Sam Samurai (5 page)

“Forget it,” said Sam. “If even bodyless heads need passports, we are cooked.”

“Sumo,” said Zou. “Sumo never need passports. Not easy to hide sumo. Are you sumo today?” Zou cracked himself up again with his own bad joke. “Or performers. If you can show a good enough trick. Are you performers today?”

Fred and Sam looked at me.

The line moved forward.

It all became painfully clear. Once again I had one chance to come up with a good trick.

The line moved forward.

And this time it looked like it was going to have to be something a little better than the Magic Finger Rings trick.

I looked ahead and saw an awful lot of swords and spears up at the passport check gate.

I remember thinking, “Something way better than the Magic Finger Rings trick.”

You know, now that I think of it, time warping really isn’t such an unusual thing. It happens to people all the time. When you can’t wait for something good to happen—like Friday afternoon and getting out of school for the weekend—that hour from 2:00 to 3:00 can take forever. When you want time to go slow—like when you have to go to the doctor’s and get a shot in a week—seven days can whip by in the blink of an eye.

Time warped. I blinked. And the next thing I knew, Fred, Sam, and I were standing in front of a pinched-face man at the wooden guard gate across a bridge. He had already checked Honda’s and Zou’s passports. Now he had his hand out for ours.

“Papers,” he ordered.

“We are entertainers,” I said. “From the far-away province of Brooklyn.”

The gatekeeper frowned. He looked like one of those unhappy guys who always think the worst about other people.

“You look like runaway boys in very bad clothing,” said the gatekeeper, eyeballing us suspiciously.

Honda came back with one hand on his sword handle. He looked down at the gatekeeper and spoke harshly to him. “They are entertainers,” said Honda. “I am escorting them.”

You could almost see the gatekeeper shrink under Honda’s stare. “Of course, samurai. As you say, samurai.”

Fred, Sam and I couldn’t believe it. Just like that we were free. I didn’t have to come up with a trick, which was a good thing because I hadn’t thought of anything. We walked through the gate and looked at the buildings of Edo in the distance.

The gatekeeper gave a little bow, still looking us over. He looked at us like a snake watching a frog.

“But according to law, they must show their entertainment,” said the gatekeeper.

Honda turned to argue.

The gatekeeper smiled a thin, mean little smile, now looking like the snake who swallowed the frog. A group of travelers, hearing the word “entertainment,” started to gather around us.

Honda didn’t want to draw any more attention to us. He could only agree.

Sam fiddled nervously with his glasses. “Okay Joe, let ‘em have it.”

Fred pounded me on the back. “Abracadabra.”

I looked at Sam. I looked at Fred. I didn’t have the heart to tell them—my mind was a complete blank. It was like one of those horrible nightmares where you show up for math class in your underwear and find out there is a test you didn’t know about.

Except this was a nightmare I couldn’t escape by waking up.

“Well?” said the gatekeeper. I was scared stiff. I was scared speechless. I didn’t know what to do.

And then the strangest thing happened. I still don’t know if it really happened, or if my stalled brain just made it up.

I looked at the crowd waiting for the trick. The smiling face of Zou caught my eye. He nodded toward the doorway of the gatehouse. I looked just in time to see a bird spreading its wings and flying out of the doorway. I looked back at Zou. He nodded and flapped his arms once like wings.

Now you may think I’m crazy. In fact, I think I’m crazy, because everything suddenly came together in my mind and hit me like a lightning bolt. All from Zou and a bird and a doorway. But how did Zou know I would know? Did I really see a bird? Did Zou really flap his arms?

I didn’t have time to answer any questions. I had to get to work showing my Mental Powers in the Flapping Arms trick.

“Of course,” I said, scanning the crowd for a friendly face. This trick works best on somebody who wants to believe you. “We don’t normally unleash our full Mental Powers because they can be so ... frightening,” I said. I found a kindly looking older lady smiling and nodding. “But I can show you a small glimpse of my Mental Powers by giving this lady the mind of a hawk, freed from its cage, spreading her wings to fly.”

The gathering crowd laughed and clapped their hands. Zou nodded, smiling. The gatekeeper frowned. I led the lady over to the doorway. I stood her inside it with her feet in each corner.

“Close your eyes,” I said in a low even voice. “Do not speak. You are a hawk trapped in a narrow cage.” I moved her arms so the back of her hands touched against the inside of the doorway. “Push your wings up and against the cage.”

The lady closed her eyes and pressed her arms up. The crowd leaned forward to spot any tricks.

“Keep pressing your wings against the cage. You want to be free,” I said.

The other secret of the trick is to keep your patter going for at least a solid minute. I filled it with a lot of talk about the cage closing in, the hawk wanting to be free, wanting to lift her wings and fly away.

I looked around the circle of spectators. Travelers, and now some soldiers, watched the lady carefully. Fred, Sam, and Honda were sucked in too.

The beautiful part of the trick is that it isn’t really a trick or Mind Power at all. It’s more like a reflex. After your muscles press for so long, they automatically tighten when you stop pressing.

I kept up my patter. The tension built. “When I count to three,” I said, “I will release you from your cage. Then you can step forward, drop your arms, and your wings will rise. One. Two. Three.”

The lady opened her eyes and stepped forward. I held my breath. Her arms hung loose and then to her surprise, they rose, rose, rose up to her shoulders. The crowd oohed and ahhed.

The lady laughed and covered her mouth. “I felt my wings! I wanted to fly!”

The crowd clapped and cheered. Even the lemon-sucking gatekeeper looked amazed.

“Joe the Magnificent,” yelled Fred, raising a fist in the air.

I bowed.

And life would have been great—if a certain red-armored samurai hadn’t chosen that moment to ride up on his horse.

“What is all this noise?” the samurai demanded. He had a scar that made his lip curl into a nasty sneer. Even his horse looked mean, stamping around. The crowd backed away, leaving Fred, Sam, and me.

We copied everyone else bowing. Zou stepped forward to save us. “A small entertainment, sir.”

The samurai scowled down at us. “No one disturbs our master’s peace with their entertainments unless they ask me, leader of the Red Devil body-guards, Owattabutt.” The samurai posed proudly.

Fred’s eyes bugged out. I couldn’t stop him.

“Oh what a butt?” asked Fred.

“Owattabutt of Minowa,” said the samurai.

“Oh—what a butt,” repeated Sam.

We tried our best not to laugh. We really did. But you know us.

It took us about three seconds to crack up, freak out Owattabutt, have our hands tied behind our backs, and get surrounded by a gang of red samurai warriors with spears.

Then things really went bad.

Owattabutt gave us a very nasty look and said, “Now you will
woof woof woof bark bark bark meow meow meow.”

“Let me guess,” said Sam, staring at the point of the closest spear. “Something’s wrong with the Auto Translator again.”

“Eeka weeka wakka,”
said Owattabutt.

“I think so,” I said. “But I don’t know how ... if we don’t even have
The Book.”

“WAKKA WEEKA EEKA!”
screamed Owattabut. He was standing right over us now. The samurai spears closed in.

“Sam, what’s he saying?” said Fred.

“I’m guessing it’s something like,
‘Let’s poke Fred full of holes for laughing at my name!”’
said Sam.

“You laughed, too,” said Fred.

“Only because you started,” said Sam.

“I don’t think so,” said Fred.

“I think so,” said Sam.

Owattabut spoke loudly and slowly, one word at a time.

“What is that?” I said.

“It sounds familiar,” said Sam.

“Well don’t hurry,” I said. “But just let us know what it is before we get poked full of holes, okay?”

“Sam?” I said.

“Go?” said Sam. “That’s ‘five.”’

“Six,” said Sam.

“Shichi.
”

“Seven,” said Sam. “He’s counting.”