Dead End in Norvelt (27 page)

“Jack!” Mom shouted at me. “Now!”

In a blind panic I ran for the garage. Dad had the regular door locked, so I cut back around to the half door. It was already open so I ducked down and went inside. I lifted the top of the chest where he kept the war souvenirs. The Japanese flag was balled up and pushed to one side and the rifle was gone. I dug frantically through the other souvenirs, but there was no rifle. Oh God, I thought, don’t let that man shoot my mother.

I pulled out the long Japanese sword, and when I scrambled back around the corner of the pen nothing had changed except I was even more afraid. The hunter had moved forward to the edge of the woods and my mom was still standing in front of the deer, and that was when the deer suddenly dropped down onto his front elbows and bent his head forward, as if death were a pool he could dive into. I looked at Mom and then at the deer and back at Mom and I knew she was one shot away from dropping to her knees. I stood paralyzed with fear and willed myself to raise the sword inch by inch above my head as Mom kept her eyes locked on the hunter’s eyes.

“Step away from the deer,” the man demanded, and slowly shuffled forward. “It’s my kill.”

I ran up to Mom, panting, and handed her the sword then jumped off to one side, as if leaping from a train. She gripped the sword in her hand and savagely slashed the air back and forth, as if in an instant she could cut that man out of the picture in front of us. “I will use this,” she said in a threatening voice. “So just turn around and leave.”

“The deer is mine,” he said in a firm, menacing voice, and took a step forward. He must have been ten feet from her, with that long rifle barrel pointing directly at her face. Then she took a step forward and with her fully extended arm pointed the tip of the sword right at the center of his masked face. “Turn around and go back where you came from,” she said fearlessly, as if bullets would bounce off her.

The deer quietly slumped over onto his side, with his glossy brown eye wide open to the sun and pink foam collecting around his sad, quivering mouth. I dared to slowly walk over to him and knelt down and put my hand on his firm side. He was breathing harder now and I knew he was dying because there was nothing we could do to help him.

“You are trespassing,” Mom said harshly. “And what you have done to this deer is criminal.”

“Let me get my deer and you’ll never see me again,” he replied, and inched toward her.

I looked from the deer to the man.

“I wouldn’t take another step if I were you,” she stated. And then her face switched from being ready for a fight to a look of disbelief. She tilted her head to one side in a puzzled way and took a measured step toward the man, and then another, as if she were one of the British troops marching eye-high into the barrel of the rifle. She was about two feet away when she slowly lowered the sword and said, “Will? Is that you?”

He stepped back and swung his face away from her, then took more back steps into the woods.

“It is you!” she shouted angrily. “Come here!”

He dropped the rifle and ducked down, thrashing his way through the lower branches and summer undergrowth. We listened to the cracking branches in the woods until we couldn’t hear him anymore. Then silently we turned and looked at the dead deer. My mother held out the sword. “Take this,” she said. I reached for the handle and took it from her. Every move she made was deliberate, as if she had already lived this moment a dozen times and had always done the right thing. She strode forward into the woods, then bent over at the waist and hoisted the rifle off the ground.

It was the Japanese rifle! Uncle Will had taken it from the chest. She opened the chamber to check for a round. There was one in there. She pointed the barrel toward the dirt and fired. It was loud and I flinched. She cocked the rifle and checked the chamber again. Another round had entered and she fired it into the ground. She cocked the rifle again and fired.
Click.
The clip was empty.

“I hate these damn war souvenirs,” she said firmly. “They don’t care if they kill your enemy or your family.” Then she turned and held it out to me. I grabbed it with my right arm, which was stronger.

“Now put that back just how Dad keeps it,” she ordered. “Honestly, if he knew my crazy brother took it out to poach deer he’d shoot him.”

“I bet Uncle Will was the one who left the bullet in the gun the night I pulled the trigger,” I said. “I know I didn’t load it and Dad said he didn’t either.”

“Well, that may be true,” she considered. “But we still can’t tell your dad.”

“But it means that I shouldn’t even be grounded,” I protested. “It was never my fault.”

“My crazy brother did not cut down the corn,” she quickly reminded me. “That is the bigger reason why you are grounded.”

“Dad made me do that,” I cried out to defend myself. “And Dad thinks I put the bullet in the gun. It’s not fair and now my whole summer has been ruined.”

“It’s not ruined,” Mom said. “You made a new girlfriend.”

“Who?” I asked. I really liked Mertie-Jo but I hadn’t told Mom about it.

“Miss Volker,” Mom said, teasing. “You go down there all the time and you spend the whole day there. You might be down there kissing all day for all I know.”

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I really don’t want to be kissing her. Besides, Mr. Spizz wants to marry her.”

“Well, they used to be lovebirds in the old days,” Mom remarked. “Now he’s got her under house arrest. Who knows, maybe that’s what he wanted all along.”

“I bet they’re arguing all day,” I said.

“You know what they say about love,” Mom said sagely, “the more you pester someone the more it means you love them.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

“It’s one of the ten commandments of love,” Mom said confidently. “So you can count on it.”

“I’m going to put the gun away—and the sword,” I said. “Before Dad returns.”

“Hey,” she said. “Look at me.”

I looked at her face, but not directly into her eyes.

“Your nose,” she said.

I ran my hand over it.

“Why isn’t it bleeding?” she asked.

“I was keeping it a secret,” I replied. “But I’ll tell you. Miss Volker operated on it and fixed it, and I helped too.”

“Oh my God,” Mom said in horror. “With
her
hands?”

“You should have seen the veterinarian tools she used on me,” I said, wide-eyed. “They were like torture tools from the Spanish Inquisition.”

“I’ve heard enough,” she said. “Not another word. This day has been too insane already.”

I nodded. “Yep,” I said. “How are you going to explain the deer to Dad?”

“I’ll tell him it just came out of woods. There have always been poachers back up that way. He can dress it out and we can use the meat since he’s leaving for a while.”

Then I took a chance. “Hey, Mom, can we barter for something like the old-fashioned Norvelt way?”

“What are you getting at?” she asked.

I walked over and gave her a big hug, then stepped back. “Now, how about one in return?” I said.

And she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me. “If you say one word about my brother and the gun, you will be grounded until you turn eighteen no matter what your father says—do you hear me?”

I heard her.

Once she walked off I turned the other way and took a few steps back. I looked directly down at the dead deer, and in its shiny eye I could see myself reflected. But instead of turning away in fear I knelt down and placed my hand over the eye. I loved that deer. It never did anything wrong in its entire life except to be in the wrong place. History could be like that, especially for the innocent.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and smoothed his eyelid across his eye and held it there until it stayed. Then I stood up with the rifle and sword and walked away.

28

By the time
I woke, Dad had already used the tractor to drag the deer into the garage. He had been a hunter all of his life and he knew what to do. He spent the morning cutting it up, separating the good from the bad and packaging the meat.

I didn’t want to watch so I stayed grounded in my room. Slumped was more like it. I was so bored I wished the telephone would ring with Miss Volker calling to tell me Mr. Spizz had dropped over dead and I had to come down and write one last obituary. But that wasn’t likely to happen. Still, that didn’t mean I had to stop writing obituaries. I figured I could write one about the deer. I tried to get myself worked up like Miss Volker. I swung my arms around and did some deep knee bends, but I didn’t have her scratchy old voice and her bottomless well full of words. I just took out a sheet of paper and began to write something that seemed honest.

The deer, whose name was The Deer, was born about a year or so ago and grew up freely in the woods. He spent his days smelling and hearing and eating and feeling the warm hand of the sun on his back and doing all the things that deer have been doing for thousands of years until one day he was standing still and listening to a shoe snap a twig followed by the sound of a Japanese rifle and felt the bullet strike his neck. He ran but there was no place to hide because his life ran out of him faster than he could run for cover. We thank him for providing food, and even though his death gives us life, it is hard to thank even an animal enough for that.

It was a sad personal history and like Miss Volker taught me, I tried to think of a famous story in history to link to it, but all I could think about was
Bambi
and that wasn’t real history. That was just a cartoon story that people cried about, but it didn’t stop them from hunting deer. If I was going to take this to Mr. Greene and ask him to print it, I would have to come up with some good history to go along with it.

I was sorting through my books to find something just right when Dad came into my room.

“Hey, I have a little souvenir for you,” he said casually, and in one motion he reached into his pocket and tossed me something. I caught it with one hand and when I opened my hand I saw the bullet and felt the weight of it.

“It was still in the neck,” he said.

“Thanks,” I replied, and smiled only because I knew he would want me to smile.

“I know you didn’t load that Jap rifle,” he said. “But you did pull the trigger. Promise you’ll never do something that stupid again.”

“History won’t repeat itself,” I said. “Promise.”

He turned and walked out of the room to prepare for his trip. I stood up and closed my door and sat on the edge of the bed feeling very different from myself. Maybe I felt like a city before it was invaded. Or a ship before it sank. Or happiness before it turned into sadness. I couldn’t say exactly. But something was about to change in me.

That change came two days later when the phone rang. I whipped open my door and ran to the kitchen and snatched the receiver and pressed it against my ear.

“Gantos boy!” Spizz hollered into the phone.

“How’s Miss Volker?” I asked breathlessly.

“Don’t talk. Just listen,” he instructed. “Go to her house and down into the basement. She’s tied up down there.”

“Why don’t you go to her yourself?” I asked, confused. “You are the one in her house.”

“I’m not,” he said. “I’ve vanished.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. “A grown man can’t vanish on a tricycle!”

And then the phone went dead. A feeling of horror came over me and a moment later I was out the door and running full speed down the hill to Miss Volker’s house. I yanked open her back door and dashed to the basement door and pulled it open.

“Miss Volker!” I hollered as I hammered my way down the steps.

“Take your time,” she advised. “If you fall and kill yourself, I might starve to death all tied up like this.”

When I reached the last step I looked at her. She was sitting in a kitchen chair with her arms loosely pulled back behind her. On the floor around her were open heart-shaped boxes of chocolates. A few bold mice were nibbling on them.

“This is how he tortured me,” she said. “He knows I don’t like rodents.”

I kicked at the boxes, which scattered the mice. “I’ll wring his neck,” I said, stepping behind the chair to untie her.

“Don’t hurt ol’ Spizz,” she said warmly. “Over the last few days I really had a pretty good time with him.”

“That’s hard to believe,” I replied. But maybe he hadn’t been so bad—her hands were gently tied up in a floppy bow with the red ribbon from the chocolate boxes.

“Yes,” she continued. “Ol’ Spizz was very cooperative with me, and it didn’t take too much work to get him to confess that he did all the poisoning.”

“He killed them?” I shouted.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “He even let me dictate his confession while he wrote it down. Honestly, we never did get along so well as when he was telling me how he knocked off all those ladies. It was flattering that he killed them for me. He wanted to get them out of the way so my duty to Mrs. Roosevelt would be over and I would be free to run off with him. Can you imagine that? The two of us on his tricycle! Ha!”

“Did he say anything to you before he left?” I asked. “Like where he was going?”

“All he said was he’d tie me up while he got a six-hour head start out of town,” she said. “That’s about all.”

“I don’t think he got far, because his tricycle is in front of your house.”

“Oh, he didn’t take the tricycle,” she remembered, and made a sad face because she knew what I was about to figure out.

“He escaped in my car?” I yelped, and stomped the ground, which sent a few more mice running.

“Yep,” she confirmed. “I figured you’d be upset about that.”

“Oh cheeze! Well, now I really hope they catch him before he crashes it,” I said.

“Me too,” she agreed. “But at the moment this is the least of my worries. Now help me stand. I’ve got to go upstairs and sit on the couch. Sitting in this chair has just about killed my rear end.”

I helped her up the stairs and got her onto the couch. “Can I help you with anything? Can I call the police?”