The Great Brain Is Back

by John D. Fitzgerald

  Just when Herbie finished licking his plate, Mamma appeared with a pitcher of water.

  “Lemonade would be too sour after all that sweetness,” she said, “but I wonder if any of you young men would care for a drink of nice cool water.”

  “I would,” Parley said.

  “Thank you, Ma’am

  And my, oh my,

  Would you be so kind

  As to sell me more pie?” Herbie asked.

  Mamma was so startled that she almost dropped the pitcher. “Sell you more pie?” she said. “Why, I sent that pie out to thank you boys for your help.”

  “I already paid them, ten cents each, for their help,” Tom said, smooth as a whistle.

  “And then we paid him ten cents each for a piece of pie,” Jimmie said.

  “He even made me pay ten cents,” Frankie said in a quavery voice, “for a piece of my own mamma’s pie.”

  Mamma put the pitcher down on the grass and placed her hands on her hips. It was good that she never scolded us in front of the other kids or Tom’s ears would have been blistered right then. Instead she said, “Well, Tom Dennis, you will return those dimes immediately, all of them, including Frankie’s and John D.’s.”

  From the way Mamma called him by his full name, Tom knew not to argue. He gave all us fellows back our money. Then Mamma asked Parley, Herbie, and Jimmie to come with her to the kitchen door. She gave each fellow a pie to take home with him to his family. After that she came back out to the yard where Frankie and I were finishing up our pie and Tom was kicking dirt over the fire under the apple-butter kettle.

  “Now, Tom Dennis,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

  “Those peaches were mine,” Tom said. “Chief Rising Sun sent them to me because I figured out how to prove Henry Martin was lying about the Paiute braves stealing.”

  “Well, pardon me if I didn’t hear correctly,” Mamma said. “Perhaps I need my ears cleaned out. John D., tell Tom Dennis exactly what Running Bear said.”

  “Running Bear told us the Chief sent the peaches as a gift for his friend Fitzgerald,” I said.

  “Right,” Mamma said. “His friend. If those peaches had been for you, the Chief would have sent them to his blood brother.”

  Well, Tom sure couldn’t argue with that, because it was the truth. He didn’t argue much either when Mamma next told him to pay Frankie and me each ten cents.

  “Why?” he asked, sounding astonished.

  “Because you are paying boys ten cents each for preparing peaches, so you pay John D. and Frankie too,” Mamma said, “unless you wish to have the silent treatment until after you leave for Boylestown.”

  Tom knew Mamma meant serious business when she mentioned the silent treatment. Mamma and Papa hadn’t given any of us the silent treatment in a long time, not since Frankie had run away after it. They’d decided that Sweyn, Tom, and I were too old for it, and that Frankie didn’t understand. So when Mamma now threatened the silent treatment, Tom knew he didn’t stand a chance. He gave Frankie and me each a dime, and he helped Mamma clean up in the kitchen too.

  I was glad to get that money, and I was glad to see Tom’s great brain and his money-loving heart swindled at last, and by his own mother. Not that Mamma would ever think she’d swindled Tom, but as far as I was concerned it amounted to the same thing.

  But most of all, I was happy that Tom didn’t get the silent treatment. Not because it would have been hard on him, but because of Mamma. I knew that she would suffer when Tom and Sweyn left for Boylestown, and I didn’t want her to have to send Tom off without saying good-bye. That would have broken Mamma’s heart.

  • • •

  Tom spent his last few days at home helping Papa at the Advocate, and he spent his last evenings sitting on Polly Reagan’s front porch. That had been his pattern for so much of the summer that I didn’t realize how much excitement he’d put into those long, hot days until it came time to say good-bye.

  I was used to Sweyn being away, but Tom was another matter. As we stood by the big locomotive, waiting for the conductor to shout, “All aboard!” I was plumb sad. For some awful minutes I thought I would embarrass myself and the whole family by bursting into tears.

  Then the engine built up a head of steam, and the whistle sounded. Frankie clapped his hands over his ears, but I loved that whistle, even though it meant the train was taking Tom away from me. The locomotive came to life. Its big wheels creaked and the sides of its blue steel belly trembled as if the iron horse couldn’t wait to be off down the track.

  “All aboard!” shouted the conductor in his deep voice.

  Tom kissed Mamma and Aunt Bertha, shook hands with Papa, and swung onto the train before Sweyn even had time to pick up his carpetbag. In another minute both of my older brothers were leaning out the window, waving, and the train was moving off down the track, headed east.

  Frankie and I stood looking after the train for a long time. When it was finally out of sight, Frankie put his fists in his eyes and began crying. “I miss T.D. already,” he said. “Please, J.D., make the train bring T.D. back.”

  Maybe I should have been even sadder since Frankie was crying. But I wasn’t.

  “Don’t you worry,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders. “T.D. will be home again. And when he comes home, life will be just as interesting and exciting as it always is with T.D. around. The Great Brain with his money-loving heart will find some way to swindle you and all the other citizens of Adenville.”

  “Promise?” Frankie said, still rubbing at his eyes.

  There was no question about it. I knew the answer as well as I knew my name was John D. Fitzgerald.

  “Promise,” I said.

  KEEP READING FOR A LOOK AT THE GREAT BRAIN’S VERY FIRST SWINDLE!

  Text copyright © 1969 by John D. Fitzgerald

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Magic Water Closet

  MOST EVERYONE IN UTAH remembers 1896 as the year the territory became a state. But in Adenville it was celebrated by all the kids in town and by Papa and Mamma as the time of The Great Brain’s reformation.

  I was seven years old going on eight. Tom was ten, and my other brother, Sweyn, would soon be twelve. We were all born and raised in Adenville, which was a typical Utah town with big wide streets lined with trees that had been planted by the early Mormon pioneers.

  Adenville had a population of twenty-five hundred people, of which about two thousand were Mormons and the rest Catholics and Protestants. Mormons and non-Mormons had learned to live together with some degree of tolerance and understanding by that time. But tolerance hadn’t come easy for my oldest brother, Sweyn, my brother Tom, and myself. Most of our playmates were Mormon kids, but we taught them tolerance. It was just a question of us all learning how to fight good enough for Sweyn to whip every Mormon kid his age, Tom to whip every Mormon kid his age, and for me to whip every Mormon kid my age in town. After all, there is nothing as tolerant and understanding as a kid you can whip.

  We never had any really cold weather or snow in Adenville because it was situated in the southwestern part of Utah, known to the Mormons as Dixie due to its mild climate. This was fortunate since we didn’t have indoor toilets then. Everybody in town—from Calvin Whitlock, the banker, down—had to use a backhouse until the water closet Papa ordered arrived from Sears Roebuck. We called them backhouses and not outhouses because in Utah an outhouse was a sort of toolshed and storage room. Backhouses ran from two-holers to six-holers. Ours was a standard four-holer. You could just about judge a family’s station in life by their backhouse. Just by looking at the Whitlock backhouse, with its ornate scroll woodwork trim and its fancy vent, you knew Calvin Whitlock was a person of means and influence in the community.

  If there was one man in all of Adenville who would order the first water closet ever seen in town, that man had to be Papa. I though
t Papa was the greatest man in the world except for one weakness. Papa just couldn’t resist ordering any new invention that he saw advertised in magazines or catalogs. Our big attic was filled with crazy inventions that didn’t work. Papa was always threatening to write to the presidents of these companies and denounce them as swindlers, but he never did. I guess he was afraid they would write back and call him a fool for believing what they said in their advertisements. Papa was editor and publisher of the Adenville Weekly Advocate. You would think a man smart enough to be an editor and publisher would be smart enough not to let himself be swindled. But Papa kept right on ordering new inventions. It was no surprise to anybody in town when they learned Papa had ordered the first water closet most people had ever seen.

  The first Tom and I knew of it was the morning Fred Harvey walked into our backyard with a pick and shovel on his shoulder. He was the only plumber in town. He was a middle-aged man with a face that looked as if he’d just taken a bite out of a sour pickle. He was known as a very cranky person who didn’t like kids. Mamma said the reason Mr. Harvey didn’t like kids was because he had never had to put up with any of his own. It didn’t sound quite right to me, but that is what Mamma said.

  When Mr. Harvey came into our backyard, Tom and I were on our big back porch which ran the width of our house. We were beating with sticks on Mamma’s washtubs, pretending that we were drummers in a band. Tom had a grin on his freckled face as he banged away. He was the only one in our family who had freckles. Tom didn’t look like Papa and he didn’t look like Mamma, unless you put them together. Then you could see that his hair was a cross between Papa’s dark hair and Mamma’s blond hair and that he had Papa’s nose and mouth and Mamma’s stubborn chin. Where the freckles came from was a mystery. I took after Papa and had curly black hair and dark eyes. My other brother, Sweyn, took after the Danish grandfather for whom he was named. He had blond hair and a stubborn Danish chin.

  Tom and I heard the clanking sound of the pick and shovel being dropped to the ground by Mr. Harvey over the sound of our beating on the washtubs. We stopped and turned around to watch.

  Mr. Harvey pulled a bandanna handkerchief from his overalls’ pocket and blew his nose loudly. Then he looked at us as if he resented us being on our own back porch.

  “Why aren’t you kids in school?” he demanded.

  “Because there isn’t any school today,” Tom said, glaring right back at Mr. Harvey. “And there might not be any school for a whole week.”

  “And why not?” Mr. Harvey asked.

  “Because Miss Thatcher is sick,” Tom answered.

  Mr. Harvey certainly knew that Miss Thatcher taught the first through the sixth grades in our one-room schoolhouse. He also knew that when she was sick there wasn’t any school for any kid in town. I guess this kind of upset him.

  “If I’d known that,” he said as if angry, “I wouldn’t have taken this job.”

  Tom and I watched Mr. Harvey start to dig a hole in our backyard.

  “What is he doing?” I asked, just as curious as I could be.

  “Let’s find out,” Tom said.

  We left the porch and approached Mr. Harvey.

  “Why are you digging a hole?” Tom asked, polite as all get out.

  “To bury nosy little boys in,” Mr. Harvey said gruffly. “Now get away from me and leave me to my work.”

  “Come on, J.D.,” Tom said, heading back for the porch. “We’ll ask Mamma.”

  My brothers and I always called each other by our initials because that was the way Papa addressed us. We all had the same middle initial because we all had the same middle name of Dennis, just like Papa. More than two hundred years before I was born, an ancestor of ours named Dennis betrayed six of his cousins to the English during the rebellion in County Meath, Ireland. His father decreed that all male Fitzgeralds must bear the middle name of Dennis to remind them of the cowardice of his son.

  I followed Tom into our big kitchen with its ten-foot-wide coal-burning range. Mamma was kneading dough on the big kitchen table as we entered. I had never seen Mamma’s hands idle. They were busy hands—sewing, mending, cooking, washing, knitting, and always moving.

  Mamma’s blond hair was piled high in braids on her head. The sunshine coming through the kitchen window and striking Mamma’s head made her hair look like golden sunlight.

  She looked at us and smiled. “What have you two boys on your minds?” she asked.

  “Why is Mr. Harvey digging a hole in our backyard?” Tom asked.

  “It is the cesspool for the water closet your father ordered from Sears Roebuck,” Mamma answered.

  Aunt Bertha, who had lived with us since the death of her husband, was greasing a bread pan with bacon rinds. She wasn’t really our aunt, but we called her Aunt Bertha because she was just like one of the family.

  “This water closet business is the most foolish thing your husband ever did,” she said to Mamma. When Aunt Bertha criticized Papa, he was always Mamma’s “husband.” When Papa did something Aunt Bertha approved of, he became “that man of ours.” She was a big woman, with hands and feet like a man’s and gray hair she always wore in a bun at the nape of her neck.

  Tom scratched his freckled nose as wrinkles appeared on his high forehead. “You put china in a china closet,” he said slowly. “You put clothes in a clothes closet. You put linen in a linen closet. But how can you put water in a water closet?”

  I was dumbfounded. It was the first time in my life I’d ever heard my brother, with his great brain, admit he didn’t know everything. Every year when Papa renewed his subscription to the New York World, they sent him The World Almanac. While Sweyn and I read books like Black Beauty and Huckleberry Finn, Tom read The World Almanac and the set of encyclopedias in our bookcase. Tom said his great brain had to know everything.

  “A water closet is a toilet you have inside your house,” Mamma explained. “That is why your father had Mr. Jamison partition off that room in the bathroom. The hole Mr. Harvey is digging is the cesspool for the new water closet.”

  “But Mamma,” I protested, thinking about the odor coming from our backhouse, especially on hot days, “it will stink up the whole house.”

  Aunt Bertha agreed with me. “I tell you, Tena,” she said to Mamma, “this is going to make us the laughing stock of Adenville.”

  “Now, Bertha,” Mamma said with soft rebuke, “I’ve seen water closets in hotels in Salt Lake City and in Denver while on my honeymoon. I assure you they are very convenient and sanitary.”

  I remembered how I couldn’t believe you could get water without a pump until they built the Adenville reservoir and Papa had explained how the reservoir being on higher ground forced the water through the pipes. And when Mr. Harvey had installed our hot-water heater and we got hot water right out of a tap, I thought it a miracle. But a backhouse in our bathroom was beyond my wildest imagination. I was positive that Papa had been swindled again on another crazy invention.

  Tom and I went back outside to the porch. We watched as Mr. Harvey continued to dig the cesspool. In a little while Sammy Leeds, Danny Forester, and Andy Anderson came into our backyard. Mr. Harvey chased them away and told them to stay out of the backyard while he was working. Tom and I sat on the porch, watching until lunchtime.

  Papa came home for lunch with Sweyn, who had been helping at the newspaper office. Mr. Harvey came to our back door. He demanded that Papa keep all kids out of the backyard while he was working. Papa told Sweyn to remain home to see that this was done.

  “Can we watch from the back porch?” Tom asked.

  “Yes,” Papa agreed, “but stay out of the yard.”

  I could tell from the conniving look on Tom’s face during lunch that his great brain was working like sixty to turn this to his financial advantage. He disappeared right after lunch. I went out to the back porch with Sweyn.

  Mr. Harvey had j
ust finished eating his own lunch which he had brought in a shoebox. He went to the hydrant and got a drink of water and then went to work. Mamma had asked him to have lunch with us, but Mr. Harvey had refused.

  Sweyn and I sat on the railing of the back porch watching.

  “Think you’ll have any fights keeping the kids out of the backyard?” I asked hopefully.

  “There is nobody left to fight,” Sweyn said as if he regretted it.

  “Maybe when Papa and Mamma send you to Salt Lake City to school next fall, you’ll find some kids there to fight,” I said, wanting to cheer him up.

  He shook his head sadly. “It’s a Catholic academy, J.D., and I don’t believe the sisters or priests who teach there will allow any fighting.”

  I thought ahead to the time when I would be graduating from the sixth grade in Adenville like Sweyn would in June of that year. I too would be sent to school in Salt Lake City. The thought scared me and made my mouth dry. I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water, just as the door leading to our side porch was thrust open. I stared bug-eyed as I watched Tom come through the hallway that separated our kitchen and dining room, followed by ten kids.

  “It is all right, Mamma,” Tom said as if he led ten kids into our kitchen every day. “Papa ordered Sweyn to keep the kids out of the backyard while Mr. Harvey is digging. But Papa said it was all right to watch from the porch. We can’t get to the back porch without going into the backyard unless we go through the kitchen.”

  Aunt Bertha shook her head. “I tell you, Tena, that boy could talk his way around anything.”

  “He gets it from his father,” Mamma said as if she was proud of Tom instead of angry with him for marching ten kids across her clean kitchen floor.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched Mamma go into the pantry and return with a big crock jar filled with cookies. She stationed herself near the door leading to the back porch.

  “All right, boys,” she said, smiling, “help yourselves to an oatmeal cookie as you pass by.”