Wringer

Palmer has always felt conflicted about Family Fest—the week-long festival culminating in a pigeon shooting contest. Palmer enjoys the rides and fried foods, but he loathes the pigeon shooting. He thinks back to when he first witnessed a pigeon being wounded during the shootout. A shooter maimed the bird but didn’t kill it. The pigeon fell to the grass, and Palmer watched in horror as the bird hobbled “loppysided” (39) towards Palmer. Then a little boy ran over and wrung the bird’s neck. Palmer’s mother said it was to “put the pigeon out of its misery,” (40) but this reasoning never made sense to Palmer. He wondered why the shooter put the pigeon into misery in the first place.

Palmer remembers attending his second pigeon shooting with Dorothy. It was her first, and he remembers the sick pleasure he got from telling her all about how the pigeons die. The words “were dusty and bitter on his tongue” (45) as he told her, but he couldn’t help himself. She ran away from him. He realizes that his own words and the images they conjure are making him cry.

Palmer never watched another pigeon shooting after that. Instead, by his third year at Family Fest, he and Dorothy just stayed on the swings to avoid the gruesome sight. But Arthur Dodds, who had not yet started going by the nickname Beans, was thrilled about the dying pigeons. One of the maimed pigeons escaped into the crowd, and Arthur grabbed it and wrung its neck. He was so proud that he took the dead bird home.

Palmer remembers his father smelling like the “gray and sour odor of gunsmoke” (50). This smell began haunting him. Everywhere he went, he smelled that smell. During the summer of his eighth birthday, his family takes a family vacation and stops in a big city. Palmer is amazed to see that “[p]igeons were everywhere” (51). A man is even sitting in the park, covered by the pigeons he’s feeding. Palmer has never seen wild pigeons, and he’s certainly never seen humans being nice to pigeons. This scene reinforces the knowing that he doesn’t want to be a wringer. But this knowing is complicated by the fact that his father used to be a wringer and a shooter and Palmer feels like he must follow in his father’s footsteps.

It’s Family Fest again. Palmer is nine-years-old—still a year away from becoming a wringer—yet he can’t shake the impending dread. He tries to avoid Beans and the other boys, and Dorothy is avoiding him. He thinks back to how, when he was younger, he asked his father why they didn’t just blow up all the pigeons at once. His father explained that it isn’t just about killing the pigeons; it’s about the sport of it. Since the shooters pay money to kill the pigeons, and that money goes to the park, his father said, “you can thank a pigeon for the swings at the playground” (57).

That night, Palmer dreams he’s being carried away by numerous pigeons, and they seem to be heading for the sun. One of the pigeons pecks him and laughs. He wakes from the dream to find Beans and the other boys in bed with him. Beans tells him to follow them, and he does. He's “always been an obedient kid,” (61) and he doesn’t think to ask Beans where they’re going.

As they run through the dark, Palmer feels bonded with the boys: He “loved these guys. He would follow them anywhere” (62). Beans leads them to the railroad station, where 5,000 pigeons are trapped in cages. Beans and the other boys run along the cages with sticks, but Palmer is paralyzed by the sight of “[t]en thousand orange eyes” (63) staring back at him.

The morning of the Family Fest pigeon shooting, Palmer stays in bed and pretends to be sick. He watches TV and plays Monopoly with his mother, but he “did not play with his soldiers” (64).