Ten Thumb Sam

by Rachel Muller

  “Who’s Oliver?” Sam asked.

  “Our pet chameleon,” said Herbie. “He’s escaped from his terrarium.”

  The commotion was too much for Aunt Mabel. She looked as if she was about to cry.

  Sam’s mother took control. “Okay, listen up everybody,” said Irene. “The bologna sandwiches go to the boys. Annabel and Mary Ann, you can have peanut butter and jam. Louise and Elizabeth, take the egg salad sandwiches. And if anyone’s still not happy, they can wait until the bus clears out and make their own lunch with whatever’s left. Good luck to you.”

  While the two mothers were doing their best to get lunch under control in the kitchen, Sam could hear his father having an intense discussion with his uncle at the front of the bus.

  “It’s really not necessary,” Sam heard his father say.

  “But I insist,” replied Albert. “We intend to pay our own way.”

  “But you’ve only just arrived,” said Max. “You need time to rest!”

  “Nonsense,” said Albert. “We’re all perfectly rested, thanks to your hospitality.”

  “Well then, at least give yourselves time to see how we do things, if nothing else,” Max argued. “Then we’ll figure out how to introduce your acts into the Triple Top show.”

  “It’s simple,” said Albert. “We’ll perform our acts in the order you do them, one after another: Triple Top, Goldfingers, Triple Top, Goldfingers. We’ll start at tomorrow’s matinee.”

  “But Albert,” said Max, “why would we want two magic acts, one after another?”

  “We’ll be giving the audience good value—twice the show for the same price!”

  Max’s voice began to rise. “But we’d be out there all day and all night if we did that!”

  “Not at all,” said Sam’s uncle. “We’ll shave a little time off our acts, and you can shave a little time off yours. It will be fabulous!”

  The discussion continued, but Sam had had enough of the noise and confusion. He grabbed his bologna sandwich and a handful of carrot sticks and headed back outside.

  Chapter Seven

  “There you are,” said Harriet.

  It was Saturday afternoon, and Sam was sitting at the picnic table outside the Stringbini bus, playing Lightning Smash Blasters on Martin’s Pocket-Nitro.

  The magpie on Harriet’s shoulder flapped its wings as she sat down beside Sam. “The show’s going to start in fifteen minutes,” Harriet said. “Want to watch with me?”

  Sam remained focused on his game. “Why? It’s always the same.”

  “I’ve never seen your family perform before. And you’ve never seen mine, either,” Harriet pointed out. She lifted Loki from her shoulder and put him inside the birdcage tucked in the shade of the bus.

  “I’m sick of circus acts, all of them,” said Sam.

  “Suit yourself,” Harriet said with a shrug.

  She was halfway to the big top when Sam caught up with her.

  “Changed my mind,” he replied in response to his cousin’s lifted eyebrow. “My batteries went dead. I’ve got nothing better to do while I wait for them to recharge.”

  “Your ringmaster looks like he’s about to have a heart attack,” Harriet said as she and Sam munched on caramel corn during intermission.

  Mr. Pigatto did look a little more excited than usual. He was waving his hands in the air as he addressed Sam’s father and some of the other performers. He paused to wipe his forehead with a red handkerchief, and then he pointed dramatically at his left wrist.

  Sam checked his own watch. “Mr. Pigatto has this thing about keeping everybody on time. I guess he’s not happy about how long the show is running with all the extra acts.”

  “Look over there,” said Harriet. She pointed across the tent to the performers’ entrance. “Mary Ann is throwing one of her hissy fits. That will be about having to cut back her time on the high wire. If Mary Ann had her way, she’d be the only act in the circus.”

  Mr. Pigatto and Mary Ann weren’t the only people unhappy with the new schedule. Sam found himself dodging grumpy performers wherever he went that afternoon. There were heated discussions everywhere. No one wanted to give up any time in the spotlight, and Mr. Pigatto was determined to keep the show from running too long.

  Even Sam’s father was visibly annoyed when he returned to the bus after the Triple Top’s evening performance. “Your brother is something else,” Sam heard his father whisper to his mother on the other side of the curtain when everyone was in bed. “He stole fifteen minutes from me tonight!”

  “He just got a little carried away, Max,” Irene soothed. “Besides, the crowd really did like his act. They gave him a standing ovation.”

  “Sure they did,” Max muttered crossly. “Why wouldn’t they? He was performing some of my best tricks. That one with the beach towel and the sandcastle? He stole that one from me years ago, when you and I were first dating.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

  “Humph,” Max grumbled. “And another thing; these benches are murder to sleep on. I want my bed back!”

  Sam rolled over on his foamie, trying to find a more comfortable position. He sympathized with his father. Sam’s narrow bunk wasn’t luxurious, but it was ten times better than the floor. When was he going to get his own bed back?

  Sam was awake the next morning before dawn. Something soft brushed against him as he sat up, but he couldn’t see what it was in the dark. Someone above him was snoring loudly. It sounded like Herbie—or maybe Robbie. Trying not to make any noise, Sam felt his way past the curtain and out the back door of the bus.

  His father’s voice startled him. “Couldn’t sleep either, eh, Sam? Well, pull up a chair.”

  Sam felt for one of the folding chairs leaning against the bus and set it up beside his father.

  “The silence is nice for a change, isn’t it?” said Max.

  Sam looked up at the stars twinkling peacefully in the sky above him and nodded. “When do we get the bus to ourselves again?”

  “When your uncle and his family find somewhere else to stay, I guess.”

  “But when is that going to be?”

  “Patience,” said Sam’s father. “Believe me, I know how you feel. It’s crowded enough in there without Albert and his family on top of us. Especially Albert. Your uncle has an ego the size of a small country.”

  “I really shouldn’t have said that,” Max said a minute later. “Oh well. I’m sure we’ll get through this somehow.”

  The other occupants of the Stringbini bus got up a few hours later. As he listened to the commotion coming from the kitchen, Sam was grateful he’d snuck a peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich outside.

  “Annabel, what’s wrong with your face?” Sam heard his mother ask in alarm. “You’re all red and puffy!”

  Annabel gave a double sneeze in response. “I doh’t dow,” she wheezed.

  “You must be allergic to something,” said Irene. “Did someone let one of the animals onto the bus last night?”

  “Oliver’s still missing,” said Robbie.

  “I doubt Annabel’s allergic to your chameleon,” said Irene. “Lizards don’t have fur or feathers. What about the cats and the magpie? Where are they?”

  “Loki’s outside, sleeping in his cage,” said Harriet.

  “The cats are in Mary Ann’s bunk,” said Martin.

  “Snitch!” Sam heard Mary Ann shriek. “I can’t believe you just ratted me out!”

  “Is that true, Mary Ann?” asked Sam’s mother. “Did you smuggle the cats inside?”

  “Well, I couldn’t leave Cleo and Caesar outside,” Mary Ann whined. “They’re not alley cats—they’re purebred Siamese.”

  Irene’s reply was firm. “No animals on the bus-cats, lizards, birds or otherwise.”

  A minute later, Mary Ann’s precious cats were dumped out the back door of the bus.

  “I know just how you feel,” Sam said as the two felines stared forlo
rnly at the door. “They kicked me out of my bed too.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Have you seen my juggling plates?” Martin asked Sam half an hour before the show that afternoon. “Louise said she saw you fooling around with them after breakfast.”

  “I was helping Robbie look for his chameleon,” Sam said without looking up from the video game he was playing. “I just moved them aside.”

  “Well, where’d you put them when you were done?” Martin demanded.

  “I didn’t put them anywhere,” said Sam. “I just looked behind them.”

  “C’mon, Sammy,” said Martin. “I need them for the show. Cough them up.”

  “I told you. I don’t have them, and I don’t know where they are.”

  Martin pulled Sam off the picnic table and put him in a headlock. “C’mon, tell me where they are. I’m not letting you go until you do.”

  “What would I want with a bunch of dishes?” Sam said angrily, squirming to break free. He was just about to stomp on Martin’s foot when his mother poked her head out of the Stringbini bus.

  “Enough already!” said Irene. “If Sam says he didn’t take your plates, Martin, he didn’t take them. Now let him go.”

  “He stole them!” said Martin. “Louise saw him!”

  “That’s not what Louise said,” said Irene. “Your dishes will turn up somewhere, Martin. In the meantime, you’ll just have to improvise.”

  “Fine, but you aren’t playing my Smash Blasters anymore,” Martin said as he released his brother and grabbed the Pocket-Nitro from Sam’s hand. “I’m hiding this where you’ll never find it!”

  “But I didn’t take your stupid plates!” Sam called after Martin’s retreating back. “I didn’t!”

  Sam found his brother’s dishes twenty minutes later, when he went back to the bus to get a pile of comics he’d stashed in the cupboard under his bunk. The missing plates were buried under a pile of his jeans and T-shirts.

  It took him only a moment to guess who had put them there. It had to be Mary Ann. She’d been furious with Martin for telling his mother about the cats, furious enough to want revenge.

  “You didn’t have to stick them in my cupboard,” he muttered as he gathered up the plates and deposited them inside the bunk that temporarily belonged to Mary Ann.

  “What are you doing, Sam?”

  Sam spun around. Annabel stood in the curtained opening, a look of triumph on her dimpled face. “Wha—what are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I lost one of my hair ribbons. I was getting another one.”

  Sam waved his hands in the air. “It’s not what it looks like—”

  It was too late. Annabel was already chanting, “I’m telling, I’m telling,” as she backed away. The bus door slammed behind her.

  Sam plunked himself down beside Harriet in the bleachers a few minutes later. Down below in the center ring, Mr. Pigatto was announcing the first act.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Harriet.

  “She’s got me,” Sam said miserably. “And I didn’t even do anything!”

  “Who’s got you? What are you talking about?”

  Sam shook his head. “Don’t even ask.”

  The matinee performance was uneventful right up until the last act. With Annabel’s assistance, Magic Max had just performed a series of successful tricks. Now Max was displaying his black top hat. He walked around the center ring and turned the hat upside down to show that it was empty. Annabel stepped forward to join her father in the spotlight. As everyone leaned forward expectantly, Max’s young assistant reached into the hat.

  Even from his seat high up in the bleachers, Sam could see that something was wrong. There was a bewildered expression on his sister’s face, and she had stopped to whisper something into her father’s ear.

  “What is it?” Harriet asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Sam. “Maybe the hat really is empty. Maybe Snowball is missing.”

  Magic Max whispered something to his daughter and then signalled for another drum roll. With her eyes screwed shut and her teeth clenched, Annabel reached into the top hat and slowly removed the animal inside.

  The audience gasped. They’d been expecting a rabbit—not the large lizard that Annabel was holding up in obvious discomfort!

  “Oliver!” Harriet and Sam said in unison.

  As they watched, Oliver wriggled free of Annabel’s grasp and fell to the floor. Annabel squealed and jumped back as the chameleon scurried over her feet and made its escape.

  Sam groaned and let his head fall forward into his hands.

  “Are you okay?” Harriet asked.

  “Just wait—I’m going to get blamed for this too!”

  They didn’t have to wait long. “I hate you, Sam!” Annabel hissed as she stormed onto the Stringbini bus immediately after the show.

  Max climbed onto the bus behind his daughter, just in time to prevent her from slugging her brother. “Calm down, Annabel,” he said, grabbing both her arms. “As for you, Sam, I think you and I need to take a little walk.”

  “I can explain,” Sam said as soon as they were away from the bus. “I didn’t steal Martin’s dishes, and I didn’t plant the lizard in your hat—”

  “Your sister says she saw you put Martin’s dishes in Mary Ann’s bunk. Is that true?” asked his father.

  Sam nodded. “But—”

  Max shook his head. “I’m disappointed in you, Sam. First you take your brother’s plates, and then you try to frame your cousin.”

  “I’m the one who was framed!” Sam exploded.

  “You don’t know for sure that Mary Ann hid those dishes in your drawer,” Max said after Sam had finished telling his side of the story. “You should have alerted your brother the instant you found them instead of putting them in her bunk. You know that, Sam.”

  Sam was silent.

  Max ran his fingers through his beard and sighed. “What about the chameleon? What do you know about how Snowball and Oliver got switched this afternoon?”

  Sam shook his head angrily. “I told you, I had nothing to do with that. No matter what Annabel says!”

  Max studied his son’s face. “All right,” he said. “I believe you. But I’m telling you the same thing I’m going to tell everyone else. It’s hard enough all of us living together without everyone playing pranks on each other. It ends here, are we clear?”

  Chapter Nine

  The Triple Top caravan arrived on the outskirts of Winnipeg at lunchtime the following Wednesday. Everyone pitched in, and soon the circus was set up for its first performance on Thursday night.

  “Hey, wait up,” Harriet called as Sam walked toward the main tent with a tray of cotton candy hanging from his neck. “Are you selling that tonight?” she asked.

  Sam nodded glumly. “I have to sell snacks at every single performance from now on. It’s supposed to keep me out of trouble.”

  “At least it’s something to do. Want some help?” his cousin offered.

  Sam shrugged. “Sure. Thanks. Man, it’s hot out tonight,” he complained as they approached the tent entrance. “They better have the air-conditioning running full blast.”

  But the temperature inside the tent was even higher than it was outside. Harriet fanned her face as they stood just inside the entrance. “Whoa—it’s like a million degrees in here! Isn’t the show supposed to start in fifteen minutes?”

  Max was just a few yards away, talking with Mr. Pigatto and the Zuccatos. “What’s going on? Why is it so hot in here?” Sam asked his father.

  “The generator that powers the air conditioners has died,” said Max. “We’ve called someone to look at it, but who knows when he’ll get here. Looks like we’re performing in a sauna tonight.”

  Mrs. Pigatto made her way across the tent toward them. “We’re playing to a small crowd,” she informed the group as she got closer.

  “But the lines outside are huge,” said Harriet. “We saw them on our way in.”

  “Selling tick
ets isn’t the problem tonight,” said Mrs. Pigatto. “It’s keeping them sold. People step in here and turn right around and ask for their money back. Can’t say that I blame them.”

  Mr. Pigatto wiped the sweat from his brow and shook his head. “We can’t afford to cancel. We’ll just have to take it easy tonight. And remind everyone to make sure they drink lots of water. We don’t want anyone collapsing in the heat.”

  As the performers dispersed, Sam and Harriet set off to sell cotton candy to the few remaining spectators in the bleachers. “At least no one tried to blame this one on me,” Sam said to his cousin.

  The generator was repaired just in time to cool down the big top for Friday evening’s performance. The show was uneventful right until the final act, when Uncle Albert appeared in the center ring. With Mabel’s assistance, Albert began the beach towel and sandcastle trick that Max claimed Albert had stolen years before. Albert waved his magic wand and said the magic words, “Salt and sea and air and sand, let a castle appear at my command!”

  Mabel dutifully lifted the beach towel to reveal the promised sandcastle. But where the sandcastle should have been—where the sandcastle had been every other time Albert had performed this trick—there was now only a pile of loose sand. Believing it was all part of the act, the audience laughed and clapped dutifully. Then they waited for Albert to finish the illusion.

  Sam leaned forward over his tray of cotton candy, curious to see how his uncle would respond. Poor Albert was not handling it well. He was becoming increasingly frantic as he poked the pile of sand with his wand. When the castle still did not appear and the audience began to get restless, Mabel took her husband’s arm and tugged him out of the spotlight.

  “Man, this isn’t going to be good,” Sam said as several members of the audience began to boo.

  Sam was on his way back to the Stringbini bus when Albert strode past.

  “That was a dirty rotten trick you just pulled out there,” Albert called ahead to Sam’s father, shaking his fist in the air.