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Rose Knows

Jacoby Harbison

    This is a bad but not rare situation. She is bleeding, and a warm, late June breeze blows.
    Laurel is on the ground in a mess of limbs, oddly bent joints, and American Beauty red roses and thorns. She tripped in the yard and hit her head on the stair rail leading to the sun porch and fell into her rose bush. Dale is on the other side of the house in a distant part of the two acre yard, unaware anything is taking place with Laurel and the rose. Maybe he’ll make it around to where Laurel is lying with ebbing energy. Maybe he’ll begin to wonder where she is. Laurel’s fall might’ve made a noise, but Dale is deaf from years of farming with unprotected hearing. He might accidentally step around the house and see her from a distance, but Dale is blind with macular degeneration. This is a bad but not rare situation. Laurel’s feebleness has caused her to land in the rose bush before. This time is different.
    Dale is 93 and a stubborn German farmer. He is stuck in his ways and uncompromising even when his way doesn’t serve him well. Dale is tall, almost 7 foot, and weighs 350 pounds on his light days. He has a big square head, big square shoulders...He’s just big and square. When he tells stories, which he will if given half a chance–you best pull up a chair–for Dale’s stories are long and struggle to find a point. He also has an undiagnosed drooling issue that most folks don’t bother to notice.
    Laurel is 85 and feeble–both of mind and body. She is a fun-loving, hardworking, person who used to be 5 foot 2 inches before she started shrinking in her late 60s. She has short, curly gray hair, whose curl might or might not be the result of a perm. She keeps it short because her shoulders hurt too much to maintain a longer style. She used to be skinny, but time and arthritis drugs have “poofed” her out some. But she is still easy with a smile and self-deprecating humor.
    Dale and Laurel live 25 miles from the nearest town in Rural Missouri – almost to the Indiana/Illinois line. There are neighbors 10 or more miles away. The Lutheran preacher comes by every other month to serve communion and a healthy dose of theology that excludes some of Dale and Laurel’s kin from salvation and entry into heaven. This would be the same kin who often beg the couple to move to town where they can be checked on more often.
    The farmstead is 800 acres and a tiny house with three bedrooms and a single bathroom directly off the kitchen (where most old farmhouses put them for plumbing convenience). The house is white and on a hill. This is not unique. If you travel in that part of rural Missouri or perhaps anywhere in rural America, most farmhouses are white and on a hill.
    The life Dale and Laurel built together lays upon a foundation of growing and nurturing things. The farm produces corn and soybeans. The yard around the house on the hill supports fruit trees and a variety of flowers. The feeders in the yard are for the pleasure of birds and squirrels. The garden once yielded tomatoes, green beans, carrots, onions, and potatoes. The house, quite by accident, grows mice. Dale and Laurel nurture each other.
    As the farm couple’s vigor wanes, so does the attention to the details of growing and nurturing. The crops in the field are passed off to renters to oversee. The garden teeters off to only tomatoes in a few buckets that are neglected soon after planting. The fruit trees in the yard die off due to drifting agricultural chemicals from the nearby fields. The birds and squirrels are fed only when sore joints and wayward memories permit. But the flowers in the yard and around the house on the hill...those still remain a focus and source of pride.
    As Laurel lay on the ground with her right arm bent at an ungainly angle and snarled in the red rose bush, she may have had a thought. At some point she may have reasoned that Dale would stumble upon her and save her. Or peace and surrender may have flooded her consciousness. As she lay, the rose branches begin to slowly, almost imperceptibly wrap around her limbs then the rest of her body. The thorny branches reach out and coil–at times scratching and penetrating the skin. Blood trickles.
    The birds flock to the feeders. Hummingbirds, butterflies, and bees visit the flowers–even the red roses on the bush Laurel finds herself engaged with. Peaceful, beautiful– It all seems good...even meant to be. Nature just being nature. Reclaiming things as it has for eons. Does the rose bush have a claim on Laurel? Maybe. Maybe not. But claim her the shrub does. Funny enough, as the rose continues its advance and drawing of blood, this does not seem to be a foreign or unnatural thing– Laurel’s blood to this rose. Perhaps there is a long interconnection between thorned species throughout time – as the living organism remembers the many and varied tastes of blood along the way. This particular rose seems to know what it is doing and has a plan.
    Dale crawls in another part of the huge yard looking for something. It isn’t worms, because he doesn’t fish. He’s not pulling weeds, because if it wasn’t for weeds the yard wouldn’t be green at all–just another consequence of the aging couple’s declining health and stewardship skills.
    The rose knows where the blood flows best. It seeks the wrists and the spot on Laurel’s neck where the pulse should be. It is good. As Laurel becomes more and more engulfed by the stunning shrub, its bright American Beauty blooms, thorns...it becomes more and more difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. The excitement in the air is electric as the rose gains momentum on the way to fulfilling its role. This time nature won’t take back what it needs all at once. This has to take place a piece at a time. This is a hopeful moment, and Laurel is at the right place at the right time. Peaceful...Familiar...Heroic...Maybe even foretold. Laurel becomes less and less conscious–but more and more aware as her life force does not dissipate but becomes something...different. Laurel–the rose–is pleased.
    The rose finds the vein. The birds sing and squirrels play. Dale putters without purpose. All is as it should be.
    She is bleeding, and a warm, late June breeze blows.
    Laurel is on the ground in a mess of limbs, joints, and American Beauty red roses and thorns. Dale is on the other side of the house in another part of the two acre yard, unaware.

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