Sam the Man & the Dragon Van Plan

by Frances O'Roark Dowell

  For Robert-Bob Stockfish, dear friend, beloved crank

  —F. O. D.

  To my trusty minivan, the Grey Hippo—Keep on Rollin’!

  —A. J. B.

  The Monster Truck Plan

  Sam Graham was a monster truck man.

  Every year he and his dad went to the Monster Truck Jam downtown. They cheered for trucks with names like “Master of Disaster” and “Big Dawg.” Sam’s dad made him put squishy orange earplugs in his ears, but he could still hear the roaring engines as the trucks raced across the arena.

  Every year Sam asked his dad if they could get a monster truck of their own, and every year his dad said, “Sorry, Sam the Man, we’re sticking with our minivan.”

  Every year Sam pointed out that there was never a minivan jam at the downtown arena.

  “You know what a monster truck would be great for?” Sam asked one morning at breakfast. “If there were a huge blizzard and you were out of milk, a monster truck would get you to the store.”

  “So would a snowplow,” Sam’s sister, Annabelle, pointed out. Annabelle was in sixth grade and always pointing out stuff to Sam, who was in second grade and was tired of people always pointing out stuff to him.

  “A snowplow wouldn’t be any good in summer,” Sam replied. “But you could take a monster truck camping. You could roll out your sleeping bags underneath it. It’s like an automatic roof.”

  “But where would you put your camping gear when you were driving?” Annabelle asked.

  “In the truck bed, of course!” Sam said, wondering how someone as smart as Annabelle could be so dumb.

  “What if it rains?”

  Sam rolled his eyes at his sister. “You get waterproof stuff for camping. Everybody knows that!”

  Annabelle picked up the sports page. She looked like she was losing interest in the conversation. “What about the fact that it’s illegal to drive monster trucks on regular streets?” she asked. “Wouldn’t that be a problem?”

  Sam stood up and carried his cereal bowl over to the kitchen sink. He was losing interest in this conversation too, especially because Annabelle didn’t know what she was talking about.

  If anyone would know about trucks, Sam thought as he put on his coat and hat, it would be Miss Louise, the school bus driver. A school bus was even bigger than a monster truck, although it wasn’t as high up in the air, and it usually didn’t have a scary monster face drawn on the hood. In fact, buses never had anything good painted on them. Sam could think of a million things you could paint on a school bus—dragon scales would be cool, and so would big, creepy eyes around the headlights so that maybe the front of the bus looked like a really spooky jack-o’-lantern.

  “Do you think Miss Louise has ever driven a monster truck?” Sam asked his friend Gavin as they waited at the bus stop. “I think she’d be good at it.”

  “Miss Louise would be an awesome monster truck driver!” Gavin agreed. “But once, I heard her say that she spends her weekends making cat videos. Did you know she has five cats?”

  “I wonder if her cats like chickens?” Sam had a chicken named Helga who lived in a coop at his neighbor’s house. Mrs. Kerner had five chickens, and Sam’s friend Mr. Stockfish had one chicken, so there were seven chickens in all. Maybe Sam should start making chicken videos. He’d probably get famous and make lots of money, and then he could buy his own monster truck. He’d call it the Sammer Hammer Jammer, and he’d drive it all over town as soon as he got his driver’s license.

  “Monster trucks are legal to drive anywhere, right?” he asked Miss Louise when he was climbing up the steps of the bus.

  “I don’t know much about monster trucks,” Miss Louise told him, “but I do know you can’t drive them on streets or highways. They’re too high off the ground, for one thing, and too dangerous. They’re more likely to roll over than regular cars.”

  So the two things Sam liked best about monster trucks were what made his dream to drive one impossible?

  After that, Sam was in a grumpy mood for the rest of the day. He was grumpy in math because they were doing subtraction. He was grumpy in PE because they did square dancing. He was grumpy at lunch because his dad put strawberry jam on his peanut butter sandwich instead of grape jelly. Sam hated strawberry jam.

  He was still in a grumpy mood that afternoon when he got off the bus. He was looking forward to stomping across the kitchen floor and eating frozen waffles without even bothering to put them on a plate when he got home. Then he would go take Mr. Stockfish on their daily walk to visit the chickens. Mr. Stockfish was always grumpy, so he and Sam would get along better than ever.

  But when Sam got to his house, something was weird. His family’s blue minivan wasn’t in the driveway, even though it was Tuesday, and his mom worked from home on Tuesdays. Maybe she had to go to the store. But usually when Sam’s mom had to go to the store, she made sure to be back when Sam got off the bus.

  The front door was unlocked. “Mom?” Sam called out as he walked inside. “Are you home?”

  “In the kitchen,” Sam’s mom said. Her voice sounded sort of strange. Maybe she was in a grumpy mood too.

  Sam found his mom sitting at the table, drinking a cup of tea that smelled like apples and cinnamon. Sam’s mom only drank tea when she was trying to calm down or right after she talked to Aunt Karen on the phone.

  “Did someone steal the minivan?” Sam asked. “Is that why you’re drinking tea?”

  “I wrecked the minivan,” Sam’s mom said. She sighed. “I hit a bus.”

  “A school bus?” Sam practically shouted. He thought his mom might go to jail for that.

  “No, a city bus. I was changing lanes. . . .” Sam’s mom stopped and rubbed her forehead. She looked like she had a headache. “It’s a long story. Let’s just say I wasn’t paying close enough attention.”

  “Were you talking on your phone?” Sam asked. “Because you always say it’s stupid to talk on the phone when you’re driving.”

  “No! I never talk on my phone in the car!” Sam’s mom sounded like she couldn’t believe Sam would even suggest such a thing. “I was . . . singing. And . . . dancing. Well, not exactly dancing—it was more like bouncing.”

  “Did that song about walking on sunshine come on the oldies station?” Sam asked.

  His mom nodded. “It’s very hard not to bounce to that song. And really, it’s not like I ran into the bus. I just got very, very close to it. There was no damage done to the bus at all. The minivan, on the other hand . . .”

  Sam’s eyes widened. Would they have to get a new car? His eyes opened even wider. Maybe they could get a really cool car this time, a car that didn’t make Sam practically fall asleep from boredom every time he got into it.

  “What’s wrong with the minivan?” Sam asked, trying to sound like he was very concerned with the minivan’s health and hoped it would get well soon. “Is it okay?”

  “No, Sam, it’s not,” his mom said, and then she took another sip of her apple-cinnamon tea. “It was pretty old to begin with, and then with the damage, well, it would cost more to repair it than the van is worth. We’re going to have to get a new one.”

  Yes! A new car! Maybe they could get a red car, or a yellow one; maybe one that sort of looked like a race car. Sam wouldn’t mind driving around town in a car that looked like a race car.

  Wait a minute! Maybe instead of another minivan, they could get a monster truck, a small one that you could drive without getting a ticket! Sam wasn’t sure if there was such a thing as a mini–monster truck, but there might be.

  He knew he needed to be very careful. If Sam asked to get a monster truck—or even a mini–monster truck—
while his mom was feeling sad and upset, she’d probably say no. He’d have to figure out the right way to make her see that a monster truck was the right choice for their family.

  Sam would have to come up with the perfect monster-truck plan.

  Angry Chickens

  “A monster truck? Are you crazy?”

  Mr. Stockfish shook his head at Sam and patted his chicken, Leroy, on the head. “It’s illegal to drive monster trucks on the road. Did you know that?”

  “I know that, but I’m not talking about a monster truck,” Sam said as he poured fresh water into the chickens’ waterer. “I’m talking about a mini–monster truck.”

  “So you mean a pickup truck?”

  Now Sam shook his head. “A pickup truck is too small. But I’m pretty sure you could get a mini–monster truck, one that has big wheels, but not so big that you could get a ticket. And pickup trucks don’t have names, but mini–monster trucks do. Plus, you get to paint mini–monster trucks so they look like scary stuff. You know, monsters or animals with sharp teeth.”

  “Like Leroy here,” Mr. Stockfish said, giving his chicken another pat on the head. “Only she’s got a sharp beak instead of teeth. And she’s mean when she doesn’t get fed on time.”

  “Maybe not exactly like Leroy,” Sam said. “More like dragons and growling dogs. Especially dragons because they’re long enough to cover the whole truck and they have flames coming out of their mouths. A dragon truck would be really cool.”

  Mr. Stockfish put Leroy down and stood up. This meant he was ready to go home. “How many people can fit in your mini–monster truck, Sam?”

  Sam picked up Leroy and put her back in the coop with the rest of the chickens. “I don’t know. Two? Maybe four. Some trucks have two rows of seats.”

  “Who will do most of the driving when you get this truck?”

  “Me, when I get my driver’s license,” Sam said. “But until then, my mom.”

  “Do you think your mom will want to drive a truck with an angry chicken on it?” Mr. Stockfish asked.

  “No, but there won’t be an angry chicken on the truck,” Sam said, holding the backyard gate open for Mr. Stockfish. “It will be a monster truck, not a chicken truck.”

  Sam and Mr. Stockfish walked for a few minutes without saying anything. Even though he didn’t want to, Sam started to think about the problems with mini–monster trucks. First of all, he wasn’t exactly sure there were mini–monster trucks, unless you counted Hot Wheels. Sam had three Hot Wheels monster trucks, but they were only a couple of inches big, which was too mini to be any good.

  Second of all, Sam’s mom liked to say that minivans might be boring, but they had a lot of space. She was always driving the girls in Annabelle’s scout troop on field trips, and once, when Grammy and Pop were coming for a visit, Sam’s mom dumped three laundry baskets full of stuff she didn’t have time to put away in the back of the minivan. Another time, she stored ten cases of fund-raiser popcorn there.

  Sam was pretty sure mini–monster trucks didn’t have a lot of storage space, at least not inside storage space. And anything you stored in the bed of the truck would get wet.

  But then Sam remembered another thing that his mom liked about the minivan. She said it made her feel tall because the seat was higher off the ground than in a regular car.

  Monster trucks make you taller! Sam decided that was a good motto for his mini–monster-truck plan.

  “Not everything about a mini–monster truck is great,” he said now as they walked up the sidewalk to Mr. Stockfish’s house. Sam thought he sounded very reasonable and grown-up. “But I think the good things are gooder than the bad things are bad.”

  “If that’s the argument you’re going to make to your mother, I think you need to find a better word than ‘gooder,’ ” Mr. Stockfish said, pushing his front door open.

  “You’re probably right,” Sam said, practicing his agreeableness. His mom liked it when Sam was agreeable.

  “You might also want to find out what a monster truck costs,” Mr. Stockfish added. “It might be more expensive than you think.”

  Then Mr. Stockfish slammed the door closed. Mr. Stockfish always slammed the door closed, so Sam didn’t take it personally.

  Plus, he thought Mr. Stockfish had given him good advice. He would do some research, come up with a truck budget, and then very reasonably and agreeably tell his mom that their new car should be a mini–monster truck. He would give her a list of why she would love a mini–monster truck.

  Number one, the list would begin, you will feel six feet tall when you drive.

  Number two, you will be the coolest mom in town.

  Number three?

  Sam didn’t know what number three would be.

  But he knew just the person to ask.

  A New Plan

  Annabelle was sitting at the computer playing her favorite game, Big City Build 3. Sam liked it because whenever an old building needed demolishing, Annabelle let Sam be the demolition man. The demolition man got to swing the wrecking ball that knocked everything down.

  “Let me finish this round, and then I’ll help you,” Annabelle said when Sam asked her to look something up on her phone. “I’m waiting for the city council to approve the plans for my new skyscraper.”

  A minute later Annabelle pounded her fist on the desk. “Safety code issues? What do they mean ‘safety code issues’?”

  Then she took a deep breath, paused her game, and went over to sit next to Sam on the couch. “So what are we looking up?”

  “Mini–monster trucks,” Sam told her.

  “You mean monster trucks, don’t you?” Annabelle asked as she tapped on the search engine app.

  “No, I mean mini–monster trucks,” Sam said. “I want to know if they actually exist or if I just made the whole idea up.”

  Annabelle tapped again and then typed “mini–monster truck” into the search engine box. “Oh, they exist all right,” she said after a few seconds. “And you can have one for a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Is that more than what a regular car would cost?” Sam asked.

  “It depends on the kind of car,” Annabelle said. “But the kind of car our family would buy? Yes, it’s a lot more. A lot, lot more.”

  “A lot, lot, lot more?”

  Annabelle turned and looked at Sam. “Sam the Man, you know we’re not getting a monster truck, a mini–monster truck, a garbage truck, or even a truck truck, right?”

  “But I have a plan!” Sam told his sister.

  “So do Mom and Dad,” Annabelle informed him. “We’re going out car shopping after dinner tonight. Minivan shopping.”

  Minivan shopping? Sam slumped over. Could there be two worse words in the English language?

  “I like these mini–monster trucks, though,” Annabelle said as she scrolled down a screen filled with images. “Look at this one—it’s pink!”

  “I think we should stop talking now,” Sam said.

  “I understand,” Annabelle replied. “Want to go demolish a building before dinner?”

  Sam nodded glumly. “Sure, but I don’t think it will make me feel much better.”

  Annabelle stood up. “Look at it this way, Sam: Things can’t get much worse, right? So they’ll only get better.”

  “Dinner’s almost ready!” their mom called from the kitchen. “We’re having beans!”

  “Maybe they’ll get better later,” Annabelle said with a sigh.

  Sam didn’t bother answering. He was pretty sure things would never get better.

  “Are you ready to go car shopping, Sam the Man?” Sam’s dad asked as he passed Sam a bowl of rice. “You can help pick out the color! Don’t you think that would be fun?”

  Sam took a deep breath and let it out. He and his dad had very different ideas about what the word “fun” meant.

  “Okay, Sam, what’s wrong?” Sam’s mom asked. “You’ve been acting strange all afternoon. Are you sad about the minivan getting wrecked?�
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  “Not really,” Sam said. “It was pretty old, and it smelled funny whenever it rained.”

  Sam’s mom nodded. “I could never figure out what caused that.”

  “It’s from when Sam threw up two years ago,” Annabelle said. “You can never really get rid of that throw-up smell.”

  “Not exactly dinner-table talk, Annabelle,” Sam’s mom said.

  “Not while I’m eating beans, please, Anna Banana,” his dad said.

  “What’s wrong with beans?” Sam’s mom asked his dad.

  “When did you start calling me Anna Banana?” Annabelle asked Sam’s dad.

  Sam couldn’t take it anymore. He stood up. He threw his napkin onto the table. “Minivans are boring!” he yelled. “Everybody knows it!”

  “That’s why we’re getting another one, Sam the Man,” his dad said. “Boring cars are safe cars.”

  “But I don’t want a safe car,” Sam said. “I want an exciting car.”

  “He wants a monster truck,” Annabelle informed her parents.

  “I want a mini–monster truck,” Sam informed his parents. “It’s smaller than a monster truck, and safer. You can drive it on the road.”

  He turned to his mother. “And you would feel very tall if you drove it.”

  Then Sam sat back down because he wasn’t done eating his dinner.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Sam the Man,” his dad said. “We’ll get a red minivan. That sounds exciting, doesn’t it?”

  Sam closed his eyes. Why was he the only reasonable person in his family?

  “Sam?” his mom asked. “Do you feel okay?”

  “Did you hear me, Sam?” his dad asked. “A red car will make us feel like we’re going faster, even when we’re driving the speed limit!”

  Annabelle walked over to Sam’s side of the table and kneeled beside him. “It’s going to be okay, Sam. You’ll come up with a plan.”

  Sam considered this. “You mean a monster-truck plan?”

  “A monster-something plan,” Annabelle said, patting Sam on the shoulder. “You’re better at coming up with plans than anyone I know.”