The Great Brain Read Online Free PDF Page A

like always, as Sweyn was getting better Tom and I started getting watery eyes, runny noses, and fevers. Sweyn moved upstairs to his bedroom while Tom and I moved down to Mamma’s bedroom.
    The next morning Sweyn came into Mamma’s bedroom right after breakfast to rub salt in our wounds as he always did when he got a disease first.
    “Good morning,” he said so cheerfully I would have thrown a pillow at him if I could have seen him in the darkened room. “How are all my little measle patients today?” he asked.
    “Beat it,” Tom said.
    “I was just about to do that very thing,” Sweyn said. “While you two are lying here moaning and groaning with pain, I will be outside playing and having fun.”
    “You can’t do that,” Tom said. “We are quarantined.”
    “True “ Sweyn admitted “but it so happens my good friend Jerry Mason has had the German measles and Dr. LeRoy and Mamma said he could come here to play.”
    “Why don’t you really rub it in and tell J.D. you’ll celebrate his birthday for him?” Tom asked with sarcasm.
    “That’s right,” Sweyn said as if the idea pleased him. “Can you imagine J.D. celebrating his birthday in bed with the measles? What a way to spend a birthday.”
    I was so sick I’d forgotten about my birthday. Spending my birthday in bed with the measles wasn’t bothering me because I knew Mamma would give me a delayed birthday party when I was well. What was bothering me was knowing I would never be the first to catch a disease. I would never be the one to be all well just as Tom and Sweyn were getting sick. I would never know the joy of coming into Mamma’s bedroom and rubbing salt in their wounds the way they did to me.
    Every day Sweyn came into the bedroom to tell us about all the good things he’d had to eat that day while Tom and I had to eat just mush and soup. Every day Sweyn rubbed it in by telling us what he and Jerry Mason planned to do that day while we lay sick in bed.
    Tom and I finally got over the measles. The quarantine sign on our house came down and we three boys went back to school.
    Mamma gave me a delayed birthday party on a Saturday afternoon. All my friends came to the party. We played Heavy Heavy Hangs Over My Poor Head, Button Button Who Has the Button, Hide the Thimble, Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and other wonderful games.
    All my friends gave me presents, but the best present of all was the genuine Indian beaded belt my Uncle Mark gave me. Uncle Mark was the town marshal and a deputy sheriff. He was married to Papa’s sister, my Aunt Cathie. Tom was bug-eyed when he saw the belt. He tried to trade me out of it and then he tried to swindle me out of it, but I was too smart for him. I was the only kid in town with a genuine Indian beaded belt and I wasn’t about to let go of it for anything.
    On Wednesday of the following week I missed my friend Howard Kay at school. Sweyn, Tom, and I had been staying after school every afternoon to make up for the days we’d lost. When Miss Thatcher anally let us go, I ran all the way to the Kay home. There was a yellow quarantine sign on the house. I knew from the color of the sign that Howard must have the mumps. Wasn’t this just my luck. Why couldn’t Howard have had his mumps while I was having the measles.
    That night as Tom and I undressed for bed I hung my Indian belt on the bedstead.
    “It’s a beauty,” Tom said, eyeing the belt. “There must be something you want more than the belt, J.D.”
    “Nothing you’ve got,” I said, thinking about Howard and his mumps.
    “Then there is something!” Tom said eagerly. “Just name it, J.D., and we can make a deal.”
    “The mumps,” I said. “Only I’ve got to get them first.”
    “You must be crazy,” Tom said. “I could tell you how to get the mumps first, but knowing Mamma’s system I’d have to get them too. The belt isn’t worth it.”
    I lay awake putting my little brain to work. If Tom knew how I could get the mumps first, there