Yeah.
V for victory.
Mission Greentop: accomplished.
I headed for my soggy plot. Squish-squish-squish. Mr. K.'s holes were full of muddy water.
And my bush—a puddle of thorns.
The roses, though, were still hanging on. Rain had pounded them for three whole days—but they had survived. One of those garden surprises.
Then I got another surprise.
Rolling down Evert. Built like a tank.
Blood Green.
He was forever skipping school. But why'd he have to miss the same day as me?
“Jones.” Blood's mouth screwed into a smile. His arms bulged in his T-shirt.
Blood unlatched the gate and entered.
I was trapped. Surrounded by fence too high to leap.
Blood rammed through gardens.
Plowed straight toward me.
His mission: to destroy.
I held my ground, brain whirling. Maybe I could make a break for the gate. Zigzag through the garden.
No one would hear me holler for help. Kids were still in school, the blacktop empty.
Squosh. Squosh. Squosh. Blood's big shoes.
Squosh. Squosh. Through Mailbags's garden.
Blood stopped in Mr. K.'s plot.
“Jones,” he said. And he lunged.
Things happened fast then. Blood stepped into a hole. Teetered.
Splot.
Face first in the mud.
He lurched to his feet like some Nemo monster.
Leaped at me again.
Slid. Right into the rosebush.
“Yow!”
Blood had jumped my fierce pile of sticks.
“Yow!” He flailed wildly. Arms, legs, stems— everything churned in the mud. Rose petals flew through the air.
Finally Blood lay still. Gripped by thorns, a mud-covered Shamu. Petals floated around him.
“Jones,” he whimpered.
Talk about garden surprises.
I gazed down. What should I do?
I could leave Blood there. School would be out soon. The sidewalks would fill with kids heading home. Kids that Blood had bullied. Wouldn't they love to catch him like this?
I could mess with Blood the way he messed with Reuben and me.
I could haul off and hit him. He'd get a taste of what he dished out.
No, I wanted to do something that would last a loonng time.
At my feet, two eyes narrowed. “Jones,” Blood spat, “you better help.”
“On one condition,” I said.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Slowly, slowly I worked the thorn from Blood's shirt.
“Hurry, man.”
“Hold still,” I commanded. “When you thrash around, the thorns twist tighter. And the mud slimes everything.”
“I should sue,” Blood grumbled.
Listen to the boy. All that big talk? Nothing but air.
“One down,” I said, moving to the next thorn. “About twenty to go.”
“Faster,” Blood demanded.
I had to smile. What strategy! If Reuben was here, we'd be slapping some skin.
See, before I agreed to help, before I started on the first thorn, I had laid out the options for the big lump of mud.
1. Blood could stay trapped. Maybe kids passing by would help. Maybe not.
OR
2. He could promise to lay off Reuben and me. No punching or pushing. No “Rose Jones” or “Art Fart.” No picking on Juana, Gaby, and Ro.
“If the punching starts again,” I had continued, “the whole school might be very interested in how you lost a fight—to a rosebush.”
The Blood-lump had growled.
“Reuben will draw a picture.” I tapped my chin, thinking it through. “We'll pass out copies. Two or three hundred. The school newspaper would get all the details.”
What could Blood do but promise?
And when I had worked my way down to the last six thorns, I knew he would keep that promise.
See, Blood liked to wear big jeans. The kind that barely hold to the hips. In the tussle, his jeans had ridden low … low … down to his knees.
The last six thorns—well, each had grabbed a chunk of Blood's underwear. They had poked and ripped and slashed.
Those thorns had whipped Blood's sorry butt.
“Huh,” I said, peeling back muddy cloth. “This how you got your name?”
“Jones.” Blood glared.
“Mr. Jones,” I corrected.
It's been one month since Blood tackled my rosebush. Sometimes he still lets fly with “Bouquet Jones.” I figure that boy is stuck in his pea-brain ways. It's hard for him to change.
So I just draw out the word rose to remind him. Roosse.
Blood shuts right up. He knows I keep my silence as long as he keeps his promise.
Mr. K. had once told me that a fall rose was special. Little did he know.
On account of Blood's whomping, Mama never did see my flowers. But I managed to save a few petals.
She mixed them into something called potpourri—shriveled plant parts stuck in a bowl.
Potpourri. Another villain for Captain Nemo.
Villains, huh. These days Blood is not the only bad guy keeping a promise. Last week Mailbags delivered a thick brown envelope. It was addressed to Mr. Jones.
Inside were copies of reports and completed forms.
There was a scrawled message on Drane and Company paper.
Mr. Jones,
Plans moving nicely. Looking forward to dedication ceremony in the spring.
A. Drane
Dedication ceremony: a fancy name for a party. There would be speeches and photos, maybe cookies for all. A plaque for Drane and Company. Nathan Aramack might come with a big TV camera.
Rooter's would be safe. A teeny national park that no one could bulldoze or build on. The mishmash of plots would continue.
Including Plot 5-1, which grows the best weeds in the city. I forked my fingers: V for victory.
Yeah, a lot had happened in the past month.
In fact, I had just finished being grounded. No after-school b-ball, no hanging out with Reuben. My mama had grounded me so long I felt stuck as a seed in the dirt.
“You skipped school,” she told me a month ago. “You went downtown by yourself.”
“But, Mama!” I had tried smoothing on strategy.
“Don't even try your fast talk with me.” Mama's worry frown had been deep. “Just because things turned out okay doesn't make this behavior right. Understand?”
Yeah, I guessed I understood. Mama didn't want me getting hurt or lost. She didn't want me growing super-sneaky, like Amelia Drane.
At first, Reuben and Juana had been mad at me for tackling Drane and Company without them. But when they saw my stuck-seed, bored state, they got over it. At school, Reuben told me he was working on Nemo's weirdest villian yet.
“Draneco has a bubble head and a shiny cape.” He smiled. “She's scarier than the Unspeakable Z.”
Uh-oh, the Unspeakable Z. Zucchini. Maybe Mailbags and Mr. K. could plant less the next spring. Then there'd be no extra to pass on to Mama. No zucchini baked, boiled, breaded, or fried.
I had till April to figure a strategy.
But the Unspeakable Z was to return sooner. Much sooner.
On my first Friday freed from grounding, Reuben and I moseyed home from school. I didn't even mind moving poke-turtle slow, like Reuben. My man and I needed time to plan the perfect Saturday. Tomorrow we'd play a little one-on-one at the blacktop. Work on our latest Nemo strip. Even help Mr. K. fill in his holes. I'd already given my five cups of rich dirt to the ficus, I told Reuben. Gift from the garden.
“Jackson grows roses. Jackson grows roses. Big, red, smelly-good ROOSSES.”
I whipped around.
“What?” asked Gaby, all innocent. “I can sing. It's a free country.”
“How about ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’?” Juana suggested.
“Boring,
” said Gaby.
“Baby song,” sniffed Ro.
Why did I make Blood promise not to deck those two? I thought, rounding the corner.
That's when I saw it.
Huge, hulking, green.
I blinked. Zucchini on wheels.
Mama patted it proudly.
Juana giggled. Gaby and Ro made straight for the parked monster.
“Sure is bright” was all Reuben said.
My plant doctor mama had done it. She'd gotten a green ambulance.
One of her teachers had recommended her for a job, Mama told us. Two offices needed regular plant care.
“This new work is part-time.” Mama's eyes were all shiny-happy. “I can do it before my regular job. Think, Jackson, a little extra money. And the start of my own business.”
Mama had traded our car for a van. She had needed more space to carry her tools.
Mailbags pulled up behind Mama's van. His mail truck hunkered small as a peanut beside a green zuke.
“Nice rig.” He smiled.
Mama smiled back, flourishing open a door. “Who wants a ride?”
Gaby and Ro scrambled in.
“Jackson,” they yelled, “now we can go EVERYWHERE with you.”
Juana hopped inside, followed by Reuben. Even Mailbags took a seat. Their heads bobbed together like a bunch of wildflowers. Wild flowers, to be exact.
Mama touched my arm. “What do you think?”
I eyeballed the van. I lived in a jungle, talked to a tree. Now I had to ride in a vegetable.
“Mama,” I said, “my life is getting too green.”
Mama nodded seriously. “I've thought hard about all your help, Jackson. And how my studies have taken over.”
Where was this headed?
“I plan to take just one class from now on till I finish,” Mama went on. “Free up some time. Can't have you being a guy Cinderella.”
My feelings exactly.
Mama and I slapped skin. She didn't do it right. But she tried.
“When I cook, you can clean,” I suggested.
“Starting tonight.” Mama smiled.
I climbed into the van, very cool. “I know the perfect first job for your van.”
“That so?” Mama started the engine.
I nodded. “Let me show you the way.”
Down the street were gallons of dirt. Reuben and I had planned to tote them tomorrow. But with a van and all these helping hands—why not do it today?
Gaby started in on her Jackson-grows-red-roses song.
I grinned. Wait till Mr. K. saw us. Arriving in Mama's zucchini-mobile.
A garden surprise, for sure.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
During World War II, nearly 20 million Americans planted vegetable gardens to help provide adequate food for those at home and U.S. soldiers overseas. These victory gardens came in all shapes and sizes. They were planted in window boxes, vacant city lots, backyards, and schoolyards. With so many fathers, uncles, and older brothers away at war, the children in many households helped sow seeds, tend plants, and harvest and preserve produce. They grew carrots, turnips, spinach, tomatoes, and many other vegetables and fruits.
Most of these gardens disappeared after the war— but a few continue to flourish. They might be considered living history, a testimony to the idea that history is made not just by presidents and generals but also by ordinary children, women, and men. For years, my husband and I tended a plot in our city community garden (the Melvin Hazen Community Garden in northwest Washington, D.C.). This garden began as a victory garden and is now part of Rock Creek Park, one of the largest urban national parks in the United States. Whenever I planted, weeded, and munched home-grown lettuce and radishes there, I thought about the numerous others who had worked this same small plot of land.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With much gratitude to the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities under the National Endowment for the Arts, for a creative writing grant during the time this book was written. Thank you to Elizabeth Judd and Annie Thacher for sharing gardening thoughts, and to the Melvin Hazen Community Garden in Washington, D.C., for many good gardening years. Thank you to Kevin Mohs for kindly answering questions related to an earlier draft. Many, many thanks to Leslie Buhler, executive director, and Jill Sanderson, education director, for information on Tudor Place, a historic house and garden in Washington, D.C. I am also deeply grateful to Nancy McCoy, education director of the National Museum of American History, for insights on victory gardens and the National Park Service, and to Perry Wheelock, Rock Creek Park's cultural historian, for information on the community gardens in this national park. Big thank-you bouquets go to Jen Carlson, Jennifer Wingertzahn, and Françoise Bui for seeing the manuscript through, and to Christopher and Christy David for their continued support and good cheer.
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, the Parenting Reading Magic Award, and other accolades. She writes frequently for the Washington Post and teaches creative writing in Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and daughter. For years Mary Quattlebaum tended a plot in a city community garden, where, like Jackson Jones, she found both weeds and good fellowship.
You can read more about the author at her Web site, www.maryquattlebaum.com.
Published by
Yearling
an imprint of
Random House Children's Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
New York
Copyright © 2004 by Mary Quattlebaum
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eISBN: 978-0-307-53303-6
December 2005
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