The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  “How are you doing, Alice?” they’d ask. What a question.

  As she steered toward the cereal aisle, she saw the back of Debi Jeffreys, the office manager from the county planning department, her cart piled high and three little boys hanging off the sides yelling like pirates. Alice decided she didn’t need cereal after all and headed to the checkout line.

  She drove down Twelfth Street and turned onto Greenwood Court. The yellow Ford Focus parked in front of number eleven had a bumper sticker that read: “God is my co-pilot.” Her pulse quickened as she thought of the scene there two nights before, and she took a deep breath. She turned off the engine and sat, letting the seconds tick by. This was small-town politeness—waiting in the driveway when one wasn’t expected. After a couple of minutes, the door opened and the kid’s mom came out, shading her eyes with her hand. She waved and walked down the steps toward Alice, smiling. Alice climbed out of the truck and held up the backpack like a flag of surrender.

  “Hi!” she called. “Don’t mean to intrude. I just wanted to drop this off.”

  Jake’s mother was still smiling. As she got close to Alice, she held out her hand.

  “I’m Tansy. Tansy Stevenson,” she said. “It’s Alice, right?”

  Alice nodded and smiled. Tansy grabbed her hand and shook it. She held on to it a second too long, which embarrassed Alice, it felt so intimate. She pulled away, but Tansy didn’t seem to notice.

  “I’m so sorry for the other night. I felt terrible once Jacob explained what happened. Edward and I are so grateful that you brought him home safe. We thank the dear Lord that you were there to help him.”

  Alice doubted that Tansy’s husband thanked the dear Lord for anything, but she could see tears welling up behind the woman’s pink-framed glasses under curled bangs and felt sorry for her. Tansy was younger than she was and dressed in an A-line polyester skirt and nylons with low heels. Alice was suddenly self-conscious of her dirty overalls and her sun hat jammed down over her hair.

  “It was nothing,” Alice said. “It was the least I could do. I feel terrible about the whole thing. I just didn’t see him in the dark out there.”

  Tansy sighed, put her fingers to her temples, and shook her head. “I tried to get him to promise me he wouldn’t go running around alone, but he’s stubborn.”

  She tried to laugh, but Alice could see the tears still bright in her eyes.

  “There are so few things Jacob enjoys these days . . .” She trailed off.

  Alice didn’t know what to say. The sorrow in the woman’s voice spoke volumes about her son’s young, arrested life.

  “Well,” Alice said, “I’d like to pay for any repairs needed on the chair.”

  Tansy smiled, pulled a Kleenex out of her cuff, and dabbed her eyes. “The chair seems fine, but thank you for offering.”

  Just in case, they should exchange numbers, Alice said. She walked back to the truck to get a pen. She scribbled her email address and phone number on her receipt from Ace and realized she was stalling, hoping to see the kid. The screen door creaked open, and there he was, mohawk and all. She noted the dark circles under his eyes and his pale face. His smile bloomed tentatively.

  “Hey, Alice!” he called. He rolled down the wheelchair ramp and braked at her feet. Alice noted his fluid, even graceful, maneuvering of the chair. In the clear light of day, he looked even younger. She regretted having left so abruptly two nights earlier, never mind what his stupid father had said.

  He spotted the backpack at his mother’s feet.

  “Thanks. I was missing that,” he said.

  “No problem,” she said, and smiled back.

  “How are the ladies doing?” he asked. “Everyone okay after their big adventure?”

  Alice chuckled. “Yes, they’re settling in okay.”

  “Right. Like you said, tough little broads. Everyone hard at work raising the babies?”

  Alice was pleased that he had remembered her words.

  “You bet,” she said.

  Tansy looked from Alice to Jake and back again.

  “Bees, Mom! I told you. She’s a beekeeper,” Jake said.

  He waved his hands in the air, his eyes wide. “She has thousands of bees at her house. Thousands!”

  “Well, tens of thousands, actually,” Alice said. “Each of those boxes in my truck had about ten thousand bees in it.”

  “Holy crap! That’s amazing!”

  “Jacob. Language, please.”

  “Sorry, Mom,” he said. “But seriously.”

  He cocked his head and lowered his voice. “You should have seen them flying around after Alice hit the fence. The boxes fell all over the place. She just walked right in there like it was nothing. Picked them up and put them back in the truck.”

  Tansy shuddered. “Do they sting you?”

  Alice shrugged. That was everyone’s first question. “Sometimes. But like I told Jake, they only sting when they feel threatened.”

  Though Alice hated small talk, she loved bee talk. She thought she might tell Tansy about the guard bees, if she was really interested. But Jake was already telling her. He glanced at Alice.

  “Yeah, I looked it up yesterday. Pretty cool. It’s like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. ‘You shall not pass!’ I was reading about yellow jacket robbing too. What do you do? Bait traps or let them fight it out?”

  Alice started to respond but then heard the low growl of a diesel engine in the driveway behind her. She turned and saw Jake’s father glaring out the window of a silver Ford F-250. The engine whined as he reversed and parked on the street. He walked toward them, his face creased in anger, every step weighted with the tragedy of this inconvenience.

  “. . . Park in his own damn driveway!” he was muttering as he approached. The smile had left Jake’s face, and Tansy looked nervous. Jake’s father scowled at them. Something told Alice this happened all the time.

  “What are you doing here? Besides blocking my damn driveway?”

  He was wearing Wranglers ironed to a crease and a plaid shirt with a name tag that read, “Hello! I’m Edward!” in cheerful female handwriting, clearly from some work event. The contrast with his cranky face made Alice smile involuntarily.

  “You think that’s funny, huh?”

  “Edward, dear,” Tansy said. “Alice brought Jacob’s backpack—”

  “I think I told you to get off my driveway,” he said, ignoring his wife. “And I meant stay off. Is that so hard to understand, lady?”

  His voice rose to a whine, and he looked like a petulant child.

  Alice didn’t say anything. She’d grown up with such a kind father, his colorful language aside. But she’d met this kind of man before. Every woman in America had by the time she was twenty-five. She’d worked with men to whom bullying was a standard management style. Testosterone poisoning, she and her friend Nancy joked. And yet it was women who were called hysterical. They were like little children, these angry men, she thought. Always throwing their tantrums.

  Something clicked in Alice’s mind then. Little boys. Edward Stevenson. Eddie.

  “Eddie Stevenson,” she said aloud. “Eddie Stevenson from Hatch Street.”

  Edward’s face went slack in surprise.

  “I’m Alice Holtzman,” she said, looking closely at him. Yes, he was in his late thirties, which would make him about seven years younger than she was.

  “I was your babysitter’s neighbor. Jeannine Sharp. Remember?”

  She snapped her fingers and laughed. “I helped her give you a bath when you were three years old.”

  The memory flickered through her mind. Funny Jeannine, always so patient with little kids. Alice sat on the bathroom floor watching the boy splash in the tub while Jeannine changed his little sister’s diaper.

  Ed shifted uncomfortably and grew pale. Jake looked skeptical, as if he co
uldn’t believe his father had ever been a small, naked child. Alice saw something in Ed’s face like shame. And fear.

  What was it? The ugly story came back to her like a sour smell. She was a junior when she heard about it at a football game. The little boys had caught a feral cat on the playground after school. Tortured it to death. Alice looked at him and saw the little boy in this man’s face. Imagined the dirty streaks on his nose, sunburned neck, crew cut, and torn shorts. He would have been nine or so then. They’d sent him to live with relatives in Spokane.

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “You got expelled from May Street Elementary. You and Craig Stone.”

  Such cruelty from children was rare in their little town, something you didn’t forget. The poor helpless creature, not deserving of such an end. And Jake, with a father like that.

  Alice felt her throat catch, and her breath grew shallow. Time slowed. She held herself very still and waited for her breath to leave her, waited for that tightening in her chest. But it didn’t happen. This was different. Her vision, instead of blurring, sharpened, and so did her hearing. She heard the scornful yawp of a crow and felt the brisk breath of the spring chinook on the back of her neck. Instead of feeling like she might splinter into a thousand pieces, she felt a hot, white coherence. It hovered over her head like a blessing.

  Ed still said nothing, his face pale and sharp. He seemed to shrink into himself. Alice glanced at Tansy, who was gripping the railing of the wheelchair ramp with one hand, her eyes closed, her mascara making tracks down her cheeks. She knew who she’d married.

  “What can you do for the boy, anyway, Alice?” her father’s voice murmured in her ear. Alice stepped back and exhaled.

  “I should go,” she said, looking away from Ed and down at the boy. “But I have a proposition for you.”

  She handed him the Ace receipt with her phone number and email address.

  “Thing is, I’m hiring. I need help around the bee yard. No experience necessary, and it’s part-time. I just posted the ad today. Check the job board on gorge.net. If you want to give it a whirl, call me.”

  She heard herself telling him that room-and-board was negotiable as part of the wage. Never mind that she had scoffed at the idea of WWOOFers that very morning. The words just kept tumbling out of her mouth.

  The boy looked at the paper, expressionless and clearly as surprised by the idea as Alice was herself.

  Ed roared back to life then. “Lady, you need to mind your goddamn business! I’ll kick your ass from here to Odell if you don’t get off my driveway!”

  “Edward, please!” Tansy grabbed her husband’s arm.

  Alice felt the white heat descend again and entertained the joyful fantasy of harming this man. She could hear the neighbors opening their windows and doors to listen. The rational part of her knew she could never hurt anyone. Of course not. She was a Holtzman. Still, she felt that strange feeling course through her—a wildness that somehow made her feel deadly calm. She looked directly into Ed’s eyes.

  “You go ahead and do that,” she said evenly. “And I’ll call the sheriff. He’s my brother-in-law.”

  “Lady, if you know what’s good for you—” Ed hissed.

  “Sounds great to me, Alice!” Jake exclaimed at her elbow. “I’ll come with you now, actually. Have a look around.”

  The boy’s mother had retreated, her arms folded, against the porch.

  “Jacob,” she sobbed.

  Ed sneered down at his son. “Working man, huh? How do you think that’s gonna go for you?” he spat.

  Jake’s eyes blazed as he stared up at his father. “I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we? Eddie.”

  When he called his father Eddie, Alice saw the man shrink back. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

  The boy drew himself up taller in his chair, as if Alice’s fury lit something in him too. It burned bright in his eyes and bore him forward. And then Alice found herself driving out of the dusty yard, past the vanquished donkey, and into the bright April sunshine with eighteen-year-old Jake Stevenson on the seat next to her, his eyes blazing and Bruce Springsteen blaring through the speakers.

  What in the hell have I done now? Alice thought.

  7

  Bumbling

  I discovered that bees often recognize strangers by their actions, even when they have the same scent; for a frightened bee curls himself up with a cowed look, which unmistakably proclaims that he is conscious of being an intruder.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  If Harry had learned anything in nearly a quarter of a century of life on earth, it was that upon first impression, most people thought he was a dumbass. He couldn’t really blame them. He was a follower and sometimes went where others led despite the “Wrong Way” signs posted at every turn.

  “Don’t be such a people pleaser,” his mother said. She’d been saying that since fourth grade, when he let some older boys “borrow” his lunch money and came home hungry. She was trying to help him, he knew, but it was really just a nicer way of saying he was a dumbass.

  “Those boys don’t want to be your friends, son,” his mother said. “You know how you can tell?”

  Harry shook his head and bit into the peanut butter sandwich she’d made him.

  “Because they want to take something from you. Friends should just be friends because they like each other.”

  Harry nodded, not really understanding. He would think of her words the next time he lost his lunch money. And the day he let the neighborhood kids ride his bike off the jump in the vacant lot and came home with a bent wheel. Then there was the time he got arrested for helping his friends move a truck full of stolen flat-screen TVs.

  “What were you thinking!” his mother yelled in the car after she bailed him out. It wasn’t a question he could answer. Harry slumped against the seat with shame and fatigue. He’d spent the night in jail next to a drunk old guy who smelled like pee and mustered up the courage to call his mother when he couldn’t take the smell any longer.

  “Harry! Explain yourself, son!”

  His mother rarely yelled, saying it was undignified, so her doing so then underscored the seriousness of the situation. But Harry had no explanation for her. He could only acknowledge that he’d been stupid enough to let his friends talk him into driving a truck of stolen TVs to a buyer who had turned out to be an undercover cop.

  What had he been thinking? Certainly not that Marty’s rationale made any sense.

  “Dude. Nothing has changed since Occupy,” Marty said one afternoon, as they stood outside the Three-O-One Saloon. “The one-percenters still have all the power. System’s rigged. They owe this to us.”

  Marty dragged on his cigarette and flicked it out into the street, where it lay smoldering. Sam nodded, and Harry had nodded too, though he wasn’t really agreeing. He just didn’t want them to think he was a big puss. He was thinking that Marty was kind of a one-percenter himself. At least his father was—a man who owned a string of assisted-living facilities along the Atlantic Coast. Marty often bragged about how his father skimmed off of Medicare and about the family’s vacation home in the Florida Keys. His father employed him too. And although Marty purported to hate working for him, he would inherit the family business. Thus, the Robin Hood rationale didn’t make much sense. Harry knew this—Marty’s proposal that they remove a shipment of electronics from the store where his cousin worked—wasn’t a revolution. It was just a side hustle.

  Harry ended up as driver and later wondered if Marty and Sam had agreed upon that in advance. They ran when the cop pulled out his badge. Harry was sitting in the cab looking at his Facebook feed and hadn’t noticed. The cop had to tap on the window to get his attention. Harry was the only one who got arrested.

  The judge sentenced him to twenty-four months in a low-security prison for attempted grand larceny. He looked disappointed, which made
Harry feel even worse.

  “Mr. Stokes,” he said, “this would be a good time to turn yourself around. Make a change before you go too far down this road.”

  His mother blew her nose and suppressed a sob. Sal sat next to her with his big arms crossed and his nostrils flaring.

  Harry had hoped to leave his poor decision-making behind with the move west, which had felt like a change. His parents wanted to believe that it signaled some sort of new direction. Accepting the idea that Harry was finally leading his own life would allow his mother and Sal to move to Florida guilt-free. Harry didn’t want them to worry about him anymore. But Seattle had been too big and confusing. The high school friend who told him to come visit anytime hadn’t seemed pleased when he showed up. I should have called first, Harry thought then.

  Still, it was cool of Jeff to let him stay for a week. Jeff’s girlfriend, Sylvia, made it very clear that she didn’t want him there. She had stayed in the bedroom when she was home from work and stalked through the living room to the kitchen without speaking to Harry or Jeff as they sat reminiscing about high school. Sylvia’s angry silence made him uncomfortable, and he started looking for his own place. He even talked to the manager of Jeff’s building and began filling out an application. But then he got to the part about the background check. He stuffed the paper in his bag and mumbled something about forgetting his ID. Who would rent to a felon?

  He walked the dreary Seattle waterfront where huge container ships docked against bulky piers. The air smelled of creosote and seawater. Seagulls hopped about on the sidewalk, screaming and fighting over garbage. The blustery February wind blew in over the stormy Puget Sound and dark clouds obscured the Olympic Mountains. Rain spattered in fat drops and then began in earnest, falling in a blinding torrent. Harry ducked under the dry roof of Pike Place Market and found himself standing next to a tower of polished apples. “Heirloom selection: Pippins, Braeburns, and Gravensteins from the Hood River Valley!” the sign read. Harry picked up a sample, and as the sweet pulp slid down his throat, he remembered that his mother’s uncle lived somewhere near Hood River. He said goodbye to Jeff, hopped on a Greyhound to Hood River, and hitched his way to BZ Corner. After Sylvia, Uncle H’s welcome seemed pretty warm. Harry didn’t know if it was hospitality or senility, and he didn’t want to know. However, any momentum he’d gained had stopped there in the woods.