John Fitzgerald GB 06 Return of

The Return of The Great Brain

Contents

CHAPTER 2 Tom and the Wild Jackass 22

The Return of The Great Brain

DURING THE FIRST WEEK of August in the year 1898 a trial was held in Adenville, Utah. The defendant was my brother, Tom Fitzgerald, alias The Great Brain. He was only twelve years old, but he was charged with being a confidence man, a swindler, a crook, and a blackmailer. The judge was Harold Vickers, who was sixteen. And I guess I must have been the youngest district attorney to ever try a case, because I was only ten years old.

I hated to put my brother on trial, but it was something the kids in Adenville should have done a long time before we did. Tom, with his great brain and his money-loving heart had been swindling us kids since he was eight years old. We had put up with it until that summer. He had swindled Danny Forester out of his new baseball glove, Par-ley Benson out of his new King air rifle, and a dozen other kids including myself. But when Tom almost got my two best friends killed to make thirty cents, I decided the only way to make him give up his crooked ways was to put him on trial in our barn.

If I do say so myself I presented a brilliant case, calling one witness after another to testify The Great Brain had swindled them. I wanted to take the witness stand myself because Tom had swindled and blackmailed me more than any kid in town. But Judge Harold Vickers said I couldn’t be both a witness and the district attorney.

Tom was found guilty on all counts. Harold handed down the sentence: No kid in Adenville would play with The Great Brain or have anything to do with him for one year. After Tom promised to reform, Harold suspended the sentence. But he warned Tom that if my brother did any backsliding he would revoke the suspended sentence.

There was great rejoicing all over town when the re-sults of the trial became known. Papa, who was editor and publisher of the Adenville Weekly Advocate, was so happy he looked ten years younger. I guess that was because Tom’s past shenanigans had made him look ten years older. Now he wouldn’t have to worry about angry fathers coming into his office to complain that Tom had cheated their sons out of something.

Mamma was happy as a bee in its first spring flower-Mothers of the boys my brother had swindled would no longer be calling her on the telephone to tell her she had a junior-grade confidence man for a son. My uncle, Mark Trainor, who was the town marshal and a deputy sheriff, was

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relieved because he would no longer have to explain why he couldn’t put Tom in jail. Tom, with his great brain, had been so smart there never was enough evidence to arrest him.

The way people acted it was a wonder Mayor Calvin Whitlock didn’t declare a holiday to celebrate The Great Brain’s reformation. But for my money everybody was living in a temporary fool’s paradise. I didn’t believe The Great Brain could give up his crooked ways any more than a hen-with a rooster around could stop laying eggs. But after a whole week went by without Tom pulling one crooked stunt I began to think maybe he really was going to reform. And strangely enough I began to regret it. I had never realized how dull things would be if Tom reformed. His crooked deals and swindles made life exciting even when I was the victim.

I was thinking about this one morning as I sat on the log railing of our corral fence with Tom and our six-year-old adopted brother, Frankie. Frankie’s parents and brother had been killed in a landslide when he was four. When Uncle Mark couldn’t locate any other relatives, Mamma and Papa had adopted him. It was easy to see that Frankie wasn’t our real brother because he had the blackest, straightest hair of any kid in town. I was a dead ringer for Papa with dark eyes and dark curly hair. My oldest brother, Sweyn, who was named after our maternal Danish grandfather, had blond hair like Mamma. Tom didn’t look like Mamma and Papa unless you sort of put them together. He was the only one in the family with freckles.

So there I was sitting on the corral fence that morning wondering if I’d made a mistake putting Tom on trial and making him reform.

“Going swimming this afternoon?” I asked.

“Sure, J.D.,” Tom answered. “What made you ask such a silly question?”

My brothers and I often called each other by our initials because that was the way Papa usually addressed us-We all had the same middle name of Dennis just like Papa because it was a tradition in our family-

“I just wanted to see if they’ve started to grow yet,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Tom asked.

“Yeah, what?” Frankie said.

“You’ve been such a good little angel since you reformed,” I said, “all you need are some wings.”

“You were the one who got the kids to put me on trial and make me promise to reform,” Tom said. “Are you sorry I have reformed?”

“You’ve become so goody-goody it makes me sick,”4 said. “There is no fun and excitement any more.”

“So,” Tom said, “you want fun and excitement. In other words, J.D., you are trying to make a backslider out of me.”

Frankie looked up at Tom- “What’s a backslider?” he asked-

“A backslider,” Tom said, “is a person who promises to reform and then doesn’t keep his promise. But do you know what is ten times worse than a backslider? I’ll tell you. It is a person who tries to get somebody who has promised to re-form to backslide. And I’m afraid when I tell Papa and Mamma about it that J.D. is going to find himself in hot water.”

“I’m not trying to make a backslider out of you,” I protested.

“Oh, yes, you are,” Tom said. “And Frankie is my witness.”

Frankie patted Tom on the knee. “Tom is good now,” he said, “and you are trying to make him bad again.”

“How right you are, Frankie,” Tom said as he jumped down from the corral fence. “I think we should let Mamma and Papa know about this right away.”

I jumped down from the fence. I knew it would cost me at least a month’s allowance if they told.

“How much do you want not to tell?” I asked.

“That proves it,” Tom said. “If I ask you for anything to make me keep silent that would be blackmail. You want to make a blackmailer out of me just so you can make a backslider out of me.”

“No, I don’t,” I protested. “I’m sorry I opened my big mouth.”

“Just being sorry isn’t enough,” Tom said. “You must be punished for trying to make a backslider out of me,”

I knew he had me. “Name the punishment,” I said.

“No,” Tom said. “You must punish yourself.”

“How can I punish myself?” I asked.

Tom looked up at Frankie who was still sitting on the fence- “Know something, Frankie?” he said. “Mamma wants the vegetable garden weeded tomorrow. One way J.D. could punish himself would be to volunteer to weed the garden all by himself.”

It was a stiff price to pay for not having sense enough to keep my big mouth shut. It would take me all day to weed the garden without Tom’s help. Mamma wouldn’t let Frankie help with the weeding because he didn’t know the difference between a weed and a vegetable,

“I’ll punish myself,” I said. “I’ll weed the garden.”

“All right,” Tom said. “And to show you my heart is in the right place, I’ll do your share of the chores tomorrow.”

He boosted Frankie down from the fence. “Let’s go to Smith’s lot and play until lunch time,” he said.

Mr. Smith let the kids use a vacant lot he owned on Main Street in return for keeping it cleared of weeds. Main Street was a very wide street like’in most Utah towns. It was covered with a foot of gravel so it wouldn’t get muddy when it rained. There were electric light and telephone poles down the middle of the street, and the sides were lined with trees planted by early Mormon pioneers-The places of business all had wooden sidewalks and hitching posts in front of them. The railroad tracks separated the east side of town from the west side.. Most of the places of business and practically all the homes were on the west side, including the Advocate office and our home. East of the railroad tracks there were two saloons, the Sheepmen’s Hotel, the Palace Cafe; a rooming house, a livery stable, and the campgrounds.

Adenville was an agricultural community surrounded by farms and cattle and sheep ranches. It never got very cold in the wintertime, and we seldom had snow because the town was located in southwestern Utah. We had a population of about two thousand Mormons, four hundred Protestants, and only about a hundred of us Catholics. The Mormons had a tabernacle and a Bishop because Adenville was what the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called a ward. There was no Protestant or Catholic church. We all went to the Community Church where Reverend Holcomb preached strictly from the Bible so he wouldn’t show favoritism toward any religion.

As Tom, Frankie, and I walked down Main Street to-

ward Smith’s vacant lot I couldn’t help feeling relieved that Adenville had only a one-room schoolhouse, where Mr. Standish taught the first through the sixth grades. Any parents wanting their kids to get a higher education had to send them to Provo or Salt Lake City. In just two weeks Tom would be leaving for his second year at the Catholic Academy for Boys in Salt Lake City. He would be in the eighth grade this year although he was only twelve. Tom with his great brain had been so smart that Mr. Standish had let him skip the fifth grade. My brother Sweyn had already graduated from the Academy, where only the seventh and eighth grades were taught. Papa was sending Sweyn to live with relatives in Boylestown, Pennsylvania, where he would go to high school.

If I could just keep my big mouth shut for two weeks I wouldn’t have to worry about Tom making me the victim of his great brain and money-loving heart. I knew he hadn’t really reformed when he blackmailed me into weeding the garden. I also knew it would break Mamma’s and Papa’s hearts if they found out Tom was backsliding. And I had a feeling that Tom wasn’t worried about the suspended sentence, He would be going away for nine months and probably figured the kids would forget all about the trial by the following summer.

When we arrived at the lot there were about twenty kids playing catch, batting fly balls, playing leapfrog, broad jumping, and playing other games. We joined in until it was time to go home for lunch.

That evening after the supper dishes were washed and put away the whole family was sitting in the parlor. Aunt Bertha was sitting on the couch darning socks. She wasn’t

really our aunt. She had come to live with us after her husband died because she didn’t have any place to go. She was in her sixties, with hands and feet as big as a man’s. Mamma was sitting in her maple rocking chair knitting. Frankie, Tom, and I were sitting on the floor in front of the stone fireplace playing dominoes. Sweyn was reading a book-Mamma looked up from her knitting with a sort of sad expression on her face.

“I was just thinking, dear,” she said to Papa, “with two .of our boys going away to school soon we haven’t many more evenings to spend together as a family.”

“That reminds me,” Papa said. “Everything is arranged for Sweyn to go back east. But next week I must remember to send Father Rodriguez a check for two hundred and twenty-five dollars to enroll Tom for the school year at the Catholic Academy.”

“I wish we had an academy right here in Adenville,” Mamma said.

“Few if any towns this size in Utah have more than a common school with six grades,” Papa said. “There just aren’t enough parents who want their children to get more than a sixth grade education, especially in an agricultural community like Adenville. Many farmers believe you don’t need more than a sixth grade education to run a farm. Take Adenville—not more than a dozen boys and girls are sent to academies or high schools each year.”

“I think a lot of parents would like their children to get a higher education, but they just can’t afford it,” Mamma said.

“Two hundred to two hundred and fifty dollars for a school year is a lot of money,” Papa said. “That is what the

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Mormon, Protestant, and Catholic boarding school academies charge.”

“It just isn’t fair for a boy like Sammy Leeds,” Mamma said. “He has been working now for over a year on the” soda fountain at the drugstore. Mr. Nicholson told me the boy wants to become a pharmacist more than anything in this world. But he hasn’t got a chance because Mr. and Mrs. Leeds can’t afford to send him to an academy.”

Papa appeared puzzled. “It takes more than an eighth grade education to become a pharmacist,” he said.

“I know,” Mamma said. “But Mr. Nicholson said that if Sammy had an eighth grade education he could get the boy a job working part time in a drugstore in Provo. By working there part time during the school year and full time here in Adenville during summer vacation, Sammy would be able to put himself through high school. Then Mr. Nicholson would help him prepare for the junior pharmacist state board examination. Instead Sammy Leeds will never be anything better than a soda fountain clerk.”