More Adventures of the Great Brain

by John D. Fitzgerald

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Death of Old Butch

  IT WAS JUST A COUPLE OF WEEKS after I’d seen Tom cry for the first time that a dog named Old Butch died. He was a mongrel dog, who was everybody’s dog, and yet he was nobody’s dog. I know that sounds funny, but it is true. He had big ears like a hound dog, a squat body like a bulldog, and only the good Lord knows how many other breeds were in his ancestry. He was mostly black and brown with white spots.

  Nobody knew where Old Butch came from. Mr. Harmon, who ran the Z.C.M.I. store, believed the dog was left behind accidently by some people passing through town. Maybe he was right because Old Butch made his home in a packing case behind the store, and sometimes he’d sit for hours is front of the store as if waiting for the people to come back for him.

  Some of those people must have been kids because Old Butch really loved kids. He was like a godsend to every kid in town whose parents wouldn’t let them own a dog. He’d play with them and let them pretend he was their dog whenever they wanted. And there are times when a boy really needs a dog. I know when I was getting the silent treatment, there were many times when I went down behind the barn to cry, and my dog Brownie was always there to comfort me. He’d lick the tears from my face and let me hug him while he comforted me. And I knew a lot of kids in town who didn’t have a dog who would head straight for Old Butch after getting a whipping. Old Butch would lick their faces and comfort them.

  Grownups liked Old Butch too. They would stop and pat him on the head whenever they met him. But he just wouldn’t let anybody really own him. He made his rounds every day. He’d stop in front of the Deseret Meat Market first. He didn’t beg. He’d just sit on the wooden sidewalk until Mr. Thompson came out and gave him a bone or some scraps. And he would go behind the Palace Cafe and sit until Mr. Kokovinis brought him some scraps. And the kids who didn’t own a dog would sneak food out of their homes for Old Butch. He was probably the best fed dog in town.

  Plenty of kids tried to make him their dog and took him home with them. Some even built a doghouse for him. But he would only stay for a day or so and then go back to his packing-case home.

  Tom and I had just finished doing our morning chores the day Roger Gillis came running into our backyard. He was a kid about six years old whose parents wouldn’t let him own a dog. He was crying.

  “Old Butch is dead!” he cried. “I went to look for him to play with this morning and found him dead.”

  “He was getting pretty old for a dog,” Tom said, trying to comfort Roger.

  That was sure true. I could remember Old Butch from the time I was very little. Nobody knew who named him Butch, and then as he got old everybody started calling him Old Butch.

  “Maybe he isn’t really dead,” Tom said. “Maybe he is just sick.”

  “He looks dead,” Roger said.

  “Stop crying until we make sure,” Tom said.

  My brother went up to our bedroom and got a small pocket mirror from his strongbox. The three of us ran all the way to the rear of the Z.C.M.I. store.

  Old Butch lay on a blanket some kid had put in the crate a long time ago. His eyes were open and he looked all stiff.

  Tom knelt and held the mirror in front of Old Butch’s nose and mouth. The mirror remained dry and bright. Tom stood up and put the mirror in his pocket.

  “He is dead all right,” Tom said.

  Bad news travels fast in a small town. Andy Anderson and Howard Kay and Jimmie Peterson and Seth Smith came running up the alley. They were all kids whose mothers wouldn’t let them have a dog. Their mothers said dogs made too much of a mess on the lawns and gardens.

  Then Uncle Mark came riding up the alley on his white stallion. He stopped and dismounted. He took his lariat from his saddle and started making a noose on one end.

  “What are you going to do?” Tom asked.

  “Mr. Harmon reported finding the dog dead,” Uncle Mark said. “It is my duty as Marshal to get rid of the body. I’ll drag him out of town a mile or so.”

  Tom folded his arms on his chest. “You aren’t going to drag Old Butch out of town and leave him for the buzzards,” he said.

  “There isn’t anything else I can do,” Uncle Mark said. “He is just a dog, and he is dead.”

  “He was more than just a dog,” Tom said. “Maybe you can’t do anything about it, but us kids can.”

  “Like what?” Uncle Mark asked with a surprised look.

  “Like giving Old Butch the proper funeral he deserves,” Tom said. “All the kids in town loved Old Butch, and we aren’t going to let the buzzards have his body.”

  “All right, boys,” Uncle Mark said, “but you’ll have to bury him today.”

  Tom became all business as soon as Uncle Mark rode away. “J.D., get your wagon,” he said. “Seth, you go get Sammy, Danny, and Basil and meet us in our barn. Jimmie, go into the store and tell Mr. Harmon we are going to take a small wooden box with boards pried up on top to make a coffin for Old Butch.”

  By the time I returned with my wagon, there were a whole bunch of kids there. Old Butch’s body, wrapped in the blanket, lay in a smaller wooden box than the crate that had been his home. Tom and I lifted the box onto my wagon.

  When we arrived at our barn, Seth, Sammy, Danny, and Basil were waiting.

  “Sammy,” Tom said, “you and Danny and Basil get shovels out of our toolshed and go dig a grave for Old Butch. Take a pick along too. You might need it.”

  They didn’t ask questions. They all knew there was a small piece of ground just south of the cemetery where people sometimes buried their pets. They left to dig the grave.

  “Jimmie,” Tom said. “You go to the meat market and tell Mr. Thompson we want a big bone to bury with Old Butch.”

  Jimmie hitched up his britches, which were too big for him, as he looked at Tom with surprise. “If he is dead, he can’t eat,” he said.

  “The Indians always bury their dead with enough food to last until they get to the happy hunting ground,” Tom said. “Maybe there is a happy hunting ground for good dogs like Old Butch. We’ll put a bone in his coffin to last him until he gets there.”

  Tom told me to go ask Mamma if we could have the old American flag she had put in our attic when Papa bought a new one.

  I ran to our kitchen, where Mamma and Aunt Bertha were kneading dough to make bread.

  “T.D. wants the old flag you put in the attic,” I said.

  “Why?” Mamma asked.

  “To put on the coffin,” I said.

  “Coffin?” she asked. “Is Mr. Peters dead?”

  I guess Mamma thought because Mr. Peters was a Civil War veteran and entitled to have a flag on his coffin that Mr. Peters had died.

  “No,” I said. “It is Old Butch and I guess Tom wants to give him a military funeral.”

  “God love that boy,” Mamma said. “Sometimes I get so exasperated with him I could scream, and then he does something that makes me very proud he is my son. Of course he can have the old flag.”

  Mamma wiped the flour from her hands and went up to the attic to get the flag for me because she couldn’t quite remember where she put it. When I returned to the barn with it, Sammy, Danny, and Basil were back from digging the grave. The coffin was on my wagon. Tom draped the flag over it.

  “We will let Old Butch lie in state until two o’clock this afternoon,” he said.

  “But,” Sammy said, “only people lie in state.”

  I couldn’t keep my mouth shut I was so curious.

  “What is lying in state?” I asked.

  “When a person dies,” Tom explained, “if he or she has been a good person who is loved and respected, the body in the coffin lies in state in an undertaking parlor, or in the Mormon Tabernacle, or in the Community Church, so people can pay their last respects to the dead. You’ve seen it, J.D.”

  “But I didn’t know what they called it,” I said. “Then Sammy is right. Only people lie in state.”

  Tom looked angry for a second and the
n his face became calm. “If that was Brownie lying in that coffin, you’d want him to lie in state, wouldn’t you?”

  It wasn’t until that moment I really understood what Tom was trying to do. There were at least seven or eight kids in the barn right then who felt about Old Butch the same way I did about Brownie.

  “You are right,” I said. “Old Butch deserves to lie in state.”

  Tom sat down on a bale of hay. “Now about the funeral procession,” he said. “The kids who don’t own dogs will be the pallbearers. Basil, you and J.D. will pull the wagon. I mean the hearse. Following the hearse will come the band and after the band the mourners.”

  We all stared at Tom as if he’d gone loco. The only band in town was the town band made up of grownups.

  “Sammy,” Tom continued, “you will play your cornet in the band and also play ‘Taps’ at the final resting place.”

  “I can play ‘Taps’,” Sammy said, “but I don’t know how to play a funeral march.”

  “I know,” Tom said, “so you and the band will play ‘Home Sweet Home’ instead. You can play that, can’t you?”

  “It’s about the first thing you learn how to play on any instrument,” Sammy said.

  “Danny will play his trombone,” Tom said. “Seth will play his violin. Jimmie will play his clarinet. Howard will play his snare drum, and I will play his bass drum.”

  Seth shook his head. “Whoever heard of a violin in a band?” he asked. “And besides, you don’t know how to play a bass drum.”

  “You can play ‘Home Sweet Home’ and that is all that matters,” Tom said. “And with my great brain I can learn to beat time on a bass drum in a minute.” Tom got up from the bale of hay. “The fellows in the band be here at one-thirty so we can have a rehearsal.”

  It was time by then for us all to go have lunch.

  “We can’t leave Old Butch alone,” Tom said after the others had left. “I’ll stand as honor guard while you eat, and then you can come back and relieve me while I eat.”

  That was all right with me because it gave me a chance to be in the spotlight during lunch for a change. Papa, Mamma, and Aunt Bertha listened intently as I told them about the funeral arrangements. Sweyn didn’t seem impressed at all.

  “Whoever heard of a funeral procession for a dog,” he said. “It is ridiculous.”

  Papa glared at Sweyn. “The death of any living thing, be it a plant or an animal or a person is never ridiculous,” he said. “You will march in that funeral procession with your brothers.”

  “At my age?” Sweyn asked with a startled look. “Marie Vinson will think I’ve gone crazy.”

  “That isn’t what she will think,” Papa said. “It is just what you think, and I don’t like your thinking at all.”

  It was almost worth Old Butch dying to see Papa put Sweyn in his place for a change. After I’d eaten, I ran to the barn to tell Tom the good news about how Papa had really told off Sweyn.

  “It’s about time,” Tom said “Sweyn is getting too big for his britches. Now, J.D., stand as honor guard. Any mourners that come before I get back, let them pat the coffin and say good-bye to Old Butch.”

  In a little while kids started coming into the barn from all over town to say good-bye to Old Butch. Then they stood in small groups, talking in whispers like people do at funerals. The band and everybody were there when Tom got back.

  Tom began rehearsing the band. It sounded so bad at first that our cow began to moo, our team became restless, and Dusty began to neigh. But the band finally got so it didn’t sound half bad. It was time for the funeral procession to begin.

  Basil and I pulled the hearse to the alley. Tom lined up the band behind us. The mourners fell in line, including Sweyn, who looked as if he wished he could find a hole and crawl into it. Tom gave the signal and the band started playing “Home Sweet Home” as the procession began to move up the alley. Following Tom’s instructions Basil and I turned when we got to Main Street and led the way right down the middle of Main Street, with the band playing “Home Sweet Home” over and over again.

  I could see people coming out of stores and homes and people on the sidewalk staring at us. Then I saw Papa come out of the Advocate office. I thought some of the grownups might laugh and think it ridiculous like Sweyn. But they didn’t. When we got to the railroad tracks, I looked over my shoulder. Papa and about a hundred adults had joined the funeral procession. You would have thought we were burying the Mayor.

  When we reached the grave site and stopped, the pallbearers placed the coffin in the grave. The band stopped playing. Then Tom stood beside the open grave and I’d never seen his face so solemn.

  “I will now deliver the eulogy for Old Butch,” he said. “If ever there lived a good dog, it was Old Butch. He loved everybody, and everybody loved him. We are all going to miss Old Butch. But those who will miss him the most are kids whose parents won’t let them own a dog of their own. Old Butch took the place of the dogs they couldn’t have. And now that Old Butch is gone, these kids are going to be mighty brokenhearted. What these parents don’t realize is that a dog is a boy’s first great love except for his family. A family without a dog is like a house that is empty.” Tom stooped over and picked up a handful of dirt which he sprinkled on the coffin in the grave. “ ‘Dust thou art and to dust thou return’,” he quoted. Then he nodded at Sammy.

  Sammy put his cornet to his mouth and began to play “Taps”. He played so beautifully it made me cry. But I wasn’t the only one crying.

  When Sammy finished blowing “Taps” for Old Butch, Seth and Basil picked up the shovels they had left there and began throwing dirt on the coffin. I thought the grownups would leave then, but they didn’t. They stayed until the last shovelful of dirt had been placed on the grave. Then they began to leave.

  Uncle Mark and Papa walked to where Tom was standing.

  “Thanks, Tom,” Uncle Mark said, and his voice was hoarse.

  Papa put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I am going to give Old Butch an obituary in the Advocate,” he said. “And I’m going to let you write it just as you said it here today. Even in death Old Butch is going to make some boys happy. Mr. Gillis told me after hearing your eulogy that he is going to find a pup for his son, Roger. And there are others who heard your eulogy or who will read the obituary in the Advocate who will change their minds about their sons owning a dog. I’m proud of you, son.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Ghost of Silverlode

  JUST THE OTHER SIDE of the town limits of Adenville on the old road leading up Red Rock Canyon lay the ruins of the ghost town of Silverlode. It had been a booming silver-mining camp before I was born. Ever since I could remember, there had been a wood sign just this side of Aden irrigation ditch, which had separated Adenville from the mining camp. The sign read:

  NO PERSON UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE

  ADMITTED BEYOND THIS SIGN UNLESS

  ACCOMPANIED BY ADULTS BY ORDER

  OF MARSHAL AND DEPUTY SHERIFF

  MARK TRAINOR

  The road up Red Rock Canyon had been the only road to Silverlode and Adenville until the mines petered out and Silverlode had become a ghost town. Then the railroad had come to Adenville, and a new road had been built that ran northward, following the railroad. The old road up Red Rock Canyon was only used by trappers and hunters. There were so many rock slides and washouts it was impossible to travel by wagon.

  I learned when quite young why Uncle Mark had put up the sign. When I was about three years old, two Mormon kids, Larry Knudson and William Bartell, had gone exploring in the ghost town and were never seen again. The ghost town was honeycombed with old mine tunnels and mine shafts and giant excavations. Uncle Mark organized a search party, but a cloudburst that afternoon had washed away all tracks left by the two boys, and the heavy rain had caused landslides, rock slides, and cave-ins. Every able-bodied man in Adenville had searched for the bodies of the two boys for two weeks without success, and then the search was given up.

>   That was the reason Uncle Mark had put up the sign. But he really didn’t need a sign to keep the kids in Adenville from exploring in the ghost town because it was haunted by the ghost of Silverlode. Trappers and hunters returning at night had reported seeing the ghost. Many fathers told their sons they had seen the ghost. And even Uncle Mark said he’d seen the ghost. I remember asking Papa about the ghost when I first heard about it from some other kids.

  “They say it is the ghost of a man named Tinker, who owned the Tinker Mine,” Papa had told me. “Like other greedy mine owners he refused to put proper safety devices in his mine. The day before the mine closed, six miners were killed when trapped by a cave-in. The miners who escaped lynched Tinker before the Marshal could prevent it. And the miners who lynched Tinker put a curse on him, that he would never know peace in death and would haunt Silverlode forever. They say his ghost comes up from his grave at night and roams the ghost town.”

  “Have you ever seen the ghost?” I asked.

  “No, J.D.,” Papa had answered. “But even without a ghost, Silverlode is no place for you or your brothers unless I am with you. What happened to Larry Knudson and William Bartell could happen to any boy foolish enough to go exploring there.”

  I sure as heck wasn’t going to take a chance of being buried alive or meeting up with a ghost. The ghost was welcome to his ghost town as far as every kid in Adenville was concerned until just a couple of weeks before my brothers were to leave for school in Salt Lake City.

  It started on a Saturday afternoon. It was raining too hard to go swimming. Some of the kids came to our barn to play, as they often did when it was raining. Seth Smith showed up with his eyes all red.

  “Are you sick?” Tom asked as Danny Forester, Sammy Leeds, Parley Benson, Basil, and I crowded around him.

  “I didn’t sleep all night,” Seth said. “My Uncle Steve is visiting us and he likes to tell ghost stories. He was telling us some last night before I went to bed. I was so scared I was afraid to close my eyes all night.”