Freddy Plays Football

by Walter R. Brooks

  “We do not approve of betting,” said Alice primly.

  “Neither do I,” said the frog, “unless I’m sure I can win.” He winked one bulging eye at them and disappeared.

  A minute later he crawled out on the bank and in two long jumps he was around behind Mr. Doty, who had lighted a cigar and was standing at the edge of the water, shouting advice and encouragement to Freddy. Then he gathered himself together and with one long spring landed square and clammy on the back of the man’s neck.

  Mr. Doty threw up his arms, his cigar flew out of his mouth, and with a warwhoop that would have scared any number of Ogallala Indians, he lost his balance and plunged after the cigar. Little bits of the uncompleted warwhoop came up in a string of bubbles.

  Fortunately the water was not deep on that side. Mr. Doty reappeared almost immediately. As soon as he stopped sputtering, Mrs. Wiggins said: “That was a real pretty dive, Mr. Doty. And quick! My land, when you dropped your cigar, it had hardly left your mouth when you were right after it.”

  “Don’t believe in wasting things,” he said, and started to climb up on the bank.

  “Aren’t you going to stay in and show us some stunts?” Bill asked.

  “Well, well, I’d like to. But the water’s pretty cold today and the trouble is, I’m subject to cramps.”

  All this time Uncle Wesley had been cowering under his burdock leaf with his head tucked tightly under his wing, and he hadn’t heard much of what went on. But he did hear Mr. Doty’s yell. He took his head out, and there in front of him was a piratical looking stranger climbing up out of the water and apparently coming straight for him. Uncle Wesley wasn’t very brave, but even a cornered duck will fight, and he felt that he was cornered. He flew up and grabbed Mr. Doty’s nose with his strong yellow bill and twisted.

  He flew up and grabbed Mr. Doty’s nose.

  Again Mr. Doty gave the warwhoop and fell into the water—backwards this time. And again the end of the yell came up in bubbles, while Uncle Wesley fluttered free and, half flying and half swimming, made for the reeds.

  Mrs. Wiggins was all admiration. “You did it again!” she exclaimed. “And backwards this time! That was wonderful!”

  But Mr. Doty was mad. He scrambled ashore and picked up a stone and threw it at Uncle Wesley. His aim was poor and he barely missed Emma.

  “Hey, take it easy,” said Freddy. “Wes didn’t mean any harm. You scared him.”

  “Is that so!” Mr. Doty gave Freddy a mean look. “Well, I’ll wring his neck if I ever get hold of him.” And he picked up another stone and threw it. This time it didn’t come within yards of the ducks.

  Freddy looked at Mrs. Wiggins, and then at Bill and Robert and Georgie, and they all got up and went over and stood in a ring around Mr. Doty. Jason came along too. They didn’t look threatening or anything—they just stood and looked at him. And Mr. Doty, who was stooping for another stone, straightened up and gave an uneasy laugh. “Well, well, well,” he said; “mad at me, are you? Why I wouldn’t hurt him. Ducks I wouldn’t attack. Lions and rhinoceroses, yes—done it many times. But ducks, no. Just wanted to scare him a little. I didn’t try to hit him; you saw yourselves how the stones didn’t come anywhere near him.”

  “Maybe you aren’t a very good shot,” said Georgie.

  “Well, well, so that’s what you think, eh? Let me tell you, I hit what I aim at. Why, when I was pitching for the Cards there’s game after game I’ve struck out ten, fifteen, twenty men.”

  “Yeah?” said Georgie. “Let’s see you hit that fence post over there.”

  Mr. Doty swung his right arm around a couple of times. “No,” he said. “I’d better not. It’s a long time since I pitched a game and my ligaments ain’t real tight. Might stretch one, and then I’d be laid up good. Guess I better get this wet bathing suit off,” and he went back to where he had left his clothes.

  Pretty soon they started home. Freddy looked at Jason’s sweater. “What have you done with the C.H.S. you used to have on that sweater?” he asked.

  “I ripped it off,” said the boy. “I guess I just couldn’t take the kidding. You know what everybody says it means: Can’t Hope to Score; Creep, Hobble and Stumble. They make up a new one every day. I don’t think we’ll have any team this year; I don’t think anybody’ll come out for it.”

  “Well,” said Freddy, “I don’t think you ought to be ashamed of being on a team just because it loses. I saw your second game with Tushville last year. You put up a good fight, but they were just too heavy.”

  “Quite a football player myself I used to be,” put in Mr. Doty. “Never forget the game we played against Notre Dame. Made three of the four touchdowns myself. The last one, I wasn’t only carrying the ball, I was carrying their big left guard, too—Winooski, his name was. He’d tried to tackle me, ye see, and I couldn’t shake him off, so I just picked him up and tucked him under my other arm and carried him over the line.”

  Freddy had become convinced by this time that Mr. Doty’s stories of his exploits were all lies. They were rather harmless lies, because Mr. Doty evidently didn’t expect anybody to believe them. Nobody, for instance, could run with a two hundred pound football player under one arm. Freddy thought Mr. Doty just told them for fun. He said so to Mrs. Wiggins when they got back home.

  Mrs. Wiggins didn’t agree. “He wouldn’t tell those stories to the Beans,” she said. “No, sir, he thinks animals are stupid. Dumb animals—that’s what most people call us. He thinks we’ll believe anything.”

  “I sort of like him, though,” said Freddy.

  “Land sakes,” said the cow, “I don’t object to a liar, as such. He’s a lot of fun, too. Only I wouldn’t trust him much. He’s using lies every day, and if he got mad at you, he’d pick up the handiest thing to get even with. And what has he always got handy?—a good fat lie.”

  When Jason started home, Freddy walked down to the gate with him. “I think you ought to sew those letters back on your sweater,” said the pig. “You played the game hard; you’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I’m not ashamed really,” said Jason. “The reason Tushville has piled up such big scores is that they’ve got a lot of ringers on their team. There’s four of those boys in the last game that must be twenty years old; I bet they don’t even go to school.”

  “Well, can’t you do anything about it?”

  “I don’t see how. We tried to get Mr. Gridley, our principal, to do something, but he doesn’t like football and he wouldn’t. He thinks we ought not to have a team anyway. Can’t you think of something, Freddy?”

  “Why, sure,” said Freddy. “Sure. I’ve got several ideas already. H’m, let me see … Give me a day or two to mull it over, Jason. So long now.”

  Freddy’s conscience bothered him as he walked back to the pig pen. He’d said that he had several ideas. That was true enough. But they weren’t very good ideas. “I suppose it’s an idea to put a lot of lions and tigers into football suits and have them play on the Centerboro team. And it’s an idea to shoot all the Tushville team. But they’re neither of them really ideas because they couldn’t be used. I guess I’ll have to make good on this. I guess I’ll really have to do a little mulling, whatever that is. I don’t want to get like Mr. Doty.”

  Chapter 4

  Mr. and Mrs. Webb were two spiders who had been happily married for many years. They had led a quiet life on the farm, until the winter when the Bean animals had gone to Florida. The Webbs had gone along. The trip, during most of which they had ridden on Mrs. Wiggins’ head, had been a wonderful experience for them, and had changed their whole lives. For it had given them a desire to travel.

  Now spiders are not generally great travelers. Of course they have plenty of legs, but their legs are too short. For Mr. Webb to go from the barn up to the duck pond would be as hard and dangerous as for you to travel through fifty miles of a tropical jungle, since grass is tough going for anything as small as a spider. But the Webbs had worked it out. They hitch-hi
ked.

  They did it this way. Let’s say they wanted to go over to Tushville, about ten miles beyond Centerboro. It was easy enough to get to Centerboro. Freddy went down at least once a week, and they could get a ride on him. Or if they couldn’t ride any other way, they’d wait until Mr. Bean hitched Hank up to the buggy, and then they would hop on to Mr. Bean and climb up and hide under his coat collar. They could have ridden on Hank, of course, but Hank didn’t like it—he said they tickled.

  Then when Mr. Bean stopped in Centerboro they would wait in the buggy until they spotted a car which seemed to be headed in the right direction, and they would hop down and get aboard it. Sometimes, of course, they would end up in South Pharisee or Pocanaxon, and once they got carried clear to Albany without a chance to get down. But they didn’t care. It was all interesting, and they stayed a couple of days and saw the sights and even had dinner with the Governor—at least they sat on his collar during the meal.

  Mrs. Webb enjoyed going to weddings and crying a little when the bride walked up the aisle, and Mr. Webb liked them too, because he could look at the presents and figure out what they cost. So one day several months before Mr. Doty’s arrival at the farm, they were returning from Utica, where they had attended a large wedding. The young man with whom they had ridden from Centerboro had come alone, but on the return trip a young lady rode with him. They had expected that he would stop in Centerboro, but he drove right on through, and they learned from the conversation that he was going to Syracuse.

  The Webbs didn’t mind. “We haven’t been in Syracuse in some time,” said Mr. Webb. “Perhaps if we are smart we can take in a movie before we go home.”

  But the car didn’t go into the city, it turned out towards the airport. The young man turned to his companion. “Well,” he said, “there’s your plane. They’ll be loading in a few minutes. Have a good time in Hollywood.”

  “Good land!” said Mrs. Webb. “We’d better jump!”

  The spiders had been riding under a bow of ribbon on the front of the young lady’s hat. For a traveling spider, no safer or more comfortable spot can be found than a lady’s hat. It was the Pullman car of spider travel, Mr. Webb said. For women are careful of their hats; they never throw them around or put them where they’ll be sat on, as men do; and there are usually flowers or feathers to hide under.

  Mr. Webb got ready to jump to the young man’s shoulder, then he hesitated. “We haven’t ever flown, mother,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Good grief!” Mrs. Webb exclaimed. “You don’t mean you’d trust yourself to one of those flimsy contraptions?”

  “Hollywood’s quite a place, they tell me,” Mr. Webb continued.

  Mrs. Webb laughed. “Well, I must say, Webb, you get some very unspiderlike ideas. But good land, there’s nothing that calls us home. Though how you ever expect to get back—”

  “Oh, we’ll get back somehow,” said her husband.

  So that was how the Webbs went to Hollywood. And they really had a wonderful time. They met several prominent West Coast spiders, and were royally entertained, and visited a number of studios, and their adventures would fill a book. They even got into the pictures, although you can’t see them unless you know just where to look. Except in one called The Masked Bandit. In that one, the hero is sound asleep in bed, and the bandits are creeping up to break into the cabin. Mr. Webb was on the ceiling of the cabin when they were shooting that scene, and he got so worried that the hero wouldn’t wake up in time, that he let himself down on a long strand and landed on the man’s nose. The hero sneezed and woke up in time. Of course the director didn’t plan it that way, but it was so exciting that he said he’d keep the scene the way it was. And I guess he would have made a big fuss over Mr. Webb, and maybe even given him a part in the next picture, but Mr. Webb couldn’t be found. He had been blown on to the floor by the hero’s sneeze and quite badly bruised, but he managed to crawl down a knothole so that he wouldn’t be stepped on, and Mrs. Webb took care of him there for two or three days until he could walk without limping. After that she wouldn’t let him visit the studios any more, and a few days later they started east.

  The hero sneezed and woke up.

  It took them nearly two months to hitchhike home. They didn’t have much luck with planes. They only flew once—from Denver to Chicago; the rest of the way they traveled mostly by car. Often the car they were riding in would turn off in the wrong direction and carry them miles out of their way. But they were in no hurry. Sometimes when they found themselves in a quiet spot where there were plenty of flies, they would spin a web and rest a few days. They really had a wonderful trip.

  They got back to Centerboro about the middle of September. They came in on a milk truck, and when it stopped at the filling station for gas, they hopped down, climbed to the top of the gas pump, and waited. Several cars stopped for gas, but they were going in the wrong direction. But at last one pulled in that was headed for the road that led past the Bean farm. It was a shaky old rattletrap and the engine seemed to be trying to smash its way out from under the hood.

  “Well,” said Mr. Webb, “it isn’t the kind of shiny powerful car us big movie actors are accustomed to riding in, mother, and that’s a fact. But I guess it’s all there is. Come along.”

  So they climbed into the car. The driver was a small, shabby man, and when he had bought two gallons of gas he didn’t drive on immediately, he pulled off to one side. Pretty soon another car drew up behind him and a man got out and came up and said: “Well, how’s it going?”

  The Webbs looked at each other. They didn’t know that the first man was Mr. Doty, because they had never seen or heard of him. But they knew the other man all right. He was Mr. Herbert Garble, who had once given the Bean animals a good deal of trouble, and had even tried to kidnap and sell Freddy.

  “Going fine,” said Mr. Doty. “Only how’s about slipping your old pal Doty a little more folding money? I’m running short.”

  Mr. Garble frowned. “I’ve already advanced your expenses getting here. I told you I wasn’t going to keep shelling out after you got settled in. Anyway, you’re taking too long.”

  “You got to go slow in these things. Money I can’t start talking about—not till they bring it up themselves. They’ll get suspicious.”

  “Yeah?” said Mr. Garble. “Well, you want to look out for that pig. He’s a detective, and I’m telling you—he’s good.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Mr. Doty, “just because those animals can talk, you think they’re smart, huh? Well, they’re animals, ain’t they? If they were smart, they wouldn’t be animals, would they?”

  “I don’t know how you figure that out.”

  “Never mind how I figure it. I’m telling you. Heck, I kid ’em along and they think I’m wonderful.”

  “Well, I admit that’s not too smart of them,” Mr. Garble said.

  “Well, well; ve-ry funny!” said Mr. Doty. “I tell you I got ’em all eating right out of my hand. And now how about that money?”

  Mr. Garble pulled a couple of bills out and handed them over. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said. “And while those animals are eating out of your hand, keep an eye on your fingers. You might lose one or two.” He turned away. “Meet me here again Friday. So long.”

  As they clattered out of town the Webbs sat on Mr. Doty’s coat collar and talked over what they had heard. They couldn’t make much sense out of it. “Well, mother,” Mr. Webb said at last, “whatever this Doty is plotting, I don’t think he’ll get very far with it. Not if he figures Freddy for stupid. We’d better tell Freddy all this right away.” He looked out at the landscape, familiar now that they were nearing home. “My, my!” he said. “Won’t it be wonderful to get back and see everybody again! Aren’t you excited, mother?”

  She said: “I certainly am. I’ve been trying to think of that song Freddy made up—you know, about getting back home.” She began to hum it.

  “You’ve got a real nice voice, mother,�
� said Mr. Webb. “I like to hear you sing.” And indeed her voice was very sweet, though of course pretty small, and about two octaves higher than a mosquito’s.

  “Sing with me, Webb,” she said. “You used to have a fine rich tenor.”

  So Mr. Webb joined in. This is what they sang:

  Oh, a life of adventure is gay and free,

  And danger has its thrill;

  And no spider of spirit will bound his life

  By the web on the windowsill.

  Yet many a wandering spider sighs

  For the pleasant tang of the home-grown flies.

  But one tires at last of wandering

  As summer fades to fall.

  And the year is old, and the wind grows cold,

  And the flies are few and small.

  Then each spider knows that, by Jan. or Feb.,

  He’ll be better off in the old home web.

  Mr. Webb had changed the song a good deal so it would be about spiders. But it sounded quite nice, though naturally nobody heard it. And pretty soon their car drove in the Bean gate, stopped with a final bang, and Mr. Doty hopped out.

  The Webbs of course hopped out with him, but as he went in the back door they dropped off and went up to Jinx, who was asleep in the sunshine, and swung on his whiskers until he woke up.

  “Well, where did you two come from?” the cat demanded. “Golly, this calls for a celebration. Where’ve you been all summer—on one of those trips of yours? You might have dropped us a postcard.”

  “Look, Jinx,” said Mr. Webb, “we’ve got some important news. About this Mr. Doty we drove home with. Who is he anyway?”

  “That’s right,” said the cat, “you don’t know about him. Why, he’s Mrs. Bean’s brother. If you’ve got news about him, let’s go up to the pig pen and talk to the big editor. If you aren’t too proud to travel by cat, after riding in that high-class thunder-buggy of Doty’s.”