Jackson Jones and the Curse of the Outlaw Rose (8 page)

Mr. K. loved his lecture. His voice grew louder. “I ever tell you how my grandmother brought that yellow-rose cutting from Texas?”

Reuben and I nodded.

“Stuck in a potato,” he happily continued. “Yup, those yellow roses are tough. They can survive drought and blight. Look how they lasted this spring when everything else shriveled up. Huh, they can grow in
shade
, when most roses need sun. Why, one kind of Texas rose even lived through a fire.”

I tried not to yawn.

“Mind you, I never actually
saw
that rosebush. Couldn't tell you if the blooms were white, red, or pink. My grandmother told me the story. See, she had a friend come up from Texas about the same time she did. The woman—no more'n a girl, really—brought a cutting, too. To listen to my gran, this girl had the gift. She'd set a stick in soil … the next day, flowers.”

Reuben slumped beside me. My eyes closed sleepily.

“My grandmother couldn't wait to leave Texas, that dry, dusty place. But her friend called that big state home. The husband, though, wanted to try his luck in the East,
and so she came, bringing their baby. Settled somewhere around here.”

The zuke mobile hummed down the highway. The darkness cozied in.

“—lost everything in that fire. House, husband. Little girl, too. Buried what remained of the bodies. Left her roses behind. In a few weeks, she was back in Texas.”

“Oh, that poor woman,” Mama murmured.

“Wish I could remember the name,” Mr. K. droned. “Cassovava? Cassovara?”

My eyes snapped open.

“Cassoway?” Reuben spoke up.

“Maybe,” said Mr. K. “I can't recall. She had an outlandish first name, though.”

“Rose?” I whispered.

Mr. K swiveled round to glare at me. “What you whispering for, boy? My hearing's bad enough. Did you say 'Rose'?” He paused. Shook his head. “I can't recall. No, seems Rose was the name of the little girl. A silly business, naming children for flowers.”

“I named a boy for a horse.” Mama winked at me in the rearview mirror.

Mr. K. slapped his knee. “Oooh, Jackson,” he laughed, “what if that horse was called Daisy?”

I smiled but kept quiet. In the darkness, I thought of that young woman. She had lost everything: home and husband and child. Her love—where had it gone? It had gotten transplanted, maybe. Maybe to roses. Was she trying still to protect them? Maybe her ghost, shaped like a bee, watched over the grave of her daughter and the roses that grew there.

I thought and thought as the van rolled home. And then I must have slept.

So was the curse lifted? The curse of the outlaw rose?

Was there even a curse to begin with?

I don't know.

I do know three things.

Number one: The judge guy did call. Turned out the yellow rose
was
rare. It was an “antique” and had never been named. The man explained that it should be registered, so other folks could learn about it. Thanks to his grandmother, the rose belonged to Mr. K., but he asked Reuben and me to do the honors.

Gaby voted for Gabrielle Marie. Of course, she contributed her own name.

Reuben suggested The Nemo, for our space-comic hero.

Mailbags showed Reuben and me a rose book from the library. There was page after page of long, prissy names. Europena, French Lace, Fortune's Double Yellow. Many roses were named for the people who had found or first grown them.

Because of Blood and his “Flower Boy” taunts, I knew I didn't want a rose with my name.

“What about the name of a place?” asked Mailbags.

So we called it Rooter's. Rooter's Rose. “A good name for a sturdy rose,” Mr. K. said approvingly.

The second thing I know: The day after we returned the twig, the skies sent rain. Not roaring thunder or lightning. Not slashing, smashing drops. Just a steady downpour that soaked the earth and brought green back to the garden.

A coincidence? Of course. Nothing supernatural about a drought.

The third thing? Blood quit being a BIG bully. Mind you, he was still a little bully. He'd let loose a “Rose Jones” or “Art Fart” every once in a while, but he laid off the punching, pounding, and stealing. And if a bee buzzed near—even a gentle bumble guy— Blood would leave
fast.
Maybe being haunted had given his mean self a feeling for the fear and pain of other kids. Or maybe, as Gaby said, the boy believed he was cursed. Forever.

One mystery remained, though. How had Mama, Reuben, and I escaped the curse? I had cut the graveyard twig. Reuben had touched it many times. It had lived with Mama and me. And yet we had remained unhurt. No poison ivy, no bee stings, no broken bones.

For weeks, Reuben and I tried to puzzle it
out. And one July day, while we lollygagged at Rooter's, Reuben hit on a possible reason.

“Maybe the twig didn't hurt us,” he explained, “because we didn't try to hurt it.”

“Go on.” I plucked a grass blade from under my puddle of thorns.

“Think about it,” said Reuben. “The cleanup crew at the cemetery, the manager with the beard, Blood—everyone wanted to destroy it.”

“But I cut the twig and took it away.”

“You were going to plant it,” Reuben said. “You were helping that rose to live.”

I blew a nice, screechy whistle on the grass blade. “But Mr. K. wasn't doing any damage,” I pointed out. “And he sprained his ankle.”

Reuben smiled. “I bet Mr. K. got bossy. You know,
commanding
that twig to grow.”

Mama had said that plants can sense feelings. Maybe the outlaw rose had flat-out refused to live with that bossy man—and had taken action. Huh, that was one
spooky
twig.

Or was it?

“Reuben.” I fiddled with a thorn on my rose bush. “Do you
really
believe that twig was
haunted? I mean, Mr. K. said those old-time roses could live a long time with no rain. And he said they could survive in shade, which explains why the graveyard roses could grow in a forest. Maybe everything that happened was, well,
normal.
No ghosts involved.”

My man took a looonnng, poke-turtle slow time pulling a weed.

I shivered. “But then I remember the feeling that sometimes came off that plant. That sad lonesomeness. How do you explain that?”

Maybe we would never know for sure. Pulling weeds, though, Reuben and I came to one important conclusion. “Haunted twig,” “outlaw rose”—that plant needed a less scary name.

From that day on, we called it the Cassoway Rose. Only to ourselves, though. We would never tell the rose judge, even though the Cassoway was probably rare. We wouldn't register it. We would leave it alone in the graveyard, watched over by the bee.

Who knew, though? Maybe the mama ghost bee (the pink-rose guardian) would visit Rooter's sometime. She'd want to check
on Mr. K.'s old-time yellow roses, after giving them so much care.

“Listen, Reuben.” I whistled another grass blade. “We need a good villain for the next Nemo strip. One with thorns, maybe.”

My man considered the idea. “Giant thorns,” he added.

“Filled with poison.”

As we planned the ultimate fight between Nemo and the evil Thorngruber, I realized a fourth thing I was starting to know. For the first time in my life, maybe roses had not been bad luck.