A Rose by the Door

by Deborah Bedford

  The great hulking shape Bea had viewed through the glass had stepped away from the porch and into the yard. It was a man. Bea opened the door a bit, feeling wary.

  Paisley slept in Nathan’s room—no, her room—in-side. Bea had decided she ought to be more careful, now that she had family to protect. She squinted and reached for the porch light. She couldn’t see a thing out there. “Hello?”

  The man turned, and light hit him full in the face. He raised a hand to shade his eyes from the harsh bulb. “Hey.” It was only a murmur, as if he didn’t know if he had a right to speak. “Hey there.”

  At first Bea thought she’d made a mistake. It could be so easy to mistake a stranger for someone you know. Just in passing. Just catching a glimpse on the street. But here he stood, so handsome, a grown man, much bigger than she’d ever expected him to get, with his sideburns and jaw shaved, his shoulders overflowing his coat, his neck filled out to accommodate what used to be his Adam’s apple.

  She acknowledged him with one stark, broken cry of recognition. “Oh, my.”

  That was all the permission he needed.

  He swept her off the brick stoop and hugged her for all he was worth. “Oh, Mom,” he whispered like he’d done when he was an adolescent boy. “Mom.”

  “Jacob. Jacob.”

  How to describe the feeling Bea knew of becoming the little one, the dainty one, the one cared for after so many years of being the caregiver. He was broader than Bea by a mile and stood a good three heads taller and when he wrapped his arms around her to walk her inside she felt protected and loved and hugged by King Kong, all at the same time.

  She invited him in. He tossed his coat over the back of Ray’s old chair, loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar. He sat on the floor beside the couch, his pants hiked up, his huge legs folded in half at the knees, his head tilted so he could see his adoptive mom. They talked in hushed undertones about everything they could think of—happy and sad things both.

  They talked first about Nathan.

  “Did you hear he’s gone?” she asked, bittersweet tears welling in her eyes, halfway telling him more than she should, halfway afraid, wondering if he might not even know.

  “I did,” he answered, the same bittersweet tears welling in his. “Someone called me. That’s why I’m here. I thought it was you.”

  Bea ran her fingers through his hair, touched his head the same way he’d so desperately needed to be touched when he had been a broken, scared little boy. “Maybe Nathan’s wife. Gemma.” Bea motioned to the picture of her and Nathan she had placed in a frame on the side table. “If she did it, I’m glad she called you. You know if it was me, I wouldn’t have felt free.”

  “I know that.”

  “You’ll meet her. She does things like that. She’s got a way about her, bringing people around.”

  Jacob said he had a wife named Sonja and a boy six months old and a job on a construction crew over in Wyoming. He told her about the places he’d been, the foster families he’d stayed with, the schools and counselors he’d gone to, the dreams he’d counted on. Like coming here.

  “I went crazy that night, you know.” Jacob examined the button on his cuff. “That night I had the knife. Ray was another parent leaving me, like my dad and my mom before. I took it out on you. You were the only one there.”

  Bea bent her head to his, unafraid now, when there had been times he had terrified her before. “Yes. I know that, Jacob. I guess I always did. You were angry and hurt. You struck out the only way you knew how.” She lowered her face even more, away from him. “I’m the one who might have changed things. I could have fought harder. I could have been stronger. I might have found another way to raise you without letting the sheriff take you away.”

  “But you weren’t stronger,” he said, touching her arm. Reassuring her. “No woman would have been. A child left alone with so much anger. Living in a house where there wasn’t a man who could pin him down and talk sense into him. Without Ray, you couldn’t do it. I think I knew that even when I pulled out that knife. Maybe that was my way of helping you. Maybe I knew already that it wouldn’t work for me to stay.”

  She buried her face in her hands for a moment, then lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t know, Jacob. I’ve second-guessed it so many times. It was easier to blame myself than it was anybody else.”

  “We were all responsible. I was responsible.” He touched her palm and brought it down. “Hey, let’s talk about other things. If I brought Sonja and the baby sometime, would you make your lasagna? I’ve been describing your lasagna to Sonja for forever.”

  This, momentarily liberating her, felt like the nicest question Jacob had ever asked. “Oh, yes. I want you to bring her all the time. And, when you don’t have time to drive, I’ll even give Sonja my recipe.”

  Poignant quiet claimed them.

  He started to ask something, but stopped.

  He started and stopped again. Twice.

  Bea knew without doubt which question would come. And she was right.

  “Did you ever tell Nathan?” he finally asked. “Did he ever find out what I tried to do to you? What an awful brother I was? That you had to call the sheriff to protect yourself?”

  For a long moment, she waited. “Jacob.”

  “Did he know that I even tried to hurt the dog? That you bandaged up my hand after I’d gone after you, and told me how much you loved me? And after that they took me to lock-in school?”

  “What does it matter now if Nathan knew?” She didn’t want to tell him. When she did, she realized that Jacob would see all she had done for him, and eventually he would count the cost. “Nathan is gone. You and I owe it to him to go on with our lives.”

  “I cared so much what Nathan thought about me, you know? He trusted me. He said I was the best brother anybody could have.”

  “Jacob. You don’t need to do this. It’s over.”

  “I wanted him to always remember me as somebody worthy of being his brother.”

  “He did, Jacob. He loved you until his dying day.”

  “So, did he know? Did you ever tell him the awful thing I’d done?”

  She took his man-face, saw the resemblance of the boy she’d known so many years ago, as she held it in her hands. “I made a promise to you that night, Jacob. It was the last time I ever saw you, and you were my son. I kept that promise. For a long time, that promise was the only thing of you I had to hold on to.”

  He lay his own hands over hers, against his cheeks. “You never said anything to him? Ever?”

  She shook her head. “I knew how much it mattered to you, son. I never told Nathan what happened or why you were sent away.”

  Jacob pondered the ceiling for a long while. “The whole thing changed my life, you know. Having to be accountable for my own actions. When you sent me away, you did a hard thing. But you made me grow into a better man.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered to him. “Thank you.” She released his face and smiled through glimmering tears. “I’ve needed to hear that.”

  Some of this would be better left handled on another day. But it would be handled. They would build, not tear down.

  “Nathan wrote you postcards for a while. He stopped because they kept coming back. They’re in your room in that old tackle box where you boys kept all your secret messages. One of these days, you’ll want to read them.”

  “Yes,” he said. “One of these days, I will.”

  The sun rose on Lake McConaughy the same way every September morning, its light glancing off still water, satin mirror, gun-barrel gray.

  Gemma didn’t want to miss it. She rolled out of her sleeping bag and yanked on a pair of sweatpants, shivering, trying to keep warm.

  She’d been joking all evening beside the campfire that she’d be the first one up. But no matter how Gemma boasted, it never happened that way. Bea always beat her to the sunrise. Gemma found her sitting on a rock with a mug of something hot keeping both hands warm, the campfire crackling and the blu
e coffee pot on, steam curling from its spout.

  “I missed some of it.” Gemma went to get her own mug out of the camp box. “I went back to get my shoes and the light changed.”

  “I know.” Bea sipped her coffee and wrapped an arm around Gemma. “You have to be fast. It always does.”

  “Good morning.”

  Bea rubbed her shoulders. “Good morning back.”

  “You think there’s any fish in that lake?”

  “There’s plenty. Believe you me, with two teenage boys around the house for a while, I saw more than my fair share of fish from Lake Mac.”

  “Paisley finally went to sleep last night.” Gemma found a flat place to sit on the rock, too, and Bea scooted over. “She says this is the time she’s going to catch more fish than Uncle Jacob.”

  “Well,” Bea laughed. “I’d like to see that.”

  “Me, too.”

  They contemplated the universe for a few minutes, the sky, the poor doomed fish, the lapping of water on the shore.

  “Nathan used to describe this spot to me.” Gemma set down her mug and found a good skipping rock. She side-armed it and counted. One. Two. Three. “He used to say it looked like the mallards were gliding on glass water. He always called them drakes. I think he liked that word. Mallard drakes.”

  “Hmmm-mmm.”

  “He said there was nothing better than waking up in a place to make you feel like you owned it. Morning is fragile, he said. Makes you belong to something in a way that someone who hasn’t slept over never would.”

  “Smart thing, what my boy said.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Same thing fits with family.” Bea looked for her own skipping rock. She found a rock, pitched it, and watched it sink. “Same thing fits with faith.”

  Gemma didn’t say anything to that. She listened, learned.

  “Faith is like Lake Mac on a still morning. It reflects. A perfect mirror. Like my roses. Isn’t that what Care Goodsell says?”

  Gemma crossed her arms. “You know, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Care Goodsell.”

  “You have?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about?”

  “I . . .” She hesitated. “Oh, I don’t know. It’s okay. Maybe it’ll wait until another time.”

  “Yeah. Maybe it had better wait. Here comes Jacob, and I’ll bet his poles are already rigged up.”

  “If Mr. Goodsell asks me to ride in his wheelbarrow again, I’m going to do it. I’ve decided that much.”

  “Are you? Well, maybe I will, too.”

  The car with the Wyoming plates parked and, sure enough, out piled family, out came a jumble of rods, ready to fish. Jacob wasted no time making a perfect cast, arcing the line and the red-and-white float through the air, catching light. “Paisley. Wake up,” he warned outside the tent in a gentle voice, obviously torn between seeing his niece and fishing these familiar waters. “If you want to beat your Uncle Jacob catching fish, you’d better get up and get started.”

  Bea and Gemma watched together from their rock, arms entangled around each other’s shoulders, sipping coffee, remembering . . . hoping . . . trusting.

  Along the shore, other campers had awakened and had begun to cast out their lines. Children still in pajamas danced as water rippled between their toes.

  Two small boys with close-clipped, bare heads skittered up and down the shore, kicking sand, reminding Bea of two other little boys a long time ago.

  Something yanked Jacob’s line and the fishing float plunged under. Way under.

  “Look, Grandma,” Paisley said, scrubbing sleep from her eyes and coming to take Bea’s hand. “Uncle Jacob’s got something!” And Jacob began to reel in the first gift of the day.

  Transplanting Harison’s Yellow

  Harison’s Yellow roses are readily available from nurseries and greenhouses that specialize in growing varieties of antique roses. They are also readily available in brambles along roadsides and beside homes all across Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon. It is true that, in areas where historians could not determine the exact location of the Oregon Trail, they plotted it out by following the roses. These plants can be cut, carried away, and transplanted in exactly the way Bea transplanted her roses onto Nathan’s grave.

  If you are lucky enough to find someone who will give you a start of Harison’s Yellow, follow these directions. To find an appropriate sucker, dig in the ground near a rose bush until you find a little side shoot of plant that has both wooden stem and green sprout attached. Keep this in water the same way you would keep a cut flower.

  When this sucker has begun to root, you can transplant the rose into potting soil or into some other good growing medium, and harden it off. To harden off the rose, do not water often after these rootlings are planted in soil. Give moisture only when absolutely necessary.

  When transplanting roses from pots into the ground, dig the hole twice as big as a lazy person would dig it, twice as wide, and twice as deep. Plant in a location where roses will receive six to eight hours of direct sun-light. Prepare the soil by working good humus or compost into the dirt until the soil feels good and smells good. If you want to use a commercial product, try Osmocote Granular. Becareful not to work too much into the soil or the roses will burn.

  The roses do not want to be planted deep. Plant them the same depth that they have been growing in the pot, in well-drained soil. Water thoroughly. Their roots will eventually reach deep enough to find the moisture they need.

  A general gardener’s rule is to plant roses in the spring. Harison’s Yellow growers will tell you that these roses catch on spring, summer, or fall, whenever there is enough of a season left for the sprouts to stay warm and grow. Becareful to arrange the plants so they are easy to water and weed. A hoe and a sharp steel rake should be used to keep the soil loose and the weeds out.

  Author’s Note

  In Search of Pioneer Roses

  Whenever we made the drive to see my grandparents when I was growing up, we always passed by one old rickety farmhouse, grayed from the weather, windows broken out, the porch sagging on one side. This old house had become almost hidden by its overgrowth of brambles, trees, bushes, and wildflowers.

  For some odd reason that we could never quite figure out, the trees and weeds and wild roses grew taller close to the porch than they did in the yard.

  My father and I laughed every time we drove by, picturing a woman and a man sitting in rocking chairs on that old porch, having a seed-spitting contest—lofting seeds that would someday bury themselves in the dirt and grow.

  Perhaps it is this childhood memory of one old house and those growing things that came to life in my heart when a kind gentleman appeared on our doorstep one morning to install the natural gas fireplace we’d ordered. As he worked, he began to tell me the story of his mother’s pioneer rosebush, over 150 years old, which had been brought out on a wagon on the Oregon Trail. He told me how his mother coddled the roses and how visitors from all over stopped by to see them and, if they were lucky, to take home a cutting to start in their own gardens.

  My mother-in-law, Mollie Jensen Bedford, grew up in Washington State. When I asked her if she knew anything about pioneer roses, she jumped right in with her own stories of yellow bushy roses—how they grew in profusion along the yards, how they’d moved across the western states as the Oregon Trail settlers had planted them, how the girlfriends she remembered always picked them for bouquets.

  Harison’s Yellow roses actually originated in New York City. George Harison, an attorney and amateur rose-grower, discovered it in the 1830s growing in his backyard. The roses were fragrant and hardy, they spread vigorously, and they resisted disease—all traits uncommon in yellow roses. Harison gave a slip to Thomas Hogg, a local nurseryman, who assigned it its first and perhaps most accurate name, given how far it would soon range: “Hogg’s Yellow American Rose.” A second nurseryman, William Prince, better equipped to propagate and distribute it, renamed it “Harison
’s Yellow.” In an 1846 rose catalog, William Prince wrote that this rose was brilliant and beautiful. He also wrote that “a hot sun makes its blooms expand and lose much of their beauty.”

  Rose bushes, advertised “on their own bottoms,” not grafted, were sold for fifty and seventy-five cents. But Harison’s Yellow suckered so easily that it was most often given away. Roy Sheperd wrote in his 1954 History of the Rose (Coleman, reprinted 1978) that, “No old rose is more generally distributed throughout North America nor better known.”

  Donna Mileti Benenson writes in Early American Homes:

  Beloved by pioneers, this rose was carried by brides denied more cumbersome mementos of home. They kept cuttings alive stuck in raw potatoes or damp cloths. Flourishing, colonizing, the rose outlasted those who planted it and survives on abandoned homesites all over America. It haunts ghost towns and cemeteries and tumbles down gaping cellar holes. It is seen running wild the length of the Oregon Trail. Still commercially available, still cherished, and still given away as a keepsake, “Harison’s Yellow” travels back and forth across our country even today.

  When I began writing A Rose by the Door, the story of these tenacious roses came first. Bea Bartling, Gemma, and Paisley came next. As I interviewed experts on Harison’s Yellow roses, it became evident that these roses, coupled with the history of the brave pioneer women who planted them, reflect a perfect, beautiful likeness of the resilience that God has created in each of our human spirits. On a deeper level, these roses are a humbling representation of God’s faithfulness to us and our faith—which is totally dependent upon Him— blooming back to him, through us.

  I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  May the Father’s love bring its season of blooming into your heart,

  Deborah Bedford

  www.deborahbedfordbooks.com

  P.O. Box 9175

  Jackson Hole, WY 83001