Chapter 10 Summary

The following year, Palmer avoids the Pigeon Shoot and plays with Dorothy at the playground all day while the sounds of gunshots punctuate the afternoon. Beans encounters Palmer and Dorothy at play and is incredulous when he learns that they are not going to attend the Pigeon Shoot. Even though he is too young to participate, Beans runs off to the soccer field to pick up wounded birds and is chased away by the legitimate wringers.

This is the year that Palmer remembers smelling the gun smoke on his father's clothes after the Pigeon Shoot. The usually familiar and comfortable security of his father's lap takes on a mildly threatening feeling in this aura of smoke. Palmer also remembers this as the year that his family took a family vacation to a large city where the pigeons stroll freely on the sidewalks, and...