Freddy Goes Camping

by Walter R. Brooks

  “Yes, I think we can make terms with you,” said Mr. Camphor. “Listen to me. We have prepared a paper here, and you are going to sign it.”

  “Huh, don’t make me laugh!” said Mr. Anderson.

  “We’re not trying to. We’re just trying to see that you don’t sleep until you’ve signed. You know that you won’t get any sleep here at Lakeside. But I suppose you think that you can spend your nights in your home in Centerboro. So you can. But you won’t sleep there either. We have by no means exhausted all our methods for keeping people awake. Crickets can get into your house as easily as into this hotel. And there are doorbells that can ring, telephone bells in the middle of the night, mice gnawing in the woodwork—we have a hundred means at our disposal.—Here, wake up!” For Mr. Anderson’s head had fallen forward on his chest.

  “You have a very soothing voice, Mr. Camphor,” said Freddy. And then as Mr. Anderson gave a long comfortable snore: “Hi, Jacob!” he called.

  There was a droning buzz, and the wasp lit on Mr. Anderson’s collar. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “Where do you want me to begin drilling—you got any preference?”

  “You pick your own spot.”

  Jacob took out his sting and polished it on the coat collar, then walked up onto Mr. Anderson’s neck and looked around with a professional air. “I always like this spot just below the ear,” he said. “The nose is more spectacular, but in the long run the neck gives the best results. Well, here we go!” And he drove the sting in.

  The results indeed were excellent. Mr. Anderson’s snore turned into a screech, and he leaped up, clawing at his neck. He danced around for a moment wildly, then clasping his neck in both hands, dropped down on a log and stared up at them balefully under drooping eyelids.

  “You see,” said Mr. Camphor pleasantly, “no signature, no sleep.” He held out a paper, and after a moment Mr. Anderson took it with a grunt and started to read. Halfway through he started up. “Do you think I’m crazy?” he said. “Why, this thing—you could jail me on it any time you wanted to!”

  “Quite right,” said Mr. Camphor. “But we won’t if you behave yourself. We will give it back to you when you have given the hotel you stole back to Mrs. Filmore.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Mr. Anderson’s face twisted in an unpleasant sneer. His whole expression now betrayed how dishonest he really was, for he was too tired to keep on playing the part of the bluff, genial good fellow whom most Center boro people thought him. “Give it back, eh? I paid good money for that hotel, and …”

  “And Mrs. Filmore will pay it back to you,” Mr. Camphor interrupted, “less, of course, what it costs to repair the damage you have done. Say three thousand dollars.”

  Mr. Anderson was again peering at the paper. “Listen to this,” he said. “‘I confess that I did feloniously, and with malice aforethought, scare, frighten and terrify the employees of said hotel, to the end that they might, and subsequently, did, flee in terror and consternation; and that I furthermore, in pursuance of my criminal and iniquitous machinations …’ Why, I don’t even know what it means!”

  Mr. Camphor smiled a self-satisfied smile. “I thought I worded it rather well,” he said. “Hey!” Mr. Anderson’s head had begun to droop again. Mr. Camphor seized his shoulder and shook it. “Wake up! Sign this paper!”

  Mr. Anderson roused slightly, and held out a groping hand for the pen Mr. Camphor put into it. He signed, then fell right off the log onto his back and went to sleep.

  Mr. Camphor tucked a copy of the paper into the sleeper’s pocket, with a note at the bottom saying that the original would be turned over to the district attorney within three days unless Mrs. Filmore had bought back Lakeside for three thousand dollars. “That’ll fix it,” Mr. Camphor said. “He’ll know, when he wakes up and looks at the paper, that he’s got to return the hotel or go to jail.”

  “It didn’t take long to break him down,” said Freddy. “I thought we’d have to keep him awake for a week.”

  “Those big men!” said Mr. Camphor complacently. “They can’t take it.”

  “Nonsense!” said Miss Minerva. “He broke down because he knew he had done a wicked thing. If he’d been in the right, you’d never have got him to sign.” She looked down at Mr. Anderson, who was sleeping as peacefully as a baby, with his head in the ashes of last night’s fire. The ashes blew up in little grey clouds as he breathed. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Let’s get the carpenters to take him home,” said Freddy. “We don’t want him here, cluttering up the scenery, any longer. Where’s the carton?—I’ll have to round up the bugs and take them and Homer and the mice back to the farm. And then …” He hesitated. “Well, are we going to break up camp now?” He looked around regretfully at the shelters and the beach and the fireplace.

  “Why should we?” said Mr. Camphor. “We haven’t had much fun yet on our camping trip.”

  “I don’t want to go home yet,” said Miss Minerva.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” said Freddy. “Then if Bannister can drive us down to the farm, I can come back again.”

  Mr. Bean looked curiously at Freddy when Bannister drove the animals into the barnyard. It was plain that he was anxious to know what had happened, but it was against his principles to ask any animal questions. Freddy explained this to Bannister, so the butler brought Mr. Bean up to date, while Freddy ran off to tell Mrs. Wiggins.

  Mrs. Wiggins and her sisters were delighted, but they had one disquieting bit of news: the rats had escaped during the night. However, Uncle Solomon had sighted them shortly before midnight, traveling steadily south. “I don’t think we have to worry about them, Freddy,” said the cow. “They couldn’t do anything alone against us. I don’t believe we’ll ever see them again.”

  Freddy said he hoped so and went back to the waiting car. Mr. Bean was leaning on the car door, talking to Bannister. Beside him on the ground were several cartons and a large package. When Freddy came up, he reached out and patted the pig’s head. “This pig, Bannister,” he said, “is a fine pig. Mrs. Bean and I are very fond of this pig. He’s smart as a whiplash, Bannister. Going camping with Mr. Camphor, you tell me. Well, I was down to Centerboro yesterday, and I saw some things in the Busy Bee I thought might be good for him to have. Couldn’t figure out which one he’d like best, so I bought the whole kit and bilin’. You can just heave ’em in the back, there.”

  “Oh, Mr. Bean!” Freddy began. But Mr. Bean turned his back on him and said to Bannister: “Get along with you now.” And he walked into the house.

  Back in camp again Freddy undid the packages. The big package was a tent, just like the one the rats had destroyed. In the cartons was everything imaginable for camping—nested cooking utensils, a small axe, a little pressure kerosene stove, a compass, a hunting knife in a sheath, a camera, a pair of binoculars—everything anyone could possibly want.

  One day about two weeks later, Miss Minerva and Freddy were out fishing in the canoe. Mr. Camphor had gone to Lakeside to help Mrs. Filmore hang curtains—the hotel was to open the first of June. The camp had now taken on the look of a permanent camp, for Mr. Camphor had decided that he liked living there better than he did in his big house across the lake. Miss Minerva, who now required only two compliments a day—three on rainy days—to keep her from getting cross, agreed that she liked it better too, though later in the season she might stay for a while at Lakeside, where she had spent so many happy summers. Even Bannister had finally come over to stay. Mr. Camphor hadn’t wanted him at first; he said that he didn’t need dignity out in the woods. But when Bannister agreed to be as undignified as possible while in camp, Mr. Camphor let him come.

  Today Bannister had paddled over to get the mail and some supplies. Miss Minerva had just landed a good-sized perch, and Freddy was taking it off the hook for her, when he looked up and saw the butler’s canoe approaching. He wasn’t surprised to see Jinx sitting up in the bow. One or other of the farm animals was always coming up to spend a day or two. But t
his time Jinx called out to him: “Come ashore. I’ve got a message for you.”

  It was a letter that the cat had, and this is what it said:

  Mr. Frederick Bean

  Pres. First Animal Bank of Centerboro

  Editor Bean Home News

  Stony Point, Jones’s Bay, Lake Otesaraga 45, N. Y.

  Dear Sir:

  At a meeting of the depositors of the First Animal Bank, it was unanimously agreed to pass a vote of censure, directed against you, for neglecting your financial duties by closing the First Animal Bank without warning, and keeping it closed for three weeks, to the great detriment and disgust of said depositors.

  It was further agreed, that in the event you do not return pronto, the Committee for the Depositors will combine to form an independent bank, to be known as the Bean Trust & Fidelity Co., and will endeavor by all the means in their power to take your banking business away from you. This they will undoubtedly be able to accomplish, as everybody is sick of waiting for you to come back.

  At a later meeting of the subscribers to the Bean Home News, a vote of censure was proposed and passed against you, for the neglect of editorial duties, in that no issue of the Bean Home News has appeared for three weeks. A committee, headed by Mr. J.J. Pomeroy, is now drafting plans for an independent newspaper, to be known as the Rural Animal Intelligencer, which will be written entirely in verse, (“Huh,” said Freddy, “J.J.’s two lines of poetry is going to his head!”) and will be distributed free.

  Yours faithfully,

  J. J. Pomeroy

  JJP/JJP

  For the Committee

  “Well, I’ll be darned!” said Freddy. “Written on my own typewriter, too! What’s there to this, Jinx? Are they really sore?”

  “Oh, not really. But it is a nuisance not having the bank open. Hank and I wanted to go to the movies night before last, and Hank had to borrow the money from Mrs. Bean. Quite upset him—you know how shy he is.”

  “I suppose you couldn’t have borrowed it?”

  “Sure I could have! But I’ve taken Hank three or four times, and has he ever taken me once?—he has not! I just told him it was time he did something about it.”

  Freddy said: “Well, to get back to this letter, who wrote it?”

  “Charles drafted it. Lot of nice words in it, aren’t there?”

  “I thought I recognized his fine Italian claw,” said Freddy.

  “Written in Italian, eh?” said Jinx. “Guess that’s why I couldn’t understand more than half of it. Oh sure, I read it on the way over—I knew you wouldn’t mind. Here’s a word now: censure. What’s that mean?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Freddy. “I guess it means—oh, I don’t know, I guess a vote of censure is the opposite of three loud cheers. Well, I’d better go down.”

  Mr. Camphor, who had come back from Lakeside and was sitting on a log looking at his mail, now called to Freddy: “Hey, look at this.”

  It was a picture postcard, a photograph of a little tumbledown hut which stood on the edge of a muddy looking stream. All about stood huge forbidding looking trees, their branches draped in tattered black rags of moss. Everything looked damp. There were two alligators on the mud bank beside the house. And written under it were these words: “Having a terrible time. Glad you are not here. Everything awful. Very happy. Your loving Aunt Elmira.”

  “Can you beat it?” said Mr. Camphor. “We did everything possible for her; talked cheerfully to her, waited on her—and she goes and lives in a swamp!”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Freddy. “You were nice to her, all right. But being nice to people—well, I guess it’s giving them what they want, instead of what we think they ought to want.”

  “Yeah,” said Jinx. “Well, the boys want the bank open. How about it, pig?”

  So Freddy said goodbye to the Camphors and promised to come back for a day or two anyway, and maybe longer, as soon as he’d got things straightened out at home. Then he and Bannister and Jinx set out in the canoe.

  Freddy looked back mournfully at the camp, as it got gradually smaller and smaller. “On the road to Jones’s Bay,” he thought. “It is—it is always bright and gay. No—no good.” Then he thought: “Gracious, if I’ve got to get out an issue of the paper tomorrow, I’d better get busy. Let’s see, there ought to be a poem; maybe another one in the series about the features. H’m.” He got out his notebook.

  And as always, in the pleasure of composition, he forgot his sadness. This is what he wrote:

  THE FEATURES, NO. 5

  THE EARS

  The ears are two in number, and

  Beside the head, on either hand,—

  One to the left, one to the right—

  They are attached extremely tight.

  Their purpose is twofold, to wit:

  To give the hat a place to sit,

  So that it will not lose its place

  And, slipping down, engulf the face.

  Also to ventilate the brain,

  When heated by great mental strain,

  By standing at right angles out

  To catch whatever wind’s about,

  Or when the summer breeze is napping,

  To substitute by gently flapping.

  Do not, therefore, attempt to pull

  The ears from off the parent skull.

  Though ears look odd and out of place,

  And add so little to the face,

  Though as adornment they’re lamentable,

  Without them you’d be unpresentable;

  And he who rashly grabs the shears

  Will find too late, with bitter tears,

  That there’s no substitute for ears.

  “There,” said Freddy. “My goodness, it’s nice to get back into harness again.”

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1948 by Walter R. Brooks

  Cover design by Kathleen Lynch

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-9222-0

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