Dead End in Norvelt Read Free Page A

come this blood is brown?” I asked. “Last night it was red.”
    “It is too early in the morning to mess with me,” she replied. “Just change the shirt and get moving. I’m going back to bed.”
    I didn’t change the shirt. Only a few spots of blood had soaked through, so I just turned it inside out as I walked down the narrow hall, past my small room, through the airless living room, and out the front door and down the three porch steps. All the Norvelt houses were built to look the same. It was like I was stepping out of one of those little green houses in a Monopoly game.
    The dark grass was wet with morning dew and a little squeaky under my sneakers. It was tall enough for me to cut. I might be a slob but I kept the yard looking tidy because Dad allowed me to drive our big garden tractor with a mower attachment on the back. I’d love to drive a car, and just thinking of that word, drive , made me look toward the drive-in on the hill and wonder if the bullet I fired had passed cleanly over Norvelt and punctured the screen. From where I paused, the screen was a solid black square and I’d never know if I had hit that tiny Japanese soldier and put a hole in the screen unless I got up close to it, which I promised myself I would do before the summer was over.
    Above the screen the western sky was still dark and the stars looked like holes from missed shots. It was a good thing John Glenn had orbited the earth back in February. If he’d still been up there last night I might have shot his Friendship 7 space capsule out of the air and started a world war. That would be just my luck. My uncle who had painted the pony claimed he had seen a UFO come down over that very same hill before the drive-in was built. He was in the newspaper and said he had “touched” the UFO and that it was “covered in a strange Martian language that looked like chicken feet.” My dad called my uncle a nut, but it wasn’t so nutty when the army sent troops and a big truck to take the mysterious UFO away and afterward military police went door-to-door to all the little towns around here, warning people not to talk about “the fallen object” with any strangers as they might be Russian spies.
    Because my mind wanders in the morning my feet are always a few steps ahead of me and suddenly I found myself on Miss Volker’s back porch. There was a large heart-shaped box of chocolates covered in red foil leaning against her door. I bent down and picked up the box. A small note card was tucked under the decorative red lace ribbon. I knew I shouldn’t read it, but I couldn’t help myself. I loved to know other people’s personal business. Mom called me a gossip lover . But I called it whisper history , so as quickly as I could I pulled out the card and flipped it over. It was from Mr. Spizz. The handwriting was all chunky printing that leaned forward just like words blasting out of his mouth. It read, I’m still ready, willing and waiting. Your swain since 1912 with the patience of Job. —Edwin Spizz.
    He was patient—1912 was fifty years ago. Waiting for what, I wondered. I didn’t know what a “swain” was. I put the card back into the envelope and slipped it under the ribbon. Mr. Spizz was with my uncle the night they found the UFO. Dad called him the town busybody. Mr. Spizz was an original Norvelter and worked for the Norvelt Association for the Public Good. He thought he was a big deal around town, but he was kind of sinister and lived and worked out of a tiny office in the moldy basement of the Community Center.
    I rapped on Miss Volker’s door with my knuckles. “Miss Volker!” I called out loudly because her hearing aid might still be waterlogged from the toilet. “It’s Jack Gantos. I’m here to help you.”
    “Come in!” she cawed like a pirate parrot.
    I pushed the door to and stuck my head inside. “Hello?”
    “In the kitchen,” she squawked.
    I followed the smell of bacon and entered the kitchen where I was