John Fitzgerald (2 page)

   
And, by jingo, it worked! When I woke up in
the morning I had my story. I waited until after supper that Sunday evening to
tell it. Papa was sitting in his rocking chair reading the mail edition of the
New York World. Mamma was sitting in her maple rocker crocheting. The light
from the ceiling chandelier made her blonde hair, piled high with braids on her
head, shine as if it were golden. Aunt Bertha was sitting on the couch darning
some socks. She wasn't really my aunt. She had come to live with us after her
husband died. She was sixty years old and had hands and feet as big as a man's.
I was sitting on the Oriental rug in front of our huge stone fireplace.

   
"I was talking to Frank and Allan
Jensen yesterday," I said. "I sure feel sorry for them."

   
Papa dropped the newspaper on his lap.
"What makes you say that, J.D.?" he asked. Papa always called us boys
by our initials.

   
"Because they are so poor," I
said, "the only time they ever get a piece of candy is at Christmas
time."

   
"Mr. Jensen is a poor but proud
man," Papa said. "But I do know the family has enough to eat because
the Mormons never let another Mormon go hungry."

   
"But don't you think every boy is
entitled to some candy more than just once a year?" I asked.

"Yes, I
do," Papa answered.

   
I knew I had him. I'd made Papa walk right
into my trap. Now all I needed was to make Mamma second the motion.

   
"How about you,
Mamma?"
I asked.

   
"Candy is a part of boyhood," she
said. "I must remember the next time I make some candy to send some over
to

Mrs.
Jensen."

   
"You won't have to," I said.
"I fixed it so Frank and Allan can have some candy every week."

Papa stared at
me. "And just how did you arrange that?" he asked.

   
"I'm going to pay them ten cents a
week out of my allowance to help me do my chores," I said. "Frank
will help one week and Allan the next week. That will give each of them a
nickel spending money every week."

   
"I'm proud of you, son," Papa
said, and I knew when he called me "son" he was feeling very proud of
me.

"God bless
you," Mamma said.

"Amen,"
Aunt Bertha said.

   
I was so excited I felt like doing an
Indian war dance right in our parlor. I'd begun my career as a wheeler-dealer
by pulling off my first big deal.

   
And that is how come I was sitting on the
top rail of our corral fence the next day after school feeling as if I were
sitting on top of the world. But I sure as heck wasn't sitting there very long.

   
Mamma kept looking at me in a funny sort of
way all through our roast pork supper with homemade gooseberry pie for dessert.
She didn't say anything until we'd finished eating and she had folded her
napkin and put it in the silver napkin ring.

"I thought,
John D.," she said, "that Frank and Allan were just supposed to help
you with your chores. From what I saw this first day it appeared that Frank did
all your chores. And all you did was
sit
on the corral
fence watching him." I had to think fast. The answer came so quickly that
I began to believe I had a great brain like Tom.

"Frank and
Allan appreciate what I'm doing for them so much," I said, "that they
insisted on doing all my chores." "Good," Mamma said, to my
surprise. Papa was also surprised. "What is good about it?" he asked.
"It seems to me we got rid of one conniver by sending him off to Salt Lake
City only to discover we have another one in our midst."

Mamma smiled.
"Don't you see, dear, this means John D. will have time to do other things
that need to be
done.
" I didn't like the sound of
it. "What other things?" I asked.

   
"You can begin tomorrow after school
by spreading manure on our vegetable garden," Mamma said.

   
That was when I learned something about
mothers I didn't know. They just couldn't stand to see their sons taking it
easy. I looked at Papa with pleading eyes. He had always said it was brains
that counted and not muscle. He would appreciate how smart I had been. I
couldn't have been more wrong than a mouse
who
spits
in a cat's face.

   
"That is a splendid idea," Papa
said, as if he enjoyed making a slave out of his own flesh and blood. "I
thought I might have to hire a man to do it, with Tom gone. But J.D. is big
enough to handle it."

   
"And when he finishes that job,"
Mamma said, as if she were doing me a big favor, "he can help Bertha and
me with the fall housecleaning. The wallpaper needs cleaning in all the upstairs
rooms and in the two bedrooms downstairs. He won't have to bother with the
parlor and dining room because I'm going to put new wallpaper in both rooms.
And there will be windows to wash and rugs to beat and a lot of other things he
can do to help."

   
I knew there was no appealing one of
Mamma's decisions. I also knew that if I listened to any more I'd burst out
crying. I excused myself from the table and ran up to my room. I threw myself
on the bed. I tried to hold back the tears but couldn't. If ever a fellow had a
right to cry, I sure did.

   
I would ten times rather do my chores than
haul manure, which meant I had to take a bath every night before supper. I
would a hundred times rather do my chores than help with the fall
housecleaning. And the worst part of housecleaning was cleaning the wallpaper.
You had to do it with
a homemade
dough that really
smelled bad. I don't know what Mamma put into it but it was like having a skunk
in your hand. And you had to rub it over every inch of the wallpaper. I admit
it really cleaned wallpaper, taking off the grime and dirt just like an eraser.
But it was back-breaking work and the smell was enough to make a fellow sick to
his stomach.

   
For the next four days after school and all
day on Saturday I hauled manure and took baths. Papa had often said that a man
profits more spiritually from failure than he does from success. But I sure as
heck didn't get any spiritual uplift unless maybe taking so many baths washed
some of my sins away.

   
But I wasn't going to let one failure get
me down. I'd made the best deal of my life with Tom by renting his bike from
him for ten cents a week while he was away at school. I had a scheme all
figured out for making a fortune with the bike. Monday morning during recess I got
all the kids together who didn't own bikes. I told them I would rent out Tom's
bike for five cents a day and would be in our barn to sign up customers after
school.

   
I stopped at the Z.C.M.I. store after
school and got a calendar from Mr. Harmon. The full name was Zion's Cooperative
Mercantile Institute. They were stores owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints all over Utah which sold everything from toothpicks to
wagons.

   
Sammy Leeds was waiting in our barn when I
arrived. He was puffing as if he'd run all the way from the schoolhouse. I
didn't like Sammy because he was a smart aleck and bully, but business was
business. I was both surprised and delighted when Sammy said he would take
twenty days and dumped a total of one dollar in dimes, nickels, and pennies in
a box I had in the barn.

   
I tore off all the months on the calendar
up to September and told Sammy to write his name on the twenty days he wanted
to rent the bike. Parley Benson, wearing his coon-skin cap, came into the barn
with Basil
Kokovinis
, a Greek boy whose father owned
the Palace Cafe. Danny Forester, Howard Kay, Jimmie Peterson, and Seth Smith
came in right behind them. They waited until Sammy had signed his name twenty
times on the calendar and I had marked each day paid.

"Before you
fellows lay your money on the line," Sammy said, "I've taken all the
Saturdays and Sundays for the next ten weeks. That means I'll get to ride the
bike all day for my nickel but you fellows will only get to ride it after
school for a couple of hours for your nickel."

   
Parley pushed his coonskin cap to the back
of his head. "I sure
ain't
going to pay to rent
a bike when I'm sitting in school," he said.

   
He and the other kids looked at me as if
I'd just tried to rob their piggy banks, and walked out of the barn.

   
"Tell you what I'll do," Sammy
said. "Seeing as how I would only get to use the bike for a couple of
hours on school days, I'll give you a penny a day. I know the other kids would
pay you a penny too, but there will be days when nobody will rent the bike.
I'll pay you cash right now for the next fifty school days."

   
I knew Sammy was right, and
five-cents-a-week profit was better than taking a chance of not renting the
bike on some school days.

   
"Why do you want the bike all for
yourself for ten weeks?" I asked.

   
"Mr. Nicholson at the drugstore wants
a delivery boy with a bike to work after school and on Saturdays," Sammy
said. "You will be helping me get the job, John, and you know my folks are
poor and we can use the money."

   
"The drugstore is closed on
Sundays," I said. "Why did you want Sundays too?"

   
"A fellow is entitled to a little fun
after working all week,
ain't
he?" Sammy asked.

   
I sure as heck didn't want to be known as a
fellow who stopped a boy from getting a job and helping out his folks.

"It's a
deal," I said.

   
Sammy put his hand in another pocket and
took out exactly fifty cents in change as if he had known what was going to
happen.

   
The next day after school I had to deliver
the weekly edition of Papa's newspaper to local subscribers at their homes and
the ones with yellow mail stickers on them to the post office. Papa saw I was
using my wagon instead of Tom's bike. I told him about the deal that I had made
with Sammy Leeds. Papa pushed his green eyeshade up on his forehead.

   
"I'm glad you helped Sammy get a
job," he said, "but you had no right renting out something you do not
own. And I hope you realize Sammy will just about wear out the tires in ten
weeks on these gravel streets."

"That is
Tom's tough luck," I said.

   
"No, J.D., that is your tough
luck," Papa said. "You will buy new tires for your brother's
bicycle."

   
"But they will cost about three
dollars," I protested, "and I am only making fifty cents on the whole
deal."

   
"I am sure you have enough money in
your bank to buy the new tires when the time comes," Papa said.

   
If I thought that was bad, the worst was
yet to come. Sammy let all the kids know that Mr. Nicholson was paying him two
dollars a week and in ten weeks he would have more than enough money saved to
buy a bike of his own. He also told all the kids he would be at Smith's vacant
lot on Sundays and they could rent the bike for a penny an hour.

   
I learned later that Sammy had made seven
cents renting the bike for one-hour rides that first Sunday. I knew he would go
on making money every Sunday. And, oh, how I wished my little brain had thought
of the idea first. Boy, oh, boy, what a catastrophe my career as a
wheeler-dealer had turned out to be. If Papa was right about a fellow profiting
spiritually from failure, I'd soon become the holiest kid in the world at the
rate I was going.

CHAPTER TWO

A Born Loser

   
MAMMA AND AUNT BERTHA had towels tied
around their heads when Papa and I entered the kitchen for breakfast the next
morning. It was their way of notifying us that fall housecleaning was to begin
that day. During the next six days I discovered that Abraham Lincoln left out
something when he freed the slaves—he forgot to include kids in the
Emancipation Proclamation. I was so plumb tuckered out at night I could hardly
do my homework. We finished all the housecleaning on Saturday. That was one
Saturday night when Mamma didn't have to remind me it was time for my bath.

"I am going
to take my bath and go to bed," I said as we all sat in the parlor after
supper was over.

   
Mamma looked at the clock on the
mantelpiece. "At seven o'clock?" she asked.

   
"Not only that," I said,
"but please don't call me until it is time to get up to go to school on
Monday."

   
Mamma smiled at me. "You have worked
very hard, John D.," she said. "And when a person does his best
without thought of reward it proves he has a good character."