The Rose Thicket

Other than that damn rose thicket, the house was perfect. Three bedrooms, two car garage, corner lot. It was close to the school. I fell in love with it the minute I saw it. It was a bit dated but then, it was an older home. The price was a steal. Our realtor said the elderly lady that lived there had passed and her son, now living out of state, just needed to get it sold. To me, it was a win, win for us and for him.

The back yard was large, as in swimming pool large. But it had no pool. That was a negative, but then, if it had a pool, it would not have been rock bottom price. Coming up with the money to put in a pool would be a struggle. It would have been more convenient if it had been part of the initial purchase on the mortgage. My husband Jim said not to worry, we would have a pool and not have to pay interest for it for thirty years. I suppose he is right. But I warned him that we indeed WILL have a pool.

I'm a swimmer. An avid swimmer. And living seaside my whole life on the Gulf Coast, swimming was a daily part of life. And now, here I was land locked in arid New Mexico. So, a pool was an absolute must. I think Jim keeps hoping I'll give up the idea. That I'll just join a gym or the YMCA or something. But, damn it, I want a pool right here in the back yard. Right where the damn rose thicket is.

I have to wonder about that rose thicket. It's huge. It's not that the roses aren't pretty. I've just never seen such a wild tangled mess as this. The thicket is so massive it takes up a good portion of the yard. Lilah knocked her little ball into it and there was virtually no way to get it out of that horrendous thorny mass. She cried and cried. I consoled her by telling her Daddy would get it out for her or else buy her another one. Jim can crawl into that damn thicket because I'm certainly not.

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We've lived here two years now. I've gotten the inside of the house painted and decorated exactly like I wanted. Lilah has an adorable room. And the nursery for Joshua is just the cutest thing. I can't wait for him to be born. Just a few more weeks. I had hoped to have a water birth in our very own pool. But nope. No pool yet. That damn rose thicket is bigger than ever. I can't even imagine why anyone would ever plant whatever kind of roses those are.

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Lilah is nearly seven and she still hasn't really been around water. Joshua is three and the deepest thing he has ever been in is the bathtub. God, I miss swimming. We've lived in this house six years and Jim still hasn't made good on his promise to dig up that damn rose thicket and have a pool installed. I lamented about this often to my husband. I just need to be firm with Jim and tell him how important it is to me. I really want to but I'll put it off a while longer. It's getting late in the year anyway.

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Spring is in full swing. Jim has been working overtime like crazy. He is being totally odd tonight. He came sneaking in through the back door for one thing. As I started into the kitchen, he shushed me back out again. "I'm making dinner. Just go put the kids down for the night and then get your sexy self back down here."

I had already fed the kids earlier in the evening. In fact, I had actually eaten with them, but I didn't want to tell Jim that. I gave him a peck on the cheek and took the kids upstairs. Who knows, maybe Jim was feeling spicy tonight and I'd be on his dinner menu. The thought made me shudder with anticipation. The kids bathed and tucked in, they went to sleep without a fight.

When I got back down to the kitchen, it was dark. I could see candle light from the dining room. A warm thrill washed over me. As I entered the room, I saw there were actual place settings on the table and Chinese food in take out cartons. Ok, well, the candle light and fancy dishes were a plus anyway.

Then I saw them. Right smack dab in the middle of the table. A large vase full of roses from that damn rose thicket in the backyard. I just can't ever enjoy those roses because I know they are taking up space where my pool should be. But I didn't say a word about them. I didn't want to ruin the mood and spoil whatever this was my husband had going on. I could tell by the way he watched me that he had things on his mind. I liked where this was going -- where I hoped it was going.

Jim dished up low mein on both our plates and finished them off with crab rangoons. Suddenly my cheese macaroni and tuna was gone. My stomach growled a little. "Goodness woman! You'd think I was starvin' you or something. I gotta' start taking better care of you." His handsome smile always wins me over.

Just as I was contemplating slipping off my shoes and running my bare foot up his leg to spur things along, Jim handed me an envelope. "I can't wait any longer. Here you go."

The envelope was letter size and held some papers. I blanched. My heart beat erratically. Jim had been working late. At least I though he had. Was he having an affair? Was this divorce papers? "I don't understand."

"Open it. Just open it."

I tried to gauge his mood. He was staring at me so intensely. My heart was hammering in my chest so hard that it was all I could hear. I opened the clasp on the envelope and pulled out the papers. I could hardly believe what I saw. "Is this for real?" My hands were shaking.

"It's for real. I should have done it a lot sooner. I'm sorry that I didn't."

I broke down in wracking sobs. "Oh my god Jim, I love you so much!" In my hands was a contract with Sierra Pool Contractors to put a pool in our back yard. The drawings were everything I had dreamed of having. "When do they start?"

"Tomorrow." Jim winked. "Now, you were saying? Just how much do you love me?...."

"Let me show you." The table was cleared and a different kind of feast was had.

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Next morning, I was so excited about the pool. I took Lilah to school early and left her in the before and after care room at school. Joshua dropped at Pre-K, I hurried home. The pool crew was driving up just as I pulled into the drive.

It was very exhilarating to see that rose thicket being ripped out of the ground. The little Bobcat dozer was making short work of them. When one of the men shouted, "hey! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! We got something."

They had warned me when they started that although no diagrams showed any easements for any utilities in that area, that if they saw anything at all during the excavation that looked like something that shouldn't be there, they would have to shut down and call in Code Enforcers to work it out. There was no reason to think any such thing would happen. And yet, here they were, flagging the dozer driver to shut down.

Once the dozer stopped, curiosity got the best of me. Walking around the dozer, I saw the group of men staring down into a hole left by the ball of roots of an exceptionally large hunk of the rose thicket. There was black plastic. A slit in the plastic revealed what looked like a rotted pink fury blanket and a hunk of what looked like a bone. I guessed immediately that someone had buried a large dog in the back yard even though doing so was illegal.

One of the men reached down apprehensively and lifted part of the black plastic. The bone had a hand and fingers. Dropping the plastic like a hot coal, the man jumped back from the hole nearly falling backwards as he did. "Shit! We gotta' call this in."

My mind couldn't comprehend this.

Authorities arrived. Our yard was a hustle and bustle of activity as they dealt with the secrets of the rose thicket. It took ten days of searching the back yard with cadaver dogs, shovels. It was a nightmare. Eventually we were cleared to proceed with digging our pool.

Information wasn't forthcoming from the authorities about the contents of my back yard. Then one day, picking up the newspaper, front page headlines read "Woman dead for 10 years found buried in back yard." Thank god they didn't list my address or neighborhood. They simply said "on the west side."

The woman in my back yard was the mother to man who sold us our house. She was old and frail and passed of natural causes. Thank goodness for that. However, though there was no foul play involved, there was fraud. The son had chosen to bury her in the back yard so he could keep her benefits going. When he came into some money on some investments that spiked, he cashed out and that gave him financial autonomy. That's when he decided to move out of state and sell the house. His cover story about his mother was that she passed, was cremated, and he rented a plane and flew out over her favorite lake and spread her ashes. When pressed, he couldn't provide records for any of that. Dental records proved it was his mother. It was then that he confessed.

I got my pool. And I do enjoy it. And on the far end, against the fence is some of that damn rose thicket. It was the least I could do to honor the final resting place of a woman who found herself in everybody's way. I pick roses from that thicket and every Wednesday, since that was the day of the week we found her, I take roses from the thicket and put them on her grave.

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I hope you enjoyed this story. This odd tale was actually based in part on true events. While working for a law firm many years ago, an individual we used to serve papers actually did bury his mother in the back yard of their out of state home. It's somewhat unsettling to know I actually shared space and time with someone that killed his mother, cut her up and buried her in the back yard. (creepy shivers/heebie jeebies) And he got caught exactly because the new owner dug up the rose bushes in the back yard. Wondering how the case turned out, I did a quick Google search. The case only recently settled up in the court system. Unbelievably the case spanned thirty years before he was acquitted because it had been too long and they couldn't pull the case together enough to make it stick. You can read about that true story HERE.

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