Wringer Page 6

  Another time, they had been playing outside in the snow and Beans decided he was too cold. “Let’s go to Palmer’s,” he said. “We don’t have heat,” Palmer said. “Our heater broke.” Beans said he didn’t care; the house had walls and a door, didn’t it? So that’s where they headed.

  Palmer could not think of anything until they were at his front steps, when suddenly he pointed across the street and yelled, “Let’s bomb Fishface’s!” By the time they finished snowballing Dorothy Gruzik’s house, it was nearly white, and Beans had forgotten that he was cold.

  It became a habit, using Dorothy to divert attention from himself and his house. As soon as the guys would drift onto Palmer’s block, he made his move:

  “Let’s bomb Fishface’s house!”

  “Let’s bomb Fishface’s car!”

  “Let’s bomb Fishface!”

  When there was no snow on Dorothy Gruzik’s sidewalk, they brought their own chalk and drew funny faces in her hopscotch squares. They ambushed her on the way home from school. They taunted her and ran rings around her as she walked. Sometimes they simply stood in front of her in the middle of the sidewalk, like human trees, forcing her to walk around them. Then they would run ahead and become new sidewalk trees, making her detour around them time after time, all the way home. Beans gave the game a name: treestumping.

  One day Dorothy was not there. She was home sick. The snow had melted. There was nothing to bomb her house or car with. Every hopscotch square had been funnyfaced.

  “I’m cold,” said Beans, turning to Palmer. “Let’s go to your house.”

  And Palmer, with no time to think, heard himself say, “Let’s go to your house!”

  20

  Palmer had never been to Beans’s house. He had been to Mutto’s and to Henry’s, but never to Beans’s. He had come to imagine that Beans lived alone. Beans never mentioned parents, brothers, sisters or any other aspect of family life. Palmer further imagined that Beans lived by himself in a lean-to, or even better, a cave, a hole, down by the creek.

  So he was surprised when Beans said okay to his suggestion. And even more surprised, ten minutes later, to discover that Beans did not live in a lean-to or a hole, after all, but in a house. And from the looks of it, a fine house, with a front porch and a shiny brass doorknob. Mutto rang the doorbell—which he did whenever he approached a house, even his own—and inside could be heard a two-note chime.

  Beans took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. He waved, “Come on in.” Inside, Palmer looked about for signs of primitive living—mud, piles of rubbish—but saw nothing but clean furniture, carpets, pictures on the walls. A regular house.

  Beans led them straight back to the kitchen. “Wait’ll you see this.” He dragged a chair in front of the refrigerator and stood on it. He opened the freezer compartment and began pulling out frozen dinners and plastic containers. Reaching in to the very back of the freezer, he pulled out a frozen dinner, jumped down from the chair and put the dinner on the kitchen table. The lid said spaghetti and meatballs.

  “Yummy,” said Henry.

  “I hate spaghetti,” said Mutto.

  “You’ll like this,” said Beans.

  The box was bigger than the others, a so-called “He-Man” size. And it had already been opened. Palmer could tell because the lid was held on by Scotch tape. Beans peeled away the tape. He seemed especially slow and careful about it. He looked up and grinned at each of them. He lifted the lid. It was not spaghetti and meatballs.

  All three visitors recoiled. Henry went, “Eewww!”

  Mutto was first to recover. He leaned in. “What is it?”

  Without warning Beans snatched the contents of the box and bopped Mutto on the head. “A muskrat!”

  He threw it on the table. It clattered like a piece of wood. It was flat and stiff and mostly black, and Palmer never in a million years would have guessed it had once been a muskrat. Tree bark, he would have guessed, or sewer-grate flotsam. Now, staring down at it with the rest of them, he noticed clotted ridges that might once have been fur, and frost-fastened along one edge, a naked tail.

  “Where’d you get it?” said Henry.

  “Panther brought it,” said Beans.

  Palmer boggled. “You have a panther?”

  Mutto and Henry laughed. “It’s a cat,” said Mutto.

  Beans shoved him. “It’s a panther!” He bopped Mutto again with the muskrat carcass, chased him once around the table and out of the kitchen.

  While howls and thumps rang throughout the house, tall Henry leaned in close to Palmer and softly uttered, “Panther’s a cat. It’s the meanest cat in town. You can’t pet it. It’s always catching birds and mice. It bites their head off and brings the body to the front steps and leaves it there, like a present. Beans says Panther even killed a deer once.” He searched Palmer’s face. “You believe it?”

  Unsure, Palmer stared back—and the hurricane swirled into the kitchen, Mutto screaming and laughing around the table, Beans waving the muskrat like a tomahawk.

  Suddenly Beans stopped. He dropped the carcass on the table. He brought his hands up to the sides of his face, like paws; he crooked his fingers, like claws. He drew back his lip to show his teeth of many colors. He snarled, “Panther prowls the jungle. Panther stalks his prey. He waits, he creeps—” Beans crept across the kitchen on tiptoe. “He pounces! He bites the neck!” Beans pounced on Mutto’s back. Mutto wobbled howling out the back door with half an inch of neck skin clamped between Beans’s Technicolor teeth.

  Outside Palmer met Panther for the first time. The cat was ambling into the backyard from the weed field beyond. Beans yelled “Panther!” The cat meowed, showing its daggery teeth. It was a yellow cat, ordinary-looking, no bigger than a usual cat. But Palmer noticed that no one, not even Beans, bent down to pet it as it ambled past the four of them and disappeared around the front of the house.

  Beans, hoisting the muskrat carcass like a flag, blared, “Back to Fishface’s!” and led them out to the sidewalk. They were crossing the street when Beans abruptly stopped. “Detail, halt.” He rapped his knuckles against the carcass, he shook his head disappointedly. “We gotta go back.”

  Back to the house. In the kitchen Beans placed the carcass in the microwave. He set it for one minute, full power. At the end of the minute, he tested it with his finger. He sniffed it. He gave it another minute. By the third minute Beans was the only one left in the kitchen. The others were outside sucking fresh air and trying to expel from their nose buds the odor of warm, dead muskrat.

  Beans finally came out carrying a supermarket bag. On the way to Dorothy Gruzik’s, Beans walked half a block ahead of the rest. When he reached Dorothy’s, he sprang into action while the others hid behind a car several houses away. Palmer could see Beans reach into the bag. When his hand came out it was holding the carcass by the tail. Again he reached into the bag, this time coming out with a hammer. He then nailed the tail to the Gruziks’ front door, punched the doorbell and took off. He dived behind the car just as the door was opening. A lady—Mrs. Gruzik—appeared.

  None of them saw what happened next, but there was really no need to see. The scream came as they huddled against the tires of the car. Palmer had thought he knew screams. He had heard plenty of them in the movies and on TV and at sporting events. But what he heard now was something else—it was real—and it sent icy buckshot through his body.

  They heard the door close. When they looked up, the carcass was gone, and Beans and Mutto were on their backs, flinging arms and legs into the air and howling with boundless delight. It was during this celebration that Mutto, looking straight up into the gray January sky, said in a voice both dreamy and weary from laughter, “Hey, ain’t that a pigeon?”

  21

  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.”

&n
bsp; 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.

  22

  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 hi
s 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?…”