Great Brain Reforms

by John D. Fitzgerald

  “This basketball cost two dollars and twenty cents,” he said. “Playing on the ground instead of a hard wood floor is wearing it out.”

  Danny gave Tom a nasty look. “What skin is that off your nose?” he asked. “It is John’s ball.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Tom said- “I made a deal with him for the basketball and backstop yesterday. You fellows sure as heck can’t expect me to buy a new basketball every time one wears out. It is going to cost a penny a day for

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  each kid who wants to play from now on. That way I’ll have enough money to buy a new ball when this one

  wears out.”

  Basil shook his head. “I don’t charge kids to use my

  new baseball bat,” he said.

  Jimmie nodded. “And I didn’t charge to use my new

  baseball,” he said.

  “That’s different,” Tom said. “Whoever heard of a baseball bat wearing out? And you can use the baseball I won for nothing. But it is a penny a day to play basketball

  from now on.”

  The kids all grumbled about it. But I knew they would all pay because basketball was so much fun and such an exciting game. And I knew right then that The Great Brain was going to make me pay too.

  That evening after supper Sweyn left to see his girl and Tom left the house also. Now that The Great Brain was twelve years old, he was allowed to remain outside the house until eight o’clock. I was in the parlor with Frankie and Papa while Mamma and Aunt Bertha were doing the supper dishes.

  I only had a little brain but I didn’t believe Tom could really hypnotize anybody. I figured it he could he’d be hypnotizing kids all over town and getting everything he wanted. I got the checkerboard and put seven checkers

  on it. I walked over to Papa.

  “Tom showed me a trick today,” I said, “but I can’t figure out how he did it. The idea of the trick is to make the other player take the last checker. A player can take one checker or two checkers at a time.”

  I put the checkerboard on Papa’s knees. He studied

  the checkers for a moment, and Frankie came over to watch.

  “It is a simple mathematical problem that T. D. probably learned in advanced arithmetic at the academy,” Papa said. “Whoever goes first must lose.”

  “How do you figure that?” I asked.

  “All the person going second has to do is to leave just tour checkers,” Papa explained. “You go first and I’ll show you.”

  I removed one checker. Papa removed two. “There are now four checkers left,” Papa said. “No matter if you take one or two I can make you take the last checker. If you take one then I take two and you get the last checker. If you take two then I take one and you get the last cHecker.”

  “I understand that part,” I said. “But Tom also made it so he always got the last checker.”

  ‘“‘That is easy,” Papa said as he lined up the seven checkers orrthe board. “You go first.”

  I removed one checker.

  “Now all I have to do is to take the same number of checkers as you do,” Papa said, “so I’ll take one. There are five left. If you take one I take one leaving three. Then all you have to do is to take two and I get the last checker.”

  “What if I take two the first time?” I asked.

  “That would leave five,” Papa said. “Then I would take two leaving three. And all you have to do is to take two and I get the last checker.”

  “Thanks a lot, Papa,” I said. “T. D. sure had me buffaioed on this trick.”

  I walked over and sat down on the floor with Frankie.

  We played checkers until bedtime. Frankie didn’t say what was on his mind until we reached our bedroom.

  “Tom cheated Jimmie and Danny,” he said.

  “He doesn’t call it cheating,” I said- “According to Tom, he is simply using his great brain to get something he wants.”

  “I’m all mixed up,” Frankie said. “I don’t know who is right and who is wrong.”

  “You’ll find out tomorrow,” I said. “Danny’s father will complain to Papa and Jimmie’s mother to Mamma-It will then be up to The Great -Brain to convince Papa and Mamma that he didn’t cheat anybody.”

  When Papa came home for lunch the next day I knew Mr. Forester had complained from the way Papa kept looking at Tom during the meal. And I figured Mrs. Peterson must have complained too from the way Mamma kept staring at Tom. But Papa didn’t say anything until we had finished eating.

  “Well, T. D.,” he said as he put his napkin in his silver napkin ring, “I see you are at it again. Mr. Forester stopped in at the Advocate office this morning. He told me that you had cheated his son Danny out of a baseball glove.”

  Mamma held up her hand. “Before you answer that, Tom Dennis,” she said, “Mrs. Peterson phoned me this morning to complain that you had cheated her son Jimmie out of a new baseball.”

  Tom didn’t appear worried at all. “Did Mr. Forester demand that you make me return the infielder’s glove to Danny?” he asked Papa.

  “Well, no, he didn’t,” Papa said.

  Then Tom looked across the table at Mamma. “Did Mrs. Peterson insist that you make me give Jimmie back the baseball?” he asked.

  “No, she didn’t,” Mamma answered. “But she was certainly upset about it.”

  “I think that proves I didn’t cheat Danny or Jimmie,” Tom said- “If I had cheated, they would have demanded that I return the glove and the baseball. And if Danny had won the two dollars and a quarter from me, you can bet his father wouldn’t have mentioned it to you, Papa. And the same with Jimmie.”

  After that brilliant defense there was nothing Papa could do but nod his head. “You do have a point,” he

  said.

  “Point or no point,” Mamma said, “Mrs. Peterson works very hard to support herself and her son. And a dollar-and-tencent baseball to her is the equivalent of a bicycle to your father and me.”

  “All the more reason why she should be thanking you instead of complaining,” Tom said.

  “And just how do you arrive at that conclusion?” Mamma asked.

  “Assume Jimmie had won the dollar and ten cents from me,” Tom said. “He would say to himself, look at all this money I won betting. This would make him want to bet some more, and he would get the gambling fever, which is worse than drink. Jimmie would grow up to be a gambling man, taking money from his poor mother to gamble away in the saloons. The same goes for Danny. So you see. if it weren’t for me both Jimmie and Danny would have become gamblers, bringing sorrow, heartache, and disgrace to their families.”

  It is a rare occasion when a boy can dumbfound his parents so they just sit with open mouths and staring eyes. Aunt Bertha was the only one not struck dumb by Tom’s brilliant logic.

  “I do declare,” she said, “if that boy was caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he would convince us he was putting a cookie back.”

  Tom excused himself from the table. Frankie and I joined him on the back-porch steps, Tom looked plumb disgusted.

  ‘T just don’t understand what made Papa and Mamma so upset,” he said. “You would think they would be used-to parents complaining about my great brain by this time.”

  “I know how you did it,” I said. “I didn’t snitch. I told Papa that it was a puzzle you showed me and used checkers instead of tin cans. Papa said it was a mathematical problem you must have learned in class at the academy.”

  “He was wrong about that,” Tom said. “I learned the trick from a kid named Jerry Moran at the academy.”

  “Why did you go through all that rigmarole with the tin cans and pretending you could hypnotize people?” I asked.

  “Jerry showed me the trick with seven pennies,” Tom said. “But if I’d used pennies and offered to bet I could make the kids take the last one, they would have known it was a trick right away. Those kids weren’t betting I couldn’t make them take the last can. They were betting I couldn’t hypnotize them.”

 
“It was still a swindle,” I said.

  “Wrong,” Tom said. “When Parley, Seth, Basil, and

  Howard bet me, they were all positive they had a sure thing. And they won twenty-five cents from me. Do you think they swindled me out of my quarter?”

  “Well, no,” I had to admit.

  “And when Danny and Jimmie bet,” Tom said, “they were positive they had a sure thing and couldn’t lose. If they had won the three dollars and thirty-five cents from me, would you say they had swindled me?”

  “Of course not,” I answered.

  “Then how can you say I swindled them because I was positive that I had a sure thing?” Tom demanded.

  I thought about it for a moment. “I guess you didn’t

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  swindle them after all,” I had to admit.

  “I accept your apology,” Tom said.

  Frankie smiled at Tom. “Then you didn’t cheat,” he said as if the idea pleased him.

  Tom ruffled Frankie’s hair with his fingers. “You can^t be guilty of cheating somebody,” he said, “if that person is trying to cheat you.”

  Well, all I can say is that The Great Brain could talk himself out of anything. If he was caught stealing a horse, he would claim he was nearsighted and thought it was his lost milk cow. And for my money, he would get away with it.

 

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Tug of War

  TOM DIDN’T MAKE AS MUCH money as I thought he would charging the kids to play basketball because soon we were able to go swimming. The first thing every kid looked forward to when summer vacation began was the day he could go swimming in the river. We sel-dom got any cold weather in Adenville during the winter because the town was located in southwestern Utah. But it did snow in the mountains west of Adenville. Until after that snow melted, the water in the river was too cold for swimming. So it was a great day for all the boys in town when we saw all the snow in the mountains was gone.

  Tom and I were late getting to the swimming hole

  p>

  that afternoon because of Frankie. He wanted 10 go swimming with us and take along his playmate, Eddie Huddle.

  “You are too little to go swimming,” Tom said.

  Frankie began to cry. “You always say I’m too little,” he cried. “Too little to play baseball. Too little to play basketball. Now I’m too little to go swimming.”

  “Stop bawling,” Tom said. “If Mamma says you can go, we will take you with us.”

  Mamma surprised us by saying Frankie could go if we would watch out for him. She hadn’t let me go until I was seven years old. Then Eddie Huddle began to bawl.

  “I wanna go swimmin* too,” he cried. “If Frankie goes I ain’t got nobody to play with.”

  Frankie put his arm around Eddie’s shoulders, “If Eddie can’t go,” he said to Tom and me, “I won’t go. And if I don’t go after Mamma telling you to take me, it means you can’t go.”

  ‘ What could Tom and I do? We walked to the blacksmith shop owned by Eddie’s father. Mr. Huddle said we could take Eddie if we kept a careful eye on him—

  There were about fifty kids at the swimming hole. .We all went-swimming naked because nobody owned a bathing suit then. I had learned how to swim when Sweyn tossed me into the deepest part of the swimming hole from the diving board. But Frankie and Eddie were too young for this. Tom and I showed them how to pretend they were swimming by mud crawling. They could walk on their hands in the shallow water and, by kicking their legs, keep their bodies afloat. Tom and I took turns watching them. I knew from the fun the two kids were having that we would be stuck taking them swimming all summer.

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  After swimming in the river began, the next thing we all looked forward to was the Fourth of July. Nobody in Adenville ever locked their barns until one week before the Fourth. Then suddenly the barns of everybody who was going to enter a float in the Fourth-of-July parade became forbidden territory. This was because people were secretly working on their floats. No one got to see the floats until the morning of the parade.

  The first prize was a blue ribbon with the words “First Prize” printed on it. The second prize was a red ribbon and third prize a white ribbon. I doubt if these ribbons cost more than twenty-five cents each. But the way people worked on floats, you would have thought the ribbons were worth a fortune. Mamma had won one blue ribbon, two red ribbons, and two white ribbons over the years. This Fourth of July she was determined that she was going to win first prize.

  And this Fourth of July Tom had made up his mind that the Gentile kids were going to win the tug of war. I’d better explain that back in those days anybody who wasn’t a Mormon was called a Gentiie in Utah. Every Fourth, ten Mormon kids and ten Gentile kids between the ages of eleven and twelve were chosen for the tug of war. The kids themselves selected the biggest and strongest boys for their teams. A rope was stretched across Aden Irrigation Canal, which was about three feet deep and ten feet wide and ran down one side of the town park. The teams lined up on each side of the canal. Then the tug of war began to see which team could pull the other into the canal.

  The Gentile kids had been getting dunked in the canal ever since I could remember. It didn’t take a great

  brain to figure out why. The Mormon kids outnumbered the Gentile kids in town by about four to one. This gave them a four-to-one advantage in picking the biggest and strongest kids for their team. That is why I thought Tom had suddenly came down with brain fever when he said he was going to put his great brain to work on how to win the tug of war. I knew even his great brain couldn’t make ten Gentile kids each grow ten pounds heavier and stronger in a week.

  Mamma had a beaut of an idea for a float. She told us about it one night after supper.

  “My entry is going to be entitled “The Ringing of the Liberty Bell,” she said, looking mighty pleased.

  Papa nodded. “An excellent idea,” he said. “But you would need some sort of a belfry to hang the bell on. And I doubt if there is room enough in our buggy.”

  “Mark is going to let us borrow his wagon,” Mamma said-.”We’ll move the buggy out of the barn and the wagon into it tomorrow.”

  “That problem is solved,” Papa said, “but what are you going to use for a bell? We can’t use the town hall bell because it is used to summon the volunteer fire de- ‘partment in case of fire. And I doubt if Reverend Hoi-comb would want us to take the bell from the Community Church.”

  “You are forgetting the schoolhouse bell,” Mamma said.

  “Right,” Papa said. “I’m sure I can get Calvin Whitlock and the other two members of the school board to let us borrow the bell.”

  “No,” Mamma said, to our surprise. “Mrs. Granger is a member of the school board and enters a float every

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  year. I don’t want her to know about my idea. She might want to copy it and take the bell for her own float-You will just have to get the bell without permission from anybody. And wait until the evening of July third to do it.”

  “Another excellent idea,” Papa said.

  Well, all I can say is that it just goes to prove there is no figuring grownups. If Sweyn and Tom and I had told Papa and Mamma that we were going to steal the schoolhouse bell, they would have had a fit about it. Just for saying it we would have lost our allowances for six months. But there sat Papa and Mamma smiling proudly, as if stealing a schoolhouse bell wasn’t any crime at all. Their consciences weren’t bothering them a bit. Try and figure that one out because I can’t.

  Uncle Mark’s wagon was moved into our barn the next day. Papa bought some lumber, Tom, Sweyn, and I helped him build a belfry on the bed of the wagon. The next day Mamma and Aunt Bertha began decorating the wagon. They wove red, white, and blue bunting between the spokes of the wheels and draped it around the body of the wagon and the seat. After the wagon was decorated, Mamma and Aunt Bertha began making the costumes my brothers and I would wear.

  On the evening of July third Papa was nervous. Instead
of smoking just one after-dinner cigar, he smoked two. Mamma kept looking out the bay window in the parlor. Finally she spoke.

  “It is dark now; time to go get the bell,” she said as if Papa went out stealing schoolhouse bells every night of the week.

  .S9

  1 Papa cleared his throat. “I’ve decided to take Sweyn and Tom with me,” he said. “I might need some help.” “Can I go, too?” I asked.

  Papa must have wanted all the company he could get when he went out stealing bells. He said I could go with them. We left by the back door and went to the toolshed fora wrench. Papa motioned for us to follow him into the barn. He sat down on a bale of hay and began patting my dog Brownie and Frankie’s pup Prince on their heads.

  “How much do you think that bell weighs?” he asked- “About twenty pounds,” Tom said.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Papa said. “If I’m caught removing (he bell from the schoolhouse, it will make me the laughingstock of everybody in town. I’ll be the butt of jokes for years to come. Now you boys don’t want to see chat happen to your father, do you?”

  What could we say after that dramatic appeal? We all said we wouldn’t want that to happen. And I knew

  right then -why Papa wanted company when it came to

  stealing the bell.

  “Thank you, boys,” Papa said. “I’ll just sit here and keep the dogs company while you go get the bell.”

  “If we get the bell for you, what do we get?” Tom asked.

  “My undying thanks,” Papa said.

  “And if we let Mamma think you helped to get the bell?” Tom asked.

  “I see what you mean,” Papa said. “In addition to

  my undying thanks, you will each receive fifty cents.” “You’ve got yourself a deal. Papa,” Tom said. Tom got Sweyn’s lariat and a gunnysack. He put the

  lariat and wrench in the sack. He acted as scout, leading

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  Sweyn and me down alleys and through vacant lots to the schoolhouse. Tom tried the door. It was locked.

  “Now why would anybody be stupid enough to lock the door of a schoolhouse in the summertime?” he asked. “No kid in his right mind would enter a schoolhouse un-less he had to.”