The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  Celia noticed the smoke first.

  “The rice! The rice!” She dashed across the kitchen and grabbed the smoking pot by the handle with a dish towel. The smoke alarm screamed in short bleats.

  “Open the windows!” Jake yelled.

  Noah threw open the windows of the kitchen, and Celia jumped on a chair and flapped the dish towel in front of the smoke detector.

  “This is not a drill!” she yelled, laughing. “Proceed to the nearest exit and your teachers will direct you!”

  “Holy shit! Do your cooking classes always end in a crisis, girl?” Jake shouted.

  “I fell into a burning ring of fire!” Noah sang.

  The kitchen was filled with smoke and laughter and yelling.

  “Noah, take the damn thing outside!” Jake hollered. Noah grabbed the pan and threw open the door, nearly colliding with Alice.

  “What in the hell is going on in here?” she yelled.

  11

  Scouting

  That bees send out scouts to seek a suitable abode, admits of no serious question. Swarms have been traced directly to their new home, in an air-line flight, either from their hive, or from the place where they clustered after alighting.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  The dancing catfish clock over the dinette wriggled and slapped its freckled head and tail to announce that it was 7:00 a.m. Harry had awakened hours earlier to the predawn snarling of raccoons in the garbage pile. They looked like small bears scuttling around in the weak moonlight and sounded like crazed human babies. When he threw open the window and yelled at them, they seemed more irritated than frightened but finally slunk off into the woods.

  His own hunger had been sated by the discovery of a cache of food under the bench where his uncle usually slept. His eyes had lit on the handle as he scoured the trailer for any remaining supplies. Bingo! A jar of peanut butter, three Hershey bars, two loaves of unfortunately moldy bread, a box of saltines, and a quart of whiskey.

  He shivered in the cold damp of the trailer, went outside, and sat on the steps in the morning sunlight with a plate of peanut butter crackers. He held up the whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and took a swig of the golden liquid. It burned all the way down his throat. He coughed and put the lid back on, realizing the impracticality of getting drunk while waiting for the library to open so he could check his email. He brushed his teeth and examined his face in the chipped mirror.

  In many ways, Harry’s twenty-four-year-old face was the same face he’d had as a child. His kindergarten photo showed a small boy with red-brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles across alabaster skin, and a worried brow. His pale blue eyes stared out of the frame, uncertain. Surely, he was being admonished to smile, but his lips were pinched in a straight line. The neutral expression made him look old-fashioned, like a miniature man in daguerreotype. His mother laughed when she saw it.

  “You look just like my paw paw!” she exclaimed.

  If everyone had a core, Harry’s was five years old—skinny, not brave, but not a tattletale. He didn’t ask for help, not wanting to be a bother. He suffered through things. He attached himself to people in a quiet way, hoping they wouldn’t notice, just wanting to belong. All the way through school, he was the boy just outside the circle, making enough noise to fit in but not stand out.

  However, as the episode with the stolen TVs had shown, Harry was not what you’d call a great judge of character when it came to friends. Sam had come to see him once. He thanked Harry profusely for not ratting him out and promised to visit often. Harry hadn’t heard from him after that. Marty never bothered to come at all. It took six more months of silence from his supposed pals for it to sink in that Marty and Sam had never been allies. He had known them since high school but couldn’t remember a single kindness either of them had ever done him. He lay on his bunk at night, his face burning with the shame of it. They didn’t even like him. What a dope.

  He met with his lawyer then and handed over their names, an act that reduced Harry’s sentence considerably. He walked out of the Stonybrook Correctional Facility after nine months, still skinny, still not brave, and now a tattletale.

  His lawyer tried to help him see it another way. “What would Sam and Marty do in your shoes, Harry?”

  Harry knew they would have thrown him under the bus. The realization shocked him—not that his friends weren’t trustworthy, but what he’d been doing his whole life. He’d always been the fall guy. No, the problem with Harry’s life was Harry. He knew that. He needed to change. He just didn’t know how.

  “Follow your bliss!”

  His teachers had been saying that since the sixth grade.

  What did that mean? Did everyone else really sense some Oprah-like compass directing their lives?

  “Work, Harry. Hard work, son. That’s my passion,” his mother said, when he’d been assigned to write about the power of personal passion for school. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a gloved wrist and opened the tailgate of the truck.

  “And pink zinfandel. Now help me unload these trees.”

  Sal was no help either.

  “My passion is blondes, kiddo. Like your mama,” he said, and winked.

  Harry wrote his paper about having a passion for long-line trolling, which really didn’t interest him at all. He got a C+.

  Forget about passion. Harry’s problem was far simpler and more daunting. How do you move forward? All he knew after a stint in jail, a cross-country bus trip, and two months in the woods was that he still had no idea how to direct his own life. Harry sighed and ran his fingertips across his upper lip. He needed to get his shit together.

  He thought of Uncle H and felt a wave of guilt. He hadn’t gone to see him at the hospital yesterday as planned. He’d gotten as far as calling, but the nurse said she couldn’t release patient information outside the family. He hung up without saying he was family, the only family in the area. He should have gone straight to the hospital then, but he didn’t. Why he didn’t was another question he simply couldn’t answer, and really the same question that had dogged him his entire life—like the lunch money, the bike, the heist, his general failure to thrive. Why was Harry a passenger in the vehicle that was his life?

  He washed up in the frigid eddy behind the house and hopped on the old Schwinn, which was rickety but faster than hitchhiking. The cool wind on his face cheered him. He rode the two-lane highway, swerving back and forth between the lanes as he went. He heard the chug of a big engine behind him and moved right to make way. As a logging truck blew past, he swerved to miss a pile of red and brown that he realized was something dead, a dog or a coyote. Harry could see its head and face intact like it was smiling above the torn body. He gagged as he passed and wished he could unsee it.

  There was nobody in the little library in BZ besides the librarian, who nodded at Harry and said good morning. She gave him the computer log-in code, which hadn’t changed in the two months he’d been coming, but neither of them acknowledged that. He opened his email, and his stomach dropped at the five messages from his mother. They all had the same subject line: “Call me!”

  He sighed and didn’t open those messages.

  He scrolled down, deleting as he went. Spam. Political newsletters he never read. A message from a guy he met in jail who Harry had, regrettably, given his email. Then a message from the gorge.net job board. It was a reply to one of his applications, the bee thing. In his notebook he had listed the pros and cons of each job he’d applied for, and under the bee farm he had written: “Positive: working outside, learning opportunity, farming, carpentry.” The last and most important: “No background check request.” In the negative column he had simply written “bees.” He shuddered. He hated insects, all kinds. But the idea of carpentry work cheered him. He shot a quick message back to the farmer. Yes, he could be there the following afternoon at 1:00 p.m. for an interview. He printed the e
mail, paid the librarian, and left.

  Harry wheeled his bike to the gas station and leaned it against the worn fence at the pay phone. Harry hadn’t seen a pay phone since he’d been a kid, but the poverty and poor cell service in BZ meant this one got plenty of use. He called his mother collect, and his heart sank when he heard her agree to receive charges. It reminded him of calling her from jail. Twenty-four years old and he still couldn’t afford to call his mother.

  “Son! I’ve been worried sick. Listen, honey, I want to hear all about your new job, but first, how’s he doing? Is he still unconscious? Are they keeping him on oxygen again today?”

  Harry felt the weight of shame descend. Of course the hospital would have called her.

  “I, um. They wouldn’t release any information to me when I called. So, I’m not sure what the story is right now,” he said.

  “What do you mean? Aren’t you at the hospital?”

  Harry looked up at the big fir trees leaning over the highway like he might find the answer there.

  “I-I’ve just been really busy with work,” he said. “It’s been hard to get the time off during visiting hours.”

  Did hospitals even have visiting hours anymore? He hated lying to his mother, but he didn’t want to try to explain why he hadn’t set foot in Skyline Hospital in the four days since his uncle’s capture by social services.

  Why his mother always chose to believe him was a mystery, but he was grateful now.

  “Listen, son. You tell your boss that this is an important family matter. We are Uncle H’s only people. Well, the only good ones, anyway. I called Jenny. ‘He died years ago as far as I’m concerned,’ she told me. Can you believe that? She’s just mad because he lost all his money in that Ponzi scheme at Powder River. Well, she should have been looking out for him, so she has no one to blame but herself.”

  She paused, and Harry heard her light a cigarette and exhale.

  “Listen, Harry. I wish I could be there, but I can’t get away right now. Sal isn’t doing great. It’s nothing serious, but he needs eye surgery, and I have to drive him to appointments the next couple of weeks. I’ll get out there as quick as I can. Meantime, I’m counting on you to keep me updated. Call me collect until you get a phone. Now, how are you doing? Are you eating enough? Making friends? How’s your job?”

  Harry told his mother some more lies about how great things were and promised to call her the next day. He felt like such a loser.

  Down the hill at the small hospital, he forced himself through the doors. He presented himself as Uncle H’s nephew, and the woman at the front desk directed him down the hall. Harry walked slowly, glancing into the rooms. TVs blared, and old people lay flat on their backs, mostly sleeping.

  Uncle H was at the end of the hall. Curled up under a blanket, he looked smaller and frailer than Harry remembered. His white hair stood up in its usual bird’s nest. His eyes were closed, and his breath was shallow and ragged. He was attached to a bunch of machines that beeped and flashed. Plastic tubes ran into his nostrils. His lips were sucked in around his gums, as someone had removed his dentures. His face was gray and papery.

  “Uncle H?” Harry whispered, hoping the old man would open his eyes and say something feisty. But he didn’t. His breath dragged in and out. The machines beeped; their lights flickered. The room smelled antiseptic and was brightened only by a vase of flowers on the table. Harry knew they were from his mother before he read the card.

  “Get well soon, Uncle H! Much love, Lydia and Sal,” it read.

  Harry swallowed hard. He sat and looked out the window. He could see the river from up here, but he doubted his uncle had appreciated the view. Harry stared at a calendar on the wall. April. How was it already April? He’d been living with his uncle for two months.

  A doctor came through the door, peering down at a tablet in his hands. He was tall and thin and looked irritated until he saw Harry. Then he smiled and held out his hand.

  “Hi. I’m Dr. Chimosky.”

  Harry stood and shook his hand. “I’m Harry Stokes, sir. His nephew.”

  The doctor nodded and looked back down at his tablet. “We’ve been in touch with your mother, I think?”

  Harry nodded and hoped the doctor wouldn’t ask where he had been for the past four days.

  “Well, your uncle had a rough night. He was recovering well from the initial stroke, but he’s pretty fragile, and his heart went into an arrhythmia for a bit and then bumped itself back out. He’s been on oxygen since he got here. He’s stable now, but there’s not much we can do for him. Legally we have to follow his advanced directive.”

  Harry struggled to make sense of the flood of information. “A stroke? What’s an advanced directive?”

  The doctor looked impatient. “From what we can tell, your uncle had at least one stroke before social services brought him in. An advanced directive outlines what kind of care he wants to receive if hospitalized. He signed it last fall. It says he doesn’t want to be admitted to the ICU or put on a ventilator or have a feeding tube put in. We can only offer him limited intervention, like IV fluids and comfort care.”

  Harry shook his head. “I didn’t know.”

  The doctor shrugged, seeming unsurprised. “You’re living with him now?”

  Harry nodded.

  The doctor frowned down at his tablet.

  “Sounds like his trailer is in pretty rough shape. If he recovers, he’ll likely move to a rehab setting for a while, but then he’d need a more stable living situation. Will you be staying with him? He’d need help with bathing, eating, getting to follow-up appointments, and such.”

  Harry, who was down to $297.75, half a jar of peanut butter, two sleeves of Saltines, a Hershey bar, and a quart of whiskey, said, “Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

  The doctor smiled. “That’s great to hear,” he said. “It’s much easier when folks have family step up.”

  He tucked the tablet under his arm and reached out to shake Harry’s hand again. “I’ll check in later. Let the nurses know if you have any questions.”

  The doctor strode out of the room.

  Harry sat down and looked at his uncle, who struggled to breathe, and was unsure how to feel. He was fond of Uncle H, but he didn’t really know him, not like his mom did. He mostly felt guilty for not feeling something more deeply—sad or worried. But he could be there on his mother’s behalf. That was something.

  Around 5 p.m., one of the nurses brought in a dinner tray.

  “Oh, I don’t think he can eat that,” Harry said.

  “Anybody else hungry in here?” she asked with a wink.

  Creamed chicken and rice, corn, salad, a cookie. Harry ate every bite, ashamed and grateful. He fell asleep in the chair and awoke when another nurse came in in the morning. Through it all, Uncle H hadn’t opened his eyes or uttered a sound other than the rasping breath that escaped his mouth. Without his glasses and his dentures, he looked like a baby. His thin arm was bruised around the IV. Harry took his hand, which felt cold and papery.

  “I’ll be back this afternoon, Uncle H,” he said. “I’ll bring some cards with me, and we can play rummy.”

  Harry rode down the hill to Hood River and across the bridge. He passed River Daze and caught a flash of Moira’s face in the bakery window. His heart clenched, and his stomach growled. He thought wistfully of the hospital breakfast trays he had seen passing the door. The morning nurse hadn’t offered him one or seemed very friendly, so Harry hadn’t asked.

  He stopped at a food truck just outside of downtown and bought a breakfast burrito. He knew a little Spanish from working with the guys in his parents’ landscaping crew. So he said good morning and ordered in Spanish. The guy beamed at him and said a bunch of stuff Harry didn’t catch. He gave Harry an orange juice for free and gestured to a plastic chair next to the food cart. Harry sat and wolfed down the burrito, li
cked his fingers, and drained the juice box. He looked out over the methodical rows of trees that made up the orchards. Their white blossoms stirred in the breeze. The valley opened up there, and he could see Mount Hood to the south and more orchards marching across the landscape. He heard the cough of a diesel engine and saw a man driving a red tractor between rows of trees. The engine startled a flock of birds, which burst across the road, crying in alarm and flapping their nearly useless wings. A covey of quail, Harry remembered from the bird book as he heard their alarmed peeping. He wiped his hands on his pants and grabbed the Schwinn.

  “Gracias, señor! Buen día!” the man said.

  “Gracias!” Harry said, waving as he pedaled off.

  He parked his bike in the shade by a creek to wait until it was close to 1:00 p.m. He tried to think of what to say to the farmer. Should he have brought a copy of his résumé with him? The thought ratcheted up his anxiety. He hadn’t thought about job interviews since his coaching meeting at the correctional center.

  His counselor was a skinny Italian guy named Anthony Barone. Anthony wore a crisp blue shirt and tie and had a small gold earring in one ear. His office smelled strongly of cedar aftershave, which was not unpleasant. Harry sat in the chair he gestured to. One of the wheels was coming loose, and the whole chair tipped backward if Harry shifted his weight. He sat forward and watched Anthony flip through his file, feeling like he was in the principal’s office.

  “Mr. Stokes. Okay. So, you graduated from high school. Good. Oh, college boy! Don’t see that every day. How the heck did you end up in here with a college education?” He looked up from Harry’s file and raised a thick eyebrow.