by Jack Gantos
“How do you know about Florida?” I asked too quickly, and I could feel my heart racing, because now I thought he did know too much—he was the smart detective.
“You could buy your mother a new blue dress,” he said smoothly. “Maybe help your dad get seed money to start a business in Miami and move out of Norvelt for good. Maybe get a real doctor to fix your nose.”
“How do you know this stuff?” I asked.
“I’m a detective,” he said confidently. “Knowing other people’s business is my business.”
Just then he slipped a twenty-dollar bill under the stall. “For your comic-book collection,” he said. “This is just the tip of the iceberg.”
I looked at the twenty. Classics Illustrateds cost fifteen cents each. Twenty dollars was a lot of cash for me, but I didn’t touch it. Besides, my nose was beginning to work again and the money smelled—smelled like rot and bathroom chemicals all at the same time.
“Hey,” he said, “I’m out of toilet paper. Throw some over the top of the stall.”
I thought about it.
“Use the twenty,” I said.
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” he snapped back at me without humor. “Just give me some paper.”
“Will you leave me alone then?” I asked.
“For a little while,” he agreed.
“Mr. Greene at the newspaper said there are other suspects,” I said.
“Maybe so,” he replied, “but that idiot Spizz is the only one who should get the electric chair. That kid, George Stinney, never killed those girls. But he got the chair anyway. Sometimes justice isn’t fair,” he said forlornly. “It would be terrible for the wrong person to get the chair—especially an old lady and a boy.”
I didn’t even know who George Stinney was, but electrocuting a kid for something he didn’t do scared me.
I unrolled a wad of tissues for myself, then pulled the roll off the spindle and lobbed it over the top of the stall.
I heard his quick hand snatch it before it hit the floor. “Thanks, kid,” he said. Suddenly his voice sounded different. He must have dropped whatever he held over his mouth in order to catch the toilet paper.
A moment later he flushed and quickly opened his door, and in an instant he pressed his shoulder against my door to pin me in. “Remember, kid,” he said with his voice muffled again. “I know what you look like. I’ll always spot you before you even sniff me. If you have some information for me, just hang the tail end of a white handkerchief out of your back pocket. I’ll see it. I’ll always be tailing you. That will be our signal that you are ready to talk. See you around.” Then, just as quickly as he had arrived, he vanished, without even washing his hands.
I stayed sitting on the seat with my head tilted back to let the blood coagulate and I was going over what had just happened and what I should do next when somebody took the empty stall. I thought maybe the detective had come back to say something more. Maybe he had another threatening story to tell me about a kid who was framed for a crime he didn’t commit.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” I said firmly.
Surprisingly it was a different man who replied. “Gantos boy,” whispered the sandpaper voice of Mr. Spizz. “You are in over your head.”
“Spizz!” I said happily. It made me feel so good to hear a familiar voice even if it was the man who might get me the electric chair. Then I made a little joke. “I’m not in over my head,” I said, “because I haven’t flushed yet.”
“Ha!” he laughed. “But what I mean is, Miss Volker is taking you for a ride and you are too blind to see it. Now she’s going around blaming Mrs. Custard’s murder on me too.”
“That’s because you probably did it,” I insisted. “You came back to kill Mrs. Custard. I heard you that night in your old office.”
“I admit I was in the office,” he said earnestly. “But someone had been there before me and opened the 1080 and spilled it on the floor. I was waiting to meet the one person who could clear my name of murder when I heard you come into the Community Center—and you called out, ‘Is someone in there?’ But then you got scared and left, and when the coast was clear I sneaked out just behind you. That’s when I saw who grabbed you by the neck. It was your girlfriend, Miss Volker, and I think she was the one who had gone to my office in the first place to get the 1080.”
“But Mrs. Custard said you had gone to her house,” I replied, poking a hole in his explanation. “And she said you gave her the Girl Scout cookie.”
“Nonsense!” he said angrily. “I didn’t go to her house. I returned to town to run off with Miss Volker because I won the bet—she was the last old Norvelt lady left.”
“You are lying,” I said. “The truth is you killed Mrs. Custard, and Miss Volker can’t stand you.”
“You have it all wrong, kid. She hasn’t told you the whole story. She loves me. After I wrote that phony confession to protect her I ran off and have been hiding in the Glades. I was going to sneak back and marry her because she was the last old Norvelt lady. We didn’t expect another old Norvelt lady to return and that messed up our deal. But then Miss Volker knocked off Mrs. Custard so she would remain the last old Norvelt lady and marry me—the man of her dreams. Anything else she tells you about me is a lie.”
“You’re the one who is lying,” I shot back. “Miss Volker wouldn’t marry you—she wants to send you to the bottom of the ocean.”
“Kid, you have a lot to learn about love. She loves me as much as she hates me,” he said bluntly. “You’ll see. But remember this as we all head to Florida, I’m on your side.”
“I find that hard to believe,” I replied.
“To prove it, let me give you a little gift.” In a moment he slid my shoes under the stall.
“Where’d you get those?” I asked, and snatched them up and onto my lap before he could pull them back.
“They were in her room,” he replied. “Your girlfriend’s been holding out on you. She’s not telling you the truth.”
I didn’t believe him. He must have stolen them from the steward who was going to polish them. I reached forward and ripped the toilet paper wrapping off my feet. When I went to put on one of my shoes I saw a folded-up piece of train stationery inside.
“You see the note,” he said, knowing I would. “Give it to her. And if you’re smart, keep an eye out on that pistol she has. She stole it from Mrs. Custard’s kitchen drawer. I saw her do it when I was spying through the kitchen window.”
Maybe I did believe him because suddenly I blurted out, “Keep an eye on the guy who was just in here. He’s dangerous.”
He laughed hard at that last bit. “I have one word for that smelly bum,” Spizz said, then he flushed the toilet. The water gushed loudly and when it settled back down Spizz was gone.
I looked at the note. It was written in Esperanto. I couldn’t make out any part of it except for one name, Huffer. What could that mean? I thought. Maybe it had something to do with the casket. After all, Miss Volker had hired Mr. Huffer to join us in Florida to help prepare her sister’s body for a return to Norvelt.
But for now it felt so good to have my shoes back on my feet I busted out of the bathroom stall like a bucking bronco and ran crazily down the train hallways kicking at splinters and pounding down nail heads with my heels. I didn’t know who invented shoes but I wanted to kiss them!
When I got to Miss Volker’s door I just slipped the note through the bottom crack and kept clippity-clomping down the hall to the safety inside my own roomette. Quickly I set the dead bolt then dropped to my knees, pulled out my key, and double-locked the door. I untied my shoes and peeled my dirty socks off and dropped them into my sink of soapy water. As I brushed my teeth in front of the mirror I could see the reflection of the cover of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde spread out across my bunk, except in the mirror the letters in the title were reversed, just like the character kept reversing in the story. One minute I went from reading about Jekyll turning into Hyde and the next moment it switch
ed to Hyde turning into Jekyll.
I felt the same way myself. One moment I was certain of who I was, and the next moment I was feeling like someone I had never met before in my life. How did I go from being a regular boy from Norvelt to being a boy threatened with the electric chair for murder, and then back to just being a plain old boy washing his socks in the sink? Dr. Jekyll didn’t know the truth about himself and maybe I didn’t know the truth about myself either. After all, look what I did to poor Mrs. Custard. I had become her Mr. Hyde when I dressed up like Mr. Spizz. I always thought of myself as a nice boy, but I wasn’t as nice as I thought, and no one else was either.
As I rinsed the soap out of my socks I kept peeking into the mirror to see if I had turned into my evil self, but I just saw the boyish face I knew so well. “Be the solid man your mother wants you to be,” I said to myself. As I hung my socks on the towel rack I could hear her steady voice in my head, “Don’t jump to conclusions. Think it all through and you won’t fall to pieces.”
But as I stepped into my pajamas I could only hope that a different me didn’t step out of them in the morning.
9
Sleeping on a train is like being gently rocked back and forth in a cradle. Waking up is more like being tossed out of one. I was curled up into a ball of infant bliss when the head-banging started against my door. I knew who it had to be.
“Miss Volker,” I called out, and threw my covers to one side. “I’m coming.”
I dropped to my knees in front of the door and unlocked it with my key. I remembered how she had rammed me the last time, so this time I carefully slid the dead bolt halfway and got into a position to leap to one side. At that moment, she hit the door so hard the dead bolt tore loose and she bore down on me like the carved maiden on the bow of a whaling ship. She rammed her wood-hard head directly into my chest. The air rushed out of my lungs and we both fell back onto my bunk. Not this again, I thought.
“I just read Spizz’s note!” she said in a panic. “Did you read it?”
“No. I can’t … read … Esperanto,” I wheezed with my last thin wisp of air.
“I’ll teach you someday,” she said hastily, then turned her head to see if she had been followed. “But for now we have to get off this train.”
I agreed, and wanted to blurt out my news about the second detective and Spizz, but without air I just gummed my words like actors in silent films.
“What are you? A ventriloquist’s dummy? Say something!” she demanded. Then in an effort to push herself off of me she pressed her claws down on my windpipe.
I raised my hands and used my fingers to give clues, as if I were playing charades and trying to act out the words for “choking to death.”
“Are you using sign language for the deaf?” she asked. “Because I think you just spelled out ‘white whale.’”
I shook my head.
“Something to do with the Pequod?” she guessed.
I nodded.
“I agree. We better get ready to abandon ship,” she said, and removed her hands from my neck and scooted over to the edge of the bed. I felt like a criminal who had just received a last-second gallows pardon.
I staggered onto my feet and raised my arms up above my head and down again, and up again and down again. As the air was pumped back into my flattened lungs I made a loud rasping noise like a braying donkey.
“This is no time to sound like an ass,” she said crossly. “If you have something to say, then just say it.”
“Spizz and the second detective”—I gasped hoarsely—“they are on the train.”
“I know,” she replied. “Spizz slipped a note under my door when I was asleep.”
“That was me!” I cried out. “The second detective and Spizz followed me to the bathroom after you got drunk and announced that I was a murderer and…”
“I wasn’t drunk and you can tell me your news later. For now Spizz is going to make a run for it once we get to Washington.”
“Perfect,” I replied. “Let him run. We’ll get rid of Spizz and the detectives and continue to Florida to meet up with Mr. Huffer and return your sister’s body to Norvelt like you planned.”
“You keep missing the point,” she replied sharply. “We want the detectives to follow us. That’s why I announced we killed the old ladies. Now that note changes everything. If the detectives arrest Spizz, I’ll never have a chance to kill him myself.” She slumped back onto the bed.
“Just let the detectives do their job and arrest him,” I insisted.
“We have to get to Spizz before they do,” she persisted, popping back up. “Now you do your job. Get dressed and start packing. Remember, Mrs. Captain Ahab took an oath to follow her white whale to the end of the earth.”
“You don’t really plan to kill him,” I said daringly. “You’re like Bunny Huffer. She says she wants to bury me but she really wants to kiss me.”
“Open your eyes!” she shot back. “Spizz is a murderer, and that weird troll-doll girlfriend of yours does want to bury you—as soon as you purchase one of her father’s abnormal caskets!”
“Close your eyes,” I said in an effort to change the subject. “I have to take off my pajama bottoms.”
“Don’t worry,” she replied, and looked me up and down with her X-ray eyes. “After you fell into the septic tank, your mother gave me a detailed description of what you look like naked from the waist down.”
“What!” I shouted, and jumped like I’d stepped on a nest of splinters. “Why’d she do that?”
“She wanted advice about the nasty red skin rash on your rear that she claims is in the shape of Italy.”
“Stop!” I insisted, and pointed at her mouth. “Don’t talk.”
Suddenly I knew there was only one way to end this conversation. I yanked down my pajama bottoms and bent over in her direction. “See, I’m fine,” I insisted, and gave her a good look. “Nothing has spread. I don’t have a map of Italy on my butt.”
She cocked her head to one side and hummed as if she were contemplating a medical oddity. “I’d say it’s more in the shape of an octopus. But don’t be embarrassed,” she replied calmly. “A lot of infirm elders get exotic rashes on their backsides from poor hygiene and dirty diapers. Sometimes even I get…”
“Don’t say it,” I ordered, and pointed my finger at her mouth. “No! This conversation about my bottom is bad enough. I don’t want to think about your bottom.”
“Your loss,” she said in a sultry voice, and batted her eyes at me as I pulled up my drawers. “Now, do you have the ointment I gave your mother?” she asked. “I can rub some on your rash before it wraps its grasping tentacles around your sensitive parts.”
“I put some on last night,” I lied as I snaked my arms through my shirtsleeves, then quickly buttoned up.
“What else did Spizz say in the note?” I asked.
“Something about Huffer and the casket for my sister, but I couldn’t make out the rest,” she said, sounding vague. “Spizz was always a lousy student of Esperanto.”
“Maybe you should slow down and read the note again!” I suggested a little too harshly. “Maybe there is something important Spizz is trying to tell us about the casket—you know, like at the end of Moby-Dick, when Ishmael uses a casket as a life raft.”
“Don’t tell me about Moby-Dick,” she arrogantly snapped back. “You only read the comic-book version. Besides,” she added, “Huffer is always hopeful someone will drop dead. Maybe he’s bringing an extra casket for Spizz after I do him in.”
“You are a big talker,” I jabbed back, and pulled up my itchy wool pants and fastened my belt. “If you wanted to harpoon Spizz it seems you had years to do it in Norvelt.”
She dismissed the thought. “Too many witnesses there,” she replied. “But soon I’ll get him alone and I’ll bury him where he’ll never be found.”
“That reminds me,” I said, as I put my shoes on. “Spizz found my shoes. He told me you had been hiding them from me.”
She was right. But I didn’t say so because I could feel the train slowing a bit. We were hours behind schedule. The train had been stopped for much of the night because of some mechanical problem nobody explained to us. When it finally got going again, I didn’t feel a thing. But now it seemed like we had finally reached Washington. I quickly opened my little suitcase and grabbed at my clothes and Classics Illustrateds and pressed them madly into the case and snapped the metal clasps shut.
“I’m going to get your bag and overcoat,” I said, rushing my words. “So stay put. I don’t want Mrs. Captain Ahab to wander off course.”
“Don’t forget my half bottle of wine!” she reminded me. “A little grog on the high seas always helps my aim.” She winked at me as she patted the outline of the pistol in her cloth pocketbook.
She’s lost her compass, I thought as I stepped out into the corridor and walked quickly down the hall.
The view from the train windows flickered by like the frames in an old film. The rising sun cast long beams of light down the wide avenues of Washington, D.C. The rays gleamed along the curbs of snow and spread like a hand with a thousand brilliant fingers. Windows blinked like waking eyes. Roof antennas shone as they stretched their silver branches. Clouds glowed, the sky blued, and shadows turned and fled from the city named after the president who brought this country into the light.
As I watched, the night seemed to vanish into me as easily as Mr. Hyde vanished within Dr. Jekyll. The train moved on but I stood still with a powerful sense of doom. I wanted to call my mother and tell her that Miss Volker had a gun and was out to kill Mr. Spizz, but there was no phone on the train and even if I did talk with her I knew what she would say. At the train station in Greensburg she had put her hands on my shoulders and stooped down to face me. “Remember, you are like her seeing-eye dog. Without you she is helpless. Promise me you will do whatever she says.” I had raised my hand like a Boy Scout and repeated, “I promise.”
