Dewey Fairchild, Sibling Problem Solver

by Lorri Horn

  “Oh, alright,” he moped.

  “Here’s your chance,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  Before she further explained, down plopped none other than one Pooh Bear.

  “Argh! Are you kidding?!”

  “Don’t be mad, Dewey! You said! You said I could come back.”

  “When? When did I say that?” he asked the air.

  “So, what?” Dewey asked Clara. “I give her a chore from a jar? Hug her toe-to-toe for three hours? What?!” He was getting exasperated.

  “Why,” Clara whispered into his ear, “don’t you just spend a little time with her?”

  He looked aghast. And confused. He had a million things to do. Clara nodded. And walked out.

  Why did she always do that?

  “O-kaay, do you want to do something together?”

  “Here?!” Pooh clapped her hands together. “Yay!”

  “O-kaay, what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s play with Wolfie. I can be Wolfie’s mom, and you can be his dad, and he can be our baby!”

  “Wake up dog, we’re playing.”

  Wolfie, who ordinarily would already be running around when someone arrived, conveniently lay curled up like a black and white comma in his bed.

  “I guess you’d better go rouse him. Here, I’ll make the baby his bottle and you can bring it to him.” Dewey pretended to make Wolfie a bottle and handed it to his sister.

  Pooh, looking quite earnest, took the “bottle” from him and walked over to Wolfie.

  “Here, baby,” she said in a high soft voice. “It’s time for your bottle.”

  Wolfie lifted his head expecting something, anything, really, other than nothing, and he put his head back down.

  “Oh. He’s so cute.” She tried to pick him up but he wasn’t helping, so Dewey went over and heaved him up.

  “Oh! That’s my big boy,” Dewey grunted. “Come to Papa.” He picked Wolfie up like a baby and put him over his shoulder.

  “We have ta’ change the baby’s diaper,” Pooh said.

  “Oh boy,” Dewey laughed.

  Wolfie looking confused as she attempted to lay him on his back began to wriggle. No belly rub, no dice. He rolled back and stood on his four legs.

  “Aww! No fair!”

  “Why don’t we try doing what he wants for a bit. Might work better?” Dewey suggested. “You want to give him some water and then we can play keep-away with his Skunky?”

  Pooh carefully filled up his water bowl and they played for a while with Pooh laughing and running back and forth almost as much as Wolfie. Wolfie began to pant and walk, and Pooh gave a yawn. The whole thing lasted about fifteen minutes, tops.

  Then she headed for the Gator.

  “Wolfie can’t play on there.”

  “I know,” she said. Though he had no idea how she could possibly know such a thing. “Bye, Dewey!” She stopped and turned back to kiss Wolfie on the head. Dewey just stood there staring at her. Then she hopped on the Gator.

  “Dewey,” she said. “Put it up.”

  “Oh, right. See ya.”

  Up and out she went.

  Dewey settled on the couch. “She left! So fast!”

  “Indeed,” Clara said.

  Road Plan

  All the kids called it the Big Ship park due to the gigantic play ship in the middle of the play area. Dewey and his friends used to climb on that ship, pretending they were pirates, or that great white sharks swam beneath them in the sand. These days, they rarely hung out where the swings and play structures stood. Instead it was the large grassy field and open spaces that occupied their recreation.

  “What do we do?” Seraphina asked.

  They had gone there after school. Dewey and Colin wanted to do some more mini-drone photo work and Seraphina and Elinor joined in.

  “It’s going to be hard to top last week’s pics,” Colin said, ribbing Dewey about the pink bicycle.

  “Ha-ha,” Dewey said sarcastically. “Let’s take some of you this time.”

  “Okay.” They walked up the stairs to scout a good spot.

  “Hey! Seraphina! Elinor! You’re lagging!” They had not followed them up the stairs.

  “Never mind,” Colin said. “They’ll catch up.”

  Colin and Dewey headed over to the little kids’ play area, and began to film Colin on the swings.

  “Try to fly it as high as I get. Then see if you can lower it as I jump off.”

  They tried that take a few times.

  “Not bad!” Dewey played it back. “Battery’s low now. Where are they?”

  They walked over to the other side of the park along a winding path.

  “This is where I met Wolfie for the first time,” Colin said. “Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Dewey laughed. “Clara walked right through here where the signs say no dogs allowed. Wolfie. So cute and little then.”

  “What the—” Colin couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Seraphina and Elinor were at the bottom of four stairs with a, could it be?

  “They’ve got the Parrot Jumping Sumo! No way!”

  Dewey and Colin ran over.

  The Parrot Jumping Sumo was a mini-drone that jumped almost three feet high and went up to almost four-and-a-half miles an hour. It had two big wheels like a monster truck, and a center that looked like a space capsule.

  “Whose is this? Where’d you get it? How’s it work? Can I try?”

  They laughed.

  “Mine. eBay. We’ll show you. Sure,” Elinor said, laughing some more at Colin.

  “Why didn’t you tell us?!”

  “You didn’t ask,” Seraphina smiled, putting her hand on Dewey’s shoulder.

  “Here. I’ll show you. Just push here to go forward,” Elinor said, holding her phone, “and tilt it like this to go left or right.”

  “What’s this button?”

  “Turn 180. But ‘spin’ is the coolest.”

  Colin hit ‘spin’ and it whipped around in a circle like a top, making a computer sound like BB-8.

  ‘Tap’ produced a quick jerk.

  “Eh,” Dewey wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Slow Shake’ moved left, right, left, but made a sound like a baby kitten mewing for milk.

  “Cute, right?” Seraphina nodded, agreeing with herself.

  “Lemme try,” Dewey stuck his hand out to Colin for Elinor’s phone.

  “Try ‘Metronome’ or ‘Spin Jump.’” Dewey hit ‘Spin Jump’ and the Parrot spun fast and leapt off the ground.

  “Whoa! Give it back!” Colin extended his hand.

  “The battery’s low. Let us show you ‘Road Plan’ and what we just made!”

  Elinor gestured for Dewey and Colin to sit on the bench.

  “It’s a color walk. We picked a color. Blue. Because girls can like, blue, as you know,” Seraphina paused, emphasizing her words. “We walked all around here looking for blue stuff.”

  “ We mapped the best stuff using ‘Road Plan,’” Elinor added.

  “What’s that?” Colin asked, extending his hand to see her phone again. She gently pushed his hand down and smiled before answering him.

  “You map out directions it goes. Like tell it to go straight four feet, turn right, take a picture, jump, then take a picture.”

  “Coooool.”

  “This changes everything!” Colin said, putting his hand out again.

  “Soon,” Elinor said. “Soon.”

  He dropped his hand.

  Colin and Dewey watched as the Parrot moved past a blue bench, hopped up, and took a still shot of a blue recycle bin.

  “I have another battery. You guys can give it a try.”

  “Yesss!” Colin said picking up the Parrot.

  “Go on a color walk. Pink.”

  “Nooo!” Colin said, setting it back down like it had germs.

  “I just did that ride,” Dewey said.

  “Don’t
be juvenile. See if you can beat our blue.”

  “Oh, fine. You’re on,” Colin said.

  “Good!” Elinor smiled. “You can start with that piece of pink gum stuck under your shoe.”

  Dewey looked down, picked his right foot up and saw nothing. He lifted his left and saw a long stringy pink wad stretch from his rubber sole to the pavement.

  “Did you plant that?!” Dewey asked, amazed.

  “Don’t move,” Colin said. “We need to film you as the first stop.”

  “How am I going to help look for pink stuff if I don’t move?”

  Free Ride

  “Take off your shoe and leave it there so we can use it when we’re ready!”

  Dewey sighed, taking off his left shoe. “The things I do for you, people.”

  Dewey and Colin ran around looking for the color pink.

  “There’s nothing, and this is dumb! Let’s just hook this baby up and let it roll!”

  “Thank you!” Dewey agreed. “Let’s put it in ‘free ride’ mode and do an obstacle course,” Dewey said, looking around for things the Parrot could maneuver and grabbing his left shoe.

  They gathered empty soda cans and stacked them up in a pyramid, dragged a log over, and found a baseball hat.

  Soon, Seraphina and Elinor joined in gathering leaves and making a path for the Parrot to follow.

  “Lead it to the stairs, jump down, and then follow the path!”

  “Here! Ha!” Dewey said. “Pink!” Someone had discarded a piece of pink cellophane in a cardboard box from a gift or maybe a cupcake.

  Dewey shoved the cellophane in his pocket. Maybe they’d use it at the end somehow, like the finish line or something.

  They worked together and at the end had a short video that lasted all of thirty-seconds and took them almost two hours to create. The little Parrot droid jumped out of the cardboard box, hit the ground, spun around like an insane top, did a two-foot vertical jump, and headed off down the path of leaves.

  “Wait!” Colin yelled, running alongside it two steps ahead as Dewey worked the controller. He scattered some purple jacaranda flowers he’d grabbed along the ground like he was a fairy sprinkling pixie dust. “Ha ha! Purple! Okay?! Pink’s closest kinswoman!”

  “You’re a goofball, Colin!” Seraphina laughed.

  “No, I’m Greaseball.”

  The mini-droid busted down the soda can pyramid.

  “Whoa!” they all yelled.

  It continued to roll under the bench, and a nearby squirrel scurried up a tree.

  “Aw, poor little guy,” Dewey said.

  “We should do a whole thing with it filming squirrels! It’s totally eye-level to them,” Elinor said as she chased behind it, jumping down the three long stairs.

  The Parrot wound its way along more of their path, and pulled up to take its final bow like a little one-eyed droid in a black tux on the shiny pink cellophane red carpet.

  “That’s called an undulation. Cool move, huh?”

  Just then, a small kid being pulled by a beautiful golden retriever made his way through their obstacle course. To think that Wolfie and he were even the same kind of animal, members of the genus Canis, seemed hard to believe. Wolfie was a sturdy fellow. His features were symmetrical, too. They both had pink tongues, with mouths that smiled, and warm brown expressive eyes, and black teddy bear noses. This dog though, running through their obstacle course trailing a small child behind him, spoke sleek and symmetrical engineered beauty, like a new rose-gold iPhone. Wolfie spoke more manufactured fluff-ball cuteness—like, say, Amazon’s Echo Dot.

  “Stop, Oli!” he shouted as the dog dragged him along on a heavy rope.

  Too late. Their Parrot was a sitting duck.

  Before any of them knew what had happened Oliver’s mouth came chopping down around the mini-Parrot like it was a tennis ball.

  Solver Heal Thyself

  “Let go, boy! Let go!” Oliver’s boy tried grabbing the Parrot, but the two wheels just hung out the side of the dog’s mouth.

  “I’m sorry!” he tried to pry it out.

  The dog wasn’t chewing on it, but he wouldn’t let go of it, either.

  “Don’t pull too hard,” Dewey warned. “It might snap.”

  “Oh, man. My parents are going to kill me,” Elinor said. “I just got it.”

  “Hang on a second,” Colin said, digging into his pant pockets. “Who has a dollar? Quick. Oh, wait. I do. Don’t let that dog run!”

  Colin ran, though, and within about a minute and a half came back with a Screwball Cherry ice cream. He peeled off the paper top and held the cone under the dog’s mouth to lick.

  “Here, dog.”

  The dog dropped the Parrot and he took a big bite of it.

  “Here,” he said, holding the Parrot gingerly between his thumb and forefinger to avoid the dog slobber.

  “Thank you!” Elinor sang.

  “Better take your dog away from us,” Dewey said to the kid, leading the dog away with the ice cream.

  “Yeah. So sorry!” the kid said as he took over holding the ice cream to lead the dog away.

  When the dog got out of the park, they tested to make sure the Parrot still worked. It jumped and spun without incident.

  Elinor threw her arms around Colin.

  “Thank you!” she said again.

  “Fast thinking!” Seraphina said.

  “Ha! The color!” Colin pointed to the melting dark pink puddle on the ground.

  “Nice!” Dewey nodded. “Screwball for the win!”

  Later that evening, Dewey wandered into Stephanie’s room. He hardly ever went in there these days.

  “What’s up, Dewsters?” she asked, looking up from her homework.

  “Do you remember when Mom and Dad told you they were having another baby and they were adopting me?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “Well, they bought me a doll so I wouldn’t pull your head off.”

  “Were you jealous?”

  “I don’t remember. I hated sharing my stuff with you. Freaking broke everything.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  He just sat there on her bed, watching her.

  “Like right now. You’re nice and all, but I’m kind of busy and you’re still here. I don’t wanna hurt your feelings or anything, so I’m still talking to ya. But I’m kinda busy. And you’re still kinda here.”

  “Right,” he nodded slowly.

  “Right what?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. It never occurred to him that he might bother her the way Pooh bothered him.

  “Dewey. Done here?”

  “Oh, yeah. Thanks. Sorry. Close your door?”

  “Please.”

  He’d been hoping to ask her if she had any ideas about how to help the Disks. Why not? She’d walked into his office. Might as well use her superior brain. He also was hoping to ask her if she’d ever gotten detention. She wasn’t having any of it, though.

  Too bad Pooh didn’t have any good ideas. She’d be more than happy to help. Just then a text came in from Mrs. Disk.

  Louise just sailed Efren’s Lego in the bathtub and Efren stuffed her doll head-first in the toilet. Coming back soon?!

  Yes

  He’d go back, but he wished he felt a little bit closer to his game plan.

  A Great Quantity

  of Wind

  It turned out that Pooh did give Dewey an idea. It came to him as he ate a plateful of nachos in the mudroom, listening to Louise make her case for taking Efren’s Legos for a morning ride on the high seas.

  “It wasn’t my fault. My fingers were greasy ’cause of the pepperoni,” she explained.

  “You had pizza?” Mr. Disk clarified.

  “Right.”

  “She has to take all of the pepperoni off her pizza and put it in a pile and then walk around eating it. Her fingers get
all greasy and disgusting. She goes in my room and grabs my Lego!” Efren yelled.

  “You’ll get your turn,” Mrs. Disk said, trying to keep the tempers calm. “So you have pepperoni fingers and go get the Lego?”

  “Right! I got the Lego, so that’s why they got all greasy but that was a mistake because I didn’t want them greasy, just to play with, and I had to wash them, so I put them in the bath, and then Efren put Molly in the toilet!!” Hot tears began to run down her face.

  “You’re not supposed to be in my room! Mom! Dad! Why’s she touching my Lego!? My LEGO! She doesn’t even LIKE LEGO!! And she put it in the bathtub?! I’ll never get it rebuilt right. Do something to her! Now she’s going to cry like the baby she is and just get away with it.”

  Dewey was confused. Mrs. Disk’s text had said Louise took Efren’s pirate Lego for a sail in the bathtub. She had the details wrong. Louise didn’t want to play with Efren’s stuff. She wanted to play with him. That kid needed to play with his sister for fifteen minutes before she destroyed all his stuff. Fifteen minutes of playing with Wolfie and Pooh had sent her on her way for him, maybe it would help them, too.

  Dewey found it funny, perfect almost, that his own fingers were covered in grease from the nachos as this idea came to him. He sucked it off his pointer finger and gave Pumpkin a little string of cheese that clung to the plate.

  “You RUINED MOLLY!” she screamed. “Lego’s waterproof! Molly’s all ruined forever! Molly!” she wailed.

  Now, how was he going to get Efren to see the benefit? How had Clara done it?

  As he sat propped up on the bench, knees up, back against the corner of the wall, he tried to think about that saying, something about prevention and it how was worth it in the long run. That was the basic idea. He tried searching for it but didn’t have enough of the right words. He braved trying Stephanie again.

  Dewey: whats that famous quote about prevention

  Stephanie: huh??

  D: famous guy

  S: franklin?

  D: maybe

  S: ounce of prevention…

  Yes! That was it. She always knew. He searched Benjamin Franklin and an ounce of prevention and found what he had almost been remembering from who knows where. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That was the idea he needed to sell. Dewey picked at the cheese at the bottom of the plate, reading more about Benjamin Franklin and his saying.