Grover hoped to grow up to be a champion wrestler like the wrestlers he saw on television. His favorites were Whipper Billy Watson, Bobo Brazil, Killer Kowalski, and Gorgeous George who preened and strutted in a silly way and made Grover laugh. Sometimes Grover would pull one of the twins down to the ground without warning and pin them and shout, “You’re pinned! I win! I win!” even when the boys had not been aware that there had been a wrestling match in progress. But Rodney and Wayne could not help liking Grover who just like Becky and them, had only one parent, and who, just like the two boys, had never even met one of his parents. You see, Grover’s father had died in the Battle of Guadalcanal in World War II. He had died a war hero, and Grover kept all of his medals in a little box next to his bed.
Rodney and Wayne spent their normal school days listening to their pretty, young eighth-grade teacher Miss Lyttle talk about the differences between reptiles and amphibians, and the differences between acids and bases, and the differences between Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt. And all of these noncalamitous days were generally good days, except that they were sometimes a little boring.
And a little bothersome. The bothersome part went by the names Jackie Stovall and Lonnie Rowe. These were two boys in Rodney and Wayne’s class who had no friends other than each other. There was a very good reason for this: nobody liked them. And there was a very good reason why nobody liked them: they tried their best to make trouble for their classmates whenever possible. Lonnie liked to put out his leg and trip anyone walking past. (Most of the students in the class had learned to give him a wide berth.) However, Jackie’s mischief was more cunning. He would think of things to hurt people that no one had ever thought of before. And it was not only children who were the victims of his naughty behavior. Sometimes he would steal the newspapers left by the paperboy in the early morning. (This would have a double benefit to Jackie; people would have to start their day in a sour mood without their Pitcherville Press Morning Edition, and they would blame the paperboy for not delivering it.)
Sometimes Jackie replaced the milk that the milkman left on the porch with milk bottles filled with soapy water. He was always careful to cover his tracks and pretended never to know anything when it was time to get to the bottom of something bad that he had caused. Once he slipped away from school and disguised his voice and called Principal Kelsey on a pay phone to tell him that he had better hurry home because his wife had left the faucet running in her bathtub before she left the house and there was a cascade of water coming out of his upstairs bathroom window. The absentminded principal was halfway home before he realized that there was no upstairs floor to his house.
And that he did not even have a wife.
But Jackie Stovall reserved his most illustrious acts of mischief for Rodney and Wayne, because he was envious of the boys and all the good things they had done for the town through their work with Professor Johnson. Sometimes it would be a little thing like replacing the boys’ bologna sandwiches with mud sandwiches. But sometimes Jackie’s stunts were of a far more serious nature — like the time he put itch powder in the boys’ costumes when they played Pilgrims in the school Thanksgiving pageant. Several people in the audience had watched the twins jumping and wriggling around on the stage and had pointed at them and laughed in a way that Miss Lyttle (who had written the Thanksgiving pageant herself) had not intended. One woman had said in a loud voice, “Those two Pilgrim men must have to go to the bathroom! Take those Pilgrim men to the bathroom, Chief Wahunsunacock!”
All went well for so many days that the citizens of Pitcherville began to wonder if the calamities had stopped altogether. “Wouldn’t that be marvelous!” exclaimed Aunt Mildred, who was working late in her kitchen to make cinnamon fudge for Professor Johnson. (Aunt Mildred, you see, was quite fond of the bachelor professor and he liked her too, during those occasional moments when he could think of something other than his work.)
Then it happened: it was early in October when the mornings had gotten a little cooler and the leaves on the trees were just starting to show a little color that was not green.
Rodney woke, as he usually did, without opening his eyes, and knew that this was going to be one of those days. How did he know this? Because his arms and legs felt funny. They felt somehow smaller than usual. How could such a thing be? he asked himself, and do I dare to open my eyes to find out? Not only did his arms and legs feel funny, but his pajamas felt several sizes larger than they did when he went to bed. And where was his pillow? He reached about his head and could not feel it.
This is terrible, Rodney thought. I have been shrunk to a miniature size! Rodney had wondered when this might happen. Only a few weeks before, he and Wayne had sat down and made a list of all the different bad things that had yet to happen to the town of Pitcherville, and Rodney, remembering the problems of Alice in Wonderland, added to the list the possibility of everyone in the town being made very tiny. “And now it’s happened!” he said aloud, his eyes still squeezed tight.
“Now what’s happened?” Rodney had never heard this voice before — it was very high and very squeaky. And yet there was something a little familiar about it.
“Open your eyes, fraidy cat!” said the voice, now taunting him. And this is what Rodney did. He opened his eyes and glanced in the direction of the voice — in the direction of his brother’s bed— and there, sitting up against the wooden headboard that had been painted with a long wagon train, was a chubby baby of somewhere between one year and two years of age (Rodney was not good at telling the age of babies and toddlers since he didn’t spend much time around them). The baby looked very much like Wayne had looked when he was very young, for it had taken at least two years for Rodney to gain some weight and Wayne to lose some weight and the two to look more like twins. This is the way it often is with identical twins: one is born bigger than the other, and it takes a while before they grow into their identical-ness.
The baby looked quite comfortable and casual sitting against
the headboard. But he did not look entirely happy. “Will you get a load of this? I’m a baby!” he said in a not-very-happy voice. “And you’re a baby too. And I would have woken you up sooner but you were sleeping so peacefully. You were sleeping like a baby.”
Rodney stretched out his little arms and stretched out his little legs and knew now for certain that he was a baby too.
“Has everybody in Pitcherville been turned into babies?” asked Rodney in his own high and squeaky voice.
Baby Wayne shook his baby head. “I don’t think so. I heard Aunt Mildred a little earlier singing in the bathroom. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t singing in a baby voice.”