Dead End in Norvelt (28 page)

“First I’ve got to call Mr. Greene and apologize. He was right about the ladies being murdered—though he was wrong that it was me. But I was wrong about them dying of natural causes, so I guess my medical examiner days are over. After we set the record straight we’ll call the police and tell them to come get Mr. Spizz’s confession.” She pointed to the typewriter table where he had typed it and signed it. “Can you believe that he killed them all? D-U-M-B. How stupid can you be?” she asked no one in particular.

I went over to the map and put a red pin in Mrs. Droogie’s house—D-21.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “And thirsty.”

I went into the kitchen and got her a glass of tap water. “Don’t eat anything from your house,” I warned her. “I’ll go up and have Mom cook something for you.”

“Okay,” she replied. “That would be nice. I suppose because I’m the last original Norvelter in town I should celebrate, but I think I’ll just lie down and take a nap.”

“Don’t you want to call Mr. Greene and the police?” I asked. “We don’t want Spizz to get away.”

“Just let me have a tiny catnap,” she said. “It won’t matter how much head start Spizz has. He’s too ugly not to be easily spotted.”

I plumped up the pillows. And once she was stretched out I pulled her woolen afghan over her.

“One more thing,” she asked with her eyes half-closed. “Keeping in mind all those old ladies who have passed on, today is the eve before we honor the first English child born in America—Virginia Dare in 1587. Don’t forget your history,” she murmured. “Life is a cycle.”

Exactly, I thought. Life
is
a cycle, and this is the history part I can add to the deer obituary. I bet Virginia Dare’s parents even called her a “little dear.”

I waited for a moment until she fell asleep before I leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. Then I went outside and hopped on Mr. Spizz’s tricycle and rode up to our house. It was a pretty good ride.

*   *   *

I told Mom everything. She called the county police, then quickly gathered up a basket of food for Miss Volker.

“Do you want me to come?” I asked.

“I think it will be better if I handle this alone,” she said. “You’ve been a big help, but the police are just going to want to speak with adults. Besides, your dad is leaving tonight for Florida and you might want to help him out—and you have a baseball game.”

“I’m ungrounded?” I asked.

“As long as you don’t do something stupid again,” she said.

“Reading all those books has made me a lot smarter,” I replied. “It’s probably
impossible
for me to do something stupid again.”

“Never say never,” she advised me, then hurried off.

I found Dad out by the J-3 and told him everything. “Figures it was Spizz,” he said. “I should have known that tricycle was a clue to just how demented he was.”

“He took my car,” I said angrily. “Do you think we can fly around until we spot him?”

“The cops will track him down. But here’s our J-3 plan,” he said, changing the subject. “I got a flight plan out of Norvelt tonight for Florida.”

“But Mom has just allowed me to play baseball tonight,” I cried out, and nearly broke into tears. “I’m finally free and I won’t get my airplane ride.”

“Don’t start blubbering,” he said. “I’ve got it all figured out. You’ll be playing in the outfield, right?”

“Yep,” I said. “Usually center field because we don’t have enough players to cover all the positions.”

“Well, when you see me come out of the left field lights, run for the right field fence,” he said, and winked.

“What else?” I asked.

“You’ll figure it out,” he replied, and snapped his fingers. “You’re a smart boy.”

“Do you need me to help with anything?” I asked.

He looked over at the bomb shelter. “Maybe you could start filling that in,” he said, and laughed.

“Really? Now?” I asked.

“Not now,” he said. “You’re free to go.”

I ran back to my room to finish my obituary with the Virginia Dare story. Then I ran down to Mr. Greene’s office. He was pecking away at a typewriter.

“Another dead old lady!” he shouted when he saw me. “Impossible.”

“A deer this time,” I said, and passed him my handwritten obit.

“The hunters around here won’t like it,” he said after reading it through, “but I’ll print it.”

Then I stuck out my hand. “I won the bet,” I said. “Miss Volker didn’t kill those ladies.”

He smiled, then opened the drawer where he kept the bet money. “Here is your four bucks. I thought I had you when they arrested her but then old Spizz turned out to be the killer. I’m writing up an article on it now,” he said, and went back to his typewriter. “Sorry, I have a deadline.”

*   *   *

That evening I decided to ride Spizz’s tricycle to the game, and when Bunny saw me ride up in my uniform and walk onto the ball field she wanted to know everything about the murders.

“I’ll give you all the details after the game,” I said. “In full—I know
everything
. The
who
, the
how
, and the
why
!”

“Everything?” she asked.

“Remember how you told me about all the details on that dead Hells Angel?” I reminded her. “Well, I’ll tell you all the details about how the ladies died and how Spizz did it—and I bet it will make your nose bleed too.”

“It’s a deal,” she said gleefully, then she slapped me across the butt with her glove. “Good to have you back on the field. Now let’s play ball.”

When the game began I took the outfield. The sky was just growing dark and I kept looking up into the air as if every batter was hitting me a fly ball. And then I heard the J-3 to my left. I looked up and he was coming in low. He didn’t have a lot of room to land and so he was feathering his engine to keep his speed down. I ran as fast as I could to the far fence. By then a few people in the stands had seen him and they began to point. And then I could hear their voices, and then I could only hear the engine of the J-3 as Dad barely cleared the fence and set it down in right field, and then he rolled across center field, and by the time he reached left field he turned the tail rudder and the plane spun around.

At that moment I hopped off the fence and ran as fast as I could along the warning track until I was well past the propeller, then I circled around to the passenger side. Dad leaned over and opened the door and I hopped into the plane.

“Put your seat belt on,” he hollered over the engine noise, and then he hit the throttle and the J-3
hop-hopped
forward and we went speeding across the green outfield grass. For a moment I looked at the infield, and the entire team was just standing as still as painted plastic toys, and then I turned back to look out the windshield just as Dad lifted the nose and we left the ground and rose up over the fence and gained speed as we climbed into the air over Norvelt.

“Take a good look,” Dad hollered above the sound of the prop. “They should put a fence around this town.”

“Like a Japanese internment camp?” I asked.

“More like a museum,” he suggested. “Your mom is right. It’s a piece of history. But like a lot of history, it won’t last. I mean, it’s not like Rome was saved, or Athens. All that is left of them are some stone ruins. And in a few years the wooden Norvelt houses will be hauled off and just the stone basements will be left—and some tombstones. That’ll be the end of it. Of course, there will be a historic plaque recording what Norvelt used to be.”

“But it’s sad that it will be lost,” I said. “The whole idea behind why they built it will be gone.”

“Things change—that’s why they call it
history
,” Dad said. “But before this town is gone for good, let’s give them one more thing to talk about.”

He pulled back on the stick, and when we banked to the left I could see we were headed for the Viking Drive-in.

“Look in the back,” Dad hollered above the noise of the engine and airflow. “You’ll find a milk crate full of balloons—filled with
red
paint!”

“I thought we were doing
water
balloons?”

“Red should leave a little more history,” he said. “Water will evaporate.”

“What’s playing?” I asked.

“
Sink the Bismarck!
” he replied. “Maybe we can help!”

In a minute we were heading directly for the screen. “Grab a balloon,” Dad said. “When I say ‘bombs away,’ let it go.”

Because the sun had just gone down, the black-and-white preview for tonight’s movie was still rolling. On the screen the massive German WWII battleship was being launched. Then the picture changed to a worried British captain and a war-room map of the Atlantic Ocean covered with little toy-sized ships.

“Is this okay to do?” I asked Dad, and held my balloon by the window.

“All is fair in love and war,” he said. “Bombs away!”

We both let the balloons drop, and Dad pulled back on the stick and we climbed into the sky. “Did we hit anything?” I asked.

“You never know until you go in for a second pass,” he said, and laughed like a maniac.

I gave him a balloon and got one for myself, and we turned and headed back toward the screen. Right away I could see that both of us had scored direct hits. Two red blotches had exploded against the black-and-white movie images and the red paint ran like bloody tears down the face of the screen as torpedoes skimmed across the water toward the hull of the
Bismarck
.

Once again Dad went into a dive. “Bombs away!” he shouted. We let go, then quickly climbed up into the air again. There were two more balloons left. “One more time,” he said, “and then we better get out of here before they call the air force on us.”

He steered the plane around and I could see the red splotches on the screen, but this time I also saw that all the cars had started up and their headlights were on and people were running out the pedestrian gate, and it wasn’t funny. Cars were jamming up around the exit and their horns were blowing and a few people were pointing up in the air at us, and I suddenly realized that I was doing it all over again. It was like I was shooting Dad’s Japanese rifle at the screen. Only then I had no idea how frightening it would be if I had shot someone or just scared someone. Now I knew exactly what I was doing. The reason you remind yourself of the stupid stuff you’ve done in the past is so you don’t do it again. That was what Miss Volker had been teaching us all these years.

“Dad,” I said. “Let’s leave. People are scared.”

“We aren’t hurting anything,” he said. “It’s a joke.”

“Maybe this joke isn’t that funny,” I said. “Really. I want down.”

“On the ball field?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. I knew Bunny would think it was really funny. And I knew I would laugh about it with her. But it would be a false laugh because I’d probably get into trouble, and later when I got home Mom would already know I had done something wrong, and I knew that being a jerk in the airplane and scaring people was really stupid. And being stupid at that moment would forever be a part of who I was. If Miss Volker was writing about it for her This Day In History column it might read:

On the morning of August 17, Jack Gantos was released from being grounded by his parents. But stay tuned because on August 18 he might be grounded all over again—unless he remembers his history!

B
Y
J
ACK
G
ANTOS

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Dead End in Norvelt

Text copyright © 2011 by Jack Gantos

All rights reserved

First edition, 2011

mackids.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gantos, Jack.

    Dead end in Norvelt / Jack Gantos. — 1st ed.

       p.   cm.

    Summary: In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses.

    ISBN: 978-0-374-37993-3

    [1.  Behavior—Fiction.   2.  Old age—Fiction.  3.  Norvelt (Pa.)—History—20th century—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

    PZ7.G15334Dd 2011

    [Fic]—dc22