by Hannah Reed
“I suppose I have a few you could start with, to see how you like them. If you don’t, you can always bring them back. If you do, you can keep them or start your own.”
Exactly what I’d hoped he’d say.
“Why don’t I stop over at your place around three o’clock? After the twins come to cover for the rest of the day.”
“Works for me.”
I wasn’t going to chase after Stanley Peck in my car anymore. This time, I’d go head-to-head with him, tackle the issue like a woman, and wrestle it to the floor until it gave me some answers.
I better take Holly along.
Thirty-five
“I remember back when Stanley had dairy cows,” Holly said on the ride over to Stanley’s farm. “He always smelled like manure.”
“I like that smell,” I said.
“And school groups would go out there and take tours. I got lightheaded from the strong odor and had to wait in the bus, I still remember.”
“The days of local dairy farmers are almost gone,” I said. “Someday, nobody will recognize the fresh, clean perfume of cow poop.”
“The sooner, the better.”
We pulled up next to Stanley’s farmhouse. I turned off the truck.
“I forgot to tell you, Mom wants us to go over for dinner tonight,” Holly said.
“Your husband Max out of town?”
“Foolish question. Of course he is. Will you come?”
I’d been expecting an offer, since I hadn’t been over to Grams’s for a while. Well, not all the way inside, at least. I could check on my bees, too, make sure nothing menacing was bothering them.
“Who’s cooking?” I wanted to know.
“Mom. And we’ll have Grams’s AP.”
My mental text dictionary couldn’t keep up with her random abbreviations. “AP?” I asked.
“Apple pie. She said to come over at six o’clock and no later.”
“Can I drink heavily first?”
Stanley came out of his house before Holly could endorse my strategy. We got out of the truck and followed him to his chicken coop on the side of the barn. He recited enough material on raising chickens to fill an entire textbook, beginning, middle, and end, until I knew more about the birds than I’d ever wanted to know.
“Pick out a couple. Three or four, for starters,” he said, pointing to masses of hens pecking around inside a fenced area connected to the coop. “I’ll find something for you to carry them home in.” He wandered off in search of a way to transport them.
“They stink,” Holly said, wrinkling her nose. “Worse than cows. And now you’re stuck with chickens.”
I’d filled Holly in on the way over so she knew the real reason we were visiting Stanley. The chickens were simply a cover.
“I’ve been considering getting chickens anyway,” I said. “Now’s as good a time as any.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to put stinky chickens in your backyard.”
“I like that smell.”
“They all look alike.”
On that, at least, we agreed.
Stanley came back with a big cardboard box and chicken feed. He and Holly watched me run around until I managed to snag three plump hens, then Stanley helped me get them into the box. “Tie this around it nice and tight,” he said, handing me a ball of twine. “That’ll keep them from getting out.”
“Before we load them into the truck,” I said after securing the box, “we have to clear the air.”
Holly wrinkled her nose again and stifled a chuckle. The air, according to her silent smirk, needed big time clearing. “I feel dizzy,” she said. “I’ll wait in the truck.” From the fumes, she mouthed to me so Stanley couldn’t hear.
At times, it was hard to believe that Holly and I were from the same family; just like it was impossible to imagine Mom and Grams were related.
“What’s up?” Stanley asked me.
“You’ve been studying up on bees. You checked out a beekeeping book from the library. So you tell me what’s up?”
“Can’t a man read what he wants?”
“Sure he can. But he has some explaining to do if he’s reading on a subject and that same subject seems to have vanished from Manny’s beeyard right after he died. And especially since the town is upset about bees and certain residents don’t want us raising them and are willing to make trouble over it.”
“That’s just Lori. She’ll find something else to rail about eventually.”
“Please, I need to know. Are you getting ready to raise bees?”
“What ever gave you that idea?”
“The book, Stanley. The beekeeping book.”
“I was just reading.”
Stanley refused to explain further. I phrased and rephrased the same question different ways without any luck. With nothing more to discuss, Stanley helped load the hens, feed, and a bale of straw into the back of the truck. Holly and I headed out.
“That man is hiding something,” I said.
“No luck getting him to talk?”
“Nope.”
Ten minutes later Stanley drove out of his driveway. We blew out of our hiding place and gave chase.
“Stay back or he’s going to see you,” Holly called.
“He’s not going to check his rearview mirror for a tail,” I said.
“How do you know?”
“Outside of the movies, what real person does that? When’s the last time you glanced back to see if a vehicle was following you, one you recognized?”
“He’s bound to notice eventually.”
“Besides, last time I stayed back, I lost him. I don’t want him getting away this time.”
We left Moraine, following the rustic road, which was becoming more familiar to me from all the time I was spending chasing Stanley around. He wasn’t in a hurry, going much slower than the speed limit. On the same stretch where I’d lost him before, he turned into one of the driveways I’d checked last time. Only last time I hadn’t noticed that the main driveway went one way and a smaller, gravel drive went another.
Stanley followed the gravel one.
“GFI!” Holly shouted, getting excited. (Go For It!) “Follow him in.”
Instead, I pulled over and parked. Hens squawked from the back of the truck. “Let’s wait a few minutes, see if he comes out.”
Fifteen minutes later, Stanley hadn’t reappeared.
“Let’s walk in,” I said.
“ITA (I Totally Agree),” she said. “That will be less obvious.”
The driveway was longer than we thought, ending at a small cottage tucked between a mature maple and an oak tree. A woman’s home, with lace curtains peaking out, fresh flowers on windowsills, and tended daylilies all along the front.
Stanley’s car wasn’t parked next to the cottage, so I assumed he’d pulled into a small garage close by. That explained why I hadn’t spotted his car the first time I chased and lost him on this same road. I remembered turning into this driveway then.
As we edged around the back I spotted beehives.
Not many. Five to be exact. Certainly not Manny’s bees, judging by the beehive construction. And while you can’t really tell one honeybee from another, completely different hives meant different honeybees than the ones I was searching for.
I moved closer to the back of the cottage, wondering who lived there. Holly stayed with me. Not a sound came from inside.
Holly tugged on the back of my top, gesturing with her head and her eyes. Time to go. Let’s get out of here. I shook my head back. Not yet. Three feet to one of the back corner windows. I had to look in. We’d come this far. Two feet. One. Crouching lower than the window, easing up. Eye level. Holly right beside me.
It was a good thing the window was closed when I backed up, tripped, clutched my sister for support, and took her down with me. Holly let out a muffled yelp. We untangled and crawled out of sight.
I’d discovered Stanley’s secret.
He had a girlfriend, one who
was at the moment naked and entwined with Stanley on a bed right before our eyes.
And here I had been, peeking in at them like P. P. Patti without a telescope. If I found time, I’d be ashamed of myself later.
Holly and I darted back down the driveway a safe distance before speaking to each other.
“Did you see that?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Stanley has a girlfriend,” I said, which was pretty obvious to both of us.
“He doesn’t want anybody to know.”
“It’s our secret.”
“Right.”
“He’s learning about bees because of her.”
“Right.”
“Stanley isn’t Gerald Smith. He isn’t the phantom bee thief.”
“Right.”
At the bottom of the driveway, we meet my new chickens running toward us, free as birds. At least, I assumed they were mine, since they looked exactly like the ones I’d picked up.
“Grab them,” I said in a stage whisper, spreading my arms wide in hopes of driving them back toward the road.
Instead the hens banded together, dodged to my right as one unit, flapped their wings, and made it all the way to the cottage side of my blockade, still running on their scrawny chicken legs.
“Get them.” I was right behind two escapees but couldn’t help noticing that my sister wasn’t. “We have to stop these chickens or I’m going to have some explaining to do. What will I tell Stanley?”
“I don’t deal with live chickens,” Holly called from close to the road. “They probably have all kinds of diseases.”
The faster I ran, the faster the hens ran away from me. Within mere moments of giving chase, it was clear that I wasn’t going to catch them. I couldn’t do anything but give up and return to the truck.
My twine tying needed serious work. Somehow it had come loose and the chickens had worked themselves free.
Holly started laughing when I explained what had happened. “Once Stanley sees his chickens in his girlfriend’s yard, he’s going to know you were here spying on him.”
“So were you.”
“I’ll deny it.”
“Thanks a lot.” I looked up the drive, hoping to see the chickens running back down. No such luck. “Chickens aren’t wild animals,” I said. “They won’t last one night out in the open without shelter. A raccoon will finish them off. What should we do?”
Then I heard Stanley’s voice coming from the general direction of the cottage.
“What the hell! Why, these look like. . . . they are! How did my chickens get all the way over here?”
With that, we drove off faster than a flying chicken, effectively ending my short-lived career as a chicken farmer.
Thirty-six
“What have you girls been up to?” Grams asked from her position at the kitchen sink where she washed finger-ling potatoes I’d dug up from my garden.
“Nothing much,” Holly said. “Just working hard.”
“Or hardly working,” Mom chimed in.
I’d had a nice big glass of wine to prepare myself for the ordeal. I could have used an entire bottle.
“How about a beverage?” Grams asked, wiping her hands on a towel. By beverage she meant, in her genteel manner, an alcoholic beverage.
“No thanks,” Holly said.
“That’s my girl,” Mom said. “Booze ages a woman.”
“I’ll help myself,” I said, pouring a generous glass of wine.
“See,” Mom pointed out, casting me a look of disappointment.
That firstborn daughter thing was really getting to me. She wanted to control me or break me, or whatever mean people do. I planned on resisting until the bitter end. How could Grams stand to live with her?
The inquisition began immediately and continued through the meal prep as Grams fixed the potatoes, Holly and I whipped up an enormous garden salad, and Mom fried chicken. Here’s the gist of the conversation, all pointed directly at me:
• That Carrie Ann, how anybody would trust her with a cash register full of money was beyond my mother.
• Speaking of the store, were we focusing on safety in numbers and doing as she told us to do or did she have to get more involved in the daily running of the store to protect us?
• How was the family going to recover from my sordid divorce and now rumors of my brazen affair with a married dead man, which happened to be the talk of the town? That poor woman, Grace. I should find my own man, not one already taken.
• Why was I seeing Hunter when he used to be such a drunk and those kind don’t change their stripes. (That comment also proved that everybody in town but me knew about Hunter’s former problem with alcohol.)
• Which brought us to that “nice boy,” Dennis Martin, who’d had a crush on me since grade school and was still available and would make a perfect marital partner.
“He’s gay,” I said, drinking faster.
“You aren’t taking any pills, are you?” Grams said. “We don’t want a repeat of last time after the funeral.”
“I was perfectly fine.”
“That man slept over at your house,” Mom said.
“He did not. Hunter escorted me home and left. Your sources are wrong.”
“Now, Helen,” Grams said. “You’re being awful hard on Story. She a successful businesswoman and she’ll get her personal life in order soon. She’s just going through a transition, that’s all. Aren’t you, Sweetie?”
“And that dead woman’s earring,” Mom continued, not hearing anything but her own voice. “How did it get in your office?”
“I’m giving you a pill,” Grams said to Mom. “You’re getting worked up.”
“I’m fine,” Mom said, turning the chicken in the skillet. I wished she’d take the offered medication.
Why I’d arrived early to take all this abuse, before the dinner was on the table, was a mystery. It seemed an eternity but finally the meal was ready, and we took our positions, each of us having established a permanent seating arrangement as family members seem to do.
We squared off at Grams’s table, Mom sitting directly across from me.
“Is it true?” Mom asked after Grams got a nice picture of her “three favorite people.”
“Can’t we have pleasant talk while we eat?” Grams asked, taking her seat.
“Is what true?” I said, wondering which one of the many accusations she’d hurtled at me she was referring to.
“Is it true that Manny Chapman was visiting you from the river so nobody would see him? I’d like you to tell me what’s going on. Is it true?”
“I’m sure it’s not,” Holly said, finally speaking up and sort of coming to my defense.
I was reaching for a piece of chicken when it dawned on me—an epiphany. I’d been so dense until this very moment.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Yes, that’s absolutely right.”
Unfortunately, I said that out loud when I meant to just think it.
Somebody gasped. Holly, maybe.
I dropped the piece of chicken back into the serving bowl, jumped up from the table, and flew out the door.
“Now look what you did,” Grams said behind me, thinking I’d left because of my mother.
She was only partly right.
I wore my bee veil and gloves when I went in with the smoker. During one of my usual visits to my hives, I would typically just make sure the queen in each was doing well and that the workers were carrying on as usual. But this wasn’t going to be a routine inspection.
Colony Collapse Disorder was an unsolved mystery yet to be unraveled and it was always at the back of a beekeeper’s mind. When this sad event occurred, adult bees simply vanished, abandoning the queen and brood. All the workers, including scouts and nurse bees, disappeared at once, every last one of them, leaving stores of honey and certain death for those remaining behind.
My bees were in fine health, judging by the activity around the two hives. The entrances looked like busy airports. I st
epped gingerly around the nails spiking up through the board, having learned my lesson last time. I’d also traded my flip flops for a sturdy pair of work boots.
After settling the honeybees in the first hive with a few puffs of smoke to keep them docile, I lifted off the cover and removed each of the honeycombs hanging inside the hive box. Slowly, cautiously, with a little more smoke here and there, I slid out each of the frames and inspected under and around before replacing them. Then I did the same thing with the next hive, careful not to harm any of my bees in the process.
Everything was as it should be.
I stood back and pondered. Manny, even as afraid of water as he’d been, had taken a canoe down the river by himself and paddled over to my house. He must have had a very good reason. The only explanation I could think of that “held water,” so to speak, was that he didn’t want anyone to know where he was going. Or why.
I stared at the hive boxes. At home in my backyard, I kept the hives on concrete block bases so that they were raised off the ground, the theory being that the bees would be happier the farther their hives’ entrances were from the dampness of earth. On the night I’d moved the hives, I hadn’t bothered to also transport the heavy blocks. I’d had my hands full as it was.
Now that I studied the hives, I could see that one of them was at a slight angle. I’d assumed that was because I’d placed them on the edge of the cornfield where the ground hadn’t been tilled flat.
Crouching down, I rather awkwardly raised one side of the tilting beehive about two inches. It was too heavy to hold with one hand and still check underneath with the other. If I’d been paying better attention to my bees, I would have noticed that they were getting excited. Usually they were the gentlest honeybees you could know, but like all bees, they were protective of their queen and territory and really tuned in to threatening behavior from outsiders.
Outsiders, like me.
Instead of tuning in to them (using my “mental awareness” as Manny had reminded me to over and over), I rummaged around on the side of the field until I found a fallen tree branch thick enough to use as a lever. I worked it in under the hive. That freed my hands, but the gloves were getting in the way.