Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns Read Free

left out the part where Reuben and I would charge five dollars a rose. Somehow, I don’t think in the country she harvested her flowers for cash.
    Mama smiled. “Jackson, this is wonderful. I had a hard time deciding whether to give you a basketball or a garden. I wish I had enough money to give you both. But I thought you’d get so much more enjoyment out of a garden.”
    Yeah, right.
    “You do like the garden, don’t you?” Mama asked.
    Mama is always anxious about raising meright. See, my father ran off when I was a baby and she worries about me having no male role model. (She got that from TV.) I tell her I have Mailbags Mosely to role-model me. And she tells me not to bother him ’cause he’s-work-ing-full-time-and-going-to-college-and-don’t-have-time-to-hardly-breathe-poor-man. I just shrug when she says that.
    Mama has a little frown line between her eyes from worrying about giving me a good childhood in the city. (Her words.) And she reads books like
How to Talk to Your Child
. I read a little of that one, so I could learn how to talk back. The whole book was like this:
    Child: “Give me that radio.”
    Parent: “You are behaving inappropriately.”
    Child (screaming): “I want that radio.”
    Parent: “You are behaving inappropriately.”
    Boring. Also stupid. I couldn’t talk that mean to my mama. She’d probably start crying. And Miz Lady would clobber me.
    So when she looked at me with that littleworry frown, I said, “Mama, the garden was a
good
present.”
    The worry frown disappeared. She smiled. “I can hardly wait to see the first seedlings. Why, the flowers should be blooming by June.”
    Then I got another brilliant idea. More than brilliant—spectacular.
    Mama’s birthday was in June.
    I would give her the garden for her birthday.
    Or, rather, her birthday present would be her first glimpse of all those marigolds, zinnias, and roses. Then I would chop them off and sell them for a profit.
    I figured I must be a genius.
Plus
an excellent businessman.
Plus
a wonderful son.
    I grinned. I could hardly wait for planting time.
    I surveyed the rows of hoses, gloves, planters, hoes, shovels, and minishovels in Juniper’s Hardware. And the prices: $6.95, $4.95, $.89, $8.57.
    With his artist’s eye Reuben was checking out the seven neat rows of seed packets.
    Gaby and Ro were running around a tin garden shed, with Juana chasing them.
    Immediately, a salesman materialized. One minute—nothing. Next minute—Poof!—some frosty-face Joe pops up like a magic trick.
    “Stop that,” he hissed.
    That just made Gaby and Ro run faster.
    Salesclerks come in two varieties: the kind that get cute with kids and the kind that treat kids like JDs. Frosty Joe was the second type. “Juvenile delinquent” flashed in his eyes when he looked at me.
    I eyed all those hoses, hoes, et cetera, et cetera, again. Mr. Frosty Joe tapped his shiny shoe. Then I unfolded my list—as slooowwly as Reuben on his slowest day.
    Gaby and Ro suddenly shot past and swarmed up the shelves. They dug their sneakers into the coiled hoses as if they were scaling a cliff.
    Juana hurled some Spanish up at them. They spat words back. I’d catch a “
diablo
” and an “
agua
” once in a while but prettymuch lost the conversation. I vowed to learn more Spanish.
    I smiled my friendliest smile at Frosty Joe. “I’d like to see your rose seeds, please.”
    “Roses grow on bushes, young man.” Frosty Joe squinted past me to Reuben. He figured I was trying to distract him while Reuben stuffed the seeds into his pocket. I felt mad, but I kept cool.
    “Show me the bushes, then.”
    Frosty squeezed up his eyes like he had a headache and led me to a shelf crammed with bags of thorns.
    Now I was suspicious. “Where’s the flowers?”
    “You want instant roses”—he actually sniffed—“go to a florist.”
    Reuben waved a seed packet at me and mouthed, “Zinnias.”
    Frosty Joe squinted at Reuben and then at me, like he was trying