The Pinballs Read online

  BETSY BYARS

  Dedication

  For David Atchley

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  About the Author

  Other Works

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  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 ‘Young 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.

  2

  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. Walton—unsuccessfully, 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 ‘Leave It to Beaver,’” she said. She especially distrusted the row of photographs over the fireplace. Seventeen pictures of—Carlie guessed—seventeen 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, tw
o boys are coming this afternoon—Thomas 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.”

  “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.

  3

  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.”

  4

  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.”