Dead End in Norvelt (16 page)

But then, when church was over, everything in my imagination seemed to collapse into the dust of a lost world that on the following Sunday I would have to mix up with some live yeast and bake into another vision of heaven.

14

That night my birthday celebration continued
. Mom, Dad, and I had cake and ice cream and played Monopoly, which Dad declared was the greatest game ever invented. “It is the American dream in a box,” he said, pleased with his tidy summation.

Mom disagreed. “It teaches you how to ruin other people’s lives without caring,” she countered. She owned the low-rent properties—Baltic and Mediterranean. I owned the railroads, the utilities, and the orange properties. Dad owned the red, yellow, and green properties and had them loaded up with hotels just waiting to bankrupt us out of the game. The rest of the properties were split unevenly among us.

Mom and I teamed up on a handshake and gave each other free rent. Still, it didn’t take long for Dad to own us both. He didn’t gloat, but he grinned and sang one of his favorite songs about hard work. “You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt.” Then he carefully packed up the game, as if he were packing up the town and getting ready to hit the road before he got older and deeper in debt.

*   *   *

Sometime after I went to bed I heard the motorcycles swarm up over the hill and down toward the center of Norvelt. I could tell they were not returning to the Huffer Funeral Parlor but to some other place a little farther out. They had to have awakened everyone as they downshifted loudly, and even at a distance their roaring engines rattled our windows. I didn’t know why they came back but I knew it couldn’t be good. They didn’t stay long, however, and it seemed like only a few minutes passed before I heard them rev their engines and come growling back up the hill and branch off toward the road to Mount Pleasant, where the first Hells Angel had danced in from.

Maybe they were lost, I guessed. But that was just wishful thinking. I should have remembered the plague they brought, because I had almost fallen back to sleep when the stabbing whistle of the volunteer fire department went off. I jumped out of bed and ran to the hallway just as Mom and Dad dashed out of their doorway. It was if we were on the
Titanic
. We all went into the living room. Mom pulled the curtains to either side of the windows. I half expected to see waves and fish and icebergs. But immediately we could see the fire beyond the Community Center.

“It has to be a house in section D,” Dad announced, and he doubled back to his room. In a few moments he came out in his work clothes.

He gave Mom a quick kiss.

“Be careful,” she said as he went out the front door. I heard his boot steps quicken as he tramped down the front porch. In a moment we saw the headlights swing by the windows as he turned his truck around, shifted into first gear, and headed off to join the other volunteers to help put out the fire.

Mom and I were both nervous and kept staring blankly out the window. From our distance we couldn’t make out any telling details, other than that the fire seemed to grow.

Suddenly, Mom turned to me as she remembered. “Go get me those Japanese binoculars,” she ordered, and gave me a little shove toward the back door. “Hurry! But don’t you dare touch the rifle.”

“Of course I won’t,” I cried out. “I’m not a suicidal maniac.”

I grabbed the flashlight from under the kitchen sink and turned it on just as I started down the back porch steps. The air was thick with humid summer heat which seemed to rise off the grass like steam. The paving stones under my bare feet were warm and smooth as I leaped from one to the other, silently counting them like Monopoly spaces all the way to the garage. Dad had left the door unlocked and half open. I slipped inside and in one motion pulled the hanging string switch for the overhead light as I trotted around the sleeping J-3 and over to the chest where the souvenirs were kept. I lifted the lid and leaned it back against the garage wall. The rifle was wrapped up in the Japanese flag, right on top where Dad always kept it. I could just see the dark barrel poking out from the white silk of the flag. I swung the flashlight and could make out the shining lenses of the binoculars in the far corner of the chest. I quickly grabbed them then reversed my steps back to the kitchen.

“Let me have them first,” Mom said urgently, and took the binoculars from my hand. She stood at the kitchen window and held them up to her eyes as if she were the captain on the bridge of a battleship.

“What do you see?” I asked anxiously.

“The whole house … is on fire,” she replied slowly as she concentrated on what she saw through the lens. “And the garage too.”

“Whose house?” I asked. Mertie-Jo lived in that direction, along with a couple other kids I knew from school.

“Miss Volker’s sister’s old house,” she said.

“But Miss Volker sold it,” I replied. “To some young guy.”

Mom lowered the binoculars and gave me a very serious look. “She sold it,” Mom said grimly, “not to some ‘nice young guy’ but to the Hells Angel who was hit by the cement truck. It turns out he was dancing his drunken jig to his new home when he was run over.”

“That’s interesting,” I said, wide-eyed. “Real interesting. Because Bunny told me that when the Hells Angels showed up to take his body away they were really angry.”

“I saw Mrs. Huffer on the way to the pants factory and she was worried,” Mom added. “She said they swore they would return for revenge.”

“Did you hear the motorcycles tonight?” I asked.

“That had to be them,” she agreed. “I bet they returned to set the house on fire.”

“But why would they set their own house on fire?”

“To scare us,” Mom said. “Burning down a house is about the most terrifying thing you can do to someone because it says you have no respect for human life, or anything.”

I don’t know why but at that moment I thought of the
Lost Worlds
book. Invading armies would always burn a city down. Why wouldn’t they just want to conquer the city and keep it as their own? Why would the ancient Greeks burn Troy? Or why would the invading Goths burn Rome? It seemed like the smartest thing to do would be to capture the city and keep it for yourself. If the Hells Angels moved into that house and lived in our town that would be more frightening to me than burning the house down. But maybe what Mom said is right—burning something down is the most terrifying thing you can do because burning a house down to the ground is the same as putting a person six feet under.

“This is just too sad,” Mom said with a shudder as she turned away and handed the binoculars to me. “Watching it burn is like watching someone being tortured. I can’t look.”

“Could you see Dad?” I asked.

“No,” she replied, and poured a glass of water from the sink. “The fire truck is there, but nothing can be done. The house is a complete loss.”

“Should I go tell Miss Volker?” I asked.

“Let her sleep,” Mom said with mercy in her voice. “It will be bad enough for her in the morning. Just return the binoculars before your dad gets home. I’m going to bed.”

I took the binoculars and went out the back door but I didn’t go to the garage. I trotted over to the picnic table and used the bench to step up and stand on the tabletop as I had done the night I fired off the sniper rifle.

I held the binoculars up and focused on the small house. I could see the flames leaping into the air, and the confetti of glowing ash that floated above the flames as if a magical fairy celebration were taking place in some ancient world under a dark night. But it wasn’t a celebration. The blistering flames rising above the house were just waving goodbye to everyone who was watching. And even for those not watching it was a piece of history dropping to its knees before disappearing forever.

It was too sad, so I swung the binoculars toward the Viking Drive-in. As usual, a war movie was playing. American and Korean soldiers were machine-gunning each other to bits across a shell-pocked field. Fiery explosions tossed bodies through the air to bleed out and nourish the exhausted dirt. It was an American-made movie and I knew we would win, but still I could feel myself getting all worked up. My heart pounded and my breathing was rapid and my eyes were glued onto each American soldier and I could feel myself wanting to shout “Come on, kill them, kill them all,” and when one of the American stars got shot I jerked away from the screen and lowered the binoculars.

I was panting like a dog and passed my hand under my nose to feel for blood. Nothing. Maybe Miss Volker had fixed my nose, but it didn’t stop me from wanting to watch war movies. That was the weird thing about death. In real life I was afraid of it. In the movies I couldn’t get enough of it.

I swung the binoculars back toward the burning house at the moment when the roof caved in and the final golden crown of flames rose up through the air. I felt as if I were trapped inside that house, as if I couldn’t escape the broiling walls—as if my life and the life of that house were burning down together. I stood there for a minute because that cruel moment had captured me in its tight fist, but after a while the harsh feeling weakened and I lowered my head as I stepped down from the table and across the wilted grass and returned the binoculars to the chest and went to my room. Watching that house burn was the torture Mom claimed it was. It felt like we were cursed. And after I crawled into my bed and got settled under the sheet it wasn’t easy to fall asleep.

*   *   *

As soon as the phone rang I shouted out, “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute. I have to brush my teeth.”

I got out of bed and dressed and dashed to the kitchen where Mom gave me half of her egg and butter sandwich.

“Did Dad say anything when he got home?” I asked with my mouth full.

“You better get a move on,” she replied. “Believe me, if there is anything to be said about last night Miss Volker will say it.”

When I arrived on her porch there were about a half-dozen big ceramic pots by her door. They were covered in black soot and all the plants were leafless and charred. One pot was in the shape of a large owl’s head, and growing out the top were just the spindly burned stems of something that had been alive the day before. There was a card between the stems and I knew I had to read it. I put my ear to Miss Volker’s door. I didn’t hear any movement. I reached down and quickly opened the card.
Sorry, these were all I could rescue.—E. Spizz, Volunteer Fire Deputy.
I closed it up and put it back between the stems. He was always leaving her presents and he must have saved these from her sister’s house.

I opened her door. “Miss Volker,” I hollered, “are you dressed?”

“What would it matter?” she replied glumly. “Today I’m not a person—I feel like a box full of cold ashes.”

When I entered the living room she was sitting on the couch wrapped up in a large knitted afghan. The tears ran in uneven channels down the wrinkled maze of skin on her face. Watching an old person cry is not the same as watching a young person cry. Old people don’t really seem hurt so much as they seem hopeless, which is worse.

“I heard about your sister’s house,” I said quietly. “You can have it rebuilt. My dad could do it.”

She wiped her face against her bony shoulders. “No,” she replied softly. “It’s gone for good. But not forgotten. Sit down and get your pencil and paper. Today we are going to write a different kind of obituary.”

I took my seat and got my pad and sharpened my pencil. “I’m ready,” I said, and licked the tip of the lead.

“This is not your normal obituary,” she started, and I could hear the strength return to her voice. Then she pulled herself up like a drum major about to march at the head of her words. “This is the obituary of a house—a home that was born of love and died by the hands of hatred. The little house on parcel number 11 in section D on Larkspur Circle was born in 1935. Mrs. Roosevelt was the godmother and a great one she was. When the government offered to help poor people build houses in Norvelt the architects drew up plans to have entire families live like farm animals in one barnlike room with a bathroom outhouse and a kitchen that was nothing but a wood-burning cook shed on the back of the property. The government’s idea of helping poor people was to give them some shelter to survive, but not to allow them to live a life of pride.

“But Godmother Roosevelt came to the rescue. She made sure people had real houses—little New England–style houses—and they had bedrooms and a living room and a useful kitchen and a bathroom with a bathtub, and even a laundry room with a washing machine. The government called this luxury living. But Mrs. Roosevelt called it living with dignity.

“My sister and I lived together here in my number 3 house in section A until she met and married Mr. Chester Hap in 1941. He was an original Norvelt member who was accepted into the new town because he was an electrician and was needed. He helped folks wire their houses and in return they helped him build his house. In true Norvelt fashion he bartered his skills for their skills until the two hundred and fifty houses were fully built.

“Many good times were had in the Hap home. All the holidays were celebrated with artistic decorations, as my sister was head of the Federal Art Project in Norvelt and she taught ceramics and painting and the decorative arts in her garage art studio, and up at the school and Community Center. Their home was a Babylonian garden of beauty. They had a grape arbor, beds of asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, and potatoes, as well as fruit trees and a field with corn and soybeans. The grounds were graced with raised beds of mixed bouquets, and the full perimeter of the property was edged with azaleas, which fit the house like a gilded frame fits a beautiful painting.

“In such a fertile home devoted to beauty, love, and understanding, only one thing was missing—a child. My sister was a little too old for motherhood, but in 1942, after the bombing at Pearl Harbor when Japanese Americans were being rounded up and sent to internment camps, a Japanese couple with a new baby arranged for their infant son to be adopted by my sister and her husband. This way the child would have a loving home and not have to be sent to a prison camp and suffer the hardship and shame of that life. I remember that beautiful baby and the love my sister and her husband graced upon him. They had an angelic six months together until the federal government tracked that baby down and took him away, all because he was of Japanese origin—an enemy of America in diapers!