Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns Page 5

  “Garden’s dead,” I said.

  “No way,” said Mailbags. “Those flowers are going to bloom again. Give ’em a few weeks.”

  Seventy flowers blooming. Twenty-five spelling basketball.

  Reuben and I high-fived.

  “Here comes Juana and the kids,” said Mama. “Maybe they’d like some cake.”

  Slap, slap, slap. Juana’s sandals marched up the garden path. In one hand she carried a peanut jar and a plastic grocery bag. The other was clamped to a struggling Gaby.

  Slap, slap, slap. Juana’s face was set.

  “She doesn’t look like she wants cake,” Reuben whispered.

  I knew that look. Juana had turned that same look—THE LOOK—on me when she had accused me of cheating Gaby.

  “The money’s gone,” I shouted. “I bought flowers for Mama’s birthday.”

  Slap, slap, slap, slap.

  Juana halted in front of me.

  “Gaby has a confession to make.”

  So THE LOOK was directed at Gaby, not me. What a relief.

  Gaby scrambled for the peanut jar. Ro dove for the bag.

  Juana shook them off.

  “A terrible confession,” she said.

  “They’re mine,” Gaby screamed. “Mine, mine, mine.”

  As I watched Gaby claw and leap, I had a terrible feeling. My spirit fell again and landed somewhere in the heel of my right Air Jordan. It trembled there.

  I had punched the wrong man.

  “What’s in the jar?” I asked Juana.

  “Olive oil.”

  “Fragrant oils,” howled Gaby.

  “She was making perfume,” Juana explained.

  I grabbed the bag. It was full of petals. And broken flower heads. Probably about seventy.

  “You stole my perfume”—Gaby landed a kick on Juana’s leg—“just when it was smelling good.”

  “Smelling good,” Ro howled.

  Gaby sighed tragically. “I was going to sell it for a hundred bucks a bottle. Maybe more. It smelled much better than that blond-head lady’s.” She faced me. “I was going to cut you in on the profits, Jackson. Honest. Just as soon as I invented it.”

  Juana’s face didn’t change expression.

  Gaby gazed out across the garden as if seeing a great vision. “I was going to call it Bouquet Jones,” she said. Her look swept across the street, as if including the cars, people, and 7-Eleven store in her vision. “It would have been as famous as Calvin Klein perfume. Now…” She sadly spread her empty hands.

  Mama uncapped the peanut jar. Sniffed. “Vanilla,” she pronounced.

  “A hint of cinnamon,” said Miz Lady.

  Mailbags sniffed. “Definitely olive oil.”

  “And twelve drops of Night of Stars,” said Gaby. “Dab some behind your ears. Free trial.”

  “Gaby has three dollars and seventy-two cents, which she would like to pay you for damages,” Juana told me.

  “No, she wouldn’t,” said Gaby.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “The flowers will grow back.”

  Gaby stuck her tongue out at Juana.

  “Just don’t ever cut them again,” I added quickly.

  “The perfume business is bust anyway,” said Gaby. “Mama locked up the Night of Stars.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Juana directed THE LOOK at Gaby.

  “Cake?” Gaby asked.

  “Apologize to Jackson.”

  “No.”

  THE LOOK deepened.

  “I’m-sorry-I-cut-your-stinking-flowers-now-can-I-have-some-cake.” Gaby got that out in one breath.

  “I’m sorry,” said Ro.

  “Ro didn’t do anything,” said Reuben.

  “He just wants cake,” explained Gaby.

  Juana turned to Ro. “Say, ‘please,’ not ‘I’m sorry.’ And don’t suck your thumb.”

  “I’m not sucking, I’m tasting.”

  Juana addressed the adults. “I’m trying to teach them manners.”

  Then Juana apologized to me, saying she had falsely accused me of cheating Gaby. Seems like Gaby finally told her the real story behind the sale of the red zinnias. She also said she still felt—THE LOOK crossed her face—I had treated Reuben wrong.

  I knew that.

  Night was coming on and the lightning bugs dipped over Reuben’s bows. Checking out the exotic flowers, I guess. Still we stayed outside. Mailbags rapped in his buffalo voice about a dude that sowed seeds and reaped gold—mari-gold. We all laughed. The little kids sang about el gato in a sombrero. (Which means “cat in a hat.” Juana’s taught me that much Spanish.)

  Then I started thinking how we—Reuben, Miz Lady, Juana, everybody—were gathered around kind of like the plants in my garden. Like flowers, almost. (Except Gaby was more like a weed.) And the city Mama and I had passed through last night—with folks sitting on their front steps and pigeons and all—was part of that garden, and that garden spread out a long way in the darkness, even into other countries. It was weird to think of the garden covering that much ground. Like thinking of the sky making a place for everyone to breathe. And the vastness of space.

  I thought and thought, trying to understand.

  Big things and small things—how they all fit together. How flowers die—and then come back. (According to Mailbags, anyway. I’d believe that when I saw it.)

  Mama told a story. Miz Lady told a longer one.

  Till the mosquitoes started biting and drove us inside.

  Mama said it was her happiest birthday ever.

  The next day as Reuben and I walked to school, he asked the BIG question:

  “You scared about Blood?”

  I’d asked myself that question a lot since Mama’s garden party.

  “I know what I’m going to do.”

  “Prepare to die.” Reuben shuffled beside me. “Hey, can I have your Nemo notebook when he wastes you?”

  “He’s not going to waste me.” Lub-dub. My heart again.

  “How about your spade?”

  “Vulture.”

  “Dead meat.”

  Reuben softly punched my arm.

  At school Blood eyed the clock, then eyed me, then eyed the clock. He reminded me of a Doberman pinscher watching a little piece of steak.

  Ms. Wanbe signaled for recess.

  Grim-lipped, Reuben walked beside me. We were the last in line.

  Lub-dub, lub-dub went my musical heart.

  One by one the kids peeled off to the blacktop.

  Except Blood. He waited for me by the door.

  With the fat lip I’d given him, he looked twice as mean.

  “Jackson,” Reuben whispered.

  “Shut up,” Blood growled. “Or you’re next.”

  He rubbed his fist into his palm. I wondered if he was going to lick his chops, like a Doberman pinscher.

  “I got something to say.” I stepped forward.

  “You got nothing to say.” Blood spat. The spit quivered, then seeped into the sidewalk.

  “I know you didn’t cut those flowers.”

  Blood stepped back. His big face seemed to deflate. “I never touched your stupid garden.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “So apologize.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Jackson, you fool,” Reuben wailed.

  Blood glared at me. “Is this a joke?”

  I shook my head.

  Blood peered into my face. “Are you scared?”

  “Only a little,” I said honestly.

  Then Blood doubled back and—Wham!—punched me.

  But on the arm. And not too hard.

  “See you don’t make that mistake again.” He sauntered off.

  Reuben grabbed me. He pawed me like I was that guy in the Bible, Lazarus, come back from the dead. “You okay, man?” he kept asking.

  I straightened my arm. It worked just fine.

  I stepped into my walk, the one Miz Lady calls my Mr. Cool style.

  “That boy’s just wan
ting,” I said.

  I wish I could say Blood never bothered me again. But he still cawed “Boo-kay” over the garden fence, and once in a while he’d punch my arm, for old times’ sake. His meanness continues to be one of life’s mysteries. Maybe someday he’ll find out what he wants.

  The flowers grew back, just like Mailbags said they would. And with three people—Reuben, Mama, and me—working that garden, I had more time for other things.

  Hanging out.

  Writing three Captain Nemo strips.

  Slam-dunking my new b-ball.

  Yes, the day finally came when I trimmed twenty-five zinnias. Reuben tied up their stems with a precise bow. And Mailbags bought the whole bunch. Just slapped twenty-five bucks in my hand and lifted those zinnias high. “These flowers are perfect,” he said, and smiled his buffalo smile.

  Reuben and I stepped down to Harvey’s Sports and tapped, poked, and softly dribbled each basketball. Then we tapped, poked, and dribbled them all over again. I’d waited for this basketball for a long time. I wanted to make sure I bought the best.

  Finally, I laid down my flower money and picked up the best basketball. I spun it, tossed a fast one to Reuben.

  Thonk, my man caught it. Tossed it back.

  Thonk, the ball slapped my palm. Ahh! That felt good.

  And don’t you know, when I got home those same flowers were sitting in Mama’s blue vase.

  “Did you buy those zinnias from Mailbags?” I asked.

  “They were a gift,” said Mama.

  “Mailbags gave you those flowers?” I couldn’t believe it. “Those flowers cost him twenty-five dollars—and he just gives them away. The man wastes money.”

  “Maybe not,” said Mama.

  After that I noticed that Mailbags tended to mosey over to my garden every time Mama was around. I also noticed Mama would stop weeding and chat.

  “What kind of role model inclines a mama to laziness?” I grinned at Mama one day as we weeded the lettuce.

  “Boy”—she grinned back—“you trying to grow trouble in this garden?”

  But I knew better. Mixed in with trouble was some good garden stuff. I coolly yanked a weed.

  About the Author

  MARY QUATTLEBAUM is an award-winning author of picture books, poetry, and novels for children, including Underground Train, Grover G. Graham and Me, and Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns, winner of the first Marguerite de Angeli Prize, Parenting’s Reading Magic Award, and other accolades. Mary Quattlebaum writes frequently for the Washington Post and teaches creative writing in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and their daughter. For years Mary Quattlebaum tended a plot in a community garden, where, like Jackson, she found both weeds and good fellowship.

  You can read more about the author on her Web site at www.maryquattlebaum.com.

  About the Illustrator

  MELODYE ROSALES studied art, filmmaking, and animation at the University of Illinois, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College. She has illustrated several books for children, including Kwanzaa, Double Dutch and the Voodoo Shoes, Beans on the Roof, and Addy in the American Girl series. She lives in Champaign, Illinois, with her husband and their two children.

  Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York

  Text copyright © 1994 by Mary Quattlebaum

  Illustrations copyright © 1994 by Melodye Rosales

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-42147-0

  May 1995

  v3.0