Dead End in Norvelt

by Jack Gantos

  I took a step back and quickly touched my nose. I glanced at my finger—no blood yet—but to be on the safe side I kept my hand pressed over my mouth like a window awning. I didn’t want to drip blood on my clean white shirt.

  “Clearly,” I heard Miss Volker say from where the victim’s head would be, “there can be no doubt that the main cause of death is a massive skull fracture.”

  “No doubt about it,” Mr. Huffer agreed sadly, and I imagined he struck his classic one-hand-on-hip mournful pose while his other hand reached out to pat someone on the shoulder. That’s what made him look like a human teapot. “This is the most massive head fracture I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Even worse than that of Dan Eakins.”

  “Of course it’s worse!” Miss Volker said impatiently. “Dan was only split through the head with the pig-shaped weather vane that flew off a barn. Now let me see that police report.”

  I heard her rustle through some papers for a minute before she began to speak. “It’s hard to believe a man could dance this much,” she remarked. “Because it says here that he started dancing a jig in a Mount Pleasant bar then danced out the door. Some drivers claimed to have just missed hitting him as he danced all the way here, and that is three miles from where he started. Mr. Spizz was the last to see him—said he was putting air in his tricycle tires up at Bob Fenton’s gas station early this morning after poisoning rats at the dump when the stranger strutted by, and a couple minutes later he was flattened.”

  Mr. Huffer cleared his throat. “And,” he began, “the truck driver said the last thing he saw was the man gyrating wildly with his arms and legs pumping up and down as if he was on the dance floor.”

  Bunny sidled up to me and whispered, “Did you see the big meat cleaver tattoo on his chest?”

  “You know I didn’t,” I replied impatiently, and felt a shiver of fear run up my spine.

  “What is great about it,” she said, ignoring me as I swayed back and forth in my white shirt like a bowling pin about to fall over, “is that it looks like the cleaver has chopped open his flesh so you can see his open heart, which is black. And in the middle of the black heart is the laughing red face of the devil. Isn’t that spooky?”

  I couldn’t listen to her anymore. My head felt like a balloon that was swelling up and about to blow into another massive head fracture.

  “Okay,” Miss Volker said dramatically. “I’ll sign the death certificate and release the body to you and you can do with him what you will.” Her voice had become really loud and I thought it was because I was about to faint. I felt my forehead. It was hot. Hang in there, I said to myself.

  I knew that Miss Volker’s hands must be cold by now and she’d be ready to leave. I was right, and in a moment I heard the slow scrawling of the pen on the death certificate. “There,” she said, “he’s all yours.”

  “I can keep the body in the freezer for a few days,” Mr. Huffer said evenly, “but if no one claims him then the Norvelt paupers’ fund will only pay for cremation. I’d like to give him a proper burial but no one will pay for it.”

  “Good enough,” Miss Volker said. “We’ve done all we can.”

  Bunny tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “The show is over and it looks like you just saw a ghost.”

  I staggered out the back door and into the parking lot and took a deep breath. “I’ve seen a million dead people in the movies,” I said. “But real ones nearly kill me.”

  “The movies are all fake,” she remarked. “They use animal blood. And they never give you the smell of death. I do admit this was the deadest guy I’ve ever seen. I mean, he was really flat.”

  I was so relieved when Miss Volker came out. Quickly I helped her into the car and started it up. “Do you want me to assist with the obit?” I asked, and gunned the engine as we burned rubber onto the road.

  “I’ll have to ponder this one overnight,” she said, lost in thought. “The dancing part reminds me of something, of some convulsive condition I read about once. I’ll do some research. Come down in the morning and we’ll tackle the obit.” Then she pointed at my shirt. “Your nose is leaking.”

  I looked down. The big red splotch on my shirt looked like a real bleeding heart.

  “Mom’s gonna kill me,” I moaned. “This shirt is still mostly new.”

  “Bring the shirt tomorrow,” she said. “I have some chemicals in the garage that will send that stain to the Promised Land.”

  “Great,” I said. “Because if Mom sees this she’ll send me to the Promised Land.”

  “We can’t allow that to happen,” she remarked. “You are my right-hand man.”

  I glanced at her hands. They were crossed in her lap like two old gloves.

  10

  The next day, as usual, Miss Volker called early but Mom was up even earlier. It was her day to cook for the Norvelt Meals for the Elderly program, and she was singing along with the radio as she chopped mushrooms she had gathered up in the woods by the town dump. After a quick breakfast I cleaned myself up a bit then hid my bloody white shirt in a bag and walked swiftly toward the back door. “See you later,” I called out.

  “Not so fast,” Mom ordered. “When you come back I want you to deliver these casseroles to the Community Center. Mr. Spizz will deliver them to the ladies who called in for a home-cooked meal.”

  “Mr. Spizz,” I said with disgust. “Doesn’t he bug you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But in a small town you have to forgive people for their faults no matter if you want to or not.”

  “I guess,” I said, wishing he’d forgive me for forgetting about the weeds and rip up the ticket.

  “So don’t be too late,” she cautioned. “Old people like to eat dinner at four in the afternoon, and they get ornery if they get too hungry.”

  “I’ll be on time,” I promised. Then I was out the door. Dad was on the tractor, still working with the heavy road roller in order to flatten the waves out of the runway. In the summer he liked to get started early on chores before the sun blazed down on him.

  “Hey!” he yelled when he saw me, and cut the engine back. “You still have some diggin’ to finish.” He pointed toward the bomb shelter and the sharpness in his voice and the stiffness of his jabbing pointer finger told me he meant business.

  “Hey!” I yelled back, and shrugged forlornly. “I still have to help Miss Volker.” I kicked a rock toward her house.

  “You should be helping me out around here,” he said, “instead of working for that nut who’s got one foot in the grave.”

  I pointed toward the kitchen and lowered my voice. “I’m just following orders.”

  He gave me an I-know-what-you-mean look and put the tractor back to work, and I happily ran down to Miss Volker’s house thinking I had really dodged a bullet. Nothing could be worse than digging that fake bomb shelter. It was a project as imaginary as digging a hole to China. At least Dad’s work would lead to something. Once he finished the runway he could fly away. Once I finished digging the bomb shelter I would probably be buried in it.

  When I entered Miss Volker’s living room she was standing in front of the needlepoint map of Norvelt and looking over the small number of surviving original homesteaders. There were medical textbooks opened to various pages and spread out across my little writing desk, the couch, the floor, and anywhere she could find free space. She must have been up all night.

  “We have a huge day today,” she announced enthusiastically, “and I have it organized just right in my mind. First, we go down to the drugstore to get some supplies for your nose operation and some wax for my hands. Then we’ll come back—I’ll heat up my hands, do the operation, and then dictate the obit to you. Got it?”

  “Yep,” I said uneasily, “except I have to make sure to get Mom’s casseroles to the Community Center on time.”

  “Do I get one?” she asked, and held up her hands. “About all I can grab is a cookie.”

  “Only if you sign up for it in advance,” I
explained. “Call the Community Center and get on the home meals delivery list.”

  “Can you request anything you want?” she asked. “I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Mom would cook anything for you.”

  “Well, let’s get our day started,” she suggested. “It’s a big one.”

  I grabbed her purse and followed her out to the car, happy to drive again.

  In less than three minutes we entered the Rumbaugh drugstore. Miss Volker marched toward the back and showed me where the blocks of special wax were kept.

  “Can’t you just take a pill for your hands?” I asked as we strolled down the aisle of instant fix-it supplies for bad stomachs, headaches, excess mucus, and other ailments.

  “Maybe,” she replied. “But like the Indians I’d rather discover my own medicines. They were smart enough to make natural remedies, and they knew what would cure you or what would kill you.”

  “Are you saying the Indians cooked their hands in hot wax?” I asked. “Because I don’t think they had wax.”

  “Use your head,” she snapped back. “They had beeswax. And tree sap. They could heat that up. How do you think they waterproofed their canoes?”

  “I thought they used animal fat,” I guessed.

  Suddenly, Miss Volker stopped fast and her face knotted up into a bony fist. “You see that man,” she said loudly to me, and pointed her quivering chin at Mr. Spizz. “That man,” continued Miss Volker with contempt in her voice, “is the town irritant.”

  He couldn’t help but hear her. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a smirk on his face. “I thought you were sitting around your house all lonely and waiting to die.”

  “Not yet,” she replied. “I’m waiting for you to go first.”

  “Mrs. Roosevelt gave me the job of keeping this town in good repair and I’m going to do my best till my last breath,” he said.

  “That can be arranged,” Miss Volker whispered to me. Then she turned to Mr. Spizz. “Listen,” she said sternly. “Mrs. Roosevelt appointed me to be the chief medical examiner and that is a far more important job than going around scraping gum off of sidewalks or stepping on ants, so you have my permission to do your civic duty and drop dead.”

  “Look at you,” he said, pointing to her cupped hands, “you can’t even feed yourself with those crab claws. How can you keep anyone else in good health?”

  “By using my head,” she replied swiftly. “And for the health of this town I think you should take a long walk off a short pier.”

  “You’re the one waiting for everyone to die around here, so why don’t you set a good example and lead the way,” he said.

  “Well, I plan to live to be a hundred,” she stated.

  “I’ll be a hundred and one,” he said with bravado.

  “I’ll be a hundred and two,” she said, topping him.

  “A hundred and three for me,” he continued.

  “A hundred and four,” she said strongly.

  I didn’t want to get involved, but Mr. Spizz turned to me and said, “If you are her new boyfriend you should know that she is very immature. She always has been.”

  I looked toward Miss Volker for help.

  “That old pain in the neck is just jealous of you,” she said, and cackled. “He thinks you are my beau.”

  “I am your boy friend,” I said to Miss Volker. “Now come along. Just walk away from this. Don’t sink to his level.”

  She pulled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. “I’ll sign your death certificate, mister,” she said with confidence. “Mark my words, you should be euthanized like a garden pest.”

  He pointed at her hands and let out a mean-old-man har-har-har laugh. “You can’t even swat flies with those hands, much less sign a death certificate. You’ve had this job too long. You’re in a rut, and you should be worried about that because the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth!”

  She smiled. “Good one,” she called back. “I’ll use it when I write your obituary.” Then she turned and marched up to the pharmacy window. On the way she whispered to me, “He’s so stupid. Honestly, when he makes alphabet soup it spells out D-U-M-B.”

  Once we bought the wax and some topical medicine to numb the inside of my nose, we marched back out of the store.

  Mr. Spizz was standing outside. “Hey, Gantos boy,” he said, pointing at me. “I know you did a lousy job cutting down those gutter weeds and earned your family a ticket.”

  “So?” I said hesitantly.

  “So I heard your dad is building a runway on your property. That’s against the zoning laws around here.”

  “What’s zoning?” I asked, looking more toward Miss Volker than him.

  “It’s what you can build and where you are allowed to build it,” she said. “But pay no attention to that bully. In Norvelt you can be as free as a bird—or a plane.”

  “Just tell your dad,” he said, “that I’ve already submitted his zoning violation to the Community Council meeting.”

  I nodded, and reached for Miss Volker’s elbow and escorted her to the car as gently as I could. Mr. Spizz watched us all the way. He shouldn’t have given me that ticket, because now I wanted him to see that I really was her boyfriend and that he should be jealous of me.

  The moment we pulled out of the parking lot she said, “He and I used to date before Norvelt was built. He wanted to get married but I had my nursing career and held him off. Still, he kept asking over and over to marry me. I guess he wore me down, and in a weak moment I made the mistake of saying I’d marry him once all the original Norvelters were dead and my duty to Mrs. Roosevelt was over. I figured that was safe to say because he’d be dead by now—but he keeps living!”

  “You sound pretty upset,” I remarked, but I was still confused about their argument in the store because I had read the card he had left on her box of candy and I knew he did like her.

  “I’m not upset,” she said, and smiled broadly. “I love mixing it up with him. I guess it’s a game we play since we both missed out on the joys of marital arguing—keeps my blood flowing.”

  Now I was even more confused because she said she liked arguing with him. Maybe Dad was right. He said both of them were nuts.

  “We can skip my nose if you want,” I suggested, thinking of my own good health.

  “Oh, no,” she replied with enthusiasm. “I’ve been looking forward to knocking the rust off of these hands and performing an operation to keep your blood from flowing,” she continued. “So don’t you worry. I’ll be gentle, and it just takes a moment.”

  * * *

  After we entered her house she had me drape a bedsheet over the kitchen table.

  “So here is how this is going to work,” she explained. “We’ll deaden your nose and then I’ll cook my hands, and when they are working I’ll quickly heat up the cauterizing wire and do the work on you. More than likely my hands will tire and seize up, so I’ll have to recook them and heat up the wire and work on you in shifts, but we’ll get it. Okay?”

  “Are you sure I shouldn’t go to a doctor?” I ventured.

  “Don’t insult me,” she said firmly. “I’m a nurse, and I’m telling you that I can handle this. Nothing is wrong with the iron in your blood. It’s just your nose capillaries, which are too bundled up and delicate on the inside surface of your nasal passages. I’ll burn them off and you’ll be fine. You got that? It’s easy-peasy.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But are you sure it will work?”

  “These hands have delivered babies,” she stated. “I’ve stitched up miles of gaping wounds and set a hundred broken bones and pulled a gallon jar full of rotten teeth—I even had to pop an eyeball back into its socket, so don’t question me. Now get onto the table.”

  I climbed up and took my place on the table as if I were one of Mr. Huffer’s cadavers. Next to me she laid out the Q-tips, a magnifying glass, the bottle of anesthetic, and the cauterizing instrument, which was a wooden
handle with a six-inch-long thickish wire coming out of one end. On the tip of the wire was a tiny scorched blade. As she turned away to heat up her hands all I could imagine was that she would aim the instrument into a nose hole, have a hand spasm, and drive it up my nasal passage until she jammed the hot little blade into the soft, creamy center of my brain, and I would end up being a babbling idiot for the rest of my life.

  “Go ahead and swab your nasal passages with a good dose of the anesthetic,” she instructed. “And don’t be stingy with it. Believe me, you don’t want to feel any of this pain.”

  I sure didn’t.

  While I swabbed the inside of my nose with the Q-tip, she got busy with cooking her hands. After she removed them from the pot and peeled off the hot wax, she held them up in the air.

  “Watch this,” she called, and wiggled her rusty fingers back and forth while singing, “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout.”

  That really didn’t make me relax. I tried to smile, but I had swabbed on so much anesthetic my lips were frozen in place like fish in a frozen pond.

  Then quickly she heated up the wire and pulled it out of the flame. It was red-hot, and a puff of smoke rose from what I guessed was a little scrap of human tissue that had been stuck on the blade from her last operation. I whimpered.

  “Don’t look at it,” she ordered. “You’ll flinch and I’ll scorch you—and then you’ll really have something to bleed about.”

  “How do your hands feel?” I asked shakily as she came toward me.

  “Rock steady,” she declared. “Now close your eyes.”

  I did, and waited for the pain.

  A few moments later she asked, “Did you feel that?”

  “Feel what?” I replied.

  “If you didn’t feel the map pin I just stuck into the tip of your nose,” she said, “then you are ready. Let’s get this done.”

  I crossed my eyes and looked down at my nose. There was a red-topped pin sticking straight out of my nose, but before I could say anything she came at me. I took a deep breath and clutched the tabletop on either side. I lifted my nose up into the air so she could get a clear view. I felt her dark shadow bend over me. I sensed the beam of her flashlight up my nose, and then slowly she inserted the red-hot wire into my nasal cavity. I waited for the searing pain, but I couldn’t feel a thing. The anesthesia was working. However, I could smell something nasty. “What is that odor?” I mumbled, not daring to move my face or neck.