From Norvelt to Nowhere (Norvelt Series)

by Jack Gantos

  I really didn’t have a tin of 1080 vermin poison in my brown paper bag. I had a Black Cat shoe-polish tin and I had painted a skull and crossbones on it with the numbers 1080. Instead of Girl Scout Thin Mints I had a wax-paper sleeve of Oreos.

  We walked into the Employees Only area of the funeral parlor, where Bunny’s mom and dad outfitted and applied face makeup on the cadavers before they posed them in the coffin for a public viewing.

  Mrs. Huffer was modeling a nun’s outfit in the mirror as if she were dressing up for Halloween. “Don’t mind Mom,” Bunny said once we hurried by her and slipped into a big storage room. “She’s just making sure the blood is washed out of Sister Maria’s habit before we send her back up to Seton Hill for burial.”

  Bunny opened a low cabinet door and lifted out a fishing-tackle box. When she opened it the rows of small trays folded outward like stair steps. “Your nose is too small and it swoops up,” she said after carefully examining my face. “Spizz has a big potato nose.” She reached into one of the trays and pulled out a wad of flesh-looking putty.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Cadaver wax,” she said, working it in her hand until it took on the lumpy shape of a big nose. “It will stick to anything. It’s really handy for plugging up holes in people after bad car accidents and facial gunshot wounds. Dad uses it all the time. Give him a photograph and he can rebuild a face for a close-to-perfect open-casket look. Now hold still.”

  I did and she pressed the wax nose hard against my own nose. “No bleeding,” she ordered, and did some forceful pinching and final shaping until she was pleased with the outcome. “There,” she remarked, “that is an authentic-looking Spizz honker.”

  “Great,” I said, shaking off the nose pain.

  “Do you want some yellow facial warts?” she asked, holding up a ribbon of glossy paper lined with gummy flesh dots. “Spizz had warts.”

  “Might as well,” I agreed, and stuck my chin out as she pressed one on each side.

  Then she snatched a pair of scissors out of the box. “Your hair needs a trim,” she declared in a very determined way. “Spizz had a crew cut.”

  “Oh no,” I protested. “I like my hair long.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said, coming at me with the open scissors. “Even after you die your hair keeps growing. Now lean forward.”

  I did and she went to work on me. The hair fell like grass clippings to the floor. It didn’t take her long, and when I ran my hand over my head I felt like I had become a little Spizz. It was disturbing. Then she took out a plastic bottle of powder and sprinkled it over my head and rubbed it in until what hair I had left was mostly gray.

  “Wow,” she said, pleased with her work. “You look just like him, only smaller—like his kid or something. It’s freakish.”

  The thought of looking like Spizz Junior did not thrill me. And once Bunny and I started trick-or-treating we found out it did not thrill anyone else in Norvelt. After the first two houses we visited slammed their doors on us I turned to Bunny and said, “I think I should go home and change. Nobody likes my costume—in fact, they hate it.”

  “Don’t be so thin-skinned,” Bunny advised. “Ignore them.”

  “It’s hard to ignore people who say, ‘I’m going to call your mother and tell her how shameful you are.’ Or ‘You must take after your father because you think being cruel is funny.’”

  “Okay, okay,” Bunny agreed. “It’s clear this town has lost its sense of humor. You can’t even crack a war joke without people going up in smoke. So let’s go hit Mrs. Custard’s house so I can do my Custer’s last stand routine and you can go crying wee-wee-wee-all-the-way-home and change into your crummy old costume.”

  I agreed, but as we walked to house E-19 my every footstep seemed to take me down a bad path to something that was even worse. First, when we passed the Hells Angels clubhouse they were giving cans of beer out to little kids.

  “Repeat after me,” ordered a drunken Hells Angel dressed as a Viking warrior. “When I grow up I’m going to be a badass.”

  Bunny turned to go up their sidewalk.

  “I’m a badass Indian,” she hollered out, and waved her hatchet around. “And I want a beer or I’ll scalp me a Viking!”

  “You’re too short to be a badass!” I growled, and yanked her away by her Indian braids.

  “You’re no fun,” she griped as we moved on.

  I picked up my pace because we were approaching a lot where the house had been jacked up and trucked away, leaving nothing behind but a sinister black hole of a basement. It looked like a mass grave big enough to hold everyone in Norvelt.

  “Do you want to hide in there and scare kids?” she asked, and pointed at the sinister foundation.

  “The only scared kid would be me,” I replied. “Let’s just go to Mrs. Custard’s house and get this over with. I’m nervous enough as it is.”

  “Well don’t start bleeding,” she said. “Spizz didn’t get nosebleeds and you’ll ruin your disguise.”

  I reached up and touched my nose, but it was dry.

  We quickly passed two more houses, then I took a deep breath and turned up Mrs. Custard’s crooked path of mossy paving stones. The walk was lined with squat tubs of dead shrubs, and their dried-out branches clawed through our costumes like the twisted legs of upturned cats. The sagging thatch of several trees made a dark burrow of Mrs. Custard’s walkway. I kept slipping on the stones and the skin across my knees and around my ankles felt shredded. I stooped over to scratch my wounds. The same fear that sent me running from the Community Center had me walking on my tiptoes like a spooked rabbit ready to bolt. By the time I reached Mrs. Custard’s front door, and at the very moment my shaking fingertip grazed her bell, she suddenly yanked open the door.

  “Boo,” she said softly.

  I let out a yelp and shot up into the air like an electrified spring. She yelped right back at me. That made me yelp a second time, because her face was shrunken inward like a rotten apple and when she yelped her false teeth jutted forward like a rack of small ribs.

  But only her teeth were scary. When I landed on my feet I saw she was dressed just like a plump old lady in a pleated pink housedress, with fuzzy pink slippers and a pink sleeping cap that looked like swoopy strawberry icing. Her body was sort of cupcake-shaped and I thought maybe she was wearing a pastry costume.

  “Hello, nice children of Norvelt,” she said, greeting us so sweetly I felt even worse.

  “Trick or treat,” I said without much fanfare, and then stepped forward and went into my crude Spizz act. “Would you like a poisoned Girl Scout cookie?” I asked in a slobbery old-man voice, and offered her an Oreo.

  “How kind of you,” she replied, and that’s when I noticed she was already holding a real Girl Scout Thin Mint in her other hand. She pointed to me with it and said with some amazement, “Not a moment ago a man gave me this cookie. He had a nose and warts just like yours and could have doubled as your grandfather. He rode up on a very large tricycle.”

  “Spizz!” I shouted as she raised the Thin Mint to her open mouth to take a bite. “He’s back!”

  “Don’t eat that cookie!” Bunny cried out, and took a leaping swing at it with her hatchet. But she was too short and missed.

  Startled, Mrs. Custard stepped back, popped the Girl Scout cookie into her mouth, and crunched down on it.

  “Spit it out!” Bunny and I yelled at once.

  We must have scared her because she gasped and right away started to choke, but then with a determined dry gulp she sucked the cookie down.

  “Spit it back up,” I ordered, and held my candy bag open in front of her mouth. “Spit now! It’s poison!”

  “I’ll just get a glass of water from the kitchen sink,” she said, and swallowed roughly as she tried to clear her throat. “I don’t want to spit up in front of you nice children.”

  Bunny raised her hatchet. “We aren’t nice children,” she cried out. “Now spit in the bag or I’ll scalp
you!”

  Mrs. Custard leaned forward and reached for my bag but there was a sudden weakness in her legs, as if her bones were melting, and she dipped down a little at the knees like a curtsy before the queen. At that moment she looked directly into my eyes and I could see the sudden confusion in hers. Then she gagged and backed slowly down the hall like a troubled ghost retreating weakly into another world. She vanished through the open parlor doorway and a moment later only came back in sight within my mind when I heard her hit the floor with a solid thud and the windows rattled in their dry casings.

  “Last stand,” Bunny whispered, and snapped her fingers.

  “Don’t be cruel,” I said harshly, scolding her in the same voice as I scolded myself. Then I shoved her forward. “Go help her up. Get her some water. I’ll run and get Miss Volker.”

  It only took me a minute to cut through yards and reach Miss Volker’s house. I pounded across the porch and ran inside shouting, “Miss Volker! Miss Volker! Mrs. Custard was poisoned by the return of Spizz and Bunny thinks she’s had her last stand.”

  “That’s not a very amusing Halloween story,” Miss Volker growled out from the kitchen, where she had just finished loosening up her stiff hands in a hot pot of melted paraffin. “Be courteous toward the elderly.”

  “But I’m telling the truth,” I replied desperately.

  “The truth is most convincing when delivered with respect, young man. Remember that,” she advised as she peeled the drying wax from her hands. “Tell me what’s happened.”

  I took a deep breath and enunciated in my well-mannered movie voice: “Miss Volker, our dear neighbor Mrs. Custard has just seemingly been poisoned by a Girl Scout cookie we believe was given to her by Mr. Spizz, the 1080 murderer who is still on the loose, and now she has had her last stand and dropped to the floor and I’m guessing she may have ceased to live, but if she is alive and can be saved then she could use your help now!”

  “God, you are long-winded,” she remarked, and threw the last strip of wax into the hand-cooking pot as I grabbed her medical bag, which always sat at the ready next to the door. “You should be a politician. Now let’s go.”

  Miss Volker was a brisk walker, but even if we had flown through the air on witches’ broomsticks, there was nothing that could be done for Mrs. Custard.

  When we arrived Mr. Huffer was already standing in the parlor with his black hat off in respect for the dead. He had covered her with a dark rubber sheet that resulted in Mrs. Custard looking like something suffocated under a collapsed trampoline. Bunny had called him on the house’s telephone, and now we were all awkwardly standing around the crumpled sheet waiting for the police to arrive.

  That’s just when Miss Volker looked me up and down and realized the identity of my costume. “I thought you knew better than to dress as Mr. Spizz,” she said sharply. “I should have the police arrest you for callous disregard of human life.” Then she abruptly turned her sickened face away and refused to look at me.

  I had already used up all my “I’m sorrys” for the day, so I quietly parked myself in a corner like a junior criminal menace and picked off my warts and stuck them to the bottom of my shoe.

  The police arrived and eventually asked me to explain what had happened a couple different times. I told them what I saw, but not how I felt. Then the volunteer ambulance pulled up with a doctor from Mount Pleasant and soon they were hauling poor Mrs. Custard out on a stretcher. When no one seemed to need me anymore I turned and began to walk back home.

  On the way I passed the Community Center, which was always unlocked. I was so worked up I thought I’d go in and just borrow back one of the comics I hadn’t read yet to later help me wind down and go to sleep.

  I crept inside and quickly dashed downstairs to the donation table and chose my Moby-Dick. When I turned around I noticed a thin light shining out from the crack under Spizz’s old office door. It chilled me to think that he had returned to poison Mrs. Custard, and if it was him in there now I had to do something. Even though I told myself to be brave I was still afraid of him. After all, he was a cold-blooded murderer, and adding my name to his long list of victims wouldn’t bother him one little bit.

  I grabbed a woman’s clunky shoe from the donation table and threw it at his door.

  The light didn’t go off and I didn’t hear any movement.

  “Is someone in there?” I hollered. No answer. I knew the next thing I had to do was to open the door and stick my head in to take a look, but my hand would not reach for the knob. I was so terrified I just shrank down into a little baby version of myself and like a shameful coward crept silently up the basement steps and out the Community Center’s entrance.

  “You’re willing … to scare an old lady … to death,” I stuttered to myself as I tiptoed down the front stairs, “but you don’t have the backbone to catch her killer.”

  I felt disgraceful and slunk away like a spineless shape. I lowered my head. A stone statue knew more about the darkness inside itself than I knew what was inside of me. I was alive, but nothing more.

  I had just passed the unlit back corner of the building when I heard a twig snap and then something warm and bony clamped down on the back of my neck. I shrieked and twisted my head left and right but couldn’t get away from the grip, which held me firmly like the talons of a hawk.

  “Gantos boy,” growled Miss Volker, mimicking Spizz’s meat-grinder voice as she kept me hooked with her curled hand. “I’ll see you down at my house in the morning. We have an obit to write up.”

  “Okay,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath as she released her hold.

  “And remember,” she said severely, “when you go around scaring old ladies they will get you back.”

  “That costume was a real mistake,” I admitted, then turned tail and trotted off.

  I circled around to the rear of our house and entered through the back door as Mom passed out candy at the front of the house to some normal kid in a clown outfit.

  I slipped into the bathroom to wash up. When I looked into the mirror that stupid Spizz nose was still stuck on my face, only it was smushed off to one side from my wrestling to get away from Miss Volker. I reached up to pull it off but then I paused. I knew better than to imitate Spizz. He was a murderer and a criminal—the lowest of the low—and it was disgraceful of me to sink lower than him.

  I turned away and yanked off that ugly nose as if it were a big blood-sucking tick and I threw it into the trash can. I never wanted to see that Spizz nose again.

  3

  That night I read Moby-Dick and afterward I dreamed I bled a cask of blood from my nose. When I woke I expected to find my pillow had been wrestled into the shape of a soggy red whale. But it was solid white.

  I hopped up and looked into the mirror but there was no red tide of blood foaming around my nose and trickling over my lips and chin. In Moby-Dick it was pretty gruesome to read how whales were tracked and harpooned until the windblown plumes of blood sprayed like flags of death from their red wounds. The whales died slowly and were hauled across the water to the mother ship and chained onto the side. Then they were gradually rotated so the blubber could be peeled from the flesh in one thick spiral, like peeling the coarse skin of an orange in a single strand. The crew axed the tough blubber into chunks and dropped the slippery pieces into cast-iron tubs and boiled them down into oil that was poured into casks and stored in the belly of the ship. The worthless carcass of the whale was then cut loose and a frenzy of sharks stripped the meat from the bones until the weight of the white skeleton slowly pulled what little sinew remained to the bottom of the ocean.

  It was cruel how men could take the life of a mighty whale, which at one time could launch itself thirty feet above the churning surface of the ocean, and pitifully reduce it down to a minnow-sized flame that flickered in a bright dance from the spout of a small brass lamp. If only Aladdin could rub that lamp and wish the tiny flame back into a whale.

  And I wished too that I could turn M
rs. Custard back into her old self, but no one could bring back the dead. I didn’t kill her, but maybe she wouldn’t have eaten that Girl Scout cookie, I agonized, if I hadn’t dressed up as Spizz Junior. Maybe she would have thrown that poison Thin Mint in the trash instead of taking a bite out of it.

  Then I imagined that Mrs. Custard could have given it to Bunny to eat, which was a dreadful picture to paint because then Bunny would have had her own “last stand” and landed on that toy hatchet. Or worse, Mrs. Custard might have given it to me and I might have saved it and later given it to my mother as a treat. That was a torturous thought, and that’s another reason why all night long I had tossed and turned and dreamed like a harpooned whale gushing blood onto my pillow.

  Perhaps Mrs. Custard would have eaten the cookie even if I hadn’t dressed up like Spizz, but now I’d never know. Screaming out “Trick or treat!” on Halloween had always been so much fun. Now it would always seem like the shameful battle cry of a child assassin.

  When I made up my bed I tried to put the dream of the bloody pillow out of my mind, but there was no masking what had happened at Mrs. Custard’s house. And there was no hiding from wondering who I might have discovered at the Community Center if I had been brave enough to have kicked open Spizz’s old office door when I heard the file drawers being slammed around. Maybe then I could have caught the killer in the act of sprinkling 1080 on that cookie before he delivered it. If I hadn’t been such a coward and slunk away, nothing bad might have happened.

  I was my own worst company, so I shuffled down the hall. Mom was weeding through her long cave of a closet for more old stuff to donate to the tag sale.

  I leaned against the closet doorjamb and casually said, “I’m going down to Miss Volker’s house to help with an obit.”

  “Oh, no. Who died?” she asked, and tossed some tangled wire hangers in my direction.

  When Mom cleaned house she fell into a world of her own. Obviously, she hadn’t heard the news yet. “A person who recently moved to town,” I said nonchalantly. “I only saw her once and she didn’t look too well.” That wasn’t the complete truth but it wasn’t a complete lie either.