The Pigeon With the Tennis Elbow

by Matt Christopher

  Whether it was the shot or the score, Tommy's balloon was pricked. Kevin took the next two points, winning his first love game of the match. Tommy couldn't seem to get out of his slump and lost the set, 6–2.

  As the boys walked to the bench to rest, Kevin looked up at Charlie and saw the pigeon's right eye close and open in a pleased wink.

  “Good match, Kevie,” said Charlie. “You follow instructions like a real pro.”

  Kevin smiled. “I guess I owe you…” he started to say, then paused. If the fans heard him talking to a pigeon they'd think that he was ready for the funny farm!

  Even though the rest was only for a minute, Kevin was grateful for it. He really needed it. The heat was torture.

  “Kevin!”

  He turned and saw Ginnie leaning forward in her seat, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Finish him off in the next set!”

  “Ginnie!” said her mother, grabbing Ginnie's arm and pulling her back. “Don't be so cruel!”

  “What's cruel about that?” said Ginnie.

  Kevin looked away, grinning. He knew that Mom had to undergo a lot of embarrassment quite often because of her daughter's courage to say whatever was on her mind.

  As the boys changed sides for the start of the second set, Kevin saw that Charlie wasn't on the post. He glanced around to see if Charlie had discovered another perch. He had not.

  Then Kevin glimpsed a pigeon flying high in the distance, and figured that Charlie was just exercising his wings. After all, sitting on a small flat spot for a couple of hours would tire any old body. Nonetheless Kevin hoped the remarkable bird would return soon.

  Tommy, serving first, failed to get the initial shot over the net. His second was good. He seemed to have regained a lot of his composure, and started to score points on hard-hit shots that Kevin got a racket on but hit out of bounds. Tommy took the first three games, outplaying, out-hitting, out-shining Kevin as if he had been saving up all his tricks and skill for this second set.

  But something happened to his playing in the fourth game. Kevin guessed it was fatigue. Tommy had been doing a lot of running in the first three games and in the heat might have run himself ragged. Anyway, Kevin once again became the aggressor and the tide turned. He took the next four games in a row.

  Then fatigue weakened him too. Ease up, Kev, warned his conscience. Maybe this is exactly what Tommy wants you to do — get all bushed so he can take you to the cleaners in the next three games.

  Kevin listened to his conscience and took it easy. Tommy took the game. 4-all.

  Ginnie clattered down the stands and sat next to Kevin during the one-minute rest period. “You're playing a good game, Kev!”

  “You're just trying to make me feel good. But thanks, anyway,” he said.

  Both boys went into the next game strong. But it was Tommy who won it on a lob over Kevin's head. 5–4, Tommy.

  Just before Kevin began to serve the next game he heard a whisper of wings near him and the next thing he knew Charlie was perched on his right shoulder.

  “Charlie!” Kevin cried sharply. “Where have you been?”

  “You need some sound advice, boy, so I came back,” said Charlie into his ear. “You can take that Smith kid if you'll listen to old Charlie. Will you listen?”

  “I'm listening, I'm listening!” answered Kevin anxiously. “But hurry, will you? The crowd will wonder what in heck's going on!”

  The crowd was already wondering what in heck was going on. A buzzing had started up among them, mixed with a ripple of laughter.

  “You've got to be more aggressive,” advised Charlie in that funny, cooing pigeon voice of his. “Hit the ball behind him. He's a poor backhand shot, and that's what you have to work on. O.K.?”

  “O.K. Now get, will you, Charlie, before I'm disqualified for holding up the game?”

  “Attaboy,” said Charlie, starting to lift his wings to take off. “Spunk! That's what I like. See you, boy.”

  Charlie flew off, leaving a very embarrassed Kevin looking after him. Instantly a thunder of applause rose from the fans, mixed with a chorus of yells.

  “Who's your friend, Kevin?”

  “Why didn't you give him the racket?”

  Then, the inevitable clincher, “Is he your coach, Kevin? Ha! Ha!”

  Man, if I told you he was, you'd die!

  Kevin followed Charlie's advice as well as he could, trying to hit the ball behind Tommy whenever the opportunity arose. But his anxiety doomed him. Most of the shots landed either against the net or out of bounds.

  Tommy won the game, and the set.

  6

  AFTER THE TEN-MINUTE rest period both boys appeared fresh and full of pep. Kevin wished it was all over with, though. Fresh-looking he might be, but his arms and legs felt as if spikes were driven into them.

  He lost the first game by an embarrassingly wide margin; he didn't score a point.

  The next game was better, but Tommy won it. Game-30.

  “I think you're too aggressive,” said Ginnie during the one-minute rest period. “You're playing into his hands.”

  There you go, thought Kevin in utter confusion. Charlie tells me to be more aggressive and she tells me I'm too aggressive. Maybe I'd be smarter to ignore their advice and play my own way.

  Tommy served the third game. Kevin took Ginnie's advice and relaxed a bit. Twice the game went into the advantage stage for him, and both times Tommy tied it up. Then Kevin took two points in a row and won it. 2–1, Tommy.

  Kevin won the next game too, not only tying up the score, but proving something he had been told in the process. Don't be too aggressive. Just hit the ball over the net. Let your opponent drive it back as hard as he wants to. Count on him to make the errors.

  He took the game, and finally the set, 6–2.

  He ran over and shook hands with Tommy. Then, as he started off the court amid loud applause from the fans, he heard a sudden flutter of wings and there was Charlie, settling on his shoulder.

  “Nice game, Kevie!” said Charlie, tickling Kevin's right ear with the tip of his wing. “You played that last set like your great old uncle used to! You were marvelous, boy! Just marvelous!”

  “Thanks, Charlie,” Kevin said, and thought: Like my great old uncle used to? You sure about that, Charlie? I thought you were the aggressive type!

  “See you later, Kevie,” Charlie said. “Right now you're in for some congratulations from your happy fans.” With that he flew off, and Kevin felt the dig of his sharp claws on his shoulder.

  “See you, Charlie,” said Kevin. Then he turned to meet his sister, mother and a host of other people who came to offer him their congratulations.

  They made quite a fuss over him. He liked it, yet, Wonder what they would've done if I had lost? he thought.

  That evening Charlie flew in while Kevin was lying on the smooth, close-cut, cool lawn. The sun was just beginning to set, a big red disk with a veil of cloud streamers lying across the face of it.

  “Tch! Tch!” muttered Charlie. “What a life!”

  Kevin grinned. “Don't tell me what a life. I think you've got the life. Wish I could fly, go anywhere anytime I please, and not think about what clothes to wear. Man, I'd have a ball.”

  Charlie chuckled. “That's being envious, boy. And envy is the root of a lot of heartaches.”

  “Now you sound like my third grade teacher,” said Kevin. “Shall I bring out a blackboard?”

  “Tch! Tch!” said Charlie again. “I'm just telling you these things for your own good, Kevie. Having lived a good many years as a human, I learned what kind of flowers were safe to pluck and what kind weren't. Envy is far from being a rose.”

  “I'm sorry, Charlie,” said Kevin. “I didn't mean to be smart.”

  “Forget it. The fact is, you're right. I'm happy in this new life of mine. It does have a lot of advantages over being a human. But the trouble is, I still love tennis. That's the advantage you have over me. Who'd think of making a tennis racket for a pigeon? Any
way, if anybody was crazy enough to try it, how could I ever hold onto the darn thing?”

  Kevin laughed. “I guess you're right, Charlie. There are advantages in being a human being and being a pigeon.” He rolled over and looked Charlie in the left eye. “Can I ask you a very personal question?”

  “Shoot,” said Charlie.

  “Do you have any pigeon friends? You're not the only pigeon who used to be a human being, are you?”

  Charlie let out a peal of laughter. “Of course not, boy! I have several friends!”

  “Where are they? I've only seen you around here.”

  Charlie ruffled his feathers in what Kevin presumed to be a shrug. “That's because they preferred to stay back there in the city, under that big church steeple near the courtyard. I was never much of a city kid. Not too many tennis courts there. But, frankly, living under that church steeple has something appealing about it. We could find food easy enough. You'd be surprised how anxious people are to feed us. It's toughest in winter, of course. But we manage to get all we need.”

  “Do you play games? What kind of fun do you have?”

  Kevin listened eagerly, realizing that he must be one of the very, very few lucky people in the whole wide world who could be having a heart-to-heart talk with a pigeon. At least, he had never heard of anyone ever talking to a pigeon before.

  “Sure we play games,” replied Charlie seriously. “Follow the Leader is one of our favorites. We have some good fliers, you know. As a matter of fact, some of those guys used to fly the old Spads and Handley Pages during World War One. You ought to hear the stories they tell.”

  “Spads and Handley Pages?” Kevin frowned. “Are they airplanes?”

  “Are they airplanes?” Charlie almost died laughing. “They were airplanes, boy! Spads were American fighters and Handley Pages were heavy bombers. Oh, they were airplanes, all right! And the guys who flew them were real fliers!”

  A voice, coming from the house, interrupted them. “Kevin! Who are you talking to?”

  Before Kevin could turn around he heard Ginnie's feet rattling down the steps.

  “Oh-oh,” said Charlie. “It's that kid sister of yours.”

  Kevin rolled over onto his back and looked up at Ginnie as she stopped beside him, hands on her hips. She looked from him to Charlie, an expression on her face Kevin could describe only as sheer wonderment.

  “You — you weren't carrying on a conversation with that pigeon, were you?” she said. “You — you haven't gone out of your mind?”

  Kevin tightened his lips and looked at Charlie. Well, Charlie, old uncle, what shall I tell her? She heard us talking. If I deny it, she'll really think I'm crazy. Maybe she'll tell Mom and Dad and the next thing you know I'll be in a hospital having my head examined.

  Charlie met Kevin's intense gaze, then hopped over close to Kevin and whispered into his ear, “Tell her the whole story, and make her promise not to tell another living soul. That's going to be tough for her to do, but we have to count on it. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Kevin. Looking up at Ginnie, he saw her eyebrows jerked upward in surprise and her face turning the color of paper.

  Kevin said gently, “Sit down, Gin. I've got something to tell you, and you've got to keep it to yourself. Forever. Think you can do that?”

  She stared at him. Then her head bobbed as she sat down, curling her legs under her. “I — I think so,” she whispered.

  “You — you know what reincarnation is, don't you?” Kevin asked her.

  “Reincarnation?” She frowned. “I've heard of it.”

  “O.K. It's when a person dies and his soul enters another body,” Kevin explained. “The body could be that of an insect, or an animal, or even a bird. Different religious sects believe in it”.

  Ginnie's eyes seemed to grow even wider as they hopped from Kevin to Charlie and back to Kevin. She straightened her back as if something was crawling down it.

  A chuckle broke the tense silence, and both Kevin and Ginnie looked at Charlie. The expression on Ginnie's face was one of utmost surprise.

  “What he's driving at, my dear Ginnie,” Charlie chimed in as a loving old uncle might, “is that I used to be your Great-Great Uncle Rickard O'Toole. And after my death I returned in the form you see before you. Not as handsome, perhaps, but what can you expect of a pigeon?”

  Ginnie's face paled. Then slowly her color came back, and a happy smile came over her face.

  “I can't believe it!” she cried softly. “Oh, I just can't believe it!”

  “You might as well believe it,” said Charlie. “Because it's true. But don't shout the news so loud that the whole world will hear you. This has got to be a secret just between us three. Remember that.”

  Ginnie shook her head vigorously, no longer straight-backed nor as scared-looking as she was when she had first heard him talk. “I'll remember that, Uncle…”

  “Charlie,” interrupted Charlie quickly. “Never call me uncle anything. It's just Charlie. All my pigeon friends call me Charlie, and that's what I want you and Kevin to call me, too. O.K.?”

  “O.K.,” said Ginnie, bobbing her head so that her hair fell over her face and she had to whip it back. “Oh, Charlie! I'm so happy to meet you!”

  “O.K., O.K. But just keep your voice down, for Pete's sake,” reminded Charlie, sounding a bit cranky. “Now let's talk about tennis for a while. That's the real reason I'm here.” He cocked his head to the right so that his left eye focused on Kevin. “You're playing Roger Murphy next Saturday, right?”

  “Not unless I beat Chuck Eagan on Wednesday,” said Kevin.

  Charlie chuckled. “Oh, you'll beat him. It's that Roger kid you'll have trouble with. I've watched him. He plays like his great uncle used to.”

  “Which great uncle?” Ginnie broke in.

  “Sanford,” said Charlie. “Sanford Wallington Murphy. What do you think of that handle? Anyway, Wally — as we used to call him — had two main weaknesses which only a few of us were able to detect. A low drive that landed near his feet, and a drive hit to his forehand side. He had trouble returning either one.”

  “His forehand side?” Kevin frowned. “Are you sure about that, Charlie?”

  “As sure as I'm standing here,” replied Charlie. “You see, Rog has probably done the same thing old Wally did. He's worked on his backhand stroke so much that he paid too little attention to his forehand.”

  Kevin shrugged. “Makes sense — I guess,” he said.

  “Of course it makes sense,” said Charlie. “Remember those two…”

  “Hey!” a loud voice interrupted. “Isn't that the same pigeon that was at the tennis match this afternoon?”

  “Oh-oh,” muttered Charlie. “It's the enemy. Roger, himself. See you kids later. I'm getting famished, anyway.”

  He sprang up, spread out his gray-white wings, and flew off. Kevin watched him as he climbed higher and higher, gradually diminishing into a dot and then vanishing into the fast growing dusk.

  7

  ROGER CAME INTO THE YARD, blowing a piece of bubble gum to the size of a baseball. Explode, gum! Kevin thought. Stick to his face! Better yet, stick to his mouth so that he cant open it!

  The gum exploded with a loud burst. But that was as far as the sticky substance went in satisfying Kevin's wish. Rotten luck. Bet if it was me the darn stuff would stick to my face.

  “As I was saying,” said Roger. “Isn't that the same…”

  “It is,” Ginnie cut him off short. “And I guess you know now what pigeons think of you.”

  Roger grinned that crooked grin of his, and Kevin wondered if a clean sock on the side of his jaw might straighten it out.

  “Well, I'm not one for pigeons,” Roger remarked. “Not for any kind of birds, for that matter.”

  He stuck his hands into his rear pants pockets and started to rock back and forth on his heels.

  “He seems to be pretty friendly with you two,” he observed. “What have you got that nobody else has, anyway?”
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  “A friendly face,” Ginnie answered.

  “We talk his language,” Kevin said.

  “What? Coo coo?” said Roger, and doubled over, laughing.

  I walked into that one, Kevin thought as he saw the disgusted look that Ginnie gave him. Finally Roger straightened up. “I suppose you've got a name for him.”

  “Of course,” said Kevin.

  “No kidding. What is it?”

  “None of your bus…” Ginnie started to say, but Kevin interrupted, “No, we'll tell him, Gin,” he said. “We won't have to worry about losing Charlie as a friend just because we tell Roger that much about him.”

  Roger frowned. “Charlie? Is that what you call him? And what do you mean about telling me that much about him?”

  Now, Kevin thought, it's my turn to laugh. And he did.

  “Just sleep on that for a while, Roger,” he said. “So long. I've got some chores to do.”

  “Better practice up for that game with Chuck,” Roger reminded him. “Otherwise we might not be playing each other this year.”

  Kevin's ears turned red. What Roger meant, of course, was that Kevin might not beat Chuck Eagan in their forthcoming match and earn a match with Roger.

  Losing to Chuck didn't necessarily mean that an O'Toole-Murphy match could not be played. It could, if only to satisfy their egos. Especially Roger's. But it was Kevin's hope to play the cocky Roger properly.

  “Don't worry,” said Kevin. “You and I will play, all right. You can bet your big fat bubble gum on that.”

  He turned and walked up to the house, expecting to hear that familiar Roger Murphy laugh. But he didn't. All he heard was the door closing quietly behind him as Ginnie followed him into the house, then Ginnie's surprising comment, “I feel sorry for him. Can you believe it?”

  He looked at her. Sure enough she was either putting on a command performance, or the expression on her pixy face was real.

  “No,” he said. “But then again, knowing you, I guess I can.”

  Two days slipped by. Charlie had not been seen since Roger had broken up his conversation with Kevin and Ginnie and he had flown off into the wild blue yonder. Where was he? Why hadn't he come around in the last two days?