Nilly Has an Idea
THAT AFTERNOON, NILLY knocked hard on the cellar door at the blue house. Three firm knocks. That was the signal they’d agreed on.
Doctor Proctor flung open the door and when he saw Nilly, he exclaimed, “Wonderful!” Then he raised one bushy eyebrow and lowered another bushy eyebrow, pointed, and asked, “Who is that?”
“Lisa,” Nilly said.
“I can see that,” the professor said. “She lives across the street there if I’m not mistaken. What I mean is: What’s she doing here? Didn’t we agree that this project was top secret?”
“Obviously it’s not that secret,” Lisa said. “Nilly told the whole class about it today.”
“What?” the professor exclaimed, frightened. “Nilly, is that true?”
“Uh,” Nilly said. “A little, maybe.”
“You told … you told … ,” the professor sputtered, waving his arms around in the air, while Nilly stuck out his lower lip and made his eyes look big, as if he were on the verge of tears. This facial expression, which Nilly had practiced especially for situations like this, made him look like a tiny little, very depressed camel. Because everyone knows that it’s absolutely impossible to be mad at a very depressed camel. The professor groaned, giving up, and lowered his arms again. “Well, well, maybe it’s not so terrible. And you are my assistant after all, so I suppose it’s all right.”
“Thanks,” Nilly said quietly.
“Sure, sure,” said the professor, waving his hands at Nilly. “You can stop trying to look like a camel now. Come in and close the door behind you.”
They did as he said, while Doctor Proctor hurried over to the test tubes and glass containers that were bubbling and smoking with something that smelled like cooked pears.
Lisa stopped just inside the door and looked around. There was a potted plant with white petals on the windowsill. And on the wall next to it hung a picture of a motorcycle with a sidecar in front of what she assumed must be the Eiffel Tower in Paris. A smiling young man who looked like the professor was sitting on the motorcycle seat, and there was a sweet, smiling girl with dark hair in the sidecar.
“What are you doing?” Nilly asked Doctor Proctor.
“I’m perfecting the product,” he said, stirring some mixture in a big barrel. “Something that ought to give it even more pep. A concoction of the more explosive type, you might say.”
The professor dipped a finger in and then brought it to his mouth. “Hmm. A little more wormwood.”
“Can I taste?” Lisa asked, peering over the edge of the barrel.
“Sorry,” the professor said.
“Sorry,” Nilly said.
“Why not?” Lisa asked.
“Are you a certified fart powder tester, perhaps?” Nilly asked.
Lisa thought for a second and said, “Not as far as I know.”
“Then I recommend that you leave the testing to me for the time being,” Nilly said, pulling on his suspenders. Then he took a spoon and stuck it down into the barrel.
“Careful,” the professor said. “Start with a quarter spoonful.”
“Sure,” Nilly said, putting a quarter spoonful of powder in his mouth.
“Then we’ll start the countdown,” Doctor Proctor said, and looked at the clock. “Seven—six—five—four—three … hey, don’t stand right behind him, Lisa!”
Right then there was a bang. And Lisa felt a blast of air hitting her before she lost her balance and sat down hard on her butt on the cold cellar floor.
“Oh,” Nilly said. “Lisa, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, a little dazed as the professor helped her back onto her feet. “Well, I’d call that some pep!”
Nilly laughed out loud. “Well done, Doctor!”
“Thank you, thank you,” the professor said. “I think I’ll conduct a little test myself …”
The professor took half a teaspoon and counted down. At zero there was another bang, but this time Lisa was careful to stand by the door.
“Wow,” the professor said, picking up the plant, which didn’t have petals on it anymore. “I think we’ll do the next test outside.”
They poured the powder into a cookie tin and brought it outside.
“Give me the teaspoon,” Nilly said.
“Careful with the dose … ,” Doctor Proctor started to say, but Nilly had already gobbled up a full teaspoon.
“I feel a tingling in my stomach,” said Nilly, who was so excited that he was whining and jumping up and down.
“Seven—six—five,” the professor counted.
When the bang came, all the songbirds in the professor’s pear tree took off and flew away in alarm. And this time it wasn’t Lisa but Nilly who got knocked over and disappeared in the tall grass.
“Where are you?” Doctor Proctor yelled, searching in the grass. “How did it go?”
They heard a gurgling noise and then Nilly popped up, totally red in the face from laughing.
“More!” he yelled. “More!”
“Look, Professor!” Lisa pointed. “It ripped the seat of Nilly’s pants!”
And indeed it had. Nilly’s pants were practically torn apart. The professor looked at the results with concern and decided that they should stop the testing for today. He asked them to search for his lawn furniture, which was in the grass somewhere, and then went inside. When he came back out, he brought bread, butter, liverwurst, and juice. Lisa had found the lawn furniture, and while they sat in the crooked white-painted chairs and ate, they contemplated what the invention could be used for. The professor had the idea of trying to sell the powder to farmers. “They could eat a half teaspoon of fart powder,” he explained, “and hold the sack of seed grain in front of the … uh, launch site. Then the air pressure would spread the seeds over the whole field. It’ll save a ton of time. What do you guys think?”
“Excellent!” Nilly said.
“To be completely honest,” Lisa said, “I don’t think people are really going to want to eat food that comes from seeds that have been farted on.”
“Hmm,” the professor said, scratching his mop of white hair. “You’re probably right about that.”
“What about making the world’s fastest bicycle pump?” Nilly yelled. “All you have to do is take a hose, fasten one end to your butt and the other to the valve on the bike tire, and then … kaboom! The tire is filled in a fraction of a second!”
“Interesting,” said the professor, stroking his goatee. “But I’m afraid it’s the kaboom that’s the problem. The tire’s going to explode too.”
“What if we use the fart powder to dry hair?” Lisa suggested.
Nilly and the professor looked at Lisa while she explained that the whole family could draw straws, everyone from the littlest to Grandma, to see who would eat the fart powder after everyone had showered in the morning. And then everyone else could just stand behind that person.
“Good idea,” said the professor. “But who’s going to dry the farter’s hair?”
“And what if the blast knocks Grandma over and she breaks her hip?” Nilly said.
They kept tossing out one suggestion after another, but all of the suggestions had some kind of annoying drawback or other. In the end they were all sitting there quietly chewing their sandwiches when Nilly suddenly exclaimed, “I have it!”
Lisa and Doctor Proctor looked at him without much enthusiasm, since this was the fourth time in only a couple of minutes that Nilly had said he had it and so far he definitely hadn’t had it. Nilly leaped up onto the table. “We could just use the powder for the same thing we’ve been using it for so far!” he said.
“But we’re not using it for anything,” the professor said.
“We’re just making meaningless bangs,” Lisa said.
“Exactly!” Nilly said. “And who likes meaningless bangs better than anything?”
“Well,” the professor said. “Kids, I guess. And adults who are a little childish.”
“Exactly! And when do they want things that bang?”
“Yes!” Nilly shouted, excited. “And … and … and?”
“Norwegian Independence Day!” Lisa blurted out, jumping up onto the table next to Nilly. “That’s only a few days away! Don’t you see, Professor? We don’t need to come up with anything at all, we can just sell the powder the way it is!”
The professor’s eyes widened and he stretched his thin, wrinkled neck so that he looked like some kind of shorebird. “Interesting,” he mumbled. “Very interesting. Independence Day … children … things that go boom … it’s … it’s …” With a bounce he leaped up onto the table too. “Eureka!”
And as if on cue, the three of them started dancing a victory dance around the table.
