Dead End in Norvelt (10 page)

“Umm, I’ll check my schedule,” I quickly replied, “but I think I can fit you in.”

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

“No thanks,” I replied, and politely stood there while she chattered on. Finally I looked at my wrist even though I didn’t have a watch on. “Time to go,” I announced, and took a step back.

“You don’t have to go,” she implored with a touch of loneliness in her voice. Still, I kept inching back toward the door.

Just then I could hear Miss Volker hitting the car horn. “I’m sorry,” I explained to Mrs. Dubicki, “but my chariot is calling for me.”

“What?” she asked.

“You know, my chariot with the four deathly black horses,” I blurted out, then turned to run.

“Wait!” she shouted. “I just remembered that Karen Linga down the street fell and broke her hip and she’s in so much pain she is begging for you to come take her away.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said, and once I started running I could not slow down. I bounced off the walls and my scythe whacked some pictures sideways. I had left the front door open, and when I saw daylight I leaped across the threshold and down the few steps.

When Miss Volker saw me she stopped leaning on the horn. “What took you so long?” she shouted. “I could have died from boredom for all the time it took you to take her pulse.”

“We have to go,” I begged as I ripped off my mask and gasped for air. “She’s alive!”

“Dang,” she griped as I opened the door and hopped in. “I sure wish these old ones would hurry it up. They need to meet their maker because I’m not getting any younger and there are a few things I’d like to do in this world before my own Grim Reaper pays me a visit.”

I really wasn’t paying attention to her. My nerves were shot. I started the engine and must have driven a mile in the wrong direction before I gave any thought to where I was going.

“You know,” Miss Volker said, “I hope when my turn comes the Grim Reaper is a lot like you. You don’t seem too scary.”

“I’m not scary,” I admitted. “I was scared. Even when she invited me for tea I was shaking. And after she invited me back in two weeks I ran. I don’t think I’m a very good Grim Reaper.”

“Well, when her time comes remind me,” she said, “so that when I write her obituary I make sure to mention she invited the Grim Reaper to tea. That reveals her good upbringing, don’t you think so?”

“Very polite of her,” I agreed. “And you can add that she loved her grandson whose birthday is on July third.”

“Thanks for the good detail,” Miss Volker noted, and smiled to herself. “Now, would you like to turn the car around and go home?” she asked. “Otherwise we’re heading for West Virginia.”

I slowed and made a U-turn in the parking lot of a boarded-up church. On the way back we again passed Mrs. Dubicki’s house and saw that the black window curtains were now thrust open.

“I’ll have to speak with my spotter,” muttered Miss Volker. “He won’t be getting a finder’s fee for this one!” Then she looked at me and said, “Your nose is bleeding. The next time you come down I’ll fix it for you. It’s easy—I have all the right tools.”

“Did Mrs. Roosevelt give them to you?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “I bought some items at a retired veterinarian’s yard sale and the others I made myself.”

Cheeze-us-crust!

9

I was reading about King Arthur
and liked how he had a round table which made everyone feel equal when they sat in a circle. Usually the king was the boss at the head of a long table and everyone else had to listen and take orders and not talk back unless they wanted to get locked in a dungeon and lose their heads. But King Arthur was different. He respected everyone and believed that if he treated people fairly they would treat him fairly. That was his secret to greatness.

Just then Dad stuck his head through my bedroom doorway. “How would you like to escape your room for a while?” he asked.

“I’d love it!” I shouted, and put down my book. I had really been plowing through the Landmark series. I figured I might have them all read by the time summer was over. “Is Mom okay with letting me out?” I asked him.

“Well, I’m giving you permission to leave your room so you haven’t broken any rules. Now follow me.”

“Is she still mad about the plane?” I asked as we walked down the hall.

“Yep,” he replied. “And she is showing no sign of getting over it.”

“Are you now living in the garage?” I asked as we stepped outside.

“I bought my way out of that trouble,” he said. “I took her down to the grocery store yesterday and paid for a cartful of charity food to make up for the corn she was going to trade for groceries.”

“Cash is king,” I remarked with a little swagger.

“Money makes the world go round,” he sang. “Cash is the universal get-out-of-Norvelt-forever card.”

“How much will you have to pay her not to get mad that you aren’t really building a bomb shelter?” I asked.

“That is still an unresolved subject,” he replied. “I can only afford to pay off one debt at a time. So for now we are going to
say
we are building a bomb shelter.”

“Mom said you won the plane in a card game. Is that true?” I asked.

“Not entirely. But I got it for a song,” he said confidentially. “They were practically giving them away at a military surplus auction. I mean, for twenty-five bucks how could I not buy it?”

I was shocked. “That’s less than Mr. Fenton wants for his old car!” I blurted out.

“Next time I’ll look around and see how much they are selling Sherman tanks for,” he said.

That would be so cool, I thought. I wouldn’t have to learn to steer—I could just drive in a straight line and run things over.

By then we were standing at the edge of the ex-cornfield. To one side, where I had cut down the last three rows of corn, Dad had marked off a long rectangle with twine wrapped around stakes in the ground.

“See that space?” he said, pointing.

I nodded.

“And the shovel stuck in the dirt?”

I nodded again.

“Then start digging,” he instructed. “I’m going to roll the field flat for the runway.” He jerked his head toward a road roller which was hooked up to the back of the tractor.

“Can we trade places?” I asked. “Miss Volker needs me to practice my driving so I can cart her around town.”

“Maybe later,” he said. “But for now you can practice your digging.”

I didn’t think that being grounded also included working in the ground.

I grabbed the shovel handle with both hands, then closed my eyes and imagined merry-olde-England in medieval times. “Whoso pulleth out this sword is the rightwise born king of England!” I shouted from
King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
. Then I tugged on the handle with all my might. The shovel easily pulled out and for just a moment I imagined that I really would be king, but when I opened my eyes I was still a kid holding a rusty shovel in western Pennsylvania. I had not become the future king of England, but I wished I had. King Arthur only had to deal with plague, famine, and evil knights. Instead, I was just the lone digger of a fake atomic bomb shelter.

“Hey, Dad,” I called behind him as he walked toward the tractor. “Which do you think is more deadly? Past history or future history?”

He didn’t even slow down to think about it. “Future history,” he yelled back without hesitation. “Each war gets worse because we get better at killing each other.”

That sounded so true. At first cavemen bashed each other’s heads in with rocks and sticks. By the time of the Crusaders it was long swords and arrows, and at Gettysburg they were blasting each other to bits from cannons filled with lead balls, iron chains, railroad spikes, and door knobs. And atomic bombs made future wars look even more hopeless.
No humans will survive. All the animals will die. Fish will rot in acidic water. All vegetation will wilt in the polluted air. There will be nothing left but enormous insects the size of dinosaurs.
I took a deep breath and pushed the blade of the shovel into the earth and got busy filling a wheelbarrow with dirt. Our only hope for survival might be in building cities deep underground like the one Dad said the army built to protect the president and all the self-important government people.

After a while Mom sauntered out with a pitcher and cups to give us some cold water because it was hot and because she wanted to check up on our progress. We must not have been doing too well because after a quick glance at our work she said to Dad, “Jack, you know I can get some men from the Community Center to help out. This is a big job.”

“It’s okay,” Dad replied, and poured a cup of water over his head then shook it off like a dog. “We don’t need any help from the
Communist
Center. We can do this ourselves.” He glanced at me. “Right, partner?” he asked, and jabbed me in the shoulder.

“Right,” I replied, but I didn’t mean it. I’d love to have a dozen friendly guys run over and finish this job.

“Mr. Spizz and that maintenance crew of his could make this easier,” Mom suggested, trying to reason with him. “And faster too. And they might make the runway a little smoother.”

The three of us held our hands over our eyes and squinted at the runway. It was as wavy as the ocean.

“It makes me seasick to look at it,” Mom remarked as she turned away.

“That’s nothing,” Dad said dismissively. “This plane was built to take off and land on a ship, so it can certainly land on this.”

“Are you sure you don’t need just a tiny bit of help?” she asked again.

“Honestly,” he said in a firm voice, “I’d rather just keep it in the family.”

“Okay,” she conceded, giving in to his stubbornness. “Do it your way.” And she went over to the pony pen to check on War Chief’s hay and water.

Dad turned to me. “If Spizz and those Community Center guys help us, the next thing you know they’ll want to help fly my plane and share our bomb shelter. Good God,” he said, “think of it. The Russian Commies will be bombing us from above and we’ll be protecting a bunch of local Commies in our shelter. Nuts to that!” He hopped back onto the tractor, started it up, and roared off with the roller in tow.

“Yeah,” I aped, and picked up the shovel. “Nuts to that.” I certainly didn’t want Mr. Spizz to come by and ask about paying the ticket.

Just then Bunny came running from around the corner of our house. She looked like the square face on a box of Wheaties—only with arms and legs. I was really happy to see her.

“Hey,” she said breathlessly, “what are you doing?”

“Digging our fancy new bomb shelter,” I replied without enthusiasm. “The future is going to take place underground.”

“Bomb shelters are just family-size coffins,” she said like a know-it-all. “When the atomic war comes we’ll all die and when UFO people arrive they’ll dig us up and study our culture.”

“What do you think they’ll learn?”

“Who knows and who cares,” she replied, and threw her short arms up into the air. “Probably no more than what we know from digging up King Tut.”

“Well, we have history books,” I reminded her.

“They’ll rot like everything else,” she countered with a groan, and dropped her hands down to her side. “Nothing will be left.”

I was going to say that the presidents on Mount Rushmore would survive when she stopped me.

“Let’s change the subject,” she insisted.

“To what?” I asked, and leaned on my shovel.

“To what I came here to tell you! The ambulance just arrived and now we have a stranger in the funeral parlor,” she said excitedly. “A Hells Angel motorcycle guy who was dancing in the middle of the road early this morning and got flattened by a cement truck down by the pants factory. Guess you could say he got
pressed
flat as pants.”

“Ugh,” I said. “What’s he look like?”

“Like tattooed roadkill only with a long black beard on one end and crushed black boots on the other,” she said. “It’s not pretty.”

I could already feel my nose twitch from imagining what he might look like. “Is he from around here?”

“No one can tell,” she said. “He didn’t have a wallet and the police don’t recognize him. But he has amazing tattoos.”

“What kind of
amazing
?” I asked, and looked around to make sure Mom wasn’t sneaking up on us.

“Depends on what part of his body you look at,” she whispered, and made her eyes get real big like she had seen something off limits. “Dad’s just now photographing them for the police, so he told me to get lost.”

“Do you think I can handle seeing him?” I asked.

“No way,” she replied. “You’d bleed out of your eye sockets if you saw this guy.”

That was probably true. But then I had a thought. “Has Miss Volker been there yet?” I asked. “She needs to make it official.”

“Nope,” she replied.

“Well, do me a favor,” I said, and put my hands on her shoulders. “Run down to her house and tell her about the Hells Angel. Then tell her to call me immediately, and that way I can get out of digging and take her down to see the body.”

“Sounds like a good plan,” she said, getting all wound up and pawing at the dirt with her sneakers. “Meet you in the back of the funeral parlor. But if you plan on looking at this guy, bring a box of tissues because of your nose problem.”

“Thanks for the tip,” I said as she bounded off like a springer spaniel.

It didn’t take long before the telephone rang and Mom called me inside. “Miss Volker needs your help right away,” she said at the door. “There was a road accident this morning and she has to examine the poor victim.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” I gasped, and imitated Mr. Huffer’s sad face, but inside I was thinking, Great, this will get me out of digging. But before I could make my escape she reached out and grabbed my shirt. She reeled me in and smelled my armpit. “You stink like an old billy goat,” she said, and wrinkled her nose. “Hop in the shower, quickly. I’ll get your clothes ready. I want you to look respectful at Mr. Huffer’s place.”