Freddy Plays Football

by Walter R. Brooks

  While all this was going on Theodore had not been idle. As soon as Freddy and Mr. Garble left the pool, he came out from under the bank, gathered his legs under him, and gave a leap that carried him up into the edge of the woods, a little to the left of where the others had entered them. Then he kept right on leaping. He looked like a little green ball bounding along through the trees. And as he bounded, he thought: “I hope P-Peter is in his den, and not off berrying. If he’s home, maybe we can head off gug, gug—I mean Garble and rescue Freddy.”

  It may seem odd that Theodore stuttered even when he was thinking. But he said that he did it on purpose. “You see,” he said, “if I don’t stutter, then it doesn’t sound to me like me, and I think maybe it’s somebody else thinking, and then I get mixed up. But if I stutter, then I know right away it’s my own thought.”

  A frog can really travel when he gets into the swing of jump—gather your legs—jump—gather your legs—jump. Long before Freddy and his captor had got through the Big Woods, Theodore had reached the bear’s den. Luckily Peter was home. Since it was October, it was getting along towards his bedtime, and he was busy airing his blankets and pillows, but he left them hanging on the line and set out at a dead run. Even Theodore was left behind, for although bears look clumsy, they can gallop through the tangle of thick woods faster than you can run on the open road.

  Luckily Peter was home.

  And now there were three rescue parties, all headed towards Freddy from different directions. Peter reached him first. He came out of the Big Woods on the north, and there by the side of the old wood road was a station wagon, with the initials H.G. on the door. There was no one in it.

  Peter looked at it. “I wonder what these things weigh?” he said. Then he went up to it, and bending down, put his big forepaws under the runningboard. And he was just about to heave the car over on its side when a voice shouted: “Stand away from that car!” and he looked around to see Mr. Garble pointing a pistol at him, while Freddy, with bright steel handcuffs on his fore-trotters, stood dejectedly beside him.

  “A pistol!” said Peter. “H’m, that alters things, rather.” He got up and walked slowly towards Mr. Garble. “Good morning,” he said. “I was just looking—I thought you had a puncture in that rear tire.”

  “Stand where you are, or your rear tires will get plugged full of punctures,” said Mr. Garble menacingly. “Get into the car, pig.”

  As Freddy obeyed there was a crashing and trampling in the woods, and the Bean animals burst into the open a little way up the road and came galloping down on them.

  Of course none of them knew that the pistol wasn’t loaded, and as Mr. Garble swung it to cover them while reaching for the doorhandle with his free hand, they skidded to a stop. They stood around him in a semicircle, the cows and goat with horns lowered, the dogs snarling, the cat with back arched and tail three times its natural size—even the placid Hank showed his long wicked teeth.

  Nothing is more truly terrifying than the anger of animals. For when an animal snarls, or threatens with horns or claws, you know he just isn’t fooling. Freddy knew that in a minute they would rush Mr. Garble in spite of the pistol, and he called to them to stop. “Don’t do anything,” he said. “You’ll only get hurt.” Then it occurred to him that, as a pig about to be exiled, perhaps even executed, he was in an even more romantic position than as a lonely wanderer. He forced a brave smile. “Do not weep for me, my friends,” he said with simple dignity. “Though I go, never to return, think kindly of me when I am no longer among you. Do not think that I shrink from the fate that awaits me. (Golly,” he thought, “that’s a good start for a poem.) Tell them,” he said,—“tell them that I only did my duty, that—”

  The sound of a horn interrupted his last words. Everyone turned to look, and saw the sheriff’s car coming up the road.

  A look of consternation came over Mr. Garble’s face. Now he would have to turn Freddy over to the sheriff. And the pig knew too much. No one now was paying any attention to him; every eye was on the approaching car. Suddenly he whirled about. “Stop him! Stop thief! He’s trying to escape!” he shouted, and aiming his pistol at the pig, fired twice.

  Mr. Garble would probably have fired again, but before he could pull the trigger a third time the sky fell on him. At least that was what it felt like. What had really happened was that at the first shot the animals had all turned and made a dive for him, and there he was with his face in the dirt and a good half ton of assorted animals on top of him.

  The sheriff’s car stopped and he jumped out and ran up to them. By doing a good deal of yelling, and by grabbing, now an ear, now a horn or leg, and pulling hard, he finally got to the bottom of the heap and dragged Mr. Garble out. Mr. Garble was a mess. He was covered with dirt and his nose was scratched where it had been pushed into the road, and he really did look a lot flatter. He staggered over to the ditch and threw himself down.

  Suddenly somebody said: “Hey, where’s Freddy?” and they all made a rush for the station wagon.

  Freddy was lying on his back on the front seat with his eyes closed and his handcuffed fore-trotters folded across his chest. Not having known that the pistol was loaded only with blanks, he quite naturally thought that he was dead, and so he lay as still as possible. He was really very comfortable. “Probably,” he thought, “I am now a ghost, and tonight I shall go down and haunt Mr. Garble.” And he was thinking of all the different things a ghost could do to make Mr. Garble shake and shiver with fear, when there were a lot of voices around him, and two big paws lifted him up and carried him over to the grass by the roadside.

  “That’s funny,” he thought; “you can’t pick up a ghost. Maybe I’m not killed—maybe I’m just mortally wounded.” Something wet splashed on his forehead, and he opened one eye to see the faces of all his friends looking down mournfully at him. “Oh, he does look so natural!” murmured Mrs. Wiggins, and another large tear rolled down her broad face to splash on his nose.

  He tried to think of something noble to say, something that would be worthy to be quoted among The Last Words of Famous People. Unfortunately he had already made some appropriate and dignified remarks on getting into the car; these, if he said anything more, would become his Next to the Last Words, which would be silly.

  However, something had to be said. He dodged another tear, and said to Mrs. Wiggins: “Old partner, we have come to the parting of the ways.” He smiled bravely. “We have had good times together, you and I. But at last the hour for me to leave you has struck—” He didn’t get any farther, for at that moment the cow burst into loud sobs.

  When Mrs. Wiggins cried, she gave it everything she had. You could hear her for miles. The sheriff, who had been chuckling to himself over the act Freddy had been putting on, decided it was time to break it up. But he didn’t want to tell them that the pig hadn’t been shot at all, because he would be in for a lot of criticism around Centerboro if it got out that he had armed a deputy with a pistol loaded only with blanks. He went over and whacked the pig on the shoulder. “Come on, old partner,” he said with a grin. “The hour for you to get up on your hind legs has struck. You aren’t wounded; Herb didn’t even hit you. Which is a good thing for you, Herb,” he said, turning to Mr. Garble, “because law officers that shoot unarmed prisoners usually get put where they can’t do any more mischief. Come on, unlock these handcuffs.”

  Mr. Garble got up with a groan and limped over to the car. “He was trying to escape,” he said. But nobody could hear him because Mrs. Wiggins had begun to cry in earnest now, and was making a terrific hullabaloo. The others were trying to explain that Freddy was all right, but she wouldn’t listen.

  When the handcuffs were off, Freddy sat up and felt himself all over. “No bullet holes?” he said. “My goodness, Mr. Garble is an awful poor shot.”

  “What?” shouted the sheriff, and Jinx put his mouth close to Freddy’s ear. “Go and let Mrs. Wiggins see you,” he yelled. “Maybe that will stop her. She’ll go on like this
for hours if you don’t. And it’s Sunday, too.”

  So Freddy went over and stood in front of the cow. After a minute she caught sight of him. She hiccuped twice and then stopped crying.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Garble didn’t shoot me.”

  “Freddy!” she said. “You—you’re really …? Oh, how happy that makes me!” Then her face became sad again. “But how could you let me make such a spectacle of myself? All that about the parting of the ways, and the hour having struck—such dreadfully sad thoughts!” And she began to cry again.

  “Come on, Freddy,” said the sheriff. “You’re my prisoner now, and I’ll have to take you down to the jail.” He glanced at Mrs. Wiggins. “She sure is fond of you, Freddy. There ain’t any people that would cry like that over me. Not any that could, anyhow.”

  So Freddy said goodbye to his friends—without any noble phrases this time—and got in the sheriff’s car. Even through the noise of the engine they could hear, for quite a long time, the sound of Mrs. Wiggins’ grief, as Peter and her two sisters helped her on her homeward way.

  That evening Uncle Solomon called at the jail. Freddy and the sheriff were playing checkers when he flew in the window. “Continue your game, gentlemen,” he said, perching on the back of a chair. “Don’t let me interrupt.” And then as the sheriff reached out to move a man: “No, no, sheriff!” he said. “Not that man; oh dear me, no!”

  “Eh?” said the sheriff, and he leaned back and studied the board.

  “By the way,” said Uncle Solomon, “I have been curious about a remark you made to me this morning. About the reason you hadn’t gone to church. Your Adam’s apple had something to do with it, did it not?”

  “Oh,” said the sheriff. “Yeah. Why you see, if I go to church, I have to put on a necktie. ’Tain’t that I mind; it’s sufferin’ in a good cause. But I like to sing the hymns. Maybe that’s other folks’ sufferin’—I don’t know. Anyway a hymn starts, say, fairly low. OK, so I’m right with it; so I sing. Then the tune goes up a few notes. Up I go with it, and—well, I expect you ain’t got an Adam’s apple so you don’t know, but the higher the note, the higher your Adam’s apple climbs in your throat.” He lifted his chin and sang a scale to show them. “Everything’s all right so far, but what happens when the tune drops down again? My Adam’s apple gets caught on top of my necktie, and my voice stays up with it, and there I am singin’ four or five notes higher in the scale than the rest of the congregation, and off the key by that time, like as not. Well, that throws the other singers off, and they begin caterwaulin’ in six different keys, and then that throws the organ off, and—well, ’tisn’t fittin’. ’Tain’t the right kind of noises to be coming out of a church.” He leaned forward to move another man.

  “Tut, tut!” said the owl sharply, and he drew his hand back again.

  So Uncle Solomon thanked him for his explanation, and then turned to Freddy. “My purpose in coming this evening,” he said hesitantly, “was—er, to offer you a—” He interrupted himself to stop the sheriff again. “The king, sheriff; the king!”

  “If your purpose,” said the sheriff with some irritation, “was to finish this game for me, sit down here and finish it!”

  “No, no,” said the owl. “I beg your pardon; I’m a little upset this evening. No, my purpose—well, in fact I have written a short poem,” he said with a titter of embarrassment, “a modest effort, to redeem, in some measure, my shameful neglect of duty this morning.”

  “Oh, forget it,” said Freddy.

  “No doubt I shall. Our errors are easily forgotten. However, this poem is in the—the form of a missile—a missive, or epistle, I should say-addressed to you.” And he cleared his throat and recited.

  “Remarkable pig:

  Without ceremonial

  May I offer to you this slight testimonial

  To your wit and your wisdom, so often exhibited

  On occasions where others are dumb and inhibited.

  To your skill metaphorical, brilliance poetical,

  Expertness rhetorical, and refinement aesthetical;

  To your sharpness financial, your scope editorial,

  Your feats on the gridiron quite gladiatorial.

  And if anyone questions, or has the temerity

  To doubt of your honesty, zeal or sincerity,

  You have my considered permission to call ’im an

  Enemy of

  Your good friend,

  Uncle Solomon.”

  And having finished, he gave again the embarrassed titter and flew out of the window.

  “Gee whiz!” said the sheriff.

  Chapter 14

  If you had to go to jail, Freddy thought, there certainly wasn’t a nicer jail to go to than the Centerboro one. It was just like staying at a hotel, only it was nicer than a hotel because you didn’t have to pay anything. Of course it was run differently than most jails. The sheriff let the prisoners have parties, and go to movies and ball games because, he said, “I want to turn ’em into good citizens, and ’tain’t any training for good citizenship if you’re locked up in a little cell all the time with no other citizens to talk to.” The only trouble was that some of the prisoners didn’t want to leave when their time was up.

  The sheriff, however, wouldn’t let Freddy have as much freedom as the others had. “Until you’ve come up for trial and been sentenced, you have to stay right in your cell,” he said. “Not more than a month or two, anyway. We’ll try to make it as pleasant as we can for you.”

  “How—how much of a sentence do you think I’ll get?” Freddy asked anxiously.

  “Oh, five years maybe. Six years. I dunno.”

  “Six years!” Freddy exclaimed.

  “Well,” said the sheriff, “you ain’t supposed to rob banks, you know.”

  Freddy was brought up before Judge Willey Monday morning.

  “This prisoner, your Honor,” said the sheriff, “is accused of robbing the First National Bank of Centerboro of $5000.”

  “Goodness!” said the judge.

  “He respectfully requests,” continued the sheriff, “that an early date be set for his trial.”

  “H’m,” said the judge. He took a little calendar from his desk and leafed through it, murmuring to himself. “November … have the trial of Mrs. Watson Dickey—husband gave her a box of cigars for Christmas, then smoked ’em himself.”

  “What did she do?” asked the sheriff curiously.

  “Don’t know. He disappeared. But there’s a strong smell of cigars down cellar … H’m, that’ll be a long trial … Let’s see. December? No, have to get Christmas shopping done. Then … h’m … Mrs. Willey having big Christmas dinner, probably we’ll be most of January washing up the dishes. February—” He looked up. “February tenth,” he said. “Now is there anyone here who offers bail for the appearance of the prisoner on that date? If so, I set the amount at $5000. No one, eh? I’m not surprised. Sheriff, lock him up.”

  When they got back to the jail, Freddy said: “This bail business—that means that somebody puts up some money to guarantee that if I’m let out, I’ll show up for my trial?”

  “That’s right,” said the sheriff. “And if you don’t show up at your trial, they lose the money.”

  “I guess I stay in jail, then,” Freddy said.

  Several visitors came to see him on Monday. The first was Mrs. Bean. “Well, Freddy,” she said, “I’m very sorry to see you here. Why, oh why did you do such a thing?”

  “I guess you know, ma’am,” he said, “why I did it.”

  “Yes, I guess I do. You think Brother Aaron is an impostor. But that is a matter for me to decide. Oh, Freddy, I know you didn’t steal the money for yourself; I know you’ve hidden it and intend to give it back. Do it now, Freddy, and I can give it to my brother and then my conscience will be clear.”

  “But he isn’t your brother,” Freddy insisted.

  “Oh, I’d like to shake you!” she exclaimed and her black eyes snapped angrily. Th
en she relented and put her arms around him and gave him a big hug. “I’m not angry at you,” she said, “—not really. But Mr. Bean is. He wouldn’t come to see you. And here’s another thing for you to think about. Everybody guesses that you’ve hidden the money somewhere in the woods, and quite a lot of them are up there hunting for it. Suppose they find it and keep it themselves?”

  Freddy didn’t say anything, and she turned and went out the door. But immediately she put her head back in. “If there’s anything you want from the pig pen, I’ll have it sent down to you.”

  So Freddy said he’d like his dictionary and some pencils and paper, and she said all right and went.

  Freddy learned from Jinx, who came a little later, that the state troopers were searching for the money. “They just about tore the pig pen to pieces yesterday,” he said. “Boy, don’t you ever dust the place? They had to keep coming outdoors to sneeze. They even ripped up the cushion in your big chair, and gosh, how they laughed when the cracker crumbs flew! They said they guessed they’d seen untidier places, but they couldn’t remember when.”

  “I suppose they’ve got a right to search my place,” said Freddy, “but I don’t see why they have to criticize my housekeeping.”

  Jinx grinned. “I don’t either,” he said. “People hadn’t ought to criticize you for something you don’t do. But there’s other people looking for that money, too. Only a lot quieter about it. Herb Garble’s one.”

  “I know,” said Freddy. “If somebody happened to see that little package up in the tree-Well, get hold of Uncle Solomon right away, and have him bring the money down here tonight. Don’t let the sheriff see him. But the money will be safer here than anywhere else. The sheriff went through my pockets when he brought me in; he won’t search me again.”