Wringer

  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 loading—coat, boots, books—and 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 commercial…right into the commercial….

  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 around—potato 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 minute…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.

  16

  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 earlobe—“Ow!”—and 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 problem—it 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 bird—with a startled Oh! Palmer imagined—tumbled 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 laughter—just 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 s
taring 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 now—” 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.

  17

  A pinch on his earlobe woke him. He opened one eye to find an orange button staring back. The pigeon was on his pillow, sounding like someone gargling water. Again it nipped his earlobe.

  “Ow!”

  Palmer swiped, and the bird flew to the foot of the bed. “I’m awake, okay?” Palmer wondered if his old pair of earmuffs was still around.

  A knock at the door. His mother!

  “Palmer.”

  “Yeah?” He threw his blanket over the pigeon.

  “Time to get up.”

  True to her word, she did not come in.

  “Okay. I’m up.”

  She went away.

  The blanket moved like a ghost over his bed. He pulled it back. With a gobble the pigeon flew off to the comic book stack. Like the day before, it skidded off the top comic and onto the floor. This bird, thought Palmer, is either dumb, clumsy or a comedian. Palmer dressed and went down for breakfast. This time he returned not only with FrankenPuffs but Grape Nuts as well. He spread the cereal on the snow outside his window. The pigeon did not have to be coaxed. It flew out the window and attacked the food.

  Over the next week Palmer got better acquainted with the pigeon and adjusted his own life to take his new friend into account. From the library at school he borrowed a book about pigeons. Actually he sneaked it out. When it came to pigeons, he did not trust anyone in town, except maybe Dorothy Gruzik. It occurred to him that if he walked up to the front desk with a pigeon book in his hand, someone might see him (though certainly not Beans, who avoided the library like toothpaste). Or the librarian might look at him funny. Or she might act nice and then as soon as he left report him to the authorities. So he slipped the book into his bag and walked out as innocent-looking as possible. He had it back on the shelf in two days.

  From the book he learned that pigeons go to sleep as soon as the sun goes down. This was called roosting. He learned that it was okay to feed his pigeon cereal, but that outside on its own it would probably eat some gravel. The gravel goes into the gizzard and grinds the food as it comes down, since the pigeon has no teeth in its mouth to chew with. He learned that a pigeon isn’t very fussy about what it eats, because its tongue has only thirty-seven taste buds.

  He learned that a pigeon’s heart is about the size of an acorn. And that a pigeon’s heart, as measured against the size of its body, is one of the largest hearts in creation.

  Palmer learned that in the wild pigeons used to live in the nooks and crannies of high rocky cliffs. When they came to this country, they headed for the things that looked like high rocky cliffs to them, which happened to be tall buildings and skyscrapers. And that’s why pigeons live mostly in big cities.

  He read about the passenger pigeon. Flocks of them numbered in the millions. So many were there that when they flew, they would block out the sun and people below would have to light torches. And then people began to shoot them. Even dynamite them. And by 1914 the last passenger pigeon was dead.

  There’s something about pigeons, thought Palmer, that makes people want to shoot them. Whatever that thing was, he could not find it in the book.

  But he found much else. The book was eighty-nine pages long, and this surprised Palmer. He never would have guessed that there were eighty-nine pages’ worth of things to say about pigeons.

  But then, come to think of it, he himself could have written many pages about his own pigeon. (And no question now—it was his.) He could write about the pigeon tapping on the window every afternoon until he let it in. The pigeon strutting across the sill and onto his bed, then flying from spot to spot in the room, perching for a moment at every stop, as if to say, Just making sure everything’s as I left it. The pigeon banana-peeling off the comic book stack in a clownish flop. Palmer finding his pigeon roosting in the closet every night after dinner.

  And the sounds. So many, so different. There were tootles and grumbles and rumbles and sighs and gobbles and giggles and even a woof. His new roommate was a one-bird band!

  He thought about a name. He thought about how the pigeon nipped his ear each morning. In fact, it was always nipping at something: the Nerf ball, the gray soldiers, book covers. So there it was: Nipper. And simply because Nipper sounded like a boy’s name, “it” became “he.”

  Before long a routine had developed:

  Wake up. (The “alarm clock” being nips on the earlobe.)

  Pretend to be groggy when Mom knocks with official wake-up call.

  Let Nipper out. Leave food on porch roof. (He had bought a box of Honey Crunchers, which he kept in his closet. He had studied cereal boxes and found out that Honey Crunchers contained a lot of fat; and fat helps keep a pigeon warm in winter, so said the book.)

  Clean room. Leave no evidence of roommate.

  Go to school (or, on weekends, out to play). Act normal. Return home. Let Nipper in.

  Nipper walks up arm, stands on Palmer’s head. Feels good. Nipper checks out room. Nipper skids off comic stack. Laugh. Play ball with Nipper. (Nipper would perch on the basket rim while Palmer tossed in Nerf ball shots. As the ball went by, Nipper nipped at it. Sometimes he caught it before it went through the net.)

  Go to dinner. Return to find Nipper roosting.

  Homework, read, TV. Go to closet, whisper “Good night, Nipper.” Go to bed.

  The hardest part of the routine came each day when he left the house: Act normal. How was he supposed to act normal in a town that murdered pigeons?

  18

  Act normal.

  In his room, in the streets, at school, seven days a week he whispered to himself: “Act normal…act normal….”

  But how could he act normal knowing there was a second pigeon right here in the house, a golden one that never took wing from the mantel in the den? Knowing that in this house, in this town, only the golden pigeon is allowed to roost. Knowing that he was holding inside himself such stupendous news.

  Act normal.

  He tried. Which is to say, he kept his mouth shut. He did not rap his fork on the dinner table and shout, “I have a pigeon!” Did not jump up in class and shout, “I have a pigeon!” He did not throw up his arms in the middle of the street and shout to all the world, “I HAVE A PIGEON!”

  He did not.

  But he did say to his mother one Saturday morning, “I think I’ll change my own bedsheets from
now on.”

  His mother was standing on a chair changing a lightbulb. As soon as Palmer said it, she wobbled on the chair, her eyes rolled. He was afraid she was going to topple. She looked down at him as if he were a stranger. “Would you repeat that?”

  He repeated.

  She finished changing the bulb. She got down and sat on the chair. “Is this another sign of your maturity?”

  Palmer nodded. “Yep. And I don’t even use the nightlight anymore.”

  She whistled. “What’s next? Are you going to go out and get a job?”

  “Just trying to help out,” he said pleasantly. “And I’ll empty my wastebasket too. And clean my room.” He patted her on the head. “You’ll never have to do it again.” He kissed her on the cheek and walked off.

  He could feel the stunned silence behind him. He was in shock himself. Was this him? He could not remember the last time he kissed his mother. He was not the mushy type. He was acting anything but normal. And he was beginning to learn how far he would go to protect his secret.

  19

  After dealing with his mother, Palmer turned his attention to the guys.

  Certain scenarios gave him the sweats. It is afternoon, and the guys are in the backyard just as…Nipper swoops in to land on the porch roof. Or the guys sneak into his room at night, as they did before, and one of them…opens the closet door.

  He toyed with the idea of coming right out and telling them they could never come to his room again. Tell them the room was crawling with cooties, or a ghost used to live there. But he knew that would never work. Telling Beans not to trespass would be as useless as telling Nipper not to peck.

  Or he could tell them his mother said they were no longer welcome in his house (a lie). Because she didn’t like them (the truth). But he didn’t have the nerve to say it.

  And so he tried simply to give them no reason to want to come to his house. One Saturday, for example, Beans decided they should all have lunch at Palmer’s. They had done so a few times before, and Beans had always found something he loved in the refrigerator. Thinking fast, Palmer told them the refrigerator had broken, roaches had infested the kitchen, and they had nothing in the house but tuna fish and water. Beans believed him.