Wringer (3 page)

“What happened to your arm?”

Palmer's mother was lifting his shirtsleeve and asking him a question he did not want to answer.

“I said, what happened?”

“The Treatment,” said his father, coming into the room. He mussed Palmer's hair. “Right, big guy?”

Palmer nodded. Even nodding seemed to hurt his arm. “Right.”

His father inspected the spot. He whistled softly, he nodded gravely. “Nine hard ones, huh?”

“Right.” Palmer stood a little taller. He felt as if his father had just pinned a medal on him.

But his mother's voice was strained. “What are you talking about? What treatment?”

His dad spoke for him. “It's been a tradition for years around here. On your birthday you get knuckled once for each year old you are. It happened to me plenty.”

She sneered. “That doesn't mean it has to
happen to him.” She lifted his sleeve again. “Look at that. Look.”

“It's a bruise,” said his father calmly. “It goes away. He's okay. Right, big guy?”

Was he okay? His arm wasn't okay. It was killing him. But what about the rest of him? “Give him an extra!” Beans and Mutto had shrieked. “He's crying!” But Farquar had said no, it was just eye tears, everybody gets them. And he had carefully, daintily really, pulled Palmer's shirtsleeve down over the wound and said, “Happy birthday, kid,” and walked off, and in that moment Palmer loved Farquar.

Was
he okay?

“Sure,” he said, and he gave a little chuckle just to prove it.

“Well,” said his mother, aiming her voice somewhere beyond the room, “
I'm
not okay. He had those hoodlums here for his party.”

“Beans?” said his father.

Palmer gladly answered. “Yeah, Beans was here. And Mutto and Henry.”

His father wagged his head. “He's a pip, that Beans.”

“Hoodlums,” his mother went on. “And they
don't even like Palmer that much. They never pay any attention to him. They never play with him.”

“They do now,” Palmer protested. “They were just waiting till I was nine.”

His mother ignored him. “He invites them, but little Dorothy Gruzik he doesn't even invite.” She bore down on him. “Why not Dorothy?”

“She's a girl.”

“She's your neighbor. She's one of your best friends.”

Palmer laughed out loud. Sometimes his mother tried to make something come true simply by saying it. “She's not,” he told her bluntly. “If she didn't live across the street I'd probably never see her.”

“She invites you to her parties.”

Palmer was fed up. Why did his mother have to go on the warpath just when everything was so great in his life? He blurted, “She has a fish face!”

His father laughed. His mother's eyes went wide, then she abruptly changed topics. “And the nickname,” she said to his father, “you should hear the nickname they gave him for his ninth birthday, the hoodlums.” She tapped Palmer on the shoulder. “Tell him.”

“Snots,” said Palmer. It was already beginning to feel like his.

“Snots,” his dad echoed.

“Now what kind of name is that?” said his mother. “Where did that come from?”

Palmer shrugged. In truth, he had no idea. Beans gave out the names. His own obviously came from his appetite for cold baked beans out of a can, anytime, day or night. Mutto? A mystery. There was no dog in Mutto's life that Palmer knew of. And Henry, that sounded more like a real name than a nickname, but Palmer couldn't imagine Beans letting someone's real name stand, so Henry must be someone else too.

Seeing that no answer was coming from Palmer, his mother gave up and walked off muttering, “Doesn't have the good sense he was born with.”

“Well, Snots,” said his father, “sorry I didn't make it to the big party. Here's a present if you think you can stand another one.” He reached into the dining room hutch and pulled out a gift-wrapped package.

Palmer tore off the paper to reveal an old, frayed shoe box. He gasped. He knew what was
coming but still couldn't believe it. He lifted the lid. “Your soldiers!”

“Yours now,” said his father.

They were twenty-seven toy soldiers. They were made of lead, which in many places showed through the olive-green paint. They were two inches tall, and they were very old. The helmets were shallow, like soup bowls. They had first been played with by Palmer's great-grandfather, then by his grandfather, then his father. Palmer had played with them many times, but only with his dad's permission. He had always thought of them as the most valuable things in the house. His dad kept them in the shoe box behind a suitcase in the back of a closet.

“That is,” his father added, “if you promise to take care of them and pass them on to your own son some day.”

Palmer could only nod in wonderment. “I can keep them in my room?”

“Sure can.”

That night in his room Palmer debated where to hide the twenty-seven toy soldiers. He chose the high shelf of his closet, which he could not reach without standing on his chair. He had to carry the
chair and reach up with his right hand. His left arm was useless. His fingertips tingled. At dinner he had let it just plop on the table and stay there. His mother kept glaring at it.

Sometimes his arm felt numb, as if he had been sleeping on it. But mostly it hurt. He found that if he kept his mind busy, he didn't notice the hurt so much. He read a book, watched TV, inspected his presents, thought about the day.

What a day!

New birthday. New friends. New feelings of excitement and pride and belonging. His mother was wrong about the guys never playing with him. He had had a lot to overcome, that was all. Being the youngest, the shortest. And his unusual first name, he took lots of teasing there. But that was all over now. He fell back on his bed, he grinned at the ceiling. Life was good.

While brushing his teeth that night, Palmer looked at his face in the mirror and suddenly began to cry. He cried so hard he could not finish brushing. He ran to his room, shocked and angry at this unexpected turn to his perfect day. Sobbing loudly, gasping for breath, he plunged into his bed and smothered his face in his pillow.

He was not aware of turning the ceiling light off and the night light on. He was not aware that he ever stopped crying. In his sleep a voice echoed down the long dark barrel of a cannon:
You have run out of birthdays
. In the morning he awoke suddenly to a flutter of wings.

The following weeks were like a parade to Palmer, with himself as grand marshal. He felt as if he were marching down the middle of a broad boulevard with crowds of people cheering from the sidewalks.

Calls of “Hey, Palmer!” and “Hey, Snots!” flew across the summer days. From blocks around kids came to see his arm. Little kids would gather around, four or five at a time. He would lift his sleeve, and they would gasp and go “Wow!” Some of them would reach out to touch. The squeamish ones would pull back their hands as if from a hot stove, and they would shudder and squeak.

Big kids did not touch. They simply looked and nodded in grim respect, remembering their own Treatment, and Palmer's heart would swell.

Within three days he could lift his left hand to his nose. At the end of a week he could reach above his head. He was almost sorry he was healing. He enjoyed showing off to little kids: “Look, I
can't lift my arm any higher than this.” He enjoyed the amazement in their eyes.

He wished the bruise would not go away. He wished he could make them feel the tingle in his fingertips. One day he darkened the diminishing bruise with a bit of purple crayon.

One person was missing during his imaginary parade down the boulevard: Dorothy Gruzik. And for some reason, this bothered Palmer.

Several times he saw her playing hopscotch in front of her house. Like Palmer, she was good at playing by herself. Of course, Palmer had buddies now, so he would never have to play alone again, not if he didn't want to. He wondered if girls grouped up like boys.

The first couple of times that Palmer walked past, Dorothy did not even look up from her hopscotch. This was very unusual. Dorothy had always said hi.

So next time Palmer said it: “Hi.”

Dorothy just went on hopping one-footed, brown ponytail bobbing.

She's mad because I didn't invite her to my birthday party, thought Palmer. And that was understandable, but also beside the point. The point was
getting her to look at the bruise, and the more she would not, the more Palmer wanted her to.

Finally he rolled his left sleeve up to the shoulder and plopped himself down on her front steps. She went on playing, tossing a green beanbag into the chalk-numbered squares, ignoring him.

At last he thought of a funny thing to say. “Who's winning?”

She said nothing. She tossed the beanbag to the farthest square and hopped on down and back. She tossed the bag out again, and just when it seemed she would never speak, she said, “Thanks for inviting me to your party.”

It made no sense, but Palmer was thrilled to hear her voice. “It was all boys,” he said.

“Good,” she said with a disdainful sniff. Sometimes it amazed him that this girl, just out of third grade, could make him feel so little. She went on hopping.

“Did you hear my new name?” he said.

She did not answer, did not look up.

“It's Snots.”

A short snorty chuckle burst from her nose, then she was stone-faced again.

He turned so that his left arm was fully facing
her, so she couldn't miss it.

“I got The Treatment too.” She went on hopping. “For three days I could only move my arm up to here.” She did not even look. “Want to see my bruise?” Her eyes never left the green beanbag.

He stood. He smiled. “Want to touch it?”

It was as if he wasn't there.

So he ran off and found others to marvel at his bruise. He played with the guys, and when they came to taunt Dorothy, he did not feel as bad as he had before. They called her “Fishface!” and made fun of her name and kicked her beanbag off the hopscotch squares. Palmer stood back and gave a sly grin.
That'll teach you, Dorothy Gruzik.

At the same time she befuddled him. Not once did she raise her eyes to her tormenters or say anything back. She did not run into her house. She did not cry. What kind of girl was this? She just kept playing hopscotch, as if no one else was there.

After a while Beans could not take any more fun, so they all ran off.

In the third week after The Treatment, Palmer came to the end of his imaginary parade. His bruise had faded to a dim yellowish blot, and the crowds had gone home. But something was still
there. Palmer knew what it was. It had been there all along, silent, hardly seen among the cheering crowd, a flash of black feather now and then, an orange eye, waiting.

As he kicked his checkered soccer ball along the streets, he could feel it lurking in shadowy doorways, behind shaded windows. He would not look. He felt it come out of the shadows, and the sunlight on the back of his neck turned to frost. It was behind him. He picked up his ball and ran.

But he could not run from time. It was the first week in August.

Family Fest had arrived.

Family Fest.

Such a nice name. And a nice time it was. A week of talent contests and softball games and races and Tilt-A-Whirl and bumper cars and music and barbecue and cotton candy.

And shooting pigeons.

If only Family Fest would stop on Friday, Palmer had often wished. But it did not. It began on Monday and ended on Saturday. And that Saturday, the first Saturday in August, one month after his birthday, was the worst day of the year.

During the night before, trucks could be heard rumbling through the streets, carrying wooden crates from the old railroad station to the soccer field. The crates held pigeons. Five thousand of them.

Except on that day, Palmer had never seen a pigeon in his town. Some, he heard, were trapped in the railroad yards of the great city a hundred miles to the east. The rest were bought, paid for.
Why anyone would pay for a pigeon only to shoot it was just one of many questions about Pigeon Day that bewildered Palmer.

Palmer's first Pigeon Day had occurred when he was four. Certain moments, five years later, were still with him. The birds in the sky, then suddenly not in the sky, only feathers fluttering. The red fingers and lips of a man cheering, spewing specks of barbecued chicken. A man wearing a bright pink baseball cap. The smell of gunsmoke.

And most of all the pigeon, the one pigeon that hurried across the grass lopsided—“loppysided,” as Palmer would have said then—as if one leg had been kicked out from under it, hurrying, hobbling, wobbling in goofy loops, tilting like a sailboat blown over, a boy chasing after, running and reaching, the boy laughing, the people laughing, little Palmer thinking,
The boy wants it for a pet.
And then the pigeon was coming this way, flopping, righting itself, hobbling straight for the people, head bobbing, loppysiding on a curving course, and the people were shrieking and calling “Wringer! Wringer!” and the boy was chasing and sure enough the boy caught it, caught that hobblywobbling pigeon right in front of Palmer. And the
pigeon's eye looked at Palmer and the pigeon's eye was orange and everyone clapped and Palmer clapped too and laughed and called out “Good!” and the boy closed his hands over the pigeon's neck and twisted his hands real quick—like
that
—and Palmer heard a tiny sound, like when a twig was stepped on, and when the boy took one hand away the pigeon's head hung down toward the green grass, so sadly dangled down, though the pigeon's eye was still round and orange.

Palmer had turned and looked up at his mother and said, “Why did he do that?” and his mother had said, “To put the pigeon out of its misery.”

“Was the pigeon in misery?” Palmer asked his mother.

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?” said Palmer.

His mother did not answer. She was looking at the sky.

“Because he was loppysided?”

She smiled thinly, she nodded. “Yes.”

“The boy didn't want him for a pet, did he?”

His mother kept looking at the sky, kept not answering. Palmer began to notice a gray, sour smell in the air. Suddenly his mother grabbed his
hand and pulled him away. As they squeezed through the crowd, the happy faces of the people and the cheers and laughter and the fingers red from barbecue sauce gave Palmer the feeling that he was leaving a party.

The boy, Palmer learned later, was called a wringer. It was his job to put the wounded pigeons out of their misery.

During the following year Palmer thought about that quite often. If the wounded pigeons were in misery, he wondered, why put them there in the first place by shooting them? Why not just let them all fly away?

Palmer's mother had no answer to these questions, so Palmer thought about it some more and concluded that all pigeons must be miserable, wounded or not, and that was why they must be shot. And perhaps the pigeons themselves knew this. Perhaps when the boxes were opened and they flew into the sky over the soccer field, they were not trying to fly away at all. They were simply giving the shooters a good target, they were saying, “Here we are, put us out of our misery.”

How sad, to be a pigeon. And how nice of the people, that they would stop at nothing to help.
They would shoot and wring—and, Palmer imagined, punch and hand grenade and bayonet if they had to—anything to end the poor birds' misery. And this, Palmer guessed, was why the people were so happy. Because every dangling, orange-eyed head was one less miserable creature to weigh heavy on their hearts. Heaven, Palmer thought with a smile, must be teeming with pigeons.

On the mantel of a fake fireplace in the den of Palmer's house stood a statue of a pigeon. It was golden. It was beautiful. Words were etched into a shiny panel below the statue. Palmer could not yet read, so he pretended that the words said:
In honor of all pigeons. This house loves you.

But the questions did not stop. Killing the pigeons and putting them out of their misery stubbornly refused to mean the same thing. Palmer thought about misery, and it seemed to him that a shotgun was not the only way to end it. When Palmer was miserable, for example, his mother or father would hold him close and wipe his tears. When Palmer's mother or father put him out of his misery, they did not shoot him, they offered him a cookie. Why then on Pigeon Day did the people bring guns instead of cookies?

It was confusing.

“Was Daddy a wringer?” Palmer asked his mother one day.

After a minute she said, “Better ask your father.”

So he asked his father. “Daddy, were you a wringer?”

His father looked at him and said, “Yep.”

“Will I be a wringer too?”

His father gave a snappy nod and said, “Sure thing, big guy.”

Sure thing.
Palmer pronounced the words over and over in the days that followed.
Sure thing
.

Boys became wringers, he heard, when they became ten years old.