The Great Brain Is Back

by John D. Fitzgerald

  I had to fall in line last to get one of my own mother’s cookies. Tom was munching on his cookie as I joined him on the back porch.

  “You know, J.D.,” he said as he finished the last bite of his cookie and folded his arms on his chest, “there is room for at least ten more kids on this porch. I am going to give you an opportunity to share in this business venture of mine.”

  “Business venture?” I asked, not knowing what he meant. “What business venture?”

  “You didn’t think I let these kids see the digging of the first cesspool in Adenville for nothing, did you?” he asked as if I’d insulted him. “I charged them a penny apiece. You go round up ten more kids. Tell them they not only get to see the digging of the first cesspool for a water closet for a penny, but also that they will be served refreshments. Collect the money in advance. No credit or promises.”

  “How do you know Mamma will give them a cookie?” I asked.

  “She has to,” Tom said confidently, “because she gave all the other kids a cookie.”

  “What do I get out of it?” I asked. I knew from past experience that it always pays to spell out the terms when making a business deal with my brother.

  “I’ll pay you a commission of one penny for each five kids,” Tom answered. “If you round up ten more kids, you will make two cents.”

  How proud I was a half hour later as I marched ten kids into our kitchen and told them to line up to receive one of Mamma’s delicious oatmeal cookies. Mamma’s attitude puzzled me. She didn’t look pleased and proud as she had with Tom. I caught her giving me a funny look as she held the cookie jar and each kid helped himself to a cookie. I was at the end of the line and all set to have another cookie when Mamma snapped the lid back on the jar.

  “You had a cookie, John D.,” she said. “Please inform Tom D. the cookie jar is empty. I wasn’t prepared to serve cookies to every boy in town.”

  I thought Mr. Harvey would be mad as all get out at having twenty kids watching him. But as the afternoon wore on he seemed to like playing to an audience, especially when he hit a big rock which he had to lift out of the hole. It was a heavy rock for one man to lift. All the kids applauded. Mr. Harvey looked at us and appeared to almost, but not quite, smile.

  When Mr. Harvey quit work that day, he told Mamma to tell Papa that it would take two more days to finish the cesspool.

  “Did you hear that, J.D.,” Tom said, rubbing his hands together. “I knew my great brain would make me a fortune some day. Twenty kids tomorrow and twenty more the day after. That adds up to forty cents.”

  “How about me?” I asked, not wanting to be frozen out of this financial bonanza.

  “I’m sorry, J.D.,” he said, patting my shoulder, “but you know what Mamma said about the cookie jar. That means I’ll have to buy some gingersnaps myself to serve as refreshments.”

  • • •

  The next morning I went with Tom to Zion’s Cooperative Mercantile Institution, which was the name given to stores all over Utah which were owned by the Mormon Church. There was one in every town, and you could buy anything from a penny stick of licorice to a plow and harrow in them. Most people simply called them the Z.C.M.I. store, although some Mormons did call them the Co-op. Tom bought a five-cent box of gingersnaps which contained twenty cookies.

  Mr. Harvey played to a full house for the next two days. He finished digging the hole, which was over ten feet deep and about ten feet across, and a trench two feet deep and about a foot and a half wide that ran from the hole right under our house where the bathroom was located. Then he brought a wagonload of cedar posts which he used to line the sides of the cesspool, tying them together with baling wire. He also brought clay pipe, which he laid in the trench, and filled the joints with mortar. Then he covered the cesspool with cedar posts and boards over which he put two feet of dirt. He filled the trench with dirt, covering up the clay pipes just as the day’s work finished.

  Mamma must have felt a little guilty about not serving the kids cookies for those two days because she made lemonade for all the kids both days. Tom of course took all the credit, saying the lemonade was included in the price of admission. His great brain had made him a fortune in three days.

  The failure of the new inventions Papa ordered was always made all the more embarrassing because he bragged about them in advance. The water closet was no exception. Everybody in town knew about it long before it arrived.

  Nels Larson was stationmaster, ticket agent, telegrapher, express agent, and freight agent at the railroad depot. He never delivered any express or freight except the things Papa ordered. Mr. Larson would simply telephone people and tell them they had express or freight shipments at the depot and to come and get them. But his curiosity always got the best of him when anything came for Papa. When the water closet arrived, he went home and got his own team and wagon to make the delivery. He told his wife the water closet had come. Mrs. Larson got right on the telephone to spread the news all over town.

  By the time Mr. Larson had returned to the depot and loaded the crates containing the water closet, his wife had let everybody know that today was the day. Mr. Larson was a middle-aged man with blond hair and a light complexion stemming from his Swedish heritage. He always walked leaning forward as if walking into a strong wind and rode on the seat of his wagon the same way. He drove the team from the depot right down Main Street, with people leaving their places of business and homes to follow him. When he stopped in front of our house, there were about two hundred men, women, and children in the street. Mamma took one look out the bay window in the parlor and telephoned Papa at the Advocate office. Mr. Larson was poised over a wooden crate with a hammer in his right hand, right in the middle of Main Street, when Papa arrived.

  “What in the name of Jupiter do you think you are doing?” Papa demanded. “Make the delivery in the rear.”

  “Nothing in the rules, Fitz, says I’ve got to make deliveries in the rear,” Mr. Larson said.

  “You don’t have to open the crates right in the middle of Main Street,” Papa said.

  “Rules and regulations say I’ve got to inspect the merchandise for damage,” Mr. Larson said.

  “You know very well, Nels,” Papa said testily, “the only time you ever inspect anything is when the shipment is for me.”

  “Ain’t nothing interesting in the others,” Mr. Larson said.

  “Now you listen to me, Nels,” Papa said, his dark eyes flaming with anger. “I will not permit you to make a spectacle of my water closet in the middle of Main Street.”

  “And you listen to me, Fitz,” Mr. Larson said, pointing his hammer at Papa. “It is my job to inspect the merchandise for damage and that is just what I intend to do. Don’t want you blaming the railroad or the express company because this crazy contraption doesn’t work.”

  “What makes you so certain it won’t work?” Papa asked, glaring at the stationmaster.

  “None of those other new-fangled inventions you ordered worked,” Mr. Larson answered, putting Papa in his place.

  “Go ahead and open it,” Papa said in complete defeat.

  The first crate Mr. Larson opened contained the copper-lined water tank, which he placed on exhibition on top of the crate. He stepped back and eyed it critically.

  “Can’t figure out what that is for,” he said.

  “Are you satisfied it isn’t damaged?” Papa said as if trying to control his temper. “If so, I assure you that Mr. Harvey and I will know what it is for.” Then Papa folded his arms on his chest like a martyr. “Since you are bound and determined to hold a public unveiling of my water closet in the middle of Main Street, please get on with it.”

  “No reason to get sore,” Mr. Larson said indignantly, “just because a man is doing his job according to the rules and regulations.”

  The next crate contained the big brass pipe that we later learned connected the w
ater tank near the ceiling to the bowl on the floor. Mr. Larson held it up as if it were a spyglass.

  “You’ve been swindled again,” he said to Papa as he laid the pipe down.

  Papa was positively fuming as Mr. Larson opened the next crate which contained the porcelain bowl. Mr. Larson placed it like a trophy on top of the crate for all to see.

  “It is beginning to make sense,” Mr. Larson had to admit, “but that bowl is plumb too big for kids.”

  “Just determine if it is damaged and get on with it,” Papa said, so angry he turned his back on Mr. Larson.

  It wasn’t until the stationmaster removed the wooden toilet seat that his skepticism began to vanish. He held it in front of his face as if it were a picture frame, as he slowly turned around for all to see.

  “This is the thing-a-mah-bob you sit on!” he shouted as if making a great discovery.

  There were many ohs and ahs from the crowd who were used to sitting on boards with holes cut in them.

  Papa then sent me to fetch Mr. Harvey. I thought from the way Papa’s jaws were puffed up that he would explode before I returned with the plumber, but he didn’t. Mr. Harvey and I arrived just as the public unveiling of our water closet on Main Street came to a close.

  Mr. Harvey pushed Mr. Larson to one side and began searching through the crates until he found a big brown envelope containing the instructions for assembling the water closet. Then his and Papa’s troubles began. Every man, woman, and child who could get their hands on any part of the water closet as it was being carried to our bathroom thought their help entitled them to remain and watch it being assembled.

  “Make everybody clear out of here,” Mr. Harvey said to Papa as he plunked his tool case down on the bathroom floor. “Can’t do a blooming thing with all these people hanging around in here.”

  Papa asked everybody to leave. Nobody budged an inch until Papa promised they could all see the water closet and how it worked after it was assembled. He even made Sweyn, Tom, and me leave.

  The crowd broke up into small groups in our backyard and on our front lawn. They spoke in hushed whispers as people do at funerals. I wandered from group to group, listening. The more I listened, the more humiliated I became.

  “Wouldn’t want one of those things in my house,” I heard Dave Teller, the shoemaker, telling a small group. “It is bound to stink up the whole house.”

  “Not only the house,” Mr. Carter, who worked at the creamery, said, “but the whole neighborhood if that cesspool caves in during a rain storm.”

  My friend Howard Kay didn’t help matters as he sidled up to me as if ashamed of being seen with me.

  “Gosh, John,” he whispered, “folks are saying your pa has gone plumb loco putting a backhouse in your bathroom.” He put his fingers to his nose. “Phewee! I’d hate to be living in your house.”

  It was too much for me. I held back tears of humiliation until I’d run upstairs to the room I shared with Tom. I flung myself on the bed and began to cry. I had always been proud of Papa in spite of him buying crazy inventions that didn’t work. But this time he’d gone too far. He had done what Aunt Bertha said he would do. He had made us Fitzgeralds the laughing stock of Adenville. Nobody would come to our house anymore. How could Mamma entertain the Ladies Sewing Circle in a house that smelled like a backhouse? It would be the same as entertaining in our old backhouse. I visualized callers at our house stopping at the front gate and putting clothespins on their noses before entering our home.

  I don’t know for how long I lay there crying with shame before I heard a terrifying clanging and banging as if somebody had dropped a lot of pans and kettles off our roof. I dropped to my knees. I was positive the water closet had exploded.

  “Please, God, spare my Papa,” I prayed.

  Then I ran downstairs. I expected to find Mamma hysterical with grief and Papa and Mr. Harvey blown to kingdom come. Instead I found Mamma and Aunt Bertha in the kitchen making plattersful of sandwiches. I ran into the bathroom. Papa and Mr. Harvey were standing looking at the installed water closet with smug expressions on their faces. The porcelain bowl was bolted to the floor in one corner of the room that had been partitioned off. The wooden seat had been attached to it. The water tank was fastened to the wall near the ceiling, with a water pipe running up to it. The big brass pipe was connected to the water tank and the bowl. There was a brass chain attached to the water tank, with a wooden handle on it.

  “One more time to make sure,” Papa said to Mr. Harvey.

  I watched Mr. Harvey pull on the chain. There was a clanging sound and then water rushed down the brass pipe from the water tank into the porcelain bowl, filling it up, and then suddenly the water in the bowl disappeared.

  “She is ready and rarin’ to go,” Mr. Harvey said, and for the first time in my life I saw him smile.

  It was surely a miracle invention, but there was one thing I had to know.

  “Will it stink?” I asked.

  “No, J.D.,” Papa answered. “The water level in the bowl will keep any air or odor from coming up from the cesspool.”