Wringer

“For the moment he wondered if he would be getting The Treatment, but he pushed that thought aside. He was getting greedy. He had already been blessed enough for one day.” 

On Palmer’s ninth birthday, he is elated when Beans--the lead bully and most respected kid on the street--attends his birthday party. Palmer has spent much of his young life feeling outcast from his peers, and Beans’s attention is a sign that Palmer is finally socially accepted. The idea of getting The Treatment—a series of punches on the arm from an older boy in town—enhances Palmer’s feeling of social acceptance. Beans and The Treatment are both sources of pain in Palmer’s life, but in the beginning of the novel he’s willing to sacrifice his comfort to feel accepted.

“Fishface was Beans’s name for Dorothy Gruzik. Beans and the guys hated Dorothy and harassed her whenever they got the chance. Palmer had never understood why, though now that he was one of them, maybe he would find out. Maybe now he could finally find a fish in her face.” 

Palmer and Dorothy had once been friends, but once Palmer starts hanging out with the Beans Boys, he feels like he must do what they’re doing so he’ll fit in. When the Beans Boys call Dorothy names, Palmer doesn’t agree with them, but he thinks that he will learn to view Dorothy the same way they do if he hangs out with them long enough.

“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 that any ten teachers could give.” 

This reasoning explains why Palmer is so excited to receive the painful Treatment from Farquar. He sees the excruciating pain as worth it because it means he’ll receive respect and honor from his peers. He also makes a connection between war and The Treatment. He views both experiences as painful events a person must endure, but that the individual comes out of the pain stronger as a result.

“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.” 

This quotation comes from Palmer’s father. He is fondly recalling the moment he received his own Treatment. In this moment, Palmer feels like enduring the pain of The Treatment has made his father proud of him.

“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.” 

This description refers to the toy soldiers that have been passed down from generation to generation in Palmer’s family. For Palmer, the toys have deep symbolic meaning because he knows how much they’ve meant to his family. When his father passes them down to him, it makes Palmer feel mature, like a torch is being passed on to him.

“New birthday. New friends. New feelings of excitement and pride and belonging.”

Palmer is full of hope after turning nine. When he was younger, his only friend was Dorothy, and he often felt left out by the other boys in the town. But after Beans, Mutto, and Henry attend his birthday party, he feels fully accepted in a way he’s never known before. At this point in his life, this feeling of belonging means everything to him and he’s willing to pretend to be someone else to maintain it.

“Palmer’s first Pigeon Day had occurred when he was four. Certain moments, five years later, were still with him. The birds in the sky, then suddenly not in the sky, only feathers fluttering.”

Palmer was deeply scarred by his first pigeon day experience. Years later, he vividly recalls the haunting details. He’s never been able to reconcile this moment--nor the pigeon day shootings more generally--to anything reasonable. He doesn’t understand why people want to shoot pigeons, nor what the pigeons did wrong.

“Through the day the squeak of the seesaw and the creak of the swings joined the sound of the shotguns. At this distance they sounded like balloons popping.” 

At his third Family Fest, Palmer sits with Dorothy on the swings, away from the pigeon shooting. Even though they sit far away from the shooting, they can hear the continual sound of the guns. In his mind, he likens the sound to the innocent noise of popping balloons. This demonstrates Palmer’s youthful hopefulness and outlook; he can’t find a way to reconcile the bad that’s happening, so he likens it to something good as a way to block it out.

“It was about then that Palmer began to feel a certain tilt to his life. Time became a sliding board, at the bottom of which awaited his tenth birthday.” 

Once Palmer realizes his own father is a pigeon shooter, things begin to really spiral in his life. This is when Palmer realizes he’s expected to become a wringer, and maybe even a shooter like his father, and he doesn’t see a way to escape this awful fate.

“He explained that there was more to it than putting the pigeons out of their misery. He said that only people who paid money were allowed to shoot the pigeons, and that the money was used to make the park better.” 

Palmer’s father tries to explain the theory behind the Family Fest pigeon shooting, but it still doesn’t make sense to Palmer. He doesn’t understand why pigeons have to die for the park to be better. He also doesn’t understand how guns put a pigeon out of its misery because he doesn’t know why the shooters put the birds in misery in the first place.

“Jogging through the dark and sleeping alleyways, skirting pools of streetlight, he imagined he was a toy lead soldier come to life, following Sergeant Beans and Private Mutto on a mission behind enemy lines.” 

Palmer loves being accepted by the boys, and he likens it to the way soldiers must feel for their comrades in war. Deep down, he knows he’s not like the other boys, but their shared experience and his sense of belonging makes him feel connected to them. The war imagery is also strong here. Palmer likens himself to a soldier because he doesn’t necessarily like what’s happening, but he believes he can grow from the experience.

“He watched TV. He read. He cut out Beetle Bailey comics for his collection. His mother played cards and Monopoly with him. He did not play with his toy soldiers.” 

Rather than attend the Family Fest pigeon shooting with the boys, Palmer pretends to be sick so he can stay home. The fact that he doesn’t play with his toy soldiers is symbolic. The soldiers have always brought him joy, but he’s starting to realize that war isn’t just about honor and respect for the soldier; it also means death, and in this case, it’s the death of thousands of pigeons.

“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?” 

Palmer has never seen a pigeon in his town except for the ones that get shot during Family Fest. Seeing a wild, flying pigeon--especially one at his window--is curious and thrilling for Palmer. He suddenly can’t think about anything but the pigeon.

“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, even to himself.” 

Palmer knows that feeding the pigeon will make it want to stay, and although he doesn’t want to admit it to himself, he wants the bird to stay. This is one of the first times Palmer’s inner feelings are in conflict with what he feels is expected of him. He thinks everyone in town hates pigeons, especially his father, so he can’t bring himself to outwardly admit that he loves the pigeon at his window.

“It was resting on its stomach on the shoe box that housed the toy soldiers.” 

After dinner one evening, Palmer returns to his room to find Nipper sleeping on the toy soldiers’ box. This is a symbolic moment demonstrating the tension between tradition and the desire to break tradition. The town has always shot pigeons, but Palmer’s love for his pigeon goes against everything the Family Fest pigeon shooting symbolizes. This moment with Nipper on top of the soldiers symbolizes a peace only made possible by a little boy’s love for his pigeon.

“Palmer got better acquainted with the pigeon and adjusted his own life to take his new friend into account.” 

After Nipper arrives at Palmer’s window, the two quickly become close friends. Palmer wants to learn everything he can about Nipper, especially since he’s grown up in a town without wild pigeons. This is also the first time Palmer looks at Nipper as his friend. His friendship with Nipper solidifies his knowing that he never wants to be a wringer.

“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?” 

As Palmer’s love for Nipper grows deeper, his life grows more complicated. He knows most everyone in his town hates pigeons so much that they want to murder the birds, so he must act as if he doesn’t have a pet pigeon. This leads to his double life where he acts one way in public but lives a different way in private.

“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.” 

This is one of Palmer’s lowest moments. Dorothy expressed sadness at the way he’s been treating her, and Nipper failed to return home. His sense of connection between these two events makes him feel like he’s the common denominator. He realizes he hasn’t been a good person, and he’s plagued by guilt over this.

“I want to be nobody. I want to be invisible. If I was invisible, then Nipper would be too.” 

Palmer has been getting into trouble at school in the hopes of avoiding crossing paths with Nipper on the way home. Getting into trouble has been making him famous at school. When Dorothy comments on this, Palmer laments the attention. He understands that the more attention he has, the more attention Nipper will have, as well. He’s terrified that if anyone finds out about his pet, Nipper will be killed like the birds at Family Fest.

“That was the worst of it, the running. What am I doing? Palmer kept thinking, but his legs ran on.” 

Palmer’s friendship with Beans, Mutto, and Henry is no longer motivated by his desire for acceptance; instead, he’s afraid of what they’ll do if he leaves. After school ends, Beans and the boys drag Palmer to wringer school. He doesn’t want to go, but his body goes along with it, and he can’t understand this disconnect between his mind and his body.

“Palmer saw Henry for what he was: a captive, strong enough to warn him about last night, but too weak to do anything except follow Beans. He saw in Henry something of himself, and worse, what he could become.” 

Palmer finally sees Henry for who he is and also recognizes Henry is a kindred spirit. He and Henry both follow Beans without question, but they also aren’t like Beans. Beans is violent and cruel, but Palmer and Henry follow rather than actively participate in Beans’s antics. Palmer realizes that if he doesn’t make a change, he will be trapped in this cycle forever.

“Your dad’s been changing. He didn’t even go to watch Pigeon Day last year, much less shoot.”

Palmer’s mother reveals how his father has changed since Nipper’s arrival in the household. Palmer’s love for the bird has transferred to his father who no longer enjoys the pigeon shooting experience. Palmer has vicariously enabled his father to see Nipper, and pigeons more generally, as unique creatures rather than targets to be shot.

“They seemed not so much to be shot down as tripped. The men might as well have waited by the box and whacked them with a bat as they came out. The pigeons were denied even the elegance of a long fall.” 

Palmer is at the Family Fest pigeon shoot. It’s a momentous moment because he’s ten-years-old, but he’s not a wringer. His biggest fear didn’t come true, which enables him to stand up to it by watching the horrors of the event. Unlike his younger years, when he looked to the adults to interpret the shooting for him, he grapples with the events on his own. No matter how long he watches, the injustice of it all only deepens.