Wringer (5 page)
Authors: Jerry Spinelli
“It's a doozie.”
These were his mother's words as she sat with him looking out the living-room window. His father called it a blizzard. Palmer called it rotten luck.
It could have snowed on Christmas, the day he got his new sled. But it didn't. Nor did it snow the next day, or the next, or any day for the rest of the year. Vacation days, no-homework daysâdays that could have been filled with whistling plunges down Valentine's Hill were filled instead with hateful frowning at a cloudless sky.
The new sled was a classic: polished wood, red runners, steering handles. It no more belonged on the living-room rug than a Maserati belonged in a stable.
On New Year's Day Palmer's father said to him, “You know, I swear the weather plays games with people. Every time I decide not to take an umbrella, that's when it rains. Maybe snow's the same way.
Maybe we can fool it. Why don't you try putting the sled away, like it's spring and sledding's over for the year.”
Having no better idea, Palmer dragged his sled down to the basement. He added touches of his own. He took off his shirt, wiped his brow and said, “Whew, sure is hot out these days. I can't wait to go swimming.”
He put the sled in the farthest, darkest corner. “Won't be needing this thing, that's for sure.” He covered it with an old blanket. He stacked cardboard boxes on top of it. He saluted, “
Adios
, old pal,” and walked away.
This was mid-afternoon. At dinnertime he looked outside. He could not see stars. By seven o'clock the first thin flakes were falling. He stood at the front door and cheered: “Snow!” And brought the sled back upstairs.
The next day was the last day of the holiday vacation. He expected it to be still and white and waiting for sleds. Instead he awoke to a blizzard thrashing his windowpane. He looked out. The world seemed to have come to an icy boil. He could not see to the end of the backyard. He ran downstairs. A car, molded in snow, was stranded
sideways in the street. The howling wind flung itself at the house with a fury that frightened him.
Even his mother shuddered beside him as she repeated, “A real doozie.”
“I might as well chop up my sled,” Palmer grumped.
She draped an arm around him. “Well, look on the bright side. If it's too bad to go sledding today, it'll probably be too bad for the buses tomorrow morning. Bet you'll have a snow day.”
She was right. January third was a day for snowplows and snowboots, snowballs and sleds. It seemed like every kid in town turned up on Valentine's Hill. All day long Palmer, Beans, Mutto, and Henry made a quadruple-decker sandwich as the new sled sailed and resailed down the slope.
That day as a crimson sun fell below the rooftops, one weary and happy kid dragged his sled back to port. Before going downstairs to dinner, Palmer took a moment to look out his bedroom window. He had never cared much for scenery, yet the scene outside touched something within him. The setting sun seemed to have ladled its syrupy light over the crusted snow, so that ordinary house parts and backyards in this fading
moment seemed a spectacular raspberry dessert. When his eyes fell to the porch rooftop just outside his window, he saw the four-toed imprints of bird feet etched into the snow.
A good thing there was no homework over Christmas vacation, for Palmer could never have managed. He was sound asleep by eight o'clock. And stayed that way until he heard the tapping.
This was unusual. His mother never bothered to knock in the morning, but came right in. “Who's there?” he said, his eyes still closed, his voice barely working.
There was no answer.
His eyes opened. It was daylight. “Come in.”
The door did not move.
Had he been dreaming?
Thereâagain the tapping. It was not coming from the door. It was coming from the window.
The guys!
Palmer was suddenly, sharply awake. Why would the guys come now, in the morning, before school? He got out of bed, raised the windowshadeâand froze. It wasn't Beans. It wasn't Mutto. It was a bird.
More to the point, it was a pigeon.
Or was it?
So often had Palmer dreamed of pigeons, that's what he thought it might be: a dream. He pulled down the shade.
He walked around his room. He kicked his hippo slippers across the floor. He picked up his little foam basketball and lobbed some hook shots into the net hanging from the back of his door. He returned to the window. He lifted the bottom of the shade an inch. He peeked. He saw a pair of small, pink, turkeylike legs rising to a gray, feathery plumpness. He lifted the shade fully.
It was no dream.
Palmer flapped his hand. “Shoo! Shoo!” he whispered.
The bird pecked at the windowpane.
Just what Palmer needed, to be seen in the company of a pigeon. Beans would wring both their necks.
“Go!
Go!
”
The bird tapped, as if replying in pigeon code.
Palmer rammed down the shade.
What a stupid pigeon! A million towns to choose from all over the country, and this birdbrain picks the one that shoots five thousand of them every year. And of all the houses in town!
The door opened. His mother poked her head in, surprised. “You're up?”
“Just got up,” he managed to say. “I heard you coming.”
The door closed.
Palmer rushed through everything that morning. He couldn't wait to get out of the house. He was ten minutes early at the corner where he met the guys every school day.
They were two blocks away when they saw him. They waved crazily and yelled, “Snots! Snots!” and came running. They knocked each other into snow-banks in their attempts to reach him first. Palmer's eyes watered, he gave out a giggle, he felt so good.
The walk to school became one long snowball fight. Along the way Beans noticed Dorothy Gruzik walking behind them. “Enemy ambush!” he cried out. “Counterattack!”
The four of them fired volleys at her. She
hunched and turned as snowballs exploded on the back of her red coat. Palmer could not remember seeing the coat before. Must have gotten it for Christmas, he thought, as he packed and fired, packed and fired.
“Battleship barrage!” shrieked Beans.
Palmer fired without restraint. Since summer he had hardly spoken to her. He had found out there just wasn't room in his life for both Dorothy and the guys. Like peanut butter and pickles, they didn't mix. It seemed like everything the guys liked, everything they stood for, she did not. Thanks to the guys, he finally saw her for the pooper she was. She never laughed, never had any fun. Even now, look at herâjust crouching there, not a peep, no screaming, no crying, no running away like any normal girl. Always had to act so big. And three weeks ago, for the first time ever, she had not invited him to her birthday party.
The school bell was ringing.
“Let's go!” shouted Beans.
Giving it a little extra, Palmer fired a final cannonball. It splattered white against the red coat, and he ran inside with the guys.
All day long he had a hard time concentrating.
He kept thinking of the pigeon. Where did it come from? How did it get here? Did the blizzard blow it in? Where was it going now?
Anywhere but my house, thought Palmer.
After school he forgot about the bird in a flurry of snowballs and the crackle of sled runners on Valentine's Hill. He plunged and snowballed and tumbled and laughed until the sky in the west turned fiery orange. He made it home just in time for dinner. He did his homework. He played with his toy soldiers.
The sky outside his window was pitch black. He did not want to look, but he had to. He got his father's flashlight. Slowly he raised the shade. He could see nothing but the reflection of his own room off the windowpane. He raised the window. Light spilled from his room onto the snow-capped porch roof. He saw pigeon tracks, but no pigeon.
He leaned out the window. He turned on the flashlight and swept it across the roof, back and forth, corner to corner. He saw nothing but silent snow.
He closed the window, lowered the shade, turned off the flashlight. He sat on the edge of his bed. He took a deep breath. He felt better.
Tapping.
Again, next morning.
Oh no
.
He reached out from the groggies, lifted the hem of the shade two inches. There it was, the world's dumbest bird, dipping its dumb head down so its orange button eye could stare back at him.
Palmer knelt at the window. He talked to the orange eye. “Don't you want to live, you dumb stupid cluck? Go look at the soccer field. This town kills pigeons. There's a guy named Beans. He's my friend, but he's not your friend. He hates you. If he ever sees you he'll wring your neck. And if you don't care about yourself, how about me? What do you think's going to happen to me if people think I have a pigeon?”
He raised the shade; the pigeon's head rose with it.
“Pleaseâ
please
â” he put his palms together prayerfullyâ“go back where you came from. We
don't want you here.”
The bird tapped on the windowpane. Palmer shook his fist and yanked down the shade.
Later during breakfast, as he chewed a spoonful of FrankenPuffs, he suddenly saw the issue: food. The bird was hungry.
Fine. So he feeds the bird.
But what happens then? Does the bird eat and fly away to the next town? Or does it return to the back bedroom window where it got its last meal?
Palmer was afraid he knew the answer. He knew that food was a powerful persuader of animals. Even his mother had told him once about a stray cat: “Don't feed him, or he'll keep coming back.” If he fed this pigeon, it would be like sending it an invitation to return, an invitation to disaster.
That's why Palmer was surprised to find himself carrying a handful of FrankenPuffs up the stairs. And opening his window. And tossing the Puffs onto the snow, now crusted and gleaming with sun melt.
Puffs disappeared into the bird's beak. Palmer could not stop watching. Like the pigeons he had seen in the city, this one was mostly gray, the color of eraser-smeared blackboard. But there was more.
As the bird pecked at the Puffs, sunlight skipped off glossings of green and purple around its neck. Palmer counted: gray overall feathering (one), orange eyes trimmed in black (two, three), tan beak (four), pink legs and feet (five), green and purple neck (six, seven), white wingtips (eight). Eight! Who would have thought one miserable winged rat had so many colors?
At the door his mother's voice, alarmed: “Palmer! I thought you were gone. School starts in ten minutes.”
He slammed down the shade, prayed she hadn't seen. He loaded what needed loadingâcoat, boots, booksâand ran. The sidewalks were empty, the guys gone. School came much too soon. He did not want to stop running.
All day long he was twitchy, runnerish. All day long he kept asking himself.
Why did I do that?
But he knew why. He just did not want to say, not even to himself.
After school he ran.
The guys spotted him. “Hey, Snots! Where you going?”
“Home,” he called. “My mom gave me a job.”
By the time he reached his bedroom he was
gasping. He threw up the shade. The FrankenPuffs were gone. So was the bird.
He scanned the empty blue sky. How should he feel? He thought of the pigeon flying over the snow-covered land, looking for another window at another bedroom, and he felt bad. He thought of the guys coming over and not finding him with a pigeon, and he felt good.
He opened the window and with his fist crushed the crusty footprinted snow in front of it. No one would know a bird had been there.
He lay on the bed. He no longer felt like running. He wondered if pigeons flew south in winter, like geese. He wondered how far away it was by now. He thought about somebody else feeding the pigeon, and he felt jealous.
Then he felt nervous, realizing he was thinking of it as
his
pigeon, and what a dangerous thought that could be around here.
He got up. He got down his soldiers but didn't feel like playing. He put them back. He shot some baskets. He turned on the TV. He watched, but he wasn't paying close attention. There was
Sesame Street
, with the Cookie Monster spewing crumbs
all over the place. Then
Gilligan's Island
. The snooty, fancy-talking man was trying to crack a coconut with his wife's high-heeled shoe. He kept hammering until Gilligan snatched away the coconut and cracked it open by bonking it against his own head. But the hammering went on, right into the commercialâ¦right into the commercialâ¦.
Palmer sprang to the window. There it was. “Pigeon!” he yelped aloud.
His first thought was to feed it, so it wouldn't go away. He made a gesture of patience with his hands. Through the window he called, “Just wait there. Hold on.” He raced through his room. He was always leaving something lying aroundâpotato chips, pretzels, half a cupcake. He darted into the closet, dived under the bed, yanked open drawers. Nothing. Not a scrap.
The bird was tapping. It was still daylight outside, but fading.
“Just a minuteâ¦one second,” he called.
He'd have to go downstairs, get something from the kitchen. Which was fine, except what if the bird got tired of waiting? Maybe, flying around all day, it had found a friendlier window, one that
didn't make it wait so long. Maybe the next time it went away it would not come back, ever.
Palmer did not think. He did not use one bit of the good sense he was born with. He simply walked across the room and opened the window.
The bird walked in.
Not hopped. Walked. Like a person, like those city pigeons he had seen. Head bobbing, all business, cool as you please, like it owned the joint.
Walked across the windowsill onto the back of Palmer's hand, strolled up his right arm, nipped Palmer's earlobeâ“Ow!”âand hopped onto the top of Palmer's head. Palmer stood rock-still, afraid to move even his eyeballs. Pointy little toes were moving in his hair. It felt scratchy good.
The bird made a sound like a chuckle, like it had just heard a joke, and in a wingflap was gone. Palmer turned and found it walking across the floor. Seen from behind, the pigeon waddled. Hunger had not been its problemâit was pudgy.
The bird hopped onto Palmer's bed and took a walk around, with each step nodding approvingly, as if to say
So far so good. I think I'll like this place
. Its orange eye never blinked.
It flew to the bookcase, ambled across the
booktops, pecked at pages. It checked out the TV but did not seem interested in the program of the moment, the five o'clock news. It stepped through the circular UHF antenna like a show dog through a hoop, and moved on to the top of the dresser, where its waddle tipped over Palmer's family picture, the candle he made at school and everything else that had been standing. From there it swooped down to Palmer's stack of comic books. The landing was a disaster. As soon as the bird's feet touched down, the flimsy cover of the top comic gave way, and the birdâwith a startled
Oh!
Palmer imaginedâtumbled beak over toes to the floor. It left a white, quarter-size glop where it landed and marched over to the wastebasket.
Palmer yowled with laughterâjust as his mother came in, asking, “What's so funny?”
Palmer stiffened. He blurted, “Nothing. Something on TV.”
The wastebasket was behind the door she had just opened. He willed her not to look.
She frowned. “Why is the window open? It's cold in here.”
He jumped up and shut the window. “Time for dinner?” Before she could answer he snapped off
the TV and the light, pulled the door shut and bounded downstairs announcing, “I'm starving! Let's eat!”
When Palmer returned to his room after dinner, he did not see the pigeon. The white glop on the floor had dried to powder. He kept looking, in the corners, under the bed. Finally he found the bird in the closet, on the high shelf. It was resting on its stomach on the shoe box that housed the toy soldiers. Its eyes were closed.
Palmer emptied his pocketful of FrankenPuffs onto his homework desk. He took off his sneakers so he would not make too much noise walking around. He turned out the overhead light and turned on the desk lamp. He cleaned up the white spot on the floor.
He did his homework. He watched some TV. He mounted some Beetle Bailey comics in his collection book. He ate his snack. He read two chapters of a book. He did everything he usually did on a school night, except he did it more quietly. And with a warm, giggly, I've-got-a-secret feeling. And with a peek into the closet every five minutes.
When his mother came in to say good night and to ask if he had brushed his teeth, he knew it
was time to have a talk with her.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
She was standing in the doorway, her hand on the knob.
“Do you think maybe when you come to my room from now on, like, you could knock?”
He had tried to say it casually, in his best nobig-deal voice, hoping she would receive it just as casually and reply with a shrug, “Sure, no problem.”
Hah! When did his mother ever make it that easy? She stood staring at him from the doorway, her eyes blinking, her expression a total blank, like he had just spoken to her in a foreign language. Then a faint amusement overcame her face, and she said, “Okay.” Casually. With a shrug.
Amazing.
She smiled and closed the door.
Too amazing. What if she wasn't as casual as she acted? What if she came around snooping? He had to give her a reason.
He opened the door. She was halfway down the stairs.
“You want to know the reason?”
She stopped, turned, looked up at him. “Okay.”
“Well,” he said, “it's like, you know, I'm getting older nowâ” He stared at her. How could he say this?
She said it for him. “And you're a boy and I'm a girl, and you're getting too big for girls to see you in your underwear, even if the girl is your mother. So you want a warning, so you'll have time to cover yourself up. Right?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Just one question.”
“What?”
“Aren't you still a little young for that?”
“I'm mature for my age.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “Oh. I see.” She started down the stairs, stopped, turned back. “How about, besides knocking, if I blow a whistle when I'm on my way?” Her eyes were twinkling.
“Mom.”
“Am I still allowed to
wash
your underwear?”
Palmer closed the door. In another second he'd be laughing.
Palmer went to bed that night with a grin on his face. For the first time in his life, he was not the only sleeper in his room. He did not turn on the nightlight.