He did not want to be a wringer.
The entire narrative revolves around the fact that the Palmer, the protagonist of the story, does not want to be a wringer. What is a wringer? It is considered a position of the highest honor in the town of Waymer. The biggest day of the year in Waymer is Pigeon Day. On that day, pigeons are released into the air as targets to be shot and killed. But, of course, not all pulls of the trigger fly straight and true. Not all pigeons enjoy the sacrificial pleasure of instant death in the air. Some are merely wounded and fall to the ground, the life still clinging within them which must be extinguished for, you know, the sake of mercy. The extinguishing of life from those poor pigeons is the job of the wringer. And Palmer does not want to be one. And Pigeon Day is fast approaching. And Palmer is finally of age.
When it came to pigeons, he did not trust anyone in town, except maybe Dorothy Gruzik.
It is not merely that Palmer does not want to experience the visceral experience of wringing a suffering pigeon’s neck to hasten the onset of death. That alone would be horrific, of course, and certainly reason enough for not wanting to face the inevitability of being conscripted into the service of wringing. The rejection off desire traces way back, but is enhanced by a strange occurrence: the arrival of a pigeon on Palmer’s windowsill that will simply not be chased away. The pigeon is insistent and eventually adopted, named Nipper, and protected in secrecy by Palmer.
The only person he feels comfortable sharing this information with is his friend Dorothy who enjoys the convenience of her gender disallowing her from becoming a wringer since she, too, stands in form opposition to entire Pigeon Day madness. Standing in opposition to Dorothy in the world of Palmer, however, is the gang of boys who desperately wait for their chance to be a wringer and with whom Palmer has had to present a façade of equal desire. Palmer finds himself in the classic stance of being torn between the girl and the guys. And he's just nine years old.
An unexpected episode occurred during
this year’s event. At one point in the late
afternoon an unidentified boy dashed onto
the shooting field and retrieved a wounded
pigeon. Shooting was immediately halted,
and the reckless lad, perhaps seeking an
unusual pet for himself, was allowed to leave
the premises with the bird.
The novel begins and ends with an excerpt from the local Waymer newspaper reporting on the Pigeon Day festivities. The first provides standard just-the-facts background information on things like attendance, number of pigeons and how the pigeon shoot is carried out. It is a terse overview lacking any nuance or insight. The blurb which ends the book describes in a similar journalistic fashion the events which comprise the climax of the story. The details are there along with a strangely opinionated assertion of motivation utterly absent any factual background.
The use of this as a way to end the book illustrates the difference between journalistic writing and creative writing as well as the chasm existing between a simple recitation of facts and facts presented with the full context and background provided. Everything presented regarding the “unexpected episode” is either factually accurate or logically hypothetical. And yet, to the reader who has just finished the book, it verges on being absolutely useless for understanding what actually occurred.
