Wringer (2 page)

It was never meant to be a real party. “Just cake and ice cream,” Palmer's mother had said, “that's all.” She did not want “those little hoodlums,” as she called them, in her house any longer than necessary.

The boys dragged out the cake and ice cream as long as they could. Beans and Mutto kept leaving their chairs and wandering around and flopping on furniture. Palmer's mother kept shooing them back to the table.

“I guess you're done now,” she said, anxious to shoo them out the door.

“More ice cream,” they said.

And then Beans started having to go to the bathroom, or so he said. He made three trips upstairs, probably spying on Palmer's room. As he headed up the stairs for his fourth trip, Palmer's
mother grabbed his arm and announced, “Okay, boys, party's over. Time to go out and enjoy the summer sunshine.”

As the guys left, Henry surprised Palmer's mother by saying thank you for the party. “Yeah,” Palmer called back, “thanks, Mom.”

Palmer brought out his new black-and-white soccer ball. Beans snatched it from him and booted it into the back of Mutto's head. Mutto squawked, and the two of them rumbled onto the sidewalk. Beans and Mutto rumbled several times every day. Each rumble lasted about twenty seconds, with both claiming victory.

The ball bounced down the street and into a neighbor's front yard. The front yards along Palmer's street were very small, about the size of a blanket. The grass was neatly trimmed, and almost every yard had a border of flowers. Most of the houses were gray.

Henry chased down the ball and kicked it back up the street. Henry always looked funny running, all arms and legs. He was by far the tallest of the group.

Beans said, “Which one is Fishface's house?”

Palmer did not want to say, but Beans was
looking straight at him. “I'm not sure,” he answered.

“Not sure?” Beans gave a smirk. “Guess I gotta start yelling then.” He cupped his hands and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Fishface! Fishface! Fishface!”

Palmer pointed to the house directly across the street from his. “That one.”

Beans stepped up to the house and shouted: “Fishface! Fishface!”

Palmer cringed.

No one came to the door, no window curtain stirred.

“Okay, Fishface, you asked for it!” Beans turned to Mutto and Henry. “Let's leave her a little present.”

They searched the gutter.

“Sewer grate!” piped Mutto. The three of them raced to the nearest grate.

Fishface was Beans's name for Dorothy Gruzik. Beans and the guys hated Dorothy and harassed her whenever they got the chance. Palmer had never understood why, though now that he was one of them, maybe he would find out. Maybe now he could finally find a fish in her face.

Palmer's mother had been trying to push
Dorothy and him together as friends for years. Palmer had never been much interested. For one thing, Dorothy was a girl. Plus she was in a lower grade and a whole year younger than he.

The guys returned from the sewer grate with something in a plastic bag.

“Just mud and sticks,” said Beans glumly. He went to Dorothy Gruzik's house and dumped it on the top step. His face brightened. “Maybe they'll think it's poop.”

He rang the bell, banged on the door, and everyone took off. It was the first time Palmer had ever run with the gang. He felt shivers of excitement. He screamed and beat them all to the corner.

They kicked the ball around for a while, then Beans said, “Let's go to the park.” He booted the ball down the middle of the street.

“Why don't we play here,” said Palmer, but the others were already dashing after the ball.

Let's go to the park.

Palmer hated the park. He never played there, never swung on the swings, never slid down the sliding board, never fed the ducks, never watched a softball game. Most especially, he never went near the soccer field. For in one month, four short weeks after his birthday, the soccer field would become, as it did every year, a place of horror.

He walked. Four blocks and he was at the park. He hoped they would be at the softball field but knew they would not. Nor were they at the baseball field or the basketball court or the tennis courts or the World War I cannon or the playground or the Boy Scout cabin or the picnic area.

He heard, then saw them at the soccer field,
racing and yelping like puppies in a pasture. He stayed on the sidelines, walked along the chalked edges of the field.

“Come on, Snots!” they yelled and kicked the ball his way.

“Can't,” he yelled, lying. “My leg hurts.” To prove it, he threw the ball back. “I'll just stay here and watch.”

He hoped they wouldn't be mad at him for not joining in. He loved to see them playing with his birthday present. Each thud of a foot said:
We're kicking your soccer ball. We like you. You're one of us.

He wished it could stay like this forever.

But it changed. Beans backed up and pointed at Henry and yelled, “There's one!” Henry began flapping his arms and swooping in circles, being a bird. Beans and Mutto made their arms like shotguns and pulled the triggers: “Pow! Pow!” Henry veered, lurched, tilted, staggered. To Palmer, tall, gangly Henry did not look like a bird at all, but a giraffe with two howling hyenas snapping at its knees. It had long seemed a curious contradiction to Palmer, that among the three kids rollicking on the field, Henry was the tallest yet also the
meekest. Palmer had the sense that he was seeing more than a game, that Henry was not just a member of the group, but also its prey.

After a minute or two of lopsided, long-legged careening, Henry flopped to the ground. “Wringer! Wringer!” shouted Beans. “Wringer! Wringer!” shouted Mutto. Four hands clamped around Henry's neck, shaking Henry's head like a rag doll, twisting it this way and that.

“Wringer! Wringer!”

Henry's legs flailing. Shrieking laughter.

“Wringer! Wringer!”

Palmer tried to hold the moment there, but it would not stay. It tunneled back through time and burst up onto this same field three years before, the first Saturday in August, when the grass was streaked with red and guns were booming and birds were falling. From the treetops, from the clouds they plunged to earth, thumped to the ground, sometimes with a bounce. And still some of them lived, flopping drunkenly across the grass until a wringer grabbed one by the neck and twisted and that was that.

Beans and Mutto were now at each other's throats, rolling, rumbling, rollicking across the
grass, Henry woozy but up now, laughing with the others, then heading off with the others, the three of them yelping and kicking the ball up through the picnic area.

Palmer did not know why he stood there, alone at the edge of the field, the last place on earth he wanted to be. As the voices of his new friends died away, he was aware of the silence. He looked up. Nothing flew in the sky. Nothing called from the trees. For a moment a dragonfly hovered before his eyes like a tiny helicopter, then darted off. That was all. Silence and stillness.

He ran.

He caught up to them at the playground. They were diving headfirst down the sliding board—stacked, all three.

“C'mon, Snots, make it four,” Beans called.

Palmer's mother had told him about sliding boards, way back when she started bringing him to the playground. Hold tight to the rail as you climb the ladder. No sliding down stacked. No sliding down headfirst. But this was a new time. He wasn't here with his mother, he was here with the guys. His guys.

“Snots, c'mon!”

He joined them on the ladder. As the stack arranged itself, he wound up on the bottom. He could not take a deep breath. He could feel the shape of his belt buckle in his stomach. He could smell the tinny slide. And down they went. And for the two-second trip, Palmer felt something more than the thrill of the plunge. He felt his friends above riding him, clutching him, depending on him.
Had the slide been a thousand feet long, he would have carried them happily. And then they were spilling off the end like potatoes dumped from a sack.

Again and again they rode the slide, taking turns on the bottom. The first time Beans was on the bottom, he clamped the sides halfway down and stopped, sending the rest of them tumbling to the ground.

A lady called from the swings “Hey, you kids, no stacking.”

Beans pinched his nose and honked, “Ehh, yer old man!” as they went flying down again. Mutto and Henry honked too. Finally Palmer did it, his back to the lady, pinching his nose, getting it out—“Ehh, yer old man!”—just before the giggles came, forgetting he hated the park.

Then Beans was pointing from the top step, shouting, “Look!” Everyone followed the pointing finger to a kid leaning against the monkey bars, a big kid, chewing on a beef stick.

Mutto gasped, “Farquar.”

Farquar it was. Legendary wringer. The coolest, most feared kid in town.

Why was he staring at a bunch of nine-year-olds?

Beans called to Farquar, “Here he is.” He was pointing at Palmer. “The birthday boy.”

Suddenly Palmer understood. His birthday was no secret to Farquar. He was about to receive the ultimate honor, the ultimate test, The Treatment.

Farquar started walking. They followed.

Nobody gave The Treatment like Farquar. Palmer knew a kid who had his arm in a sling for a week after. Yet Farquar himself was maddeningly unpredictable. Some birthday boys he seemed to totally ignore, passing them on the street as he usually did, as if they were dog doo. On the other hand, he had been known to walk halfway across town, knock on a door and say sweetly to a surprised parent, “I hear there's a birthday boy in here.”

Some kids turned into quivering zombies. They kept their birthdays as secret as possible. In school, if their teacher announced their birthday, they denied it, claiming it was a mistake. They refused to have parties. They stayed inside their
house for a month so they would not bump into Farquar.

But there was another side to it. There was the honor. There was the respect you got from other kids, the kind of respect that comes to soldiers who survive great battles. There was the pride in yourself, in knowing you passed a test more dreaded and painful than any ten teachers together could give.

Farquar led them to the World War I cannon. The cannon was on a small grassy hill overlooking the park.

Farquar approached Palmer. With the end of one finger, he pushed the last segment of beef stick into his mouth. “Left or right?” he said.

Palmer had not known he would get a choice. “Left. No, right.”

“Make up your mind.”

“Left.”

“Left it is,” said Farquar.

Farquar rolled up Palmer's left shirtsleeve to the top of his shoulder, so that the entire arm was bare. Farquar studied the arm for a long time, pressing, feeling, like a doctor. Finally he said to Beans, “Put your finger right…here. Don't move
till I say.” Palmer felt Beans's fingertip on his arm, on a bony part about halfway between elbow and shoulder. Farquar spat on his own fingertip, rubbed the tip in dirt, and with the resulting mud—“Move”—made a mark on Palmer's arm where Beans's finger had been.

At this point, it was rumored, some kids wet their pants.

“Blindfold?” said Farquar.

Palmer looked over the peaceful scene: people playing, walking in the park, the trees, children's shouts. “No,” he said, but nothing came out. His throat had turned to sand. He coughed, swallowed, tried again. “No.”

“Okay,” said Farquar, “don't move.”

And don't look, thought Palmer. That's what he had always heard on the street:
If you ever get The Treatment, don't look.
By the time Farquar bunched up his fist and stuck out the knuckle of his middle finger, it was hard as a ball peen hammer and sharp as a spear. Bad enough you had to feel it. Don't make things worse by watching it coming.

Farquar took a position to Palmer's left side. He backed off a step, spread his legs, planted his feet firmly. He crouched, lowering himself. Palmer
felt a gust of beef stick breath.

Beans and Mutto stood directly in front, grinning, as if watching someone about to get a hotfoot. Palmer wished he had asked for the blindfold. Henry was off to the side. Palmer took a quick look at him and wished he hadn't. Henry was not grinning. His eyes were wide as a hangman's noose.

Palmer turned back to find Beans's grin wider than ever. Beans had the most incredible teeth Palmer had ever seen. Beans swore he had not brushed them since the big ones came in. At one time or another Palmer had seen every color in the crayon box on Beans's teeth. Their major color was a dull yellowish-brown fringed with green.

Beans and Mutto shouted “One!” as the first rap hit, and Palmer understood instantly the genius of Farquar. He understood that Farquar somehow knew his body better than he himself did, that there was no need to rear back like a baseball pitcher and bring the whole fist. That when the perfect spot is found, the tip of a knuckle fired from a mere six inches away is enough—enough so that Palmer's whole body was sucked into a suddenly new sinkhole in his arm.

But Palmer kept his mouth shut.
Don't scream,
the street had always said.
If you do you'll get an extra.

“Two!”

Tears sprang to Palmer's eyes, smearing the grins of Beans and Mutto.
Don't cry,
the street said,
or you'll get two extras.

“Three!”

Palmer bit on his lip and screamed inside his head, bashed chairs and flung himself against the walls of his braincase: Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!

“Four!”

He takes his time. You want it to be over fast but he goes real slow.

Henry had turned his back.

“Five!”

MOMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

“Six!”

“Seven!”

“Eight!”

“Nine!”