by Jack Gantos
“Little did he know the note was just a few lines from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address—in pig Latin,” I revealed slyly.
“A-plus for that,” she stressed. “He’s somebody who wouldn’t recognize history even when it’s right in front of him.”
“You really had me believing you were going to kill Spizz,” I said.
“I told you that I love him as much as I want to kill him,” she declared. “I’m really Jekyll and Hyde. I’m the one who told Spizz to sneak back to Norvelt and we’d run off together, since I promised to marry him only if I was the last old-lady Norvelter. But by the time he sneaked back into town Mrs. Custard had returned, so I was no longer the last old lady. Huffer caught wind of Spizz hiding in the Community Center and he poisoned Mrs. Custard dressed as Spizz, who’d already confessed to the other crimes.
“Well, naturally, when she died I thought Spizz had killed her so I’d once again be the last old-lady Norvelter. That just really made me furious because I felt like a fool, like I had let Mrs. Roosevelt down because it was my fault Mrs. Custard was killed. And then when Spizz fled I wanted to go after him and put him six feet under. I knew he was going to Florida where he’d bought a hideout in the Everglades, but I couldn’t get to Florida on my own, so I made up the part about my sister dying so your mother would allow you to help me get here, and it worked. Then I invited Huffer down to make the funeral look legit.”
“Do you mean that all your hollering about killing the white whale was an act?”
“Not all of it,” she said with a little fire in her voice. “In the beginning I made an oath I’d do him in. When that detective almost captured him in D.C. I fired my gun on purpose. I wanted to shoot Spizz myself. But once I was sure Spizz was telling the truth and that Huffer was the real killer, I wasn’t as angry as I appeared. Honestly, I’m great with a harpoon and I should have winged him at Rugby just for the heck of it. And then when he was in the Amphicar and you pulled up next to him, I could have speared him right through the gills, but I missed on purpose.”
“How did I not see all of that going on?” I said. It was mind-boggling that I never figured out what she was up to. “It’s so obvious now.”
“Remember the Proclamation Line historic marker you didn’t see,” she said. “Remember I told you that you missed it because you only see what you already know? Well, start looking for what you don’t know. Tick-tock,” she said, clucking her tongue.
“But why Spizz?” I asked.
“I’ve got more wrinkles on my face than a wad of tinfoil, and he’s the only guy who would kiss an old lady like me. Sometimes love has the upper hand over a harpoon,” she said with a smile. “And I’m glad it does, because I told you I wanted some love before the world blows up.”
“You sure had me fooled,” I said. “Was all the history real?”
“I could lie about Spizz,” she said, “but I’d never lie about history. That is a crime!”
“Hang on,” Dad called out. “We’re going down.”
We landed hard on a crusty old tarmac and bounced abruptly to a stop. Dad cut the engine, and once the prop stopped he stepped out on his side, and then helped guide Miss Volker down from the back. I jumped out on my side. I looked around. We were in the middle of the Everglades.
“I camp out here,” Dad explained. “It’s an old Army Air Corps strip and free parking for the plane while I look for work.”
Spizz must have seen us land, and now that our engine stopped he drove out into the open and hit the horn on his Amphicar to give her a signal.
“I can’t stay and talk,” she said. “We have to get going—he’s afraid the law is going to catch up to him.”
“But he’s no longer a wanted man,” I said. “Aren’t you going to tell him about Huffer?”
“I’m certainly not going to tell him,” she said sneakily. “I still want him to think he’s my Clyde and I’m his Bonnie.”
“Really?”
“You know how he is,” she said. “He’ll be a much better boyfriend if he thinks I can call the cops on him and have him arrested.”
“And I know how you are,” I replied. “You love being in charge.”
“I don’t call myself Mrs. Captain Ahab for nothing,” she replied.
I just had one more thing to say. I looked up at her and I knew I was going to cry. “This is the end of our history, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “But we made history together. Never forget that!”
How could I? “Do you need help to the car?” I asked, eager to lend a hand one last time.
“Nope,” she said. “That’s why I have the white whale. Your job ends here, now wish me luck.”
I reached up to give her a kiss and felt the handbag on her arm. “I wish you would give me that pistol,” I said. “That has been nothing but trouble.”
“We need it for gators,” she replied as Spizz’s horn honked again. “And other pests.” She jerked her head toward him.
“After I turn in the obit for Eleanor, do you want me to write your fake obituary?” I asked.
“Give me a week,” she said. “Or a day, or maybe just an hour—or a few minutes.” Then she turned, and with some spring still left in her step she walked on down to the Amphicar. Spizz swung open the door for her and guided her in.
He turned and waved. “Bye, Gantos boy,” he hollered.
“Bye, white whale,” I hollered back.
Then he put the Amphicar in gear and as he drove into the water the little cake-mixer propellers in the rear began to spin, and in a few minutes they had motored across the water and past a hammock of trees and around a bend and out of sight.
Dad came over to tell me to get a move on. I gave them one more fancy wave goodbye, like the starter at a horse race shouting “Go!” And that’s when I heard the gunshot.
“Oh cheeze!” I cried out, and reached for my nose. “The bullet of history has been fired.”
“What are you talking about?” Dad asked.
“She wrote in Mrs. Custard’s obit,” I explained, “that history would be made when the bullet finds its target. And now maybe it has.”
“Well,” Dad surmised, “one way or the other she got her man.”
“Dead or alive,” I added. “We’ll never know. Sometimes history is a mystery.”
“If I were you, I’d start writing an obit for Spizz.” He turned and walked toward the J-3.
“That’s a fact,” I said. “Now let’s go home.”
“I have news for you. You’re already there,” he replied. “Your mom is flying in from Pittsburgh tomorrow, and I’ve rented a house in South Miami and start a new job this week.”
“Really?”
“Look around you and say hello to paradise,” he announced with his arms wide open.
I looked around and an alligator was crawling across the broken airstrip. It opened its powerful jaws and nosed up to the tire on the J-3 and snapped down on it.
“Is that the paradise welcoming committee?” I asked.
Just then the tire popped and the plane tilted to one side.
As Miss Volker always said, “There’s nothing but trouble in paradise.”
BY JACK GANTOS
Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade
Jack’s New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year
Desire Lines
Jack’s Black Book
Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade
Joey Pigza Loses Control
Hole in My Life
What Would Joey Do?
Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue
The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs
I Am Not Joey Pigza
Dead End in Norvelt
From Norvelt to Nowhere
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010
Text copyright © 2013 by Jack Gantos
All rights reserved
/> First hardcover edition, 2013
eBook edition, September 2013
mackids.com
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Gantos, Jack.
From Norvelt to nowhere / Jack Gantos.
pages cm
Sequel to: Dead end in Norvelt
Summary: After an explosion, a new crime by an old crook, and the sad passing of the founder of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack accompanies his slightly mental elderly mentor, Miss Volker, on her relentless pursuit of the oddest of outlaws.
ISBN 978-0-374-37994-0 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-374-32474-2 (ebook)
[1. Friendship—Fiction. 2. Old age—Fiction. 3. Norvelt (Pa.)—History—20th century—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.G15334Fr 2013
[Fic]—dc23
2013022251
eISBN 9780374324742
