Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken

by Di Filippo, Paul

  “I truly appreciate your help with the building of our house,” said Horst Honigmann earnestly.

  “Our pleasure,” replied Mister Parker. “Ernie had no business to speak of, and the boys were getting rusty as railroad spikes, sitting around with no construction chores. But folks just can’t afford new buildings these days. And so long as the lumber yard accepted your downpayment and promissory note, you won’t have to worry about any further expense till you bring your first harvest in. We’re all just glad to see this land being worked again after so long.”

  These words reminded Honigmann that Mister Parker knew nothing of the bees. Honigmann walked him over to the droning cages. “The crop will be a golden one, Charles.”

  Mister Parker nodded sagely. “Good thinking. Mackay is over-extended. The area could use a second source of honey.”

  “I will pay everyone back with interest,” Honigmann seemed compelled to add.

  “Don’t worry about money, Horst. That’s my outlook anyhow. More people have died from fiscal anxiety than from bullets. Unfortunately the world’s economy resembles war, and only the conscientious objectors know any peace of mind.”

  The two men now began to tour the property, but their progress soon came up against the barrier of a dead horse.

  “Yours, I take it,” said Mister Parker.

  “Yes. Poor Axel. Many a good year’s labor he gave us.”

  “If I take the carcass in trade, you can shave some few dollars off what you feel you owe us.”

  Honigmann thought he was hearing things. “What use would a schoolteacher have for old Axel?”

  “I’ll have the butcher dress him down, and we’ll feed him to the dogs.”

  A sad fate for Axel, who had carried them so heroically to this new frontier. But Honigmann possessed a farmer’s realism about livestock, live or deceased.

  “Done!” They shook hands on the deal, and Axel, once winched aboard the truck, managed a visit to Independence before either Rudy or Freyda.

  Luckily, Rudy, who had harbored the most affection for the old beast, never discovered Axel’s fate till days later. And by then he was almost too busy to mourn.

  That night the Parkers camped out with the Honigmanns. A bonfire crackled till nearly midnight, fueled by river driftwood and lumber scraps. Honigmann broke out his single bottle of spirits, a gallon jug of piestengel, the Amana rhubarb wine. Freyda whipped up biscuits, mashed potatoes and coffee to supplement the cold fried chicken the Parkers supplied. Full-bellied, the new friends sang songs afterwards: “Camptown Races,” “Beautiful Dreamer, “After the Ball,” “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.”

  The mild weather prevailed, and sufficient bedding was assembled from the Honigmann’s stores. Before too long, the weary workers noisily sawed logs of a more intangible sort, each Parker comforted and warmed with a companion dog.

  Suddenly, as Rudy was drifting off to sleep on his back, the fresh scent of cut boards filling his nostrils and an easy wash of tired contentment laving his mind, a small silhouette partially blocked out the stars.

  “Did you figure out yet why you wanted to know how old I was?”

  Rudy shot up, alarmed and confused, the veils of sleep dragging off his face like a tattered ghostly curtain whipped in a gale.

  “Huh? What? Who? Roz?”

  In a self-satisfied tone, Roz said, “I guess you haven’t.”

  Incredulous, Rudy watched her skip back to the side of her sleeping father. Astonishing. What kind of fairy child was this?

  In the morning before the dew was even warm, the Parker brothers were up and about, bare-chested and briskly washing their fraternal faces in pots of river water. After a breakfast eked out from suppers leftovers, the boys and young men fell to work.

  Framed sections of the house lay in the wet grass next to a stubby completed fieldstone foundation, anointed here and there already with dog urine. (Honigmann had vetoed the work needed for a true cellar, and the few courses of stones were sunk solidly only a foot or two into the loam, providing a future crawlspace suitable for generations of happy skunks and possums.) Huge logs, cut yesterday and hauled from the nearest copse, were already being hoisted atop this foundation to support the superstructure.

  Mister Parker’s oldest son answered to the name of Ernie. While Rudy and the other Parkers labored over the house, Ernie and Horst Honigmann were busy constructing hives. Although Honigmann currently possessed only two queens, he already planned for an ambitious expansion.

  “Knock together twelve hives, Ernie, if you’d be so kind.”

  “A dozen’s hardly any more work than two, Mister Honigmann.”

  Based on Honigmann’s recounting of Mackay’s instructions and Ernie’s practical wisdom, the hives began to take shape. Built with Ernie’s typical attention to fine details, each hive was a stack of boxes following this scheme: atop a footed platform that raised the whole affair hygienically off the ground rested the first box, or “super.” The first super did not make full contact with the base along one lower edge, allowing the bees a means of egress and ingress. Inside the super were several vertical partitions, or “frames,” capable of being raised completely out of the super. Here the bees would build their combs and deposit their honey.

  A beekeeper could combine supers and frames in intricate ways to accommodate and encourage a growing colony in its honey production. By adding new supers at just the appropriate time, a keeper could prevent a colony from swarming. Knowing just how to configure a hive represented a major component of the beekeepers art.

  Each super had an open top, making for an undivided hive interior. A square lid capped the uppermost super, of course.

  Ten thousand bees with accompanying queen would reside initially in a single super. A full-strength hive would house anywhere from fifty to sixty thousand bees in three supers.

  Soon the first two hives stood finished, white and smooth-planed beneath the sun. Placed some distance off from the homestead, abundant clover and wildflowers to all sides, the empty hives seemed miniature cities awaiting their citizens.

  “Well, I guess we should transfer the bees now,” said Honigmann with tentative assurance.

  Ernie brushed wood-shavings out of his thick locks. “Can’t say as I’ve ever turned my hand to such a thing, Mister Honigmann.”

  “Mackay said that if I put the queen in first the rest would follow.”

  “Let’s try it then.”

  Honigmann had earlier carried the makeshift cages to the selected hive site. The bees buzzed inside with restrained dynamo power. For the first time Honigmann peered cautiously within. Through the mass of wing-blurred worker-bee bodies he could make out the queen. Mackay had caged her individually, wiring her personal chamber to the larger cage wall just inside the door. The queen’s tiny prison was capped with a thick lid of special sugar candy which her attendants were gradually eating away to free her.

  Honigmann moved one cage closer to a hive.

  “Here goes nothing.” The older man’s voice quavered slightly, but Ernie, standing well back, pretended not to notice.

  Honigmann opened the door on the vertical face of the big cage. A bee or four flew out, but the mass remained inside. He mostly untwisted the wires securing the regal chamber. Then before he could think about it, he stuck his hand inside.

  Only when his fingers had closed on the queens chamber did Honigmann realize his eyes were squinched tight.

  Miraculously unstung, Honigmann opened his eyes and quickly removed the queen. He deposited her, contrivance and all, into the lower super.

  As if herding cows, Honigmann issued an instinctive command. “Fly out, bees.”

  Astoundingly, they did, in a swelling, single-minded cloud.

  What a miracle! Honigmann felt a queer rapture overtake him. He was struck by a conviction that these tiny creatures knew and respected him. They had listened to him, hadn’t they? Refrained from stinging him? Certainly some ancient bond existed between Honigmann and his inse
cts. Didn’t his very name emblem such a connection? Who knew what livelihood his most distant ancestors in Germany had practiced? Perhaps they had all kept bees, or even belonged to some ancient Teutonic bee cult? Stranger beliefs had flourished down the millennia.…

  One hive full and lidded, the second went just as easily.

  “I like this much better than planting corn,” Honigmann confided to Ernie. “Much easier. I think keeping bees is in my blood. I was meant to do this.”

  Ernie had relaxed once the bees were encased. He studied the few insects already utilizing the hives’ entrances, as if gauging customer satisfaction with his work.

  “Glad to hear it, Mister Honigmann. But you’ll never catch me sticking my hand in a bunch of bees like you did. That took guts.”

  “Or love,” said Honigmann, surprising even himself.

  * * *

  All morning long Roz had kept busy by Freyda’s side. Now at noon she appeared among the men, pulling a toy wagon. The wagon transported a glass pitcher of lemonade (made from river water and sugar and lemons supplied by the Parkers) and a heterogeneous assortment of glazed mugs (definitely and cautiously not Freyda’s best ware).

  When Rudy approached for his drink, Roz looked him up and down with a cool precision that left him dumbfounded.

  “Your mother’s nice,” the little girl said. “I like her.”

  Subtle tonal emphasis overlaid the words “mother” and “her.” Rudy got the message as clearly as if telegraphed.

  How could a sweet lady like her give birth to a big goof like you?

  Speechless, Rudy watched the child trundle the wagon away. At last shaking his head in wonderment, he smiled. He had never seen anyone like Roz.

  By day’s end all that remained lacking on the house was its roof and some interior finishing; also, the windows stared blankly without glass. The Rockefellers might have disdained to take possession of this rude but spacious and protective home, but to the Honigmanns these four large rooms represented a warm hearth laid up with future joys.

  Freyda, standing between her husband and son at dusk, began to cry. Honigmann squeezed her hand while Rudy dug the toe of his boot into the resilient turf. Honigmann turned to Mister Parker.

  “I don’t know how we can ever thank you, Charlie.”

  Plainly embarrassed, Mister Parker said, “Nonsense. Anyone with six idle sons would have done the same.”

  “Not true.” Honigmann searched for some adequate response to convey his gratitude. “Charlie —the first honey every year will be yours in perpetuity.”

  “If you insist.”

  They solemnly shook hands on it, and the Parker boys threw their caps into the air with a loud huzzah.

  That night the Honigmanns slept inside their roofless house. Rudy lay awake for hours, frightened that Roz Parker might materialize spectrally again beside him. But she never showed.

  As Rudy was helping to loft the ridgepole into place the next day he was startled to see a bee alight on the beam just in front of his nose. Rudy could see the actual pollen grains on the bee’s legs, so close did it rest. When he announced this visitation in an amazed voice, everyone agreed that the omen presaged good fortune.

  Before the newcomers could quite bring themselves to acknowledge the departure of their new friends, they were waving goodbye to the Parkers. The stowed saws oscillated, the dogs’ ears flapped, and the town boys waved till the truck disappeared from view. The Parkers had been their guests for only three days, but the Honigmanns already felt they had known them for a lifetime.

  Ernie had promised to return alone to handle any detail work, and Rudy found himself already anticipating the visit of the affable carpenter. But Rudy also recalled with a shiver the closing words Roz had bestowed on him: “I’ll see you again.”

  How could the trivial farewell of a six-year-old scare the wits out of a grown man?

  * * *

  Nine years passed.

  This gray day in the first week of December of 1941 broke no differently from any other. The Iowa light falling from the mattress of clouds like stuffing floated atop the choppy steel-gray Wapsipinicon River. The light rested like blankets swaddling the many rows of hives standing somnolent in the snow-dusted fields. The light filled with flocculent softness the leafless branches of the trees where crows sat and nattered.

  A paved road ran now along the edge of the Honigmanns’ property, built by WPA labor. The road led to Independence and the Parkers, and frequently saw traffic by both families in both directions. Off the road ran the Honigmanns’ gravel drive. At the far end of the drive reared a small horse-barn, outside of which hulked a second-hand red Ford truck. At the public end of the drive stood a sign on two posts:

  Honigmann’s Apiary

  “honey for money”

  Horst Honigmann had adopted this motto as a private and rather caustic reminder of what made the world turn, and what had driven him away from the Amana colonies. The bitter expression on Honigmann’s face when he first coined the motto had represented the only sourness Rudy had ever witnessed his father express over the odd turnings his life had taken. Generally nowadays the elder Honigmann found no time to fret, tending his hives contentedly while humming old hymns in eerie synchrony with the buzzing of his charges. And once Freyda had been allowed to reestablish contact with her relatives, including an occasional holiday visit, the last irritant to her own serenity had vanished.

  A poetic observer might have noted that Honigmann’s gradual mellowness had increased with the addition of every new hive. The old man’s rocklike religious views, softening ever since the shock of his forced defection from his spiritual comrades, had now reached perhaps their lowest possible level of slackness: the nightly Bible readings of Rudy’s youth had actually given way to the enjoyment of radio shows, with the money-dispensing quiz programs Pot o’ Gold and Break the Bank being particular favorites.

  In short, the demanding reality of shepherding multitudinous honeybees seemed to have replaced any idealized visions of celestial flocks in Horst Honigmann’s blissful mind.

  Rudy too would have counted himself happy, save for one factor. On the positive side of life’s ledger, he discovered he loved beekeeping nearly as much as his father did. The land hereabouts, beautiful as the region of his birth, offered lots of opportunities to enjoy riding Axel the Second, their new stallion. Swimming in the Wapsipinicon allured and rewarded him also.

  However, life’s red ink spelled out one massive countervailing deficiency: twenty-seven-year-old Rudy was still wifeless. Girlfriendless. Womanless in all degrees. This sad condition threatened more and more to overwhelm all his happiness. Yet no easy solution presented itself. Moving away was out of the question: his father needed his help, and no other avocation appealed. Besides, he had an attachment of the heart here, a female who attracted him, whom he thought he could love.

  But she obviously did not love him.

  And this neutral interpretation of her behavior cast her actions in the most positive light. An unaligned realist might have told Rudy that this femme fatale actively disliked him. A close friend trying to shock him out of his misplaced affections might have changed “disliked” to “detested.” A vile enemy, had Rudy possessed one, might have gone so far as to claim Rudy’s very existence posed an affront to her sensibilities.

  Not an easy burden to bear.

  The calm silence of the December day was broken by the outer door of the Honigmann home slamming open so violently that it bounced off the clapboards. A wild-eyed Rudy appeared in shirtsleeves, clutching a sealed bucket of paint and two brushes, one broad, one narrow. His hair, worn slightly longer these days, resembled an amateur’s haystack. The radio voice of President Roosevelt drifted out the open door to spice the cold air.

  Rudy took a step outside. Horst Honigmann appeared in the doorway behind him, a desperate pleading look on his aged face. He clutched at Rudy’s flannel sleeve.

  “We kept our name despite the invasion of Poland!” s
houted Honigmann. “And this one isn’t even Hitler’s fault!”

  Rudy shook off his father’s grip. He spoke with reined but vehement emotions. “Yes it is. Everything is the fault of that madman, no matter who he gets for a flunky. I won’t be associated with such barbarians in any way one minute longer. And if you have any shame or pride left, you wont try to stop me!”

  Freyda’s voice pleaded. “Must you two fight? Must you fight today of all days?”

  Horst Honigmann held back as Rudy descended the steps and crunched off deliberately down their gravel drive.

  Rudy reached their apiary sign. He set down his paint bucket and removed a screwdriver from his back pocket. He pried up the lid, set the cover aside and dipped his big brush.

  With one wide dripping stroke that trailed off to jagged streaks at either end, he obliterated the name Honigmann’s. Wetting his smaller brush, he next lettered a replacement name above the defacement: Honeyman’s.

  Back inside the house Rudy told his father, “Now when I enlist I won’t be ashamed of my heritage or subject to ragging. I’m Rudy Honeyman now. You may call yourself whatever squares with your conscience.”

  “Enlist?” said Freyda, who had been dividing her attention between proximal family and distant president. She began to sob.

  “When?” said Honigmann.

  “Right now,” said Rudy. And with that determined pledge he ran still coatless to the barn, emerging minutes later astride Axel. Sensing the drama of the moment, the horse reared in a perfect Hi-ho-Silver moment before galloping off.

  Freyda demanded a party to send Private Rudy Honeyman away in style. Of course the Parkers all received invitations. The family had enlarged considerably once most of the boys got married and had children of their own. Ernie brought Sheila and Roscoe. Dan brought Gert and Danny. Ralph brought Lillian and the twins, Marvin and Martin. Mister Parker, though still unmarried, was seriously courting the Widow Blechschmidt, and she hung on his arm throughout that affair.