The Pinballs (2 page)

“Well,
something
must have happened. They don't just put casts on your legs for the fun of it. In fact they
won't
put casts on your legs unless you've had a real accident. I know, because a friend of mine tried to get a cast put on her ankle so she wouldn't have to be in Junior Olympics, and they wouldn't do it.” She waited, then she said, “So what happened?”

There was a long pause. Harvey looked down at his legs. In his mind the shiny Grand Am lunged over him again. He felt sick. He said, “If you must know, I broke my legs playing football.”

He wished it had happened that way. A boy at school had broken his ankle playing football, and everyone in school had autographed his cast. Girls had even kissed the cast and left their lipstick prints.

Harvey's casts were as white as snow. He wished he had thought to forge some names on them. “Love and kisses from Linda.” “Best wishes to a wonderful English student from Miss Howell.”

Carlie was still looking at him, eyeing the casts, his toes sticking out the end. Then she glanced up at his face.

“What position were you playing?”

Harvey hesitated. “Quarterback,” he said.

Carlie snorted. “You're no quarterback. I've seen Joe Namath in person.” She looked him over. “If you were playing football at all, you were probably the ball.”

Harvey kept looking at his legs.

Carlie decided to give him one more chance. “So what really happened?”

“I was playing football,” he insisted.

“Listen,” Carlie said. “This is one of my favorite shows, so if you're going to tell me a bunch of big lies about what happened to your legs, well, I'll just go back to watching my show.”

“Go back to watching it,” Harvey said.

Thomas J
arrived after supper. He had been living with the Benson twins so long that he yelled everything. That was the only way he could be heard at the Bensons'. The twins were almost deaf.

“Where do I put my things?” he yelled at Mrs. Mason.

“Why, right back here, Thomas J. I'm putting you and Harvey in the same room so you can help him if he needs it.”

“I'll be glad to,” he yelled. He was used to helping people.

“If Harvey has any trouble in the night, you can call me.”

“I'll call you.”

“He's sure got the voice for it,” Carlie said.

“Do I put my things in the drawer or just leave them in the suitcase?”

Carlie spun around on the footstool. “Will you keep your voice down. I can hardly hear the television.”

“I'll be glad to,” Thomas J yelled.

That night the three of them sat watching “Tony Orlando and Dawn.”

“Now, this really is one of my favorite shows,” Carlie said as soon as it was announced. She gave each of them a long hard look.

Thomas J nodded. Actually he would rather have watched something else. The show brought back sad memories. It had been one of the Benson twins' favorites. The twins had always liked anything that came in pairs—Doublemint-gum commercials brought them hobbling—and Dawn in their matching dresses looked like twins even though they weren't.

“Sing the song, girls,” Tony Orlando said, stepping back on his high-heeled shoes.

Thomas J felt awful. He could remember the twins leaning forward on their canes, trembling a little as they squinted at Dawn. They had the oldest television set in Macon County, and they had to lean close to see anything.

He hoped there was a TV set at the hospital where they had been taken. They had both broken their hips on the same day. They had been coming in from the garden—Thomas J had been right behind them carrying a bushel basket of weeds—when one of them had slipped. She had grabbed the other for support, and they both had gone down on the path. One had broken her right hip; the other, her left.

It was not until they were being admitted to the hospital that Thomas J had learned their first names. For six years he had just called them both Aunt Benson. Their first names were Thomas and Jefferson. They had been named for their father's favorite president. That was how he had gotten the name Thomas J. He had been named for them.

“Don't worry, Thomas J,” they had told him in the emergency room where they had lain on side-by-side tables, “we'll get over this, won't we, Sister?”

“
I
will.”

“We
both
will because everybody in our family has lived to be at least ninety.”

Thomas J had nodded. He knew their father had lived to be ninety-six. The father would have lived longer except that a limb fell off a tree and hit him on the head. The twins had kept the limb on the back porch for a long while, and the only time the twins had ever been angry at Thomas J was when he, not knowing the importance of the limb, had broken it up for firewood.

Andy Griffith was on the television now, telling a long joke. Carlie said, “Why doesn't he get off? Nobody wants to listen to him.”

“I do,” Harvey said.

Carlie glanced at him. “You would,” she said.

Harvey felt a twinge in his right leg. It was the worst of the breaks. The bone had gone through the skin.

He looked at the back of Carlie's head. He would have liked to answer her back, to insult her, but he knew that Carlie could out-insult anybody he had ever met.

“He
gives
me a pain,” Carlie said. She glanced around the room, taking in everyone present. “And he's not the only one.”

Carlie entered
her room slowly. It was the first time she had slept in a room by herself. At one time in her life she had slept with a cousin, her stepfather's two daughters and a half sister, all in one bed. She had spent her nights saying “Move over, will you?” and “Who do you think you are—Miss America?”

She walked slowly over to the dresser and looked at herself in the mirror. She had developed a way of smiling that hid her crooked lower teeth. She smiled at herself now, making sure she still had the technique.

Suddenly she heard a noise behind her. She swirled around. She didn't like anybody watching her when she was looking at herself. When she saw it was Thomas J, she could have stung him. “What are you staring at?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to tell you I found your earring.” He came in with a small pleased smile. He was thin and walked as carefully as an old person. He held out the earring.

When Carlie had discovered one of her earrings was missing just after “Tony Orlando and Dawn,” she had accused everyone in the house of stealing it. “I'm going to find that earring if I have to turn every one of you upside down and shake you,” she had said. “That earring is pure gold.”

“Now, now, Carlie, no one stole your earring,” Mrs. Mason had said.

“All right then, where is it?”

“The earring was in the bathroom,” Thomas J said, still smiling. “It was by the basin.” He held it out. He had been as pleased when he found it as if it had been a gold nugget. He couldn't wait to bring it to her. Once when he had found the Bensons' father's gold watch, they had been so happy they had patted him. It was the only time the Benson twins had ever touched him on purpose. He could still remember their stiff old fingers tapping his head.

“Good boy,” they had said. It had made him feel warm and happy. He had wanted them to lose the watch over and over again so he could keep finding it, the way a dog keeps fetching a stick.

Also he wanted Carlie to like him. He admired her. Her long flowing hair—lion-colored—made him aware of his own scraggly head. The Benson twins always cut his hair together, one on each side, neither bothering to stop and check the other's work. As he came toward her, he smoothed his hair.

Carlie snatched the earring from him and looked at it suspiciously. “So you just
found
it, huh?”

He didn't get her meaning. “Yes, it was by the basin. I looked down and there it was. It was like the time the Benson twins lost their father's watch and I—”

“Huh, strange that you just
happened
to find it after I announced I was going to search everybody's room.”

Now he got her meaning. “Oh, I didn't steal it. Really I didn't. I found it. It was by the basin. Honest.” His voice got even louder. “You can ask Mrs. Mason if you don't believe me. She heard me find it.”

Carlie put the earring back on her ear. “I tell you one thing. I'm having my ears pierced as soon as possible. That's the only way things are going to be safe around here.”

“I found it, I tell you,” Thomas J yelled. He took two steps backward. “I found it!”

“All right, all right, you found it,” Carlie said. She glanced at the open door. “Keep your voice down.” She turned back to the mirror. “I guess even a blind pig can come up with an acorn every now and then.”

After Thomas J left, Carlie got into bed and stared up at the ceiling. Mrs. Mason passed by in the hall and stuck her head in the door. “Everything all right, Carlie?”

“What do you think?” Carlie said.

“Oh, I imagine things seem very wrong tonight.”

“
Seem?
” Carlie said.

Mrs. Mason came in and stood by the bed. She patted Carlie's arm. “The first night is always the hardest.”

Carlie was silent.

Mrs. Mason sat on the edge of the bed. “And I know how you feel.”

“How do you know? Have you ever been in a foster home?”

“I've had a lot of kids staying with me—seventeen, not counting you three—and all seventeen told me that the first night was the worst. They all said they just felt sick.” She kept her hand on Carlie's arm. “I guess ‘homesickness' is a very real kind of illness, like measles or mumps.”

“Too bad there's not a vaccine.”

“Yes.”

“Only the people that give money for vaccines, they want to give for heart diseases and polio, stuff
their
kids might get. Nobody worries about us.”

“Yes, they do, Carlie.”

“Anyway the only reason I came was because Russell—that's my stepfather—threatened to cut off all my hair. And it took me since fourth grade to grow this hair!” She yanked the sheet up higher on her shoulders. “Now I wonder if it was worth it.”

“Carlie, did you see the pictures of the kids in the living room?”

“How could I miss?”

“Well, all of those kids have gone on into the world. Two of them are in college now. They write me letters. One has his own service station. Some are back with their families. It all works out somehow.” She smiled. “Even without a vaccine.”

She waited for a moment and patted Carlie's arm again. Then she rose from the bed. “Things'll be better tomorrow. You'll see.”

“They better be,” Carlie answered as Mrs. Mason left the room. She turned her face to the wall. She thought, I can always run away.

Harvey and
Thomas J shared the room across the hall. It had bunk beds. Because of his broken legs Harvey got the bottom bunk. He eased himself down on the mattress and looked up at the springs.

Thomas J paused beside the bed. Every night at the Bensons' he had said his prayers like the twins did—on his knees beside the bed, arms out straight as boards, fingers pointed up. He felt shy about praying in front of Harvey.

“What are you standing there for?” Harvey asked, glancing at him.

“Nothing.”

Still Thomas J hesitated. The habit to pray was strong. Harvey was still looking at him, waiting. Abruptly Thomas J climbed up the ladder to his bed.

“Do you want to know how I broke my legs?” Harvey asked.

Thomas J was on his knees in the upper bunk. “Yes,” he answered.

“I was playing football—quarterback—and I got tackled too hard.” He stared down at his casts, at his pink toes. “Everyone was going to autograph my casts—all my friends—but I had to come here before they could.”

“That's too bad,” Thomas J said. He was still in praying position, but he eased back onto his heels. “You know, bones break very easily. You can break bones just walking down a path.”

“Oh, I don't know about that,” Harvey said.

“Yes, it really can happen.” Thomas J leaned over the edge of the bunk and looked at Harvey. “The Benson twins—that's who I lived with before I came here—both broke their hips just walking down a path to the house. They slipped.”

“Oh, well, yeah, sure, if they slipped.”

“That's why I had to come here. They're both in the hospital.”

“I had to come here because there was no one at home to take care of me.”

“How about your mother?”

“My mom doesn't live with us anymore.”