Penelope Crumb (10 page)

“What are you doing?” Littie says.

“Pretending like I’ve been here all day and not somewhere else doing something I’m not allowed
to be doing,” I whisper. “Do you see your momma anywhere?” I peer over the top of the book and hope we aren’t in for a battle of our own if Momma Maple is already here.

“I don’t see her,” whispers Littie. “I don’t think she’s here yet.”

I hand Littie the book and wish her good luck. “Then I better be getting home.”

Somehow I get home before Mom or Terrible do, thank lucky stars. All this sneaking and snooping and not getting caught makes me feel like I am an official detective now. And I just know that Miss Stunkel would be proud.

I’m back at Grandpa Felix’s the next day, after I get Littie to call my school and say that not only am I no better, but I’m a whole lot worse.

I knock hard on Grandpa Felix’s door. His footsteps are heavy and slow. And when he opens the door I say, “I’m back,” and then I pick up my toolbox and go inside before he has a chance to send me away.

He stands at the door in a green coat and looks at me while I step over piles on the way to the table. I grab a couple of pictures, newspapers, and magazines from the top of each one. Grandpa Felix follows and sits beside me but doesn’t say anything. He rubs his fingers over his whiskers.

“Were you going someplace?” I ask, pointing to his coat.

“It can wait, I guess,” he says, taking off his coat and throwing it over the back of a chair.

I thumb through a
Life
. “That’s a funny name for a magazine.”

“You think so? Maybe that’s why they stopped printing it.”

“Do you still take pictures?” I say.

He pulls a card from his coat pocket that’s got a drawing of a camera on it and big letters that say:
A THOUSAND WORDS
. “Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’?”

“No.”

“Well, there you are,” he tells me.

“‘A Thousand Words,’” I say, reading the card. “So you do still take pictures?”

“On occasion.” He points at the stack in front of me and asks, “What do you have there?”

The picture on top is of a boy in blue-striped overalls sitting on a porch step and grinning like he just won first place. His front teeth are missing. I hold the picture out to him. “Who’s this?”

He takes the picture from me, looks it over, and then hands it back. “Yours truly.”

“You were little,” I tell him.

“That’s what they tell me,” he says. “Guess I’d be about ten in that picture.”

“Same as me. Well almost. I’ll be ten next year.”

“Is that so?” he says.

I tell him that it is so and he nods. “Can I have this picture?”

Grandpa Felix scratches his whiskers for a long time. So long that I think maybe he forgot what I asked. But then he says, “I guess so,” and I tuck the picture into my toolbox before he changes his mind.

“How’s that brother of yours?” he asks.

I make a face. “Terrible.”

Grandpa Felix gives me a look that says, He Can’t Be All Bad. So I tell him that Terrible is so all bad. And that he was snatched by aliens and he smells and that I’ve got a list that I’m going to send to NASA. But instead of offering his help to send Prince Stupider back to Planet Jupiter, Grandpa Felix says, “You should give your brother a break. It’s not easy being the man of the house when you’re only fourteen years old.”

But when I tell him that he’s an alien, not a man, and that we don’t even live in a house, he just says, “You know what I mean.” Only I don’t really.

The next picture in the pile is a face I know. “We have the same picture of my dad on our bookshelf at home.”

Grandpa Felix drops his eyes on the picture but doesn’t take it. Then he looks away. “That your toolbox?”

“Yep. It belonged to my dad.”

“It belonged to
me
,” he says. “I gave it to your father when he moved out.”

We’re both quiet for a little while longer. I watch his yellowed fingernails tap on the tabletop. He’s got some kind of rhythm going, but if it’s to a tune, I can’t make it out. “You know what else I have of yours?” I say. “My nose.” I stick it up in the air and turn my head so he can get a good look.

“I’ll say you do,” he says. “Too bad.”

“What do you mean? I like the Crumb nose. It makes for a good drawing subject.”

“You can’t miss it, that’s for sure,” he says. “You can see one coming from miles.”

“You can?”

“No,” he says. “I’m exaggerating.”

“Oh.”

He clears his throat. “The Crumb nose has stood out in this family for a long time. My father, that would be your great-grandfather, also was blessed with this beast.”

“Is that so?” I say.

A glint of a smile appears on his face. “That’s so. There was a time when I very much did not like my nose. But after a while…”

“After a while what?”

Grandpa Felix settles back in his chair and folds his arms. “There are certain advantages to having a large protuberance.”

“A what?” I say.

“A big nose.”

“Like what?”

He rocks back in his chair so that it stands on only two legs. Something that Mom never lets us do. “Many people find that big noses work better,” he says. “If you want to be a winemaker, a florist perhaps, even a chef, or perfumer, your nose may come in handy.”

I lean back on my chair, holding on to the table to balance. “Perfumer?”

“A person who makes perfume,” he explains.

“Oh,” I say. “I’m going to be a famous artist. Like Mister Leonardo da Vinci, only not dead.” I
let go of the table one finger at a time until I’m balancing on two chair legs and a pinkie.

“Da Vinci?” he says. “You couldn’t do better.”

“Did you know Mister Leonardo?” I ask.

“Did I know him?” he says. “Just how old do you think I am?”

I laugh and let my pinkie go. The chair rocks back, and just when I think I’ve got it balanced, the chair rocks back even farther. “Whoa,” I say, flailing my arms and trying to paddle through the air to get closer to the table.

Grandpa Felix puts his big hand on my knee and presses down until my shoes are flat on the floor.

“Thanks. That was a close one. Can I have some of these?” I ask, pointing to the magazines and pictures.

He looks at me like he’s not sure he wants to let them go. But then he says okay, and I stuff them into my toolbox before he can change his mind.

He’s quiet for a while again, after. Talking to Grandpa Felix is kind of like waves in the ocean.
There’s a big
whoosh
of words from him, words that are foamy and tickle your toes. And then, without knowing why, those words pull away, leaving your toes in the sand, dry and with nothing at all to do but wait for the next wave to come.

“An artist?”
Whoosh.

I nod. “I have to do an arm coat for school. Coat of arms, I mean. One that has pictures of things that are important to our family.”

“What have you got so far?” he asks.

“Not much. I have to turn it in two days from now, but I don’t know what to draw exactly. Besides, I’ve been kind of busy trying to find you.” When Grandpa Felix doesn’t say anything, I keep on talking. “My arm coat, when I finish it, might get to be at the Portwaller-in-Bloom Spring Festival. That’s a festival at my school where lots of people are invited,” I explain. “You could come.”

Grandpa Felix bites his lip. “Things important to your family, you say?” He gets up from the table then, weaving through the piles to the other side of
the room. “Now, where did I put that?” He kneels next to a pile and goes through it one by one.

“What are you looking for?”

“Gotcha,” he says, waving a piece of paper at me. He lays the paper on the table. It’s a copy of a story from a newspaper. He taps his finger on the page, and says, “Read this here.”

“‘Troops Follow Nose to Victory.’” I read the words twice before I get what they mean. “Good gravy. Is this about you?”

“No, not quite,” he says. “This is about my father, your great-grandpa Albert. The one with the nose I was telling you about.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes, he’s been dead a long time. Hasn’t anybody ever told you about him before?”

I shake my head and give him a look that says, Nobody Ever Told Me about
You
Before.

Y
our great-grandfather Albert,” Grandpa Felix begins, “fought in a big war in Europe, many years ago. His unit was on a mission to find the enemy’s headquarters. For seven days they crept behind enemy lines, risking capture. If they were caught, they would face certain death.”

“Do you mean Graveyard Dead?” I say, drawing my finger across my throat.

Grandpa Felix nods slowly. “I do indeed.”

“My word.”

He holds the newspaper close to his face and reads: “‘On a cold November evening, PFC Crumb…’”

“PFC? I thought his name was Albert.”

“His name
was
Albert. PFC means ‘private first class,’” he explains, looking at me over the paper. “It’s a rank. Kind of like a title. You know, mister, miss, that sort of thing. But for the army.”

“Never heard of it,” I say, shrugging.

“May I continue?” he asks. I nod, and he goes on. “‘On a cold November evening, PFC Crumb, out scouting alone in hedgerows near Paris, caught a whiff of a delicious smell that was unfamiliar to his sensitive nostrils.’”

“Huh?”

Grandpa Felix says, “He smelled food cooking.”

“Oh. What kind of food?”

He puts down the newspaper. “How much do you plan on interrupting me?”

“That’s all,” I say. “Go ahead.”

Grandpa Felix eyeballs me like he’s waiting for me to say something else. But I just sit all good and quiet and wait for him to go on. He does. “Now, where was I? Let’s see.” He taps his fingers on
the table again and then says, “Right. Here we are: ‘…unfamiliar to his sensitive nostrils. Crumb followed his nose to a knoll and hid there until nightfall, where just beyond lay the enemy’s headquarters.’”

A gasp comes out of my mouth just then. Grandpa Felix pauses, gives me a look, and I press my lips together tight. He continues: “‘When Crumb returned the next morning to rejoin his own troops, he was able to recount the enemy’s exact location, enabling the capture of more than one hundred German soldiers and helping to turn the battle in favor of the Allies.’”

I don’t understand that part, and Grandpa Felix must be able to tell because he says, “He sniffed out the bad guys.”

“Good gravy.”

“‘When asked how he knew it was the enemy’s cooking he smelled, Crumb said, “After day in and day out of bean rations, I just knew this had to be something from the other side. As it turns out, the
German’s
rinderbraten
smells something like my aunt Becky’s meat loaf.”’” When Grandpa Felix finishes reading, he places the paper back on the table.

“Let me get this straight,” I say. “The Crumb nose has smelling powers?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“But you said that Great-grandpa, umm…” I pat the paper with my hand.

“Albert.”

“Right, Albert,” I say. “You said that his nose smelled cooking. And that made him a war hero.”

“Well, yes,” he says, nodding. “That’s what happened.”

I’m up and out of the chair then. “So I’m like a superhero?”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly.”

“Why not? This is a Crumb nose,” I tell him, pointing to it. “Same as yours. Same as Great-grandpa Albert’s.”

“It is,” he says.

I put my hands on my hips. “Then a super nose is what I have.” And before he can tell me any different, I stick my nose in the air and try to see what I can smell. I sniff so hard I can almost suck up the stripes off the wallpaper, the dust off the lamps, the ink off the newspaper. I follow my nose around the room and holler out whatever smell crosses my path. “Old paper! Dust! More old paper!”

Grandpa Felix yells, “Be careful now!” And he is out of his chair, laughing.

“All right,” I say. And when I turn to look at him, I see my dad in his face. For the first time, I have real proof that Dad was here. That startles me and the next thing I know, my foot catches the edge of a pile, the one with a picture of a cornfield lying on top, and I’m tripping and falling, knocking over one pile, then another, and another, doing a nosedive until I hit the floor face-first.

I
’ve never been to a hospital before (not counting when I was born on account of the fact that my brains were too small to remember). I haven’t been here long, but it’s long enough to know that I don’t like it one bit. Grandpa Felix doesn’t like it much either.

“I hate the way hospitals smell,” he says, while we wait to see the doctor in the emergency room. His leg is bouncing like it’s running a race that the rest of him forgot to enter.

I take off the bag of frozen peas Grandpa gave
me and try to sniff. But nothing gets through. “I can’t smell anything.”

“Keep that on there,” Grandpa Felix tells me. “It will help keep the swelling down.”

“Swelling!”

“How does it feel?” he asks.

“Like an iceberg.” I take off the peas again and then wipe under my nose. “At least it’s not bleeding anymore.”