Freddy the Pilot

by Walter R. Brooks

  When Freddy entered the store, Mr. Tweedle was having an argument with a thin, sour-faced man. “My dear sir,” he was saying. “I don’t sell comics. You’re wasting your time.”

  The other sniffed. “You’re wasting yours, running this kind of business. Bet you don’t get two customers a week. Put in a line of Condiment Comics and from the minute you open in the morning the place’ll be jammed, teeming, populous—I mean to say, crowded.” He pulled a sheaf of bright-colored comic books out of his pocket. “Brighten up the place,” he said.

  “Look,” said Mr. Tweedle; “I consider the comics cheap and silly, and I’m not going to sell my customers cheap and silly stuff.”

  “Half the people in the country read them,” said Mr. Condiment.

  “Then half the people in the country ought to go back and start all over again in the second grade,” said Mr. Tweedle.

  Freddy gave what he considered a ladylike cough, and when they turned to look at him he came forward and said in a high affected voice with what he fancied to be a Spanish accent: “Oh, those delightful comicals! I see you have new ones. I may look, no?”

  Mr. Tweedle shrugged and turned and went into the back of the store. But Mr. Condiment squeezed his face into what was meant to be a smile, and said: “Of course, madam. Delighted, I’m sure; charmed, very happy—in short, greatly pleased. These—I publish them myself; you see my name here: Watson P. Condiment—these are the funny ones, Chirpy Cheebles, about a bird, you see—very amusing. And these are the horrible ones: Lorna, the Leopard Woman, In the Lair of the Great Serpent, The Secret of Grisly Gulch—all very grim, ghastly, shocking—in short, revolting.”

  “How lovely!” said Freddy, taking them. “The Great Serpent—Ah, si! Is he not cute? He just goes to bite that little boy in two. Oh, and see thees demon woman! Is living in Grisly Gulch, no? Oh, oh, see—she has horns! And two little boys she is eating!”

  It was lucky that Freddy had on a veil, for he had noticed something in the back of the store and he couldn’t keep his face straight—it kept spreading into a broad grin. For what he had noticed was Willy, the boa constrictor from the circus, curled up in an armchair by Mr. Tweedle’s desk. At least he was partly in the chair, which wasn’t large enough to hold all of him; four or five feet trailed off on the floor.

  Willy was a rather unusual snake, for he was fond of reading. Snakes don’t usually care much about books, probably because they haven’t any hands to hold them with. But Mr. Tweedle had a sort of reading stand on his desk, and if he propped a book up on it, Willy could turn the leaves with his nose. He had spent many happy hours here when the circus was in town. He was particularly fond of poetry. That too is rather unusual in a snake.

  Freddy turned a page. “Ay, mi alma!” he exclaimed, and then speaking in a good loud voice: “What a so dreadful creature! Indeed, how terrible to see a great serpent like that rear up beside you!” He held out the picture and then began to peer fearfully under counters and into dark corners. “Ah, Señor, think what might lurk in such darknesses! Then the springings out! The grabbings!”

  Willy had lifted his head and turned to look at them. His forked tongue began to flicker out. He hadn’t recognized Freddy, but he dearly loved a practical joke, and now he saw a chance for a good one. He uncoiled and flowed out of the chair, glided silently along the wall—and suddenly reared up until his big flat head with the black expressionless eyes was about an inch from Mr. Condiment’s.

  “No cause for alarm, ma’am,” Mr. Condiment was saying. “Such creatures never really existed. They are imaginary, fictional—in short …” Then he saw Willy.

  For a second he didn’t say anything or do anything, but he had rather lank, colorless hair, and Freddy said afterwards that it rose right straight up on his head.

  And then Willy said: “Hello. Want a little hug?”

  Willy said: “Hello … Want a little hug?”

  This was Willy’s standard greeting. But Mr. Condiment didn’t know that. He gave a yell that made everybody outside on Main Street look around and say: “I wonder where the fire is?” and then he left, and I guess it was lucky the door was open or he would have taken it right with him.

  “Thanks, Willy,” said Freddy, and the snake turned sharply and stared at him.

  “Freddy?” he said. “Well, for Pete’s sake!” And he began to laugh so hard that he shook all the way down to the end of his tail. “My, my, aren’t you pretty! I bet you drive all the boys crazy. Golly, I’ve just got to hug you, Freddy.”

  It was Willy’s idea of a joke always to pretend to be so glad to see his friends that he had to hug them, and then he’d throw a couple loops around them and squeeze them until their eyes stuck out.

  “Don’t stop me now,” said Freddy. “That’s old Condiment, and I have to talk to him. I’ve got an idea. I think maybe I can scare him into letting Rose and Mr. Boom alone.”

  So Willy said all right, and he could have a rain check on the hug.

  Mr. Condiment had made straight for the hotel, and Freddy caught up with him in the lobby, where he had dropped into a chair and was mopping his forehead.

  “Oh, Señor Condimento, is wrong something?” Freddy asked. “You feeling sick?”

  “Sick!” Mr. Condiment exclaimed. “That dreadful snake!”

  “Snake?” said Freddy. “Why, Señor, I no see snakes. We just look at picture of snake in those comicals.”

  “This was no picture,” Mr. Condiment said. “Why, it was right between us!” He stared at Freddy. “You mean you didn’t really see it?”

  Freddy gave a little tittering laugh. “Why. Señor Condimento!” he said. “You trying to frighten me?”

  He stared at the pig, “You really didn’t see anything?”

  “You know what I think?” Freddy said. “Me, I just little Spanish girl, I got no brains much. What I think—that comical, Lair of Great Serpent. You make that book, you see it many times. Well, you just dream it. Awake-dreaming, yes?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mr. Condiment dismally. “That was a dreadful experience, a horrible occurrence—I mean to say, a ghastly happening.”

  “But it hoppen only once, is no bad. Oh si, if all comicals come alive—Lorna, the Leopard Woman, Demon Woman of Gristly Gulch—”

  “Grisly,” said Mr. Condiment.

  “Si, gristly. Be bad, no?”

  “Don’t,” said Mr. Condiment, covering his eyes with his hand.

  “Bueno, I not say more. Because—oh, Señor, I see you in these bookstore; I say to myself: is kind, that hombre, has kind face. He no be mad if I ask him advice.”

  Nobody had ever told Mr. Condiment that he had a kind face before, and even he himself probably knew that it was a pretty poor description. But the funny thing was that when he took his hand down and looked at Freddy, there really was an almost kind expression in his eyes. “Glad to do what I can,” he said. “Anything within reason—in short, any assistance that is purely verbal.”

  “Ah, Señor!” Freddy was getting tired of the ‘Señor’ but it certainly sounded good and Spanish. “Lorna is not clever, but Lorna know if man and woman is kind and good. My mother say to me: ‘Lorna,’ she say, ‘maybe you talk foolish, and no can get out of fourth grade in school, but one thing, you will be able to pick good husband.’ You married, Señor Condimento?”

  “I am affianced,” he replied. “Betrothed—that is, engaged.”

  “Ay di mi!” said Freddy. “Is my bad luck!”

  Mr. Condiment was looking at him suspiciously. “What did you say your name was—Lorna?” he demanded. “What’s your last name?”

  “Del Pardo,” said Freddy. “Lorna Del Pardo is silly name, no? Condimento so much prettier. Lorna Del Condimento—so distinguished sounding. Could break these engagement, Señor Condimento?”

  “Del Pardo!” said Mr. Condiment. It was the last name of Lorna, the Leopard Woman in his comic books. He looked scared, and he got up quickly. Without another word he walked out of the room.


  Freddy went over to the desk, behind which Mr. Ollie Groper, the proprietor, was sitting. Mr. Groper heaved himself to his feet. “Good afternoon, madam,” he said. “If you require a temporary local domicile, this hostelry is prepared to offer accommodation suitable to your requirements, however exigent.”

  “What lovely language!” said Freddy with a giggle. Then he lifted his veil and said: “I wish I had time to swap polysyllables with you, Mr. Groper, but I’ve got a lot to do and I need your help.”

  “Freddy!” Mr. Groper exclaimed. “Well now ain’t this an unanticipated gratification! And these modish habiliments! Well, well; command me, duchess,” and he shook with laughter.

  So Freddy told him about Mr. Boomschmidt’s dilemma, and how Mr. Condiment, by making the circus go broke, was trying to force Mademoiselle Rose to marry him. “He’s got Mr. Boom over a barrel,” he said, “and unless I can do something soon, Rose will just have to marry him. I’m trying to do something about that plane, but I’m trying also to scare old Condiment off. I’m trying to work the same scheme on him that he is working on Rose. Now here’s the idea.”

  Mr. Groper laughed so hard while Freddy was telling him that he had to be helped into his chair. But he agreed to do everything that Freddy wanted. “This here Condiment ain’t nothing but a human streptococcus and if I can hasten his departure from this hostelry—” The rest of his speech was rather long, and Freddy did not understand it very well, though he gathered that Mr. Condiment did nothing but complain about everything in the hotel, which he appeared to blame for his stomach ache.

  “Tomorrow evening then,” Freddy said as he left.

  “Tomorrow evening,” Mr. Groper agreed. “I anticipate a pretty gol-darned diverting soirée.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Freddy always admitted frankly that he was lazy. And yet the more he had to do, the more he seemed to accomplish. He explained it this way: He said that when a lazy person once really gets started doing things, it’s easier to keep on than it is to stop. He said it was as much of an effort to stop working and sit down as it was to get up and start working in the first place. But whatever the reason was, he certainly got through a lot of work the day after the bombsight trial.

  The first thing he did, he got up—and that, he felt, was always something of an accomplishment. For according to his theory of laziness, when you’re in bed it’s a great effort to get out. Just as when you’re up and doing things, even when it’s past bedtime, it takes a lot of persuasion to get you to go to bed. Freddy claimed that laziness was the only thing that could explain it. “It’s the same bed,” he said. “Why should you hate to get into it at night when you’re going to hate to get out of it next morning?”

  While Freddy was having breakfast, he thought about dilemmas and quandaries, and then he got a paper and pencil and wrote out several advertisements.

  Are you puzzled? Are you perplexed?

  Try our friendly Dilemma Service.

  No charge for consultation.

  FREDERICK & WIGGINS,

  Bean Farm, Centerboro 24, N. Y.

  There was of course no postal zone 24 in Centerboro; Freddy just put that in to make it sound important.

  Another advertisement read like this:

  Have you a Quandary in your home?

  Well don’t just sit there, chewing your fingernails.

  Send for Frederick & Wiggins, the Quandary Specialists.

  We remove quandaries and dilemmas quietly, and without fuss.

  (Also predicaments.)

  After breakfast he sat down and wrote a short poem for the next issue of the Bean Home News. It was another in the series of poems which he called “The Features,” and it went like this:

  THE HAIR

  The hair is an adornment

  Which grows upon the head;

  It’s black or yellow, brown or grey,

  Occasionally red;

  But never blue or green or puce;

  Such colors would look like the deuce.

  That’s just one pig’s opinion—

  Some have a preference

  For hair that’s not so usual,

  For colors more intense.

  They go for violet or carmine,

  And think that pink is simply charmin’.

  So if you’re really anxious

  To change to green or red,

  Just tell your barber what you want

  And when he soaps your head,

  The functionary who shampoos you

  Will tint your hair light blue or fuchsia.

  Aside from being pretty

  The hair can be of help

  If someone bangs you on the head

  So hard it makes you yelp;

  If you have hair that’s thick and tangled

  You’re not so likely to get mangled.

  Without hair you’d look funny,

  And rather like a squash,

  And every morning you would have

  A lot more face to wash.

  Your face would go up past your forehead,

  And you’ll agree that would look horrid.

  Grass only grows in summer,

  Hair grows the whole year through;

  It must be mowed quite frequently,

  And raked twice daily, too.

  Your hair (called “locks,” and sometimes “tresses”)

  If never combed, an awful mess is.

  Yet some folks never cut it—

  Prefer to let it grow.

  This has advantages of course,

  And even though it’s slow,

  In time they get enough to fill a

  Small mattress, or to stuff a pillow.

  Having no hair himself, Freddy soon ran out of ideas about that commodity, and he laid the poem aside and went up into the shop where Uncle Ben was hard at work. But he wasn’t working on the bombsight, which had been shoved under the bench. He was making a very complicated drawing of what looked like a rocket. Sitting on a stool beside him were Sniffy Wilson and Mrs. Wilson, and several of the little Wilsons were stretched out on the floor, looking at comics.

  Uncle Ben glanced at Freddy and nodded. “Jet plane,” he said, pointing to his drawing.

  “But what’s become of the bombsight?” Freddy asked.

  “Bombsight’s all right,” Uncle Ben repeated. “Sell it to the enemy.”

  Freddy thought a minute, then he laughed. “I see,” he said. “If we have a war, then you sell the bombsight to our enemies, and their bombers won’t be able to hit any of their targets. Not a bad idea. But how about General Grimm’s visit next week?”

  Sniffy said: “We’ve been talking about that. Uncle Ben will tell General Grimm that the bombsight can’t hit anything it’s aimed at, but he’ll persuade the General to make a good report on it. Then Uncle Ben will go see some enemy spy and sell the bombsight to him. The enemy will probably rely on General Grimm’s report, and won’t even try out the bombsight, but will go ahead and manufacture them and put ’em on their planes.”

  “Lots of ‘if’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ in that scheme,” Freddy said. “But I suppose it might work. How about this jet plane? Isn’t it pretty expensive to make?”

  Sniffy said that Uncle Ben planned to pay the cost with the money he would get from the enemy spy for the bombsight. “I really gave him the idea for it,” he said proudly. “I mean, he had been working on it before, but I got him to take it up again. You see, the kids and I were taking all our old comic books down to Lyman—you know, he’s the muskrat that lives in the swamp, down below the flats—and Uncle Ben wanted to see them. In one of them … Aroma” he said to his wife, “let’s have that one you’re looking at.”

  Freddy glanced through it. It was the story of a trip to the moon in a space ship. “Uncle Ben seemed interested in this,” Sniffy went on. “And I said: ‘Why don’t you build one yourself?’ So he dug out these old jet plans and went to work on ’em. He’ll build this first, and he says if he can make it do a t
housand miles an hour, then may be next year he can build a bigger one to go to the moon.”

  “Oh, pooh!” said Freddy disgustedly. “You and your old comics! You must really believe all the foolishness in them. But I thought Uncle Ben had better sense.”

  Uncle Ben glanced around. He didn’t say anything. He winked at Freddy and then went back to his drawing.

  “Well, you see, Freddy,” Sniffy said, “maybe you’re right about the comics. That Robin Hood book you lent me—golly, that’s some book! Why, all those adventures and things, they might have happened. Oh, the comics are kind of fun, but you know nothing like that ever really happened. Well anyway, I used to exchange comics with Lyman, but I never liked to let him take any I wanted to keep, because he lives down in that old swamp and he gets ’em wet, and then when he brings ’em back they’re all mildewed.”

  “They look kind of mildewed to me,” said Freddy, “even when they’re dry.”

  “They do, don’t they?” said Sniffy. “Spotty, like. I guess they don’t have very good artists to draw the pictures. Not like in books. Anyhow, I thought if you’d lend me your other books to read, I might as well let Lyman have all these comics, because we wouldn’t want ’em any more.”

  Freddy heard a scuffling sound behind him, then several sharp clicks, and somebody said: “Ouch!” He swung around to see that two of the little skunks had squared off and were whacking at each other with sticks. These sticks were about as long as the skunks were, and half an inch thick; they held them by the middle and tried to rap each other with each end alternately.

  “Quarterstaff,” said Sniffy. “We got it out of the Robin Hood book. We’re going to have some bows too, and arrows. Uncle Ben is going to make them for us.”

  Freddy went over and pulled the bombsight out from under the bench. He picked it up and started with it over to a table. He was looking in the eyepiece when he walked across the floor, and then suddenly he stopped, backed up, went forward, backed up again—