Jackson Jones and the Curse of the Outlaw Rose

by Mary Quattlebaum

  Also by Mary Quattlebaum

  Novels

  Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns

  Jackson Jones and Mission Greentop

  Grover G. Graham and Me

  The Magic Squad and the Dog of Great Potential

  Jazz, Pizzazz, and the Silver Threads

  Picture Books

  Winter Friends

  Aunt Cecee, Aunt Belle, and Mama's Surprise

  Underground Train

  A Year on My Street

  To Anne D.,

  friend, poet, and green-thing grower

  CHAPTER ONE

  Light barely crept through the gray trees. The damp ground sucked at my shoes and a breeze slid past my neck.

  I slapped at a bug.

  “Shhh,” whispered Reuben behind me.

  “What do you mean 'shhh'?” I whispered back. “Nobody can hear.”

  “We're in a cemetery.” Reuben's voice dipped lower. “We need to show respect.”

  I turned. “I am showing—”

  Next thing—ow!—I hit the ground.

  “You okay?” Reuben whispered.

  “Quit whispering,” I said very loud. “It's making me nervous.”

  Reuben shot me a scared look. “Man, look what tripped you.”

  I struggled to my feet. “Stop it, Reuben,” I said. “I bumped into a gravestone, that's all.”

  Beyond the old cemetery, the dark forest rustled. “Let's go, Jackson.” Reuben's voice cracked. “Something's out there.”

  “We need to get what we came for,” I replied, edging past the moss-slick gravestone.

  Then I saw the name cut in that stone.

  Rose Cassoway.

  Behind the grave, a thorny rope of flowers twined round a broken fence.

  Roses. I should have known roses would do me in.

  A chill grabbed my whole neck.

  Roses have always brought me bad luck. But thanks to my mama, I am stuck with them— and all their little green cousins: African violets, philodendrons, pansies. Mama loves plants. Our home is stuffed with them. This might be fine in the country, where Mama grew up, but it is way too much green for a city apartment. I eat with a fern, sleep in a jungle, talk to a six-foot ficus.

  Whenever I complain, Mama smiles. She claims plants are good for you. Her words: “They clear the air, soothe the eyes, and decrease stress.”

  Decrease stress. That's a laugh.

  This past year has been the most stressful of my life.

  Right to that very moment in the graveyard.

  It all started on my tenth birthday last April. I had been sure I was getting a basketball. But Mama gave me … dirt. A plot in Rooter's Community Garden on Evert Street. And there was no way I could give it back. Mama had been so happy to give me a “little piece of country.”

  Talk about trouble. That garden constantly messed with me. And my puddle-of-thorns rosebush was the worst. My best bud, Reuben Casey, and I spent all summer trying to grow something (besides weeds). Then I spent all fall trying to save the garden—my plot and twenty-eight others. I rescued Rooter's from certain doom, from being bulldozed and turned into a building.

  Now it was April again. I needed a break from plants.

  Instead, they were still in my face. Literally.

  That's because Mama had gone back to college to study plants. And she had started her own business, Green Thumb. Two days a week she tended the green things in offices; the other days she worked a normal job downtown. Green Thumb now had twelve clients, and Mama's business was growing. Literally.

  Well, I just started my own business, too. I have only one client—but he feels like twelve 'cause he keeps me so busy. Mr. Kerring is my next-plot neighbor at Rooter's. He is the oldest and bossiest person I know. The man can remember back to when Rooter's was a World War II victory garden, more than sixty years ago.

  Mr. K. was the very reason I was standing that day in a cemetery. Shivering by a grave. Staring at roses.

  Crackle-crick. That noise again from the forest. Closer this time. Reuben's eyes widened. “Jackson,” he whispered. “What do you think—”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Quit whispering.” I grabbed the rose vine. “It's probably a squirrel.”

  “Or a bear.”

  I pulled some teeny scissors from my pocket.

  Reuben snorted. “You gonna trim the bear's toenails?”

  “For your information, these are house-plant pruning shears. I'm gonna take a cutting. Here, hold this end.”

  Reuben cautiously pinched the vine. “Tell me again why we're doing this.”

  “Because Mr. K. wants to be a rose rustler.”

  Of course, right then the man was waiting in a rental car by the side of the road. And Reuben and I were stuck in the cemetery.

  As I opened the shears, I got a sudden mind picture of how our rustling had started. Two days before Mr. K. and I had visited Rooter's, and the man, as usual, had begun bossing his plants. Commanding them to grow. Then he'd started in on my rosebush.

  “Late spring already and not one single bud.”

  Now, my rosebush was no sweet-blooming angel, believe me. It was a puddle of thorns. A mess of mean sticks. But last fall it had snagged a bully named Blood. Laid him low. Since then, well… I might not like roses, but I have respect.

  Mr. K. had pointed to the yellow blooms climbing Rooter's chain-link fence. “Those are roses,” he'd said. “Tough as cowhide.” He had banged his cane for emphasis. “My gran brought the clipping from Texas, stuck in a potato. Those roses have survived drought, flood, and heat that would singe your hair. No coddling for them. And they flower longer than any modern fancy-pants rose.”

  Mr. K. had banged his cane again. It stuck in the garden path.

  I had helped wrestle it out. “Thanks, Jackson,” he'd sighed.

  Even more than today's puny roses, Mr. K. hated his cane. He had always worked his own perfect plot, but last winter he had taken a bad fall. So he had hired me to bend and lift and tote. My job: to keep his plants marching in straight rows.

  That day in Rooter's, he had proposed another job: rose rustling.

  “We'll search abandoned houses,” he had explained, eyes gleaming. “We'll hunt in graveyards. I used to rustle roses all the time when I was younger. That's how you find bushes more than a hundred years old.”

  “Why don't you just buy a rosebush?”

  “The old roses are hardier and prettier, and smell sweeter, too. But people don't grow them anymore, so stores don't stock 'em. All you can get are big show-off hybrids. No, you have to hunt for the old ones. With rustlin', you never know what you might find.”

  Rustling, huh? Sounded like Mr. K. wanted to play outlaw of the Old West. Cowboy hat and all. I was hoping he'd forget the whole idea in a week.

  The man had shuffled down the path to his grandmother's roses and carefully snapped off a few. “For your mama,” he said. “Isn't that your car?”

  “Car” didn't exactly describe what Mama was driving. It was huge, hulking, and green.

  The zucchini mobile. Mama's van for her Green Thumb business.

  But at least it was big enough to hold me, Mr. K., the cane, and all Mama's snipping, sprinkling, plant-doctoring tools.

  “Those roses smell wonderful!” Mama greeted us. “And what unusual petals. What are they called?”

  “They don't need any fancy-pants name,” Mr. K. humphed, climbing into the van. “ 'Rose' is good enough. Right, Jackson?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, slouching low in my seat.

  As Mama steered the zuke mobile up Evert Street, I slouched lower. Up ahead was the blacktop,
a basketball net, and four hoop-shooting guys.

  It was impossible to hide.

  As the zuke mobile cruised by, each guy grinned and stuck up a thumb.

  For Green Thumb.

  Talk about embarrassing.

  In one year, Rooter's had crushed my cool reputation. Believe me, I am no Farmer in the Dell. One blacktop-booming, b-ball ace, that's me. Shootin', jukin', always on the move. Dribble, dunk—SCORE.

  I got a sudden mind picture of me in a cowboy hat. A rose rustler rather than a basketball star. I shuddered. Surely, Mr. K. would forget.

  But the old man had been struck by rose-rustling fever. He talked and planned, and before we could say no way, no how, he was driving Reuben and me to a country graveyard. He had read a newspaper article about developers discovering a cemetery in a stretch of woods, with markers dating to 1842. Since folks back then planted flowers by graves, he was sure we would find some old roses.

  And we had, twined round the grave of Rose Cassoway.

  “Rustling is stealin'.” Reuben's whisper shivered through the cemetery.

  “No,” I explained very slowly and for the fourth time. “Rustling is just a word. These old roses are public property, Mr. K. says. Anyway, we're not going to dig up a whole bush. We're just taking a cutting.”

  “From a graveyard,” Reuben said.

  “You afraid some ghost will jump out?”

  Reuben didn't crack a smile. “Remember Nemo Comic Number 2? When the Flawt stole the golden orb from the emperor's tomb. Remember the curse?”

  “That was made up!” I said. “We made it up. This is real life. There aren't any curses. Anyway, that was an orb, we're only taking a little twig.”

  “I just … don't … know.” Reuben's voice trailed off. “Hey, let's go home and finish our new Nemo strip.”

  I sighed. Persnickety, careful, and poke-turtle slow—that was Reuben. Every Captain Nemo he drew, he eyeballed and erased. Every b-ball he threw had to be carefully aimed. The boy tiptoed into adventure.

  But we've been best friends since first grade, creators of Captain Nemo Outer-Space Comics since third. And now we were rose rustlers.

  I tried to joke Reuben out of his worry. “Wooooo,” I moaned, flapping my sleeves. “I am the ghost of Rose Cassoway. Who dares touch my precious rooooooses?”

  “Wooo all you want,” Reuben said. “I still think it's wrong.”

  “Woooooooo.” I clicked my shears.

  “Shhh,” Reuben said sharply. “What's that?”

  “It's Rose Cassoway, of course.” Snip. I neatly cut the vine. The small piece fell.

  Crackle-crick.

  Something grabbed my shoulder.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Aargh!” I screamed.

  The grip tightened.

  “Please,” Reuben whimpered.

  A voice spoke: “What in the … Sam Hill are you doing?”

  The voice didn't wail. It didn't moan. And what kind of ghost said “Sam Hill”?

  Cautiously I peeked over my shoulder.

  A bearded man smiled at me. “Sorry to scare you boys,” he said, dropping his hand. “I didn't want you getting too close to that fence.”

  Reuben and I stepped back.

  “I manage the clean-up crew for the housing development in the field close by,” he explained. “We've got orders to cut all the growth in this abandoned cemetery, then tear down that old fence and put up a new one. You know, tidy things up a bit. The job should take one day, two at the most. But the strangest thing …” The man shook his head. “The crew yesterday got poison ivy. Bad poison ivy. Must have been some on that fence.”

  “What about you?” I snuck a glance at his hand.

  “I wasn't here.” The man squinted at the fence. “Came to check out the situation today.”

  I squinted, too. I'd recognize poison ivy anywhere, thanks to all the fields I'd tromped in with my plant-loving mama. Leaves of three, let them be.

  “Huh.” I squinted harder. “I don't see any poison ivy.”

  “Neither do I,” said the man. “That's what's so strange. And this isn't the season for it. The only way I can figure, maybe the guys had a reaction to those flowers.”

  On the fence, the little roses swayed.

  Reuben shivered. “See, Jackson?” he whispered. “The curse.”

  “Curse?” the man asked.

  I squirmed. “My friend here thinks that, well, taking something from a graveyard—”

  “Brings on a curse,” Reuben finished. “You gotta show respect.”

  “Curses only happen in movies or books,” scoffed the man. “I tell you, this is nothing but carelessness. With bad luck thrown in. When Jake broke his leg—”

  “Was he close to the fence?” asked Reuben.

  “Yeah,” said the man. “He tripped over that gravestone.”

  Reuben crossed his arms. “Just like you, Jackson.”

  I crossed my arms right back. “Reuben, you gotta stop all that woo-woo talk now. You're scaring yourself.”

  Reuben snorted. “Wasn't me screaming.”

  “I yelled.”

  “Screamed,” replied Reuben. “Like a girl in a horror movie.”

  “Yelled.”

  “Okay, okay,” the man broke in. “Yelled, screamed—you made a noise.” This time he squinted at us. “You two jumped like a couple of outlaws.”

  I squirmed again.

  “Yeah,” said the man. “Like a couple of outlaws … caught doing wrong.”

  “We were just taking a cutting.” I picked up the fallen rose twig.

  “You two gardeners?” asked the man skeptically.

  “Sort of.” I sighed, thinking of my puddle of thorns at Rooter's. “We're getting this twig thing for a, um, friend. Anyway, these roses are public property. We're not breaking any laws.”

  “Still doesn't make it right,” Reuben muttered.

  “We gotta go,” I said to the man. “Our friend's waiting.”

  “He driving the getaway car?”

  I pictured Mr. K. behind the wheel of the Datsun he'd rented. He had started bossing that car the moment he stepped on the gas.

  “Come on, I'll walk you out.” The man smiled at me. “Don't want any more yells—or screams.” He fished an empty candy wrapper from his pocket. “Wrap that stick in this paper. It'll protect your hand against thorns and a possible rash.”

  As we filed past the other graves, I glanced back once. In the shadow of Rose Cassoway's stone, the tiny pink roses gleamed. The cutting shifted in my pocket.

  “Broken legs, poison ivy, bees.” The man shook his head. “At this rate, we'll never remove that fence.”

  “Bees?” Reuben asked.

  “Got stung myself the other day,” said the man, striding down the path. “Huge bee swooped out of nowhere, buzzing like a jet. That's why I wasn't here yesterday. My arm swelled big as a cantaloupe.”

  Reuben gasped.

  “Don't even start,” I said firmly. “Bees sting. That's what they do. It has nothing to do with a curse.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Three days later Reuben was still repeating his graveyard words.

  He was a kid with a two-word vocabulary.

  The curse. The curse. The curse.

  “I tell you, Jackson,” he muttered darkly. “The curse.”

  “It's a whatchacallit… coincidence,” I said. “Mr. K. just happened to fall.”

  “And sprain his ankle,” said Reuben.

  “Well, that other guy broke his leg.”

  “People keep getting hurt. Like in Nemo Comic Number 2: The Curse of the Golden Orb.”

  “Oooh, and now we're in The Curse of the … the Outlaw Rose, dread flower of the Old West. Reuben, my man, lighten up.” I gave him a poke.

  Why did Reuben have to ruin a nice after-school walk to Rooter's with all his doom-and-gloom talk? Three days before, we had given Mr. K. the graveyard cutting and he had happily taken it home. And yesterday, that's right, he had fallen. But a
tumble could happen to anyone, especially a guy who banged his cane. Mr. K. had lost his balance, that's all.

  We had just visited him at his retirement home. Mr. K. had taken a break from bossing his nurse to ask if I could take the cutting to Mama to root. “This bum ankle,” he had explained sadly, “will keep me from getting the right soil.”

  How could I say no? I carried the cutting, wrapped in wet paper towels, out of his building. On Evert Street, I raised it high on my palm, like a waiter in an ooh-la-la restaurant.

  I stopped at Rooter's chain-link fence to take in the garden. The twenty-nine plots were showing new green shoots. And Mr. K.'s old-time yellow roses were blooming.

  “I got a bad feeling,” Reuben said, all jumpy. “Why you gotta bring that thing to my building?”

  “Well, your building also happens to be my building,” I pointed out. Reuben lived in Apartment 316; I lived in 302.

  And here came our neighbors from Apartment 506. Juana Rivera and her too-loud sister and brother. Gaby, age seven, and five-year-old Ro.

  “Shhh, no more curse talk,” I murmured to Reuben. “Nothing about outlaw roses. We don't want to scare the little kids.”

  Like me, Ro carried something in his palm.

  Like Reuben, Juana and Gaby regarded it grimly.

  “You got a present for me?” I grinned at the little guy.

  “Meet my worm!” Ro proudly introduced his wiggly pet.

  “Disgusting.” Gaby shuddered.

  Juana hunkered down beside her brother. “Why don't you let the worm go,” she suggested. “I bet he misses his friends.”

  “I'm his friend,” Ro pointed out. “I'm protecting him. If I let him go, a bird might eat him.”

  “How you gonna take care of him?” Gaby asked.

  “Mailbags will show me,” Ro announced.

  Not that Mailbags was a big fan of worms, but he did know a lot about gardens. The man was always grubbing in his plot at Rooter's, growing zucchini and beans. And Mailbags lived in our building, too. Apartment 102. Ro didn't have to travel far for expert advice.

  Gaby tried another strategy. “That worm is not even a 'he,'” she said. “It's a he-she. Male and female.”