Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos Read Free Book Online Page A

runway at the cornfield and that leads to the dirt road out to the long pasture so we’ll get about enough distance to take off.”
    “Does Mom know you have the J-3?” I leaned forward and looked into the spare wood-and-canvas cockpit. There were only a few basic instruments, like a big toy.
    Just then her voice put a chill in me. “Jackie!” she called out furiously. “Jackie?” She called me Jack when Dad was gone and Jackie when he was home. She rattled the barn door.
    “Not a sound out of you,” Dad whispered.
    Mom pulled on the door even harder. “Jackie, if you are in there playing with your dad’s Japanese stuff again I’m going to tell him about the other night.”
    I looked up at Dad in horror.
    “Have you been messing with my Jap stuff?” he whispered, and got a grip on my forearm. “I told you never to touch it.”
    I felt the blood run over my upper lip and then I could taste it.
    “What happened the other night?” he asked.
    I pulled my T-shirt up over my face with my free arm.
    Mom rattled the door. “Jackie! If you are hiding in there I’m going to kick this door down and punish you for the rest of your very short life.”
    Dad pointed to the closed half-high door on the other side of the garage which years ago led to an outside pen for goats and sheep.
    “Can I borrow your baseball glove?” I quickly asked as I pointed to where it hung by a nail. “I’ve got a practice and Bunny and the team are waiting for me.”
    “Grab it and run,” he said as Mom kicked the door and a weathered piece of the bottom board cracked off. “Now scat!” he said. “I’ll cover your butt, but you better tell me about the Jap stuff when you get back.”
    I grabbed the glove, then pulled open the short door. I ran up through the thick woods behind the garage. A few deer bolted when they saw me. I veered off and passed beyond Fenton’s gas station and around the town dump where hundreds of rats were picking through the trash before I circled back down to the baseball fields beside the Roosevelt Community Center to meet my friend, Bunny Huffer.

 
     
    5
     
    Maybe since there were so few kids in our town we did things differently, because even though Bunny was a girl the size of one of Santa’s little helpers she was still my best friend. She was so short she could run full speed under her dining room table without ducking. I tried it once and nearly decapitated myself. Her real name was Stella Huffer and her father owned the funeral parlor, but she made everyone call her Bunny. Her father sponsored our baseball team, so we were nicknamed the Huffer Death Squad, which made sense because we were really named the Pirates after the Pittsburgh team and we had a skull and crossbones on our caps.
    Bunny had a great sense of humor. She’d take her double position at shortstop and second base and yell out to the rest of us, “Look alive, you bunch of stiffs.” She had about a million dead person jokes. She said her father’s spongy felt suit was the color of black lungs. It smelled like pickled onions. When you shook his limp hand he was like a scary doll that whispered, “Goodbye, dearly departed. Rest in peace.” Once we had some hamburger spoil in our refrigerator and when I opened the refrigerator door it smelled just like Mr. Huffer. I mentioned it to Mom and she replied that if you think about it a refrigerator is just a coffin for food that stands upright. Then she made me take the rotten meat up to the dump. I threw it to a nest of rats and ran for my life.
    Bunny was a great girl who was better than any guy I knew because she was tough, smart, and daring. Because she grew up in a house full of dead people she wasn’t afraid of anything. When I was first getting to know her we were in a viewing room at the funeral parlor looking at a new line of cigar-shaped caskets that were called “Time Capsules of the Future.” They were made out of polished aluminum and seemed very sleek with a little