by John Saul
She frowned, wondering if she ought to find Kevin, or maybe even his father, but when she looked around again and still saw nothing, she decided to ignore the strange noise.
She took the oats out and added them to the fodder, then turned the other two horses out of their stalls into the pasture.
Returning to the barn, she began mucking out the stall that Flicka and Greta shared. She raked up all the soiled straw, shoveled it into the wheelbarrow, and took it outside to add to the big compost heap over by the kitchen garden, where Kevin had promised that she’d have her very own rows of squash and tomatoes. “They grow real fast,” he’d told her the day before yesterday. “With a lot of stuff, you can hardly see anything. But with squash, you can practically watch them grow.” Maybe this morning, before they had to get ready for the wedding, he’d help her plant the seeds.
The wheelbarrow empty, she started back to the barn, pausing to shrug off her jacket now that the sun was fully up. The day was starting to get hot. Leaving the jacket on the ground by the door, Molly went back into the barn, intent on finishing the cleaning of Flicka’s stall.
The humming sound in the barn seemed louder at first, but as Molly swept the last of the dirty straw out of the stall, it began to fade away into her subconscious. She worked steadily, concentrating hard to be sure she didn’t forget any of the things Kevin had taught her. Only when she was finally satisfied that the stall was as clean as Kevin himself could have gotten it did she move to the bin beneath the hayloft to gather fresh straw.
Now the humming was much louder. When Molly looked up, she saw its source at last.
High up, just beneath the eaves that soared above the hayloft, bees were circling, barely visible except when they flashed across the beams of sunlight that filtered through the cracks and knotholes in the barn’s siding.
Fascinated, her eyes fixed on the darting insects, Molly started up the ladder to the loft. She had barely gotten to the top when she heard a voice from below.
Otto Owen’s voice.
“You stop right there,” he said. Though his voice wasn’t really loud, there was an urgency in it that stopped Molly cold. She froze on the ladder, and then, looking slowly upward, she saw it.
Her heart began to pound.
Not more than five feet away from her, clustered around one of the posts that supported the barn’s roof, was an enormous, crawling, humming mass.
A swarm of bees.
Terrified by the sight, Molly nearly lost her grip on the ladder.
The swarm was almost two feet across, black with the bodies of thousands of insects crawling all over each other while hundreds more hovered in the air around the undulating mass.
“It’s all right, Molly,” she heard Otto tell her, his voice low but very clear. “Just start coming back down, real slow. Don’t move too fast, and don’t startle them, and they won’t hurt you.”
For a long moment, her gaze fixed hypnotically on the writhing mass of insects, Molly didn’t move at all. Only when Otto spoke to her again, his voice much sharper, did she come out of the spell and begin to creep back down the ladder.
Otto Owen was waiting for her at the bottom. Callused hands seizing her by the shoulders, he carried her out of the barn, not setting her down until they were halfway across the yard. “Why did you go up there?” he demanded, his deep-set, frightening eyes fixing on her. “Didn’t you hear the bees? Didn’t you see them?”
Molly, terrified, began to cry. “I j-just wanted to see what they were doing,” she wailed. “They didn’t sting me or anything.”
Otto glared down at her, and for a second Molly was afraid he was going to hit her. Then the angry set to his expression faded away and he stiffly knelt down so his eyes were level with hers. “Now you listen to me, young lady,” he said, his voice still severe, but no longer threatening. “If you ever see that many bees again, you stay away from them, all right?”
Molly’s chin trembled as she struggled to stop crying. “B-But they weren’t coming after me.”
“No, they weren’t,” Otto Owen agreed. “But if you’da bothered them, they mighta come after you.” Molly’s eyes widened. “They coulda killed you, Molly,” the old man went on. “Don’t you never, ever go near that many bees. Not unless you know exactly what you’re doing.”
As the words sank in, Molly turned to look back at the barn. A few bees hovered in the air, and more were clinging to the barn’s siding. From the yard, though, they looked completely harmless. Then the slamming of the screen on Otto’s back door distracted her, and she turned to see her mother hurrying toward her.
“Molly?” Karen called. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
Molly pointed to the barn. “Bees!” she called out, her fear of a moment before suddenly forgotten in the presence of her mother. Running toward Karen, she started to tell her what had happened, pointing toward the barn. “They’re up there, Mom. A whole swarm of them!”
Karen’s eyes shifted to the barn’s second story.
What was Molly talking about? There were a few bees up there, going in and out, but—
Then it happened.
Suddenly the barn itself seemed to erupt into life as thousands of bees churned through the cracks and knotholes. In seconds the air was black with them, their humming a deafening drone that seemed to shake the very earth. Then they were swirling toward her. Karen grabbed Molly’s hand and began racing back toward the house, half dragging her daughter behind her.
“What are they doing, Mom?” Julie asked, a hard knot of fear forming in the pit of her stomach as she gazed at the mass of bees that roiled just beyond the window. “Are they trying to get in?”
With an arm around each of her daughters, Karen stared out the window at the swarming insects. As soon as she’d gotten Molly safely back inside Otto’s house, she’d phoned up to Russell’s. Kevin had answered, telling her not to worry, that he and his grandfather could take care of bees. “I don’t think so,” Karen finally replied, more out of need to reassure her daughters than because she herself felt that the insects would remain safely outside. “We’ll just stay right here, and let Kevin and Otto deal with them.”
An enormous old walnut tree spread its limbs toward the house, and it was in a crotch where the main trunk split into two huge branches that the bees were now swarming. The mass of insects was steadily growing, and both Julie and Karen were staring at it in awe. “My God,” Julie breathed, barely conscious that she was speaking the words aloud. “How big can it get?”
Molly, emboldened by the protection of the glass between her and the cloud of insects beyond the window, gazed at the swarm in fascination. “It was a lot bigger in the barn,” she announced. “See? They’re still coming out!”
As Karen followed her younger daughter’s gaze, her arm tightened around the little girl. Thank God Otto got her out of harm’s way! she thought, repressing a shudder. And Kevin had said it was “No big deal.” No big deal! she repeated silently to herself. With millions of bees out there, how could it be no big deal?
“What are they going to do?” Julie demanded, instantly sensing her mother’s doubts.
“I don’t know,” Karen replied, her taut nerves starting to fray. “Maybe they’ll spray them with insecticide or something.”
Molly grabbed her mother’s arm with one hand and pointed toward the barn with the other. “Wow! Look at that, Mom!”
Following Molly’s gaze, Karen stared at the two figures emerging from the barn.
Otto and Kevin Owen, their heads covered with netting, but wearing nothing else to protect themselves from the bees, were moving quickly across the yard, Kevin carrying a folded aluminum ladder, while Otto bore a large cardboard box. As Kevin began setting up the ladder, Otto put the box down, opened it, and took out what looked to Karen like a thin brush, perhaps a foot long, with a handle at one end, and an odd-looking contraption that seemed to be a metal can with an inverted funnel on top and a leather bellows fastened to one side. The ladde
r in place, Kevin knelt down and grasped the can. Pulling a match from his jeans pocket, he struck it against the bottom step of the ladder and dropped it into the metal can. He blew into the can for a moment, then, apparently satisfied that it was burning properly, put the top back on.
As Karen and her daughters watched, Kevin climbed up nearly to the top of the ladder, where his head and shoulders were almost level with the swarm, which clung to a branch two feet away from the boy. Otto handed him the brush, then picked up the box. Climbing up to the third step of the ladder, Otto held the box out so it was just below the swarm.
As Kevin worked the bellows attached to the canister, smoke began pouring from the funnel top, enveloping the bees, which promptly began flying away from the noxious fumes, until the body of the swarm was two-thirds dispersed. Then Kevin gently brushed what remained of the swarm into the box.
For a moment bees appeared to rise out of the box almost as soon as Kevin brushed them into it, but then everything changed. The flow of bees reversed, and the hovering horde began settling into the box.
Moving carefully, Otto climbed back down the ladder and eased the box onto the ground.
A moment later Kevin, too, had climbed down. As bees eddied in the air around him, he folded up the ladder and carried it back to the barn, Otto following him with the smoker and the brush.
By the time they were done putting the equipment away, all but a few of the bees had settled into the cardboard box, and when Kevin and Otto emerged from the barn, Otto was carrying a cover for it. Otto put the lid on, picked up the box and carried it to the pickup truck parked next to the barn. Kevin, meanwhile, came into the house.
“Are you all right?” Karen asked, barely able to believe what Kevin had just done. “Didn’t you get stung?”
“Why would they sting me?” Kevin asked. “I wasn’t hurting them.”
Karen sank onto one of the straight-backed kitchen chairs, feeling drained by what she had just seen. “Where did they come from?” she asked, her voice hollow. “Were they in the barn all along?” She remembered Julie and Molly running in and out of the barn all day yesterday, and the day before. Had the swarm been there all along, concealed in the loft, an unseen danger to her two girls?
Kevin shook his head to her question. “They probably just came in this morning,” he said. “It was too cold for them last night. Once it gets down around fifty, bees can’t fly much at all.”
“But where’d they come from?” Karen pressed.
Kevin shrugged. “Probably one of the hives.”
“The hives?” Karen echoed. “I don’t remember seeing any hives here.”
“They’re here,” Kevin said. “All the farms have hives—we have to have bees to pollinate the crops. But when a hive gets too full, they produce a new queen, and the old one takes off with about a third of the bees. That’s how they start new colonies. We’ll take ’em back to the hives and set up a new one for them.”
“Where are they?” Molly demanded, curiosity washing away the last of her fear. “How come you haven’t shown them to me?”
“Because they’re way over on the other side of the far pasture, as far away from the house as you can get,” Kevin told her. “And they’re out there because little kids like you should stay away from them.”
“I’m not a little kid,” Molly shot back. “I’m almost ten.”
“In ten more months,” Julie interjected.
“I still want to see the bees,” Molly insisted, glaring at her sister.
“That’s enough, Molly,” Karen told her. “Kevin and Mr. Owen can take care of the bees, and you can stay here with me.”
Outside, Otto had finished loading the cardboard box into the back of the pickup truck and was beckoning to Kevin.
“Want to go along?” Kevin asked Julie, his face reddening slightly and his eyes avoiding hers with such bashfulness that Karen, watching from the table, had to hide a smile.
Julie stared at Kevin. “Tell me you’re kidding,” she said. “You want me to get in that truck, with millions of bees in the back?”
Kevin’s blush deepened. “It’s not dangerous,” he said. “The top can’t come off.”
“Isn’t it dangerous when you put them in the hive?” Karen asked. “You have to open the box then, don’t you?”
Kevin nodded. “But Julie won’t be anywhere near it. She can even stay in the truck, and keep the windows closed if she wants to,” he explained, his eyes fastening on Karen’s in a mute appeal.
“Why don’t you go, Julie?” Karen said, giving in to Kevin’s puppy-dog look. “I’m sure Kevin and Otto know exactly what they’re doing.”
“Mo-ther,” Julie groaned. “Come on. Why would I want to—”
But this time, Karen didn’t let her finish. “I think you ought to go,” she said. “If I didn’t have so much to do, I’d go myself. It sounds interesting.” Before Julie had a chance to say anything more, Karen turned to Kevin. “Go tell your grandfather to wait a minute, will you? Julie will be right there.”
Kevin, sensing that something was about to happen between Julie and her mother, hesitated. “If she doesn’t really want to—” he began, but Karen quickly interrupted him.
“She’ll be down in a minute,” she insisted. “Just tell Otto to wait.” As Kevin left through the back door, Karen turned to her daughter, who was glaring at her angrily.
“Mother, I don’t want to go!” Julie began. “I mean, like, beehives? Who cares about beehives? I don’t see why—”
Karen held up her hands against Julie’s torrent of words. “Will you please listen to me? All I want you to do is go with them. Can’t you see how important it is to Kevin that you go? Please, Julie. You can stay in the truck and look the other way if you want to. But we’re going to be living on this farm, and we all have to get along together. Even with Otto Owen. And I might remind you that he got Molly out of the barn, and helped Kevin get the swarm out of the tree while we were hiding in the house. No wonder he doesn’t think much of us—we acted like a bunch of cowards! So just go with them, and thank Otto for taking care of the swarm. All right?”
Julie took a deep breath, about to argue some more, but then saw the expression her mother always got when she’d decided there wasn’t going to be any more discussion. “Oh, all right,” she sighed. “I’ll go. But I won’t get out of the car—I hate bees!”
“Really?” Karen asked, her brows arching and her eyes sparkling with mischief. “But they’ve always spoken so well of you!”
Julie stared at her mother in exasperation, then turned and started across the kitchen. Maybe seeing the hives wouldn’t be so bad after all, she decided. In fact, though she wasn’t about to admit it, she was already feeling a little curious about exactly how they were going to maneuver the bees out of the box into the hive.
“But what about me?” she heard Molly complaining as she pushed the screen door open. “Why can’t I go too?” Hurrying, Julie quickly moved away from the house before her mother could decide she might as well take her sister along.
“Because someone has to stay here and help me get ready,” Karen replied, reaching down and lifting Molly off her feet to distract her from trying to chase after Julie. “After all, you don’t want your old mother to look like a hag when she gets married, do you?”
“But I want to see the bees!” Molly demanded.
Karen held her so the tip of Molly’s nose just touched her own. “Tell you what. You stay here and help me get dressed, and tomorrow you and I will sneak off without anyone knowing where we’re going, and look at the beehives together. But you have to promise not to bother the bees. Okay?”
Molly, her ruffled feelings somewhat soothed, nodded reluctantly, and Karen set her back on the floor. Outside, Julie was sliding into the cab of the truck next to Otto, and though the old man barely nodded an acknowledgment that she was there, Karen smiled to herself. She had been certain she’d seen at least a flicker of interest in Julie’s eyes, and she suspect
ed that by the time Julie got back, she’d have pumped Otto dry on the subject of beehives.
And Otto, perhaps, would have warmed to at least one of her daughters.
An hour later, when the truck came back and Julie came into the house, Karen realized she’d been wrong.
“Julie?” she said. “What happened?”
Julie, already on her way to the room she shared with Molly, turned to glare at her mother.
“Mr. Owen,” she said. “I hate him! I really hate him! He wouldn’t even speak to me, even when I asked him a simple question. All he did was tell me to stay out of the way! All I wanted to do was watch! As if I care about the stupid bees! As if I care about any of this!” Bursting into tears, she dashed into the little bedroom and hurled herself onto the bed, burying her face in the pillow.
Karen groaned inwardly. Why did this have to happen on her wedding day? And worse, what did it mean for the future? Wasn’t Otto ever going to accept them being there?
Maybe she should go up and talk to Russell about his father.
Or maybe even postpone the wedding …
No! That was exactly what Otto wanted. And not for her simply to postpone the ceremony, either, but for her to cancel it entirely, and take her daughters back to Los Angeles.
Well, to hell with him! Deciding she simply wouldn’t worry about the cantankerous old man for the rest of the day, Karen set about the task of calming her daughter down.
But even after she’d stopped crying, Julie’s eyes remained stormy.
“We should go home,” she said. “We don’t belong here. We should just go home.”
Saying nothing of her own fleeting thought of postponing the wedding, Karen silently prayed that Julie was wrong.
CHAPTER 3
The afternoon sun was hot, and Karen was beginning to wonder if she’d made the right decision about the dress she’d chosen to get married in. It was a good dress—one she bought years ago, before Richard died—and its pale green was a shade she’d always thought flattered her skin and contrasted nicely with her dark hair. If it was somewhat dated, so be it—she hadn’t had any money to buy a new dress, and refused to let Russell buy her one. “Farmers’ wives do not waste money on a dress they’re only going to wear once,” she told him when he suggested she buy a new dress in Los Angeles before the move up to Pleasant Valley. She’d meant the words when she uttered them, but now, as she gazed at the carefully altered and pressed garment hanging on the closet door, she wondered.