Freddy and the Bean Home News

by Walter R. Brooks

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that, pig,” said a sarcastic voice. “What’s Shakespeare got that you haven’t got, hey?”

  Freddy turned sharply. Neither he nor Jerry had noticed Charles, who was standing on the porch. He spent most of his time there nowadays, admiring himself, when he thought nobody was looking, in the shiny bottom of the iron frying pan.

  “Can’t you get anybody else to tell you how smart you are, that you have to walk along, telling it to yourself?” continued Charles.

  Freddy laughed. “I don’t know that it’s any worse than your telling your reflection in a mirror how handsome you are all day long.”

  “Oh, is that so!” said Charles. “Well, I guess if you’d look in a mirror once in a while, you wouldn’t always be going around shaking hands with yourself. I guess you wouldn’t be so pleased with what a pig looks like.”

  “What’s all the row?” asked Jinx, coming out from under the porch where he had been annoying a beetle. “Great Scott, Charley, are you still up there making noble faces at yourself? You know, Freddy, we’ve got to do something about Charles. He’s falling in love with himself. He does nothing but strut up and down in front of this frying pan all day long, looking magnificent.”

  “I do not!” said Charles. “I come to look at myself in it once in a while—sure, I do. I’m not like some of you animals that don’t care how they look. Mr. Bean expects us to look nice, and how can you tell if everything is all right unless you take a look at yourself once in a while?”

  “That’s all right,” said Freddy, “but you’ve been looking at yourself for two weeks, and if you can’t tell what’s wrong in that time, you’d better give up.”

  “You’d better ask me,” said Jinx. “I can tell you what’s wrong in two seconds.”

  “Aw, you make me sick,” said Charles, and walked to the other end of the porch and turned his back.

  Freddy and Jerry went down to the bank to see if Ernest, Jr. was awake, and then they went home.

  “I suppose it is a good thing to know what you look like,” said Jerry. “You know, Freddy, I’ve never seen myself.”

  “You look just like other ants,” said Freddy.

  “You don’t look like other pigs,” said Jerry.

  “That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” said Freddy. “Well, let’s see.” He looked at a small mirror which hung on the wall, but, like his window panes, it hadn’t been cleaned in several years, and all he could see in it was just sort of a faint shadow of a pig. He wiped a cloth across it, but that only made it worse. What he saw then was the shadow of a pig with zebra stripes and one black eye. “I guess you couldn’t get much idea what you look like from that,” he said. “Maybe I could draw your picture. I’m pretty good with a pencil. Only your face is so small. I don’t think I know really what you look like myself.”

  He rummaged around in the drawer of his desk and brought out a large magnifying glass. Then Jerry got down on a sheet of white paper and Freddy held the magnifying glass over him—and gave a loud cry of dismay. “Good gracious, Jerry, you’ve got an awfully ferocious looking face!”

  “Have I?” said Jerry in a pleased voice. “I wish I was bigger. Maybe I could scare people. I never can scare anybody—even Fido. Where is Fido, anyway? Didn’t he go with us? Here, Fido! Fid—oh, there you are, you bad beetle! Hiding behind me like that!”

  Fido rolled over on his back to show he was sorry and waved all six legs in the air, and Jerry patted him with his feeler and told him to lie down and keep quiet. For Freddy had begun to draw.

  Freddy erased a good deal when he drew, and on the difficult parts it seemed to help him to stick his tongue out and move it around as if he was drawing with it and not with his pencil. He was fond of Jerry and wanted to give him a pleasant expression, but the harder he worked the more terrifying the portrait looked. Ants haven’t much expression anyway, except a sort of dragon-like ferocity. They don’t mean anything by it; it’s just the way their faces are put together.

  “Well,” said Freddy at last, “I guess this is the best I can do.” And he held the drawing up for Jerry to see.

  The ant looked at it for a long time, then he climbed up on Freddy’s ear. “Do I really look like that?” he said. “Golly, I’d hate to meet myself on a dark night.”

  “Well, as Mrs. Bean says, you’ll never be hung for your good looks,” said Freddy. “But for that matter, neither will I. If the Bean farm ever has a beauty show, you and I had better be the judges.”

  “Yes, I know, Freddy,” said the ant, “but you’re nice looking. You’re not handsome, but you look pleasant. But I look—well, I wonder how Fido stands it.” Then he laughed. “Though I will say that when I was looking up at you through that magnifying glass, you were pretty scary yourself.”

  “Say, I’ve got an idea,” said Freddy. He took the drawing and some colored crayons and went out and across the barnyard to the back porch, where Charles was still strutting up and down.

  “Hey, Charles,” he said, “Henrietta wants you.” And as soon as the rooster had hurried off he took his crayons and copied his picture of Jerry’s face on the bottom of the frying pan. Then he sat down and waited.

  He had barely finished when Charles came running back. “Say, what’s the idea?” he demanded. “Henrietta didn’t want me.”

  “Of course she didn’t,” said Freddy. “I just wanted to pry you loose from that frying pan for a few minutes. What you said a while ago about how we ought to try to look our best—well, I guess I’ve been kind of careless of my appearance and I thought I’d take a look at myself and see if anything needed to be done.”

  “There’s plenty to be done, all right,” said Charles, looking at him scornfully. “But if you can do it to that face, you’re a wonder.”

  “You don’t have to be unpleasant about it,” said Freddy humbly. “I know I’m not as handsome as you are. You’ve got a fine, noble profile, Charles—there’s something of the eagle in it, proud and haughty, but with more dash, somehow, than an eagle. No, I wouldn’t kid you; take a look in the frying pan yourself.”

  Charles was suspicious, but he could not resist a quick glance, for Freddy had edged him around until he was directly in front of the frying pan. He looked, then his head darted forward and he stared. And then he gave a faint gurgle and fell over in a dead faint.

  And then—he fell over in a dead faint.

  “Golly,” said Freddy. “I didn’t think he’d take it that hard!” He called Jinx out from under the porch, and they were working over Charles to bring him around, when a big car drove into the barnyard. “Wow!” said Freddy. “Mrs. Underdunk!” And he dove off the porch into the bushes.

  The chauffeur held the door open, and Mrs. Underdunk got out just as Mrs. Bean came to the door to see who her visitor was.

  “How do you do,” said Mrs. Bean pleasantly.

  Mrs. Underdunk did not reply. She looked Mrs. Bean up and down through a little pair of glasses which she held up to her eyes on a stick. “I am Mrs. Humphrey Underdunk,” she said. “I understand you are the owner of a pig.”

  “Why, yes,” said Mrs. Bean. “Won’t you come in?”

  Mrs. Underdunk came up on the porch. “I can say what I have to say here,” she said. “I wish merely to warn you that you will have to keep your pig tied up. He has been running wild and causing disturbances in Centerboro. We are not going to allow that.”

  “Why, dear me,” said Mrs. Bean. “Do you mean our Freddy? Freddy wouldn’t cause disturbances.”

  “The fact remains that he did,” said Mrs. Underdunk. “If he is found in the village again, I have given orders—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” said Mr. Bean, appearing beside Mrs. Bean in the doorway, “but who are you to give orders about my pig?”

  “I have given orders,” said Mrs. Underdunk calmly, “that he is to be shot.”

  Freddy, peering out through the bushes, couldn’t tell whether Mr. Bean was angry or whether he was smiling. Or maybe both. B
ehind all those whiskers, you couldn’t tell much more about his expression than you could about an ant’s, Freddy thought.

  “So he’s to be shot,” said Mr. Bean. “Well, now I’ll give some orders. I’ll order you, ma’am, to kindly get in your car and drive back home. If my pig has trespassed on your land or uprooted your garden, you can go to law about it. You can make me pay for any damage he’s done. Bring your proofs into court, ma’am, and I’ll meet you there. But don’t come out here with threats about shooting my pig.”

  Mrs. Underdunk glared at him and pressed her lips tight together. “Very well, then,” she said. “If you choose to be stubborn about it, you’ll have only yourself to blame. I warn you again: if that pig is allowed to run wild, he—will—be shot!” She emphasized each word with a nod of her head, and on the last nod her hat slipped down over her nose. As she turned to go, she stooped to straighten her hat in the shiny bottom of the frying pan, which had caught her eye. She had put her hands up to her head; they stayed there a moment, poised; then they dropped slowly, and with a gurgle which was exactly like the one Charles had given, she fainted away.

  “Boy!” said Freddy in an awed tone. “Am I a good artist!” And while the Beans were sprinkling water on Mrs. Underdunk and slapping her hands to bring her to, he quickly erased the picture from the bottom of the frying pan.

  Chapter 7

  On an evening a couple of days later, Freddy went down to Centerboro to see his friend the sheriff. He was a little nervous about going into the village alone, and he had tried to persuade Peter, the bear, to go along as his bodyguard. But Peter had declined with thanks. “I’m twice as big as you are, Freddy,” he said, “and if there’s any shooting, I’m twice as likely to be hit.”

  “Nonsense,” said Freddy. “Nobody’d dare shoot at a bear this time of year; you’re out of season.”

  “Sure, I know that,” said Peter. “The hunting season on bears doesn’t open till fall. But the hunting season on pigs is apparently open right now. And my old grandmother used to say that a person is known by the company he keeps. If I’m seen in the company of a pig—”

  “Oh, of course, if you’re afraid!” interrupted Freddy.

  “Sure, I’m afraid,” said Peter. “And so are you, or you wouldn’t want me to go with you.”

  Freddy couldn’t think of an answer to that one, and so he went alone.

  And nothing happened. He got to the jail safely, and walked right into the sheriff’s office, for the jail doors were never locked. The sheriff had explained this once to Freddy. “The prisoners don’t like it,” he said, “and to tell you the truth I wouldn’t like it myself if I was a prisoner. I want ’em to be happy here. Of course before we go to bed I always lock up. Some of ’em objected to that,—said it made ’em feel sort of shut in. But I told ’em it was only common sense, because there might be burglars around. ‘But some of us are burglars,’ they said. ‘Sure,’ I said, ‘but if anybody burgled this jail, they’d be caught, and then they’d have to come live here. And the kind of burglars that would burgle a jail ain’t the kind of people we want to associate with.’ That convinced ’em.”

  Tonight Freddy found the sheriff just putting on a necktie to go to the movies. He never wore one except to the movies and to funerals.

  “Better come along,” he said. “It’s a pirate movie—lots of shootin’.”

  “Shooting!” exclaimed Freddy and shuddered. Then he explained.

  “Pooh!” said the sheriff. “Don’t you worry. If anybody shoots you, I’ll shoot ’em right back.” “That won’t help me much,” said the pig.

  The sheriff grinned. “I don’t think you’re in much danger really,” he said. “Mrs. Underdunk, she talks big, but she wouldn’t know one end of a gun from t’other, and there ain’t anybody in town she could get to do her shootin’ for her. Besides, Centerboro ain’t the Wild West. I been sheriff twenty years and I ain’t ever fired a shot. The only shootin’ I can remember here was when old Mis’ Purinton throwed some of her son’s cartridges into the stove by mistake.” He laughed. “That sounded like a real fracas, but the only casualties was the stove lid and a kettle of soup and Mis’ Purinton’s nose which she skinned, slidin’ for safety down the back steps.”

  So Freddy decided to go. On the way downtown the sheriff told him that the last number of the Bean Home News had been a great success in Centerboro. “Dimsey’s having quite a time keeping up with the demand, so I’m told,” he said. “He printed quite a lot extra, too. Why, Freddy, you had more news in that Centerboro Doings column than Herb Garble has had in the Guardian all the time since he took it over. Where in tunket did you get that item about Mr. Weezer and Miss Biles being engaged to be married? There wasn’t a soul in town knew about it. I ain’t even sure they knew about it themselves.”

  Freddy was pretty pleased to hear that the Centerboro people were buying his paper, and he told the sheriff about hiring Abigail as a reporter. By that time they had reached the theatre. Mr. Muszkiski, the manager, came waddling out to shake hands with Freddy, and a number of other people came up and greeted him and told him how much they enjoyed the Bean Home News, and some of them told him about parties they were going to give that they thought he might like to mention in the next issue. Even old Mrs. Peppercorn, who never had done more than nod distantly to him before, stopped him to ask if he wouldn’t like to write a little something about next Saturday being her ninetieth birthday.

  “My, people are awfully nice to me,” said Freddy. “Not that they haven’t always been, but they seem especially nice tonight.”

  “Folks are always specially nice when they want something from you,” said the sheriff. “They want their names in your paper. I don’t know why it is, but nothing makes folks any happier’n to see their names in the paper. Makes ’em seem more important, I suppose.”

  The movie was an exciting one, with lots of shooting, but Freddy didn’t enjoy it as much as he might have, for shooting was something he didn’t want to think about. Every time a gun went off it felt as if a lot of ants with very cold feet were walking up his back. Afterwards they went to the drugstore and sat on stools at the soda fountain, and the sheriff took off his necktie and put it in his pocket and ordered chocolate sodas.

  “Dunno why it is I never could abide a necktie,” said the sheriff. “Specially when I’m eating. Guess it must interfere with my Adam’s apple. Every time you swallow, your Adam’s apple goes up, and then down. When I’ve got a necktie on, mine goes up all right, but the necktie stops it on the way down, and then I have to loosen the tie before I can start the next swallow. Slows me up terrible at banquets. Last one I went to, the speeches were all over before I’d even begun tackling my dessert.

  “Now you,” he said, looking at Freddy, “haven’t even got an Adam’s apple. You could wear a necktie with the best of ’em. And when you’re a famous editor, I expect you will.”

  “I won’t ever be any kind of an editor,” said Freddy, “if Mrs. Underdunk shoots me.”

  “I s’pose that’s what you came to see me about,” said the sheriff. “Well, you got two choices. You can stay on the farm, give up coming to Centerboro, give up your newspaper—”

  “I won’t do that,” said Freddy firmly.

  “O. K.,” said the sheriff. “Then I tell you what I’d do. I’d print the whole story—about running into Mrs. Underdunk, and her ordering me to shoot you, and her coming out to see Mr. Bean—I’d print it in the next issue of your paper. She’s told her side of the story. Have you seen the Guardian this week?—well it’s all there, about the ferocious pig running wild and attacking people, and about Mr. Bean refusing to lock you up. Now Centerboro folks know you, Freddy. But if they keep being told you’re wild and ferocious, and if they don’t hear anything to the contrary, pretty soon they’ll begin to believe it. Folks are like that, you’ve got to tell ’em your side. Of course, as long as I’m sheriff, nobody’ll dare do anything to you. But I may not be sheriff next year. Mrs. Underdunk wan
ts Herb Garble to run in the election against me. And there you’ve got a good example of what I’ve been talking about. Herb’s got the Guardian to tell his story in, and well as folks know me, if they keep reading things against me, they’re going to begin to believe ’em. And then they’ll vote for Herb instead of me.”

  “You’ve got the Bean Home News back of you,” said Freddy. “I know it’s just an animal newspaper, but some of the people will read it.”

  But the sheriff said Freddy had better keep out of it. “You don’t want to get mixed up in politics,” he said.

  But Freddy had made up his mind. He didn’t say any more, but he began to plan his campaign. They had another soda, and then walked back to the jail.

  He was trudging along with his head down, up the last long hill on the way home when he heard a shout, and lifted his head to see a horse and carriage almost on top of him. He dove off the road into the ditch and landed rather too heavily on his nose.

  Freddy was pretty mad. He scrambled out of the ditch and ran towards the carriage, which had stopped. “Hey,” he shouted, “why don’t you big lummoxes look where you’re going? Don’t you know you’re supposed to carry a light? You might have killed me. I’m going to report you to the police, that’s what I’m going to do.”

  There was some giggling in the carriage, and then a slow voice that he recognized said: “Well, I dunno’s I would, Freddy. Pigs are supposed to carry a light, too, ain’t they? Or ain’t they? I dunno.”

  “Why it’s Hank!” exclaimed Freddy. “And you’ve got the phaeton. What on earth—”

  “Pipe down, pig,” said Jinx’s voice. “We’re on a secret mission; that’s why there is no light. We’re going into Centerboro to collect scrap metal.”

  “How are you going to collect scrap in the dark?” said Freddy. “No, thanks, I’m going home to bed.”

  “Oh, no you aren’t,” said Jinx. “We need you. I suppose you think because you started this scrap drive, you don’t have to do any more about it. The rest of us have been working hard on it, but as far as I know, you haven’t brought in so much as a rusty tack. You’ve been so busy hobnobbing with editors and important people that you haven’t had time to help Mr. Bean get the prize. And I’m telling you, he won’t get it unless we all get out and hustle. Robert has been out scouting around, and he says nearly every farm in ten miles has collected more than we have. Now get in.”