From Norvelt to Nowhere (Norvelt Series)

by Jack Gantos

  “I guess I was a bit more romantic back then, because sometimes I imagined myself as a gun moll and I really wanted Spizz to sweep me off my feet like Clyde did with Bonnie. I wanted to smoke cigars and pack a pistol and thumb my nose at the law and all the rich bigwigs who had run the country into the ground—or at least I thought I did when I was on one of my rebellious streaks.”

  I had read all about Bonnie and Clyde and knew things didn’t turn out well for them. After a long killing spree, they were driving toward a hideout in Louisiana when the police ambushed them and fired about a hundred special steel bullets that perforated one side of the car, passed clean through Bonnie and Clyde, and out the other side of the car. They never saw the ambush coming—and they didn’t have time to feel themselves going.

  Once the cops pulled Bonnie and Clyde’s bodies out of the getaway car, they put the shot-up corpses on display. For miles around, all sorts of people who had been cheering for Bonnie and Clyde gathered to have their picture taken with the grisly-looking remains. Souvenir hunters cut off locks of Bonnie’s hair and sold pieces of her bloody dress. Someone even tried to cut off Clyde’s trigger finger.

  “I wish I had a cigar to smoke right now,” Miss Volker said as smoke from her bucket fire swirled around her heated hands.

  I almost suggested that she just snap off a finger and smoke that.

  “Yep, I’m feeling a little bit like I did in the old days, when I was full of vinegar and no man could hold me down—especially that old stick-in-the-mud Spizz. He is a pathetic creature—a man without an imagination. All he had to do back then was show some get-up-and-go and reveal a swashbuckling side, and maybe then I would have run off with him. But instead he kept boring me with his ho-hum wooing, which did me double the harm because it chased off any other man who showed an interest in me. Then, soon after Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down, I made the sensible decision to settle down and become the nurse for Norvelt.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said. “Because it seems like 1934 was a very bad year to be an outlaw.”

  “Well, looking back on my life, I’m glad I spent a chunk of it in Norvelt. It has great meaning for me to have helped other people. But nothing lasts forever. The Puritans thought they would be pure forever. The Indians thought their forests would last forever. The South thought slavery would last forever. Horse breeders thought the horse and buggy would last forever. Engineers thought the steam locomotive would last forever. Even Rugby thought it would last forever.

  “But life moves on, and as the preacher here used to say when he wanted us to plow the land and tend the cows, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ And now I think I’ll finally listen to him, because I’m ready to help myself and make up for lost time. I’ve already been Dr. Jekyll and lived the good utopian life at Norvelt, and now it’s time to let Mr. Hyde live that other kind of utopian life—the life of doing anything you dang well please.”

  The smoke from the fire swirled around her as if the nice Dr. Jekyll was burning up and the swarthy Mr. Hyde was about to emerge from her soul and transform her into an evil killer.

  “How can doing anything you want be utopian?” I asked. “You have to have some rules.”

  She gave me a disagreeable look. “You sound just like Spizz. Bonnie and Clyde did whatever they wanted to do without the burden of thinking of the consequences. They loved each other and did what they wanted—right up until the very second they died.”

  “Which made for a very short utopia,” I remarked.

  “Well put,” she granted. “When you are young, doing whatever awful stuff you feel like doing never seems to last long enough. Then, when you grow up and mature, you try to make the world a better place. But when you grow old you’ll find that you get a second chance at being young and restless again. You can do anything wild you want, and instead of being shot down by the police you just wander off into the wilderness like a wily old cat and are never seen again.”

  “Then we better not waste any more of your valuable utopian time,” I said, nodding toward the car. “Because I don’t want to be responsible when you wander off into the wilderness and I have to track you down. Right now we have a long drive ahead of us.”

  “You’re right,” she agreed. “The sooner we get to the fountain of youth in Saint Augustine, the sooner I’ll be able to kick up my heels—and when we get to Miami I’ll be able to raise some Cain of my own.”

  We didn’t have much to pack. I strapped our two small suitcases onto the luggage rack. She had found a thin bridle rope for the harpoon, which she sent me into the woods by the graveyard to find. After I’d yanked it from a tree trunk, she showed me how to knot the rope through the bottom hole in the harpoon’s shaft. I secured her weapon onto the roof rack as well, and then I knotted the other end of the rope to the front bumper.

  A few minutes later, we were ready to pull out of Rugby like Bonnie and Clyde after knocking over the entire town.

  Miss Volker had her window open and the smoking bucket with a few hot coals on the floor between her legs. She had made me load up the backseat with small pieces of wood to keep the fire going.

  “I want my hands warm and ready for criminal action,” she announced firmly, and wiggled her fingers in my face. “If I had kept them heated up last night, I wouldn’t have had my pistol ripped out of my hands.”

  “Which turns out to be a good thing,” I pointed out.

  “But Mrs. Captain Ahab still has her harpoon,” she said wickedly. “And it is a mighty weapon in the hands of an old salt like me.”

  “Just keep missing your target,” I advised. “I think last night’s history showed that it is better to scare your enemy away rather than dig a hole to bury him in.”

  “Last night is behind us and we have the whole seven seas to explore. Now raise the sails,” she ordered. “Keep the wind at your back, and your eyes open for the white whale.”

  I put the car in gear and we pulled out of Rugby. I had to follow her instructions because she claimed she had a shortcut to save us time.

  About an hour later, after we had taken some dirt roads that looked like cow paths, our sails were pretty limp and we were back where we started. I asked if she knew where we were going.

  “When I was here last,” she said, “we just followed the birds.”

  “Well, we need a local map,” I said. “Or a compass. Something to give us directions. I don’t think the birds follow the roads.”

  We kept poking along and sailing in one circle after another until Miss Volker hollered out, “Land ho!”

  Down the dusty road was a country store with a gas pump and we pulled in. I went into the store and looked around. A man as old as the cracker barrel he sat on asked if he could help me.

  I told him where we were going and that we needed a map.

  “Funny you should tell me this,” he said in a long, slow voice. “An undertakin’ fella in a big ol’ hearse came in here backfiring and clanking with car trouble. He was looking for a map and a mechanic. I called a tow truck for him and he got hauled away just about an hour ago.”

  That had to be Huffer, I thought. “Did you get him a map too?” I asked.

  “Nope,” he replied. “Don’t have a map and don’t need one. Let me see your hand—palm up.”

  I stuck it out and he studied it with one eye screwed shut, squinting down at my palm as if it were a treasure map.

  “Take your life line here for about a mile,” he instructed. “And at your bad-luck line take a left, then a right onto your money line, and a right where this love line merges with your disaster line, and you’ll find hard pavement.”

  “Really?” I questioned.

  “Whatever you do,” he warned, “don’t follow the marriage line. The bridge is out.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that but I was starving, so I filled a paper bag with beef jerky sticks and cheese. When Miss Volker arrived I steered her into a corner where she could pick out some cookies, and I whispered to her wh
at the clerk told me about Mr. Huffer.

  “Good,” she said quietly, and smiled. “We need to get to Miami before him.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “He’s got the gun,” she said wisely. “I’d rather be waiting for him than have him waiting for me.”

  I paid for our breakfast snacks and a six-pack of root beer for Miss Volker. Then, as we were walking out the door she saw some buckets of old house paint.

  “How much for the paint?” she hollered.

  “If you buy a brush, you get the paint for free,” he said. “It’s only twenty years old.”

  “Grab two wild colors,” she said, “quick!”

  “Why?” I asked, and picked up a bucket of bright green with one hand and something that looked like orange vomit with the other.

  “You’ve never been on the run before, have you?” she asked. “We need to disguise ourselves from those who might do us harm.”

  I borrowed a screwdriver from the store clerk and opened the can of green. I dipped the wide brush in and began to paint the car from the top down. I slathered too much on, and it dripped over the headlights and down the windshield. When I wiped it off the windshield some of the “RUNS GREAT” lettering chipped away. I used the screwdriver to scrape off some more but stopped when I saw I was scratching the glass.

  “Cheap German car!” Miss Volker remarked, but before she could go on a tirade she spotted a pay phone on the side of the building. “I’m going to call Mr. Hap and make plans for when we get to Miami,” she said.

  When she returned, I had cleaned up the headlights and pretty much painted everything else green.

  She looked at the car and made a funny face. “That is not the color I would choose if I was trying to hide from a posse,” she said.

  “They’ll think we are a couple of clowns,” I replied from over my shoulder as I walked to the pay phone. I dialed the operator and placed a collect call home. Mom picked up on the second ring.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “I have a collect call for Mrs. Betty Gantos. Is she there to accept the charges?” the operator asked. “Her son is on the line.”

  “She’s out delivering meals to the elderly,” Mom said loudly as she talked a mile a minute, “and after that she is working the tag sale at the Community Center and after that she is ironing the uniforms for the volunteer firemen and after that she is—”

  “Okay, I get it,” the operator snapped back, and paused long enough to take a long drag on a cigarette, “she’s not home.”

  “Correct,” Mom replied. “And Mr. Gantos is flying to—”

  The operator cut her off. “Your mother is a busybody,” she said to me. “And I understand why your dad flew the coop.” Then she hung up, and I ambled back to the car wondering where Dad had gone.

  Once we started driving I followed the imaginary map directions on my hand until we merged onto a paved road just as the store clerk said. On the corner was a service station. Huffer’s hearse was parked in front. The hood was up. A mechanic was leaning over one fender with a wrench and Huffer was leaning over the other with his black hat in his hand. I beep-beeped the horn and Miss Volker and I waved. Huffer looked up but he only saw the back of our car.

  We had a long drive ahead of us, so I floored the VW and we were going so fast the wet paint was rippling up on the hood and creeping onto the windshield. I tried to turn on the windshield wipers but they were broken.

  We drove south for a couple hours when I noticed a police motorcycle with a sidecar heading toward us. It looked just like the beat-up one I had almost flattened at the Foggy Bottom Used Cars lot. And suddenly I realized the driver was the little ferret-faced detective, who probably overshot the road to Rugby and was trying to find his way back.

  Miss Volker saw him too and didn’t seem to be surprised as he approached. “Figures that rodent detective would drive a cop cycle,” she remarked. “Stay far to the left and make sure he passes on my side. I have a bone to pick with him. He almost collared Spizz and denied me the pleasure of getting him myself.”

  “Why can’t we just duck when he passes by?” I shouted. “He won’t recognize us in our disguised car.”

  “Damn the torpedoes,” she replied, “and full speed ahead.”

  “Admiral Farragut said that at the Battle of Mobile Bay,” I added.

  “A-plus!” she hollered, then leaned out the window and with her warmed hands undid my slip knot and grabbed the harpoon off the roof rack.

  When the detective saw the harpoon in her hand, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small pistol and aimed it at the car. We were under attack!

  When he was about twenty feet away, Miss Volker cawed out in her Mrs. Captain Ahab voice, “Stay away from the white whale!” And before the detective could answer or pull the trigger, she cocked her arm back and prepared to chuck the harpoon at him. A look of ferret panic widened his eyes, and as he jerked his gun hand up to protect his face he dropped the pistol. It hit the sidecar and bounced off and went end over end until it skittered across the road. His other hand pulled the handlebars to the side and he swerved toward a line of trees.

  “Man overboard!” Miss Volker shouted as she wedged the harpoon between her seat and the door with the vicious point sticking out the window. “Hope he can swim to shore before the sharks get him. Ha!”

  I looked into the rearview mirror. He had regained control of his motorcycle and had stopped and was looking on the ground for his gun. If I was him, I wouldn’t be very happy about what had just happened.

  “You better reload that harpoon,” I advised her. “He had a gun.”

  “But he didn’t have the guts to use it,” she said, and stirred up her bucket embers, filling the car with smoke. “But if he gets close again, I’ll puncture him right in his cleft chin.”

  I coughed, wiped my nose on my sleeve, and hit the gas and we kept speeding down the road until he was a dark speck in my rearview mirror, and then he was out of sight.

  We drove for a good long while at top speed. I kept checking the rearview mirror, but the detective was nowhere to be seen.

  “Pull over at the first gas station you see,” Miss Volker said. “All that excitement has excited my bladder.”

  “Me too,” I agreed.

  I passed one that looked pretty seedy but soon found one that was new. I pulled in and she hopped out to go around back to the restroom. I asked the attendant to top off the gas tank. If he noticed I was an underage driver, he didn’t say a word. I think he may have been distracted by the state of our car, and the harpoon.

  “You folks seem to be on a mission,” he said.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  “Just a guess,” he said. “Why don’t you let me check your oil and take care of that windshield for you? I have some solvent that will clean it right up.”

  I thanked him and went inside for more food and drinks. I also spotted a map of the southeastern states and picked that up. When the attendant returned, we settled up, and then I saw a stack of pamphlets for tourist destinations next to the cash register.

  One of them was for the Roosevelts’ Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. Wow, I thought, Miss Volker will love this.

  Once she returned to the car, I went to the restroom. When I hustled back I showed her the pamphlet. “Do you want to go?” I asked. “It’s perfect for us.” With our clean windshield I didn’t have to hunch and squint so much and I felt ready to drive forever.

  “Let’s skip Warm Springs,” she said, sounding a bit defeated. “That Little White House just depresses me. It depressed Eleanor too, because that is where Franklin died, and when he died he was with his girlfriend.”

  “The president had a girlfriend?” I exclaimed. “But he was married.”

  “And unfaithful,” she said sadly. “One day Eleanor was going through Franklin’s luggage and found love letters from the other woman, Lucy Mercer. It hurt Eleanor’s feelings terribly, but she didn’t want to r
ock the boat and ruin his political career, so she suffered in silence. Franklin knew he was wrong but he chose to give in to his pleasure while ignoring her pain.

  “FDR may have been our hardworking president during the Depression and our fearless commander in chief during the war, but in his own home he was just a common two-timer who stabbed his wife in the back.”

  I figured this was why Miss Volker could never really be like Bonnie Parker and rob banks and shoot strangers, because she cared too much about other people’s feelings—except Spizz’s.

  “We should write this girlfriend story into Eleanor’s obituary,” I suggested. “That’s pretty important history.”

  “No,” she replied. “That is Eleanor’s personal history, and I made a promise at her grave that I wouldn’t write any of that sort of thing. We Norvelters love her, and she loved us back and that is what counts. Besides, her obituary is my love letter to her and I don’t want to add in any of Franklin’s dirt.”

  “I know Mom would agree with you,” I said. “But I was thinking that if President Roosevelt was so smart, how come he didn’t build his Little White House in Saint Augustine and soak his damaged legs in the waters of the fountain of youth?”

  She just shrugged. “I guess some men just love to be served,” she speculated. “Now let’s make some good time. I’m ready to see my sister.”

  She grew silent after that. Just like back in Norvelt, she always wore herself out telling a passionate story. It wasn’t long before her breathing deepened and her head tilted over against the window and she began to snore.

  Her sleeping was like a break for me. Instead of thinking of what I needed to do for her, I began to think about home. School would have started back up and I would be hanging around with Bunny again. I didn’t believe that she was going to have an operation and get dead-person parts to make her taller. In fact, I think she was happy the way she was, and that was one of the big reasons why I liked her. She didn’t seem to have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde slugging it out inside her. Maybe that was because she was made up of a little of both of them and she had figured out a way to make them get along. She didn’t have to choose between a totally good self and a totally bad self. She was just a happy self and said what was on her mind and went along her merry way. And that was the biggest reason why I missed her. When I was with her I didn’t have to be the good me or the bad me. We were just our true selves, which was what allowed us to come together and be friends.