More Adventures Of The Great Brain (13 page)

   
Plenty of kids tried to make him their dog and took him home with them. Some even built a doghouse for him. But he would only stay for a day or so and then go back to his packing-case home.

   
Tom and I had just finished doing our morning chores the day Roger Gillis came running into our backyard. He was a kid about six years old whose parents wouldn’t let him own a dog. He was crying.

   
“Old Butch is dead!” he cried. “I went to look for him to play with this morning and found him dead.”

   
“He was getting pretty old for a dog,” Tom said, trying to comfort Roger.

   
That was sure true. I could remember Old Butch from the time I was very little. Nobody knew who named him Butch, and then as he got old everybody started calling him Old Butch.

   
“Maybe he isn’t really dead,” Tom said. “Maybe he is just sick.”

“He looks dead,” Roger said.

“Stop crying until we make sure,” Tom said.

   
My brother went up to our bedroom and got a small pocket mirror from his strongbox. The three of us ran all the way to the rear of the Z.C.M.I. store.

   
Old Butch lay on a blanket some kid had put in the crate a long time ago. His eyes were open and he looked all stiff.

   
Tom knelt and held the mirror in front of Old Butch’s nose and mouth. The mirror remained dry and bright. Tom stood up and put the mirror in his pocket.

“He is dead all right,” Tom said.

   
Bad news travels fast in a small town. Andy Anderson and Howard Kay and Jimmie Peterson and Seth Smith came running up the alley. They were all kids whose mothers wouldn’t let them have a dog. Their mothers said dogs made too much of a mess on the lawns and gardens.

   
Then Uncle Mark
came
riding up the alley on his white stallion. He stopped and dismounted. He took his lariat from his saddle and started making a noose on one end.

“What are you going to do?” Tom asked.

“Mr. Harmon reported finding the dog dead,” Uncle Mark said. “It is my duty as Marshal to get rid of the body. I’ll drag him out of town a mile or so.”

   
Tom folded his arms on his chest. “You aren’t going to drag Old Butch out of town and leave him for the buzzards,” he said.

   
“There isn’t anything else I can do,” Uncle Mark said. “He is just a dog, and he is dead.”

   
“He was more than just a dog,” Tom said. “Maybe you can’t do anything about it, but
us
kids can.”

“Like what?” Uncle Mark asked with a surprised look.

   
“Like giving Old Butch the proper funeral he deserves,” Tom said. “All the kids in town loved Old Butch, and we aren’t going to let the buzzards have his body.”

   
“All right, boys,” Uncle Mark said, “but you’ll have to bury him today.”

   
Tom became all business as soon as Uncle Mark rode away. “J.D., get your wagon,” he said. “Seth, you go get Sammy, Danny, and Basil and meet us in our barn. Jimmie, go into the store and tell Mr. Harmon we are going to take a small wooden box with boards pried up on top to make a coffin for Old Butch.”

   
By the time I returned with my wagon, there were a whole bunch of kids there. Old Butch’s body, wrapped in the blanket, lay in a smaller wooden box than the crate that had been his home. Tom and I lifted the box onto my wagon.

   
When we arrived at our barn, Seth, Sammy, Danny, and Basil were waiting.

   
“Sammy,” Tom said, “you and Danny and Basil get shovels out of our toolshed and go dig a grave for Old Butch. Take a pick along too. You might need it.”

They didn’t ask questions. They all knew there was a small piece of ground just south of the cemetery where people sometimes buried their pets. They left to dig the grave.

   
“Jimmie,” Tom said. “You go to the meat market and tell Mr. Thompson we want a big bone to bury with Old Butch.”

   
Jimmie hitched up his britches, which were too big for him, as he looked at Tom with surprise. “If he is dead, he can’t eat,” he said.

   
“The Indians always bury their dead with enough food to last until they get to the happy hunting ground,” Tom said. “Maybe there is a happy hunting ground for good dogs like Old Butch. We’ll put a bone in his coffin to last him until he gets there.”

   
Tom told me to go ask Mamma if we could have the old American flag she had put in our attic when Papa bought a new one.

   
I ran to our kitchen, where Mamma and Aunt Bertha were kneading dough to make bread.

“T.D. wants the old flag you put in the attic,” I said.

“Why?” Mamma asked.

“To put on the coffin,” I said.

“Coffin?” she asked. “Is Mr. Peters dead?”

   
I guess Mamma thought because Mr. Peters was a Civil War veteran and entitled to have a flag on his coffin that Mr. Peters had died.

   
“No,” I said. “It is Old Butch and I guess Tom wants to give him a military funeral.”

   
“God love that boy,” Mamma said. “Sometimes I get so exasperated with him I could scream, and then he does something that makes me very proud he is my son. Of course he can have the old flag.”

Mamma wiped the flour from her hands and went up to the attic to get the flag for me because she couldn’t quite remember where she put it. When I returned to the barn with it, Sammy, Danny, and Basil were back from digging the grave. The coffin was on my wagon. Tom draped the flag over it.

   
“We will let Old Butch lie in state until two o’clock this afternoon,” he said.

“But,” Sammy said,” only people lie in state.” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut I was so curious. “What is lying in state?” I asked.

   
“When a person dies,” Tom explained, “if he or she has been a good person who is loved and respected, the body in the coffin lies in state in an undertaking parlor, or in the Mormon Tabernacle, or in the Community Church, so people can pay their last respects to the dead. You’ve seen it, J.D.”

   
“But I didn’t know what they called it,” I said. “Then Sammy is right. Only people lie in state.”

   
Tom looked angry for a second and then his face became calm. “If that was Brownie lying in that coffin, you’d want him to lie in state, wouldn’t you?”

   
It wasn’t until that moment I really understood what Tom was trying to do. There were at least seven or eight kids in the barn right then who felt about Old Butch the same way I did about Brownie.

   
“You are right,” I said. “Old Butch deserves to lie in state.”

   
Tom sat down on a bale of hay. “Now about the funeral procession,” he said. “The kids who don’t own dogs will be the pallbearers. Basil, you and J.D. will pull the wagon. I mean the hearse. Following the hearse will come the band and after the band the mourners.”

   
We all stared at Tom as if he’d gone loco. The only band in town was the town band made up of grownups.

   
“Sammy,” Tom continued, “you will play your cornet in the band and also play ‘Taps’ at the final resting place.”

   
“I can play ‘Taps’,” Sammy said, “but I don’t know how to play a funeral march.”

   
“I know,” Tom said, “so you and the band will play ‘Home Sweet Home’ instead. You can play that, can’t you?”

   
“It’s about the first thing you learn how to play on any instrument,” Sammy said.

   
“Danny will play his trombone,” Tom said. “Seth will play his violin. Jimmie will play his clarinet. Howard will play his snare drum, and I will play his bass drum.”

   
Seth shook his head. “Whoever heard of a violin in a band?” he asked. “And besides, you don’t know how to play a bass drum.”

   
“You can play ‘Home Sweet Home’ and that is all that matters,” Tom said. “And with my great brain I can learn to beat time on a bass drum in a minute.” Tom got up from the bale of hay. “The fellows in the band
be
here at one-thirty so we can have a rehearsal.”

It was time by then for us all to go have lunch.

   
“We can’t leave Old Butch alone,” Tom said after the others had left. “I’ll stand as honor guard while you eat, and then you can come back and relieve me while I eat.”

   
That was all right with me because it gave me a chance to be in the spotlight during lunch for a change. Papa, Mamma, and Aunt Bertha listened intently as I told them about the funeral arrangements. Sweyn didn’t seem impressed at all.

   
“Whoever heard of a funeral procession for a dog,” he said. “It is ridiculous.”

   
Papa glared at Sweyn. “The death of any living thing, be it a plant or an animal or a person is never ridiculous,” he said. “You will march in that funeral procession with your brothers.”

   
“At my age?”
Sweyn asked with a startled look. “Marie Vinson will think I’ve gone crazy.”

   
“That isn’t what she will think,” Papa said. “It is just what you think, and I don’t like your thinking at all.”

   
It was almost worth Old Butch dying to see Papa put Sweyn in his place for a change. After I’d eaten, I ran to the barn to tell Tom the good news about how Papa had really told off Sweyn.

   
“It’s about time,” Tom said “Sweyn is getting too big for his britches.
Now, J.D., stand as honor guard.
Any mourners that come before I get
back,
let them pat the coffin and say good-bye to Old Butch.”

   
In a little while kids started coming into the barn from all over town to say good-bye to Old Butch. Then they stood in small groups, talking in whispers like people do at funerals. The band and everybody were there when Tom got back.

   
Tom began rehearsing the band. It sounded so bad at first that our cow began to moo, our team became restless, and Dusty began to neigh. But the band finally got so it didn’t sound half bad. It was time for the funeral procession to begin.

   
Basil and I pulled the hearse to the alley. Tom lined up the band behind us. The mourners fell in line, including Sweyn, who looked as if he wished he could find a hole and crawl into it. Tom gave the signal and the band started playing “Home Sweet Home” as the procession began to move up the alley. Following Tom’s instructions Basil and I turned when we got to Main Street and led the way right down the middle of Main Street, with the band playing “Home Sweet Home” over and over again.

I could see people coming out of stores and homes and people on the sidewalk staring at us. Then I saw Papa come out of the Advocate office. I thought some of the grownups might laugh and think it ridiculous like Sweyn. But they didn’t. When we got to the railroad tracks, I looked over my shoulder. Papa and about a hundred adults had joined the funeral procession. You would have thought we were burying the Mayor.

   
When we reached the grave site and stopped, the pallbearers placed the coffin in the grave. The band stopped playing. Then Tom stood beside the open grave and I’d never seen his face so solemn.

   
“I will now deliver the eulogy for Old Butch,” he said. “If ever there lived a good dog, it was Old Butch. He loved everybody, and everybody loved him. We are all going to miss Old Butch. But those who will miss him the most are kids whose parents won’t let them own a dog of their own. Old Butch took the place of the dogs they couldn’t have. And now that Old Butch is gone, these kids are going to be mighty brokenhearted. What these parents don’t realize is that a dog is a boy’s first great love except for his family. A family without a dog is like a house that is empty.” Tom stooped over and picked up a handful of dirt which he sprinkled on the coffin in the grave.
” ‘Dust
thou art and to dust thou return’,” he quoted. Then he nodded at Sammy.

   
Sammy put his cornet to his mouth and began to play “Taps”. He played so beautifully it made me cry. But I wasn’t the only one crying.

   
When Sammy finished blowing “Taps” for Old Butch, Seth and Basil picked up the shovels they had left there and began throwing dirt on the coffin. I thought the grownups would leave then, but they didn’t. They stayed until the last shovelful of dirt had been placed on the grave. Then they began to leave.

   
Uncle Mark and Papa walked to where Tom was standing.

   
“Thanks, Tom,” Uncle Mark said, and his voice was hoarse.

   
Papa put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I am going to give Old Butch an obituary in the Advocate,” he said. “And I’m going to let you write it just as you said it here today. Even in death Old Butch is going to make some boys happy. Mr. Gillis told me after hearing your eulogy that he is going to find a pup for his son, Roger. And there are others who heard your eulogy or who will read the obituary in the Advocate who will change their minds about their sons owning a dog. I’m proud of you, son.”