Zooman Sam (10 page)

"Sam, you don't really need to wear all your hats here at home, do you?" his mom asked. "Why don't you take them off for lunch, at least?"

Sam thought about that and decided it would be okay. His head had begun to feel a little weighted from the six hats, and it felt good to put them back into the plastic bag that he now kept in the back hall beside the kitchen.

"I like seeing your hair," his mother told him, and she ran her fingers through it. Then she asked, "You hungry? I fixed some..." She hesitated and looked around. Sleuth was in his usual spot in the corner of the kitchen.

Sam could smell what she had prepared for lunch, and he knew it would be safe to say it. "Hot dogs," he announced.

Sleuth opened his eyes, looked up, glanced at Sam, appeared to think for a moment, and to make a decision, and then put his head back down.

"That's absolutely amazing, Sam. In just a week, you and Steve have that dog's behavior under control. What a great animal trainer you are!"

"We haven't finished, though," Sam warned her. "There are some casseroles we haven't done yet. And some desserts."

"Okay, I'll be careful what I say. But here you are: a hot dog." His mom put the plate in front of him. "And after lunch, shall we go to the library?"

Sam loved the library. He had always called it the
liberry,
even though he knew the correct word was
library.
He
liked
saying "liberry," which sounded like "blueberry" or "strawberry" or "raspberry," as if you could make jam out of it, or syrup for pancakes. At the IHOP restaurant, where they went sometimes, there was a little pitcher of blueberry syrup. Sam wondered what
it would be like if the chef could make liberry syrup to pour on your pancakes, or liberry jam to have with peanut butter in a sandwich.

When he was older, he decided, he would say the word correctly. But for now, he would say "liberry."

Mrs. Dilahunt, the children's librarian, greeted him when he entered the Children's Room, which was painted in bright colors and had mobiles hanging from the high ceiling. "Hello there, Sam," she said. "My goodness, a different hat today! What does this one say? Let me see." She came out from behind her desk and examined his cap.

"Blue Jays," Mrs. Dilahunt said. "That's a coincidence. Just this morning there was a blue jay on the bird feeder. See over there, at the window?" Sam looked where she pointed, at a feeder filled with sunflower seeds, attached to the sill of the library window.

"When you were here earlier this week, what was it you were wearing? Rams, I think. And last week it was Cubs. You certainly have a lot of different hats, Sam."

"Thirty," Sam told her, with a sigh.

"
Thirty!
" Mrs. Dilahunt said, looking impressed. "I've known only one other person who
owned thirty hats, and that was my great-aunt Madeline, who lived in Philadelphia.

"Of course," Mrs. Dilahunt said to Sam's mother, in an amused voice, "my great-aunt Madeline was a complete nut case. I mean
complete
"

Sam put his stack of books on Mrs. Dilahunt's desk. He was returning the ones that he and his mom had checked out earlier in the week. He had especially liked the one about a boa constrictor named Crictor. Mrs. Bennett had the same book at his school, and he thought she would probably read it next week, when Sam wore his very scary hat that said...

Well, Sam didn't want to think about that. His scary hats scared even
him.

While his mother looked in the grown-up section for her books, Sam wandered over to a low child-size table and looked at the books on display. Mrs. Dilahunt had set all the Halloween books on the table, and Sam sat down in one of the small chairs and looked at pictures of pumpkins and skeletons.

"Don't forget, Sam! Tomorrow morning is 'Saturday Morning at the Movies'!" Mrs. Dilahunt called from her desk.

Sam hadn't forgotten. He loved "Saturday
Morning at the Movies." It wasn't at the movies, actually; it was at the library. Sam had never figured out why she called it "At the Movies" when it was really "At the Library." But he loved it anyway. In the special room with no windows, there was a big-screen TV. He could sit on the carpeted floor. When all of the children were arranged in their places, and nobody was crying or fighting, and everybody was very quiet, Mrs. Dilahunt gave each child a small bag of popcorn. Then she showed a movie. Sam's favorite was
Babe.

He was afraid, though, that he wouldn't be able to attend this week's movie. Tomorrow he and Steve were going to work on casseroles with Sleuth. Sam hoped Anastasia wouldn't be there. He loved his sister. But if his sister was around when Steve was there, then Steve and Anastasia started laughing about dumb stuff, and nobody paid any attention to Sam. His mom said it was because they were teenagers. She said that Sam would be the same way when he was a teenager, but Sam knew it wasn't true.

Sam leafed through a book about jack-o'-lanterns. He felt a little sad. He remembered a time not very long ago, when he was just an ordinary boy who wore Osh-Kosh overalls and
played with his friends and went to see
Babe
at the library. Now, all of a sudden, he had a lot of jobs to do. He had to teach the other children about animals, some of them very scary ones; and he had to train his dog how to behave around the word
lasagna.
He had to wear a suit with not one single pocket and with a grape juice stain—which would not come out in the wash, no matter how hard his mother tried—on the elbow.

And he had to—

But Mrs. Dilahunt interrupted his sad thoughts. "Sam?" she said. Sam looked up.

"I think your mom's almost ready to leave. Have you chosen a book to check out?"

He looked at the jack-o'-lantern book. It didn't look very interesting, actually.

"I picked one out for you," Mrs. Dilahunt told him. "It's really special, as if the author was actually thinking 'Sam Krupnik' when he wrote it. Want to give it a try?"

Sam brightened. "Okay," he said.

But a few minutes later, sitting beside his mother in the car, Sam picked up the book, looked carefully at the cover, and made a little whimpering sound.

"What's wrong, Sam?" his mom asked. She was watching the road as they drove through the shopping area on their way home.

"Mrs. Dilahunt gave me a book, and she said it was special for me. She said the guy who wrote it—what's that called?" he asked his mother.

"The author."

"The Arthur?" Sam said. "He's an aardvark."

"The author," his mother corrected.

"I know," Sam said, "but I like to say Arthur.'"

"Why?" Mrs. Krupnik asked.

It was hard to explain. It was like
liberry.
The wrong word just sounded good. "Because he's an aardvark," Sam said.

"Oh," his mom said, though she still looked puzzled.

"Anyway, she said the Arthur probably thought 'Sam Krupnik' when he wrote it. And I thought maybe it would be a book about a boy having adventures, maybe a boy driving a train, or riding a horse, or fighting a giant, but..."

Mrs. Krupnik clicked the turn signal and turned the car onto their street. "But it isn't?" she asked sympathetically.

"
No.
"

"What is it about, then?"

"Something dumb. And the Arthur can't even write it right."

"What on earth are you talking about, Sam? You haven't even opened the book yet." His mother pulled the car into their driveway and turned off the motor.

"It's about
zoo hats!
" Sam wailed. "I don't want a book about zoo hats! And look! The Arthur wrote it wrong on the cover!" Sam handed his mother the unopened book.

She looked at it carefully. "Oh, I see what you mean, Sam. It looks very much like zoo hats. But it isn't."

"Because the dumb old Arthur made the Z wrong!"

His mother pulled Sam over onto her lap. He just fit behind the steering wheel. She put her finger on the word that Sam had thought was
Zoo.

"It's not a Z," Mrs. Krupnik said. "It's a 5. The number 5. On your next birthday, Sam, we'll find a big 5 to put on your cake."

"But what about the O's?" Sam asked, looking at the book title.

"The O's make it say a special number. Two oh oh would be two hundred, and three oh oh
would be three hundred, and four oh oh would be—"

"Four hundred," Sam said. He was getting it.

"So this book is called..." His mom smiled at him. "Can you guess?"

Sam looked carefully. "
The Five Hundred—
" he said slowly.

"That's right. The title of this book is
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins.
And that's why Mrs. Dilahunt chose it for you. She's been noticing all of your hats."

But Sam wasn't listening anymore. He hadn't even listened to the name of Bartholomew Cubbins. Sam had started to cry.

"Five hundred hats!" Sam wailed. He couldn't imagine anything worse.

Saturday morning was just what Sam had feared. Out in the yard, in their dog-training area next to Sam's sandbox, Steve and Anastasia started fooling around with Sleuth, and the serious work turned into a lot of silliness.

Sam tried using his teacher voice on them. It worked pretty well when he used it at school.

"Children!" he said sternly, looking at his sister and her boyfriend, "I think we're getting a little sidetracked here! Let's pay attention to our task!"

But Anastasia just shrieked with stupid laughter. She squirted the dog-training bottle at Steve and then ran around the yard while he chased her, trying to get even; Sleuth chased both of them, thinking that it was some sort of game. Sam watched them for a while and tried to figure out why it was that they seemed to be having so much fun when
he
wasn't having any fun at all.

Finally he gave up and went back into the house. He found his mom in the kitchen. The mixer was whirring, and his mom had some batter smears on her nose.

"You licked a bowl, didn't you?" Sam asked in a suspicious voice.

"Sure did," his mother admitted. "Oatmeal cookie batter. Want some? I saved you a little."

That was good news. Oatmeal cookie dough was Sam's favorite, and for a moment he was afraid that his mother had hogged it all, which would have ruined his morning entirely. She handed him a large wooden spoon still covered with gooey batter, and he began to lick.

"I didn't go to 'Saturday Morning at the Movies' because I had to help Steve train Sleuth," Sam said, "but Steve and Anastasia are just fooling around."

"I know," his mother told him. She walked over to the kitchen window and looked out into the yard. Steve and Anastasia were throwing
leaves at each other and laughing. Mrs. Krupnik smiled. "That's what being a teenager is like, Sam. When you have a crush on someone, you fool around and act silly. You'll do that someday."

Sam shook his head. He licked the last bit of dough from the sticky spoon. "No," he said sighing. "I'm always going to be sad." He made a very sad face, with his lower lip sticking out, so that his mother could see what he meant.

"My goodness!" she said, looking at his sad face. "Why?"

For a minute, Sam couldn't even remember why he was feeling so sorry for himself. Then he remembered, but he didn't know how to tell about it because it was too complicated. It was about wanting to be the best, the most important, the Chief of Wonderfulness.

Finally, because his mother was waiting, he tried to tell her about some of his sadnesses. "Because I always have to wear a zooman suit," he said at last, "and I don't have any pockets. And I have to wear hats every day. And my ears get folded."

He thought some more. Then he remembered a really big thing. "And I have some very scary animals to do, still."

"Like what?" his mother asked. "You already did lions and tigers. What could be scarier than lions and tigers?"

Sam looked at the floor. "There are five," he told her in a low voice. "But I'm not going to say them."

His mother picked him up. She sat down in a kitchen chair and arranged Sam on her lap. He could smell oatmeal cookies in the oven, and he could hear the clock chime in the hall. His cat wandered into the kitchen, looked around, arched her back, lay down on the dog's folded rug, and began to purr. Sam felt very cozy and comfortable.