The Genius Files #4

by Dan Gutman

  “This doesn’t help us at all,” Pep said. “He’s just teasing us. Or she is.”

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Durant OK.

  In the B box, type Denison TX.

  Click Get Directions.

  Chapter 13

  WELCOME TO TEXAS

  Coke and Pep had been sure their troubles were over. But that was yesterday. It felt like a dark cloud was gathering up ahead. If the coast was clear, why would anyone be sending them a mysterious message?

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” Pep said. And her feelings were pretty much on the mark.

  Maybe it was just a meaningless, random message, Coke tried to convince himself as he struggled to go to sleep. Maybe it was meant for somebody else.

  He tried desperately to remember the voice on the phone that told him to look under his pillow. He tried to connect it with someone he had met in his life. But there was nobody. It was a familiar voice, but not one that he had heard before.

  The twins awoke to the sound of USA Today being slipped under their hotel room door. It was July 15th. The usual wars, murders, and natural disasters were going on in the world. But when they looked out the window, all appeared calm in southern Oklahoma.

  Coke and Pep went downstairs to have breakfast with their parents, and then it was back on the road. Dr. McDonald merged onto Route 69 heading south.

  The first argument of the day had already begun. Mrs. McDonald said they needed to stop at a laundromat sometime during the day, because they didn’t have a lot of clothing after the RV exploded in Memphis. Dr. McDonald said he didn’t want to waste time doing laundry, insisting there was no reason why they couldn’t wear the same clothes for two days. Mrs. McDonald, of course, found that idea repulsive.

  The argument didn’t last long, because just a few minutes after they were on the road, they crossed a bridge over a river and this sign came into view on the left side of the highway. . . .

  “Woo hoo!” Coke shouted at the top of his lungs, “The Lone Star State! Did you know that the Texas state mascot is the armadillo?”

  “I actually did know that,” said Pep. “But did you know that armadillos always have four babies?”

  Coke was taken aback. He couldn’t think of the last time his sister knew something that he didn’t. He searched his memory bank. Never in his life had he heard anything about the number of babies armadillos had.

  “You just made that up,” he said.

  “I did not,” Pep told him. “I learned that when we went on a field trip to the natural history museum.”

  “Well, nobody cares how many babies armadillos have,” Coke insisted.

  “Armadillos care.”

  Mrs. McDonald dropped her Arkansas guidebook into the trash and pulled Amazing Texas Monuments and Museums out of her purse.

  “They say everything is bigger in Texas, you know,” she told the rest of the family. “The whole state stretches almost eight hundred miles each way.”

  “I read somewhere that the world’s largest parking lot is at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport,” Dr. McDonald said. “That airport is larger than the whole island of Manhattan.”

  “That’s quite a claim to fame,” remarked Coke. “They have the world’s largest parking lot!”

  “It says here that you could fit two hundred and twenty Rhode Islands into Texas,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “They’re always comparing the big states to Rhode Island,” Pep said, rolling her eyes. “Why don’t they leave poor little Rhode Island alone?”

  Coke turned around to see if any cars might be following them. The road was nearly empty. It would take a while to get through Texas, and both twins settled in for a long drive. But just moments past the state line, Dr. McDonald suddenly pulled off the road after seeing a sign for the town of Denison. It was uncharacteristic for him. In general, he didn’t do things spontaneously.

  “What’s the matter, Ben?” asked Mrs. McDonald. “Are you okay?”

  “Denison, Denison,” Dr. McDonald repeated. “It rings a bell. I can’t remember why.”

  He maneuvered the Ferrari off the ramp. As soon as he saw a sign that said EISENHOWER PARKWAY, he remembered.

  “Of course!” he said. “Eisenhower lived here!”

  Mrs. McDonald pulled out her laptop and quickly confirmed that the thirty-fourth president of the United States was born in Denison, Texas. He only lived in the town for the first two years of his life, but there’s a monument dedicated to him.

  She directed Dr. McDonald to take the exit for Loy Lake, and soon they found themselves on Loy Lake Road, at the entrance to Loy Lake Park. And there it was—a sixteen-foot cement head in the shape of Dwight David Eisenhower. The statue had a blank expression on its face.

  “That is one gigantic head,” Coke said, stating the obvious. “It may be the biggest head I’ve ever seen.”

  “What did Eisenhower do, Dad?” Pep asked.

  “Oh, nothing important,” replied Dr. McDonald. “He just organized the D-day invasion in World War Two. He liberated Europe from the Nazis. Defeated Hitler. Won the war. Nothing to write home about.”

  “If not for President Eisenhower,” said Mrs. McDonald, “we’d all be speaking German today.”

  “Isn’t that what you said about bauxite?” asked Pep.

  “Ich spreche Deutsch jetzt!” said Coke.

  Back in the car and on the road, the twins were curious about what they were going to do—besides laundry, of course—in the great state of Texas.

  “I really want to go to Paris,” Mrs. McDonald said.

  “That’s in France, Mom,” Pep told her.

  “She means Paris, Texas, you dope!”

  “Don’t call your sister a dope,” warned Dr. McDonald.

  “Well, what’s so special about Paris, Texas?” Pep asked.

  “They have a replica of the Eiffel Tower there,” Coke told her, “and it has a giant cowboy hat on top.”

  Dr. McDonald shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment, silently trying to compose the right words that would gently register his disapproval without provoking an argument.

  “Y’know, it’s not your birthday anymore, Bridge, and—” he began.

  Even the twins knew those were the wrong words.

  “Ben, I told you back in Virginia how badly I wanted to go to Paris, Texas,” Mrs. McDonald said, her voice rising. “So don’t act like it’s a big surprise that I’m mentioning it now.”

  “Okay, okay!” said Dr. McDonald, defeated once again as he got back on the highway. “I’ve always wanted to see Paris.”

  Go to Google Maps (http://maps.google.com).

  Click Get Directions.

  In the A box, type Denison TX.

  In the B box, type Paris TX.

  Click Get Directions.

  Chapter 14

  THIS IS WHY WE TRAVEL

  Dr. McDonald hit the gas a little harder than necessary, because frustration needs to be expressed somehow, right? He followed Route 69 south for ten miles, and then merged onto Route 82 heading east. Paris, Texas, was a little more than an hour from Denison.

  The twins pulled out magazines to help pass the time. Mrs. McDonald turned on the radio, fiddling with the buttons until she stopped at a country music station. Nobody in the family was a big fan of country music, but who could resist “My Wife Ran Off with My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him”?

  In the middle of the song, the music suddenly stopped. A male voice came on and repeated a series of letters:

  “P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

  There was a two-second pause, and then the voice said it again.

  “P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

  Startled, Coke looked up from the magazine he had been reading. He recognized the voice. It was the same as the voice on the telephone the other night. It sounded vaguely computer generated. The voice repeated the letters.

  “P-C-F-T-H-B-L
-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

  “It must be a broken record or something,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “You’d think somebody at the radio station would notice,” said Dr. McDonald. “Change the station, Bridge.”

  “Wait,” said Coke.

  He looked over at his sister. She nodded her head. Pep grabbed the little notepad she’d bought back in Memphis and quickly wrote the letters down.

  On the radio, the song returned, and when it ended a new song came on—“If the Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know It’s Me.” Mrs. McDonald turned it up loud and began to sing along.

  While their parents were occupied in the front seat, Coke and Pep put their heads together.

  “That sounded just like the guy on the phone who told me to look under my pillow,” Coke whispered to his sister.

  “It’s a cipher,” Pep replied. “It has to be. They’re coming at us over the radio now.”

  The twins looked at the letters Pep had written in her notepad: P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.

  “Oh, come on,” Coke said. “You gotta be kidding me. No way we’re gonna figure this one out.”

  “You give up too easily,” his sister told him.

  Pep took the notepad and slid over to her side of the seat so she could concentrate. This one didn’t look so hard. They had solved tougher ciphers before.

  Pep tried all the usual strategies that had worked before, but none of them seemed to fit. That only made her more determined. Her forehead would wrinkle, and then she would brighten, and then her forehead would wrinkle again. The previous cipher had been easy. This was a hard one. After almost an hour, she still hadn’t cracked it. She, too, was stumped.

  Dr. McDonald pulled off the exit marked PARIS. It looked like a pretty normal Texas town. Twenty-five thousand people. Forty-four square miles.

  “Why is it called Paris?” Pep asked.

  “It’s probably in honor of Paris, France,” her mother said, leafing through her guidebook.

  “Actually, there are fifteen American towns named Paris,” Coke said, having read that on a poster at school a long time ago.

  I think you will agree, reader, that nobody should know how many American towns are named Paris. It’s just not information that needs to be retained.

  Dr. McDonald drove through the east side of town until he reached the corner of Jefferson Road and South Collegiate Drive next to the LoveCivic Center.

  “There it is!” Mrs. McDonald shouted, pointing. “Behold!”

  And there it was—a dark metal structure that looked remarkably like the real Eiffel Tower, with the added attraction of having a ten-foot-wide red cowboy hat, slightly tilted at a jaunty angle, on top. Everybody got out of the car to get a better look.

  “Well,” said Dr. McDonald, “I must admit you don’t see that every day.”

  “It’s just like France,” Pep said, “but in Texas.”

  “I can just about smell the baguettes baking,” Coke said. “Oh, wait. That’s probably just a cattle ranch.”

  “Think of it,” Mrs. McDonald told the kids. “You’re standing in the only place in the world that has a giant replica of the Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat on it. This is why we travel, kids. To see things you can’t see anywhere else.”

  “Do you think they have a fake Mona Lisa wearing a cowboy hat here too?” Coke asked.

  Mrs. McDonald was used to her son’s snarky remarks. She took out her camera to snap a few pictures, and also jotted down some notes for Amazing but True.

  According to a plaque nearby, the fake Eiffel Tower was built in 1993 by volunteers. At first, the tower didn’t have a cowboy hat on the top. But five years later, the town of Paris, Tennessee, built a fake Eiffel Tower of its own that was five feet higher than the one in Paris, Texas. That’s when the cowboy hat was added.

  “Hey, take a picture of me with the tower in the background,” Coke told his mother.

  He went under the tower and struck a karate pose while Mrs. McDonald set up the shot.

  “Take a step back,” she instructed him.

  He did, and as she was about to snap the picture, there was the sense that something out of the ordinary was about to happen. Everyone could feel it. Something was wrong. Something was happening. They just didn’t know what it was.

  A split second later, an object appeared in everyone’s peripheral vision. The only person who didn’t see it was Coke, who was posing for the camera.

  “Watch out!” Pep screamed.

  She bolted over and tackled her brother. They hit the ground together in a tangle of arms and legs.

  “What the—”

  At that instant, something smashed into the ground with a boom at the exact spot where Coke had been standing.

  Well, it wasn’t just something. It was a cow. A big, brown, 1,400-pound spotted cow.

  As their parents rushed over, Coke and Pep looked a few feet to their left to see the cow lying on the ground next to them. A very dead cow.

  “It’s a cow!” Coke said, stating the obvious. Then he peered up at the tower, struggling to see who would have been crazy enough to do such a thing.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. McDonald asked, checking to see if there was any blood on his son in places where blood wasn’t supposed to be.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Coke said, still dazed. Then he turned to his sister. “You saved my life.”

  “It was just instinct,” she said. “I saw something falling. I didn’t know what it was.”

  A few people came over to see what was going on. After all, it wasn’t every day that a cow fell out of the fake Eiffel Tower. Some teenage girls took cell phone pictures of the cow and walked away giggling. A man wearing a cowboy hat and blue jeans walked over. He knelt down and put his hand on the cow.

  “It’s dead,” he said.

  “That’s so sad,” said Mrs. McDonald.

  “It would have been a lot sadder if our kids were under it,” Dr. McDonald told her.

  “It’s cold as an ice pop,” said the guy in the cowboy hat, who appeared to know a thing or two about cows. “I reckon this bossy was dead before it hit the ground.”

  “Why would somebody drop a dead cow on my son’s head?” Mrs. McDonald demanded. “For that matter, how did they get a dead cow up there in the first place?”

  “Why is the sky blue?” the guy replied. “Why is sugar sweet? Stuff happens.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dr. McDonald said, clearly annoyed. “There are scientific reasons why the sky is blue or sugar is sweet. There’s no logical explanation for why a cow should fall on our son’s head.”

  “Never said it was logical,” drawled the guy in the cowboy hat. He stood up and walked away.

  Just for the record, this was not the first time a large object had fallen—or been dropped—on the McDonald twins. Back in North Carolina, Pep was standing under a building that looked like a giant chest of drawers when a real chest of drawers fell out of it and nearly killed her. At South of the Border in South Carolina, Coke was standing under the giant Pedro statue when a bag full of plastic Pedro statues almost landed on him.

  And now, a cow.

  “Whoever did this is going to pay!” Coke said, his fists clenched.

  He was sweating and his heart was racing, as you would imagine your heart might race if you had nearly been flattened by a dead cow dropped from sixty-five feet. Pep put her arm around him protectively.

  “I’m sure it was just an accident,” she said, shooting a look at her brother.

  “Maybe we should take you to a doctor,” Dr. McDonald told Coke.

  “I’m fine. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Well, I want to file a formal complaint,” said Mrs. McDonald. “Somebody should be notified that cows are falling on people. You could get killed out here. This place is dangerous.”

  While their parents went to look for a place to lodge their complaint, Pep walked her brother back to the car to rest and recuperate.

  “Do you think that was intentional?” P
ep asked.

  “No, a dead cow accidentally fell out of that tower on my head,” Coke snapped.

  “You know what I mean. Did somebody drop it on purpose?”

  “You can bet on it,” Coke said, looking up again at the tower. “And he’s gonna pay.”

  “Or she.”

  To get her mind off what had just happened, Pep opened her notepad and looked at the cipher that had been stumping her all morning:

  P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N

  She stared at the message, manipulating the letters in her mind. And then, after a few minutes, Pep picked up a pencil. Her brain saw something it hadn’t seen before. Maybe the adrenaline had something to do with it.

  “I just noticed something,” she told Coke. “There are no vowels.”

  “So?”

  “Well, if there are no vowels, it’s obvious,” Pep told her brother. “All we need to do is put in the vowels.”

  “But how do we know where to put them?” Coke asked.

  “The TH helps,” Pep told him. “There’s probably an E after that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Look at it,” Pep said. “There aren’t many words that have THB in them. And THE is a really common word. And if that word is THE, the next word is BL-something-RNY. What vowel would fit in there?

  “Only an A,” Coke said. “BLARNY, or BLARNEY. The Blarney.”

  “The Blarney Stone!” Pep shouted. “STN must be STONE after you put the vowels in!”

  “Then what would PCF mean?” Coke asked.

  They both stared at the letters for a long time. . . .

  PCF THE BLARNEY STONE

  “Piece of!” Pep suddenly blurted out. “A piece of the Blarney Stone!”

  “Wow, you are good.”

  “What’s a blarney stone, anyway?” Pep asked.

  “It’s a big rock at the top of a castle in Blarney, Ireland,” Coke explained, recalling a book he’d once read during detention. “They call it ‘the Stone of Eloquence,’ and the legend goes that if you kiss it, you’ll never be lost for words.”

  “I don’t get it,” Pep said. “We’re not going to Ireland. It doesn’t make any sense.”