The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester Read online

  The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

  Also by Barbara O’Connor

  Beethoven in Paradise

  Me and Rupert Goody

  Moonpie and Ivy

  Fame and Glory in Freedom, Georgia

  Taking Care of Moses

  How to Steal a Dog

  Greetings from Nowhere

  The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis

  by Barbara O’Connor

  FRANCES FOSTER BOOKS

  FARRAR STRAUS GIROUX | NEW YORK

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  TITLE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Special thanks to Ron Leonard, Vice-President of International VentureCraft Corporation, the maker of SportSubs, for his expert advice and information about those amazing little submarines. Viola couldn’t have done it better.

  Copyright © 2010 by Barbara O’Connor

  All rights reserved

  Distributed in Canada by D&M Publishers, Inc.

  Printed in July 2010 in the United States of America

  by RR Donnelley & Sons Company, Harrisonburg, Virginia

  Designed by Natalie Zanecchia

  First edition, 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.fsgkidsbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Connor, Barbara.

  The fantastic secret of Owen Jester / Barbara O’Connor.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: After Owen captures an enormous bullfrog, names it Tooley Graham, then has to release it, he and two friends try to use a small submarine that fell from a passing train to search for Tooley in the Carter, Georgia, pond it came from, while avoiding nosy neighbor Viola.

  ISBN: 978-0-374-36850-0

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Submersibles—Fiction. 3. Bullfrog—Fiction. 4. Frogs—Fiction. 5. Family life—Georgia—Fiction. 6. Georgia—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.O217Fan 2010

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009019249

  For Leslie

  My friend

  Who knows all my fantastic secrets

  The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester

  CHAPTER ONE

  Owen Jester tiptoed across the gleaming linoleum floor and slipped the frog into the soup.

  It swam gracefully under the potatoes, pushing its froggy legs through the pale yellow broth. It circled the carrots and bumped into the celery and finally settled beside a parsnip, its bulging eyes staring unblinkingly up at Owen.

  “See, Tooley? I told you,” Owen said. “It’s not hot.”

  He plucked a carrot out of the soup and popped it into his mouth.

  Still cold.

  Not yet heated up for his grandfather’s supper.

  Owen scurried into the pantry and hunkered down on the floor among the sacks of potatoes and jars of pickled okra and waited for Earlene.

  When he heard the clomp, clomp of her heavy black shoes on the wooden stairs, he slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle. When he heard the kitchen door swing open, he slapped his other hand over his mouth, his shoulders shaking with a silent laugh. Then he peeked through the crack in the pantry door.

  Earlene stomped over to the stove in that no-nonsense way of hers. She picked up a wooden spoon from the kitchen counter and peered into the pot. Then she placed the spoon back on the counter, stepped away from the stove, jammed both fists into her waist, and said, “Owen.”

  Her voice had that sharp edge to it that Owen had heard so many times before. He ducked back against the pantry wall and held his breath.

  And then, quick as lightning, the pantry door burst open and Earlene’s hand shot in, grabbed Owen by the collar, and yanked him to his feet.

  Earlene was not a yeller.

  Earlene was a snapper.

  “Get that frog out of there,” she snapped.

  “You think that’s funny?” she snapped.

  She gave his collar a shake.

  “You are a bad, bad child,” she snapped. “And I thank my lucky stars every day that you are not mine.”

  She gave his collar another shake. “And I thank the good Lord up above that your grandfather doesn’t know what’s going on in this house.”

  She stomped over to the counter and began arranging pill bottles on a tray. “The very idea of that poor sick old man up there in the bed not able to do a thing but sleep and eat applesauce and you down here thinking up ways to make my life miserable.”

  Earlene sure knew how to ruin a good time.

  After supper, Owen sat on his closet floor beside the plastic tub where Tooley lived and looked down at the frog. Tooley was the biggest, greenest, slimiest, most beautiful bullfrog ever to be seen in Carter, Georgia.

  It had taken Owen nearly a month to catch him. A month of clomping through mud and scooping with fishnets and buckets and colanders and even a hamster cage. A month of squatting on logs, holding his breath, not moving a muscle, watching that big frog with the heart-shaped red spot between his bulging yellow eyes. A month of telling his friends Travis and Stumpy he was going to catch that frog no matter what.

  And then one day, just last week, he did.

  The right scoop with the right net at the right time.

  He had brought the frog home and made him a perfect frog house in a plastic tub in the closet.

  And he had named him Tooley Graham.

  Tooley after his cousin who lived in Alabama and played in a rock-and-roll band and wore leather bracelets and made everyone mad when he came to Georgia to visit the family at Thanksgiving. (Everyone but Owen, who thought Tooley was cool.)

  And Graham after the big pond where the bullfrog had lived before Owen caught him. Graham Pond.

  Owen poked the frog with his finger. “Come on, Tooley,” he said. “You gotta eat something.”

  But Tooley wouldn’t even look at the dead fly that Owen had dropped into the water in the tub.

  So Owen laid the chicken wire back on top of the tub, put a brick on top of the chicken wire, and flopped onto his bed, staring up at the ceiling. Travis and Stumpy were probably skateboarding over at the Bi-Lo parking lot. Maybe they were throwing rocks at the Quaker State Oil sign out on Highway 11. Or maybe they were thinking up some great new way to torture their dreaded enemy, Viola.

  But Owen was stuck here in his bedroom, thanks to Earlene, who had tattled on him big-time as soon as his mother had gotten home from work. He could tell his mother had thought that soup trick was at least a little bit funny. He had seen the corners of her mouth twitch when Earlene went on and on about what a bad, bad boy he was.

  But his mother had told his father and his father had slammed his fist on the kitchen table and hollered at Owen and
now here he was in his bedroom, just him and Tooley.

  Owen wished they had never moved in with his grandfather. He wished they still lived in that little house over on Tupelo Road. Travis had lived next door and Stumpy had lived across the street and life had been good.

  But then the hardware store had closed and his father didn’t have a job, so they had moved across town to live with his grandfather.

  There were three good things and three bad things about living with his grandfather.

  The three good things were:

  There was a lot of land around the house, with woods and paths and sheds and the big pond where Tooley had lived.

  There was a falling-down barn behind the house that was filled with stuff, like a rusty unicycle and a crate full of horseshoes and about a hundred rolls of chicken wire.

  Train tracks ran behind the woods below the house, and every few days the whistle blew late at night as the train roared through Carter.

  The three bad things were:

  Earlene had been working for his grandfather for as long as Owen had been alive. Maybe longer. Earlene was grumpy and needed everything to be clean.

  Travis and Stumpy lived farther away and sometimes did things without him.

  Viola lived next door.

  Owen did not like Viola.

  There were a lot of reasons why he did not like Viola, but the first four were:

  Viola was nosy.

  Viola was bossy.

  Viola wore glasses that made her eyes look big, like a fly’s.

  Viola was a know-it-all.

  There was only one good thing about Viola:

  She had allergies.

  Viola was allergic to pine and grass and dust and dogs and just about every good thing in life.

  This was a good thing because it meant that Viola didn’t like to play in the woods or the fields or down by the pond. And she never went inside Owen’s grandfather’s house, where Owen’s dogs, Pete and Leroy, left tumbleweeds of fur along the baseboards of every room.

  Owen checked on Tooley one more time before he turned off the lamp beside the bed. Then he sat by the window and took a deep breath of the summer night air. It smelled like pine and grass and honeysuckle.

  Far off in the distance, the train whistle blew. Owen waited, listening for the faint clatter of the train on the tracks to get louder and louder as it got closer to Carter.

  In a blink, the train was whooshing down the tracks behind the house.

  Clatter, clatter, clatter.

  And then . . . something else.

  A noise Owen had never heard before.

  From way down by the tracks.

  A thud.

  The crack of wood.

  A tumble, tumble, tumble sound.

  Then the clatter, clatter, clatter of the train grew fainter and fainter until the only sound left was the chirp of the crickets in the garden beneath the window.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “He’s sad.”

  “He is not.”

  “He is, too.”

  “He is not.” Owen stamped his foot and glared at Viola. He reached into the cardboard box and nudged the grasshopper closer to Tooley.

  The frog didn’t move.

  “Besides,” Viola said, “frogs only eat bugs that are alive.” She stepped closer to Owen. “Everyone knows that,” she added.

  Owen quickly stepped aside before Viola’s pudgy white arm could touch him. “Your mother’s calling you,” he said.

  Viola reached into the box and stroked Tooley’s back with one finger. “You should let him go,” she said.

  Well, that just proved what Owen had known all along. Viola was dumb.

  “You’re dumb,” Owen said. “What kind of person would go to all that trouble to catch the best frog in Carter, Georgia, and then turn around and let it go?”

  “A nice person,” Viola said. “A good person. A kind person. A—”

  “Your mother’s calling you,” Owen said again.

  “You’re mean, Owen.” Viola tossed her stringy hair over her shoulder, adjusted her glasses, wiped grass off the back of her shorts, and stalked off to the hedge that separated her backyard from Owen’s grandfather’s. Then, just before disappearing through the opening at the bottom of the hedge, she turned around and added, “And that frog is sad.”

  Owen scooped Tooley up and held him close to his face.

  “You’re not sad, are you, fella?” he said. He examined the frog. His shiny skin. His yellow throat. His froggy toes.

  Owen glanced over at the hedge to make sure Viola was gone, then whispered to Tooley, “You want a live bug?”

  Tooley wiggled a little bit and placed a webbed foot on Owen’s cheek.

  “Me and Travis and Stumpy will find you some big ole juicy ones,” Owen said. Then he took Tooley over to the back porch and placed him in the outside frog house, a plastic tub under the stairs. The outside frog house was just like the inside frog house, only bigger, so Tooley had more room to swim. Owen had put a log in the tub for Tooley to sit on and added some magnolia leaves that floated on the water like lily pads.

  On his way over to Tupelo Road, Owen worried about Tooley.

  He wouldn’t eat.

  He didn’t jump like he had at first.

  He didn’t swim like he had at first.

  His eyes didn’t seem quite as shiny and his skin didn’t seem quite as smooth.

  But mixed in with the worry about Tooley was some thinking.

  Owen kept thinking about that noise he had heard last night.

  That thud.

  That crack of wood.

  That tumble, tumble, tumble sound.

  Something had fallen off the train.

  Owen was sure of it.

  He had planned to dash down to the tracks first thing this morning and look for it.

  But then Viola had crawled through the opening in the hedge and stuck her nosy nose into his business and said all that stuff about Tooley being sad and now he had to find some live bugs. But he couldn’t stop thinking about that noise or wondering if he was right about something falling off the train.

  And if something had fallen off the train, what in the world could it be?

  CHAPTER THREE

  “How much do bullfrogs eat?” Travis said.

  Owen cupped his hands over the cricket. “Got him!”

  He dropped the cricket into the jar. “That’s five,” he said. “That should be enough.”

  “What about this?” Stumpy held up a fat, muddy worm.

  “Nah,” Owen said. “I don’t think frogs eat worms.”

  Stumpy tossed the worm into the flower bed and wiped his hand on his shorts.

  “Maybe we could build a cage for Tooley,” Travis said. He took his baseball cap off, swished it around in the water in the birdbath, and put it back on. Dirty water ran down the side of his face and dripped onto his shirt.

  “Y’all get out of my garden!” Joleen Berkus hollered out the window.

  The boys ran through the garden, trampling marigolds and tripping on cantaloupe vines, until they reached Stumpy’s yard.

  Joleen Berkus had moved into the house where Owen used to live. She had torn down Owen’s fort and made a garden. She had hauled off all the car parts on the back porch and put a rocking chair there. She had painted right over JESTER on the mailbox and stenciled on BERKUS in perfect black letters, and now she spent the livelong day hollering at Owen and Travis and Stumpy every time they set foot in her yard (which used to be Owen’s).

  “Maybe we could build a cage,” Travis repeated as they flopped down on Stumpy’s front steps to examine the crickets.

  “What kind of cage?” Owen said.

  “A cage in the pond.” Travis tapped on the side of the cricket jar.

  A cage in the pond?

  Hmmmmm.

  That wasn’t a half-bad idea!

  “We could use that chicken wire in the barn,” Owen said.

  “Yeah!” Stumpy said. “Bugs and
stuff could get right through it.”

  “And we could make a door so we could take him out,” Owen said.

  And so the boys planned.

  They planned how big the cage would be and where they would put it and where they would get the things they would need to build it.

  All afternoon they planned.

  And the more they planned, the better Owen felt about Tooley.

  Owen had been so busy planning, he had forgotten about the noise.

  The thud.

  The crack of wood.

  The tumble, tumble, tumble sound.

  But that evening at the supper table, he remembered.

  “I’m going outside,” he said, pushing his chair back with a scrape and heading for the door.

  His father didn’t even look up from his pork chop.

  His mother said, “Be back before dark.”

  Earlene squinted over at him from the sink and muttered something under her breath about bad manners and green beans.

  The two dogs, Pete and Leroy, leaped off the porch after Owen, and the three of them raced across the yard, into the woods, and along the path toward the train tracks.

  Owen had explored every inch of the woods and fields around his grandfather’s house. The main path zigzagged around trees and boulders to the middle of the woods. Then it forked. The path to the left led to a field full of weeds and pricker bushes, then continued on down to a tilted, rotting dock at Graham Pond.

  The path to the right led around the pond to the train tracks on the other side.

  Owen was not allowed to go down to the train tracks.

  Travis and Stumpy were not allowed to go down to the train tracks.

  Owen and Travis and Stumpy went down to the train tracks nearly every day.

  They had put about a million dollars’ worth of pennies on the tracks for the train to flatten (and a few nickels and quarters, too).

  One time Stumpy had put a liverwurst sandwich on the tracks, and when they went back the next day, not a crumb was left.