by Jack Gantos
Just when I was having that happy thought I drove up an incline and from the top I got a long view of what was ahead of us. “Uh-oh,” I announced. “More trouble in paradise.”
Miss Volker woke up with a start and took a long look down the straight and narrow highway. “Spizz,” she hissed. “Just the white whale I’m looking for! Now hit the gas and we’ll track him down from behind.”
“I thought you said you cared about people,” I reminded her, as the friendly thoughts of Bunny lingered in my mind.
“This is no time for a mutiny, sailor,” she growled. “Now, follow orders!”
“Aye-aye, captain!” I replied.
“At a time like this,” she lamented, “I wish I had a few cannon on board so we could blow that little Amphicar out of the water.”
Spizz must not have seen us right away, and by the time he spotted us in his rearview mirror we were quickly gaining on him.
“Pull up side by side,” she ordered. “So I can throw the harpoon right through the white whale and pierce his black heart.”
“You know, I don’t think you should try to kill him,” I said, easing off the gas.
“Just do as I say,” she demanded, and slammed her foot onto mine and floored the gas pedal. “He deserves hell on earth and I’m just the hell on wheels to give it to him.”
“But isn’t it like your ‘tick-tock cycle of life’ thing?” I hollered as the wind whipped through the car. “Like, aren’t you questioning why you want to kill him, and doesn’t that make you think you shouldn’t?”
“No. It only makes me think I should stop his clock,” she yelled back, and reached with her long, lanky arm to grab her harpoon and hold it out the window.
To get her into proper throwing position, she wanted me to swerve onto the wrong side of the road and drive up next to him. I ignored her and moved right, onto the dirt breakdown lane. Spizz was going as fast as he could and was all hunched over his steering wheel, as if leaning forward would make him go faster. It was pretty funny. I was leaning forward too, but I couldn’t quite catch him and he couldn’t quite pull away from me.
We rounded a curve and I could see where my dirt lane was narrowing down toward the concrete pillar of a bridge that took the highway over a river. I slowed and pulled back onto the road.
“Closer!” Miss Volker shouted. “I don’t want him to escape by driving down the embankment and into the water before we plant our flag on him!”
“Then throw it now!” I shouted as I inched the VW right behind the Amphicar’s fenders.
Miss Volker reared back and let it fly. It was a perfect shot. The harpoon went straight and true, and the sharp, hooked blade pierced the Amphicar on the right tail fin. I steadied my course and as the rope spooled out, the harpoon held.
“He’s running for his life now,” she hollered, just as all the rope we had stretched into a rigid line between us. If Miss Volker were a tightrope walker, she could have opened the car door and tiptoed across the line and grabbed Spizz from behind.
“Mind the rudder,” she ordered me, “and stay right on his flukes.”
Spizz looked over his shoulder and smiled. I smiled back. He lifted his hand off the wheel and gave a jolly little wave.
“I’ll reel you in yet,” Miss Volker hollered. “And when I do you’ll be boiled down to blubber oil.”
Spizz began to zigzag as he drove. He steered left and I followed. He steered right and I followed, and then he did a quick left and right and the rope slackened, but only for a moment before it abruptly pulled tight with a sudden jerk and I thought the harpoon was going to pull out of his tail fin and flip back and harpoon me between the eyes. Instead, the VW’s front bumper ripped off and Spizz sped away with our bumper clanging behind him end over end like an uprooted anchor.
I backed my foot off the gas.
“Dang!” she cried out. “We lost our bowsprit and my whale weapon!”
“I don’t think he’s gone for good,” I said. “For a guy who’s hiding from the law he sure seems to be around a lot.”
“That’s because my love is the bait he can’t resist,” she said proudly, straightening out her blue hair with her smoky hands. “He’s heading south for warmer waters and we’ll corner him in the shallows.”
After pulling into a rest area to check the damage, we got under way again. It was smooth sailing for a while until I looked in the rearview mirror and could just make out the ferret detective on his motorcycle.
“Trouble off the stern,” I said. “We’re still being followed.”
“I’ve got no gun. The whale ran off with my harpoon. Now there is nothing left but to give that detective a good tongue-lashing,” Miss Volker said in a threatening voice. “Besides, once he knows the truth about Spizz he’ll realize he’s wasting his time chasing after us, when he should really be after the killer!”
But the detective didn’t catch up to us. He stayed just far enough behind to remain out of harm’s way. He didn’t know Miss Volker had lost her harpoon, so he wasn’t taking any chances that next time she’d let him have it on the chin.
“And I haven’t seen Mr. Huffer,” I said, glancing in my mirrors. “Maybe he’s still under repair.”
“He’ll show up sooner or later,” she ventured. “He’s a hound for money. He’s eager to charge Mr. Hap a fortune to box up my sister in that fancy bomb-shelter casket, and he’ll be scheming to set a trap to catch Spizz so he can get the reward.”
“But what can we do?” I asked weakly. “Huffer has the gun.”
“I promised Eleanor at her grave that I’d catch the killer,” she replied, “so you can bet I’m working on a plan.”
“Would you like to share your plan with me?” I asked. “I’m smart. Maybe I could help.”
“The kind of brains you have are dangerous,” she shot back. “Which reminds me, I told your mother I’d sharpen you up some, so it’s time for your tutoring.”
I groaned. “This is like school in a car,” I said. “Hand me some beef jerky. I need some brain food.”
“They don’t call it jerky for nothing,” she pointed out. “Now, since we are heading for the fountain of youth, tell me who discovered it.”
“Easy. Ponce de León,” I replied.
“F,” she said. “Nobody discovered it, because it doesn’t exist except in your imagination. So tell me, why was it invented as a story?”
“Because everyone old and tired and wrinkled wants to be young again?” I guessed, and gave her a critical look.
“I’ll give you a C for that. Healing-water stories have been around forever in folklore. Every culture has its own story, but nobody can ever find the healing waters in reality. When Ponce de León was in Cuba, he was menacing the natives. To get rid of him, they told him their healing-water story about a river in Bimini that made you younger when you jumped into it. So Ponce left the natives alone and sailed toward the island of Bimini but missed it and landed in Florida.”
“Did you ever see the Walt Disney cartoon where Donald Duck finds the fountain of youth?” I asked.
“Dumb comments like that make old people not want to be young again,” she snapped. “Anyway, Ponce had not taken a bath once in his entire voyage from Spain to Cuba, but legend has it that once he got to Florida he plunged into every pool of water, stream, and river he could find.
“He got bad diarrhea from drinking tainted water, and went a little nuts from dragging his naked butt across the grass like a dog. Then finally he came upon some local people who said there was a river that kept people young. The river was named Apalachicola, which in the native language meant They-Help-Each-Other River. So Ponce jumped in and all the natives jumped in and they started to help each other catch fish. The natives knew that helping each other is truly the magic that keeps people young. Eleanor Roosevelt knew that too, which is why Norvelt was built as a help-each-other town. But Ponce de León didn’t want fish. He wanted youth. So he cut off a few heads and created a fountain of blood and
left.”
“So you can’t jump in a puddle and become a kid again,” I said, summing up her story like I was concluding a research paper for class.
“Well,” she said, pondering the thought, “Saint John the Baptist dunked people in water so they would be born again and cleansed of sin.”
“So would they crawl out of the water wearing a diaper and drinking from a baby bottle?” I asked.
“Look at it this way,” she replied. “The great French thinker Rousseau said, ‘All men are born free, but everywhere they are in chains.’ And this is so universally true that people want to believe that when they are in the chains of old age, or chained down by their evil sins, or chained down by corrupt governments, they can somehow return to their newborn selves and start over. So jumping into a lake and becoming young, and cleaned of sin, and having lifelong freedom is an infantile fantasy which is very appealing, but it doesn’t solve any real problems.”
“So there is no fountain of youth, right?”
“A-plus,” she replied. “Except if you want to believe in it in your imagination.”
“Well, I’m already young,” I said, “so I don’t have to imagine it.”
“And I’m just old and desperate enough to want to believe in it,” she replied with her voice rising. “I’m a dreamer, and right now my dream is to have a gallon of that water because this bucket of hot coals is just about to set me on fire.” She lifted up her legs and I could see where her stockings were smoking.
I downshifted and quickly pulled over to the side of the road and removed the bucket. Well behind us, the police motorcycle pulled over too. I scooped up sand and covered the coals. By the time I made sure the fire was out and returned to the car, I found Miss Volker had fallen asleep again. Teaching me history lessons must have been an exhausting job for her.
I just kept driving as fast as possible and scanning my mirrors for the detective and whoever might want to come after us. Sometimes the motorcycle was right behind us, sometimes it wasn’t.
Once in a while I got drowsy and jerked my head around to wake myself up. To keep myself alert, I played little games like keeping count of other green cars on the road. I rechecked my mirrors every so often to see if anyone was sneaking up on us, but the coast was clear and the road was smooth. There was nothing more I could do but drive and get Miss Volker where she wanted to go.
Since she was in a deep sleep I took a chance and turned on the radio. It was all static.
“That’s the sound of Hitler’s brain now,” she said with her eyes closed.
It was annoying and I turned it off. “Did they ever find Hitler’s brain?” I asked.
“The Russians probably got it,” she guessed. “And they hid it inside Stalin’s skull. When he died they offered it to Khrushchev and he seems to be using about half of it.”
“Maybe it’s up in Sputnik,” I said, “making that beep-beep-beep sound.”
Just then I heard the sound of a tire blow, and the steering wheel pulled to the side. I slowed down and veered off the road until I found a solid patch of rocky ground. I stopped and yanked up the parking brake.
“Flat tire,” she said.
I hopped out and walked around the VW. “Front right,” I called out.
“Open the hood,” she replied.
I knew the tire and tools were in there. I removed the spare and jack and plastic pouch of tire tools. I had changed flats on our tractor in Norvelt so I knew what to do. I worked quickly because I was afraid the creepy detective might show up when we were a sitting duck on the side of the road. In no time I had the car jacked up and the lug nuts loosened. I removed the flat tire and fitted the good one onto the bolts. Quickly I tightened the nuts and lowered the car.
Right then I looked over my shoulder and saw the detective far down the road. I didn’t wait to put the tools away. I ran around to my side, jumped in, started the engine, and took off.
I followed the map. We had left Georgia and were hauling through north Florida. The road was flat and straight and Miss Volker dozed on and off.
We were just outside of Saint Augustine when Miss Volker sat up and rubbed the sleep from her eyes.
“Welcome to the Sunshine State,” I said when she stretched her arms and yawned. “We are almost at your swimming hole.”
“I need to warm up my hands before swimming,” she said. “They cooled down again. Pull into a restaurant.”
“It’s not good to eat before you swim,” I reminded her.
“Who said anything about eating?” she replied.
“I don’t think that nap helped you,” I suggested. “The farther south we go, the grumpier you get.”
“There’s no turning back now,” she said. “Just wait until I get to Miami. By then my mood will be criminal!”
So I turned into the entrance of the first restaurant I came to. It was a soup and salad joint.
We walked in and took a seat at a table. Our waiter gave us menus, and before he walked off Miss Volker quickly glanced at hers and said, “May I have two bowls of split pea soup?”
“Miss Volker,” I whispered. “I don’t like split pea soup.”
“I didn’t order any for you,” she said crossly. “Get your own food.”
She turned back to the waiter while I read the menu.
“And make that soup extra hot,” she instructed.
“Spicy hot?” he asked, as he wrote a note on the order pad.
“Not spicy!” she hollered. “I said hot! Like boiling hot!”
“Okay, ma’am,” he replied. “Coming right up.”
I ordered a grilled cheese sandwich off the kids’ menu, with extra pickles.
The moment the waiter left I leaned forward. “Miss Volker, how can anyone like that much split pea soup?” I asked. “It’s disgusting.”
“It’s good for what ails me,” she replied. “You’ll see. A couple bowls of split pea soup and I can backstroke around that pool at the fountain of youth.”
In a moment our meals arrived. “Is the soup hot enough for you?” the waiter asked with a wise-guy smile on his face.
The soup looked like green lava. Steaming bubbles were rising up and popping on the surface. If there was a fly in her soup, it was boiled alive.
She smiled up at the waiter. “Just right,” she said in a little old-granny voice. “Not too hot and not too cold.”
“Enjoy,” he said, and as he dashed back to the kitchen she held her hands over the bowls. The steam beaded up on her palms, and then after a quick fingertip test, like sticking her toe into a scalding-hot tub of water, she gently lowered her hands into the soup until the thick green bog of liquid covered them.
“Help me,” she said with her teeth clenched and her neck muscles all flexed and red. “Cover my hands with your napkins so people don’t stare.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I unfolded the cloth napkins and tented them over her hands.
“The smell of this vile soup makes me want to sneeze,” she said. “Quick, a handkerchief.”
I pulled mine out of my jacket and held it under her nose. She sneezed and I wiped her nose and shoved it into my back pocket, which suddenly reminded me of something.
“I forgot to tell you,” I whispered excitedly, “what Mr. Huffer told me on the train when he was playing like a detective. He said that if I had any information on how to catch you and Spizz that I should hang a handkerchief out of my back pocket at the funeral parlor.”
“Why are you telling me this when I feel like I’m being boiled in oil?” she asked, with her jaw jutting in and out like a spastic desk drawer.
“I thought it might be important,” I replied.
“This torture should be against the Geneva Convention,” she hissed, and began to scuttle her shoes back and forth across the wooden floor.
“Well, is what I said important?” I asked.
“Press your shoes down on my shoes and anchor them to the floor,” she said. “It’s important that I don’t blast off
like a bottle rocket.”
I pressed down on her shoes and she bucked back and forth in her chair. Soon, beneath the napkins, I could see the shape of her fingers moving around as they came to life like frozen snakes warming up under the sun. Before long she was making a fist with each hand.
“This feels better,” she said, smiling with relief. “Holding them over the bucket fire was like barbecuing pig’s feet—it was a dry heat. But this soup is as thick and creamy as any wax I’ve used.”
Just then the waiter returned. “How is the soup?” he asked.
“De-licious,” she replied, and lifted her bright red hands out of the bowls. “But I suggest you try it with a couple of these old ham bones—they really give it a special flavor.” She grinned up at him.
He looked at me for an explanation.
“Which way is the men’s room?” I asked.
He pointed out the back door. I went outside and there was only a little shack. It smelled pretty rank inside. When I came out I took a walk because I needed some fresh air, and it felt good to stretch my legs after the long drive.
And then I saw the police motorcycle with the sidecar parked behind the trash cans. I turned and ran to the rear door of the restaurant, but it was too late. He must have been spying on us, and the moment I left he had slipped in behind my back. The ferret detective was sitting in my seat and he was listening eagerly to Miss Volker. Then he was saying something to her and I could see that he had his hand jammed deeply into his jacket pocket and the fabric on the outside was pointy, like he was holding onto a pistol. I didn’t think he would do anything to her while they were inside the restaurant, so I returned to his motorcycle. There was a small zipped case in the sidecar and I unzipped it. His notebook was in there and under it was his pistol, only it was broken. The barrel was slightly bent to the side where it had dropped out of his hand and gone bouncing end over end down the road. Now, either he had another pistol or, like a lousy bank robber, he was using his pointer finger as a fake gun.
