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.
5
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!”
6
“What happened to your arm?”
Palmer’s mother was lifting his shirtsleeve and asking him a question he did not want to answer.
“I said, what happened?”
“The Treatment,” said his father, coming into the room. He mussed Palmer’s hair. “Right, big guy?”
Palmer nodded. Even nodding seemed to hurt his arm. “Right.”
His father inspected the spot. He whistled softly, he nodded gravely. “Nine hard ones, huh?”
“Right.” Palmer stood a little taller. He felt as if his father had just pinned a medal on him.
But his mother’s voice was strained. “What are you talking about? What treatment?”
His dad spoke for him. “It’s been a tradition for years around here. On your birthday you get knuckled once for each year old you are. It happened to me plenty.”
She sneered. “That doesn’t mean it has to happen to him.” She lifted his sleeve again. “Look at that. Look.”
“It’s a bruise,” said his father calmly. “It goes away. He’s okay. Right, big guy?”
Was he okay? His arm wasn’t okay. It was killing him. But what about the rest of him? “Give him an extra!” Beans and Mutto had shrieked. “He’s crying!” But Farquar had said no, it was just eye tears, everybody gets them. And he had carefully, daintily really, pulled Palmer’s shirtsleeve down over the wound and said, “Happy birthday, kid,” and walked off, and in that moment Palmer loved Farquar.
Was he okay?
“Sure,” he said, and he gave a little chuckle just to prove it.
“Well,” said his mother, aiming her voice somewhere beyond the room, “I’m not okay. He had those hoodlums here for his party.”
“Beans?” said his father.
Palmer gladly answered. “Yeah, Beans was here. And Mutto and Henry.”
His father wagged his head. “He’s a pip, that Beans.”
“Hoodlums,” his mother went on. “And they don’t even like Palmer that much. They never pay any attention to him. They never play with him.”
“They do now,” Palmer protested. “They were just waiting till I was nine.”
His mother ignored him. “He invites them, but little Dorothy Gruzik he doesn’t even invite.” She bore down on him. “Why not Dorothy?”
“She’s a girl.”
“She’s your neighbor. She’s one of your best friends.”
Palmer laughed out loud. Sometimes his mother tried to make something come true simply by saying it. “She’s not,” he told her bluntly. “If she didn’t live across the street I’d probably never see her.”
“She invites you to her parties.”
Palmer was fed up. Why did his mother have to go on the warpath just when everything was so great in his life? He blurted, “She has a fish face!”
His father laughed. His mother’s eyes went wide, then she abruptly changed topics. “And the nickname,” she said to his father, “you should hear the nickname they gave him for his ninth birthday, the hoodlums.” She tapped Palmer on the shoulder. “Tell him.”
“Snots,” said Palmer. It was already beginning to feel like his.
“Snots,” his dad echoed.
“Now what kind of name is that?” said his mother. “Where did that come from?”
Palmer shrugged. In truth, he had no idea. Beans gave out the names. His own obviously came from his appetite for cold baked beans out of a can, anytime, day or night. Mutto? A mystery. There was no dog in Mutto’s life that Palmer knew of. And Henry, that sounded more like a real name than a nickname, but Palmer couldn’t imagine Beans letting someone’s real name stand, so Henry must be someone else too.
Seeing that no answer was coming from Palmer, his mother gave up and walked off muttering, “Doesn’t have the good sense he was born with.”
“Well, Snots,” said his father, “sorry I didn’t make it to the big party. Here’s a present if you think you can stand another one.” He reached into the dining room hutch and pulled out a gift-wrapped package.
Palmer tore off the paper to reveal an old, frayed shoe box. He gasped. He knew what was coming but still couldn’t believe it. He lifted the lid. “Your soldiers!”
“Yours now,” said his father.
They were twenty-seven toy soldiers. They were made of lead, which in many places showed through the olive-green paint. They were two inches tall, and they were very old. The helmets were shallow, like soup bowls. They had first been played with by Palmer’s great-grandfather, then by his grandfather, then his father. Palmer had played with them many times, but only with his dad’s permission. He had always thought of them as the most valuable things in the house. His dad kept them in the shoe box behind a suitcase in the back of a closet.
“That is,” his father added, “if you promise to take care of them and pass them on to your own son some day.”
Palmer could only nod in wonderment. “I can keep them in my room?”
“Sure can.”
That night in his room Palmer debated where to hide the twenty-seven toy soldiers. He chose the high shelf of his closet, which he could not reach without standing on his chair. He had to carry the chair and reach up with his right hand. His left arm was useless. His fingertips tingled. At dinner he had let it just plop on the table and stay there. His mother kept glaring at it.
Sometimes his arm felt numb, as if he had been sleeping on it. But mostly it hurt. He found that if he kept his mind busy, he didn’t notice the hurt so much. He read a book, watched TV, inspected his presents, thought about the day.
What a day!
New birthday. New friends. New feelings of excitement and pride and belonging. His mother was wrong about the guys never playing with him. He had had a lot to overcome, that was all. Being the youngest, the shortest. And his unusual first name, he took lots of teasing there. But that was all over now. He fell back on his bed, he grinned at the ceiling. Life was good.
While brushing his teeth that night, Palmer looked at his face in the mirror and suddenly began to cry. He cried so hard he could not finish brushing. He ran to his room, shocked and angry at this unexpected turn to his perfect day. Sobbing loudly, gasping for breath, he plunged into his bed and smothered his face in his pillow.
He was not aware of turning the ceiling light off and the night light on. He was not aware that he ever stopped crying. In his sleep a voice echoed down the long dark barrel of a cannon: You have run out of birthdays. In the morning he awoke suddenly to a flutter of wings.
7
The following weeks were like a parade to Palmer, with himself as grand marshal. He felt as if he were marching down the middle of a broad boulevard with crowds of people cheering from the sidewalks.
Calls of “Hey, Palmer!” and “Hey, Snots!” flew across the summer days. From blocks around kids came to see his arm. Little kids would gather around, four or five at a time. He would lift his sleeve, and they would gasp and go “Wow!” Some of them would reach out to touch.
The squeamish ones would pull back their hands as if from a hot stove, and they would shudder and squeak.
Big kids did not touch. They simply looked and nodded in grim respect, remembering their own Treatment, and Palmer’s heart would swell.
Within three days he could lift his left hand to his nose. At the end of a week he could reach above his head. He was almost sorry he was healing. He enjoyed showing off to little kids: “Look, I can’t lift my arm any higher than this.” He enjoyed the amazement in their eyes.
He wished the bruise would not go away. He wished he could make them feel the tingle in his fingertips. One day he darkened the diminishing bruise with a bit of purple crayon.
One person was missing during his imaginary parade down the boulevard: Dorothy Gruzik. And for some reason, this bothered Palmer.
Several times he saw her playing hopscotch in front of her house. Like Palmer, she was good at playing by herself. Of course, Palmer had buddies now, so he would never have to play alone again, not if he didn’t want to. He wondered if girls grouped up like boys.
The first couple of times that Palmer walked past, Dorothy did not even look up from her hopscotch. This was very unusual. Dorothy had always said hi.
So next time Palmer said it: “Hi.”
Dorothy just went on hopping one-footed, brown ponytail bobbing.
She’s mad because I didn’t invite her to my birthday party, thought Palmer. And that was understandable, but also beside the point. The point was getting her to look at the bruise, and the more she would not, the more Palmer wanted her to.
Finally he rolled his left sleeve up to the shoulder and plopped himself down on her front steps. She went on playing, tossing a green beanbag into the chalk-numbered squares, ignoring him.
At last he thought of a funny thing to say. “Who’s winning?”
She said nothing. She tossed the beanbag to the farthest square and hopped on down and back. She tossed the bag out again, and just when it seemed she would never speak, she said, “Thanks for inviting me to your party.”