Alvin Fernald, Superweasel

by Clifford B. Hicks

  At the top he stopped abruptly, and reached out with his right hand. “Alvin Fernald? Good to know you, sir! I’ve heard lots about you. Your father was one of my informants.”

  Alvin had never been called sir before. “Won’t you come in?” As soon as they were inside the bedroom he kicked the door shut behind him, and motioned toward the other two kids. “This is my sister Daphne, and my best friend Shoie.”

  The man smiled with a tight little motion of his lips, shook their hands, and said, “I’m very glad to know you. I mean no offense, but my business really is with Alvin.”

  “Forget it, sir,” said Alvin. “Anything I can tell you, these two guys know as well.” He gestured toward the chair at the end of the Inventing Bench. “Please sit down and tell us how we might help you.”

  Professor O’Harra sat down, looked with disdain at the top of the bench, pushed some of the items away, and very carefully placed his briefcase in front of him, and his yellow cap precisely in the middle of the briefcase.

  “Perhaps it’s just as well. Daphne and Shoie, you may be of help to me, too.” He had a high-pitched voice. “Alvin, indeed you come very highly recommended. I have spent two days in Riverton trying to locate someone who knows the natural sights in this area, who knows the terrain hereabouts, and who has some sense of the history of Riverton, and your name popped up again and again.”

  “I’m flattered,” said Alvin.

  “But you do, Alvin,” exclaimed the Pest. “I mean, you know all those things. You know everything about Riverton. You’ve been in trouble all over this place.”

  “So have you and Shoie. You’ve been with me whenever I got in trouble.” He added ruefully, “Most often, you’ve been the ones that got me out of trouble. Anyway, what kind of information do you want, Professor O’Harra?”

  “My friends all call me Liam. Why don’t you? My business, kids, is finding lost documents. I started, back in Ireland, when I was not much older than you. I helped those Irish, back from America, to trace their roots—their family burial plots, birth and marriage certificates. I trace down legal papers that have somehow disappeared, wills and titles to properties, all that sort of thing. Sometimes financial papers. Even if I say so myself, I’m rather good at what I do. And what I want from you kids is local evidence to help me find a document that disappeared in Riverton over a hundred years ago.”

  “Wow!” said Daphne. “That’s really old! Why, it’s just about superannuated!”

  “Liam, don’t pay any attention to the Pest. She reads the dictionary for fun. She’s an abecedarian.”

  “Oh. I see. No, I don’t really see. She’s probably the first abecedarian, whatever that is, that I’ve ever met.”

  Daphne said coyly, “Why don’t you put down your shillelagh, Professor?”

  He jumped as though he’d been shot, looked at his walking stick, and placed it on the bench. “Daphne, you’re the first American in my life that’s used that word.”

  “Shillelagh. S-h-i-l-l-e-l-a-g-h. It started out as a club or bludgeon. Now it sometimes means walking stick, just as you have there.”

  He picked up his shillelagh. “And sometimes, to me, it is a form of expression, of entertainment.”

  To the kids’ amazement the walking stick suddenly came alive. It shifted from hand to hand so fast they couldn’t follow its movements. Suddenly, with no apparent effort on the professor’s part, it shot into the air, bounced against the ceiling, and dropped behind the professor’s back, where he caught it with his right hand.

  Almost at the same instant, the professor’s clear tenor voice echoed from every corner of Alvin’s room:

  Sure it’s the same old shillelagh

  My father brought from Ireland;

  And divil a man was prouder than he

  As he walked with it in his hand.

  He’d lead the band on Paddy’s day,

  And twirl it round his mitt,

  And divil a bit, we’d laugh at it,

  Or dad would have a fit,

  Sure with the same old shillelagh

  Me father brought from Ireland.

  With that, the stick came dropping from the ceiling straight into Liam O’Harra’s teeth.

  Shoie somehow seemed unimpressed. He was more excited with the reason the professor had appeared at the house. He said, “You started to tell us how we might help you.”

  “Yes, yes. I hope you can. There might be a little money in it for each of you.”

  Alvin, seated on his bed, suddenly lifted his head.

  “The best way to tell you how you may be able to help me is to tell you a story. And the best way to tell that story is to read a certain boy’s journal. The boy was about your age—” he pointed to Alvin and Shoie, “when he wrote the journal. It tells a long story, and a true story. Do you have any plans for this afternoon? It may take that long to read the entire journal.”

  Alvin said, “You said there might be money in it? Of course we’ll listen.”

  Liam blinked his eyes as though to clear them, and opened his briefcase. He took out a small book, bound in roughly worn leather and obviously very old. “The story starts way back in February or March of 1862. Abraham Lincoln lived in the White House. He had been President for about a year, and the Civil War had been spreading across the South. Things were not going very well for the North.”

  Liam opened the book. The kids could see that the text was written in small, very neat, handwriting.

  Liam began to read.