Sins of the Bees

by Annie Lampman

  Other than the new-age beliefs expressed in her mother’s commune, and Eamon’s tree stories, Silva had never paid much attention to religion. A few clients slipped church invitations in with their tree-trimming payments, but religion—even of the ordinary, standard variety—held the tang of foreignness to her, never mind the brand Len Dietz and Becky seemed to be a part of. Becky, then Len Dietz, then Sherry all speaking to Silva as if she were a free agent they could convert just by luring her with something: threats, divination, or elk jerky—whatever worked.

  Past the grocery store, the town ended, a gas station on the corner marking a converging hub of roads. As Silva pulled up to the stop sign, an old military deuce-and-a-half turned into one of the pumps. Dark green camo with two tall aluminum stacks on either side of the passenger and driver’s doors and tires almost as tall as Silva, the truck looked like something out of a postapocalyptic movie set—some mechanized expression of a disturbing antigovernment, religious, militant identity of which this town seemed to be brimming full.

  As she pulled out quickly, following one of the roads, a man climbed out of the deuce-and-a-half. The way he held himself was unmistakable, even if this time, like his truck, he was decked out in full camo, his long hair tucked out of sight. Silva sucked in her breath and took the upcoming corner too fast. Narrow and supered the wrong way, the blacktop felt as if it had been laid to lead vehicles from the road into the river. She had to brake hard, yanking the steering wheel until the play was gone, her grocery bags spewing their contents across the floorboards. An apple caught in the gearshift along with the crumpled brochure that tied the fate of humankind and the end of the world to hunting fenced elk.

  As she straightened the wheel, she checked her rearview mirror and pinned the gas pedal, each vehicle on the road behind her making her heart thump in alarm. She was afraid Len Dietz would suddenly appear behind her, and what would she do if he did? Get out and tell him to fuck off? A paltry response to what he really deserved.

  The road wound for miles into uninhabited land, nobody else around. Silva fought her sense of unease, being in a place like this on her own. Then, after climbing a steep series of corners and dropping lower again, suddenly the land flattened and opened up, and there, right off the highway, was a large field filled with news vans, government vehicles, and sheriff 4x4s. A small, unassuming visitor center with a slanted roof was perched back from them all, overlooking Hells Canyon. Silva hit the brakes hard and pulled off the side of the highway, the Dodge shuddering to a stop. So this is what Becky had been talking about, the place stirred up like a beehive.

  Outside the visitor center, a line of heavily armed, camouflaged men clad in military gear stood posted along what looked like a hastily erected fence, its lines jagged and incomplete. Law enforcement officers and newspeople paced in the field, their cameras, microphones, and faces warily pointed the men’s way. And then, just as Silva had feared, looming in her rearview mirror, the deuce-and-a-half came roaring up behind her, rocking the Dodge as it passed, its engine screaming in low gear when it turned onto the visitor center driveway.

  The reaction was like something out of a movie—sheriffs running to hunker behind their vehicles, firearms drawn and aimed, everyone scattering and taking cover except a few gutsy cameramen, who kept filming as Len Dietz drove past them, his men at full attention now, their own weapons drawn. While the rest of them stood guard, two of the men opened a barbwire gate and then closed it behind Len after he drove in. He parked the oversize war truck in the visitor center parking lot like it was a regular passenger vehicle, then got out and stretched luxuriously, as if he’d just been on a long family road trip and had stopped for a moment to take in the landmarks. But then, when he reached inside the truck, all the law enforcement officers went into full threat-response mode, yelling over their opened vehicle doors as they crouched behind them like shields, preparing for the onslaught. Instead, Len pulled out a white bullhorn. Smiling sardonically, he lifted it to his mouth to speak, his voice echoing out.

  “Oh ye of little faith, we are here to stay,” he said, striding forward until he was standing at the fence with his men in armed-and-aimed formation on either side of him, the police yelling for him to stop, for his men to put down their weapons.

  Len walked over to the gate. “We understand that you do not wish to do your duty for the free God-fearing people of these United States,” he said, his voice crackly over the loudspeaker. “We understand that you are content in acting in negligence toward your obligations to defend the rights and liberties of these people. Therefore, we are here to take our rights back from you. From the government. From all who would stand in our way.”

  Silva felt herself shrinking down behind the steering wheel as Len turned and seemed to glance her way, even though she’d stopped far enough back on the highway to be inconspicuous.

  Finally, he quit speaking—baiting the police, putting on a show for the cameras—and walked back to the visitor center, disappearing inside. His men returned to their original posts, their weapons ready at their sides.

  Silva reversed quickly, pulling out and driving back the way she’d come as fast as she could on the winding road, watching her rearview mirror so much she was afraid she would wreck.

  When she reached the gas station on the outskirts of Two Rivers, she realized her mistake: in her earlier haste to get away from Len Dietz, she had taken the wrong road out of town. Instead of avoiding him, she’d driven right into his hornet’s nest.

  This time she was more careful, stopping to consult the atlas before taking the highway along the Salmon River, away from the visitor center, away from all of them.

  Many miles downriver, she found the turn to McGregor’s Healthy Hive-Fresh Honey—a gravel road, thickets of blackberry bramble forming dusty hedges, thistle-encroached gullies breaking line with a spattering of fir and pine. Dust rose behind her, and gravel pinged against the undercarriage as she navigated washboards. A doe high-stepped across the road and down the bank, but otherwise the road was empty. It paralleled a dry creek bed—a snaking gully of silt-caked rocks subsumed by a mat of overgrown brush. An unlikely escape for Silva and Isabelle both.

  Silva wondered what kind of life Isabelle had lived in Two Rivers—if she’d longed for all she’d left behind, or if Trawler and Eamon had just been spots of green in the rearview dust, part of the retreating scenery, indistinguishable after enough time had passed by. Perhaps Two Rivers had just been a regular town when Isabelle arrived, secluded enough that she’d found herself at home, free to make her art, painting a dozen haunted pregnant girls along with Eamon’s bonsai.

  The Dodge jounced rhythmically, ratcheted enough by the washboards that she was forced to creep along or be pitched off the side of the road, and it was a good thing, or she would have driven past the turn to McGregor’s, overgrown as it was, even with its colorful mailbox on the road’s shoulder—a standard-issue front-hinge, red-flagged version, but painted turquoise with a two-tone yellow sun wrapping from one side to the other, the same words as the package’s return address painted in orange on each sun ray: McGregor’s Healthy Hive-Fresh Honey.

  She’d made it. She took a deep breath and turned in, imagining Isabelle doing the same thing not long ago.

  A dozen chickens scattered from a weed-heavy yard, clucking and flying up to perch on a porch rail that looked as if it might give way under them. There was an old log house, dilapidated in that particular turn-of-the-century charm. But it was a tree next to the house that caught Silva’s attention. An ancient lilac—masterfully pruned, elegant, trunk-like branches gracefully reaching outward, no suckers or sprouts or offshoots. She could tell it had recently been in magnificent bloom even though most of the purple blossoms had dropped. Someone with a touch you rarely saw—the kind of tree-vision Eamon had had.

  She got out of the truck and went to examine the tree up close. Bees hummed the crown in a steady drone, searching out the last nectar.

  She walked across th
e front porch, a host of scolding clucks behind her. Then, as she lifted her hand to knock, a grizzle-bearded man suddenly came around the side of the house and charged up the porch steps, further dithering the hens.

  “Sorry about that—these ladies here think they own the place,” he said as he wiped his hands on the baggy apron he wore over his cutoffs, his hair frizzed into a gray nimbus, his bare feet so dirt-blackened it looked as if he’d been working in tar. “Eli McGregor, at your service.” He clasped her hand between both of his own and looked her over, shaking his shaggy head in disbelief. “You’re the spitting image of someone I knew once,” he said in soft wonder, his voice wistful. “She loved that lilac, too. Painted it over and over again…”

  Silva’s arms prickled into goose bumps. She wanted to say Isabelle’s name, but Eli held the front door open and gestured her inside.

  “Come, come, my dear. It’s a fine day for the bees,” he said, navigating a zigzagging footpath through a maze of books, boxes, Mason jars, and heaps of newspapers that had sloughed off into small avalanches of print, everything covered in layers of dust. Silva looked around for signs of Isabelle, but the house was devoid of a woman’s touch. A bachelor’s pad gone to seed.

  Ducking under dried herb bunches hanging from the kitchen’s entrance, Eli motioned for her to sit at a table next to a claw-foot tub, a bottle of peppermint soap and a stack of grayed washcloths on the windowsill behind. A newspaper lay dissected on the table, the snarling wolf from the day before replaced by a photo of a group of militarily armed, camo-clad men standing behind a fence. The article was titled, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT VS. THE OCCUPATION. WHO WINS?

  “Bees,” Eli said, waving his hands. “Bees are more than just makers of honey. They’re the royalty of insects, the monarchy of order, the matriarchs of nature.” He scowled in concentration as he filled a teakettle with water and shoved a few pieces of kindling under the burner of a wood cookstove until flames licked up. “You have to respect them, or they won’t respect you. They’ll leave you scorned and alone. You’ve got to treat them right.… They don’t just take to anybody, you know. They have fine taste, high standards.”

  As the kettle started to hiss, he pulled down one of the dried herb bunches and crumbled its leaves into two heavy ceramic mugs. The smell of peppermint filled the kitchen.

  Silva rubbed her hands across the table, imagining Isabelle’s prints under her own—a trace of DNA she might sense, like a honeybee locating the source of nectar.

  “Everything I know, they taught me,” Eli said, thrusting a steaming mug into her hands before grabbing two spoons. “Come—we must go upstairs for the most important ingredient.”

  Silva didn’t hesitate, eager to be every place Isabelle had been. The traveling art show Isabelle’s honeysuckle painting had been in had had its final showing in Port Townsend—only a short boat trip from Trawler. Silva wondered if Isabelle had known that was where it would end. So close to Eamon. Sending her paintings to him before the exhibition arrived like sending a message in a bottle, hoping it would eventually wash up on shore and find its intended recipient.

  They climbed a winding set of wooden stairs, the staircase low-ceilinged and narrow enough that Silva’s shoulders brushed the walls as she climbed. She was careful not to tip the sodden stew of leaves in her cup, the peppermint fumes so strong her eyes watered. A low hum filled the space, the walls themselves vibrating. Two five-panel doors off the landing were closed, each painted dark green with light green panels. Silva looked around, wondering what other items Isabelle might have left behind.

  Eli thrust his mug into Silva’s hand, nudged a rolled-up towel away from the bottom of the closest door, and tapped on the door with his knuckles before opening it.

  The hum became louder even though the room seemed empty: bare log walls, bare floor, and, at the far end, a small window that let in the afternoon’s bright light.

  Eli motioned for Silva to stay at the doorway as he walked to the corner of the room, a spoon in each hand. He crouched to lift a floorboard, exposing the active comb beneath it. Bees were suddenly everywhere, landing on Eli’s exposed hands and the back of his neck, the space alive with buzzing. He stuck a spoon down and scooped honey off a section of comb attached to the underside of the plank, then repeated it with the second spoon, twirling them as he stood, keeping the amber thread wrapped upon itself. He came out, closed the door, and plunked the spoons in their mugs of tea. Bees were in the hallway now, fifteen or more crawling all over his head and face, but he only nodded and said, “This, my dear, is hive-fresh honey.”

  “To the bees,” Silva said, lifting her mug in toast before she took a drink, careful to avoid the sodden peppermint leaves and bee parts floating on the surface.

  She’d always thought of honey as the plastic bears lined up next to peanut butter and jelly, honey that tasted dusty, as if left exposed in a musty room. But Eli’s honey was robust and hearty, not only delicately floral but bursting with the tang of earth and sun. Clover, honeysuckle, thistle—she could taste them all.

  “I knew when the time was right someone would come,” Eli said. “And now here you are. The one we’ve been waiting for. They won’t abandon you as they have the others.…”

  The reverberation those words had: they won’t abandon you, the bees waggling their way through Eli’s thick beard, circling around his head as if crowning him. Something regal, something gilded and otherworldly about all of it—Eli’s floral apron and dirty feet, his wild hair crawling with bees. She felt as though she were receiving a benediction. Something she hadn’t known she’d been looking for, but something that felt so true she wanted to kneel and bow her head, let Eli grant her all he was offering. But Silva wasn’t who Eli thought she was—someone coming to get his bees, everything just some terrible mix-up.

  “I came here hoping to find someone,” she said, the sudden emotion she felt welling up so powerfully she had to look away, focus on anything besides Eli’s questioning face. Everything leading to this moment.

  “I believe you knew her. Isabelle Fullbrook, my grandmother,” she finally said, her throat gone tight around the words. A name uttered, the universe taking notice, the momentum set.

  And just like that, Eli’s face transformed, going from surprise to pained sorrow in one quick sweep. A gut-punched mime acting out his pain. “Isabelle,” he said with quiet, wondering sadness. Love and loss and all that lay in between. A family of ghosts gone to roost. “I didn’t know she had family,” he said, his awe soft. Full of tenderness. He had loved her, Isabelle. Perhaps had even loved her as much as Eamon had.

  “I don’t think she did either,” Silva said, trying to give Isabelle’s desertion room for the unknowns life was always full of, even if in this case the unknown was Silva herself.

  She had the urge to hold out her arms, say, Here I am, in all my tattered glory. A scarecrow husk left out to weather until it disintegrated into empty rags of mourning. But Eli turned away abruptly, going down the stairs to the front door. At first, Silva thought he was going to usher her out the same as he’d invited her in, but he just stood in the threshold, gently brushing away the bees still crawling on him. Little yellow bodies tumbled and flew from his hair and joined the others already airborne in a steady activity of motion above the hens who had perched back on the porch rail, feathers fluffed contentedly. A small, peaceable kingdom.

  “The scientists don’t know what it is, you know,” he said, walking to the kitchen. “Mites, pesticides, radio waves, genetically modified crops, neonicotinoids, viruses, fungus, bacteria. But it’s all right there in their name for it: colony collapse disorder. You have to keep your colonies strong, protect them, nurture them, give them everything they need to thrive, or they will leave, collapse. Disappear. It’s always been the rule of the universe—perhaps more so now than ever. Our world is dying from all the ills we’ve subjected it to, one poison after another.”

  Silva thought of the embryo growing inside her, of Eamon and her mother
dying, of Isabelle leaving, time and time again. The pathogens of place, of family. All the things that outside pestilence could jeopardize. Men in the dark, a baby in utero, a colony of honeybees, a family of bonsai trees. She stared at the wilted peppermint leaves in the bottom of her mug, wishing they might offer some kind of answer to everything she’d come find, to ask.

  “Where did she go?” she asked finally. A trail of crumbs. A journey down the rabbit hole, Alice frightening the mouse by asking, “Where’s my cat?” when she just wanted to know who she was, where she’d gone, and what would happen next.

  “She found something she needed more,” Eli said simply. A bee he’d missed crawled up his arm, high-stepping over wiry arm hair, its hair as fuzzed as his, its eyes as big and round as a baby’s. He reached down and carefully pinched it between his finger and thumb, looked at it thoughtfully a moment, then opened the kitchen window and released it to join the others.

  Old childhood fantasies played out again in Silva’s head: Isabelle hopping from island to tropical island, wild and free, Silva tracking her from one place to the next until she finally pinned her down and demanded she become the woman, the family, she needed her to be.

  “Almost Paradise,” Eli said, frowning as he looked at the newspaper spread on the table.