Zooman Sam Read online

  "Me too," Anastasia said. "I drive you crazy, too. But you never—"

  "Actually," Mrs. Krupnik said, "I think about it quite often. At least three times a week. That time when you borrowed my leather jacket, Anastasia, without asking me, and then—"

  "Do we have to discuss this? Isn't this water over the dam? Or under the bridge?" Anastasia passed her plate to her dad, for more meatloaf.

  "It's more like one very expensive leather jacket over the dam, or under the bridge, or maybe in the dressing room at T. J. Maxx, or could it possibly be at McDonald's, or wherever you might have left it?"

  "I don't see what this has to do with the dog," Anastasia said. "And I don't think we should give the dog away. I love the dog."

  "Me too," said Sam. "I love Sleuthie."

  His mother sighed. "We all love him. But we haven't done a good enough job of training him. What we need is an animal trainer."

  Suddenly everyone was looking at Sam. They were looking at his coverall. They were looking at the red letters on his chest, the letters that said ZOOMAN SAM.

  "Me?" Sam said.

  His father, mother, and sister all nodded. "You," they said.

  At show-and-tell time the next morning at Sam's school, all of the firefighters were wearing their normal clothes. So they didn't have as much to fight about.

  Leah had told them about being a doctor during snacktime the day before, and had distributed her M&M pills.

  Now Lindsay had a turn. Wearing jeans and a sweater, Lindsay simply held a doll, rocking it gently, and announced that her Future Job was to be a mom. Adam called out that being a mom wasn't a real job, so Mrs. Bennett told them all what an important job it was, and then she read them a book about moms while Lindsay rocked the doll and patted its back.

  All of the children listened carefully to the story and looked at the pictures when Mrs. Bennett held up the book. On each page, they saw a different kind of mother doing something. They saw a Japanese mother carrying her baby on her back.

  "Yeah," Adam called out, "but that's not a job! Nobody pays her to do that!"

  Mrs. Bennett looked at Adam with a very warning kind of look. Then she read the next page and showed a picture of an African mother bathing her baby at the edge of a river. She and the baby were both smiling.

  "What kind of job is that?" Adam called out. "That baby's going to get eaten by an alligator!"

  Becky began to cry. Miss Ruth picked up Becky and comforted her.

  Big Ben picked up Adam and held him very firmly on his big lap. It was a warning kind of hold.

  "Mrs. Bennett?" Sam held up his hand politely.

  "Yes, Sam? Do you want to say something about moms?"

  Sam nodded. "I want to say that they don't have alligators in Africa."

  "We're talking about moms now, Sam," Mrs. Bennett reminded him.

  "I know. But I want to say that they have crocodiles in Africa, not alligators."

  Becky began to howl. "Crocodiles!" she wailed. "I'm scared of crocodiles!"

  "And," Sam went on, before Mrs. Bennett could interrupt him, "I think it's a very important job for that mom to protect her baby from crocodiles."

  "That's true, Sam," Mrs. Bennett said. "Thank you."

  "But it's not a real job," Adam said loudly.

  Lindsay continued to stand in front of the circle, rocking her doll. Mrs. Bennett turned a page and showed a picture of an Eskimo mother smearing grease on her baby as he lay on a pile of what looked like bearskins. Sam thought it looked a little yucky and was very glad he wasn't an Eskimo.

  Page after page, they looked at mothers caring for their babies. Sam decided that Mrs. Bennett was right. Being a mom was a hard job. Not all that much different from being a zookeeper, actually.

  "Okay, Lindsay, thank you," Mrs. Bennett said. "Now, let's see. We have just a few people left. Jessica and Kate, would you like to tell us about being lawyers, like your mothers?"

  Jessica and Kate carried their briefcases to the front of the circle. They stood side by side.

  "You stink!" Jessica said to Kate.

  "You stink double!" Kate replied.

  "I'm going to put you in jail!" Jessica said.

  "I'm going to put you in the electric chair!" Kate said.

  Then they went back to their seats in the circle. "That's what lawyers do," Kate explained.

  "Cool," Adam said loudly. "I want to be a lawyer."

  "Anybody else? Emily? You haven't had a turn, have you?"

  "I changed my mind," Emily said. "I was going to be a nun, but now I'm going to be a mom, like Lindsay."

  "Well," Mrs. Bennett said, "that's quite a change. But I'm glad you saw what an important job being a mom is, Emily. Okay, class! That's it for Future Jobs. Now we have to get to work pasting some faces on those wonderful big pumpkins we made yesterday."

  "Mrs. Bennett! Mrs. Bennett!" Sam waved his arm in the air. "You forgot!"

  "What did I forget, Sam?" Mrs. Bennett had moved to the supply closet and was taking out a big jar of paste. Sam saw Miss Ruth move into position near Emily. If someone didn't keep an eye on her, Emily liked to eat the paste.

  "I'm going to do a different animal each day, remember? For twenty-eight days?"

  Mrs. Bennett sighed. "How could I have forgotten that, Sam?" she said. "Especially when you're wearing that hat?"

  Sam adjusted his hat. "Gators," he said.

  "Children," Mrs. Bennett announced, "while we do our pumpkin faces, Sam is going to tell us about alligators."

  "Alligators!" Becky wailed. "Oh, no! I'm scared of alligators!"

  11

  At home, that afternoon, Sam replaced Gators in the bag and looked through all the hats that he had not yet worn. He had to choose one for tomorrow.

  There were seven caps with words that began with B. Sam knew the sound of B, and he said it to himself, sitting on the living room floor with the trash bag opened and the caps strewn all around him.

  "Buh, Buh, Buh," Sam said, and looked at the seven caps with B. Some were long words, just too hard.

  But one had two L's, and Sam knew the sound of two L's because there were two L's in Jell-O. The hat also had a little picture, which helped, of a snorting bull. Bull, Sam said to himself. If the word Bull had an O on the end, he figured out, it would be Bull-O. He laughed, thinking about that.

  "What are you giggling about, Sam?" his mom called. She was at work in her studio. Mrs. Krupnik was an artist who made the pictures for children's books. He could see her through the open door as she sat on the stool by the special table where she worked on book illustrations.

  "Nothing," he called back. It was too complicated to explain. He put on the Bulls cap and arranged his ears inside.

  He went into the studio and stood beside his mom. "Tomorrow, at school, I'm doing bulls," he explained. "I did gators today, but it made Becky cry."

  "I wish those caps were smaller," Mrs. Krupnik said. She tilted the visor a little and looked at Sam. "I can hardly see your face."

  "Probably after I talk about bulls, Mrs. Bennett will read Ferdinand," Sam told his mom.

  "One of our favorites," she said, smiling.

  That was true. They even had a tape of Ferdinand which they often played in the car. Sam and his mother knew the whole story by heart. Sometimes they said it along with the tape.

  "But then she'll have to explain about bullfighting, and Becky will cry," Sam said glumly. "Becky always cries."

  "Oh, dear," Mrs. Krupnik said sympathetically. She dipped her tiny brush into some green paint and added a bit of green to the picture of elves she was working on. The elves were funny, Sam thought. They had chubby pink cheeks and pointed shoes.

  "Nobody did artist for Future Job," Sam told her.

  Secretly, Sam wished he had chosen artist. He could have worn jeans, the way his mother did, and put a paintbrush behind one ear, the way she had a paintbrush right now. He could have worn one of his father's old shirts, the way his mother did, and splattered it with p
aint of all colors.

  "People change their minds about jobs," his mother told him. She looked carefully at the green that she had just painted onto an elf hat. Then, while Sam watched, she mixed a little yellow into her green and redid the pointed end of the tiny hat.

  "Some kids might want to be, oh, lawyers," she said. "And maybe they even become lawyers—but then they could change their mind and become artists."

  "Or they could be zookeepers, and then change their mind," Sam suggested.

  "I suppose so." His mother smiled at him. "But not when they have a great zooman suit made by their mom." She reached down and gave him a little tickle. Then she looked at his suit more closely. "Remind me to wash that tonight," she said. "You've been wearing it for two days. That looks like ketchup on the sleeve—oh, no!" She cringed.

  "You shouldn't have said 'ketchup,' Mom," Sam pointed out needlessly, as Sleuth bounded into the room. Mrs. Krupnik held the edges of her table tightly so that the dog wouldn't bump into it and spill her water and paints.

  "Sam, do me a favor. Take the dog and go practice a little animal training."

  "Do I have a dog hat?" Sam asked.

  Mrs. Krupnik thought. She had read all the hats to him on the first morning. "No," she said, "I'm afraid not. But you know what, Sam? You have a Timberwolves hat. And a timber wolf is very closely related to a dog, don't you think?"

  Sam thought about it. In his mind he pictured a wolf. There were a lot of books with wolf pictures in them: Red Riding Hood, for one, and The Three Little Pigs.

  He looked at Sleuth, who was very shaggy, with white hair in his eyes and a fluffy tail that curled up over his back when he was happy, and hung down like a snowy pine tree branch when he was sad. Right now Sleuth's tail was up because he was the center of attention.

  "Well," said Sam dubiously. "I guess he's sort of wolfy."

  "So switch hats and take Sleuth out in the yard for some training. I have to get this picture done."

  "Can Anastasia help me?"

  "She isn't home," his mother explained. "She had to stay after school for Chorus."

  Sam sighed. He headed back toward the living room. He wasn't looking forward to searching through all those hats again. "Come on, Sleuth," he said, and the dog followed him amiably.

  "It will begin with T, and it will be the very longest word you have," his mother called.

  That made it easy. There were only two T's, and one was the Tigers hat that Sam had already worn. Sam set his Bulls cap aside and put on the Timberwolves cap.

  He took his dog out into the large yard beside the house, and stood there wondering how on earth one went about teaching good behavior to an animal. Sleuth sat cheerfully at Sam's side and pawed at an acorn in the grass.

  "Hey, Zooman!"

  Sam looked up. Steve Harvey, Anastasia's friend who was absolutely not her boyfriend, was leaning on the gate to the yard.

  "Hi," Sam said.

  "Is your sister around?"

  "No, she had to stay at school for Chorus."

  "What're you doing?" Steve came through the gate and into the yard. He scratched Sleuth behind the ear. "Hi, Sleuth," he said.

  "Animal training," Sam explained. "It's the kind of thing a zooman has to do."

  "Sit, Sleuth," Steve said. Sleuth sat abruptly and looked up.

  "Down, Sleuth," Steve said. Sleuth wiggled himself into a lying-down position and looked up through his fringe of hair.

  "He's already trained, Sam," Steve said.

  "Yes, but he does a bad thing if you say a food word."

  "A food word?" Steve asked with a puzzled look.

  "Yes. The name of a food. Almost any food. Try it," Sam said.

  Steve looked at Sleuth, who was still obediently lying on the grass. He thought. "Cheeseburger," Steve said loudly.

  Sleuth leaped up, woofed, and threw himself at Steve.

  "Down!" Steve shouted. Sleuth reluctantly lay down again.

  "What about a food that tastes horrible?" Steve asked Sam.

  "Nothing tastes horrible to Sleuth," Sam explained.

  "Brussels sprouts!" Steve tried. Sleuth looked up but didn't move.

  "Brussels sprouts taste horrible to everybody, even dogs," Steve explained. Sam nodded. Actually, Sam kind of liked Brussels sprouts. He liked the way they looked like little cabbages. And his mom put lots of butter on them, so they tasted good.

  But Sleuth did not react to Brussels sprouts.

  "Spaghetti!" Steve said. Sleuth leaped forward and almost knocked him down.

  "You got a problem here," Steve told Sam.

  Duh, Sam thought, but he didn't say it. His mom thought saying "duh" was very rude.

  "We need a gun," Steve said. Then he looked at Sam's face, and laughed. "No, Sam," he reassured him. "Not that kind of gun."

  12

  Sam sank to his knees beside Sleuth. He put his arms around the dog, and Sleuthie licked Sam's face.

  "We can't shoot him," Sam said emphatically to Steve. "We love him!"

  Steve Harvey laughed. "No, Sam," he explained. "You didn't let me finish." He sat down on the grass beside Sam and the dog.

  "You probably know this already, being a zooman," Steve said.

  "I'm only a beginning zooman," Sam pointed out.

  "Well, the thing that animal trainers all know is that you have to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior."

  Sam thought about that. It made sense. "Moms do that," he said. "And dads. And teachers." He thought about Mrs. Bennett sending Adam to the time-out chair. And Becky. And Tucker. And Stephen with a PH. Even Sam had to go to the time-out chair occasionally.

  "That's right, Sam." Steve scratched Sleuth behind his ear, through the thick white hair. "Now: we need to teach Sleuth that certain behavior isn't acceptable. So we need to think of a way to punish him when he does it."

  "A time-out chair," Sam announced. "That's the best way."

  But Steve shook his head. "Dogs don't understand time-out chairs. Time-out chairs are a place for humans to sit and think, but dogs don't do that. What we need is a quick physical thing: something that will hurt a little, but only for a second."

  "Not a gun," Sam said warily. Suddenly he remembered something. It was something that had happened quite recently. "I know!" he said. "Anastasia did it to me! A quick thing that hurt for a second!"

  "Your sister? She did something that hurt?" Steve looked surprised.

  "Yesterday, when we went to your house to say thank you to your dad for the hats? Every time I said something dumb, Anastasia poked me with her finger. Like this." Sam leaned over and poked Steve hard, in the middle of his back, with his index finger.

  Steve jumped. "Ouch!" he said. "I see what you mean. But you didn't say anything dumb, Sam. You said thank you to my dad. That was all."

  "But I kept starting to say dumb things. And Anastasia kept poking me. I started to say about flecks."

  "Flecks?"

  "Yes. Anastasia told me that you had beautiful flecks in your eyes. So when we were in your yard, I started to say about the flecks, and she poked me really hard."

  Steve was grinning. "Beautiful flecks? Your sister really said that?"

  "Yeah. She said that they were the same color as the highlights in your hair. But she would really have poked me if I said about highlights."

  Steve ran his hand through his thick hair. Sleuth looked up and woofed slightly. "She likes my hair?" Steve asked.

  Sam nodded. "So we need to poke Sleuth, huh? When he's bad?"

  "What else did she say about my hair?" Steve asked.

  "Nothing. That was all." Sam was impatient. He didn't want to talk about hair. He wanted to start training his dog.

  "You want a hat?" Sam asked Steve. "I've got my Timberwolves cap, for when I train dogs. I could get you some kind of animal hat."

  Steve was patting his hair, still, and arranging it with his hand. "No, I think a hat might mess up my hair. What time is your sister getting home?"

  Sam was getti
ng very impatient now. He tried to think of a way to bring Steve's attention back to dog training. "She won't be home till late," Sam said. "She's probably going to stop on the way home and have a—" He looked at Sleuth, who was sound asleep on the grass. "A hamburger" Sam said loudly.

  At the sound of the H-word, Sleuth woke suddenly and jumped up. He pawed at Sam and Steve in excitement.

  "Poke him with your finger!" Sam said.

  But it was clear that a finger poke would have no effect on a jumping, woofing dog. Steve scolded Sleuth firmly and finally got him back to a sitting position. "We really need a gun, Sam," Steve said, and then, when he saw Sam's face, explained, "I mean a water pistol."

  "I'm not allowed to have guns," Sam said sadly. "Not even toy ones." Sam's parents had the same rule as Mrs. Bennett. They didn't even like it when he aimed a stick and said, "Blam." Sometimes Sam secretly made his fingers into guns and shot things that way, but he didn't let his parents see.

  Steve was thinking. "How does your mom wash windows?" he asked.

  Sam tried to remember. "Well, first she talks about it a lot. Every day she says, 'Those windows are dirty.' Then after she says that for about a hundred days, she finally says, 'Okay, I'm going to do it. Today I'm going to wash the windows.' And then she looks at my dad, but he says he has to go take the car to be repaired. And then she looks at Anastasia, but Anastasia says she has homework. And then she looks at me, and I say, 'I'll help,' but she says I'm too little. So she does it by herself."

  "But what does she use to wash them?" Steve asked.

  "Rags," Sam said.

  "But doesn't she have a squirt bottle of blue stuff?"

  Sam nodded.

  "Great," Steve said. "That's what we need. Can you borrow that bottle?"

  "Okay. But what're we going to do with it?"

  "Squirt Sleuth," Steve said.