Centerburg Tales

by Robert McCloskey

  “We don’t want any o’—” Dulcy started to interrupt.

  “It is my honor,” continued the professor, loud enough to be heard above Dulcy’s interruption, “to bring to you this fabulously amazing and most phenomenal product, and its name is”—he paused dramatically, snapping free the fastenings of the case and throwing up the cover—“its name is EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO!”

  The judge, the sheriff, Uncle Ulysses, Dulcy, and Homer all stared at the cans displayed so suddenly before their eyes.

  “What—?” Uncle Ulysses started to ask.

  “Ah-h, what?” echoed the stranger. “Ah-h, yes, my good friends, I can see the question in your friendly faces. What is this remarkable EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO, and what can this phenomenal EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO do for me? In just one minute, just thirty short seconds, I am going to demonstrate to you and to prove to you without the shadow of a doubt that this product can accomplish wondrous things.

  “Each and every can,” said the professor, picking up a can and continuing without a pause, “yes, each and every can comes complete with a handy adjustable top. A slight twist to either left or right opens the tiny holes in the cap, making EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO readily accessible for instantaneous application.

  “Now for the purposes of our demonstration,” the professor continued quickly, “we shall use these delicious-looking doughnuts. Young man,” he said to Homer, “if you will be so kind as to pass the tray, and if you gentlemen,” he requested, bowing low, “would be so kind as to take two doughnuts . . .”

  While Homer passed the tray and everyone took two doughnuts, one in each hand, the professor said, “Now, my friends, we are ready to—uht, uht, sonny, don’t forget me!” And before Homer could pass the tray the professor speared two doughnuts on the end of his cane.

  The judge and Uncle Ulysses exchanged looks, and the sheriff was about to ask, “When—?”

  “Now,” said the professor loudly, banging on his case for undivided attention, “now we are ready to proceed with our demonstration. Yes, in just one minute, only sixty seconds—but first,” said the professor, picking up a can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO, “I shall acquaint you with this wondrous product.”

  The judge, the sheriff, Uncle Ulysses, Homer, and Dulcy all leaned closer, each with both eyes watching the professor twist the adjustable can top, and each with doughnuts in both hands.

  “As I proceed, young man,” the professor said to Homer, “please pour cups of your delicious coffee for everyone here.”

  “Ahuumph!” the judge cleared his throat restlessly.

  “A cup of coffee costs—” Uncle Ulysses began.

  “Everybody eat the doughnut in his right hand!” the professor commanded loudly. “Delicious—uhm-m? Simply delicious,” he declared, taking a dainty bite from the one on the tip of his cane. Having safely stopped all interruptions with large bites of doughnut, the professor continued in a low, confiding voice, “EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO is a truly remarkable product.”

  He shook some on his doughnut and swung it in front of the noses of his audience, on the tip of his cane, for all to see. “Remarkable, you say!” interpreted the professor, loudly enough to be heard over sounds coming from behind mouthfuls of doughnut. “Yes, my friends, EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO is invisible! And what’s more, EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO cannot be smelled,” he said, passing the can quickly beneath every nose. “You cannot feel it, and you cannot see it,” he added, rubbing his fingertips and then wiggling the can close to his ear.

  “Pass the coffee, young man!” he commanded Homer and quickly continued his speech, “EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO is absolutely invisible to the naked eye, odorless to the human nose, soundless to the—young man, don’t forget the cream and sugar—as I was saying, soundless to the unassisted perceptibilities of the human ear, undetected, by itself, by the sensitive human nerves of touch, and what is more, EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO, taken from the can in its natural unadulterated state, is completely tasteless to the sensitive taste buds of the human tongue.

  “Now you are about to ask,” the professor said, “why should we be interested in this product we cannot see, smell, taste, hear, or feel? But watch closely! Sprinkle a small amount of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO in your good aromatic cup of coffee—so! Immediately, yes, my friends, im-me-e-ediately, that good aromatic cup of coffee becomes ever so much more so! Yes, indeed, and after sprinkling a few drops of this remarkable, invisible, tasteless, odorless, textureless, absolutely soundless product on the delicious doughnut you hold in your hand, that delicious doughnut becomes immediately ever so much more so delicious!”

  The can was passed to Dulcy and on to the judge, from the judge to the sheriff, on to Uncle Ulysses, and last of all to Homer. Everyone shook out a small amount of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO into his cup of coffee and onto his second doughnut.

  Everybody began tasting carefully, exchanging glances, tasting once more, and nodding solemnly, while the professor talked on and on.

  “Yes, my friends, that is indeed the most ever so much more so delicious doughnut and the best, yes, without doubt, the most ever so much more so aromatic cup of coffee you have ever tasted.”

  Everyone was nodding in agreement and enjoying his doughnut and coffee—everybody but Homer, who was tasting his coffee and making miserable faces. Finally he asked, “What if you don’t like coffee? Does—?”

  “Does EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO work on everything, this young man wants to know?” the professor said quickly. “Ah, but yes!” he shouted. “Everything. It will make a rose smell ever so much more lovely, curly hair ever so much more curly, beautiful music ever so much more beautiful. Yes, my friends, surely you are all intelligent enough to realize the far-reaching possibilities of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO! It comes to you in this convenient can, put up under the most sanitary conditions by the famous Doctor Forscyth Eversomuch in his great open-air laboratory. One can, yes, one single can, lasts a lifetime. After purchasing one can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO, a man can rest assured that he will never again want for another can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO. It will keep just as fresh, just as free from impurities, just as potent inside the can as the day it was packed. And now for the amazing price of fifty cents, only four bits, one-half of one dollar, a lifetime can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO is yours. This is one of the good things of the earth, men. Now don’t miss this golden opportunity to own a convenient can of it for this amazing price of fifty cents.”

  The sheriff counted out fifty cents, the judge bought a can, so did Uncle Ulysses. Even Dulcy borrowed half a dollar from the judge and bought a can.

  As the professor prepared to snap shut his case Homer asked, “If you don’t like coffee and you put EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO in it, then will you not like coffee ever so much more so?”

  “How would you like,” the professor asked, “a nice fast kick—eherump—would you like a nice free can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO?” And he quickly tossed a can to Homer, snapped up his case, hooked his cane over his arm, pulled on his gloves, tipped his hat, and was out of the door and away in an instant.

  “G’by,” said Dulcy abruptly. “I’m gonna try this stuff on something.”

  “Me too,” said the sheriff.

  “Good day, Ulysses,” said the judge, remembering to be polite.

  “Um-m,” answered Uncle Ulysses absent-mindedly, for he was carefully selecting two doughnuts.

  When he and Homer were alone Uncle Ulysses put the two doughnuts on two plates. One he left plain and the other he sprinkled liberally with EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO. Then he tasted, first one, then the other, the one with, the other without. He stroked his chin, then called Homer, and they both tasted.

  “I’ll be durned,” said Uncle Ulysses finally.

  “You know, Uncle Ulysses,” Homer said, “nobody paid for coffee and doughnuts this afternoon.”

  “I’ll be durned,” Uncle Ulysses repeated. “Ever so much more so!”

  * * *

  The following Thursday Uncle Ulysses sat slumped on his stool behind the counter when the judge walked in.

&nb
sp; “Judge,” Uncle Ulysses asked sleepily, “do you notice anything different about me?”

  The judge looked Uncle Ulysses over carefully and said, “I notice a marked tendency toward sleepiness.”

  “Uh-uh-uh,” nodded Uncle Ulysses with a yawn, “that’s what Aggie says. Says I’m lazier than ever—ever so much more so, she says. That’s not so, Judge. But I just can’t seem to sleep at night any more. I put some EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO on my inner-spring mattress to make it softer.”

  “And did it?” asked the judge.

  “Yes,” nodded Uncle Ulysses, “but I spilled some of the stuff on one of the springs that had a slight squeak and it seemed to start squeaking ever so much more so. Can’t sleep a wink in that bed. Hello, Sheriff,” he added as the sheriff came in, looking flustered and red in the face.

  “Gentlemen,” the judge said solemnly, “I fear that some grave metamorphosis of cerebral or of physical characteristics has erupted within my innermost self. In fact,” he said pompously, “I am just exactly like myself, only ever so much more so.”

  “Tomesimes,” said the sheriff sadly, “I wix my mords all up, but sis thuff ixxes ’em mup so I don’t even snow what I’m krying to snay!”

  “I think,” said Uncle Ulysses gravely, “that we are imaginin’ the whole thing. A man just can’t be more like himself than he is already. Let’s ask Dulcy,” suggested Uncle Ulysses.

  And indeed there was Dulcy, stamping across the grass in the square. He stumbled over a “Keep Off the Grass” sign, let out a loud bellow, picked up the sign and threw it in the general direction of “Peace.” “Peace” went kabonk! as the sign smacked into her. After knocking over a trash can, Dulcy came on toward the lunchroom.

  “He’s ever so much more so, all right. Been eatin’ it every day, I bet,” said Uncle Ulysses while the sheriff and judge nodded.

  Slam! went the door as Dulcy came in. Homer and Freddy came in soon after and looked concernedly at ever so drowsy Uncle Ulysses, at the ever so pompous judge, the ever so flustered and suspicious sheriff, and the ever so much more so uncooperative citizen named Dulcy Dooner.

  “How you feelin’, Homer?” Uncle Ulysses asked.

  “Just fine, Uncle Ulysses,” Homer answered. “You look sleepy, Uncle Ulysses. Got spring fever?”

  “What did you do with your can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO, Homer?” asked Uncle Ulysses, trying to keep awake and unconcerned.

  “Oh, that stuff,” said Homer. “Freddy and I put a lot of it on my radio to improve the reception. It seemed a little better but it seemed to make ever so much more static and interference too. So we took a screw driver and pried the top off the EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO can, just to see what was inside.”

  “Yes?” everybody asked.

  “Yes,” said Homer.

  “It was empty,” Freddy said with a shrug.

  “That stuff is invisible,” Dulcy reminded.

  “Well, it was an empty can!” said Freddy defiantly.

  “And what could be more empty than an EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO empty can?” asked Homer.

  “We’ve been dindled, doggonit—I mean swindled,” howled the sheriff.

  “Our fertile imaginations have led us astray,” pronounced the judge.

  “The professor took us, all right,” chuckled Uncle Ulysses, seeming to come more awake of a sudden.

  “Here, Judge,” said Dulcy, handing over his can of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO. “Now we’re even and I don’t owe you fifty cents.”

  “Help yourselves to doughnuts, boys,” Uncle Ulysses said solicitously, the way he always did before asking a favor.

  “Boys,” he said, “we can’t let this affair come to the attention of Grampa Hercules or we’ll never hear the end of it.”

  Homer hesitated until both he and Freddy had helped themselves to doughnuts and then said, “He already knows.”

  “What?” cried the sheriff and Uncle Ulysses.

  “Yep. I put the top back on the can and decided to give it to Grampa Herc. It’s the sort of thing he would appreciate ever so much, you know,” Homer said.

  “And what did the gold oat—I mean, what did the old goat say?” demanded the sheriff, clearly expecting the worst.

  “He said it beat all what the world was coming to, didn’t he, Freddy? And he said,” Homer continued, “that it used to come in bulk when he was young, and lots cheaper too. Nobody bothered to give it a fancy name or put it in a package with an adjustable top.”

  “Continue, young man,” the judge suggested.

  “Well,” Homer said, “he allowed as how he’d never tried this packaged kind of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO and he had a feeling he’d like to see if it was just as strong as the old-fashioned kind. So I sold him my can for a dollar.”

  “That’s my nephew, and more so,” said Uncle Ulysses.

  “We been swindled!” repeated the sheriff. “I shoulda locked that fella up!”

  “Entirely outside the law!” the judge proclaimed.

  “Helloooo, everybody!” said Grampa Hercules, letting himself in the door.

  Uncle Ulysses sighed and wondered to himself how more so Grampa Herc could possibly get.

  “How do you feel, Hercules?” the judge inquired.

  “Never felt so good in my whole life!” answered Grampa Herc.

  “Okay, what did you do with it?” demanded Dulcy.

  Grampa Herc looked puzzled; then he said, “Oh, you mean the stuff in the can, the EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO. Wu-a-ll, you know, I got to thinkin’. An old fella like me ain’t got long to spend in these parts. I can use up a lot o’ time sprinklin’ a bit on this and that, here and there. I thought to myself, what’s one big, all-fired-honest-to-crawfish, powerful, important way to use up a lifetime supply of EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO? I thought and I thought, and finally it come to me. I went out in my backyard and hunted up a nice soft spot of black earth. Then I started to shake that stuff on that wonderful earth as hard as my arm could shake. I shook until my arm got tired, and I reckon the can was just about empty. Then I took a screw driver and pried off the lid and poured the EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO can full of water, and do you know, that was the dampest, the soakenest, wringin’ wettest sloppin’-to-goodness can of water I ever laid eyes on!”

  “Yes?” said Uncle Ulysses.

  “Yep!” said Grampa Herc. “And then I dumped that EVERSOMUCH MORE-SO soakingest water onto that good old earth and watched it soak in, right down to the core—somewhere halfway between here and China. Then I looked around me and noticed how green the grass looked—trees budding, birds singing, and I felt good all over! See, look out there in the square—just like I’m tellin’ you. It’s a great old world!” shouted Grampa Herc, leaping up and clicking his heels, “and what’s more, it’s getting better all the time! So long, everybody!”

  Uncle Ulysses, the sheriff, the judge, Dulcy, Homer, and Freddy all walked out into the square in the nice warm spring sunshine.

  “Do you think I ought to give this fifty cents back to Grampa Herc?” asked Homer, holding out half a dollar.

  “You just loan that to me, Homer,” said Dulcy, making a grab, “and I’ll buy my can back from the judge. You can owe Grampa Hercules the other fifty cents.”

  “Homer,” said Uncle Ulysses, “run back to the lunchroom and bring a screw driver from the tool box. Freddy, you go along and bring a pitcher of water.”

  Uncle Ulysses was scraping up a nice soft absorbent spot under an old maple right near the statue of “Peace.”

  “You know,” he said, “it’s really a waste of time to shake it on. We’ll just fill it right up to the top and let it keep a-runnin’ over and soakin’ in!”

  PIE AND PUNCH AND YOU-KNOW-WHATS

  PIE AND PUNCH AND YOU-KNOW-WHATS

  UNCLE ULYSSES stood near the door of his lunchroom, leaning on his new automatic jukebox. While he peered out across the square toward the lighted windows of the Centerburg Public Library, his face gradually changed from pink to a deep beet-red. It turned lavender for a fleeting moment, then fa
ded off into a flickering grassy green color. Uncle Ulysses was not feeling sick, but he’d been changing colors like this for several days now—ever since he’d acquired his beautiful new automatic jukebox. The new jukebox had brilliant lights inside that automatically changed color every few seconds, and anybody or anything that came within ten feet of the jukebox automatically changed color too.

  No, Uncle Ulysses was not feeling sick, but he was feeling impatient, and just as he—and the jukebox—automatically turned lavender for the seventeenth time, the door opened, and in walked Homer and Freddy.

  “Hi, Uncle Ulysses!” Homer greeted. “Sorry we’re late. We picked out a lot of books this evening, because the library’s going to be closed for two weeks.”

  “The librarian is going away on a vacation,” Freddy explained, “so we picked out enough books to last until she comes back.”

  “I heard that she was going to Yellowstone Park with the sixth-grade teacher,” said Uncle Ulysses, who kept pretty close track of things like that.

  “Yep,” said Homer, “and she promised to send us a postcard with a picture of Old Faithful on it.”

  “That’ll be nice,” said Uncle Ulysses, listening politely. Then he said, “Boys, I’m goin’ over to the barbershop for a spell, so you two fellows help yourself to doughnuts and look after things while I’m gone.”

  “Okay, Uncle Ulysses,” Homer said, and then he watched patiently while Uncle Ulysses went from one of his automatic gadgets to the next—first turning them on and then turning them off, just to make sure they would stop. It was a slight nervous habit that Uncle Ulysses had developed of late, and it seemed to be more noticeable right before he planned to leave Homer in charge of the lunchroom. He checked them off one by one—waffle irons, toaster, doughnut machine, dishwasher. Last of all, he walked over to check his new automatic jukebox. He gave it an affectionate pat (it was a pink pat, because the automatic lights happened to be pink at the moment). He punched a button to select a number called “Boogie Woogie Symphony,” and dropped a nickel (a green one) into the green slot of the jukebox. There was a cl-l-lick! and mysteriously and silently the record that Uncle Ulysses had selected slid out of a large stack and began to spin.