Sam the Man & the Rutabaga Plan Read online

  For Jeff Burch, wonderful friend, extraordinary teacher

  —F. O. D.

  For Rosebuds and rutabagas

  —A. J. B.

  Welcome to Your Vegetable

  Sam Graham was not a vegetable man.

  “Two cups a day, Sam,” his mom liked to say. “That’s all it takes to be healthy.”

  “That’s two cups of important vitamins and minerals, Sam the Man,” his dad always added.

  “It’s two cups of stuff that probably still has dirt on it even though Mom washed it,” his sister, Annabelle, usually pointed out.

  “I’ll eat extra grapes,” Sam told his mom whenever she tried to make him eat steamed broccoli or spinach salad. “And three bananas a day.”

  “Fruit is good,” his mom would say. “But you need vegetables, too.”

  Vegetables, in Sam’s opinion, were overrated. They were either too crunchy or too slimy. Most of them looked weird. Especially broccoli. Sam thought broccoli looked unnatural, like it was trying to be a tree but had forgotten to read the instruction manual.

  He didn’t even want to think about asparagus. You could have nightmares about asparagus.

  So when his second-grade teacher, Mr. Pell, announced they were going to start a new science unit first thing Monday morning, and that that unit would be all about vegetables, Sam was glad he had an appointment to get his teeth cleaned.

  That was another thing about broccoli—it got stuck in your teeth, and you wouldn’t even know it until you looked in the mirror. Sam bet his dentist, Dr. Jenny, hated broccoli as much as he did.

  “Actually, Sam, broccoli is a good source of calcium, and calcium is good for your teeth and bones,” Dr. Jenny told him that Monday morning. She was poking at his gums with a dental pick. “If you floss after you eat, you don’t have to worry about broccoli in your teeth, now do you?”

  Sam guessed not. “But what if I forget to floss?” he asked. “Because sometimes I do, and then there’s all that broccoli stuck in there. It’s gross.”

  Dr. Jenny raised her eyebrow. “Do you floss every day?”

  “Most of the time,” Sam said.

  “Almost all of the time?” Dr. Jenny asked.

  “Almost most of some of the time,” Sam said.

  Sam left Dr. Jenny’s office with four trial-sized packs of dental floss and a booklet called Flossing: How to Be Your Teeth’s Best Friend!

  Sam didn’t know his teeth even had friends.

  “The point is, you need to floss,” his mom said as she signed him in at the front office when they got to school. “Your plaque score was a five!”

  “But no cavities!” Sam said. He smiled as big as he could, so his mom could see all his perfect teeth.

  Walking down the hall to his classroom, Sam felt happy that he had missed science, even if his plaque score was five. He would rather have plaque than learn about vegetables any day.

  “Good morning, Sam!” Mr. Pell greeted him when Sam walked into Room 11. “I hope you’re ready to learn about the wonderful world of vegetables. For the next two weeks, you and a very special vegetable are going to get to know each other. You’re going to study your vegetable, write about your vegetable, and teach us a thing or two about your vegetable.”

  “What do you mean, my vegetable?” Sam asked.

  The other kids started to giggle. That’s when Sam noticed that everyone had a vegetable on his or her desk.

  Gavin had a carrot.

  Will had a head of cabbage.

  Rashid had a tiny pumpkin.

  Emily had a green bean.

  Marja had an eggplant.

  There was something on Sam’s desk too, only he didn’t know what it was.

  It was the size of a softball.

  It was round, but not perfectly round.

  One half was purple, and the other half was a dirty yellow.

  There was a weird brown thing sticking out of the top like a little tree stump.

  “What is that?” Sam asked.

  “It’s a rutabaga!” Will yelled. Everybody started laughing, and Gavin laughed so hard he fell out of his seat.

  Mr. Pell came over to Sam’s desk. “Sam,” he said, “I’d like to introduce you to your vegetable. I think the two of you are about to become very good friends.”

  Sam Graham the Rutabaga Man

  Sam was now sorry he’d had his teeth cleaned.

  In first period, while Dr. Jenny was poking at Sam’s gums, everyone else was choosing a vegetable. They had all pulled numbers from a paper bag, and the person who picked 1 (Emily) got to choose first, and the person who picked 2 (Hutch) got to choose second, and so on.

  Because Sam hadn’t been there, he got last pick, which is how he got stuck with a rutabaga for the next two weeks. And now for homework he had to write a one-page letter from his rutabaga’s point of view.

  Sam was pretty sure vegetables didn’t have a point of view.

  But even if some vegetables did have a point of view, like maybe carrots or peas, he was positive that rutabagas didn’t. A carrot might say, My favorite color is orange, and that would make sense. It scares me when I roll under the table, a pea might tell you, and you’d understand.

  But a rutabaga? What would a rutabaga have to say about anything?

  “It probably has a lot of opinions about dirt,” Sam’s neighbor Mr. Stockfish said after school that day. Mr. Stockfish and Sam were feeding chickens in the coop behind Mrs. Kerner’s house. Sam had two after-school jobs: walking Mr. Stockfish and taking care of chickens. He was responsible for eight chickens in all, including his own chicken, Helga, who laid blue eggs, and Mr. Stockfish’s chicken, Leroy, who laid regular white eggs.

  Sam poured two cups of grain into the chickens’ feeder. “Why would a rutabaga have an opinion on dirt?” he asked.

  “Because it’s a root vegetable,” Mr. Stockfish said. “It does all its growing underground.”

  “So, it lives in the dark until somebody eats it? That’s its whole life?”

  “What’s so bad about that?” Mr. Stockfish asked. He was sitting in a lawn chair. He called himself the chicken supervisor, which meant Sam did the work while Mr. Stockfish watched.

  “It’s boring! And you’re surrounded by dirt all the time!”

  “What are they teaching at that school of yours?” Mr. Stockfish asked. “Dirt is one of the most interesting things in the world. Did you know there are more than ten thousand different kinds of bacteria in one teaspoon of soil?”

  “That makes dirt sound very unhealthy,” Sam said.

  Mr. Stockfish snorted and shook his head.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about bacteria, Sam,” he said. “Bacteria makes the world go ’round.”

  “Well, I wish bacteria was a vegetable, then,” Sam said. “It sounds like it would be a much better project than a rutabaga.”

  After Sam gave the chickens their water, he plopped in the lawn chair next to Mr. Stockfish. He wondered if chickens ate rutabagas. Maybe that’s what his rutabaga’s letter could be about. Dear Mom, Today I got eaten by eight chickens. Now I’m dead. Bye.

  Sam liked that idea. If his rutabaga got eaten by chickens, then Mr. Pell would have to give him another vegetable. Maybe he’d get a banana pepper next time. Sam could think of lots of things a banana pepper might write a letter about. Dear Mom, Today I took a ride in a pizza box to a boy named Sam’s house. . . .

  “Chickens don’t eat rutabagas,” Mr. Stockfish said when Sam told him his plan. “What are you, crazy?”

  Sam decided to look it up when he got home. But first he would have to get his mom’s permission to use her computer.

  “I’m working
,” his mom said when he knocked on her office door. Sam’s mom worked at home some days and at an office across town the other days. When she worked at home, Sam was only supposed to knock on her door if he had an emergency situation.

  Sam was pretty sure having to do a rutabaga project counted as an emergency situation.

  “You want to feed your rutabaga to the chickens so you can do another vegetable?” his mom said when Sam explained why he needed to go on the Internet. “Do you think that’s fair?”

  “To the rutabaga or the chickens?” Sam asked.

  “I mean, to, well, the other kids, I guess,” his mom said. She sounded like she wasn’t sure what she meant. “What if everyone fed their vegetables to chickens in order to get a new one?”

  “But I’m the only person in my class with a chicken,” Sam said. “A lot of people have dogs, but I don’t think dogs like vegetables.”

  His mother sighed. “Sorry, Sam. You’re stuck with your rutabaga. If the chickens ate the one you have now, we’d just go to the store and buy another one. So you better get started on your letter.”

  Sam went to his room, sat down at his desk, and opened his science notebook. He picked up his pencil. He put his pencil down. He picked it up again and chewed on the end, and then he wondered if he had yellow pencil bits in his teeth.

  Maybe I should floss, Sam thought. Yes, he should floss. He put his pencil down.

  The rutabaga letter would have to wait.

  Or Are You a Turnip?

  The problem was, Sam didn’t know the first thing about rutabagas.

  “I’ll do a search on my phone,” Annabelle said at the dinner table that night. “I’m sure there are lots of interesting facts to be found.”

  “No phones at the table,” their mom said.

  “Family time is phone-free time,” added their dad.

  “But this is important,” Annabelle said. “This is for school.”

  Their parents both shook their heads no. Annabelle looked at Sam. “Meet me in the family room after dinner,” she said.

  After dinner, Sam and Annabelle sat on the couch and looked up facts about rutabagas. Maybe rutabagas were first eaten by Vikings, Sam thought, or were used in Native American games. Maybe rutabagas were the world’s first lacrosse balls.

  “Well, this is interesting,” Annabelle said, peering into her phone.

  “What?” Sam asked, feeling a little bit excited. Maybe there was good news about rutabagas after all!

  “What’s interesting about rutabagas is there is absolutely nothing interesting about rutabagas,” Annabelle reported. She handed the phone to Sam. “See for yourself.”

  Sam scrolled down, and he scrolled up. There were entries for articles like “Why You Should Give Rutabagas a Chance” and “Rutabagas: They’re Not So Bad.”

  “In Sweden they call rutabagas ‘turnips,’ ” Sam read to Annabelle. “And they are often roasted. I wonder what’s the difference between a rutabaga and a turnip?”

  “I wonder how you say ‘turnip’ in Swedish,” Annabelle said.

  “I could look it up,” Sam said.

  “You could,” said Annabelle. “Except I need my phone back, and you need to write your letter.”

  Sam went upstairs. He climbed up onto his bed and looked at his rutabaga. “Hello, turnip,” he said, feeling mean. “How does it feel to know that you’re the most boring vegetable on Earth?”

  Then Sam felt bad. His rutabaga couldn’t help being boring. Besides, it was half purple. That was sort of not boring, Sam guessed.

  Sam went over to his desk. He took a seat and picked up his partly chewed pencil. He wrote:

  Dear Students of Room 11,

  My name is Rudy the Rutabaga. I am half purple. Other things that are purple are grapes that are not green and patoonas patunyas purple flowers. Also, lollipops and grape soda. The other half of me is yellow. My skin is smooth. If you lost your ball on the playground, you could throw me. It wouldn’t even matter if you dropped me, because I am not a pumpkin. I won’t smash.

  Sam stopped writing because he guessed that was all he had to say. He had two thoughts. One, he wished he’d gotten a pumpkin for his vegetable. Then he could write his letter about being a Halloween pumpkin and which costumes he thought were the scariest and which ones were dumb.

  His second thought was that his rutabaga was round like a pumpkin. It was even bigger than some of the very small pumpkins Sam had seen at the grocery store.

  “I think I would like you better if you had a face,” Sam told his rutabaga.

  Sam crossed the hallway to Annabelle’s room and knocked on her door.

  “Could you help me give my rutabaga a face?” he asked when she answered.

  Annabelle opened up her desk drawer and pulled out a thick black marker. “Should it be a happy face or a sad face?”

  “I think it should be a medium happy face,” Sam said. “Like it’s listening to you talk and likes what you’re saying.”

  Annabelle nodded. “That’s exactly the right kind of face for a rutabaga,” she said.

  “I think so too,” Sam said.

  House of Dirt

  Now that his rutabaga had a face, Sam felt they were more like friends than just a boy and his vegetable.

  When he put Rudy in his backpack the next morning, he said, “You’ll like it in there. It’s dark and pretty dirty.”

  Rudy smiled up at him. He seemed to like what Sam was saying.

  It was easier to have happy feelings about a rutabaga when it had a face, Sam thought.

  As always, he sat next to Gavin on the bus. Gavin had a box in his lap. “This is my carrot’s house,” Gavin told Sam. “It doesn’t have a bathroom, though. Do you think that’s a problem?”

  “Do carrots poop?” Sam asked.

  “I think maybe their peels are poop,” Gavin said. “But I’m not positive.”

  Then Gavin got very quiet. He looked left. He looked right. Then he leaned in close to Sam’s ear and said, “The carrot in the box is not actually the carrot Mr. Pell gave me yesterday.”

  “Where’s that carrot?” Sam asked.

  Gavin’s cheeks turned red. “I ate it,” he said. “I got hungry doing my spelling homework.”

  “I guess I’m lucky, then,” Sam said. “It’s hard to snack on a rutabaga.”

  He pulled Rudy out of his backpack and showed Gavin. “He might be the only smiling rutabaga on the planet,” Sam said proudly.

  “You’re so lucky to have a vegetable with a face!” Gavin said. “And one that’s hard to eat, too. I wished I’d picked a rutabaga.”

  “But at least you have a vegetable that rabbits like,” Sam said, trying to be nice. “Maybe part of your project could be about all the animals that eat carrots. Maybe you could bring a horse to school for a demonstration.”

  Gavin’s eyes lit up. “My sister has a friend whose cousin has a horse!”

  Sam didn’t think there were any animals that ate rutabagas. From what he’d read so far, most humans didn’t eat them either.

  Sam sighed. He was glad Rudy had a face, but he was still boring.

  When Sam got to Room 11, he saw that a lot of the vegetables had their own houses. Emily’s green bean lived in a pencil box, and Rashid’s tiny pumpkin lived in a square plastic container. Rashid had added some grass and candy corn for decoration.

  Sam thought maybe his rutabaga would like his own house instead of living in Sam’s backpack. But he didn’t think Rudy would like to spend all day in a pencil box or a plastic container, even one that had candy corn for decorations. What Sam needed for Rudy was a box of dirt.

  A box of really good dirt.

  “You need to start a compost pile,” Mr. Stockfish told him that afternoon when they were walking home after taking care of the chickens. “That way, you’ll have the best dirt in town.”

  “What’s a compost pile?” Sam asked.

  “It’s where you mix leaves and vegetable scraps and manure all together, add some w
ater, and cook it,” Mr. Stockfish said.

  “In an oven?” Sam asked, alarmed. He doubted his mom would think this was a good idea.

  “No,” Mr. Stockfish said. “You can either get a compost bin or you can just pile scraps in your backyard and mix it around every couple of days. The pile heats up as everything rots, and after a while it turns into dirt. But remember—no meat or dairy products. They attract animals.”

  “What’s manure again?” Sam asked.

  “Animal poop,” Mr. Stockfish answered. “Chicken poop is great for compost.”

  Sam wrinkled his nose. He found it very hard to believe that chicken poop was good for anything. Still, if it would help Rudy, he guessed he should give a compost pile a try.

  “I need to start a pile of chicken manure and vegetable scraps in the backyard,” Sam announced that night at dinner. “It’s for school.”

  “Not going to happen, Sam the Man,” his dad said.

  “It sounds unsanitary,” his mom said.

  “Not to mention unappetizing,” Annabelle said.

  “But it’s for a school,” Sam repeated. “I’m making a compost pile. It’s for science.”

  Usually, if he said he was doing something for science, his parents gave him permission right away. Science was like a magic word to them.

  “So why don’t you start a pile of chicken manure and vegetable scraps at school?” Annabelle asked.

  “It’s a personal science project,” Sam said. “It’s not for the whole class.”

  “It’s for your rutabaga, isn’t it?” Annabelle asked.

  “My rutabaga needs the best dirt nature can offer,” Sam said.

  “Sam the Man, you know your rutabaga has stopped growing, right?” Sam’s dad said.

  “Yes, but I want it to have a happy home,” Sam said. “For science.”

  “What do you do with the manure from Mrs. Kerner’s chicken coop?” his mom asked.

  “I clean it out of the coop, and then I—”

  “And then you what?” his mom asked.

  “I throw it in a pile near the back of her yard.”