Charlie and the Amazing Brain

Charlie

and the

Amazing Brain

Book Two

Michael D. Massaro

Copyright © 2013 Michael D. Massaro

All rights reserved.

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Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Contents

Preface

Chapter One: New Faces

Chapter Two: The Pear Tree

Chapter Three: The Brain

Chapter Four: Fire

Chapter Five: Two Parties

Chapter Six: Trick or Treat

Chapter Seven: Christmas Season

Chapter Eight: The Best Chicken Dinner

Chapter Nine: Open House

Chapter Ten: More Questions

Chapter Eleven: Searching for Clues

Chapter Twelve: Secrets Revealed

Chapter Thirteen: The Portage Burner

Chapter Fourteen: Heroes

Epilogue

Preface

The man stood in the gathering twilight and stared silently at the old school building. It had been twenty-five years since he last saw it and now the memories came flooding back. The smirking kids hurling taunts at him, the teachers looking down their noses at him, the policemen and firemen treating him like a dangerous animal. As if there was something wrong with him. As if he was not normal.

Twisted. Yes, that was how they thought of him. Poor twisted boy — couldn’t control himself, couldn’t keep himself on the straight and narrow, couldn’t stop playing with fire.

Playing with fire. They thought it was just a game, a pastime. They didn’t know the fire was more than just a thing. They didn’t know it was alive, eating, breathing — and talking. Yes, no one understood that the fires he created were like his children, living things that talked to him, consoled him and told him what to do.

It wasn’t his fault the children he created sometimes got too big and out of control. After all, didn’t all living things try to grow bigger and stronger? From the smallest insect to the biggest oak tree, didn’t they all want to survive? His children were no different. They wanted to survive too. They wanted to live!

But they didn’t understand. Everyone thought he was dangerous, so they put him in jail — a kind of prison, really. Then later, after they let him out, he found he was still in a kind of prison. True, there were no bars, but it was a prison just the same. And this one had no escape. No way to get out — or so he thought.

But now, after all these years, he was back. He had returned to the place where it all started. With his new identity, no one would know him. No one would suspect anything. He could bide his time until everything was just right. Then he would create one more fire. A beautiful fire that would cleanse and purify. A fire that would erase the pain and suffering of the last twenty-five years and leave him free. At last, he would be free!

— 1 —

New Faces

September 1959

Ten-year-old Charlie Applegate absentmindedly wiped his spoon with a napkin before digging into a bowl of Frosted Flakes. He didn’t take his eyes off the TV that sat on the kitchen counter.

Do you have to do that? Leo asked.

Charlie looked at his older brother. Do what?

You always wipe your spoon off before using it. Is there some invisible dirt on it or something?

Someone might have touched it, he said.

You just took it out of the drawer!

A spider could have crawled on it.

Leo, who was three years older than Charlie, rolled his eyes and returned to the newspaper he had spread out on the kitchen table. He was checking the baseball standings.

Charlie turned back to the TV. The morning news was on. The Soviet Union launched a new space probe today, the announcer said. Called the Luna Two, its mission is to crash land on the surface of the moon in two and a half days. President Eisenhower expressed concern that that the Soviets seem to be extending their lead in the space race and called on the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration to increase their efforts to close the gap.

Leo wasn’t listening to the announcer. Still looking at the newspaper, he grumbled, "Stupid Indians. They lost again. Now they’re four games behind Chicago"

Charlie knew his brother was referring to the Cleveland Indians, also known as the Tribe. For the last few years the Tribe had been rebuilding, trying to replicate the successful season eleven years earlier when they won the World Series. Now, in 1959, they had some of the best players in the league, including their star player, Rocky Colavito, who just three months ago had hit four home runs in a single game — a feat no one in the major leagues had ever accomplished before.

Everyone in Akron, which is not very far from Cleveland, was anxiously following their progress because the Tribe seemed to be running out of steam. If something didn’t change soon, they might not even make it to the playoffs.

But Charlie, who didn’t like baseball very much, had another reason to be interested in the fortunes of the team. Only two months earlier, Charlie had written a letter to Rocky Colavito asking him to send a post card or photograph to cheer up Charlie’s elderly friend, Mr. Turner.

Thomas Jefferson Turner had played for the Cleveland Indians many years before and Charlie felt sad because everyone seemed to have forgotten him. To everyone’s surprise, instead of sending a photograph, the whole team showed up at Mr. Turner’s house along with a sports reporter from the Akron Beacon Journal. The next day, Charlie and Mr. Turner saw their picture in the newspaper alongside Rocky Colavito himself. They were local celebrities for a few weeks and everyone knew they had a special connection to the team. People in the neighborhood still referred to the event as the Indian Invasion.

The boys’ mother rushed into the kitchen to take another sip of coffee on her way to the bathroom to do female things, as Leo called it. (In this case, putting on makeup.) Don’t dawdle, guys, she said as she headed down the hall. You don’t want to be late on the first day. Hannah Applegate was a pretty, thirty-nine-year-old, single mother. She had been trying hard to keep their lives normal ever since becoming a widow when her husband died two years earlier from a heart attack. She kept her job as a receptionist at the hospital where she had been employed for several years. It was a good, steady job and, although they weren’t well off, she made enough to keep the house and pay for all the things that she and her two sons needed.

Aunt Agnes came into the kitchen wearing a bathrobe and her hair up in curlers. She was the boys’ elderly aunt on their father’s side and she had been living with Charlie, Leo and their mother since the death of Mr. Applegate. The boys often complained about her eccentricities, but deep down they knew she loved them and in their own way, they loved her back.

She sat at the kitchen table, took one look at Leo and said, "What’s wrong with you? You’re not moping about those Cowboys again are you?"

"Indians, Leo said with exasperation. They’re called the Cleveland Indians, Aunt Agnes."

Cowboys… Indians, she said irritably. "I don’t care if they call themselves the Cleveland Coal Miners. You spend too much time worrying about them and not enough time worrying

about your schoolwork."

This is the first day of school, Leo complained. We haven’t had any schoolwork for three months.

That’s no excuse. It wouldn’t hurt you to crack open a book now and then, would it? she responded.

No, Aunt Agnes, Leo answered wearily. He put his dishes in the sink and headed for the bathroom to brush his teeth. Leo was starting the 8th grade at Saint Vincent, which was near the center of town. It was a fifteen-minute ride on a school bus.

Charlie, on the other hand, was beginning the 5th grade at Portage Path Grade School. Since the school was only two blocks away, he could walk there in about five minutes. He put his bowl in the sink and joined Leo in the bathroom to brush his teeth.

Leo took his toothbrush out of his mouth and said, Good luck in school, Squirt — you’re going to need it.

Why?

I heard they have a new 5th grade teacher and she’s really mean. She got kicked out of her old school for hitting a kid with a book — sent him to the hospital for a week.

Baloney! You’re making that up.

No, really. I heard it from Dave Cohen. His mom’s the head of the PTA.

Charlie knew that Leo liked to tease him. It was a kind of game they played. Leo would tell the most outrageous lie he could and Charlie had to decide if it was true. He was 90% sure that this latest bombshell wasn’t true, but that still left 10% of him that was unsure. That was part of the game. Now he would wonder about it all the way to school. He believed it was Leo’s way of driving him crazy, one day at a time.

Mrs. Applegate came back into the kitchen just as Charlie ran for the stairs. Where are you going, Charlie? she asked as he sped by.

I forgot to feed Spot.

Well, hurry up — you have to leave soon.

Charlie had wanted a dog for years, but his mother wouldn’t allow it. She told him taking care of a dog was a big responsibility and he would have to prove he could handle it. So, they agreed on a less needy pet.

If you can take care of a goldfish, then we'll consider a dog, someday, she had said.

Morning, Spot, Charlie said cheerfully. Spot just stared forlornly back at him from inside the glass bowl that sat on the desk in Charlie’s room. He opened a can of fish food, took out a tiny pinch and held it over the water, saying, Sit up, boy.

Spot swam to the surface and waited eagerly for the food. Good boy, Spot, he said. When he dropped the specks of food on the water, Spot quickly grabbed a tiny chunk and took it to the bottom.

Attaboy, Spot.

He watched Spot eat his breakfast and wondered what it would be like to live in a world filled with water.

Charlie left the house and began his walk to school. He had lived in this neighborhood all his life and knew it well. Most of the houses had been built before 1920, before there were power tools, when every board was cut with a handsaw and every nail was hammered into place by real craftsmen who built things to last forever. Although the houses were similar in construction — two stories plus a full attic, porches that ran the full width of the house, slate roofs — each one was unique in its floor plan and appearance.

He walked up Grand Avenue, turned left at Market Street, and then left again at Highland Avenue. This was the area the local residents called Highland Square, with its quaint shops and art-deco style theatre.

The school was situated directly behind the shops and took up the rest of the block. Charlie had been attending Portage Path School since kindergarten and knew every room and every hallway. He loved the feeling of familiarity he got every time he entered the three-story brick building.

As he approached the old school, Charlie remembered the field trip his fourth-grade class had taken one year earlier. His teacher, Mrs. Botzum, had led the whole class out the front doors of the school and north on the street that the school sat on, which was also called Portage Path. Not street or road – just Portage Path. As they were walking along, on that warm, fall day, she explained how the school and the street had gotten their name.

Hundreds of years ago, she had begun, "local Indians often traveled by canoe from Lake Erie in the north all the way to the Ohio River in the south. They were able to use rivers for the entire journey — except for an eight-mile stretch between the Cuyahoga River and the Tuscarawas River. To get from one river to the other, they had to carry their canoes and supplies. The word portage means to carry boats and supplies overland between two waterways. So, this eight-mile path came to be known as Portage Path. It was so well known, that for several years it was recognized as part of the western boundary between the United States and Indian Territory.

"Over the years, Portage Path became a major street in Akron, but the name was never changed to street or road; it has always been known simply as Portage Path."

At this point on their field trip, the class reached a bronze statue of an Indian that stood on a concrete pedestal near the road. Mrs. Botzum had the class gather around the statue