Swarm
Page 29
When Abby was nineteen, she fell in love with a boy from town whose parents ran the new general store. Their wedding was held on a warm afternoon in late August, a decade almost to the day that she’d come back home as a castaway, a feral child. The sky glowed bright blue. I helped her get ready in her bedroom at the Bobiwash house and then we walked outside, into the field that stretched behind her father’s home. The turkey vultures tipped their dark bodies over us, temporarily disappointed, the tops of their wings burnished amber by the sun.
In the evening, after the ceremony, Marvin and I walked home along the wide dirt path that ran alongside the impassable asphalt road. We passed the wreck of the old Toyota where the bees had once settled their swarm. Inside, Phoenix’s red scarf lay rotting on the steering wheel. A rosy dusk hung all around us, above the branches of the ancient oak, over our house, the wide lake beyond. We looked at the dark orange ribbons in the sky.
“Hopefully we get some rain tomorrow,” Marvin said as we walked down the path to the hives.
In the clearing, Marvin rolled a cigarette out of our homegrown tobacco. I used his match to light the half-burnt sumac stuffed in the tin smoker. I wanted to harvest a piece of honeycomb to give to Abby, for good luck, for fertility.
Before pumping smoke into the drift of insects, I laid a piece of peppermint cake on the nearest hive.
“There was a wedding today,” I said as the bees floated up and around.
Whenever I talk to the bees, I feel Thomson. He’s there, underneath us, in the earth. Over the years, I’ve stopped missing him so much. Phoenix too. They’re always with me. And you are also. Not Abby, but whoever I thought you were. A shadow. A band of sunlight that breaks through the clouds. A ghost. It doesn’t matter so much anymore because I have stopped looking for the things that I don’t have. Each year, as the seasons change, as the days grow longer or incrementally shorter, losing fragments of their light, I concede. To the paths that are drawn. To the places my feet fall. To life.
Acknowledgments
The University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA program helped me immensely in honing my craft: thank you to profs and colleagues for enriching dialogue and specific feedback on early scenes. I’m deeply thankful to Susan Swan, who provided creative support, encouragement, and generosity with her mentorship over several months of this novel’s growth. My agent, Samantha Haywood, has been an unfailing supporter, and I am truly grateful for her tireless work on my behalf. Editors Jane Warren and Anita Chong offered thoughts that certainly enriched the book. I’m especially thankful to Ruth Linka at Brindle & Glass and my editor, Lee Shedden, whose suggestions and astute observations helped polish those last rough spots.
Huge appreciation for my mother, Laura Carter, who read every single draft, offering thoughts, suggestions, and a listening ear as I wrestled with things. Nancy Jo Cullen provided perceptive notes, which I greatly appreciate. Thanks also to my stepfather, Ulrich Kretschmar, for corrections on bees and geology. I am blessed with incredible support from family and friends and am deeply grateful for my husband, Jason Mills, whose love and unending support (and kick in the behind when needed) mean the world to me.
Many resources inspired and assisted in the creation of this world and its characters, including The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler; Why Your World Is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin; The Life of the Bee by Maurice Maeterlinck; Bee by Claire Preston; The Weather Underground, directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel; The Power of the Powerless, directed by Cory Taylor; and A Place Called Chiapas, directed by Nettie Wild. I am also indebted to the beekeepers I interviewed for various magazine articles, including Allan Sinton and Adi Stoer and especially Tom Morrisey of Lavender Hills Farm, who gave me a face-to-face tour of his hives. Any mistakes are my own.
The excerpt from the Zapatista writings comes from the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, written by Subcomandante Marcos in 1996. “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” comes from Aleister Crowley. Vaclav Havel’s quote about ideology that Thomson paraphrases is from Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless,” while the details of underwater Roman amphora are from an episode of The Cousteau Odyssey. The stories of lone survivors of collapsed civilizations are from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Island history is drawn from Exploring Manitoulin by Shelley J. Pearen, on which my island is roughly based.
Material quoted within the text is reprinted with permission as follows: Rumi, excerpts from “The Spiritual Surgeon,” translated by Kabir Helminski and Camille Helminski, from The Rumi Collection, edited by Kabir Helminski. Copyright © 1998 by Kabir Helminski. Reprinted by arrangement with The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Shambhala Publications Inc., Boston, MA. shambhala.com.
“Billionaire”: Words and Music by Peter Hernandez, Philip Lawrence, Ari Levine, and Travis McCoy © 2010 Northside Independent Music Publishing LLC, Thou Art the Hunger, Bughouse, Mars Force Music, Toy Plane Music, Art for Art’s Sake, EMI April Music, Inc., Roc Nation Music, Music Famamanem LP, and 4daytheory Music. All Rights on behalf of itself and Thou Art the Hunger administered by Northside Independent Music Publishing LLC; All Rights for Bughouse, Mars Force Music, Toy Plane Music, and Art for Art’s Sake Music administered by Bug Music; All Rights on behalf of itself, Roc Nation Music, Music Famamanem LP, and 4daytheory controlled and administered by EMI April Music, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
LAUREN CARTER has published in several literary journals and been nominated for the Journey Prize. Lichen Bright, her first collection of poetry, was long-listed for the ReLit Award. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in a variety of publications, including National Geographic Traveler, This Magazine, The Georgia Straight, First Nations Drum, The Writer, and Adbusters. A transplanted Ontarian, she currently lives in The Pas, Manitoba. Swarm is her first novel.
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Copyright © 2013 Lauren Carter
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Carter, Lauren, 1972–
Swarm [electronic resource] / Lauren Carter.
Electronic monograph.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-927366-21-9 (HTML).--ISBN 978-1-927366-22-6 (PDF)
I. Title.
PS8605.A863S83 2013 C813'.6 C2013-902022-5
Editor: Lee Shedden
Proofreader: Heather Sangster, Strong Finish
Design: Pete Kohut
Cover illustration: Natalie Egnatchik, natalieimagines.com
Author photo: Jason Mills
Information on permissions for quoted material here.
Brindle & Glass is pleased to acknowledge the financial support for its publishing program from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.