John D. Fitzgerald - The Great Brain Does It Again

Books by John D. Fitzgerald

THE GREAT BRAIN IS BACK

THE GREAT BRAIN DOES IT AGAIN

THE RETURN OF THE GREAT BRAIN

THE GREAT BRAIN REFORMS

THE GREAT BRAIN AT THE ACADEMY

ME AND MY LITTLE BRAIN

MORE ADVENTURES OF THE GREAT BRAIN

THE GREAT BRAIN

BRAVE BUFFALO FIGHTER

PRIVATE EYE

UNCLE WILL AND THE FITZGERALD CURSE

PAPA MARRIED A MORMON

MAMMAS BOARDING HOUSE

Text copyright1975 by John D. Fitzgerald

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Fitzgerald, John Dennis. The great brain does it again.

Summary: In turn-of-the-century Mormon Utah, Toms great brain comes up with eight more schemes, most of them concerned with earning money. [1. Humorous stories]

I. Mayer, Mercer, 1943 ill. II. Title.

PZ7.F57535Gu [Fic] 7418600

ISBN: 978-0-425-29003-3

Version_1

For Ann Elmo

MY BROTHER TOM knew the A, B, Cs, could write numbers from one to one hundred, spell a lot of words, and read simple sentences before he started school. He did get some help from Papa and Mamma and my oldest brother Sweyn, but he learned most of these things by himself.

Mrs. Thatcher taught the first through the sixth grades in our one-room schoolhouse when Tom started school. Adenville, Utah, had a population of about two thousand Mormons, four hundred Protestants, and only about a hundred of us Catholics, so a one-room schoolhouse was all we needed. Later, after Mrs. Thatcher retired, Mr. Standish became our teacher. He let Tom skip the fifth grade. I guess that proves how smart my brother was.

Before 1898 any parents wanting their children to get more than a sixth-grade education had to send them away from home to go to school. Papa sent Sweyn and Tom to the Jesuit Catholic Academy for Boys in Salt Lake City, where the seventh and eighth grades were taught. After Sweyn graduated from the eighth grade, Papa sent him to Boylestown, Pennsylvania, to live with relatives and go to high school. Tom didnt have to return to the academy for eighth grade. A nondenominational academy for seventh and eighth graders had been built in Adenville that year. Thirty-three students were enrolled. Tom was only twelve years old at the time.

But the trouble with Toms great brain was his money-loving heart. Everybody laughed when, at the age of eight, he started telling people he had a great brain. But after he began to use his great brain to swindle kids and make fools out of adults, nobody laughed at him anymore. Us kids put up with him until he was twelve. Then he went too far. For thirty cents he put the lives of my two best friends in danger. We put him on trial in our barn and he was found guilty of being a confidence man, a crook, a swindler, and a blackmailer. The sentence handed down was that no kid in town would play with him or have anything to do with him for one year unless he gave up his crooked ways. The fellows let Tom off the hook when he promised to reform.

But did he reform? Heck no. Oh, he had Papa and Mamma and the kids fooled, but not me. It was just that the swindles he pulled off were so slick that nobody could prove they were swindles.

The Adenville Academy was two blocks from the Common School, where my adopted brother Frankie and I went to school. Frankie was in the first grade. I was in the fifth grade. Frankies parents and brother had been killed in a rockslide when he was four years old. Papa and Mamma had adopted him after my uncle, Mark Trainor, who was the town marshal and a deputy sheriff, couldnt locate any relatives. Frankie was now six. It was easy to see he wasnt my real brother because he had the blackest and straightest hair of any kid in town. I took after Papa and had dark curly hair. Sweyn was a blond like our Danish mother. Tom was a sort of mixture of Papa and Mamma and the only one who had freckles.

* * *

It was the first Friday in November when this buried treasure scheme of Toms began. He met us on the corner after school. We stopped at the Adenville Weekly Advocate office to find out if Papa wanted Tom to help him. Papa was editor and publisher of the towns only newspaper and did printing for everybody who needed it. He was setting type when we entered the office.

Want me to come back and help after I change clothes? Tom asked.

Papa looked at us from beneath his green eyeshade. No, thanks, T. D., he said. But Ill need your help next week on a big printing job.

My brothers and I usually called each other by our first and middle initials because thats how Papa usually addressed us. We all had the same middle name of Dennis just like Papa because it was a family tradition.

Mamma and Aunt Bertha were in the kitchen making pies when we got home. Mamma had her blond hair piled high in braids on her head like she usually wore it. Aunt Bertha wasnt really our aunt. She came to live with us after her husband died because she didnt have any place to go and she wasnt a Mormon. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took care of any Mormon in need, but Aunt Bertha was a Methodist. Why she picked our family, which was Catholic, Ill never know. She simply walked into Papas newspaper office one day after burying her husband and said she had no place to go. She was a big woman in her sixties with hands and feet as big as a mans. In a short time she became like one of the family.

Aunt Bertha being a Methodist and us being Catholics never bothered us. The Mormons had their tabernacle church with Bishop Aden because Adenville was what they called a ward. But us Catholics and Protestants didnt have any church of our own. We all went to the Community Church, where Reverend Holcomb preached strictly from the Bible so he wouldnt show favoritism to any religion. Once a year the Protestants had a revival meeting at the campground when a traveling evangelist came to town. And once a year a Jesuit missionary priest came to Adenville, where he listened to confessions, held masses, baptized babies, and married Catholics in the Community Church.

Mamma got the cookie jar from the pantry and put it on the kitchen table while Aunt Bertha got a pitcher of milk from the icebox.

Have your cookies and milk, Mamma said, and then I have something to tell you.

No wonder Mamma gave us the cookies and milk first. For Tom and me it was the same as giving a condemned man a hearty meal before hanging him.

I want the vegetable garden turned over tomorrow, Mamma said after wed finished.

We should have expected this because it happened every fall after the growing season ended. Due to the mild climate in Adenville we could grow vegetables until about the middle of October. Last Saturday Tom and I had worked all day hauling manure from our barn and corral to spread on the garden. Tomorrow we would have to spade the garden a shovelful at a time, burying the manure beneath the dirt. This would fertilize the garden for planting in the spring.

Cant it wait until next weekend? Tom asked. J. D. and I worked all last Saturday hauling and spreading manure.