Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  “You could have told us the truth about vegetables,” Emily said from her seat. She sounded mad. “We’re not little kids.”

  “You’re right,” Mr. Pell agreed. “I promise to be honest with you from now on.”

  When it was Sam’s turn, he carried up his backpack to the front of the room. He opened it so that everyone could see Rudy inside. Some of the kids waved at Rudy. Probably because he was smiling, Sam thought.

  “Today I am going to tell you the story of Rudy and dirt,” Sam said, and a few of the boys clapped. Dirt was a very popular topic with the second-grade boys at Sam’s school. “Rutabagas are root vegetables, which means they spend most of their lives underground. They like dirt a lot.”

  Sam told his classmates about how vegetables got important vitamins and minerals from dirt. Dirt helped vegetables get the water and oxygen they needed to live and grow. It gave root vegetables a nice habitat. Before he met Sam, dirt had been Rudy’s best friend, Sam explained. That was why Sam was going to make a compost bin, so that Rudy could live in great dirt all his life.

  “That was more a report than a story,” Emily said when Sam was done.

  Mr. Pell said, “You know your rutabaga is done growing, right?”

  “I know,” said Sam. “I’ve known that all week.”

  Sam walked back to his desk. He wondered if Emily had been right. He’d told everyone a lot of interesting facts, but that wasn’t the same thing as telling a story. In a story, someone had to be in trouble or have a problem, and then they had to figure out how to get out of trouble or solve their problem. Sometimes in stories, a person wanted something really, really bad, but stuff kept getting in the way.

  So what did Rudy want, Sam wondered? What was Rudy’s problem he needed to solve?

  Rashid walked to the front of the classroom carrying the plastic container that held his tiny pumpkin. He looked sad, as though he had bad news.

  “My mom says she thinks my pumpkin was pretty old when I got it on Monday,” Rashid said. “And also, maybe I should have kept my pumpkin in a cool place. So here’s the story about how my pumpkin is getting rotten spots and why I have to throw it away today or else my mom’s going to throw it away for me.”

  Rashid opened up the plastic container. All of a sudden a pumpkin-y smell filled the room. It wasn’t a bad smell, Sam thought, but it wasn’t a good smell, either. It was an old mushy pumpkin smell.

  Sam opened up his backpack again and pulled out Rudy. Rudy was not mushy or soft or stinky. He was exactly the same as he’d been on Monday. But one day he could be just like Rashid’s tiny pumpkin if he wasn’t careful.

  That was Rudy’s problem! He was a vegetable, and vegetables get rotten after a while. Unless . . . unless what? What could Rudy do to keep from getting soft and stinky?

  Sam opened his science notebook and started writing. Once there was a rutabaga named Rudy, who wanted to live a long, long time. But how?

  Sam leaned back in his seat. The problem was, he had no idea how. But there must be a way to find out. Sam needed to do some research. He knew just the person to ask for help.

  Rudy, the Angry Rutabaga

  “You want to use my phone for what?” Annabelle asked at dinner that night.

  “Research,” Sam said. “I need to do research for a story I’m writing about Rudy.”

  “Who’s Rudy?” Sam’s dad asked. “Is he a new friend of yours?”

  “He’s my rutabaga,” Sam said. “Haven’t you been paying attention?”

  “Sorry, Sam the Man,” his dad said. “It’s been a busy week at work.”

  “My question is this,” Sam said, turning to Annabelle, who was probably the only person at the table who could help him. “What can I do to stop Rudy from getting brown and mushy?”

  “Not a dinner table discussion, Sam,” his mom said.

  “That’s a little bit on the disgusting side, Sam the Man,” his dad added.

  “Eat him,” Annabelle said.

  “I can’t eat him and keep him,” Sam said.

  “You can’t keep him and keep him,” Annabelle said. “Vegetables are not meant to live forever. They’re part of nature, just like me and you.”

  “But I’m going to live forever,” Sam said. “I think everyone will in the future.”

  “You know what I think you should do?” Annabelle asked. “Put Rudy in your compost bin.”

  “But I’m building a compost bin to make dirt for Rudy.”

  “You know you can just buy a bag of compost at the garden store, right?” his dad asked.

  “I know,” said Sam, who really wished people would quit asking him questions he already knew the answers to.

  Sam turned to Annabelle. “But even if I buy compost, it’s for Rudy to live in. It’s not to compost Rudy in.”

  “Um, Sam?” Annabelle looked at Sam as though she felt sorry for him. Sam wondered why.

  And then Sam got it.

  If Sam put Rudy in dirt, then Rudy would get mushy and turn into dirt.

  Dirt would not save Rudy. Not even really good dirt.

  “Maybe I should just put Rudy in the freezer,” Sam said.

  “And then what?” Annabelle asked.

  “Buy him a hat?” Sam said. “And maybe a scarf?”

  “I think you need to prepare yourself for reality, Sam,” Annabelle said. “But who knows? Maybe rutabagas last longer than other vegetables. You and Rudy might have months left together.”

  “Could we look it up?” Sam asked his sister.

  Annabelle nodded. “After dinner. We’ll sit on the couch and look it up.”

  After dinner, Annabelle and Sam sat on the couch and looked it up.

  There was good news, and there was bad news.

  The good news was that rutabagas could last for four or five months in a root cellar.

  The bad news was that Sam didn’t have a root cellar.

  Rudy would probably last four or five months in the refrigerator, Sam thought, but what kind of life was that?

  Sam knew that Rudy would probably be happiest living in dirt, even if he ended up getting mushy. Sam would do everything he could to give Rudy the best dirt possible. And maybe instead of getting mushy, Rudy would figure out how to stay firm. Rudy seemed like a pretty smart rutabaga to Sam.

  But even if Rudy could stay firm, there was more bad news. Sam realized later when he took Rudy out of his backpack. Rudy’s face was starting to wear off. When Sam tried to fix it using a ballpoint pen, he didn’t do a very good job. Now Rudy looked like he had a headache.

  “He looks cranky like Mr. Stockfish,” Annabelle said when Sam walked across the hallway to show her Rudy. He was hoping Annabelle could use her marker to make him look happy again.

  Annabelle got out her red marker and drew over the line Sam had drawn with the ballpoint pen. The problem was, the ballpoint pen had dug into Rudy’s skin. So even when Annabelle marked over it, it just looked like a frowning face with a red lipstick smile.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” she said, handing Rudy over. “I think you’re going to have to live with Rudy’s new look.”

  Having an angry-looking rutabaga in his backpack was not as much fun as having a rutabaga that smiled at him like it enjoyed his company.

  Sam put Rudy back in his backpack.

  Who knew that having a rutabaga for a friend could make your life so complicated?

  The Most Expensive Poop in the Store

  On Saturday Sam’s dad drove Sam to the garden supply store to buy a bag of compost. It would be months before the leaves and potatoes in his compost bin turned into actual compost. He couldn’t wait that long. Rudy needed the best dirt possible immediately.

  There were several types of compost to choose from. There was compost made from chicken manure, and compost made from cow manure. There was also compost made from mushrooms, and compost made from worm poop.

  “I would like to get the worm poop compost,” Sam told his dad, even though the worm poop compost was more expens
ive than the other kinds. Sam guessed you’d need about five hundred worms pooping night and day to make enough for even a small bag. Were there worm poop farms? he wondered. If there were, he’d like to visit one.

  “Why the worm poop, Sam the Man?” his dad asked.

  “Because it’s the funniest,” Sam said. “Maybe it will cheer Rudy up.”

  After they put the bag of worm poop compost in their car, Sam and his dad went to the other side of the store and found posts and chicken wire to make a compost bin. Then they drove to Mrs. Kerner’s house. When they got there Sam’s dad pulled a post digger out of the trunk of the car.

  “We need to dig four holes,” he explained to Sam as they walked to the backyard. “Then you’ll hold a post in a hole, and I’ll shovel dirt into it and stomp it down. Once we have all four posts in, I’ll staple chicken wire around them, and there you have a compost bin!”

  An hour later the compost bin was done. Sam shoveled in all the manure from the manure pile. He put in the scraps he’d been saving in his big bucket. Then he used a pitchfork to stir everything around.

  Sam thought his compost bin looked cool. He hoped the scraps and straw and manure turned into dirt fast. He wanted Rudy to enjoy it.

  Sam would like to see a smile on Rudy’s face again one day.

  After lunch Sam went out to the garage and found an old box. With his dad’s help he filled the box with the worm poop compost, and then he dug a hole in it. He took Rudy out of his backpack and placed him face-side up in the hole.

  “This box is your new home,” he told Rudy. “I think it will make your headache go away.”

  “You know rutabagas don’t really get headaches, right, Sam the Man?” his dad asked.

  “They might get headaches,” Sam said. “We don’t actually know if they do or not.”

  “They might, if they actually had heads,” his dad said.

  Sam guessed his dad was right. Rudy might have a face, and his face made him look like he had a head. But he didn’t have a head. He didn’t have a brain. He didn’t even have a face, not a real one.

  Maybe Sam had been wrong to try to be friends with a rutabaga.

  “Do you want me to go with you to pick up your compost scraps?” his dad asked after Sam had patted down the dirt so that Rudy was covered. “I could pull the wagon.”

  “No, thanks,” Sam said. “Mr. Stockfish is going with me. He gets cranky if he doesn’t get his daily walk.”

  Today was the third day Sam had collected compost scraps from his neighbors. He hadn’t gotten many on Thursday, but on Friday, Stella Montgomery made a carrot cake, so she had lots of carrot peels to put in Sam’s bucket.

  Mr. Stockfish was waiting by his mailbox when Sam got to his house. He looked fancier than usual. He was wearing a tie, and his black shoes were shiny.

  “You know Mrs. Kerner’s birthday isn’t until next week, right?” Sam asked. “You look dressed up.”

  “I’m perfectly aware of when the party is,” Mr. Stockfish said. “This is how I always dress. Well, maybe not the tie.”

  “Or the shiny shoes,” Sam pointed out. “And you smell good, too. I mean, nicer than usual. I’m not saying that you usually smell bad.”

  “I put on aftershave,” Mr. Stockfish said. He sniffed the air a couple of times, like he also thought he smelled good. “I always put on aftershave on Saturdays.”

  The first two neighbors had left their vegetable scrap buckets by the front door. All Sam had to do was dump their small buckets into his big bucket. There were potato peels and moldy bread and apple cores and broccoli stems all mixed together. When they got to Mrs. Kerner’s yard, Sam would shake them all out on top of the pile and then cover them up with the straw from the chicken coop and leaves from Mrs. Kerner’s yard.

  “I think you should knock on the door this time,” Sam said when they reached Stella Montgomery’s house. “I bet Mrs. Montgomery would like the way you smell.”

  Mr. Stockfish straightened out his tie. “You’re probably right,” he said. “She would. But I don’t want to give her the wrong impression.”

  “Like what?” Sam asked.

  “That I splashed on extra aftershave for her benefit,” Mr. Stockfish said.

  “Who did you splash it on for, then?” Sam asked.

  Mr. Stockfish’s cheeks grew red. “It’s none of your beeswax who.”

  When they got to Mrs. Kerner’s house, the driveway was empty.

  “I wonder where she’s off to,” Mr. Stockfish said. He sounded disappointed.

  Sam looked at Mr. Stockfish. He looked at his tie and his shiny shoes. He took another sniff of Mr. Stockfish’s aftershave, which smelled like Christmas trees.

  He remembered Mr. Stockfish and Mrs. Kerner sitting in the lawn chairs, holding their chickens. He remembered how Mr. Stockfish wasn’t frowning.

  “I bet she’ll be home soon,” Sam said. “She can smell your aftershave then.”

  “Harrumph,” growled Mr. Stockfish. But he didn’t frown, and his eyebrows didn’t make an angry V between his eyes.

  It was the happiest Sam had ever seen him.

  What Is Life without Frozen Waffles?

  Sam hated going shopping after school. He liked his regular after-school plan best. He walked home from the bus stop, ate two frozen waffles that were still frozen, and then picked up Mr. Stockfish for their daily walk to see their chickens. This was the perfect plan as far as Sam was concerned.

  On Monday it turned out his mom had a whole different plan in mind.

  “I e-mailed Mr. Pell that I’m going to pick you up after school today,” she said at breakfast. “Don’t forget and get on the bus.”

  “Why are you picking me up?” Sam asked, feeling disappointed. He loved taking the bus. There were no seat belts, and sometimes Miss Louise, their bus driver, sang in a loud silly voice that made Sam and Gavin crack up. Once, Gavin rolled out of the seat and into the aisle, and Miss Louise had to pull the bus over until he calmed down.

  “You have a birthday party to plan for,” Sam’s mom said.

  Sam was confused. His birthday wasn’t until May.

  “Mrs. Kerner’s birthday party, remember?” Annabelle said in a loud whisper.

  “Oh! I printed out the instructions for charades from the Internet yesterday,” Sam told them proudly. “And I thought maybe we could go to the store on Friday and buy some cupcakes. If they don’t have sprinkles, we can add some.”

  Sam’s mom shook her head. “There’s a lot more to planning a party than that, Sam the Man.”

  “And store-bought cupcakes never taste as good as they look,” Annabelle added.

  So here it was Monday afternoon, when Sam should happily be eating his frozen waffles, but instead he was at the store listening to his mom and Annabelle argue over the best color for party streamers.

  “Sam, you should choose,” Annabelle said. She held up a package of green streamers and a package of blue ones. “Me, I like the blue.”

  “Green is more festive,” Sam’s mom said.

  “Blue is everybody’s favorite color,” Annabelle said.

  Sam sighed. He reached up on the shelf and pulled down one package of white streamers and one package of red. “These will match the cupcakes,” he said.

  Sam’s mom and Annabelle agreed that this was a good point. “Now let’s pick out some plastic tablecloths,” his mom said.

  “Plastic’s bad for the environment, Mom,” Annabelle pointed out.

  “This is getting too complicated,” Sam said.

  They got napkins that said “Happy Birthday!” instead. It wasn’t until they were in the checkout line that Sam read the words “Now You’re Three!” on the back.

  “She’s a lot older than three,” Sam said, showing his mom.

  “I think these napkins could confuse a lot of people,” Annabelle said.

  Sam’s mom suddenly looked very tired. She took the napkins out of the cart and hid them behind the gum rack. “I think I have plain white p
aper napkins at home,” she said. “We can use those.”

  “Or Kleenex,” Sam pointed out. “Which would come in handy if anyone’s allergic to chickens and has to sneeze a lot.”

  On their way home, Sam looked at everything they’d bought for the party. He looked at the birthday party plates and the birthday party hats. He looked at the streamers and the candles and the red sprinkles and white frosting and the silver foil cupcake liners and the boxes of yellow cake mix.

  It seemed like a lot of stuff for a party where only four people were coming, five if Gavin got back from soccer on time.

  Sam leaned forward. “Does anyone know what Authors is? Mrs. Kerner says she wants to play Authors at her party.”

  Annabelle held up her phone from the front seat. “Meet me on the couch when we get home,” she said. “We’ll look it up.”

  “Why can’t we look it up now?” Sam asked.

  “Because I’m reading about bees,” Annabelle said. “I’m thinking about getting a hive of bees for our backyard.”

  “You should stop thinking about that,” Sam’s mom said. Her voice sounded like a rubber band that had been pulled as far as it could be pulled without snapping.

  Annabelle opened her mouth and then closed it. She turned to Sam. “I’ll go ahead and look up Authors now.”

  Sam nodded. He thought that was a good plan.

  “It’s a card game,” Annabelle said after a minute. “And all the authors are really old.”

  “We could draw their pictures on index cards,” Sam said.

  “Or we could print out pictures from the Internet and tape them to real playing cards,” Annabelle said.

  “We’ve got at least three packs of cards in the junk drawer,” Sam’s mom said. She sounded happier now that Annabelle had stopped talking about bees. “You could use one of those.”

  Sam patted his mom on the shoulder. “Good plan!”

  “Yeah, Mom,” Annabelle said. “Thanks.”