Free Jackson Jones and the Curse of the Outlaw Rose by Mary Quattlebaum Page A

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. wantedto 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 flowersby 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