The Great Brain Is Back

by John D. Fitzgerald

  When Tom’s hour was up, he took the list of words he’d given me, shoved it in his pants pocket, and went off to work for Papa at the Advocate.

  I fed and watered our team of horses, the milk cow, and Dusty, Sweyn’s mustang. Then, leaving the rest of my chores until after dinner, I hurried over to Smith’s vacant lot.

  Howard Kay and Jimmie Peterson were there. Jimmie had grown a lot during the school year, so for a change his clothes fit him. Most of the time they were a size too large. His mother bought them that way since he had no younger brothers to wear hand-me-downs. They were meant to last two years, so by the time Jimmie grew into them, they were worn out or only good for play clothes.

  Howard and Jimmie were just standing around. Howard was kicking at the dust. Herbie Sties, Parley Benson, Seth Smith, and Danny Forester were sitting together under a tree.

  “Where’s Basil?” I asked.

  “Did you forget?” Howard said. “Basil turned thirteen this week. His parents say he has to work with them in the Palace Cafe every day after school and on Saturdays too.”

  “Boy, oh, boy,” I said. “The more I hear about thirteen, the less I want to be it.”

  “Sure is an unlucky number,” Howard said.

  I looked at the boys sitting under the tree. Herbie and Seth were both twelve and in the first year at the Adenville Academy, but Parley and Danny were thirteen.

  “Why aren’t you at work?” I asked Danny.

  “I got off early,” he told me.

  I didn’t bother to ask Parley why he wasn’t at work. Parley helped his father tend traps, but that was mostly early in the morning before school.

  “Conscious,” Seth said. “Always let your conscious be your guide.”

  “That’s conscience,” I told him.

  But Herbie said,

  “I’ll spell both words

  and thus work towards

  winning the bee

  one, two, three!”

  and he spelled the words correctly.

  “Champion,” Parley said to Danny. “I want to be spelling champion. Champion.” Danny spelled it for him.

  It sure was disappointing to come over to Smith’s vacant lot and find the kids studying there too. The next couple of weeks were no fun at all. Life was so boring that it was hardly worth being a kid. When I wasn’t drilling Tom on spelling, I was over at Smith’s vacant lot listening to the other fellows drilling one another.

  When Tom ran out of words from the Bible and the newspaper, he started making up lists of words from geography and history and all the other subjects kids study in school.

  “Paiute,” I said one afternoon three days before The Great Bee. “The Paiute Indians are our friends. Paiute.”

  “I told you that you don’t have to use the word in a sentence,” Tom said. Then he spelled Paiute.

  “Can I have that list?” I asked when we were done, thinking ahead to next year.

  “Sorry,” Tom said as he folded the list and stuck it into his pants pocket, “but I need it.”

  He knew every word on that list. I was so curious as to what Tom was doing with it that I followed him over to Polly Reagan’s after supper.

  Tom rang the doorbell and went inside for a couple of minutes. Since it was a fine evening, he and Polly soon came out on the porch. By then I was hiding underneath it.

  There were plenty of spiderwebs and dust under the porch, and there was also Polly’s dog, One Spot. One Spot came over to lick my face. It was all I could do to keep quiet with that dog slobbering on me, but I sure didn’t want Tom and Polly to catch me.

  When One Spot quit licking me, I listened carefully and heard the sound of people eating. I raised my head and sniffed, same as One Spot. I could smell cookies.

  “These are delicious,” Tom said.

  “Thank you,” Polly said. “I made them before dinner.”

  One Spot was a lot luckier than I was. He went out from under the porch and up on top of it. Polly gave him a cookie.

  “Now,” Tom said. “Paiute.”

  “Paiute,” Polly repeated, then spelled the word.

  At first I could hardly believe my ears. Then I thought my brother had gone plumb loco. He went through that whole list of words. Then Polly started on a list she’d brought. I didn’t listen to many of her words. It was all too much for my little brain. I crawled out from under the porch and went home.

  Had all those spelling words done something to Tom’s great brain? Or maybe it was Polly’s spell. Maybe she’d turned his money-loving heart into one as soft and silly as Sweyn’s when he started going with Marie Vinson, or Greg Larson’s when he took up with Sally Anne Carver. All this only made me more certain that I wanted to try as hard as possible never to let a girl put a spell on me.

  Mr. Whitlock and the other members of the school board decided that the Academy wouldn’t be large enough to hold all the people who wanted to attend The Great Bee. Bishop Aden offered the use of the Mormon Church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the Mormons called it. There were so many Mormons in Adenville, their church was the biggest meeting hall in town.

  The Great Bee was scheduled to begin at seven o’clock on Saturday night, but the best seats were filled by six-thirty. We were lucky Mamma had made an early dinner. Our family was only three rows from the small stage and the choir loft, where the thirty-two students participating in the contest sat.

  The contestants were called onto the stage one at a time. For a long time nobody missed a word except for Tubby Ralston, who couldn’t spell any better than I could. Then Seth Smith went down, and Frank Jenson. By nine o’clock there were only five contestants still on the stage. One was Parley, who wasn’t wearing his coonskin cap. He looked kind of strange without it. I had forgotten how his hair stood up in cowlicks on top of his head.

  Then Parley missed omnipotent, and Tom got it right. Now only Tom, Polly, Herbie Sties, and Danny Forester were still sitting in the choir loft. All of them were beginning to look tired, but they were also excited. There were three prizes and four contestants.

  Then Danny Forester stood and walked onto the stage.

  “Emporium,” Bishop Aden said. “An emporium is a store that carries general merchandise. Emporium.”

  I figured Bishop Aden must have been running out of words as that one was easier than some of the others he’d given during the past half hour.

  Danny must have thought so too. “Emporium,” he repeated quickly. “E-m-p-o-u-”

  A sound like loud sighing went through the church, then muttering and conversation. Danny didn’t have to wait until Papa judged the word misspelled. His shoulders slumped and he walked off the stage, down the aisle to the back of the building.

  I sure felt sorry for Danny. All that hard work and excitement and at the very end of the contest he was out on his ear.

  At least I thought it was the end of the contest. A whole half hour passed until another person missed a word. That person was Herbie and he missed terrestrial. Herbie didn’t look particularly upset. He just clumped off the stage and down the aisle to sit with his folks. I figured Herbie probably didn’t feel too bad, because he’d won two dollars’ worth of merchandise at the drugstore. Two dollars can buy a lot of ice cream sodas, fudge, and candy.

  Only two people were left, Tom and Polly. Instead of calling the next word, Bishop Aden went on the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we are going to take a little break here to give our final contestants a chance to stretch and get themselves a drink of water.” He smiled then and added, “Also, our board is going to have to come up with some more words because I’ve just about extinguished the list that was written for me.”

  Tom and Polly left the choir loft, but not everybody in the church did. I guess they must have been afraid of losing their seats. I didn’t have to wor
ry since Mamma was there to hold mine. I went outside and ran over to where Tom was standing with a couple of fellows.

  “This is it, T.D.!” I shouted. “That bicycle is practically yours.”

  “Don’t count on it, J.D.,” Tom said. “Remember all of Polly’s gold stars.”

  That wasn’t all I remembered. I remembered Tom sitting on the Reagans’ swing, going over his list of words with Polly. My spirits sank lower than a worm’s belly, and I was sure that The Great Brain had gone soft at last. Polly’s spell was about to make him give up the finest bicycle that Adenville had ever seen.

  “You mean you’re not going to win?” I asked, looking Tom square in the eye.

  “Of course I am,” Tom said. “I told you my great brain would find a way to keep everyone happy.”

  When I went back to my seat, I couldn’t help thinking that there was no way this could happen. To make matters worse, somebody had put two chairs on the stage so Tom and Polly could sit there instead of in the choir loft. I, for one, was going to be deeply unhappy to see Tom humiliated in front of most all the citizens of Adenville.

  Whoever came up with that new list put some real humdingers on it. The next word that Bishop Aden read was one I’d never even heard of: lachrymose. Polly stood, repeated it, and spelled it off as if she’d learned it in her cradle.

  The same thing happened with Tom’s word, soliloquy.

  This went on for another forty minutes. By then both Tom and Polly were looking white as sheets and completely worn out. Polly sat with her eyes on the stage floor until it was her turn each time, and Tom sat with his eyes on Polly except when he had to face the audience.

  My hands started to hurt, and I looked down to see that they were tightly clenched into fists. I was relaxing them when Polly missed a word.

  “Mundi,” Bishop Aden said. “Sic transit gloria mundi. Mundi.”

  “That isn’t even English,” Mamma whispered next to me. “It’s Latin.”

  I was glad to hear that because I’d been afraid my little brain had given out on me.

  “Mundi,” said Polly. “M-o-n-d-i.”

  “Incorrect,” Papa said. “You may take your seat.”

  Tom came forward and stood there while Bishop Aden repeated the word and then the sentence.

  “Mundi,” Tom said.

  I held my breath.

  “M-u-n . . .” He paused.

  I clenched my eyes tightly shut.

  “d-a-e,” Tom finished.

  “Sit down,” Papa said. “The word is spelled “M-u-n-d-i.”

  Then Bishop Aden said, “Hyssop.”

  Both Tom and Polly got that, I guess from Tom’s list of Bible words. They also got all the words for the next fifteen minutes.

  That was when Mayor Whitlock went to the front of the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “I have an announcement to make.”

  I don’t know about anyone else, but I sure perked up at that. Was Mr. Whitlock going to call the contest because it was so late and there was church in the morning? Would it continue the next afternoon? Had Papa misjudged a word? All those thoughts crowded my little brain so that I could hardly take in what Mayor Whitlock said next.

  “During the break about an hour ago, our panel came up with some new words,” the mayor said, “most of which I couldn’t spell myself.”

  At that point everybody laughed.

  “And at that time we also decided should our two contestants finish that list, Adenville would have two spelling champions—”

  That was when everybody started cheering. Some of the fellows threw their hats in the air. Parley’s coonskin cap sailed over my head and landed at Mayor Whitlock’s feet.

  The mayor held his arm in the air until everyone got quiet again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, and he turned to hold his hand toward Polly, and then toward Tom, “I give you the winners of the bicycles, the finest spellers in all of Adenville, Miss Polly Reagan and Mr. Thomas D. Fitzgerald.”

  The Great Brain had done it again. Tom had outsmarted everybody, kept his place on the Reagans’ porch swing, and also won a brand-new Waverley bicycle.

  I only wondered about one thing. I kept quiet about it until Tom and I were up in our bedroom at midnight, getting ready for bed.

  “Did you misspell that word on purpose?” I asked.

  “What word?” Tom asked, an innocent expression on his freckled face.

  “Mundi,” I said.

  “Well, J.D.,” Tom said. “That is for me and my great brain to know, and you and your little brain to find out.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Dogfights

  I NEVER DID FIND OUT if Tom misspelled mundi on purpose. Something happened soon after school let out for the summer to make me forget all about The Great Bee.

  When Tom and Papa appeared for supper one evening looking very subdued, I was afraid that Tom had been backsliding. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of anything else to make Papa look so upset. I had to wait until after supper to find out what had happened.

  Papa hadn’t seemed to enjoy his meal very much, and he appeared weary as he walked over and sat down in his rocking chair. He clasped his hands on his knees until the blood veins stood out.

  “A man named Bill Bartell is going to bring dogfighting to Adenville,” he told us. “Bartell rented the old Kingston farm on the outskirts of town. He’s going to build a pit in the barn and hold dogfights there.”

  Mamma’s face became pale. “You mean the kind of dogfights where one dog kills the other one?” she asked.

  “These dogfights can end two ways,” Papa said. “One dog kills the other dog, or one dog is so chewed up it can’t fight anymore.”

  “But can’t Mark and Sheriff Baker put a stop to it?” Mamma asked.

  “There is no law in Utah against dogfighting,” Papa said, “although it’s a brutal and inhumane sport. I once saw a dogfight in Silverlode before it became a ghost town, so I know firsthand.”

  “Maybe nobody will attend the fights,” Mamma said hopefully.

  “There are enough cowboys from ranches and other people who’ll attend to make it a paying proposition for Bartell,” Papa said. “I printed handbills for him today.” Papa removed a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Mamma.

  I saw the handbill after Mamma and Aunt Bertha read it. It stated:

  • DOGFIGHTS •

  BEGINNING JUNE 28TH

  DOGFIGHTS WILL BE HELD IN THE KINGSTON BARN

  AT THREE O’CLOCK

  EVERY SATURDAY AFTERNOON.

  ADMISSION $1.00

  I looked at Papa. “How do they get dogs to fight until one is killed or hurt so badly it can’t fight anymore?” I asked.

  “They are trained to kill,” Papa said. “I didn’t want to print that handbill, but I’m obligated to print anything a customer wants. Well, at least I’ll see to it that Bartell doesn’t get any publicity for his dogfights in the Advocate.”

  “Papa,” Frankie said, tugging on Papa’s sleeve. “Where does Mr. Bartell get the dogs from?”

  “I don’t rightly know,” Papa told him, “but I suppose he picks up strays or even buys dogs and then trains them to fight. I’ve been told he brought six dogs with him. And in every town there are men who own dogs they consider to be good fighters. The proprietor of the Fairplay Saloon has a bulldog named John Bull that he considers the best fighter in town. You can bet he will want to match his dog against one owned by Bartell.”

  “I’ve seen John Bull in a fight,” I said. “But he doesn’t fight fair. He has that big collar on him. No wonder he can lick any other dog in town.”

  “The dog won’t be wearing a collar if he’s ever matched against one of Bartell’s dogs,” Papa said.

  Mamma held up her hands. “Please don’t talk about
it,” she said. “It makes me ill even to think about such a horrible thing. Dogs are supposed to be pets or watchdogs, not trained to kill one another.”

  That night I couldn’t go to sleep. I was awake when Tom came up to bed an hour later.

  “Can you figure out a way to stop those dogfights?” I asked.

  “You heard Papa. Dogfights are legal in Utah,” Tom said as he removed a shoe.

  “You could put your great brain to work on it,” I told him.

  “I guess I’ll have to,” Tom said, “since the grown-ups don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.”

  • • •

  Tom and Papa had just finished a big printing job for the county the afternoon Papa found out about the dogfights.

  “You can take a few days off,” Papa told Tom the next morning at breakfast. “With that county job out of the way, I shouldn’t need your help for a week or so.”

  Right after breakfast Tom went up to his loft in the barn to put his great brain to work on the dogfights. He came down just as Frankie and I finished the morning chores.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To do some scouting,” he said.

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  “All right,” Tom agreed, “but you’ll have to do as I say.”

  Frankie stepped in front of Tom. “I want to come too,” he said.

  “You are too little, Frankie,” Tom told him. “You stay and play with Eddie Huddle when he comes over.”

  Tom and I got our bikes. We rode to the outskirts of town. Then we hid the bikes in an apple orchard.

  “We are going to spy on Mr. Bartell,” Tom said. “We’ll have to sneak up on the Kingston farm without being seen.”

  We went through cornfields, another orchard, and alfalfa fields until we were in back of the Kingston farm. There were no crops growing there, but the weeds were high enough for us to crawl under cover to the top of a small ridge. From the ridge we could see the farmhouse, the barn, and Mr. Bartell’s wagon. His team of horses were in a fenced pasture.

  We waited for what seemed like hours before we saw Mr. Bartell come out of the back door of the farmhouse. He began stretching as if he had just gotten up. Then he went to the barn. He unlocked the padlock on the door and entered. As soon as he did that, I could hear dogs barking.