Authors: Betsy Byars
The Pinballs
BETSY BYARS
DedicationFor David Atchley
1
One summer
two boys and a girl went to a foster home to live together.
One of the boys was Harvey. He had two broken legs. He got them when he was run over by his father's new Grand Am.
The day of his accident was supposed to be one of the happiest of Harvey's life. He had written an essay on “Why I Am Proud to Be an American,” and he had won third prize. Two dollars. His father had promised to drive him to the meeting and watch him get the award. The winners and their parents were going to have their pictures taken for the newspaper.
When the time came to go, Harvey's father said, “What are you doing in the car?” Harvey had been sitting there, waiting, for fifteen minutes. He was wearing a tie for the first time in his life. “Get out, Harvey, I'm late as it is.”
“Get out?”
“Yes, get out.”
Harvey did not move. He sat staring straight ahead. He said, “But this is the night I get my award. You promised you'd take me.”
“I didn't
promise
. I said I would if I could.”
“No, you promised. You said if I'd quit bugging you about it, you'd take me. You promised.” He still did not look at his father.
“Get out, Harvey.”
“No.”
“I'm telling you for the last time, Harvey. Get out.”
“Drive me to the meeting and I'll get out.”
“You'll get out when I say!” Harvey's father wanted to get to a poker game at the Elks Club, and he was already late. “And I say you get out
now
.” With that, his father leaned over, opened the door and pushed Harvey out of the car.
Harvey landed on his knees in the grass. He jumped to his feet. He grabbed for the car door. His father locked it.
Now Harvey looked at his father. His father's face was as red as if it had been turned inside out.
Quickly Harvey ran around the front of the car to try and open the other door. When he was directly in front of the car, his father accidentally threw the car into drive instead of reverse. In that wrong gear, he stepped on the gas, ran over Harvey and broke both his legs.
The court had taken Harvey away from his father and put him in the foster home “until such time as the father can control his drinking and make a safe home for the boy.”
The second boy was Thomas J. He didn't know whom he belonged to. When he was two years old someone had left him in front of a farmhouse like he was an unwanted puppy. The farmhouse belonged to two old ladies, the Benson twins, who were then eighty-two years old. They were the oldest living twins in the state. Every year on their birthday they got letters of congratulation from the governor. They were exactly alike except that one's eyes, nose and mouth were a little bigger than the other's. They looked like matching salt-and-pepper shakers.
Thomas J had stayed with the twins for six years. The twins had meant to take him into town and tell the authorities, but they had kept putting it off. First it was because he was pleasant company, later because he was good help in the garden.
When the twins broke their hips at age eighty-eight, Thomas J was discovered for the first time by the authorities. Nobody knew who he was or where he had come from. He was sent to the foster home “until such time as his real identity can be established or permanent adoptive parents located.”
The girl was Carlie. She was as hard to crack as a coconut. She never said anything polite. When anyone asked how she was, she answered “What's it to you?” or “Bug off.” Her main fun was watching television, and she threw things at people who blocked her view. Even the dog had been hit with
TV Guide
when he stepped in front of the set when Sonny and Cher were singing “I Got You, Babe.”
Carlie had to go to the foster home because she couldn't get along with her stepfather. She had had two stepfathers, but the new one, Russell, was the worst. He was mean to everybody in the family, but especially to Carlie. He resented everything she did.
Once he had hit her so hard when she wouldn't tell him where she'd been that she had gotten a concussion. Even with a concussion she had struggled up and hit him with a double boiler. “Nobody hits me without getting hit back,” she had said before she collapsed.
Carlie was to stay at the foster home “until the home situation stabilizes.”
“Stabilizes!” Carlie had said to the social worker in charge of her case. “What does that mean?”
“It means until your mother and your stepfather work out their problems.”
“Whoo,” Carlie said, “that means I'll stay until I'm ready for the old folks' home.”
The first thing Carlie did when she got to the foster home was pull the plastic footrest up close to the TV. “Don't talk to me when âYoung and Restless' is on,” she warned the foster mother, who was standing behind her.
“I just wanted to welcome you,” Mrs. Mason said. She put one hand on Carlie's back.
Carlie shook it off. “Welcome me during the commercial,” she said.
Carlie had
been suspicious of people since the day she was born. She swore she could remember being dropped on the floor by the doctor who delivered her.
“You weren't dropped,” her mother had told her.
“All right then, why is my face so flat? Was I
ironed
?”
Carlie also claimed that when she was two months old a baby-sitter had stolen a golden cross from around her neck.
“No baby-sitter stole a gold cross from you,” her mother had told her.
“All right then, where is it?”
Carlie believed everyone was out to do her in, and she had disliked Mrs. Mason, the foster mother, as soon as she had seen her standing in the doorway.
“I knew she'd have on an apron,” Carlie said to the social worker. “She's trying to copy herself after Mrs. Waltonâunsuccessfully, I might add.”
“Maybe she has on the apron because she was cooking, Carlie.”
“
I
should be the social worker. I'm not fooled by things like aprons.”
She also didn't like the Masons' living room. “This is right out of âLeave It to Beaver,'” she said. She especially distrusted the row of photographs over the fireplace. Seventeen pictures ofâCarlie guessedâseventeen foster children.
“Well, my picture's not going up there,” she grumbled to herself. “And nobody better snap me when I'm not looking either.” She sat.
Mrs. Mason waited until “Young and Restless” was over and then she said, “Carlie?”
“I'm still here.”
“Well, come on and have some lunch. Then afterward you can help me get the boys' room ready.”
Carlie turned. She looked interested for the first time. “The boys?” she asked. “There're going to be some boys here?”
“Yes, two boys are coming this afternoonâThomas J and Harvey.”
“How old?”
“Eight and thirteen.”
“Oh, boo, too young.” Carlie got up from the footstool. “What's wrong with them?”
“Wrong with them?”
“Yeah, why do they have to be here? I'm here because I got a bum stepfather. What's their trouble?”
“Well, I guess they'll have to tell you that.”
Carlie lifted her hair up off her neck. “How about the thirteen-year-old?” she asked. “What's he like? Big for his age, I hope.”
“He has two broken legs. That's about all I can tell you.”
“Well,” Carlie said, “that lets out dancing.”
Carlie was sitting in front of the television when Harvey arrived. He had to be carried in because of his legs. They set the wheelchair down by Carlie's footstool.
She looked around. “What happened to your legs?” she asked. She was interested in medical matters.
He said, “Nothing.”