See You Around, Sam!

  "See you later, Anastasia," he said. "And, Sam, I guess I won't see you later. So this is good-bye. I will truly miss you. I hope you'll send me postcards from Alaska. I especially would like to hear about the wildlife around Sleetmute."

  "Is it really dark all day long?" Sam asked suddenly.

  "Only in winter," Mr. Fosburgh said. "Of course, winter's on its way right now."

  "I don't have a flashlight!" Sam wailed.

  "One minute," Mr. Fosburgh said. He whirred his wheelchair in reverse to the hall table, reached into a drawer, and whirred back. "Here you are. It's a small one. I think it'll fit into your pocket."

  Sam took the miniature flashlight from him. He forgot to say thank you. "My pocket is full of fangs," he said. "There's no room for even a little flashlight."

  "I thought you intended to wear your fangs, Sam," Anastasia pointed out. "Wasn't that the whole point of running away? So that you could wear fangs?"

  So once again Sam took the fangs from his pocket and inserted them into his mouth. He made a face. They felt terrible, tasted terrible, smelled terrible. He tried to arrange his lips more comfortably but it was impossible.

  He tested the little flashlight. When he pressed its switch and pointed it at Mr. Fosburgh's doormat, a feeble beam of light appeared.

  "It's not a very powerful light, Sam, and the batteries are a little weak," Mr. Fosburgh said from the doorway "You wouldn't be able to see a large herd of animals with it. But I believe it'll throw enough light to show one creature at a time."

  "Creature?" Sam wiggled the little light at the doormat. Somehow the word "creature" was just as terrifying as the word "wildlife." He thought that he could see a creature on the doormat: just a small creature, maybe an ant.

  "Like an ant?" he asked Mr. Fosburgh, wiggling the light again.

  "I was thinking more along the order of a bear," Mr. Fosburgh said. "I believe you could illuminate one bear at a time with that flashlight. At least you could if it were a small bear. Not a grizzly."

  "Don't say grizzly," Sam whispered.

  He clicked the flashlight off. Now, in the dusk, he couldn't see the ant creature at all. It could be walking right toward his sneakers and he wouldn't see it.

  If he were in Alaska, and it was dark all the time, and the creature was a bear, and his flashlight batteries died, the bear could be walking toward his sneakers and he wouldn't see it at all.

  There could be all sorts of wildlife coming toward him, and he wouldn't know. He would just be lying there in a pile, in the dark, hatless and cold and chewing on blubber.

  "Sam, good luck. I'll see you around," Mr. Fosburgh said cheerfully. "Anastasia, I'll see you later for lasagna." He closed the front door and Sam could hear his chair whirr away down the hall.

  See you around, Mr. Fosburgh had said. Mrs. Sheehan had said the same thing. So, he remembered, had Mr. Watson. Sam tried to figure out what it meant, exactly. See you around what? It sounded as if they were all in a circle, like people playing Farmer in the Dell. People in a circle could see each other around.

  But Sam, according to the globe in Mr. Fosburgh's study, was not in a circle. Not anymore, at least. Sam was heading in a long, straight line from Massachusetts to Alaska.

  Nobody, he realized, was going to see Sam Krupnik around.

  Anastasia started down the steps of the porch. Behind her, Sam pushed the little flashlight into his pocket. He adjusted his foul-tasting fangs and wiped his eyes, which seemed to be starting to cry a little bit. He picked up the heavy traveling bag with both hands and followed his sister down the steps, maneuvering the bulky bag and stumbling along after it.

  ***

  "Sam, I certainly am pleased to see you!" Gertrude Stein smiled as she opened the front door. "I was afraid maybe you wouldn't stop back here again, that you'd be off to Alaska without a final good-bye kiss from me."

  "I promised to wake you up, remember?" Sam asked. Hearing the clumsy way his words came out, he sighed and removed his fangs again. He shoved them into his pocket with the flashlight.

  "Of course I remember. And you've brought your sister, too. Hello there, Anastasia."

  She ushered them inside. The lights were on, now that it was beginning to be twilight. Sam looked around, thinking that it was the last time he would be here. He tried to memorize Mrs. Stein's house so that when he was in Sleetmute, living in an igloo, lying in a pile, he would never forget the warm and cozy places of his past.

  "You have nice old-fashioned stuff," Sam said.

  Mrs. Stein nodded. "Yes, I do, don't I? This is the house where I was born and I've lived here almost eighty years. This was my mother and father's furniture. They don't make furniture like this anymore.

  "See this table?" Mrs. Stein pointed to the hall table where the telephone was. "This is a real antique. Know how you can tell? Look at the feet."

  Sam looked with interest at the table's feet, and saw that they were carved from wood to look like real animal feet, with toes and toenails, and that they were grasping a wooden ball, as if they were about to go bowling.

  His sister was looking, too. "Those are really weird," Anastasia said.

  "Those are called ball-and-claw feet," Gertrude Stein explained.

  "Claw?" Sam repeated nervously. People seemed to be saying a lot of scary words lately, now that he was about to leave for Alaska.

  Mrs. Stein nodded. "They look almost like eagle talons, don't they?"

  Talons. She was doing it again: saying a scary word as if it were just ordinary Sam shuddered, thinking of talons and claws.

  "Sam might see eagles in Alaska," Anastasia said. "There are a whole lot of eagles there. I saw it on a National Geographic special not too long ago."

  "That's right!" Mrs. Stein agreed. "Sam, be sure to write and tell us when you see eagles. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you saw one actually swoop down and catch something in its talons?

  "Look!" Mrs. Stein began to laugh. She held up her own hand, gnarled with arthritis. "I have eagle claws myself!

  "Gotcha!" She reached over and grasped Sam gently by his ear.

  Sam shuddered. He wondered if an eagle would grab his ear with its talons, or if it would go for a larger body part, like an elbow, maybe. Thinking about it, he covered his ears with his hands.

  "I need a hat," he whispered.

  "Sam's been a little concerned," his sister explained to Mrs. Stein, "because he doesn't have a warm hat to wear to Alaska. So he was thinking of asking Santa Claus for one."

  Mrs. Stein clapped her hands. "Sam," she said, "you are one lucky boy. Look here." She opened the door of the hall closet and pointed to a dark green plastic bag. "I was about to send all of these things to the Salvation Army." She opened the yellow plastic strip that was loosely tied at the top of the bag.

  "Nightgown?" she laughed. "Guess you don't need that. It's ripped, anyway." Mrs. Stein pulled out a blue flannel nightgown and set it aside.

  "Ladies' sneakers? I thought I was going to take an aerobics class at the Y, but I never got around to it. Look—hardly worn at all." She held up some white tennis shoes. "Nope, wrong size for you, Sam. Anyway, you need warm boots in Alaska in winter. Got warm boots?"

  Sam looked down at his feet. He was wearing his Velcro-closing blue sneakers with little blinking lights on the heels. "No," he muttered. "No warm boots."

  Maybe the little blinking lights would scare creatures and wildlife, he thought.

  "Here!" Mrs. Stein held up a dead animal triumphantly. Anastasia backed up with a look of apprehension. Sam stared.

  "What is it?" he asked.

  "Mink." Mrs. Stein leaned over and placed it on Sam's head. She wedged it down firmly around his ears. It felt heavy and hot, and he could feel that inside the hat one of his ears was folded and his hair was mashed.

  "Great, Sam," Anastasia said. "Perfect hat for Alaska."

  "I'm going to give you one other thing," Mrs. Stein said. "A going-away gift. Here you are." She took a pair of sunglasses from the drawe
r of the tall chest near the hall closet. "I've heard that you must really be careful in Alaska to protect your eyes. The sun can cause snow blindness."

  "Mr. Fosburgh said it was night all the time," Sam pointed out.

  "That's only in winter. In summer it's day all the time. So you save these sunglasses for next summer. I don't want to hear that you're having trouble with snow blindness."

  Mrs. Stein tucked the glasses into his pocket, next to the flashlight and on top of the fangs.

  Sam felt very uncomfortable. His pocket was crowded and bulging. His head felt like a monster head, huge and furry. He had trouble seeing because the hat came down so low over his forehead that there was mink fringe in front of his eyes. His folded ear hurt a little. He had to go to the bathroom.

  And even though he had eaten a hot dog, half an apple, some cookies, milk, and a chicken leg already this afternoon, Sam realized suddenly that he had a special kind of hungry feeling. It wasn't a not-enough-food kind of hungry. It was just a feeling that more than anything, he wanted some of his mother's lasagna.

  8

  Anastasia and Mrs. Stein didn't seem to notice how miserable Sam felt. They continued talking cheerfully to each other, paying no attention to the fact that right there, right in the hall beside them, stood a person who before his fifth birthday would probably be blinded by snow, chewed by bears, grabbed by talons, lost because he didn't know how to read a map, and sick because he didn't like blubber. And on top of everything else, his fangs—his precious fangs which were the cause of everything—might get cavities, and Sam was absolutely certain there would be no dentist in Sleetmute.

  Mrs. Stein's clock chimed loudly. Sam counted five chimes.

  "I love that clock," Anastasia said.

  "Me too," Sam said. He tilted his head back so that he could see under the fur of the hat. He looked up toward the clock.

  The tall clock stood on the landing of the stairs. It had moons and stars on its face, and you could hear a slow, steady tick.

  "I wind that clock once a month," Mrs. Stein said. "I open its front door and the key is inside, on a special shelf. Then I open the glass part, over the face, and put the key into the special winding slot. See up there?" She pointed.

  Sam looked carefully at the clock's face and saw the narrow winding slot.

  "You know what, Sam? You're old enough now to be very careful. Next time—the first of November will be the next time—you could stand on a chair, and I could show you how, and you could wind the clock for me! I could make you my official clock-winder. It's a little hard for me because of my arthritis. But you have young hands, Sam. You could—"

  She stopped suddenly. Sam stared at Mrs. Stein and then he stared at her wonderful clock. More than anything in the world Sam wanted to be the official clock-winder.

  "Sorry, Sam. I forgot," Mrs. Stein said. "You won't be here for the November clock-winding."

  Sam didn't say anything at first. Then, remem bering, he said, "November is Kelly Sheehan's first birthday, and Mrs. Sheehan is having a party."

  "Oh, good," Mrs. Stein said. "Ice cream and cake."

  "And of course November is Thanksgiving," Anastasia added.

  Thanksgiving. That meant Pilgrims and Indians and the Mayflower. And Squanto, too. Sam loved Squanto. He wished that his own name were Squanto Krupnik.

  This was Sam's second year at nursery school, and he remembered last year's Thanksgiving. In November Mrs. Bennett would be reading stories about Squanto, and holding up the book to show the pictures. The children would make crayon drawings of turkeys. They would have a feast and invite the mothers.

  For last year's feast, the nursery school girls wore Pilgrim ladies' hats, and the boys wore Pilgrim men's hats, which they had made out of cardboard. The men's hats were better than the women's because the men's hats had gold buckles. Some of the Pilgrim men had cardboard hatchets, too, although the boys who had hatchets always had to take a lot of timeouts because they couldn't seem to stop hatcheting each other. Maybe this year they wouldn't have hatchets at school.

  Last year, lots of mothers came, and they all brought food for the feast. Adam's mom brought celery. Leah's mom brought rolls and butter. Sam's mom had brought corn and lima beans mixed together, because that was one of the things that the Indians had taught the Pilgrims to eat.

  Everybody in the whole Krupnik family hated lima beans, but Sam and his mom were good sports about it at the nursery school feast because Squanto was such a cool guy. Anyway, if you were careful when you took your helping, you could get mostly corn in the spoon. When nobody was looking, you could put the lima beans into your pocket. Later, if you had a dog, you could feed the lima beans to your dog, if your dog would eat them. Some dogs wouldn't.

  Thanksgiving was a happy kind of holiday, Sam knew. But thinking about Thanksgiving suddenly made him feel sad. He felt like a Pilgrim who hadn't been invited to the feast.

  While Anastasia and Mrs. Stein continued to talk, Sam wandered to a nearby window and looked across the lawn toward his own house. He could see his father's car in the driveway. He could see a light on in the kitchen window.

  As he watched, his mother walked past the window, carrying something. It looked as if she were car rying a pan of lasagna from the refrigerator side of the kitchen over to the stove side of the kitchen.

  Now she had disappeared from view, but in his mind Sam could see her still, leaning over to put the pan into the oven, then standing and turning the dials to the correct temperature.

  Next he pictured her walking into the dining room and opening the chest of drawers where she kept place mats. Maybe she would choose the blue-and-white-checkered ones, Sam thought. She would count the correct number. Sam looked down at his own fingers and began to count.

  One place mat for his mother.

  One for his father.

  One for his sister.

  One for Mrs. Stein.

  One for Mr. Fosburgh.

  One for Mrs. Sheehan.

  One for Kelly.

  That was seven. A whole hand plus two fingers.

  But there were eight blue-and-white-checkered place mats in the drawer.

  "Mom needs one more person for dinner," Sam announced. "There are only seven people, and she needs eight because of the place mats, so I guess I could—"

  But before he could finish, Anastasia interrupted him. "No, there are eight people," she said. "Mr. Watson's coming. He got to talking to Mom about lasagna when he delivered the mail, and she invited him, too."

  Anastasia laughed a little. "She even promised to save some uncooked lasagna pieces for him. He's thinking he might do a lasagna sculpture of ocean waves."

  In his mind, Sam pictured the eighth place mat on the table. He pictured the mailman, Mr. Watson, sitting right at Sam's place, maybe even using Sam's special plate with The Little Engine That Could running around the edge. Sam loved Mr. Watson, but it made him feel sad to think of Mr. Watson eating lasagna from Sam's special plate.

  Maybe, he thought, he should stop by his house and get his plate and take it to Alaska with him.

  "Also," Anastasia went on, "the Harveys are coming over later, for dessert. Even Steve."

  "I thought Steve was toast!" Sam said.

  Anastasia shrugged and laughed. "I changed my mind. I decided maybe I like Steve after all. And Mom figured what the heck, might as well have the whole neighborhood. Mrs. Harvey's bringing another pie.

  "Remember what I told you, Sam?" she added. "It's very mature to change your mind. Only dumb babies are really stubborn about their opinions."

  "Yeah, just dumb babies," Sam agreed. But he wasn't really paying attention to his sister. He was thinking about pies.

  The mention of pies had brought back Sam's hungry feeling: the feeling of being uninvited, maybe of peeking in at the party and seeing everyone else enjoying dessert when there was none for him.

  He decided to eat some of his running-away-to-Alaska food. He decided that he would do it privately.


  "May I go to visit the flamingos?" Sam asked Mrs. Stein politely.

  She nodded, and pointed, even though of course Sam knew where it was.

  Leaving his sister and Mrs. Stein still chatting about old-fashioned furniture, Sam went into the bathroom off the little hall beside the kitchen. Today there were pink towels that matched the flamingos. As he always did, Sam examined the flamingos carefully, trying to figure out how they stood like that, with one leg tucked up tight against their tummies.

  Standing on one leg like a flamingo was a very, very hard thing to do, but Sam was getting better at it. He could stand that way now until he counted to five, and he was hoping to get to ten. When he could stand like a flamingo all the way to ten, he would show people. Maybe he would do it at nursery school, for show-and-tell.

  Of course, Sam realized suddenly, they might not have nursery school in Sleetmute.

  Sam decided not to think about that. Today, for the first time, Sam didn't even bother doing his flamingo imitation. He had more important tasks. He closed the door behind him, knelt on the floor, and unzipped his traveling bag.

  First he removed the heavy atlas that was on the top. Then he looked around, shoving things aside, until he found what he was looking for. There. The jar of peanut butter—a brand-new one with Mr. Peanut on the label—was in the corner of his bag, on top of some mashed cookies. Sam removed it. He wished that he had bread. He wished that he had a knife, or even a spoon.

  But he decided that he would just plunge his finger in, scoop out a mound of peanut butter (he hoped it was super-chunk), and eat it right from his own finger. Then he could return the jar to his bag, return the atlas to his bag, zip the bag, go to the bathroom, wash his hands, dry them on one of the flamingo-pink towels, and stand briefly on one leg for the last time. Then he would insert his fangs, say good-bye, and head for Alaska before it got any darker outside.