Poppy Ott and the stuttering parrot — Context and Discussion

h a rickety railing. Up in front a stovepipe poked its rusted snout through the roof. Like everything else in the outfit the stovepipe was wabbly and ready to fall to pieces. It was some tacky outfit, all right. The wonder to me was that it didn’t fall to pieces in traveling the country roads.

An old gray horse was staked out close to the wagon. Talk about a _sway-back_! Say, that old four-legged washboard had a gully in its back as deep as the Illinois River. On the bottom side its stomach bagged worse than the knees of Cap’n Tinkertop’s everyday pants. It was awfully proud of its ribs, or so it would seem, for every rib was shoved out in plain sight. The tail was bobbed. To help the old skate switch away the mosquitoes and flies its owner had fastened a frazzled-out rope to the stub. The old nag sure did look funny swishing its rope tail. Red and I had a good laugh to ourselves.

“Some outfit,” says my chum, taking in the rickety traveling bungalow and the ten-cent horse.

“That must be the guy who owns it,” says I, pointing to a stoop-shouldered old man who had pottered into sight from the deeper willows.

The newcomer hadn’t seen us. And shuffling up to the bungalow, he rapped on a window.

“Poppy,” says he. “Poppy Ott. You git up now. Or I’ll come in thar with a stick.”

Some one inside yawned like a young steam engine.

“_Poppy!_” says the old man, sharper-like.

“Uh-huh,” says a sleepy voice.

“You git up now,” says the old man. “You hear me? You hain’t took care of Julius Cæsar yet. An’ I’ve got to go to town on business.”

Here a tousle-headed kid came into sight on the bungalow’s fancy back porch. And at sight of him Red pinched my hand and giggled.

“Lookit, Jerry,” says he, pointing. “Huckleberry Finn has come to town.”

The kid was a dead-ringer for Huckleberry Finn, all right. His shirt was ripped at the neck and his pants were three sizes too big for him. They hung on him like Charley Chaplin’s pants. And did a kid ever have dirtier feet! _Good_ night! I wondered what his bed sheets looked like.

“Did you eat, Pa?” says the kid, stretching and yawning.

“Two hours ago,” says the old man.

“They’s some stuff under the wagon.”

While the kid was messing around in a box where food was kept, the old man got out a whisk broom and dusted his clothes. He looked pretty respectable when he got through.

“Lookit, Jerry! What’s he doing now?”

“Polishing something,” says I.

“It’s a badge,” says Red, sort of breathless-like. “A policeman’s badge. Gee! He must be a detective.”

“Yah,” says I, in a sudden cold feeling toward the old man. “Like old Mr. Arnoldsmith.”

If you have read my book, JERRY TODD AND THE WHISPERING MUMMY, you’ll remember Mr. Anson Arnoldsmith. The old shyster! He gyped me out of a dollar and a quarter. And ever since then I’ve been leary about meeting “detectives.”

“I bet he _is_ a detective, Jerry.”

“I’d sooner think he was a dog catcher,” says I.

“I don’t see any dogs.”

“Maybe he’s got ’em in the wagon,” I laughed.

“We’ll help him, Jerry.”

“We’ll keep away from him,” says I quickly, thinking of old Mr. Arnoldsmith.

“We can detect, too,” says Red. “We know how.”

“If he’s a detective,” says I, “he better detect a bar of soap and a scrubbing brush and get busy on his little Poppy.”

“Poppy,” says he, speaking the boy’s name. “_Some_ name.”

“They ought to call him squash blossom,” says I. “For he looks more like a muddy squash than he does a poppy.”

The old man put his polished badge out of sight under his coat.

“Now, Poppy,” says he, businesslike, sort of working his shoulders up and down to make his coat fit better, “you jest curry Julius Cæsar, like I tell you, an’ brush him down nice an’ neat. An’ when you git that job done you better git up on the roof with some tar an’ see ’bout fixin’ that hole whar it rained in on me last night. I’ve told you before ’bout fixin’ it. So git busy now an’ do it. Fur it may rain ag’in to-night. An’ I hain’t awantin’ to wake up like I did last night an’ find my mouth plum full of rain water. You hear me?”

“Yes, Pa,” says the kid, over the top of a hunk of bread.

As this was the first boy tramp we had ever seen our curiosity was aroused. It would be fun, we thought, to talk to him and thus get his story. For undoubtedly in traveling here and there he had met with a lot of exciting adventures. So we decided to stick around.

Finishing his breakfast, the kid got out a currycomb and brush and began massaging the ribs of the four-legged washboard. He kept at this job until his father had pottered out of sight in the direction of town. Then he sat down on a stump and sort of buried his face in his hands.

Red was puzzled in watching the other.

“What’s he doing now, Jerry? Crying?”

“Let’s go over and find out,” says I.

“Aw!... He wouldn’t want us to catch him crying. He’d be ashamed.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” says I, “and needs attention.”

“_You_ aren’t a doctor.”

“I can give him a stomach rub,” says I, grinning.

“Yah, and probably _he_ can give you a punch in the snout if you get smart with him. He looks tough. You better stay here.”

Here the kid lifted his face. We saw then that he hadn’t been crying. He had been thinking about something, like a fellow does sometimes when he’s troubled. And whatever his thoughts had been they had led him along until he was the maddest kid imaginable.

Getting up from his seat, he jumped up and down in his mad streak, sort of shaking his clenched fists. Say, he acted like he was crazy. We could hear him talking to himself, too. But we couldn’t make out what he was saying, for we were too far away.

“What the dickens?...” says Red, blinking puzzled-like at the strange-acting one. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Maybe he sat down on a hornet,” says I.

“Go over and put a nickel in him,” says I, in further nonsense, “and see if he’ll play a tune.”

“Sh-h-h-h!” says Red. “He’ll hear you.”

Sort of quieting down, the kid went back to his currying job. We watched him for several minutes, wondering what was next on the program. Pretty soon he put away his currycomb and brush and went over to the bungalow. I figured that he was going to climb on the roof and sling some tar, as his father had ordered him to do. Instead he thoughtfully walked around and around the wagon, sort of squinting at it and shaking his head. Taking hold of a wheel, he gave it a shake. Golly Ned! The old bungalow rattled in its wabbly joints like the skeleton that Doc Leland donated to the Tutter public school. I _know_ how that old skeleton rattles, for one day I fixed some strings to it and the teacher was so scared when it waved its bony hands at her that she almost jumped out of her skin.

Well, we were right-down curious about the strange kid now. He was up to something. We could see that plain enough. So we decided to stick around a while longer.

Going back to where the old nag was staked out in a grassy spot, the kid did something to the horse that made it kick. Bingo! Up went its rope tail and out shot its hind feet like a double-barreled battering ram.

Red grabbed my arm when the young horse tender led his nag over to the wagon and backed it up against a front wheel.

“_Good_ night! He’s making his old horse kick the wagon to pieces. Lookit, Jerry! There goes the two hind wheels.”

The four wagon wheels kicked to pieces, the kid led the horse back to its pasture and then squatted, contented-like, in the shade of a tree with a book.

“I wonder what got into him,” says Red, completely puzzled.

“He’s cuckoo,” says I.

“Aw! ... It’s only old men who get cuckoo.”

“How about yourself?” says I, grinning.

“You aren’t funny,” says he.

Well, we stuck around. There’d be some excitement, we figured, when the old man came home and found his bungalow squatting on the ground instead of on wheels. As for the kid, he sure had us guessing with his queer actions. We couldn’t make him out at all. And curious, too, about the book that he was reading, we crawled closer.

“It’s a schoolbook,” says Red. “What do you know about that?--_him_ studying an arithmetic!”

The kid had paper and a pencil. He was working problems. One problem seemed to stump him. He figured and figured. But he couldn’t get the right answer.

Suddenly he looked up and caught our eyes.

“Say,” says he, as unconcerned over our presence as you please, “can you kids do fractions?”

We felt foolish in being caught. We hadn’t figured on this. We had thought to ourselves that we were too smart to be caught. I had to admit to myself now that the kid wasn’t as much of a squash as I had let myself believe.

“I can’t get this problem,” says he, and he dug at his tousled hair with his pencil, looking more puzzled than ever. “It’s about a steamboat. Going up stream the steamboat travels sixteen and two-thirds miles per hour. Going down stream it travels twenty-seven and one-half miles per hour. It is three hours and seventeen minutes longer going up stream than down. How far did it go?”

Red and I had had that problem in school. So we got busy and worked it. And now that I was close to the kid I saw what bright, snappy eyes he had. I liked his looks. He interested me. And I kind of forgot about his old clothes and dirty bare feet.

“I suppose you wonder,” says he, putting away his arithmetic, “why I made old Julius Cæsar kick the wagon wheels to pieces.”

“Did you know we were watching you?” says I, in surprise.

“I saw you kids in the weeds,” says he, “when I first got out of bed.”

Red and I traded sheepish glances.

“We thought we were hid,” says I.

That made the ragged one grin. And in that moment I liked him better than ever. For he had a good grin. I could see that he would make a swell pal, all right. He was smart, too.

And I had called him a squash! I wanted to kick myself at the thought of it. It was _me_ who was the squash.

Then, taking a liking to us, he told us his story. Maybe we thought it was fun, he said, thoughtful-like, to travel around the country like a tramp and skip school and go dirty. But for his part he was sick and tired of the lazy, shiftless life.

“That is what I was thinking about when you saw me on the stump,” says he. “I felt pretty blue. Things were getting worse for us. In thinking about it I got mad. And I suddenly made up my mind that I’d stay right here. I wouldn’t go a step farther, I said. Pa, of course, would kick on that. _He_ would want to keep on going until the old wagon dropped to pieces in the middle of the road. Thinking about the old wagon dropping to pieces sort of put an idea in my head. Why not fix the wagon, says I, so he _couldn’t_ move it? Then he’d have to stay here and settle down and be somebody, like other men. So I got busy. You saw what I did.... Say, can you tell me where I can get a job?”

“How old are you?” says I.

“You’ve got to be sixteen,” says I, “to get a job in this state. I know, for my dad runs a brickyard.”

“I’m going to get a job of some kind,” says he, determined-like. “For one of us has got to work if we’re going to eat.”

“Why doesn’t your father get a job?” says Red.

The kid laughed at that.

“Pa work!” says he. “That’s funny. He’s too busy detecting to work.”

Red was excited again.

“Is your pa a detective?”

“He thinks he is,” says the kid.

“We saw his badge,” says Red.

“Yes,” says the kid, nodding, “he takes a lot of pride in that tin badge of his. It cost him six dollars. I had a row with him the day he sent for it. I told him that the detective company he was writing to was a fake and all they wanted out of him was his money. But he wouldn’t listen to me. And ever since then he’s been making a monkey of himself. Some detective, _he_ is. Huh! He’s my own father, and I suppose I ought to stick up for him, but if he was anybody else’s father I’d say he was an old dumb-bell. When Ma was alive she sort of kept him busy. Still, he didn’t do very much work at that. He’d sit around the kitchen reading his old detective books and let her take in family washings. When she died he just quit working altogether. That was two years ago. Look at me! Here I am fifteen years old and I haven’t been in the eighth grade yet.”

“It wouldn’t worry me,” says Red, who hates school, “if I never got in the eighth grade or any other grade.”

“I thought it was fun at first,” says the kid, “to skip school. But I feel different about it now. For I can see that a fellow has got to go to school or be a dumb-bell like Pa. And it’s a cinch I don’t want to grow up and be like _him_. I guess not. I want to go to school, I do. And I’m going to go to school, too--right here in Tutter. I’ve made up my mind to that.”

I was looking at the flattened wagon wheels.

“What’ll your pa say,” says I, “when he comes home and sees the wreck?”

“He’ll be mad, of course. But I should worry.”

“_Lick_ me? Pa? Shucks, he couldn’t catch me. Besides,” came the easy laugh, “why should he lick _me_? _I_ didn’t do it. Old Julius Cæsar did it.”

“When’s your pa coming back?” says Red.

“Oh, when he gets through sleuthing ... if he doesn’t get locked up in the town jail. He’s been in jail three times this summer. That’s the kind of a detective _he_ is. Probably right now he’s crawling along some alley on his hands and knees searching for finger prints, or something like that. He tries to be like the detectives in books. It makes me sick. No wonder the cops lock him up on suspicion.”

“He ought to show the cops his detective badge. Then they wouldn’t lock him up.”

“That’s the trouble,” says the kid. “It’s his tin badge that gives him away.”

“And he isn’t a real detective?” says Red, disappointed.

“_Him?_ Of course not. But he thinks he is, as I say. And snooping into things that are none of his business is what gets him into trouble.”

“We were down this way yesterday,” says I, “but you weren’t here then.”

“We pulled in late last night,” says the kid. “Pa’s been crazy to get here. He’s been talking about coming here ever since he started working on that black-parrot case.”

Red pricked up his ears in new interest.

“Black-parrot case,” says he. “What do you mean by that?”

“It wasn’t a real parrot,” says the kid, “but it could talk like a parrot. And it was coal black. I think it was a mino bird. Yes, that is the name. It came from India. A woman in Cedarburg owned it. Mrs. Casper Strange. And when it was stolen she offered a reward of a thousand dollars for its return.”

“A thousand-dollar parrot!” says Red. “I can’t believe it.”

“Oh, she has oodles of money! A thousand dollars doesn’t mean anything to her. We lived in Cedarburg, you know. Pa told her that he was a detective and would get her parrot for her. So she hired him. That is, she told him she would pay him a thousand dollars if he was successful.”

“But why did your pa come _here_?” says I. “You say he was crazy to get here. Does he think the stolen parrot is in Tutter?”

“Search me,” says the kid, shrugging. “All of a sudden he got a notion to come here, as I say. And here we are.”

“Maybe he came here to search old Cap’n Tinkertop’s bird store.”

The kid gave the speaker a quick look.

“Old Cap’n Tinkertop,” says he.

“He’s a friend of ours,” says Red. “He runs a parrot store.”

A queer look came into the kid’s eyes.

“I wonder,” says he at length, “if Pa is as dumb in his detective work as I thought. Tinkertop! That was the name of a man who worked for the rich Cedarburg woman.”

“It wasn’t the Cap’n,” says I quickly. “For he’s lived in Tutter for years.”

“_Ham_ Tinkertop,” says the kid after a moment. “That was the man’s name. He used to be a sailor.”

“I know,” says Red quickly. “Ham Tinkertop and the Cap’n were brothers. Don’t you remember, Jerry?--the brother died and the Cap’n went away to the funeral. And when he came home he had a lot of money. That was when he started up his bird store.”

I _did_ remember about the Cap’n going away to his brother’s funeral. And at the time of the old man’s return I had wondered at his sudden wealth.

“When was it,” says the kid, “that this old friend of yours was in Cedarburg to his brother’s funeral?”

“The week of my birthday,” says Red. “Around the tenth of June.”

“That was the week,” says the kid, “that the black parrot was stolen.”

I looked at my chum and he looked at me.

“Come on,” says I, taking his arm. “Let’s snap into it and find Scoop Ellery. He ought to know about this.”

As I say, old Cap’n Tinkertop had brought home a wad of money from his brother’s funeral. The dead sailor had been buried in Cedarburg. The week of the funeral a valuable black parrot had been stolen from a wealthy Cedarburg woman for whom the dead sailor had worked. We had just gotten that story from the Ott kid. And in consequence I now had the troubled suspicion that there might be some unworthy connection between our old friend’s sudden wealth and the vanished bird. I couldn’t figure it out. But I felt that Scoop Ellery could. For he’s smart in solving mysteries. So Red and I turned back into town to find the leader and tell him the story exactly as the Ott kid had told it to us.

“I bet you,” says Red, as we jogged along, “that the old man came here on a clew.”

“You mean Mr. Ott?” says I.

“He’s shadowing the Cap’n. See?”

“But why should the Cap’n steal a parrot at his brother’s funeral?”

“That’s the mystery.”

“And if he did steal it,” says I, “where is it?”

“More mystery,” says Red.

“Do you think Poppy’s father suspects that the Cap’n has the parrot here?”

“Sure thing. He’s got a clew, I tell you. That’s what brought him here.”