Wringer (9 page)

Nipper was home that day, waiting at the windowsill. But Palmer was too worn out to be relieved. All the stress and weirdness of the day had left him totally wrecked. It was all he could do to drag himself down to dinner.

Summer vacation was over a month away. He couldn't imagine lasting that long.

But he did. Somehow, day by day, he got through it.

Each morning as he left the house he faced two problems, and no matter how well he solved them that day, next morning they would be waiting for him again:

1. How to avoid Nipper on the way home from school.

2. How to keep the guys from turning against him.

As he had discovered the first day, getting into trouble could both detain him after school and boost his popularity with the guys. So he spit on
the blackboard, he talked and laughed in class, he took off his shoes and socks, he hid in the map closet, he tickled other students and, on Monday of the last week before summer vacation, he tickled the teacher.

“Palmer!” she shrieked. “What has gotten
into
you?”

She had been asking him this question for some time now. He was running out of answers. “Puberty,” he said. He didn't know what it meant, but he had heard that it happened to teenagers and that it made them batty, at least in the eyes of grown-ups.

“Try again,” she said. “You're too young for puberty.”

“I'm very mature for my age,” he said.

“Good,” she said, “then you're mature enough to stay after school for a week.”

That would take care of the rest of the school year. Palmer forced himself not to grin.

The teacher tickle made Palmer immensely popular, not only with the Beans Boys but throughout the entire school. His reputation soared as a kid who did crazy things. Students broke out laughing when they saw him in the hallways. They
egged him on to “do something nutty.” They offered him morsels from their lunches.

“You're famous,” Dorothy told him in his room one day.

“I know,” said Palmer, slumping, “but I don't want to be. I want to be nobody. I want to be invisible. If I was invisible, then Nipper would be too.”

Dorothy, for no apparent reason, started to giggle. She quickly clamped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “I know I'm not supposed to laugh, but sometimes I can't help it. I keep thinking of you tickling your teacher.” Another giggle spouted. “It's just not
you
.”

Palmer threw up his hands. “I know! I know! And wait till you see what happens in two days.”

Dorothy's eyes widened. “What?”

“Miss Kiner said I won't have detention on the last day of school. I'll have to go home at the regular time. My mom will never let me wear my winter coat anymore in this weather, so I'm afraid Nipper's going to see me again coming home from school.” Palmer paced about the room. “I have nightmares all day. I see Nipper landing on my head and Beans snatching him by his legs and—” He couldn't even say the rest. He went over to
Nipper, who was strutting along the booktops.

“What are you going to do?” said Dorothy.

Palmer stroked Nipper's smooth, glossy head. “Wear a mask.”

Dorothy's hand shot to her mouth. “Oh no.”

“Oh yeah.” With his fingertips he lightly tickled Nipper's breast feathers. He had discovered that Nipper loved this and would stay still for as long as he kept doing it.

“Do you have a mask?” said Dorothy.

“My elephant mask.”

Dorothy screeched, “Your elephant mask? From Halloween? With the trunk?”

“Yeah.”

Both of Dorothy's hands clamped her mouth, as if she were about to throw up. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes bulged. She ran from the room and slammed the door. Palmer could hear her muffled sounds coming from the stairway. If he didn't know better, he would have thought she was sobbing.

Minutes later she returned, wiping wetness from her cheeks, struggling to keep a straight face.

“I'm sorry,” she said. She joined Palmer in scratching Nipper's breast feathers.

“I can't wait till school is over,” said Palmer.

“I know.”

“But I
don't
want it to be over because then it'll be closer to my birthday.”

“I know.”

“It's all crazy. I almost get dizzy sometimes.”

“I know.”

Lightly, lazily they tickled Nipper's feathers. Their fingers mingled.

“Know what?” said Dorothy.

“What?”

“You're a hero.”

“Huh?”

“All this stuff you're doing. You're probably the naughtiest student there's ever been in our school. And you're doing it all to save him.”

Palmer frowned. “That's no hero. I just live in the wrong town, that's all.”

The pigeon seemed to be looking at them separately, one with each orange eye. A faint murmur came from deep in his throat.

“Hear that?” said Dorothy. “He's saying, ‘That feels
sooooo
good.'”

“Why would anybody want to shoot him?” said Palmer.

“Nobody's going to.”

Palmer turned to her. “But why would they
want
to?”

Dorothy stared back. She had no answer.

On the last day of school, wearing his elephant mask on the walk home, the trunk hanging down to his waist, Palmer was a sensation. The problem was keeping the mask on, because first Beans, then everyone else had to yank on the trunk. Every time the mask was pulled off, Palmer covered his face with his hands. He imagined Nipper was circling overhead, trying to spot him.

At last he made it home. He collapsed onto his bed. Nipper marched up one of his legs and down the other. The bird's feet tickled, but Palmer was too worn out to laugh. He could smile, though, for school was over. Finally.

But another school was about to begin.

Palmer had just finished supper on Monday when the doorbell rang. It was the guys.

“Let's go,” said Beans.

“Where?” said Palmer.

“School. Come on. It starts in ten minutes.” Beans grabbed Palmer's wrist and pulled him down the front steps.

Was this some kind of joke?

“School?” said Palmer. “School's over.”

“Not this school.”

They were trotting. Beans still had his wrist.

Palmer pulled himself free. “What school?” They were heading toward the park. “Where are we going?”

Beans's eyes lit up. “Wringer school.”

Palmer felt walloped. He jerked to a halt. Suddenly his throat would not work. He could not speak.

Everyone had stopped.

Beans said, “What's the matter?”

Palmer rasped, “Nothing.”

“Ain't you coming to wringer school, Snots?” said Mutto. He was leering.

“Don't you want to learn how to wring pigeons?” said Beans. He moved his fists as if twisting a wet towel. “Don't you want to learn how to wrrrrring their necks?”

Henry was looking away.

Beans was in his face. “You hate pigeons, don't you?”

Palmer nodded. “Sure.”

Mutto's eyes were scanning the sky.

Beans thumped his shoulder. “So let's go!”

They ran.

That was the worst of it, the running. What am I doing? Palmer kept thinking, but his legs ran on.

At the soccer field a mob of kids was gathered around a man with a neon pink baseball cap. The man who had been waiting for Palmer for ten years. The wringmaster.

“You stay out of the way,” he was saying, calling really, so everyone could hear. “Each shooter gets five shots at a time. Count 'em. Until the last one, you don't move. You stay here.” He pointed
to the ground at his feet. “Right here. And where are your eyes all this time?”

“On you!” piped half a dozen voices.

The man nodded. “That's right. I'm easy to find, easy to see. I guarantee nobody else is gonna be wearing a hat this ugly.”

Giggles.

“So, you're listening for the five shots and watching me, and when I go like this”—he lifted the pink hat and waved it—“that's your signal. You move. Fast. Three of you. We move in groups of three. First man gets the empty bird box and takes it”—he pointed—“over there. So they can load 'er up again with five more birds. The other two, you're moving out onto the field—
fast
. Everything you do is—
fast
.” He replaced his hat. He looked over the group. “What's the magic word, men?”

Everyone, including Palmer, yelled: “Fast!”

The man paused, then whispered, “Why?”

For a long time there was no answer. Then a mild, uncertain voice spoke. “There's so many pigeons?”

The man snapped his fingers and pointed to Henry. “Bingo. There's five thousand birds, men,
and only one day to turn 'em into fertilizer. Every dead birdie means five bucks to maintain this here park you're standing in. Anybody here don't play in this park?”

No hands went up.

He shrugged. “There you go. It's for you. You're helping yourself.” He looked them over. “Any questions?”

Palmer had a million, but he asked none. Nor did anyone else.

The man nodded. “All right. Last item—wringin' the bird.”

A cheer went up from the crowd.

The man held up something.

Another cheer.

The something was gray, perhaps once a large sock. It was stuffed to plumpness, most of it, with a narrow neck ending in a golf ball-size head.

“Stunt pigeon!” someone called out.

Everyone laughed.

The man stared sternly. “Get your giggles over with now. There'll be no giggles on the seven of August. No horsing around. Anybody that's not all business”—he wagged his thumb—“you're outta here. Understand?”

Capped heads nodded.

“Okay, now. The shooter's done. You're a team of three. One of you's gone for the box. The other two—zip—onto the field. What are you gonna find? One of three things. You're either gonna find five dead birds, you're gonna find five floppers—that's what I call the wounded—or you're gonna find—and this'll be most cases—a combination of the above. We got some sorry shooters in this town, and we got some real deadeyes, but most of 'em are in between.”

He raised a finger. “Back up a minute. If wounded birds are floppers, what do you call dead birds?” He looked over the group, his eyes were twinkling.

Someone up front said, “Croakers?”

The wringmaster laughed. “Trick question, son. The answer is dead. Dead is dead. There's no other word for it.” He ruffled the kid's hair. “All right…you're on the field. Each of you heads for a bird—and not the same bird. No fighting over who gets which bird. This ain't an Easter egg hunt.”

Giggles.

“All right. You come to your bird. If it's dead,
fine. If it ain't dead, also fine. Whichever, you snatch it up and get the next one. Between the two of you you're coming back with five birds. Here's where you check 'em out. You see one that's not dead”—he swung his head slowly, looking at every face—“you wring its neck.”

Palmer heard one stifled squeak; all else was silence.

The man held the gray thing above his head. “One hand here, one hand here, and twist in opposite directions. You do it hard, you do it quick. We're not here to torture these animals. We're here to kill them humanely. Hard and quick. That's all it takes. Into a trash bag. Go to the back of the line. Next time you're up, somebody else gets the box. Keep rotating. Everybody gets a chance. What's the magic word?”

“Fast!”

He looked them over. “Any questions?”

A voice came out of the crowd. “How will we know if it's dead or not?”

Somebody yipped, “Take its pulse!”

The man's glare cut off the laughter.

The trees were silent.

“You'll know,” said the man.

The sky was empty.

The man clapped. “All right, line up. This here's a flopper.” He held up the gray stuffed sock. “I want each one of you to step forward, wring it like I showed, and get outta here. I'll see you August seven. Six
A.M
. sharp. Let's go.”

The crowd formed a line. Palmer had notions of drifting away, but Beans and Mutto were herding him their way.

As he waited in line, Palmer felt himself to be four years old again, at his first Family Fest, with the wounded, loppysided pigeon coming toward him and the gray, sour smell of the gunsmoke growing stronger with every breath.

He took his eyes from the field and fixed them on the pink-hatted wringmaster. He noticed how intently the man stared into the face of each kid who stepped up and took the sock. It seemed that the man was on the lookout for pretenders, for kids who didn't really want to be there, for wimps.

And if the man detected a wimp, what would he do? Would he cry out, “Ah-
hah!
” and send the kid away to the jeers of the crowd? Would the kid ever be able to show his face in this town again?

Ahead of him, Beans, then Mutto, wrung the
sock. Like most of the kids, they really got into it, grunting with the effort. And now the man was holding it out to Palmer. Palmer accepted it.

Beans's voice came from nearby. “Wring it, Snots.”

Palmer could feel the man's eyes on him. He wondered how his face looked. Would the man say, “Ah-
hah!
”?

Palmer had half expected the sock to sprout pink feet and glossy feathers. It did not. He wanted to call out to all the wringers-in-training:
Hey, who are they trying to kid? This is no pigeon. You want to know what a real pigeon feels like—ask me. This is nothing but a sock.

“Let's go, son,” said the man. “Hard and quick.”

Palmer wrung its neck, hard and quick. He dashed it to the ground at the man's feet and marched off.

The man said nothing.