by Jack Gantos
“Yep, I was even thinking of starting a museum right here in Norvelt…” Mr. Fenton trailed off as he scratched a part of his body that made me look away.
If it was a museum of human freaks, I thought, he could be the first display. He looked like a human corn grub with crusty wire-rimmed glasses over his bugged-out snow-globe eyes. On his flabby shoulders he had wispy blond hairs that flowed in the wind like corn silk. He reeked of gasoline and altogether he was pretty weird, but he wasn’t dangerous. As Mom said, “He just doesn’t know better. He’s never lived with a woman so he’s like a dog that has gone feral and returned to its wild state. In his case he has turned back into a worm.” She was probably right, but he still wanted a hundred bucks for the car.
Before I drove the tractor over to the cornfield I adjusted the blade on the mower to cut a half inch above dirt level. Then, once I climbed back onto the tractor, I revved the engine, jammed it into gear, and hit the gas. The tractor tires spun and I hung on to the wheel. As I reached the first row of corn I pushed the lever that lowered the mower blade, and right away bits and pieces of cornstalk and chunks of dried dirt went flying out behind me in a thick cloud. From a distance I must have looked like a tornado tearing up the rows of corn. But I didn’t look like a tornado to my mom. I was about halfway through when she must have spotted me from the kitchen window. She ran out to the porch and waved her hands over her head as if she were chasing off an attack of mud wasps. Her mouth was moving but I couldn’t hear her since the tractor was so loud, but I knew why I was in trouble and I could already feel a little blood gathering under my nose. In no time at all she ran across the field and planted herself in front of the tractor to keep me from going forward. I put in the clutch, lifted my foot off the gas, and wiped my nose on the shoulder of my shirt.
“Have you lost your mind?” she yelled, and made a “turn the key off” hand gesture.
I twisted the key and the pistons coughed, then stopped, but she instantly filled the silence.
“What are you doing?” she asked angrily, and pointed wildly at the cornstalks as if they were little half-formed bodies. She picked up a piece of one and held it in her arms.
“Looking for Inca gold,” I said weakly because that’s all that was on my mind. “I want to buy a car.”
“Then you better buy a hearse,” she snapped back, and threw the piece of cornstalk at me.
I ducked and covered my face. “Dad made me do it,” I cried out from behind my hands. “It wasn’t my idea.”
Just then he opened the side door on the garage, which was shaped like a little red barn. Dad called it his office because that was where he kept all his secret stuff.
“Did you tell him to mow the new corn down?” Mom shouted. She was pretty upset.
“Yes,” he replied calmly with his hands fiddling with the tools in his trouser pockets. “I’m going to need this space for a major project.”
“What kind of project,” she asked hotly, “could be more important than growing food for the needy?”
“A bomb shelter,” he said out of the blue, and gazed aimlessly into the glossy sky. “Yep, we need a bomb shelter. The Russian Commies say they are planning to bury us, but I’ve got news for them—we are going to survive whatever atom bomb attack they throw our way.”
The sudden news of building a bomb shelter threw her off. “Well,” she stumbled. “Well, can’t we grow the corn first? Then you can build it?”
“Nope,” Dad declared grandly, “this corn is growing in the way of progress.”
“Well, what about these rows he hasn’t mowed down?” She pointed to what I hadn’t harmed. “Can we keep that? You know I always use the corn crop to fund my meals for the elderly.”
Dad held his hand over his eyes to shade them from the sun as he surveyed the unmowed corn. “I’ll have to measure and see,” he said thoughtfully. “I can’t promise you anything.”
“Well, I keep my promises,” she said firmly. “Especially to the old folks who depend on this food.” Then she turned her anger toward me. “Don’t you dare mow this, mister,” she ordered, and aimed her pointer finger at my throbbing nose. “Don’t you dare!” Then she marched back toward the house.
In my mind I heard her say, “Don’t you dare mow this or I’ll tell your father you fired that sniper rifle.” This was going to be bad. I looked at Dad. He bent over to tie his bootlace. As soon as she was out of earshot he peeked up at me through his eyebrows and said, “Once she goes into the house wait about ten minutes, then I want you to mow down the rest of the corn and meet me in the garage.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Sure I’m sure. When you see what I have stashed inside the garage you’ll know why,” he replied as he stood up and walked away. When I heard the porch door slap shut I knew she had gone inside. For a moment I sat there thinking I could drive the tractor off our property and down the Norvelt road until I got to the river, where I could build a raft and drift away and find a treasure from a Lost World and start my own life. But that thought was useless because I knew the only thing to find around western Pennsylvania was a lump of coal. Instead, I leaned my forehead against the steering wheel and closed my eyes. She’ll kill me, I thought, as I got a head start on dying. The blood was already flowing from my nose and spattering on my blue jeans.
* * *
When Dad had returned home the night before, I heard his truck roll up the gravel driveway. I left my bedroom and crossed the hall into the bathroom where I could peek out the tiny vent window. I saw he was towing a trailer with a tarp roped over it. Once he stopped his truck he hopped out quickly and opened the wide garage doors. He then unhitched the trailer and with a lot of grunting effort he pulled it into the garage. Quickly he closed the doors and snapped the lock through the hasp. We rarely locked the doors so whatever was on that trailer must have been top secret.
By the time he came inside Mom was up to fix him a midnight snack. “How’d the work go?” she asked, and I could hear the ping of her setting a fork on the metal-topped table.
“Good,” he replied. “Real good.” The refrigerator opened and closed and he opened a can of beer. “I believe,” he continued, “if we keep saving money we can think about moving within a year and buying a place in Florida.”
I knew what was coming next. It was the same argument they always had. I don’t know why it didn’t change much, but I guess they each figured the other one was going to give in. Still, they were both pretty stubborn, so giving in wasn’t in them.
“Wouldn’t buying a new house in Florida just put us in debt?” she said. “Maybe we should use the money to make our lives better right here. We could fix up this house—modernize it and stay put.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times,” he said evenly, “that there is nothing for me here in Norvelt and never will be. A thousand years from now it will be just the same as it is now—a dirt-poor Commie town that is dying out.”
“No, it’s not a Commie town,” my mother countered, sounding frustrated. “Stop calling it that. It’s a town set up to give hardworking poor people a helping hand.”
“It was started by that rich Commie Roosevelt woman,” he replied with contempt. “It was built by Commies with Commie money, and is rigged by Commies so that no real man can get ahead in life. If I wanted to live like a Commie, I’d move to Russia!”
“I bet all the Russians wish they could move to Norvelt,” she replied, defending her town. This was where she grew up, and where her parents had built the Norvelt house we moved into once they passed away. She knew and loved everyone in our little town and they loved her too. I never thought we would move away because we all had so much in common.
But Dad wasn’t focused on what we had in common. He was always thinking about all the things he didn’t have, and all the things he wanted. “Well, if that rich Commie woman wanted to help poor people, she should have just given them a big fat check,” Dad suggested. “That would have been a real helping hand.
”
“You don’t mean that,” Mom said, shaming him with the tone of her voice. “You always say people should work for what they have so they will appreciate it better. People want a hand up—not a handout.”
He did always say that and I guess hearing his own words thrown back at him settled him down. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I just want to get ahead in the world and this town is a dead end—basically it’s the same do-nothing day here over and over.”
“Well, I’d rather everyone have the same basic food on their plate,” Mom said, “instead of some rich people eating steak and some poor people eating beans.”
“Or leftover macaroni,” Dad grumbled, and I heard his fork peck at his plate like the turkeys pecking at feed in their tin bowls.
I waited for Mom to say something more but she didn’t. It was so odd how they never really ended a conversation. They just seemed to stop talking at some awkward, cliff-hanging moment and then Mom would attend to washing the dishes and Dad would silently read the newspaper.
I knew Dad wasn’t planning to move us to Russia because they were poorer than we were. He wanted to move to Florida, where a hardworking man could make big money building houses for rich people. But first he had to convince Mom to uproot herself and that was not going to be easy.
* * *
Now as I rested my head against the tractor steering wheel while pinching my nose closed I knew Dad was waiting to hear the engine crank up and for me to do what I was told. As soon as I mow that corn, I said to myself, it will be like lighting the fuse on a stick of dynamite. But I had no choice. I turned the key and got down to business. There were three rows left. I gripped the steering wheel, hit the gas, and mowed down the first row, turned sharply and mowed up the second row, then gunned it down the third row like I was headed for the checkered flag. I glanced over my shoulder and didn’t see Mom as I parked the tractor over by the pony pen. War Chief was rubbing himself against the rough cinder-block wall and snapping his big teeth at the turkeys, who stared back at him with their heads turned sideways as if they were ready for the chopping block. “You better watch yourself,” I warned War Chief as I ran toward the garage. “Mom’s gonna be on the warpath at any moment.”
When I got to the garage I pounded on the door. “Hey, Dad!” I hollered desperately. “Let me in.” I knew he was up to something Mom wouldn’t like, but he knew I could mostly keep a secret except for the times my nose would betray me. All Mom had to do to get the truth out of me was hold me by the chin, look me in the eye, and ask her question. If my nose stayed dry, I was telling the truth. If I leaked one little drop of blood, then she knew I was lying.
I kept pounding on the garage door until he pulled it open. “Get in,” he ordered, and grabbed the front of my T-shirt and yanked me inside. As he closed the door and relocked it my eyes adjusted to the dim garage light, and that’s when I saw the green fuselage of a small airplane on the trailer, with the wings and wheels and other parts carefully laid out on the floor.
“Wow,” I said, staring at it from prop to tail. “What is it?”
“It’s an army surplus J-3,” he said, smiling proudly. “The same as a Piper Cub. We used them during the war as training planes and for spotting enemy subs and all kinds of things.”
“Can you put it together?” I asked, pointing at all the pieces.
“Sure,” he said with confidence. “I took it apart so I suppose I’ll just reverse the process.”
“Do you know how to fly it?”
“Somewhat,” he said loosely, “but I’ll take a few lessons just to keep your mom happy—then I can teach you too.”
“This is why you wanted me to mow the corn, right?” I asked.
He grinned widely. “Yep,” he said. “You and I are building a runway out back and we need that field so we can fly anywhere we want at any time.”
“Cool,” I said. “What about the bomb shelter?”
“We’ll get to that later,” he said dismissively. “We’ll start the runway at the cornfield and that leads to the dirt road out to the long pasture so we’ll get about enough distance to take off.”
“Does Mom know you have the J-3?” I leaned forward and looked into the spare wood-and-canvas cockpit. There were only a few basic instruments, like a big toy.
Just then her voice put a chill in me. “Jackie!” she called out furiously. “Jackie?” She called me Jack when Dad was gone and Jackie when he was home. She rattled the barn door.
“Not a sound out of you,” Dad whispered.
Mom pulled on the door even harder. “Jackie, if you are in there playing with your dad’s Japanese stuff again I’m going to tell him about the other night.”
I looked up at Dad in horror.
“Have you been messing with my Jap stuff?” he whispered, and got a grip on my forearm. “I told you never to touch it.”
I felt the blood run over my upper lip and then I could taste it.
“What happened the other night?” he asked.
I pulled my T-shirt up over my face with my free arm.
Mom rattled the door. “Jackie! If you are hiding in there I’m going to kick this door down and punish you for the rest of your very short life.”
Dad pointed to the closed half-high door on the other side of the garage which years ago led to an outside pen for goats and sheep.
“Can I borrow your baseball glove?” I quickly asked as I pointed to where it hung by a nail. “I’ve got a practice and Bunny and the team are waiting for me.”
“Grab it and run,” he said as Mom kicked the door and a weathered piece of the bottom board cracked off. “Now scat!” he said. “I’ll cover your butt, but you better tell me about the Jap stuff when you get back.”
I grabbed the glove, then pulled open the short door. I ran up through the thick woods behind the garage. A few deer bolted when they saw me. I veered off and passed beyond Fenton’s gas station and around the town dump where hundreds of rats were picking through the trash before I circled back down to the baseball fields beside the Roosevelt Community Center to meet my friend, Bunny Huffer.
5
Maybe since there were so few kids in our town we did things differently, because even though Bunny was a girl the size of one of Santa’s little helpers she was still my best friend. She was so short she could run full speed under her dining room table without ducking. I tried it once and nearly decapitated myself. Her real name was Stella Huffer and her father owned the funeral parlor, but she made everyone call her Bunny. Her father sponsored our baseball team, so we were nicknamed the Huffer Death Squad, which made sense because we were really named the Pirates after the Pittsburgh team and we had a skull and crossbones on our caps.
Bunny had a great sense of humor. She’d take her double position at shortstop and second base and yell out to the rest of us, “Look alive, you bunch of stiffs.” She had about a million dead person jokes. She said her father’s spongy felt suit was the color of black lungs. It smelled like pickled onions. When you shook his limp hand he was like a scary doll that whispered, “Goodbye, dearly departed. Rest in peace.” Once we had some hamburger spoil in our refrigerator and when I opened the refrigerator door it smelled just like Mr. Huffer. I mentioned it to Mom and she replied that if you think about it a refrigerator is just a coffin for food that stands upright. Then she made me take the rotten meat up to the dump. I threw it to a nest of rats and ran for my life.
Bunny was a great girl who was better than any guy I knew because she was tough, smart, and daring. Because she grew up in a house full of dead people she wasn’t afraid of anything. When I was first getting to know her we were in a viewing room at the funeral parlor looking at a new line of cigar-shaped caskets that were called “Time Capsules of the Future.” They were made out of polished aluminum and seemed very sleek with a little glass window where the cadaver’s face could be viewed. The idea was you were buried with all your favorite things and in a thousand years a relative would dig you up and sift th
rough your rotted remains and stuff. It was kind of a disgusting thought.
But it wasn’t disgusting to her. “I’m going to take one to school for show-and-tell,” she said. “How much will you give me if I ask old Principal Knox to try it on for size?”
She turned to me for an offer. But I couldn’t say anything because the subject of death made me pale and feel cold except for the very tip of my nose, which was heating up like a match head about to combust. I started to back away from her.
She sensed my fear and edged even closer to me. “I think coffins are old-fashioned,” she remarked, and made a disapproving face. “I’d rather be cremated and have my ashes blasted into orbit like Sputnik and go beeping around the planet for all of eternity. Now that would be cool. But Dad doesn’t like cremation because he doesn’t make any money at it except for what it costs him to burn people to a crisp and put them in a Mason jar.”
By then I had backpedaled so far I was pressed against a heavy purple velvet curtain that divided the back of the viewing room from the front.
“You’re afraid of dead people,” she suddenly said. “Aren’t you?”
Before I could deny that accusation she reached out with her short muscular arm and grabbed my shirt. “Come on,” she ordered, and with her other hand she pulled the center of the curtain to one side. “You need to see your first dead person and then you won’t be afraid anymore.”
I wasn’t sure about that theory. I quickly lizard-licked my upper lip but didn’t taste any blood. So far I hadn’t humiliated myself, but I knew the worst was still to come.
On the other side of the curtain was a closed coffin displayed on a polished wood platform. Without pausing she went up and with both hands lifted the lid. She propped the lid on a metal rod as if she were propping open a car hood. There was a dead old man in there. He was dressed in a white suit and his face was tinted with flesh-colored makeup. I stared at him. His eyes were a tiny bit open, like an alligator peeking back at me.