Never Say Genius

by Dan Gutman

  After a half hour or so, Pep called it quits. It was late. The fire was dying out, and it was getting hard to see the notebook. They were both tired. Most of the people staying at the campground had gone to sleep. She could work on it some more the next day.

  Chapter 8

  CRUSING INDIANA

  As it turned out, Pep didn’t have to work on the cipher the next day after all. While she was sleeping, her unconscious mind was working feverishly on the problem. The brain has a funny way of doing that. It never sleeps. And when Pep woke up in the morning, the solution was waiting for her.

  “It’s in Pigpen!” she whispered to her brother, who was still sleeping peacefully.

  “Huh?” he muttered. “What?”

  “That cipher we saw on the video screen at Wrigley Field yesterday,” she whispered. “It’s written in a code called Pigpen. I learned about it in Girl Scouts when I was little. They used it back in the eighteenth century to keep messages private.”

  “Whatever you say,” Coke said, wiping his eyes.

  Their parents were still asleep. Pep got out her notebook and explained to Coke how the code worked.

  “Each of those symbols represents one letter, but we have to make a Pigpen grid to find out what the letters are. Let me see if I still remember how to make the grid.”

  She turned to the page with the cipher.

  Then, directly below it, she wrote out a Pigpen grid as she remembered it.

  “Look, the first symbol represents the letter T,” Pep whispered. “See?”

  Coke scanned the grid and saw that the little box with the T inside it matched the first symbol of the cipher.

  “So that would mean that the second letter has to be… W,” he whispered.

  “Right,” replied Pep. “And the third letter is O. So that’s probably the first word of the message—TWO.”

  After that, they were easily able to figure out the rest of the letters one by one—PMJULYTHIRD.

  “Two o’clock in the afternoon on July third!” Pep whispered excitedly. “That’s the message!”

  Coke looked at his cell phone to check the date—June 27.

  “July third is … six days from now,” he said, counting them off.

  “Something is going to happen at two o’clock on July third,” said Pep.

  “But that just tells us when,” Coke whispered, “it doesn’t tell us what’s going to happen, or where.”

  “Aunt Judy’s wedding will be the next day, on July Fourth,” Pep said. “We’ll have to be in Washington by then, and Dad said he wants to get there early. So we’re sure to be in Washington on July third.”

  “That doesn’t help us much,” said Coke. “Washington is a big city.”

  “What are you two whispering about?” Dr. McDonald suddenly called out.

  “Nothing, Dad!” Coke said. “Go back to sleep.”

  After everyone was awake, bathed, and breakfasted, the grown-ups huddled at the picnic table, poring over the laptop screen and road atlas.

  “Family meeting!” Dr. McDonald announced, gathering everyone around him. “We have a big day ahead of us. My goal is to get across the great state of Indiana.”

  Dr. Ben McDonald was the kind of person who liked to set goals and achieve them. It gave him a feeling of satisfaction to cross things off his to-do list, and he tried to communicate the importance of setting goals to his children.

  The plan for the day was to drive about a hundred fifty miles across northern Indiana, hitting five or six sites along the way that Mrs. McDonald could use in Amazing but True. They would start out on Route 80, which almost touches the Michigan border. At a certain point, they would veer off to visit some of the interesting sites south of the highway. He and Mrs. McDonald had mapped out the route carefully so they would stop at some historical sites for him, some offbeat sites for her, and also some sites that would keep the kids interested.

  “Okay,” Mrs. McDonald said, “first, let’s go over the places we are not going to visit today. We are not going to see the world’s largest toilet bowl in Columbus, Indiana.”

  “Oh, man!” Coke complained. “I really wanted to go there. In more ways than one.”

  “Very funny,” Pep said.

  “It’s two hundred miles south of here, and we’re heading east,” Dr. McDonald explained.

  “There’s a twenty-foot statue of a woman made out of hubcaps in Jeffersonville,” Mrs. McDonald continued, “but that’s even farther south. And as much as I would love to see the world’s largest ball of paint, it would be a three-hour drive to Alexandria.”

  “How big is the ball of paint?” Pep asked.

  “It’s over three thousand pounds,” Mrs. McDonald said, consulting her guidebook. “Oh, and the world’s largest hairball is not far from here. It’s bigger than a basketball.”

  “Let’s go!” Coke shouted.

  “It’s not on display anymore,” Mrs. McDonald said.

  “Bummer!”

  “How was it possible for a cat to cough up a hairball bigger than a basketball, Mom?” Pep asked.

  “It must have been a very large cat,” Coke guessed.

  “It was a cow,” Mrs. McDonald said.

  “Oh.”

  “The Santa Claus Museum in Santa Claus, Indiana, would be a five-hour drive,” Dr. McDonald informed everyone, “and I refuse to go to Jones, Michigan, where your mother tells me there is a fake ghost town created by the guy who invented Kitty Litter. You’ll just have to come back on another trip to see those places—preferably after I’m dead.”

  “So where are we going today?” asked Pep.

  “Our first stop is the Lunkquarium,” Mrs. McDonald replied.

  “The what?!”

  They checked out of the campground and headed east for about an hour on Route 80. Then Dr. McDonald pulled off exit 83, and a mile or so down the road a sign came into view:

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Portage IN.

  In the B box, type Edwardsburg MI.

  Click Get Directions.

  “Michigan?” Pep asked. “What are we doing here, Dad? I thought you said we were going to cross Indiana today.”

  “We are,” Dr. McDonald replied. “This is just a quick side trip.”

  “Woooooo-hoooooooo!” Coke hollered. “Did you know that Michigan is sometimes called the Wolverine State, even though there are no wolverines in Michigan anymore?”

  “Get a life, brainiac,” Pep told her brother.

  Soon they arrived in Edwardsburg, which bills itself as the “Live Bait Capital of the World.” Dr. McDonald pulled the RV into the big parking lot of a store called Lunker’s. There was a giant rotating fish on the roof.

  “I don’t get it,” Coke said as they walked through the front door. “It’s a big fishing store.”

  But actually, it was much more. The ceiling of the store was painted blue with white clouds, to make it seem like you were in the great outdoors. Besides all the fishing and hunting gear, the store featured a stuffed bear, an alligator, some huge iguanas, an enormous aquarium (the Lunkquarium), and an eight-thousand-pound sculpture of a bass that looked like it was crashing through a brick wall.

  Even Coke had to admit the place was cool. Everybody had pretzels at the in-store restaurant before piling back into the RV.

  “Okay, what’s next, Mom?” asked Pep.

  “Our next stop is the RV Hall of Fame,” Mrs. McDonald announced.

  “No!” Coke hollered. “It can’t be true! They can’t have a Hall of Fame devoted to RVs. Say it ain’t so, Dad!”

  But it was so. In Elkhart, Indiana, just eleven miles south of Lunker’s, is the RV Hall of Fame. Mrs. McDonald read from the website.

  Dedicated to preserving the history and honoring the pioneers and individuals who have made significant contributions to the RV and Manufactured Housing industries…

  “Bor-ing!” Coke shouted.

 
“Please, Mom!” Pep begged. “Don’t make us go there. We’ll go anywhere else you want. Just don’t make us go there.”

  “Okay! Okay!” Mrs. McDonald agreed. “Stay on the road, Ben. We’ll skip the RV Hall of Fame.”

  In the back, Coke and Pep breathed sighs of relief. They weren’t sure if they would rather jump off a cliff, get locked in a burning building, or visit the RV Hall of Fame.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Edwardsburg MI.

  In the B box, type Mentone IN.

  Click Get Directions.

  “Next stop,” Mrs. McDonald announced cheerfully. “The world’s largest egg!”

  It may be hard to believe, dear reader. But about an hour south of the RV Hall of Fame, in the little town of Mentone, Indiana, rests the largest egg in the world.

  Well, it’s not a real egg. And it may not even be the largest fake egg in the world, because there are other fake eggs in Washington State and Canada that the locals claim to be the largest. But if you walk down Main Street in Mentone, you will almost surely see a three-thousand-pound, ten-foot-tall concrete egg standing on its end near a bank parking lot.

  The twins were not in a position to beg off going to look at the giant egg, as they had already talked their parents into skipping the RV Hall of Fame. One should choose one’s battles carefully.

  “This is it?” Dr. McDonald asked as he walked up to the egg, somewhat disappointed.

  “What do you mean, Ben?” the easily impressed Mrs. McDonald enthused. “This is amazing! How many people can say they saw the largest egg in the world in person?”

  Dr. McDonald shook his head and went back to wait for the rest of the family in the RV.

  “It’s really not that big, Mom,” Pep said. “And it’s not even an egg. It’s an egg-shaped object.”

  “I don’t think this egg is as big as the world’s largest ball of twine,” Coke noted.

  “You’re comparing apples and oranges,” Mrs. McDonald told him.

  “No I’m not,” Coke said. “I’m comparing balls of twine and fake eggs. If you want me to compare the world’s largest apple and the world’s largest orange…”

  Mrs. McDonald ignored him, taking some photos and notes for her website.

  “It’s probably bigger than that hairball you told us about,” Pep guessed, hoping to make her mother feel like it hadn’t been a wasted trip.

  “I can’t believe we passed up the world’s largest toilet bowl to see this,” Coke complained. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”

  So they did. There’s only so much time you can spend looking at a gigantic concrete egg.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Mentone IN.

  In the B box, type Peru IN.

  Click Get Directions.

  “What’s next, Mom?” asked Pep as they drove out of Mentone.

  “Oh, you’re going to like this”, she replied mysteriously.

  Thirty miles directly south of Mentone, on the banks of the Wabash River, is the town of Peru, Indiana. Peru is called the “Circus Capital of the World,” because it used to be the winter home of Ringling Brothers and other circuses. But the McDonald family didn’t come to Peru to see lions or tigers or bears.

  They came to see a pair of pants. “Do you kids remember a couple of days ago, when Dad and I went to that shoe store in Illinois to see the shoes of the tallest man in the world?” Mrs. McDonald asked as they turned onto North Broadway in Peru.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, his pants are here.”

  Coke and Pep looked at each other as their dad pulled into the parking lot at Miami County Museum.

  “We came here to see a pair of pants?” Coke asked. “You gotta be kidding me.”

  “Well, they’re overalls actually,” Mrs. McDonald replied.

  They went inside the museum and looked all over for an extremely large pair of overalls.

  “Hey, check this out,” Coke said as he spotted a giant skull. “Maybe this is that guy’s head.”

  In fact, the skull was labeled “Big Charley the Killer Elephant.” Apparently, Big Charley was a circus elephant that got mad at his trainer one day in 1901 and drowned him. So Big Charley was shot, and his skull was put in the museum. The bullet holes were plainly visible.

  “That’s gross,” Pep said, with obvious fascination.

  Mrs. McDonald took some photos and notes for Amazing but True. But not far from the giant skull, she found what she was looking for.

  “Feast your eyes,” she told the family, “and behold … the pants … of the tallest man in the world!”

  There they were. The pants belonged to Robert Wadlow, the Illinois man whose body produced too much growth hormone. When he was thirteen years old, the sign on the wall said, he was seven feet four inches tall. At age twenty-two, he was eight feet eleven inches tall.

  “Those are some big pants,” Dr. McDonald admitted. “That guy must have been some basketball player,” Coke marveled.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Peru IN.

  In the B box, type Huntington IN.

  Click Get Directions.

  “Actually, he could barely stand up,” Mrs. McDonald said. “He died when he was just twenty-two, in 1940.”

  “That’s sad,” Pep said quietly.

  “Okay, can we get out of here now?” asked Coke. “This place is creepy.”

  Mrs. McDonald insisted on stopping in the gift shop before leaving. She gave each of the kids money to get a souvenir. Pep bought a book about circus animals, and Coke bought a can of Silly String.

  By the time the McDonalds got out of the museum, it was afternoon. They still had a long way to go to get through Indiana. So it was quick ham and cheese sandwiches in the RV and back on the road, heading east along Route 24 thirty-five miles to the town of Huntington. That’s where they saw this sign:

  Visit

  THE DAN QUAYLE VICE PRESIDENT MUSEUM

  “No!” Coke hollered from the back. “Not another museum!”

  “Do we have to go?” asked Pep. “I never even heard of Dan Quayle.”

  “Calm down,” Dr. McDonald told the kids. “We’re not taking you to another museum.”

  Instead, he pulled into the Tel-Hy Nature Preserve. The kids assumed they would be observing nature, but Dr. McDonald drove down the road a bit until he stopped in front of a row of little shacks.

  “It’s amazing!” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “I give up,” Coke said. “What is it?”

  “Back in 1960,” Mrs. McDonald informed them, “a couple named Hy and Lorry Goldenberg bought an outhouse for three dollars. They liked it so much that they started collecting outhouses. When Hy died, Lorry donated seventeen of them here. It’s probably the largest collection of outhouses in the world!”

  “It’s also probably the only collection of outhouses in the world,” Dr. McDonald commented.

  The outhouses were lined up in a row, and the family examined most of them. One of them seated three people at a time, which must have been interesting. Mrs. McDonald took photos and notes.

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Huntington IN.

  In the B box, type Kendallville IN.

  Click Get Directions.

  “Fascinating,” said Dr. McDonald. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The grave site of Johnny Appleseed was only thirty miles away near Fort Wayne, but Mrs. McDonald decided to skip it, because there is some dispute over where Mr. Appleseed is actually buried. Instead, they headed north on Route 3 to Kendallville, home of the Mid-America Windmill Museum.

  “No!” Coke screamed. “Not another museum! I’ll die if I have to visit another museum.”

  “Someday,” Dr. M
cDonald lectured him, “wind power, solar power, and other forms of renewable energy will replace coal, oil, and gas. You kids should learn about this stuff.”

  Dr. McDonald had a special interest in the subject, having authored The Impact of Coal on the Industrial Revolution.

  “Can’t Pep and I just stay in the RV?” Coke begged.

  “Fine!” Dr. McDonald said.

  By the way, anytime someone says a sentence that consists of just the word “fine,” they mean the exact opposite of fine. The situation is not fine, and they are not happy about it.

  Mrs. McDonald insisted on locking the doors of the RV, just to be on the safe side.

  “Don’t worry about us, Mom,” Coke said. “We can take care of ourselves.”

  The grown-ups went off to tour the windmill museum. Coke listened to his iPod, while Pep worked on a crossword puzzle. After about fifteen minutes, she suddenly looked up.

  “I have a bad feeling,” she said.

  Coke took off one earbud so he could hear her.

  “What?”

  “Somebody’s out there,” Pep told him. “I have a feeling.”

  They both looked out the windows. Nobody was around. It was just a parking lot, and there were no other vehicles in it.

  “It’s nothing,” Coke told his sister. “You’re paranoid.”

  But in fact it wasn’t nothing, because ten minutes later a black pickup truck pulled into the parking lot and stopped about twenty yards away. A man wearing a baseball cap got out.

  “Look!” Pep shouted.

  The twins got out of their seats and crept to the window, keeping their heads low.

  “Is it Archie Clone?” Coke asked.

  “No,” Pep replied, “and it’s not one of the bowler dudes either. This guy is too big. I’ve never seen him before.”

  The guy in the baseball cap rooted around in the back of his truck for about five minutes, like he was trying to find something. Then he pulled something out.

  A chain saw.