Wringer (4 page)

Palmer had attended his second Pigeon Day with Dorothy Gruzik and her family, as his mother had other things to do. It was Dorothy's first. She pointed to the mountain of boxes at the far end of the field. “What are they for?” she asked Palmer.

“That's where the pigeons are,” he told her.

“What are they doing in there?” she said.

“They're waiting to get out,” Palmer told her. He felt like an old pro, clueing in the new kid. “They go from the big boxes to those little white boxes there. Every little white box has five pigeons. Somebody pulls a string and a door opens and one pigeon flies out.” His father had told him these things. “Guess how many pigeons there are.”

Dorothy gave it some thought. “A hundred.”

Palmer smiled smugly. “Five thousand.”

Dorothy Gruzik's mouth fell open as her eyes rolled upward. She was imagining a skyful of pigeons. “Wow,” she said. “Then what?”

“They shoot them.”

For a long time Dorothy Gruzik did not move. It looked as if she were waiting for rain to fall into her mouth. When she finally turned her eyes back to Palmer, he wished he wasn't there.

“What?” she said.

“They shoot them,” he repeated, and the words were dusty and bitter on his tongue. There seemed only one way to get rid of the bad taste, and that was to flush out his mouth with more and more words. “They go bam! bam! bam! They open up a box and the pigeon flies out and the gun goes bam! and the bird goes—” Palmer raised his hand high above his head and dived it down to the ground to show her; for sound effect, he tried out his newly learned whistle. “And then another one comes out—bam! Another one—bam!” After each bam! came a dive and a whistle. “And the wringers run out to get the pigeons, and if the pigeon isn't dead the wringer wrings its neck.” He brought his curled fists together and snap-twisted them. “Like
that
.” He made the sound of a twig breaking.

She was already running, tunneling through the crowd, bouncing off grown-ups' legs, her mother after her, “Excuse me…excuse me…”

Palmer bored through to the back side of the
crowd. Dorothy was running past the picnic tables, her mother chasing.

Palmer called: “They put them out of their misery! That's all! That's all!”

He discovered that he was crying.

By the following year Palmer no longer cared to watch. So he spent Pigeon Day at the playground with Dorothy Gruzik. Through the day the squeak of the seesaw and the creak of the swings joined the sound of the shotguns. At this distance they sounded like balloons popping.

While they were on the swings, a boy he knew as Arthur Dodds came by. Arthur had not yet begun calling himself Beans. He was dashing through the playground when he spotted Palmer and Dorothy and skidded to a halt.

“Whattaya doing?” he demanded of the two of them.

“We're swinging,” said Dorothy. “What's it look like?” Even then she wasn't afraid.

“They're shooting the pigeons,” he said. His feet were still pointed toward the soccer field; his whole body was twitching. “Come on!”

“We're staying here,” said Dorothy.

Palmer was glad that Dorothy answered, but
now Arthur Dodds was heading straight for him. “What's your name?” he growled.

“Palmer.”

“Your first name.”

“That is my first name.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

What could Palmer say? He shrugged.

Arthur Dodds came closer. At that time he still had his baby teeth, which were as colorful as his second teeth would become. “You coming?” he said.

Palmer did not know what to say. He looked at Dorothy. She was staring at him. Somehow her face gave him the answer. He shook his head no.

Arthur Dodds exploded. “Sissymissy! Girl-baby!” He gave the swing chain such a yank that Palmer was thrown like a bronco rider onto the ground. Arthur Dodds took off, braying, “I'm a wringer, I'm a wringer! I'm gonna get me a pigeon and wring 'im!”

And he did.

As Palmer later heard the story, Arthur Dodds made a real nuisance of himself that day. He kept darting onto the field to chase wounded pigeons, only to be chased away himself by the real
wringers. Arthur Dodds, like Palmer, was only six years old at the time.

Finally he got what he wanted. A shot bird, instead of falling onto the soccer field, made it to the picnic area before it came down. Arthur saw and lit out after it. He heard a woman screaming. The bird had fallen right into the pink-fringed stroller where her baby was sleeping.

By the time Arthur got there, the pigeon was on the ground and being chased around the picnic tables by half a dozen squealing toddlers. Arthur joined the chase. The bird flapped up onto a table. People screamed. Hot dogs flew. Arthur lunged across the table, knocking drinks, smashing pickled eggs, and snatched the pigeon by the legs in a bowl of chicken salad. According to the story, Arthur threw his arms into the air like a boxing champion and crowed, “Got me one!” Then, right before the gaping eyes of the picnickers, he wrung its neck.

Arthur Dodds wasn't finished. So proud was he of his dead pigeon that he took it home, wrapped it in newspaper and hid it under his bed. For almost a week he charged kids a quarter apiece for a look. Then his mother started to smell
something, and pretty soon that was that.

Palmer smelled something too, something about his father when he would return from Pigeon Days. As often happened, Palmer would wind up in his father's lap. It was his favorite place in all the world, where he was safe from everything. But on those days he could smell the gray and sour odor of the gunsmoke. The closer he nuzzled into his father's shirt, the more he could smell it.

Then he began smelling the gray and sour odor even when his father wasn't there, even when Pigeon Day was over. It might happen in the morning as he sat in school, or at night as he lay in bed. It could even happen in his father's lap in the middle of winter, when the shotgun had been locked away for months.

The smell was sure to come on his birthday. It did not spoil his birthday, as it did not spoil his father's lap, but it changed those things so they did not feel quite as good as before.

Other things changed. Arthur Dodds became Beans, and Beans was joined by Billy Natola, who became Mutto, and by a new, very tall boy in town known only as Henry. Palmer wanted to join them,
but they said he was too small and too young and that he had a funny first name and that he played with girls, little ones at that.

Which wasn't true. The older he got, the less he had to do with Dorothy Gruzik. When he went off to first grade, he left her behind on her front steps, clutching a doll. In second grade he said to the guys, “She's my neighbor, that's all. I can't help that, can I? And anyway, what do I want with a first grader?” But they weren't listening.

Palmer invited them to his eighth birthday, but no one came. So his mother stormed across the street and dragged Dorothy to the dining room table, and his mother and father and Dorothy sang “Happy Birthday” to him, and his mother had a big smile but her eyes were red.

That was the summer that Palmer's family went on a vacation trip. They stopped in the big city for a day. From the tourist information center they got a map and gave themselves a walking tour of historic places.

Pigeons were everywhere: sidewalks, ledges, steps. Palmer even saw one crossing a street with a crowd of people on a green light, just another pedestrian. They strutted boldly, those pigeons,
going about their business, pecking here, pecking there. They did not seem in the least bit afraid or apologetic. They acted as if they belonged, as if this was their city as well as the people's.

And the people, they did not even seem to notice the pigeons. Palmer kept tugging at his parents: “Look, there's one!…Look at that one!” But the city people ignored them. No one had a shotgun.

Except for the wounded pigeon that was wrung in front of him when he was four, this was Palmer's first close look at the birds. He had heard that pigeons were dirty, filthy, nothing more than rats with wings. He looked and looked, but all he saw were plump, pretty birds with shiny coats. He was especially fascinated by how they moved. They did not hop, like sparrows or robins, but they
walked
, one pink foot in front of the other, just like people. With each step the head gave a nod, as if to say,
Yes, I will. I agree. You're right.
As Palmer saw it, the pigeon was a most agreeable bird.

They were passing through a park with many trees and benches when Palmer saw something that stopped him in his tracks. A man sitting on a bench was smothered in pigeons. They were on his shoul
ders, his head, his lap, snapping up seeds that the man appeared to have poured over himself. The pigeons were cooing and the man was giggling—or was the man cooing and the pigeons giggling? It was hard to tell.

Back home, it occurred to Palmer that since he now could read quite well, he should have another look at the inscription on the golden pigeon statue in the den. It said:

 

Sharpshooter Award

Pigeon Day

1989

 

There, standing before the golden pigeon, the odor of gunsmoke came to him, and he understood that his father was a shooter.

It was about then that Palmer began to feel a certain tilt to his life. Time became a sliding board, at the bottom of which awaited his tenth birthday.

Beans kept asking, “You gonna be a wringer?”

Every time, Palmer would look straight into that crayon box of teeth and say, “Sure thing.” And every time he said it he could feel his heart thump. For among all the changes in his life, one
thing stayed the same. It was something he had known since his second Pigeon Day, when he sat with Dorothy Gruzik on the swings: He did not want to be a wringer.

Cotton candy days, Ferris wheel nights. Family Fest was almost better than Christmas—and longer. What had been the American Legion baseball field last week was this week a wonderland. Ten times over Palmer explored every ride, every food stand, every amusement booth. He loved the boiling fat's crackling hiss that cooked his fries and funnel cakes. He loved the yelp and splash when a ball hit the mark at the Dunk-A-Kid booth, the pop of darted balloons, the St. Bernard-size grand prizes, Tilt-A-Whirl's woozy flight, neon lights like bottled fireworks, House of Horrors and Pretzel Man and chocolate bananas on a stick.

But in this year of Palmer's life not even Family Fest was pure and easy fun. Despite the gleeful shouting and merry-go-round music, he could not forget the soccer field at the far end of the park: silent, waiting. At times the Ferris wheel seemed to be winching minutes, hauling him ever closer to Saturday and the boom and smell of gunsmoke.

He tried to avoid the guys, but it wasn't as easy as before. After The Treatment they had been showing him a newfound respect, and often they came looking for him. He began leaving his house by the back door. He kept his eyes peeled at the Fest.

Dorothy showed him no respect at all. He could have had a hundred Treatments and it would not have impressed her. And yet Palmer forgave her. He reminded himself that she was young and a girl and did not understand life beyond her hopscotch squares. Also, there was the memory of his second Pigeon Day shared with Dorothy. As the week raced toward Saturday, he began to feel closer to her. But when he saw Dorothy's face flashing in the neon lights and called her name, she only stuck up her nose and turned away.

He rode the rides. His parents gave him money each day to spend. When that ran out, he used his own savings. He wobbled and swirled and tilted and whirled and plunged and soared. The closer he came to Saturday the more he rode.

The gang, whenever he bumped into them, kept saying, “See ya Saturday, Snots. Six o'clock.” They were supposed to meet at the World War I
cannon. The shooting would begin at seven and continue all day.

When he was younger this was a matter of wonderment to Palmer. It became the means by which he could grasp the first really big number in his life: five thousand. For a long time five thousand meant the number of pigeons you could shoot in one day, one by one. As he grew a little older he discovered machine guns and tanks and bazookas and, of course, bombs.

“Why don't you just blow them up and put them out of their misery all at once?” he asked his father one day.

That was when his father explained how it all worked. He explained that there was more to it than putting the pigeons out of their misery. He said that only people who paid money were allowed to shoot the pigeons, and that the money was used to make the park better. “So you see,” he said, “you can thank a pigeon for the swings at the playground.”

And for a time thereafter, Palmer did just that. Whenever he swung on a swing, he thanked a pigeon.

Palmer knew that Beans and the guys intended
to stay all day, from the first boom until the last gray feather floated to earth. When he went to bed Friday night he had decided what he would do: He would not show up at the cannon. If they came checking, he would be in bed, pretending to be sick. He would tell them that he had really wanted to go, but his mother wouldn't let him.

He felt good. The problem was solved. He went to sleep with a smile.

In his dream the pigeons came to town, not five thousand but millions. In their beaks they pinched the edges of the town, plucked it up and flew away with it, as if it were a Christmas tree display on a tablecloth. The only sound was the flutter of wings. Palmer wondered where they were going. They seemed to be leaving the earth behind. Ahead, all around, was nothing but space and the blackest of nights. On and on they flew.

Then he felt a spot of warmth on his face. A puff of light broke the blackness. He began to worry. Were they heading for the sun? Were they going to dump him and the whole town into that fiery ball? The light grew brighter. A pigeon was pecking him on the rump, pecking him and giggling. He squirmed to get away. He tried to scream, but instead of his own voice he heard another's saying, “Pinch him harder. Did ya get bare skin?”

He opened his eyes. The light was blinding,
then went away. It was totally dark. The nightlight was off, and he was not alone in bed.
Somebody was in bed with him!
He started to make a sound, but his mouth was clamped by a hand. Somebody laughed out loud, somebody growled, “Shut up! They'll hear!” He smelled baked beans. The light reappeared. It was a little penlight. It shone on two faces. One of them said, “Shut up now, Snots, okay? It's just us, Beans and Mutto. Okay?”

Palmer nodded, and the hand left his mouth. He sat up. “What are you doing here? How'd you get in?” A glance at his window answered the question. The screen was up. His window was above the roof of the back porch. It could be done.

Next thing he knew he was yanked out of bed and onto his feet. “Come on,” whispered Beans, “we got somewhere to go.”

It did not occur to Palmer not to go along. Once the shock wore off, he realized what an honor had been granted him. Imagine: A month ago these guys ignored him except to tease him; now they snuck into his house and climbed into bed with him. Palmer LaRue. Amazing!

He turned on his nightlight and dressed, and out the window they went. From the roof edge
they slid down a plank that Beans and Mutto had borrowed from a building site.

“Let's go!” barked Beans.

“Where?” said Palmer, but Beans was taking off.

They were a whisper through the nighttime town. By Beans's orders, they kept to the alleyways. They trotted in file: first Beans, then Mutto, then Palmer. The only sound was their sneakers patting the ground.

Never before, not even on New Year's Eve, had Palmer been up so late. Not to mention outside. Not to mention outside without a parent. It was not like Palmer to do this. He had always been an obedient kid. Lay down a rule, and Palmer followed it. He cringed at what his parents would say if they found out.

But the thrill of it, the honor of it swept all other feelings away. Jogging through the dark and sleeping alleyways, skirting pools of streetlight, he imagined he was a toy lead soldier come to life, following Sergeant Beans and Private Mutto on a mission behind enemy lines. He loved these guys. He would follow them anywhere. He wondered what other adventures awaited him in the
days and years ahead.

They trotted through the park and past the National Guard Armory. They turned a corner, and they were at the old boarded-up railroad station. Palmer smelled something, like animals, and heard small, soft sounds. In the moonlight he saw a second building as tall as the station and nearly as long. He did not remember this second building. He began to hear that the sounds were voices, and he saw that the second building was not a building at all. It was a mountain of crates…and soft sleepy cooings….

It was five thousand pigeons.

He stopped.

Beans and Mutto trotted on. They cheered and yipped and did a nutty dance before the stacked crates. Their mooncast shadows snagged on potholes in the old parking lot and pulled like black taffy. They made their arms like rifles and barked, “Bang! Bang!” and a squabbling uproar filled the night.

“Come on, Snots!” they called.

They picked up sticks and racketed along the slats. They played the crates like drums.

“Snots!”

Palmer could not move. Ten thousand orange eyes burned holes in his heart.

He heard a wrenching screech: they were ripping open a crate. What were they up to?

“Grab 'im! Grab 'im!” Beans was shrieking.

Ten thousand orange eyes.

“Got 'im!”

Palmer called, “I gotta go back! I have to go to the bathroom!”

He ran. He did not use the alleys. He ran down the middle of the streets, the middle of the lights, chased every step by the uproar of the crates, ten thousand orange eyes trailing him into his house, into his bed, under his sheet, into his sleep.

 

In the morning, Saturday morning, awakening, he heard tiny popping sounds in the distance. He closed his window, pulled down the shade. He brought his TV closer and turned it on loud.

Blessedly, they did not come for him. Still, to be on the safe side, he told his mother he was ill and stayed in bed all day. She looked at him a little funny at first, then was especially nice the rest of the day, as if he really were sick. She did not try to make him open the window because it was July.
She turned on the fan.

He watched TV. He read. He cut out Beetle Bailey comics for his collection. His mother played cards and Monopoly with him. He did not play with his soldiers.

Several times, when the light was deeply golden on the windowshade, he heard the doorbell downstairs and his mother going to answer. She did not say who was there. He did not ask.

When his mother came in to kiss him good night, she turned off the TV and opened the window. The night was silent.