cans. When Vincent goes into the hideout, he is stunned to find billfolds, purses, wallets and all manner of things that Ara T has taken from the people of the neighborhood, and alongside these things he finds can after can of Vienna sausages, with the tins sliced open with newly-sharpened knives much like Vince's own. Ara T returns and sees Vincent but he is able to make his escape.
That evening, Vincent is practicing throwing a baseball with his father and loses a ball up on the roof. He gets out the ladder to retrieve it but forgets to put the ladder away afterwards. He returns home the next day to find that his desk drawer has been rifled and his treasured possessions taken; his new leather billfold that his Dad bought him, containing money, and a photograph of Mam and himself at the zoo, as well as the dollar bills that Mr Spiro was giving him complete with new words on them to learn and piece together. HE realizes that Ara T has burgled him as payback for trying to retrieve his own knife.
Again, he tells Mam about what has happened. Mam khows Ara T of old and in fact believes that he was guilty of the murder of her brother a long time ago. She shared this belief with Ara T which is what got her the beating. Together they go to the other side of town where Mam knows she will find Ara T. ALthough she tells Vincent to wait outside the bar for her he does not, and follows her inside. There is a fight, and during the altercation it seems as if Ara T is actually going to kill Mam, but she manages to slash him with the yellow-handled knife that belongs to Vincent. He takes his knife back. The two agree never to speak of the incident again.
A combination of standing up to a bully, defending Mam and actually speaking to people despite his stammer is giving Vincent more confidence. Although he was unable to make his last meeting with Mr Spiro, his new friend has left him a note, cancelling his paper for the summer whilst he is out of town but expressing a hope that they can resume meeting and philosophising together on his return. The Worthingtons, seemingly so miserable in their marriage when Vincent first took over the paper route, seem to be making a new start, and there is no longer the sound of angry voices when he goes up the path. TV boy, the kid he sees staring transfixed at the television when he delivers the paper becomes one of his best friends, as he is actually in his own way impaired regarding communication just like Vincent - he is deaf, and he stares so transfixedly at the television screen because he is using it to teach himself to lip read. When Rat returns he invites Vincent to accompany him on the paper route.
Newly confident in himself, and in his validity as a communicator despite his impediment, Vincent stands up on the first day of the new school year and announces to the class that he has a stammer, but despite this, he loves writing poetry, and he also loves words.
