Dead End in Norvelt

by Jack Gantos

  “Anything else you lied about?” I asked.

  “Only you would know if someone is lying,” he boomed out. “The police are with her now. They put her under house arrest and I have to stand guard.”

  “You better not hurt her,” I warned him. “She’s old.”

  “She may be old but she’s a cold-blooded killer,” he howled, and hung up.

  I went back to my room and sulked a little bit as I looked over my collection of obituaries. It seemed impossible for someone like Miss Volker, who loved people, to turn around and hurt them. And I felt pretty rotten for thinking that she might have wanted to kill me too.

  After a while Dad walked in and put his hand on my shoulder. “I just heard about Miss Volker,” he said, and shook his head at the mystery of it. “And I know you are worried about her, so I’ll give you something to take your mind off her. I’m going to fly to Florida in a few days to look for work. I was going to stay and move more empty Norvelt houses to West Virginia, but now the police want to keep them here while they investigate the old-lady deaths, so we can’t even sell our house. This is a good time for me to go, and you can keep busy by helping your mom out.”

  “Am I still grounded?” I asked.

  “Once I’m gone she’ll need you to run errands and stuff,” he said. “I figure she’ll let you off the hook.”

  “Well, what about my flight in the J-3?” I whined. “You promised to take me up.”

  “I thought you turned that ticket in to go play baseball,” he replied.

  “I did, but can’t we do it in secret?” I begged. “When she’s not looking.”

  “Okay,” he figured, “but we’ll have to find a time real soon, and we can’t take off from the house because she’ll spot us and then we’ll both get into even more trouble.”

  “I can sneak away and meet you in a field,” I suggested.

  He nodded. “Yeah,” he said, and smiled secretly at some crazy thought he had. “That’ll work for me.”

  27

  Mom reached into the kitchen cabinet and removed a small basket made of twigs. “This is my wild raspberry–picking basket,” she said proudly, and inspected it to make sure all the twigs were still woven in place. “I made it in this house when my mother ran the Girl Scout meetings in our basement. I got a badge for the best-made basket.”

  “Was your mother the judge?” I asked, and looked her in the eye, then looked back at the basket, which looked like it had been woven by a raccoon.

  “Don’t be a wise guy,” she reproached me gently. “Now I’m going out to hunt for raspberries in the woods up behind Fenton’s gas station. I’ll be back soon because I’m going to make a raspberry tart for Miss Volker to cheer her up. It’s just criminal that she is under house arrest.”

  “Can you bake a pistol into that tart?” I asked. “She must be going insane down there with that creepy Mr. Spizz as her jailer. Just having to listen to him all day would make me want to take a shot at him.”

  “Don’t you worry about Miss Volker,” Mom replied as she headed for the back door. “That machine gun she has for a mouth is more than enough to handle Spizz.”

  She went off to the woods and I sat at the table and slowly paged through the Norvelt News. It was sad that all the Norvelt originals had now died and there were no more obituaries to write except for Mr. Spizz and Miss Volker, and they might just go on living forever as they promised each other. There wasn’t much to read about in the paper—in the Chat Line section a pet ferret had gotten stuck in the tailpipe of a car. The owners were asking for tips on how to get it out. Someone suggested that one person hold a butterfly net behind the tailpipe while another person start the car, which would allow the engine exhaust to blast the ferret out into the net. I’d love to witness that. And then I turned to the back page. As usual, I saved This Day In History for last:

  August 14, 1935: United States Social Security Act was passed (supported by our Mrs. Roosevelt), creating a pension system for the retired.

  August 14, 1945: Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

  I didn’t get to the third one because at that moment I heard a rifle shot, followed by my mother hollering, “Jack! Jack!”

  I ran out to the back porch. I didn’t see her but yelled out anyway, “It wasn’t me! I didn’t fire the rifle!”

  “Come quick!” she shouted. I couldn’t see her though her voice was coming from behind the pony pen. I dashed down the steps and had just cleared the pen when suddenly a small deer crashed out of the underbrush and into our backyard. He had been shot in the neck and the blood was running swiftly from that small entry hole and down the golden curve of his fur, where it gathered brightly in the soft thatch of his heaving chest. He must have been dazed by the bullet because once he ran out into the open he just stood still, as if he wasn’t hurt at all and was only figuring out a safe place to hide. But there was too much blood for anything good to happen.

  From the same path as the deer my mother came crashing out of the woods. She still clutched the empty basket in her hand as she glanced anxiously back over her shoulder to see what was moving from behind. When she turned her head and saw me she hollered out in a razor-sharp voice I’d never heard before. “Jack,” she ordered, “get the rifle and bring it to me. Now!”

  I knew she didn’t mean my dad’s deer rifle, because that was locked up in a special cabinet. She meant the Japanese rifle. I stood there frozen for a second until I could just make out a man in the woods wearing a camouflage hunting outfit and a black ski mask. He stepped from behind a white birch tree and he had a dark rifle held up to his shoulder. It was aimed not at Mom but at the deer. Mom saw it too, and the first thing she did was step into the line of fire between the hunter and the deer, which was still dazed and bleeding and completely motionless except for the steady drops of blood ticking off seconds against the dry summer grass.

  “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 breath
ing 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 bu
llet 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.