Part 9 (1/2)
Sam didn't like leftover, cold spinach very much. But he went to the refrigerator anyway, took out the dish that held the spinach, and ate some.
Yuck. It tasted awful.
He checked his muscles. No change.
Another big bite. YUCK.
And he checked again. Still no muscles.
Sam sighed and reached for the bowl of spinach one more time, just as the back door opened. His father was home.
”What are you eating, Sam?” Daddy asked. He set his briefcase down, came over to the table where Sam was sitting, and peered into the bowl. ”It looks like cold spinach.”
”It is cold spinach,” Sam said with his mouth full.
”Do you mind if I ask why you are eating something so disgusting? Especially when there's good stuff in the refrigerator, likea”let's seea”apples?”
”I need big muscles,” Sam said.
”You do?” his daddy asked. ”Why?”
Sam thought about that. ”If I had big muscles,” he said at last, ”Nicky would never ever bite me at school. And no monster would ever dare to come live in my closet. I could chase bad guys. And everybody would call me He-Man.”
”Well,” his dad said, ”I guess that's true. But why are you eating cold spinach?”
”This is how Popeye gets his big muscles.”
Sam's daddy sat down. ”I'd forgotten that, Sam, but you're right. That is how Popeye gets his muscles. And when I was a kid, I tried to get them the same way. But you know what?”
”What?” Sam asked gloomily, reaching for another bite of yucko cold spinach.
”It doesn't work for regular people, only for Popeye.”
”It doesn't?” Slowly Sam put the spinach back into the bowl.
”Nope. I thought I'd better tell you before you gave yourself a spinach stomachache.”
”But how did you get your big muscles?”
”Me? I don't have big muscles. I'm Mister Flabbo,” said Sam's father. ”Feel.” He guided Sam's hand to the top of his arm, and Sam poked. Through his father's jacket, the arm felt pudgy and soft.
”Anyway,” his father said, ”you don't want to be like Popeye. He wears terrible clothes.”
Sam thought about Popeye's clothes. ”They're not so bad,” he told his father. ”He wears a sailor suit.”
”I happen to know, Sam, that your mother bought you a sailor suit. And you absolutely refused to wear it. Remember that day when you were supposed to go to a birthday party, and Mom tried to get you to wear the sai-”
”Yeah,” Sam muttered. It was a day he had tried to forget. He had behaved very badly. So, in Sam's opinion, had his mother.
”And another thing about Popeyea”” Sam's father went on. ”I know you'll hate this!”
”What?”
”He smokes a pipe.”
”That's right!” Sam said. ”Just like you! Even though Mom and Anastasia and I always always tell you to quit, and Anastasia brought home all those booklets from the American Long Sausage Nation.”
”American Lung a.s.sociation,” his father corrected him, with a guilty look. ”And I am going to quit, I really am. Very, very soon. Probably next week. Or if not next week, the week after that, for sure.”
Sam's daddy looked so unhappy that Sam reached over and stroked his arm to let him know that he loved him, even if he did smoke a pipe.
”Good old Mr. Flabbo,” Sam said. ”I love you.”
”Thanks, Sam,” his daddy said. ”I love you, too. Let's you and I start doing some exercises together, so we can work on the old muscles.”
Sam grinned. He put the bowl of spinach back in the refrigerator. ”Come on,” he said to his daddy. ”Let's go pump iron.”
13.
Sam slithered on his belly up the stairs and into his sister's bedroom. Her door was partly closed, so he slithered in very carefully through the open part, making no noise.
Slither, slither, slither.
Anastasia didn't see him. She was on her bed, writing in her notebook.
Anastasia was always writing in her notebook.
”It's my private notebook,” she had told Sam. ”And don't you ever dare peek into it. Because I have ways of knowing if you do.”
”What ways?” Sam asked. ”I could do it while you're at school, and you would never, ever know.” (Anastasia never took the private notebook to school.) ”Yes, I would. Sometimes I put an invisible hair across the cover, and if the hair is dislodged I know a spy has been into my notebook.”
”Lemme see. I want to see the invisible hair,” Sam had said.
But Anastasia had said no. ”Just keep your mitts off of it,” she told him. ”People my agea”thirteena”have private stuff, and they don't want their little brothers messing around with it.”
”People my age have private stuff, too,” Sam had told her.
He didn't, really. Didn't have any private stuff. But he liked to try to make himself invisible, which was a way of being very private, and that was why he was slithering invisibly into Anastasia's room.
”BOO!” Sam shouted, leaping up suddenly, beside his sister's bed.
Anastasia jumped, startled. She dropped her marking pen.
”Sam!” she said in an irritated voice. ”Cut it out. You scared me. What are you doing, creeping around like that?”
”I'm being a lizard,” Sam explained.