Wringer (7 page)

Beans jumped to his feet, looked up. “Where?”

Mutto pointed. “There.” He stood. “It's gone.”

“Which way?” said Beans.

Mutto pointed again. “That way.”

Beans took off.

They caught up to him in an alley half a mile away. He was on his hands and knees, heaving clouds of vapor. “Got away.” He gasped. He got to his feet but stayed in a squat, like a baseball catcher. His eyes scanned the sky. Then turned to Palmer. “The pigeon was flying over your house.”

Everyone was looking at him.

“I never saw any pigeon around my house.” Palmer forced out a chuckle. “I don't think Mutto knows what he's talking about. It probably wasn't even a pigeon. It was probably just a crow.”

Mutto stomped. “It was a pigeon!”

Palmer shrugged. “Even if it was, so what? It was probably flying south or something. What
pigeon would ever want to stop off in this town?” He laughed.

“A
stupid
pigeon, that's who!” yapped Beans.

They all laughed.

Palmer shouted, “I'm treating at the deli!” and trotted up the alley. He made sure to lead them well clear of his backyard.

Later, closing the door to his room behind him, Palmer broke down and sobbed. It had been a tense, uncomfortable day. The muskrat carcass. Mrs. Gruzik's scream. The pigeon sighting. He heard tapping. He opened the window, and before Nipper could step in he reached out and grabbed him in both hands and pulled him in. The bird squirmed a little but did not struggle to get free. Palmer ran his wet cheek along the silky feathers. He held him up.

“You
are
a stupid pigeon. Don't you know nobody around here likes you? Why didn't you pick another place to land?”

When Palmer set the bird down, it flew to the basketball rim and perched there, ruffing its handled feathers and holding its head high, prim as you please, as if to say, “Because I like it here.”

From that day on Palmer became even more
attached to his pigeon. Sometimes after school he would sneak out with the crowd, past the guys, and run home a different way to get there before Nipper. Once, he and Nipper arrived at the same time, and Palmer, dashing up his backyard, suddenly felt familiar feet upon his head.

He wondered where Nipper went during the day. Did he fly around town, oblivious to the danger? Did he go to the park? Steer clear of the soccer field? Did he fly to other towns? For Nipper's sake, Palmer knew what he should wish. He should wish that Nipper would find another boy in another town, a town that would not run screaming after him, a town that would not hate him, would not shoot him.

But Palmer could not bring himself to make that wish.

Sometimes, when he let Nipper out in the morning, he would watch the bird eat breakfast out on the porch roof. When finished, Nipper would walk to the front edge of the roof, step onto the upturned lip of the rain spout, and with a chuckle take off. But he would not fly straight away. He would soar up and then circle the house once, sometimes twice. The library book had said
pigeons do this in order to fix in their mind's compass the place they must return to. Palmer preferred to think the bird was reluctant to leave. In any case, Nipper then flew off and was quickly out of sight.

He was never clumsy outside of Palmer's room.

Although in the days that followed, the guys talked and laughed about the muskrat carcass and Mrs. Gruzik's scream, they stayed away from Dorothy's house for a while. But not from Dorothy.

They continued to snowball, treestump and otherwise torment her on the way to and from school. Palmer kept expecting consequences. He thought maybe her parents would show up at his front door. Or the principal would announce that they were all suspended. Or Dorothy herself would blow her top. When something finally did happen, it was not what Palmer had expected.

Treestumping had become popular among other school kids. Other boys, noticing what fun Palmer LaRue and his friends were having, decided this was something they could play too. So they began picking out girls to treestump to and from school. Occasionally a treestump got swatted by a girl's book bag, but for the most part the girls also found it to be fun, and before long they were treestumping the boys. Dorothy Gruzik, of course, being the exception.

Beans began to notice. For a while it had been enough just to bother Dorothy Gruzik, enough to hear the laughter of himself and his pals. Now he wanted more. He wanted something from Dorothy. He wanted her to scream or laugh or cry or kick or sling a book bag. Or even scowl. A good scowl, that would do for starters. Anything but ignore them.

For that's what Dorothy did. Except to walk around them when they planted themselves in
front of her, she in no way acknowledged their existence. She did not even look at them. One day after school, determined to change this, Beans ordered the guys to meet her right at the school door and to treestump her, if necessary, every step of the way to her own front door. They did. Not once did she look at them.

Nor did she make it harder for them. She could have taken shortcuts through people's yards. She could have gone into a store here, a friend's house there. But she did not.

Beans began to do more. Instead of just standing stiff and stumplike in front of her, he waggled his arms and legs. He rolled his eyes and wiggled his ears. He stretched his lips to show every one of his multicolored teeth. He grunted and bellowed and snorted and just plain screamed in her face. He scooped a plastic spoonful of baked beans from his can and dumped it onto her shoe.

The guys and the other kids howled with laughter. Palmer's stomach hurt, he laughed so hard. That Beans! He looked like a puppet on strings herkyjerking in front of Dorothy, his head wobbling, even his ankles. What a clown!

Dorothy never flinched, she never looked.

On a windy day Beans swatted her books away, making papers fly, so she had to go chasing them. Another day he snatched away her floppy red hat and put it on his own head and did his goofy, flailing dance in front of her.

The sidewalks erupted in laughter. Even passing cars slowed down. Dorothy did not crack a smile. She did not step aside. She did not step back. She did nothing. She did not even leave the hat at home next day.

In the following days Beans zeroed in on the hat. He sent it flying across the street. He tossed it into a Dumpster. He hung it from a car's antenna. He tacked it to a telephone pole. He wiped a window with it. For Mutto, Henry and Palmer, who by now were strictly spectators, this was a daily after-school show.

Each morning the hat was a little grayer, a little less red, and just as firmly on Dorothy's head.

Mutto said in amazement, “I think she
likes
torture.”

Beans smoldered.

The last thing Beans did was the simplest of all. It happened on a Friday afternoon. As usual, he intercepted Dorothy on the way home. But this
time he not only stepped in front of her—he closed in. He closed in until there was barely a paper's width of space between their noses. No monkeyshines this time, no funny faces. His jaw hard, his eyes burning, he stared unblinking into eyes a mere inch away and dared them not to see him. Dared her not to smell his baked-bean breath.

All movement, all laughter on the sidewalks stopped. The boy and the girl stood like that for what seemed like hours, so close that at a distance it seemed they might be kissing. And to those nearby, and finally to Beans himself, it became clear that even now, even this close, still—
still
—she would not look at him.

And then she did it.

She spoke.

But the person she spoke to was not Beans. It was Palmer LaRue. She took one step back from Beans and walked straight over to Palmer and stood squarely in front of him and said, “Why are you doing this to me?”

And just like that, the girl in the red coat and floppy hat was no longer a target. She was Dorothy, there were tears in her eyes, and she was saying to him, not to anyone else, but to him, to
Palmer, “Why are you doing this to me?” And he knew that through these last weeks she had been hurting after all, and that it had been himself, not Beans, who had hurt her the most.

She turned away then, not bothering to wipe her eyes, and walked home.

 

The next day Nipper failed to return. As usual, the first thing Palmer did after closing his door was to look to the window. Usually what he saw was Nipper's silhouette, a clear black cutout on the golden sunlit shade. This time there was only the shade like an empty movie screen.

Well, it had happened before. Sometimes Palmer was the first to get home. He shot baskets with his Nerf ball, glancing at the window after every shot, listening for taps on the pane. With every passing moment he became convinced something was wrong, this was not an ordinary delay. In a way more felt than thought, he sensed a connection between Nipper's absence and Dorothy's words, which had been haunting him without letup.

He raised the shade, raised the window, looked out. No Nipper. Not on the roof, not in the
sky. And the sun was behind the houses. Nipper had never been this late before.

He shot baskets. He searched the sky. He watched the clock. Cooking smells drifted up to his room. Daylight faded. His mother called, “Palmer, dinner!” He pounded his fist on the windowsill, he kicked the bed. Tears came.

He told his parents he had to watch the news for a school project and got permission to take his dinner in his room. But he could not eat. He could not do anything but wait and watch and listen—and try to forget how useless waiting was. For he knew that no pigeon flies after sundown, and wherever Nipper was, he was there for the night.

And where could that be? Had he gotten lost? Found another pigeon? Another human friend? Was he roosting warmly in another closet in another town? Or on a road somewhere, crushed, nothing of him moving except a wing waving with every passing tire?

Had Panther the yellow cat got hold of him?

He pounded his fists on his thighs and squeaked in frustration. He wanted to do something, but what? What do you do when your pigeon does not come home? He went out to the
backyard. He stood in the cold night and looked up and softly called, “Nipper…Nipper?…”

A world of stars and darkness gave no reply.

In the den he whispered to the golden bird, “Where is my pigeon?” The golden bird was silent.

He did not go to sleep that night. Instead, sleep sneaked up on him, and the next thing he knew he was dreaming of a tapping, a cruel dream of a pigeon tapping on the window. Only it wasn't a dream, for his room was filled with daylight pouring under the raised shade, and there was Nipper, pecking at the pane. When Palmer opened the window, Nipper, as usual, hopped onto his head—and bent down and gave his ear an especially ouchy nip, as if to say, “Who said you could wake up without me?” No Christmas morning was ever happier than that one.

It was Saturday, so the two could play as long as they wished. Palmer kept the bird in his room until noon. By that time Nipper was knocking on the window, clearly wanting to go out. Palmer hated to let him go, but he knew he must. As he opened the window and watched Nipper fly off, he knew something else: He could no longer bear this alone. It had to be shared.

Why are you doing this to me?

He dashed down the stairs, out the door and across the street, coatless, not feeling the cold. He knocked on her door. He pressed the doorbell. Inside he heard her footsteps, her voice calling, “I'll get it!”

The door opened. Warmth and light washed over him. She smiled. She was glad to see him. He did not wait another moment. He said, “I have a pigeon.”