Dead End in Norvelt (12 page)

“Maybe,” she replied. “But like the Indians I’d rather discover my own medicines. They were smart enough to make natural remedies, and they knew what would cure you or what would kill you.”

“Are you saying the Indians cooked their hands in hot wax?” I asked. “Because I don’t think they had wax.”

“Use your head,” she snapped back. “They had beeswax. And tree sap. They could heat that up. How do you think they waterproofed their canoes?”

“I thought they used animal fat,” I guessed.

Suddenly, Miss Volker stopped fast and her face knotted up into a bony fist. “You see that man,” she said loudly to me, and pointed her quivering chin at Mr. Spizz. “That man,” continued Miss Volker with contempt in her voice, “is the town irritant.”

He couldn’t help but hear her. “What are you doing here?” he asked with a smirk on his face. “I thought you were sitting around your house all lonely and waiting to die.”

“Not yet,” she replied. “I’m waiting for you to go first.”

“Mrs. Roosevelt gave me the job of keeping this town in good repair and I’m going to do my best till my last breath,” he said.

“That can be arranged,” Miss Volker whispered to me. Then she turned to Mr. Spizz. “Listen,” she said sternly. “Mrs. Roosevelt appointed me to be the chief medical examiner and that is a far more important job than going around scraping gum off of sidewalks or stepping on ants, so you have my permission to do your civic duty and drop dead.”

“Look at you,” he said, pointing to her cupped hands, “you can’t even feed yourself with those crab claws. How can you keep anyone else in good health?”

“By using my head,” she replied swiftly. “And for the health of this town I think you should take a long walk off a short pier.”

“You’re the one waiting for everyone to die around here, so why don’t you set a good example and lead the way,” he said.

“Well, I plan to live to be a hundred,” she stated.

“I’ll be a hundred and one,” he said with bravado.

“I’ll be a hundred and two,” she said, topping him.

“A hundred and three for me,” he continued.

“A hundred and four,” she said strongly.

I didn’t want to get involved, but Mr. Spizz turned to me and said, “If you are her new boyfriend you should know that she is very immature. She always has been.”

I looked toward Miss Volker for help.

“That old pain in the neck is just jealous of you,” she said, and cackled. “He thinks you are my beau.”

“I am your
boy
friend,” I said to Miss Volker. “Now come along. Just walk away from this. Don’t sink to his level.”

She pulled her shoulders back and took a deep breath. “I’ll sign your death certificate, mister,” she said with confidence. “Mark my words, you should be euthanized like a garden pest.”

He pointed at her hands and let out a mean-old-man
har-har-har
laugh. “You can’t even swat flies with those hands, much less sign a death certificate. You’ve had this job too long. You’re in a rut, and you should be worried about that because the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth!”

She smiled. “Good one,” she called back. “I’ll use it when I write your obituary.” Then she turned and marched up to the pharmacy window. On the way she whispered to me, “He’s so stupid. Honestly, when he makes alphabet soup it spells out D-U-M-B.”

Once we bought the wax and some topical medicine to numb the inside of my nose, we marched back out of the store.

Mr. Spizz was standing outside. “Hey, Gantos boy,” he said, pointing at me. “I know you did a lousy job cutting down those gutter weeds and earned your family a ticket.”

“So?” I said hesitantly.

“So I heard your dad is building a runway on your property. That’s against the zoning laws around here.”

“What’s zoning?” I asked, looking more toward Miss Volker than him.

“It’s what you can build and where you are allowed to build it,” she said. “But pay no attention to that bully. In Norvelt you can be as free as a bird—or a plane.”

“Just tell your dad,” he said, “that I’ve already submitted his zoning violation to the Community Council meeting.”

I nodded, and reached for Miss Volker’s elbow and escorted her to the car as gently as I could. Mr. Spizz watched us all the way. He shouldn’t have given me that ticket, because now I wanted him to see that I really was her
boyfriend
and that he should be jealous of me.

The moment we pulled out of the parking lot she said, “He and I used to date before Norvelt was built. He wanted to get married but I had my nursing career and held him off. Still, he kept asking over and over to marry me. I guess he wore me down, and in a weak moment I made the mistake of saying I’d marry him once all the original Norvelters were dead and my duty to Mrs. Roosevelt was over. I figured that was safe to say because he’d be dead by now—but he keeps living!”

“You sound pretty upset,” I remarked, but I was still confused about their argument in the store because I had read the card he had left on her box of candy and I knew he did like her.

“I’m not upset,” she said, and smiled broadly. “I love mixing it up with him. I guess it’s a game we play since we both missed out on the joys of marital arguing—keeps my blood flowing.”

Now I was even more confused because she said she liked arguing with him. Maybe Dad was right. He said both of them were nuts.

“We can skip my nose if you want,” I suggested, thinking of my own good health.

“Oh, no,” she replied with enthusiasm. “I’ve been looking forward to knocking the rust off of these hands and performing an operation to keep
your
blood from flowing,” she continued. “So don’t you worry. I’ll be gentle, and it just takes a moment.”

*   *   *

After we entered her house she had me drape a bedsheet over the kitchen table.

“So here is how this is going to work,” she explained. “We’ll deaden your nose and then I’ll cook my hands, and when they are working I’ll quickly heat up the cauterizing wire and do the work on you. More than likely my hands will tire and seize up, so I’ll have to recook them and heat up the wire and work on you in shifts, but we’ll get it. Okay?”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t go to a doctor?” I ventured.

“Don’t insult me,” she said firmly. “I’m a nurse, and I’m telling you that I can handle this. Nothing is wrong with the iron in your blood. It’s just your nose capillaries, which are too bundled up and delicate on the inside surface of your nasal passages. I’ll burn them off and you’ll be fine. You got that? It’s easy-peasy.”

“I understand,” I said. “But are you sure it will work?”

“These hands have delivered babies,” she stated. “I’ve stitched up miles of gaping wounds and set a hundred broken bones and pulled a gallon jar full of rotten teeth—I even had to pop an eyeball back into its socket, so don’t question me. Now get onto the table.”

I climbed up and took my place on the table as if I were one of Mr. Huffer’s cadavers. Next to me she laid out the Q-tips, a magnifying glass, the bottle of anesthetic, and the cauterizing instrument, which was a wooden handle with a six-inch-long thickish wire coming out of one end. On the tip of the wire was a tiny scorched blade. As she turned away to heat up her hands all I could imagine was that she would aim the instrument into a nose hole, have a hand spasm, and drive it up my nasal passage until she jammed the hot little blade into the soft, creamy center of my brain, and I would end up being a babbling idiot for the rest of my life.

“Go ahead and swab your nasal passages with a good dose of the anesthetic,” she instructed. “And don’t be stingy with it. Believe me, you don’t want to feel any of this pain.”

I sure didn’t.

While I swabbed the inside of my nose with the Q-tip, she got busy with cooking her hands. After she removed them from the pot and peeled off the hot wax, she held them up in the air.

“Watch this,” she called, and wiggled her rusty fingers back and forth while singing, “The itsy-bitsy spider went up the waterspout.”

That really didn’t make me relax. I tried to smile, but I had swabbed on so much anesthetic my lips were frozen in place like fish in a frozen pond.

Then quickly she heated up the wire and pulled it out of the flame. It was red-hot, and a puff of smoke rose from what I guessed was a little scrap of human tissue that had been stuck on the blade from her last operation. I whimpered.

“Don’t look at it,” she ordered. “You’ll flinch and I’ll scorch you—and then you’ll
really
have something to bleed about.”

“How do your hands feel?” I asked shakily as she came toward me.

“Rock steady,” she declared. “Now close your eyes.”

I did, and waited for the pain.

A few moments later she asked, “Did you feel that?”

“Feel what?” I replied.

“If you didn’t feel the map pin I just stuck into the tip of your nose,” she said, “then you are ready. Let’s get this done.”

I crossed my eyes and looked down at my nose. There was a red-topped pin sticking straight out of my nose, but before I could say anything she came at me. I took a deep breath and clutched the tabletop on either side. I lifted my nose up into the air so she could get a clear view. I felt her dark shadow bend over me. I sensed the beam of her flashlight up my nose, and then slowly she inserted the red-hot wire into my nasal cavity. I waited for the searing pain, but I couldn’t feel a thing. The anesthesia was working. However, I could smell something nasty. “What is that odor?” I mumbled, not daring to move my face or neck.

“Singed capillaries.” She slowly answered, because she was concentrating. “It’s going well. The burnt-flesh smell means it’s working.”

After she finished cauterizing one nostril she took a break and cooked her hands again. Once her fingers loosened up it didn’t take long before I tilted back into position and she came at me and finished the second nostril.

“There,” she announced proudly, and with unnecessary flair she plucked the pin from my nose. “I’m all done. It will hurt a little tomorrow and may bleed a bit during the scabbing stage, but you should be fine.”

I sat up. “Are you sure?” I asked. “I’ve been this way all my life.”

“Don’t question me,” she said irritably. “People who question me get crossed off my good list—like Spizz.”

“Sorry,” I said in a small voice. “Didn’t mean to offend you.”

“Now come with me,” she ordered. “We’ve got some work to do.”

I took my seat at the writing desk after moving all the books to the couch where she sat. I removed a pad of paper and a pencil and stretched my fingers out and cracked my knuckles. “Ready to roll,” I said.

She stood upright with her feet firmly planted as if she were going to deliver a fiery speech that would change the course of the nation. And then she cut loose like a wild woman and paced the room back and forth. The more worked up she became the faster she spoke and the faster I had to write. But I kept up with her, and in the end we were both exhausted. She flopped down on the couch and I went into the kitchen to soak my hand in a pot of cold water.

By the time Mom called to remind me that I was late delivering the casseroles, I had finished typing up the obituary.

“Before you leave,” Miss Volker instructed, “go into the garage and get the box of hospital bleach crystals so I can soak the blood from your shirt. And while you are out there grab that rusty tin of Compound 1080 poison. I’ll need that too. I saw some vermin in my basement and I want to get rid of them—they’re feasting on the Great Women in History needlepoints my sister left for me to watch over and they already ate a hole in Clara Barton’s Red Cross hat.”

I dashed out to the garage and grabbed what she wanted, then returned.

“Should I tell Mom about my nose?” I asked, and set the bleach and poison on the kitchen table.

“Give it a week,” she suggested. “And if it heals properly we’ll surprise her with the good news.”

“Great,” I said. “Thanks.” And to myself I happily thought that now Mom wouldn’t have to save up for it.

I sprinted the obituary to Mr. Greene and was going to turn and dash home but he made me wait while he read it through. Once he finished he made a grim face. “Good grief,” he remarked, “this obituary might scare some of these old folks to death.”

Might be what she wants, I thought, but instead said, “She’s just trying to keep everyone on their toes.”

“Well, tell her I’ll get it in the paper as soon as I can,” he said with his voice trailing off. “I have to help my brother skin the minks at his mink farm this afternoon and I may fall behind a bit.”

I didn’t want to talk about skinning minks. That might ruin my nose before it had time to heal. I quickly said goodbye and ran home.

*   *   *

Mom was waiting impatiently for me with six casseroles wrapped in aluminum foil and packed into a shallow cardboard box. “They are clearly marked,” she pointed out. “This one is for Mrs. Vinyl, who had cataract surgery and can’t see her own hands. This one is for Mrs. Linga, who has the broken hip. This one is for Mrs. Sulzby, who has been living on turkey jerky for the last month, and the others are for what is left of the ladies’ Fancy Hat Club tea—Mrs. Hamsby, Mrs. Dubicki, and Mrs. Bloodgood.”

“All women,” I remarked.

“Sadly, yes,” Mom said with a sigh. “All the working men except for Mr. Spizz died young from black lung disease after digging in the mines. The coal dust clogged them up and they went early. My dad was the same. I guess the only other old men left are those who owned the mines, and they live in Pittsburgh—in mansions, not mines. Now get going,” she said, glancing at the clock. “Mr. Spizz is waiting for you. I’m sure there are some hungry old gals peeking out their windows.”

I lifted the box and marched down to the Roosevelt Community Center as quickly as I could. My hands were full so I kicked on the bottom of the door with my foot. Bunny Huffer yanked it open. She was dressed in her Girl Scout uniform, which she had sewn herself, and it made her look like a shiny green leprechaun. Behind Bunny were two other Girl Scouts. One was Betsy Howdi, who was dressed in a Peter Pan costume, and the other was Mertie-Jo Kernecky, who just had her Girl Scout sash over an outfit that made her look like the Jolly Green Giant. Bunny was the smallest of the three, but her temper made up for her size. “Holy underwear in heaven!” she spat out, and pounded her fist into her palm. “It’s about time you showed up! Those starving old people kept calling every two minutes and ruined our meeting.”