The Neddiad: How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization

by Daniel Pinkwater

  At the end of the week, Colonel Groscase, the commandant—the head military guy—came out and watched Cadet Sergeant Winkler put me through my paces. He said we had both done a good job.

  On Friday, I took my uniform home with me. I also took Seamus Finn home with me. He was a big help. He showed me how to cut a slit in a piece of cardboard and slide it behind each button so the Blitz cloth wouldn't get your shirt greasy—and there's a lot of technique involved with shoe-polishing.

  On Monday we went to school early so Seamus could go to his dorm room and put his uniform on. I reported to the office of Major Grey, the headmaster, the head academic guy. I was looking snappy and crisp, with everything shiny. Major Grey looked exactly like George Washington, and I knew he had played him in two movies, because Seamus had told me. He was a nice man with kind eyes. He told me all my tests had been evaluated and he would take me to meet my teacher and my classmates.

  My teacher was Miss Magistra. She was a small woman with a sharp nose and quick dark eyes. Like most of the lady teachers, she was on the old side. What Seamus Finn had told me was that the lady teachers, which is to say most of the teachers for first through eighth grades, had retired from teaching in regular schools before coming to teach at Brown-Sparrow. This meant that they all had about thirty years of experience, and had seen everything. This may have been more true of Miss Magistra, who was rumored not only to have retired from the public schools of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, but also to have been acquitted of shooting someone in a gambling hall. It was also thought that Magistra was not her real name.

  "Class, this is Wentworthstein," Miss Magistra said. "Wentworthstein will be joining us, and I know you will all make him welcome. Cadet Wentworthstein, these are cadets Terwilliger, Larabee, Burns, Stover, Finn, Crane, Merriwell, McCoy, and Henderson."

  Each kid stood and made a little bow when Miss Magistra spoke his name. Seamus Finn also flashed me a smile. The cadets looked reasonably intelligent and pleasant. Of course, I had already had a rundown on the members of my class from my friend Seamus. No bullies, no snitches, no crybabies, no showoffs—a pretty good bunch, he thought.

  CHAPTER 31

  I'm Learning

  Something Seamus Finn had not mentioned to me was that our class was studying paleontology for this year's science topic! What a stroke of luck! Although I had a general idea from reading the signs at the La Brea Tar Pits, and my book from the drugstore, there was still quite a bit I wasn't clear about, and I really wanted to know all about fossils, and evolution, and geologic periods.

  Right there, on my very first day in class, I got it straight. Well, straighter—there's a lot to remember. First there are eons, which are really long, like millions and millions and millions of years. There's the Pre-Archean, the Archean, the Proterozoic, and the Phanerozoic. When the name of an eon ends in "zoic," that means there was animal life—and we know about that from fossils. The eons are divided up into eras, which are also millions and millions of years, but not quite as many. Eras are divided into periods—for example, the Mesozoic era, which is neat because dinosaurs lived then, is divided up into the Triassic, the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous. And then the periods are divided into epochs, like Early Jurassic, Middle Jurassic, and Late Jurassic.

  My favorite epoch, because it's when the tar pits were sucking down animals, is the Pleistocene, which is the first part of the Quaternary period, which took place in the Cenozoic era, and it's practically now, because it happened up until about 8,000 years ago, and belongs in the Phanerozoic eon, which started around 600,000,000 years ago, and we're still living in it.

  Miss Magistra had a nifty chart on the wall with different colors showing all this stuff, also some actual fossils from the Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian periods—mostly little bugs and shellfish-type critters—plus lots of pictures of dinosaurs, and mammoths, the sort of extinct animals anybody would like.

  Apparently the class was going to take a field trip to the tar pits, and also go someplace where we could dig for fossils—and these things had not taken place yet. So I had come to the school at just the right time.

  While I was learning things, I was also trying to size up my classmates. I couldn't learn much. Everybody was interested in the science lesson, and mostly knew the answers to questions Miss Magistra asked. Nobody said or did anything outstanding. I thought I'd probably get to talk to them when lunchtime came around.

  CHAPTER 32

  I'm Eating

  When the bell rang for lunch, nobody did anything until Miss Magistra said, "Class, rise." Then we all stood by our desks, at attention. "Dismissed," she said, and we all walked out of the classroom and down the hall, nobody talking. I just followed along.

  "Just follow along," Cadet Finn whispered to me. We went out of the building and to the parade ground.

  Cadet Sergeant Winkler was looking for me. "Wentworthstein, you are in the third squad of the second platoon of Company B. You stand here, between Burns and Stover. This is your place whenever we are in formation."

  Then, a long way off, someone hollered, "Battalion!" and immediately someone a little closer hollered, "Company!" and Cadet Second Lieutenant Shmedlap hollered, "Platoon!" Then the same bunch of voices all hollered, "Ten-shun!" And we all snapped to attention. Then right face, and forward march, and the Brown-Sparrow band started playing. It was a really good band. The band was formed outside the mess hall, and we marched there while it played, up the steps, and in the door. Then everybody went to stand behind his seat. Cadet Sergeant Winkler showed me where to stand and told me this was where I was always to sit. Someone hollered, "Be seated," and we all sat down.

  It wasn't over. We sat at attention. Nobody talked, and we all had to hold our arms out in front of us, folded one over the other Indian-style, until someone hollered, "At ease." Sitting at the head of our table was Cadet Second Lieutenant Shmedlap, who said, "Gentlemen, you may now talk quietly while you enjoy your Spam."

  Spam is disgusting. It's some kind of canned meat. It's rectangular. They fry it. We also had warmish shredded carrot salad with raisins, bread and butter, and milk that could have been colder. Dessert was ... dessert. It was slightly sweet. It might have been cake, or it might have been pudding. Now I understood why Seamus Finn had gotten all excited about hamburgers and mashed potatoes.

  CHAPTER 33

  I'm Talking

  I looked around the mess hall at the whole school having lunch. All the tables were set up like mine, with a cadet officer, a high schooler, at the head, and lower ranks or younger kids in the other seats. All the cadets looked similar, not just because we were all dressed exactly alike—everybody had the same sort of facial expressions, moved the same way, had the same sort of haircut. I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, this similarity. Terwilliger, one of the cadets in my class, and at my table, explained it.

  "Everybody here is rich," he said. There were more kinds of kids than I had known at the Louis B. Nettelhorst School. By more kinds I mean from more places—about a quarter of the cadets were Jewish. There were quite a few Chinese kids, and Filipinos, kids from Mexico and other places in Latin America. "Brown-Sparrow would take a Negro," Terwilliger said, "if his father was rich enough, and he didn't mind being the only black kid in school."

  Rich people look different from other people. This was something I had never noticed before. Of course, I was rich myself, being the son of the shoelace king—but this was the first time I had ever really thought about it.

  All the other cadets at my table knew that my father was Wentworthstein shoelaces. They knew about my trip on the Super Chief, and about me being left behind in Flagstaff, Arizona, and being friends with Seamus Finn and his father, the movie actor. Seamus Finn, who did not sit at my table, had told a couple of his friends in the dorm, and they had discussed me with the others. They knew all about me before I ever came to the school.

  What they wanted to tell me about at that first lunch was who their fathers were, and that they were ric
h—which went without saying, really, because they were there—what sports they were good at, and places they had been on vacations. What they wanted to know about me was what sports I was good at (none, really), whether my sister was pretty (yes, but too old for any of them), and didn't I agree that I was a lucky boy to be going to such a swell school.

  They were friendly and polite, and seemed more grown-up than the kids I'd gone to school with in Chicago. I found I was missing those kids, and I wondered what Ronnie Wolfspit was doing. It was a swell school, and I already liked Miss Magistra, and I was excited that I was going to learn more about paleontology, and probably other stuff, in her class—but I felt a little lonely for the first time since I'd left home.

  The only kid at my table I especially liked was Cadet Junior Private Crane, Alfred, a nice-looking boy, on the small side, who sat across from me, and was also in Miss Magistra's class. He was the only one who didn't brag about his father, or say very much of anything—but he looked as though he was fighting back a smile, and his eyes twinkled when the other kids were talking.

  CHAPTER 34

  Stuffed Stuff

  I had been going to Brown-Sparrow for a couple of weeks, and was fairly used to it, on the day Seamus Finn and I ran into Crane at the Safeway. My mother had sent us to get two cans of sauerkraut, some Chinese noodles, and a bag of miniature marshmallows for her tuna casserole. Seamus was staying for supper. He had not missed a single supper with us and came over for breakfast on those mornings when he had not actually slept over.

  "I say, Crane!" Seamus said.

  "Call me Al," Crane said. "We're not in school." Crane was a day cadet like me, and like Seamus, for all intents and purposes. "I'm just picking up a couple of things for my mom."

  "That's what we're doing," Seamus said. "For our mom—I mean, his mom."

  "I'm going to get a root beer. Want to share it?" Al asked. We paid for our purchases, including a twelve-ounce bottle of Dad's Old Fashioned Root Beer from the cooler, and went outside. We put our grocery bags on the fender of a parked car and stood around taking turns sipping.

  Al Crane was different out of his uniform and away from school. He seemed easier and friendlier—not that he seemed unfriendly at school, just that he talked less than anyone else. "You guys have to be home right away?" he asked.

  "Not particularly," I said.

  "You ever been in here?" he said, indicating the store next to the Safeway. It had a big glass window with venetian blinds going all the way across. The blinds were angled down and you couldn't see inside. There was no sign like most stores have, just a small card I'd never noticed before on the glass door. stuffed stuff 'n' stuff was typed on the card.

  "What is it? It looks like an office or something," I said.

  "It's a neat place. We can go in. Come on," Al Crane said.

  "But what is it?" Seamus asked.

  "You'll see. Come on."

  We picked up our grocery bags and followed Al to the door. It was unlocked. We followed him in.

  The first thing I saw was an African lion, about one foot from my nose. I jumped. Seamus had the same reaction. It only took a second to realize that it was stuffed and not alive—but you can go through quite a number of emotions in one second. The emotion I settled on was that it was an extremely neat thing.

  We began taking in the rest of the room. It was large and slightly dim, and there were a lot of stuffed animals, including a rhino and a giraffe. There were also glass cases, and tables and shelves and counters with all kinds of things on them. There was a doorway at the back, which probably led to an office or workroom.

  We heard a voice from the doorway. "Who goes there?" it shouted.

  "It's Al," Al shouted back. "Okay if my friends and I look around?"

  "Sure," the voice said. "I'm just packing up an alligator. I'll be with you in a few minutes."

  We looked around at the things in the room. There were lots of stuffed animals, and animal heads, birds, a cobra about to strike, and fish—also primitive-looking carvings, suits of medieval armor, Indian beadwork such as I had seen in Albuquerque, old-fashioned hats, rusty pistols, and swords.

  A guy with a beard came out of the back room.

  "This is Steve Kraft," Al said. "Steve, these are my friends, Seamus and Neddie."

  "What sort of place is this?" Seamus asked.

  "It's my shop," Steve Kraft said. "I have taxidermics, curios, and antiquities. I have taxidermied fauna—that's animals—like this bandicoot here. I also have antiquities, like this Siamese Buddha, medical anomalies, like this two-headed bunny in formaldehyde, and, as you see in this case, bottlecaps, and over here, beer cans."

  "What do you do, sell them?" I asked.

  "Sometimes I sell them. Very often I rent them to the movie studios—they are shooting a picture about the Middle Ages, I provide suits of armor. They're shooting a scene in a Chinese temple, I provide authentic, or nearly authentic, carvings and decorations. Some of my customers are collectors like myself. And some things I just keep for me." Steve Kraft lowered his voice to a whisper: "Except for some of the animals, everything in the place is fake—I make it myself. For example, this is the head of a leper, made of wax. Scary, isn't it? I made that from scratch. Most of the better exhibits are made from molds. I make a rubber mold, let's say of a skull, and then I cast it in plaster or plastic and paint it."

  Seamus and I were gaping, mouths open. This was the neatest thing of its kind I had seen yet. It beat the store on Hollywood Boulevard with the magic tricks and models and switchblades. I don't like to admit it, because the Indian Building was obviously more important, and more real, but I liked this better than the Indian Building. It even beat the La Brea Tar Pits in some ways.

  "I have fossils too," Steve Kraft said. "This is the skull of a dire wolf, from the tar pits. Notice how the bone is black and the teeth are white? That's because the bone absorbed the asphalt, and the teeth, being much less porous, didn't. Completely fake, of course—it's made of plastic. All the real ones are in the county museum. But it's good, isn't it?"

  Al Crane was grinning proudly at how impressed Seamus and I were. Seamus tugged my sleeve. "Look at this," he whispered. In a glass case was my turtle! I mean, it was exactly like my turtle.

  "Uh, what is this little item, Mr. Kraft?" Seamus asked.

  "Sacred turtle," Steve Kraft said. "Naturally, I mean a fake sacred turtle. A real one, if anybody could get it, would be priceless. I copied this from a picture in an old book. It's really carved out of fake stone I make by mixing sand and vermiculite with plaster. Then I painted it."

  "It's really good," I said. "I mean, it looks just like a real one."

  "Nobody's ever seen a real one," Steve Kraft said. "There may only be one real one, and nobody knows where it is—but a Jesuit priest who was friends with an Indian shaman drew a picture of it more than a hundred years ago, and that's what I copied."

  "Do you know what it's supposed to mean?" I asked, trying to sound mildly curious.

  "Very sacred thing," Steve Kraft said. "It figures into the most secret rituals of just about every Indian tribe, also South American Indians, and Pacific Island types, and Asians, and Africans. Sacred animal everywhere, I guess. The Anishnabe say the seven parts of the turtle—the head, tail, shell, and four legs—stand for the seven codes of life: bravery, respect, honesty, humility, wisdom, honor, and sharing. Only a hero can possess the sacred turtle, and he has to defeat powerful forces of evil, or the world will cease to exist."

  "Would you sell this turtle?" Seamus asked.

  "No, I would never sell it," Steve Kraft said. "It's one of the best things I've ever faked."

  Back outside, on the street in front of Stuffed Stuff 'n' Stuff, Al Crane asked us, "What are you guys doing on Saturday?"

  "Probably catch the movies at the Hitching Post," Seamus said.

  "I live right across the street from the Hitching Post," Al Crane said. "If you want, you could come with me to see where my father works.
"

  "Would that be fun?" I asked.

  "Yes, he works in an interesting place, and it's out in the country among the farms. We'd get to take a car ride, and lunch will be memorable."

  "What does your father do?" Seamus asked.

  "He's a manager. He's a business manager. He's nice, and my mother is nice too. Want to come?"

  "Sure, we'll keep you company," I said.

  "Yes, it will be nice to go for a ride," Seamus said.

  "Great. Tell your parents you'll be gone all day," Al Crane said.

  CHAPTER 35

  He Saw What I Did

  "I saw what you did," Seamus Finn said as the two of us walked back to the Hermione.

  "The French substitution? Did I do it right? Do you think Kraft saw it?" I asked.

  "No, you did it perfectly," Seamus said. "The only reason I saw it was because I was looking for it. I was thinking it would be the right thing to do."

  "So you agree it was a good idea to switch the real turtle with Steve Kraft's fake one?"

  "I think it's a perfect hiding place. No one would look for it in a shop full of fakes. Steve Kraft is obviously a friendly guy—we can go in there anytime we want and do a reverse substitution. And he said he would never sell it," Seamus Finn said. "So it's just as safe as if it were in a bank vault."