The Genius Files #4 (12 page)

Coke and Pep went downstairs to have breakfast with their parents, and then it was back on the road. Dr. McDonald merged onto Route 69 heading south.

The first argument of the day had already begun. Mrs. McDonald said they needed to stop at a laundromat sometime during the day, because they didn't have a lot of clothing after the RV exploded in Memphis. Dr. McDonald said he didn't want to waste time doing laundry, insisting there was no reason why they couldn't wear the same clothes for two days. Mrs. McDonald, of course, found that idea repulsive.

The argument didn't last long, because just a few minutes after they were on the road, they crossed a bridge over a river and this sign came into view on the left side of the highway. . . .

“Woo hoo!”
Coke shouted at the top of his lungs, “The Lone Star State! Did you know that the Texas state mascot is the armadillo?”

“I actually
did
know that,” said Pep. “But did
you
know that armadillos always have four babies?”

Coke was taken aback. He couldn't think of the last time his sister knew something that he didn't. He searched his memory bank. Never in his life had he heard anything about the number of babies armadillos had.

“You just made that up,” he said.

“I did not,” Pep told him. “I learned that when we went on a field trip to the natural history museum.”

“Well, nobody cares how many babies armadillos have,” Coke insisted.

“Armadillos care.”

Mrs. McDonald dropped her Arkansas guidebook into the trash and pulled
Amazing Texas Monuments and Museums
out of her purse.

“They say everything is bigger in Texas, you know,” she told the rest of the family. “The whole state stretches almost eight
hundred
miles each way.”

“I read somewhere that the world's largest parking lot is at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport,” Dr. McDonald said. “That airport is larger than the whole island of Manhattan.”

“That's quite a claim to fame,” remarked Coke. “They have the world's largest parking lot!”

“It says here that you could fit two hundred and twenty Rhode Islands into Texas,” said Mrs. McDonald.

“They're always comparing the big states to Rhode Island,” Pep said, rolling her eyes. “Why don't they leave poor little Rhode Island alone?”

Coke turned around to see if any cars might be following them. The road was nearly empty. It would take a while to get through Texas, and both twins settled in for a long drive. But just moments past the state line, Dr. McDonald suddenly pulled off the road after seeing a sign for the town of Denison. It was uncharacteristic for him. In general, he didn't do
things spontaneously.

“What's the matter, Ben?” asked Mrs. McDonald. “Are you okay?”

“Denison, Denison,” Dr. McDonald repeated. “It rings a bell. I can't remember why.”

He maneuvered the Ferrari off the ramp. As soon as he saw a sign that said E
ISENHOWER
P
ARKWAY
, he remembered.

“Of course!” he said. “Eisenhower
lived
here!”

Mrs. McDonald pulled out her laptop and quickly confirmed that the thirty-fourth president of the United States was born in Denison, Texas. He only lived in the town for the first two years of his life, but there's a monument dedicated to him.

She directed Dr. McDonald to take the exit for Loy Lake, and soon they found themselves on Loy Lake Road, at the entrance to Loy Lake Park. And there it was—a sixteen-foot cement head in the shape of Dwight David Eisenhower. The statue had a blank expression on its face.

“That is one gigantic head,” Coke said, stating the obvious. “It may be the biggest head I've ever seen.”

“What did Eisenhower do, Dad?” Pep asked.

“Oh, nothing important,” replied Dr. McDonald. “He just organized the D-day invasion in World War Two. He liberated Europe from the Nazis. Defeated
Hitler. Won the war. Nothing to write home about.”

“If not for President Eisenhower,” said Mrs. McDonald, “we'd all be speaking German today.”

“Isn't that what you said about bauxite?” asked Pep.

“Ich spreche Deutsch jetzt!”
said Coke.

Back in the car and on the road, the twins were curious about what they were going to do—besides laundry, of course—in the great state of Texas.

“I really want to go to Paris,” Mrs. McDonald said.

“That's in France, Mom,” Pep told her.

“She means Paris, Texas, you dope!”

“Don't call your sister a dope,” warned Dr. McDonald.

“Well, what's so special about Paris, Texas?” Pep asked.

“They have a replica of the Eiffel Tower there,” Coke told her, “and it has a giant cowboy hat on top.”

Dr. McDonald shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment, silently trying to compose the right words that would gently register his disapproval without provoking an argument.

“Y'know, it's not your birthday anymore, Bridge, and—” he began.

Even the twins knew those were the wrong words.

“Ben, I
told
you back in Virginia how badly I wanted to go to Paris, Texas,” Mrs. McDonald said, her voice rising. “So don't act like it's a big surprise that I'm mentioning it now.”

“Okay, okay!” said Dr. McDonald, defeated once again as he got back on the highway. “I've always wanted to see Paris.”

D
r. McDonald hit the gas a little harder than necessary, because frustration needs to be expressed
somehow
, right? He followed Route 69 south for ten miles, and then merged onto Route 82 heading east. Paris, Texas, was a little more than an hour from Denison.

The twins pulled out magazines to help pass the time. Mrs. McDonald turned on the radio, fiddling with the buttons until she stopped at a country music station. Nobody in the family was a big fan of country music, but who could resist “My Wife Ran Off
with My Best Friend and I Sure Do Miss Him”?

In the middle of the song, the music suddenly stopped. A male voice came on and repeated a series of letters:

“P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

There was a two-second pause, and then the voice said it again.

“P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

Startled, Coke looked up from the magazine he had been reading. He recognized the voice. It was the same as the voice on the telephone the other night. It sounded vaguely computer generated. The voice repeated the letters.

“P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N.”

“It must be a broken record or something,” said Mrs. McDonald.

“You'd think somebody at the radio station would notice,” said Dr. McDonald. “Change the station, Bridge.”

“Wait,” said Coke.

He looked over at his sister. She nodded her head. Pep grabbed the little notepad she'd bought back in Memphis and quickly wrote the letters down.

On the radio, the song returned, and when it ended a new song came on—“If the Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me.” Mrs. McDonald turned it up loud and
began to sing along.

While their parents were occupied in the front seat, Coke and Pep put their heads together.

“That sounded just like the guy on the phone who told me to look under my pillow,” Coke whispered to his sister.

“It's a cipher,” Pep replied. “It has to be. They're coming at us over the radio now.”

The twins looked at the letters Pep had written in her notepad:
P-C-F-T-H-B-L-R-N-Y-S-T-N
.

“Oh, come on,” Coke said. “You gotta be kidding me. No way we're gonna figure
this
one out.”

“You give up too easily,” his sister told him.

Pep took the notepad and slid over to her side of the seat so she could concentrate. This one didn't look so hard. They had solved tougher ciphers before.

Pep tried all the usual strategies that had worked before, but none of them seemed to fit. That only made her more determined. Her forehead would wrinkle, and then she would brighten, and then her forehead would wrinkle again. The previous cipher had been easy. This was a hard one. After almost an hour, she still hadn't cracked it. She, too, was stumped.

Dr. McDonald pulled off the exit marked P
ARIS
. It looked like a pretty normal Texas town. Twenty-five thousand people. Forty-four square miles.

“Why is it called Paris?” Pep asked.

“It's probably in honor of Paris, France,” her mother said, leafing through her guidebook.

“Actually, there are
fifteen
American towns named Paris,” Coke said, having read that on a poster at school a long time ago.

I think you will agree, reader, that
nobody
should know how many American towns are named Paris. It's just not information that needs to be retained.

Dr. McDonald drove through the east side of town until he reached the corner of Jefferson Road and South Collegiate Drive next to the LoveCivic Center.

“There it is!” Mrs. McDonald shouted, pointing. “Behold!”

And there it was—a dark metal structure that looked remarkably like the real Eiffel Tower, with the added attraction of having a ten-foot-wide red cowboy hat, slightly tilted at a jaunty angle, on top. Everybody got out of the car to get a better look.

“Well,” said Dr. McDonald, “I must admit you don't see
that
every day.”

“It's just like France,” Pep said, “but in Texas.”

“I can just about smell the baguettes baking,” Coke said. “Oh, wait. That's probably just a cattle ranch.”

“Think of it,” Mrs. McDonald told the kids. “You're standing in the
only
place in the world that has a giant replica of the Eiffel Tower with a cowboy hat on it. This is why we travel, kids. To see things you can't see anywhere else.”

“Do you think they have a fake Mona Lisa wearing a cowboy hat here too?” Coke asked.

Mrs. McDonald was used to her son's snarky remarks. She took out her camera to snap a few pictures, and also jotted down some notes for
Amazing but True.

According to a plaque nearby, the fake Eiffel Tower was built in 1993 by volunteers. At first, the tower didn't have a cowboy hat on the top. But five years later, the town of Paris, Tennessee, built a fake Eiffel
Tower of its own that was five feet higher than the one in Paris, Texas. That's when the cowboy hat was added.

“Hey, take a picture of me with the tower in the background,” Coke told his mother.

He went under the tower and struck a karate pose while Mrs. McDonald set up the shot.

“Take a step back,” she instructed him.

He did, and as she was about to snap the picture, there was the sense that something out of the ordinary was about to happen. Everyone could feel it. Something was wrong. Something was happening. They just didn't know what it was.

A split second later, an object appeared in everyone's peripheral vision. The only person who didn't see it was Coke, who was posing for the camera.

“Watch out!” Pep screamed.

She bolted over and tackled her brother. They hit the ground together in a tangle of arms and legs.

“What the—”

At that instant, something smashed into the ground with a
boom
at the exact spot where Coke had been standing.

Well, it wasn't just
something
. It was a cow. A big, brown, 1,400-pound spotted cow.

As their parents rushed over, Coke and Pep looked
a few feet to their left to see the cow lying on the ground next to them. A very dead cow.

“It's a cow!” Coke said, stating the obvious. Then he peered up at the tower, struggling to see who would have been crazy enough to do such a thing.