The Pinballs

by Betsy Byars

  After the picnic Carlie wanted to cheer Harvey and Thomas J up so she said, “I wish I had somebody to take my picture.”

  Nobody answered. Thomas J sat without looking up. In his pocket was the Bensons’ father’s watch and the three gold coins. He had never felt a heavier burden. Harvey didn’t look up either. His hamburger had tasted like sawdust. He wanted chicken more than ever.

  “They’re having a Sonny and Cher look-alike contest,” Carlie went on, “and I want to enter.”

  “You don’t look like Cher,” Harvey said.

  “I know. I’m gonna be Sonny!”

  She waited. There was no reaction. “Oh, you guys,” she said in a disgusted voice, “what do I have to do to cheer you up?”

  “Go in the house,” Harvey said.

  She spun around and looked at him. She grinned. “You know, Harvey, maybe there’s hope for you after all.”

  12

  “What’s the list for today?” Carlie asked, sitting down on the back steps.

  “Oh, it’s a list about disappointments.”

  “Not another one. That’s what all your lists are about.”

  “I have never done this list before. It’s called ‘Gifts I Got That I Didn’t Want,’” Harvey said. “You know, like I was expecting one thing and got something else.”

  “That’s the story of my life,” Carlie said. “I expected a floating opal three years in a row and you don’t see it hanging around my neck, do you?” There was a pause and then Carlie said, “What bad gifts did you get?”

  “Well, they weren’t exactly bad—some people would have been pleased with them—but when my mom lived with us, she’d promised me a puppy for my tenth birthday.” He paused. “I really wanted that puppy.” He paused again. “My mom and me would look through the newspaper at night and read ads together, you know, like ‘Cocker spaniels, wormed and ready to go.’ It was the happiest time of my life. I wanted every dog I read about. I couldn’t wait for the paper to come at night. I’d sit out on the front steps and wait for it.”

  “So?” Carlie said.

  Harvey looked down at his legs. “So my mom left home right before my birthday. She left on the sixth and my birthday was the seventeenth.”

  “I thought only fathers left home,” Carlie said. “I lost two that way—wish it was three.”

  “And after that,” Harvey went on, “my dad wouldn’t get me a dog no matter what. It was a matter of principle. He got me a—well, it was sort of an electronic football game. You had to turn knobs to keep the other team from scoring.”

  “Is that how you broke your legs?” Carlie asked, looking at him sideways. “Turning those knobs?”

  Harvey ignored her. “And then that Christmas I decided to get a guinea pig. I really still wanted a puppy but I knew better. And anyway a guinea pig was something else my mom had promised me. She raised guinea pigs when she was little. One time she had twenty-seven of them. She wanted to sell them to make money, but she couldn’t bring herself to part with them.”

  “Whoo, that tells you something about people, doesn’t it? They can’t stand to part with stinking guinea pigs, but they throw their kids around like straws,” Carlie said.

  Harvey went on. “Anyway, I told my dad I wanted to buy my own Christmas present and he said, ‘Fine with me.’ And I went out and got a guinea pig—a big white one—I named him Snowball right there in the store.”

  “I know what’s coming,” Carlie said.

  “And I got a cage, food, everything, and I brought him home, and my dad took one look at him, grabbed him up and carried him off. He said it was a matter of principle. He never would even tell me what he had done with Snowball.”

  “Some people.”

  “To make up for it he bought me a snooker pool table, but I never played with it.”

  “Matter of principle?” Carlie asked. She grinned at him. He didn’t answer.

  Thomas J cleared his throat. He said, “Every Christmas the twins gave me a present.”

  Both Carlie and Harvey turned and looked at Thomas J. Thomas J had never learned the art of talking because the Benson twins didn’t say much. Sometimes their entire daily speech was “Water’s boiling,” and “Cronkite’s on,” and “I’m turning in.” Therefore it was always a surprise to Carlie and Harvey when he joined in the conversation.

  “What’d they give you?” Carlie asked.

  “Well, one time it was pencils with my name on them.”

  “Oh, boo, that’s the kind of thing you get for good behavior,” Carlie said.

  “How would you know?” Harvey asked.

  Carlie grinned to herself. “Go on, Thomas J.”

  “Well, one time it was gloves and one time it was a book. Big Bible Stories for Little People.”

  Thomas J fell silent. He remembered sitting beside one of the twins while she read the stories to him. He could see her gnarled finger holding the place on the page.

  His favorite story had been about Baby Moses being sent out in a basket by his real mother to a better home. When he heard that story he always imagined his own mother waiting by the road, hiding in the poplar trees, waiting to see the twins take him in.

  He wished he had thought to get the book while he was at the house with Mr. Mason. Suddenly he looked up. “Oh, yes, they also gave me three gold coins.”

  “Real gold?” Carlie asked.

  He nodded.

  “If I was you, I’d rub them against my skin. If your skin turns green, they aren’t real. That’s how I found out about my earrings. They turned my ears as green as that grass over there.”

  “Lunch,” Mrs. Mason called.

  “Whoo,” Carlie said, getting up. “Don’t tell me she managed to get lunch on the table without the slave of the world to help her. Things are looking up.”

  13

  After lunch Harvey persuaded Carlie to push him to the library. “It’s mostly uphill,” Mrs. Mason said in a doubtful way.

  “I don’t care,” Carlie said. “Harvey and me want to get some books, don’t we, Harvey?” Carlie was willing to go anywhere and do anything. She was bored.

  “It’s very steep. The library’s all the way at the top of Oak Street.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “And you won’t take your hands off the chair for an instant?”

  “Look, glue my fingers to the handles if it’ll make you feel any better.”

  “I just want to be sure.” She put her hand on the back of Carlie’s neck. “And you’ll be extra careful crossing the street?”

  “I’m always careful with valuable things.”

  “Thank you,” Harvey said.

  She poked him. “I meant myself.”

  Mrs. Mason looked at them. “All right, but you be very careful, Carlie.”

  “Whoo, you’d think we were going to the North Pole.”

  They set out for the library with Carlie pushing Harvey in a slow rhythmic way. “I’d like to give Mrs. Mason a scare, wouldn’t you?” Carlie asked. “We could get a dummy, dress him up in your clothes and push him down the street. I’d run after the wheelchair screaming ‘Mrs. Mason, help, help. He got away from me!’ I’d do it if it wasn’t so hot.”

  “Mrs. Mason’s all right,” Harvey said.

  “Well, she hasn’t done us in yet.” Carlie kept pushing. “That’s what I’m going to do a list about—people who have done me in. If you did a list like that, how many people would be on your list? Don’t give me every name, just guess at it.”

  Harvey thought of his mother and father. “Two,” he said.

  “I’d have, let’s see—” Carlie pushed the chair slower as she thought. “First there would be my father. I mean, I don’t know who he is, but he’d be first on the list.”

  “You don’t have a father?” Harvey asked, looking back at her.

  “Of course I have a father,” she snapped. “Everybody has a father. The lowest dog in the street has a father. Didn’t you learn anything in Health and Hygiene?”
She stopped to ease his chair down the curbing. “I just never knew my father. He left before I was born. But my second father—”

  “He would have to be your stepfather,” Harvey corrected.

  “He was a step down anyway,” Carlie said. “He was a real bum. Number two on my list of people who have done me in would be that stepfather. Before he left he even stole my baby-sitting money.”

  Harvey was silent.

  “Then my third father—stepfather, if you must—he was the first person who ever wanted to do me real harm. I mean, you’re always hearing how dangerous the streets are and how you’re going to get mugged or hit on the head? Well, in the streets I was perfectly safe. It was when I got home that I got mugged and attacked.”

  Harvey said in a quiet voice, “My father ran over my legs. That’s how they got broken.”

  He spoke so quietly Carlie thought she hadn’t heard right. “Ran over them?” She stopped pushing the wheelchair altogether.

  “Yes.”

  “Ran over them?”

  “Yes. In the car.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “Oh, wow.”

  “He said he couldn’t help it.”

  “Which is supposed to make everything all right.”

  “He said he got mixed up on forward and reverse. He was drinking.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  There was a silence. Then Carlie said, “You know, just think about this, Harvey. Just think about you and me as unborn babies. Here we are, see, waiting to be born. And somebody comes up to us with a pad and pencil and says ‘What do you want in a father?’

  “Well, we’d list all kinds of things. I’d say I want a father who’s good-looking—after all, Harvey, half of your looks do come from your father—and I’d say I want a father who is rich and one who loves me. I’d go on and on.” She rested herself against the back of Harvey’s chair. “Never once would I think to say ‘I want a father who will stick around.’ I mean, Harvey, he didn’t even wait to see if I was a boy or a girl! He doesn’t even know I’m me!”

  She sighed. “And you, never once would you think to say ‘I want a father who will know the difference between forward and reverse in a stupid car.’” She started pushing again, faster.

  “I think that’s the library up ahead,” Harvey said.

  “And then, Harvey, to make matters worse, here we are, totally unwanted—I think we have to admit that—and then there are people in the world who really want children and haven’t got a one. Life is really unfair.”

  Harvey smiled a little. “That’s something I have suspected for a long time.”

  14

  “I thought you came to the library to check out books!” Carlie said. Ever since they had arrived, Harvey had been at a back table looking through old New York Times Magazines. Carlie had flipped through Seventeen and Cosmopolitan, and then she had gone to the librarian’s desk.

  “Do you have any movie magazines?”

  “No.”

  “Comics?”

  “No.”

  So now she was ready to go. “Get some books and let’s leave,” she said to Harvey impatiently.

  “I’m staying until I find an article I’m looking for,” Harvey said, turning the pages in a determined way.

  “What’s it about?”

  “If you must know, the article is about my mother.”

  “What’d she do to get in the newspaper?”

  “Well, she went to live on this farm in Virginia with some people. They were going to start a new way of life and that’s what the article’s about. I want to find out exactly where the farm is.”

  “What for?”

  “So I can write her.”

  “Why don’t you just ask your dad where the farm is. He’s bound to know. He had to send the divorce papers somewhere.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. He won’t even talk about her.” He bent over the magazine again. “If my mom knew I was in a foster home—if she knew about these broken legs—well, she’d come get me. I know she would.”

  “And take you to the farm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where you’d live happily ever after?”

  “Yes.”

  Carlie was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Didn’t your mom ever write you?”

  “Oh, sure, she wrote.”

  “Well, wasn’t there any return address?”

  “I never got the letters.”

  “Oh, sure, she wrote but you never got the letters. Just like my mom wrote but I never got the letters.”

  “No, she really wrote. I know she did, only my dad tore up the letters.” He closed the magazine and picked up the next. “The article has to be in one of these.”

  “I’m getting bored,” Carlie said. “Aren’t there any cute boys in this town?” She spun around. “Hey, I think I’ll go see if they have Appalachian Nurse.” She went back to the desk.

  Suddenly Harvey came upon the article about the farm. When he saw the picture of his mother making the hammock he felt as if his heart had blown up like a balloon.

  His mother was looking down at the ropes. She had a serious look about her. There were four rings on her fingers, but no wedding ring.

  He read the article carefully. Everyone at the farm, the article said, changed their names and selected other names that were more suitable to their nature. As near as he could figure out, his mother’s new name was Bethenia.

  In the evenings, he read, everyone at the farm sat around and had discussions. Sometimes one person would sit in the center on a stool and offer himself for discussion. Everyone would then tell what they liked and didn’t like about the person on the stool. Harvey had a hard time imagining his mother sitting there, letting herself be criticized. At home the least thing made her furious. If his father called her casserole “earth food,” she sulked.

  “Good news!” Carlie shouted, coming toward him. “Appalachian Nurse!” She waved the book in his face. “And it starts out real good too. Listen to this: ‘Nurse Laurie Myers made her way over the dark road. She was tired, but she knew men had been injured in the mine and needed her.’” Carlie glanced up. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, let me see. Which one’s your mother?”

  “That one.”

  “I never pictured your mom looking like that. Hey, he’s cute, the one on the left.”

  “She didn’t look like that when she lived with us.”

  “Well, let’s go then,” she said impatiently.

  “I want to get a Xerox copy first.” He wheeled himself to the desk. “Can you copy this article for me?”

  “It’s ten cents a page.”

  “I’ve got the money right here.” He dug into his pocket.

  Carlie said, “Listen to this: ‘In the depths of the mine lay Michael. One of his arms was caught under a mine timber.’” Carlie glanced up. “See, they’re begging Laurie not to go in because of the danger, but she’s going in anyway.” She flipped through the pages. “This is really good. Here’s the end. ‘Michael looked at Laurie.’ He must have got out of the mine all right. ‘He took her in his arms.’ See, Harvey, she even saved his arm! ‘He said, “My life will always be yours because without you I would have no life.”

  “‘Laurie answered softly, “Without your love, there’s no life for me either.” They kissed.’” Carlie slammed the book shut. “Now, that’s what I call a real satisfying story.” She set it on the counter.

  The librarian came back and said, “That will be ninety cents, please.”

  Harvey counted out the money and took the article about his mother. Carefully he got the pages in order.

  As Carlie pushed him to the door he glanced up and said, “Oh, you forgot your book.”

  She looked at him, astonished. “I just read it. You saw me.” She opened the door, held it with her shoulder and pushed him out into the sunlight. She sighed with satisfaction. “You know, it was almost as good as
Hong Kong Nurse.”

  15

  Harvey’s father was coming for a visit, and Harvey was waiting on the front porch in his wheelchair. He was sitting as still as a statue.

  “Carlie, let him see his father alone,” Mrs. Mason said when she saw Carlie heading for the front porch.

  “I will.”

  “Then stay in the house.”

  “I’m going for the mail,” she said.

  “The mail is already here. It’s there on the desk.”

  “Anything for me?”

  “No.”

  “For Harvey?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong with the mail these days anyway?” Carlie asked. “People are going to quit buying stamps if the post office doesn’t start delivering letters.” She kept going toward the porch.

  “Carlie,” Mrs. Mason warned. “I mean what I say. I don’t want you out there when Harvey’s father comes.”

  “I won’t be. I’ll come back in the house as soon as he gets here. I just want to get a look at the kind of creep who would run over his own son’s legs.”

  “Who told you that, Carlie?”

  “Harvey told me.” She turned. “I wonder if he’ll have the nerve to come driving up in the same car.” Over her shoulder she said, “Anyway, when the creep comes, I will come right into the house. Girl Scout’s honor.”

  Before Mrs. Mason could say anything else, Carlie went out onto the porch. She sat on the railing in front of Harvey.

  Harvey was too nervous to fidget. He was sitting with his hands tightly clenched, his teeth clamped together. He had not seen his father since he came to the Masons’, and the only thing he could remember about his father was him weeping in the emergency room. His tears, falling on Harvey’s burning face, had seemed to sizzle.

  “Is that his car?” Carlie asked.

  “No.”

  “Because I’m supposed to go straight in the house as soon as he comes. Mason’s orders.” Carlie paused. She began swinging her feet back and forth. “Mail came. Nothing for you or me.”

  “I know.”

  “Hey, maybe your mom’s not at the farm anymore. Did you ever think of that? She could be anywhere.”