John Fitzgerald
Authors: Me,My Little Brain
Me and My Little Brain
By John D. Fitzgerald
Contents
The
Wheeler-Dealer
A Born
Loser
Frankie
Pennyworth
Cutting
Frankie's Mental Block
Frankie
Takes Over
The
Escape of Cal Roberts
Hostage
My
Little Brain Against Cal Roberts
CHAPTER ONE
The Wheeler-Dealer
ON THE SECOND MONDAY of September in 1897 I
was sitting on top of the world. Well, to tell the truth, I wasn't actually
sitting on top of the world. I just felt as if I were. I was sitting on the top
rail of our corral fence watching Frank Jensen doing all my chores. It reminded
me of
the
hundreds of times my brother Tom had sat on
the corral fence watching me do all his chores. He had bamboozled me into doing
his share of the work so many times that Mamma and Aunt Bertha were both
astonished whenever they saw him carrying in a bucketful of coal or an armful
of kindling wood. And that is why I felt as if I were sitting on top of the
world.
I had been the victim of Tom's great brain
more times than a horse switches its tail knocking off flies in the summertime.
He had swindled me out of my birthday and Christmas presents until there was no
sense in me having a birthday or receiving Christmas presents. I wasn't the
only kid in
Adenville
, Utah, who had been victimized
by my brother's great brain. Tom didn't play any favorites when it came to
being the youngest confidence man who ever lived. There wasn't a kid in town
who hadn't been swindled by my brother.
I didn't hold a grudge against Tom for the
many times he had put one over on me. I was actually grateful. When a fellow
has been the victim of every confidence trick in the book, he gets to be pretty
darn sharp himself. So sharp, I was positive I could step right into Tom's
shoes after he left for the Catholic Academy in Salt Lake City with my oldest
brother,
Sweyn
.
Adenville
had a
population of about two thousand Mormons and about five hundred Protestants and
Catholics. We had a one-room schoolhouse where Mr. Standish taught the first
through the sixth grades. Any parents who wanted their children to get a higher
education had to send them to Salt Lake City.
Sweyn
was starting his second year at the Academy. Tom was only eleven but going to
the Academy because he was so smart Mr. Standish had let him skip a grade. I
was only nine years old and wouldn't be going away to school for a few years.
I thought I would bawl like a baby when Tom
left. I felt sad about having a brother I loved leave home. I knew I would miss
him very much. But at the same time I couldn't help feeling sort of
relieved.
Mamma and Aunt Bertha carried on as if my
brothers were going off to war as the train left the depot.
"I feel so sorry for my two
boys," Mamma cried. "They are so very young to be leaving home."
Papa put his arm around Mamma's shoulders.
"If you must feel sorry for anybody," he said, "feel sorry for
the Jesuit priests at the Academy who are going to have to put up with the
Great Brain for the next nine months."
I know that sounds like a cruel thing for a
father to say. Papa was editor and publisher of the
Adenville
Weekly Advocate and was considered one of the smartest men in town. But Tom had
made a fool out of Papa almost as many times as he had me. Maybe that was why
Papa had said what he did. Sometimes I thought Tom had made Papa and me his
favorite victims because we looked so much alike. I was a real leaf off the
Fitzgerald family tree. I had the same dark curly hair and deep brown eyes that
Papa had. Anybody could tell I just had to be his son by looking at us.
Sweyn
was a blond and looked like our Danish mother. Tom
didn't look like Papa and he didn't look like Mamma unless you sort of put them
both together.
I couldn't help feeling a sense of great
power after Tom was gone from
Adenville
. I knew I
only had a little brain compared with Tom's great brain. But I believed I'd
learned enough from my brother to outsmart any kid in town. I knew I wasn't a
genius like Tom when it came to putting one over on Papa or Mamma and other
adults in town. But my brother had taught me that adults are pretty dumb, and a
kid who uses his head can fool them most of the time. The time had come for me to
take over where Tom had left off.
Tom and I had
each received ten cents a week allowance for doing our chores. I know that
doesn't sound like much, but back in the 1890's a dime would buy what it costs
fifty cents or more to buy today. Soda pop was only a penny and so was a
double-scoop ice cream cone. Papa increased my allowance to twenty cents a week
for doing all the chores after Tom left home. This was a windfall because Tom
had
connived
me into doing all the chores about ninety
percent of the time anyway. I could see no reason for me ever doing any more
chores now that I had an allowance of twenty cents a week.
I didn't get a chance to start wheeling and
dealing until the Saturday after school started. I rode Tom's bike over to
where Frank and Allan Jensen lived, on the outskirts of town. I knew the Jensen
family was very poor. Allan was fourteen but his parents couldn't afford to
send him away to school. Frank was twelve years old. They both had blond hair
that was almost white. It grew funny down over their foreheads so a shock of it
was always sticking out under the visors of their caps.
They were hauling manure from their barn to
spread on their big vegetable garden. Everybody put manure on their gardens in
the fall. Then in the spring they would spade or plow it under before planting.
It not only fertilized the ground but also kept all kinds of bugs out of the
gardens.
Frank and Allan were using a stone sled to
haul the manure. Practically everybody owned a stone sled in those days. They
were made with two-by-four runners sawed at an angle in front. More
two-by-fours or thick boards were used to build a platform. Holes were drilled
in the front part of the runners. A rope or chain was hooked through the holes
and to the tugs of a horse's harness. They were called stone sleds because they
were originally used by early pioneers to haul stones to build fireplaces. They
were very handy for small hauling jobs instead of using a wagon. Frank and
Allan were in their barn loading manure on their stone sled with pitchforks
when I walked in, wheeling Tom's bike.
"I have a
proposition to make you," I said.
They both stopped working and leaned on the
handles of their pitchforks.
Allan asked,
"What kind of a proposition?"
"I'll pay you five cents a week to do
my chores," I said. "You can take turns each week."
Allan looked steadily at me. "Just
what do you call chores?" he asked.
"Once a day you fill up all the
woodboxes
and coal buckets in the parlor, dining room,
bathroom, and kitchen," I said. "And you feed and water our team of
horses and the milk cow and
Sweyn's
mustang, Dusty.
And you milk the cow and feed and water the chickens."
Allan shook his head. "That is a lot
of work for just a nickel a week," he said.
I was expecting him to say just that. Tom
had taught me when making a deal to always offer only half at first. Then when
you double it, a kid will think he is getting a good deal.
"I'll make it a dime a week," I
said. "That will give each of you a nickel a week spending money."
Allan looked at his brother and then back
at me. "No mowing the lawn or weeding the garden or chopping kindling wood
or things like that?" he asked.
"No," I said. "If the lawn
needs cutting or there are weeds to pull, I'll do it. And my father always
chops our kindling wood for exercise."
Allan nodded. "We'll take it," he
said. "When do we start?"
"Monday after school," I
answered.
"When do we
get paid?" Allan asked.
"I'll pay you every Monday for the
previous week's work," I said.
We all shook hands to seal the bargain. I'd
pulled off my first big deal. Frank and Allan would be doing all my chores for
ten cents a week. That left me a neat profit of a dime a week for doing
nothing. Now all I had to do was think up a good story to tell Papa and Mamma.
I couldn't help
feeling very proud of myself as I rode Tom's bike down Main Street on my way
home. I had
Adenville
in the palm of my hand. It
wouldn't surprise me if I ended up becoming the youngest mayor in Utah. As its
mayor,
Adenville
was a town of which I could be
proud. It was a typical Utah town, depending upon agriculture since the closing
of the mines in the nearby ghost town of
Silverlode
.
We had electric lights and telephones. The streets were wide and covered with
gravel. There were wooden sidewalks in front of the stores. We had sidewalks
made from ashes and cinders in front of homes. All the streets were lined with
trees planted by early Mormon pioneers. The railroad tracks separated the west side
of town from the east side. All the homes and most of the places of business
were on the west side. There were just a couple of saloons, the
Sheepmen's
Hotel, Palace Cafe, the livery stable, the
blacksmith shop, and a couple of other stores and a rooming house on the east
side. When I rode down an alley and into our backyard, my dog Brownie and his
pup Prince came running to meet me. I put the bike on the back porch after
patting them on the heads. Brownie was a thoroughbred Alaskan malamute. The pup
was the pick of the litter after I'd mated Brownie with a sheep dog named Lady
owned by Frank and Allan Jensen. I walked to our barn and climbed up the rope
ladder to the loft. Papa and Mr. Jamison, the carpenter, had built the loft for
me and my brothers. They had laid boards across three beam rafters and nailed
them down. They had also made a wooden ladder up the side of the barn to the
loft. Tom, in his usual style, had taken possession of the loft. He had removed
the wooden ladder and replaced it with a rope ladder. This way he could climb
into the loft and pull the rope ladder up after him so nobody else could come
up. Tom had an accumulation of stuff in the loft ranging from an old trunk of
Mamma's to the skull of an Indian that Uncle Mark had given him. My Uncle Mark
was the Marshal of
Adenville
and a Deputy Sheriff.
Adenville
was the county seat and my uncle was Acting
Sheriff most of the time. Sheriff Baker spent a great deal of time tracking
down Paiute Indians who left the reservation in the county, and renegade Navaho
Indians who made raids into Southwestern Utah from Arizona. People said that
Sheriff Baker took care of the Indians and Uncle Mark took care of white
lawbreakers.
I sat down on one of the boxes in the loft.
I put my right hand under my chin and my elbow on my right knee just like a
picture I'd seen of a statue called "The Thinker." I figured this
position would help me think up a good story to tell Papa and Mamma. But I
found out the sculptor who had made the statue didn't know beans about
thinking. I couldn't think because the position was so darn uncomfortable. I
lay down on my back and stared up at the roof instead. I knew if I told Papa
and Mamma I'd hired Frank and Allan to do my chores for ten cents a week what
they would say. They would say if I was going to hire somebody to do my chores
I should pay them the whole twenty cents a week.
When I went to
bed that night I still hadn't thought up a good story. Then I remembered
something Tom had told me one time. He had said that a person's subconscious
mind was a hundred times smarter than his conscious mind. And he'd told me that
if a person just thinks about a problem before going to sleep, the subconscious
mind would solve the problem while the person was asleep. And when you woke up
in the morning the answer would be in your conscious mind. It sounded
complicated to me. But I was really concentrating on what I'd tell Papa and
Mamma when I fell asleep that night.