Sins of the Bees

by Annie Lampman

  She drove out the way she’d come into town, going the opposite direction from all the paths that seemed to lead to Len Dietz. She turned onto a dirt road to Heaven’s Gate, a seven-thousand-foot mountain-summit viewing spot overlooking Hells Canyon, the Salmon River Canyon, and the Seven Devils. Somewhere she hoped might offer the respite she needed.

  The Dodge’s back end recoiled over the water bars, the whole truck threatening to come apart on the road’s uneven corduroy as she steadily climbed in elevation. The hillsides were tawny with spent grasses, the evening’s heat banking along the southern slopes, patches of timber the only spots of green. Then she heard a telltale snap under the floorboards, felt the stutter and clanking, the Dodge’s engine revving out with no forward motion. The middle driveline again.

  When she was young, Silva had been the one to crawl under the truck and wrap a sheet around the broken shaft, running alongside the truck, holding the driveline up while Eamon pulled off the road. She’d helped him fix the U-joint on the middle driveline again and again, the Dodge just like an old man, he’d said—an old man with a bad back that kept blowing out, faulty discs bulging against the spinal nerves until it could no longer move. He said it marked the truck all the more as their own, a part of the family. Now it was the only family left to easily be a part of.

  She rolled backward until she was off the road enough, then leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes, connected to Eamon and her past by this faulty mechanical thread, heat radiating through the windows, pricking her skin. She licked the salt edging the corners of her mouth, let the sauna-like heat fill her nose and lungs before shoving the door open and jumping out in one quick motion. Her hands and knees planted in the dirt, she peered under the truck, saw the back driveline angled down, lodged between boulders.

  She got up, brushed off her hands, and walked to a dry wash cut into the steep hillside, a gully of cracked silt and rocks coated in drab glaze. She started up and then, compelled, kept going, pebbled sand cascading into irregular heaps at her sides, jogged loose from its rock base, the terrain growing steeper, hillsides peaking into sharp, jagged formations devoid of anything but lichen. She could see the road up ahead where it turned to boulders and washouts, Heaven’s Gate somewhere she wasn’t destined to reach after all. Beyond, the peaks of the Seven Devils rose against the horizon as bare and serrated as teeth, blunted where they’d been worn down by wind and weather. A turkey vulture circled overhead, head tipped sideways, looking for carrion.

  Farther up, the slopes had green shadows—small pockets nourished by shade and dew. She stopped at a stream still trickling, a grouse startling her in sudden flight, leaving behind downy feathers pinning slow spirals on the water’s surface, tiny pools rife with minnows, algae skins left boulder-bound, like frog hides stretched to cure. Streams shrinking to pools shrinking to puddles shrinking to nothing, minnow clouds drifting in devouring, shimmering hunger.

  Finally, angling toward a line of contorted subalpine fir and whitebark pine, she stopped at a heavily branched white fir and sat against its anchored roots, leaning into its coarse bark—the fir a symbol of endurance and determination, resilience and longevity, signifying strength, hope, and renewal. Everything quiet in the evening’s solitude, she kept watch until the landscape blurred, her thoughts spinning away from her until all that mattered was the way the tree’s roots intertwined underneath her, spreading under the exposed surface, searching for some nutrient ensconced in the rocky earth, until they found new soil and laid themselves down deep.

  In Scottish folklore, a friendly tree spirit called the Ghillie Dhu helped lost children find their way home; Silva hoped there was a tree spirit to help a granddaughter find her lost grandmother and bring her home. Home. Wherever that might be. Whatever that might mean.

  She was chilled, goose bumps creeping up her bare arms as if she’d been swimming in cold water, everything in full shadow, a robin singing its night song—the one that felt like rain, a rack of clouds piled up against the exposed western peaks. She pulled herself up from the pad of roots and rock, grimacing at the needles in her feet. The freckled skin exposed from her V-neck felt flushed, the heat of a sunburn chilling her more. She wrapped her arms around her waist trying to warm herself as she made her way to the cliff edge and looked out, the sky backed by the orange glow of night coming on, quarter moon planted on blue.

  When she started back down, knocking rocks loose in her descent, a squirrel squealed and dove back in its burrow with a scattering of pebbles and dried grass as bats swooped low through the hatches of dusky-winged ash aphids bumbling through the warm updrafts—the canyon’s nightlife beginning. Nighthawks would be out soon, their dives vibrating the tips of trees.

  Back at the truck, she got out the flashlight and tools Eamon had stored behind the seat—new U-joints in greasy boxes and the ancient sledgehammer with its red-painted handle. She shimmied under the truck in the dust, until she was positioned beneath the broken driveshaft.

  Lying on her back, she couldn’t get a good angle, her reach cramped, her aim faulty without Eamon’s help, the flashlight never shining in the right place. It took her an hour just to get the old U-joints out and replaced, then another forty minutes to get the strap bolts fastened back to the transfer case and transmission. By the time she was done, it was fully dark. She pulled herself out, hands black with grease, hair and clothes coated in dust. She bent over to shake out her hair, everything smelling of gear oil, dust, and grease. Upside down, she saw a wash of lights on the road below, then heard the growl of an engine.

  She packed the tools back behind the seat, turned over the engine, shifted into gear, and pulled forward cautiously, trying to get in motion before whoever was coming made it to her. She held her breath, but the driveshaft held. She thought about continuing up the road, driving the remaining miles to the summit overlook just to be able to say she’d made it, but she didn’t want to risk interaction with other people.

  As she tried to turn around on the narrow road, a pickup rounded the corner below her, its headlights hitting the Dodge broadside, so bright in her face she had to close her eyes. A dented Toyota covered in mud, its bed filled with a built-in plywood box, holes cut in the sides, each hole filled with a hound’s head, the din of their braying so forceful, she had to resist covering her ears to block the assault.

  They stopped in the middle of the road as she stalled out, cranking the starter over and over again. She pushed her door lock down as the hound pickup’s driver got out. He looked as if he was just out of high school—his team shirt tucked into his jeans, his hair buzzed into a hi-low.

  She rolled down her window a few inches. “Give me just a minute here,” she said.

  He raised his eyebrows when he saw Silva up close. “Won’t start?” he asked, glancing at the truck hopefully. “Drove one of these on fire-crew. Persnickety sonsabitches…”

  “It’s just flooded,” Silva said.

  He nodded with authority his body didn’t yet carry. “Happens a lot with these,” he said.

  A young woman got out of his truck and stood hunched next to the braying hounds, her arms wrapped around her chest, obviously not happy about her man talking to Silva.

  “Hush them dogs,” he called out before turning back to Silva. “You make it up to the summit? Nice view. We’re just heading up. I’m shipping out after the weekend. Going to miss this place,” he said, looking around, even though there was nothing to see in the dark.

  “I was headed there, but the driveline went out. Just got it back together.” She held up her greasy hands as proof then adjusted the choke as she tried the key again. This time the engine fired and popped, chugging as she feathered the gas.

  “Well, looks like you don’t need no help at all,” he said, giving her a thumbs-up as he jogged back to his girlfriend. She climbed into the pickup ahead of him, her bare legs flashing white in Silva’s headlights. She snuggled in tight to the boy’s side and gave Silva a hard look.

&n
bsp; “Good luck to you!” the boy yelled out his window, his arm back around the girl’s shoulders, practicing being a man before he went to fight as one, the two of them not realizing where all their hoping and dreaming would likely end—a future they would be lucky to get at all.

  “Good luck to you, too,” Silva said, choking around her words.

  She drove back to town in the dark, the Salmon glinting like oil next to the highway, stars enough to pin the sky wide open—night air that felt enough like Trawler’s, Silva could imagine the tide sweeping in. A hebdomadal reckoning of memory.

  Nobody had ever warned her that in grieving the ones you’ve lost, you’re really grieving for yourself the most. Your whole world, the story of your life, shaped and defined by your loved ones’ experience of it. That without them, you can’t ever see or understand yourself fully again.

  Though she hadn’t been able to stop forgetting little pieces of her mother until she wasn’t much more than a shadow-memory of what once was, though everyone said time solved the pain of loss, that forgetting was a balm, Silva had always thought that there was something intrinsically wrong with those failures of memory—a lack of loyalty, a flaw of character that would let you disregard the way you ached in each individual cell, missing someone so badly it felt as if you could never be whole again, the dark watery depths of despairing. A rushing current that had carried her tumbling and half-drowned to this moment, and then dissipated, leaving her suddenly still, questioning where she was and how she’d gotten there. She realized she’d never really had a choice. The only option she’d ever had was to figure out a way to make it through this new reality along with everything else.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Date: October 1, 1999

  Title: Servant-Heart Ceremony

  Subject: Maiden Training

  Setting: Almost Paradise Sanctuary

  Medium: Watercolor and graphite on cold-press

  Size: 14×10

  Dearest Eamon,

  We are—each of us—forgotten to the outside world, captured fully and completely to this place like a nightmare you wake from and then descend back into. A month that feels like a lifetime.

  We have arrived at the Servant-Heart Ceremony—the culmination of everything a girl needs to know in order to best serve her man. Four weeks of maiden-training sessions led by the Almost Paradise women. This has been the order and theme of each week:

  Cleanliness Is Godliness: Learning how to scrub each tile line, each mop-board seam, each sink and faucet and toilet and floor surface with a toothbrush and scouring pad dipped in bleach. Learning how to properly scour piles of dirty pots and pans with steel wool and dip clean dishes in a vinegar rinse for shine. Learning how to dust so not a speck is left, learning how to vacuum perfect lines in the compound’s carpet, learning how to mop so the linoleum floors gleam, learning how to wash windows with vinegar and newspaper inside and out, “polishing the eyes of the palace.” Learning how to properly launder and dry your master’s white shirts, which must always be spotless, bleached, starched, pressed, and hung in perfectly spaced rows, two inches between each hanger, buttons tightened down with extra thread, hems and cuffs and collars extra crisp.

  Fueling God’s Work: (aka how to please your man’s palate). Learning how to cook your master’s roasts, chops, ribs, brisket, backstrap, tenderloin. Learning how to prepare and steam his favorite vegetables. Learning how to can his favorite fruit and jelly and pie-filling. Learning how to prepare his favorite legumes and grains and season his jerky. Learning how to bake him bread, pies, muffins, cookies, cakes. Learning how to fry his potatoes, bacon, eggs, chicken, and fresh doughnuts. Learning how to grill his sandwiches and toss his chef’s salad. Learning how to set his table and how to serve him plates, platters, and saucers of food. Learning how to eat after he has eaten, keeping your face tucked and your chewing silent so as not to disturb him.

  Tending to the Body: Learning how to best work out your master’s kinks and knots in full-body massage. Learning how to wash and rub and moisturize his feet and hands after his daily work. Learning how to wash and condition and trim his hair. Learning how to shave his face and neck. Learning how to trim his nose and ear hair. Learning how to trim his cuticles, fingernails, and toenails, and buff his nails to a shine. (The other more intimate “body tending” training will come in a future special session.)

  Tending to the Spirit: Learning to speak only when spoken to, learning to sit with hands folded and head bowed, learning to kneel at the feet of your master, waiting for him to bless you. Learning to pray prone in submission each morning out of bed for thirty minutes, each noon for ten minutes, and each evening before bed for sixty minutes—your daily devotions. Learning how to read the scriptures and support your master’s sermons. Learning how to speak and sing in your heavenly, angelic voices. Learning how to beg god daily for forgiveness of your sinful womanly nature.

  Twelve hours a day for four weeks the maidens have been taught their master’s every need and desire, and they are nothing but devout. Delores—Holy Mother of Len Dietz and maiden trainer—makes sure of that. She, not Faith, was the one to arrange the girls for the Servant-Heart Ceremony painting at the end of the training sessions. A wooden line of girls, six on either side of the altar, a sickly yellowed side light shining in through the stained glass, casting deep shadows. I wanted to paint it all black: the pews, the sanctuary, their dresses, their faces. A frozen flock of funereal birds. A mourning mass crying ballads for the lost. Except I know it only gets worse from here.

  May my soul be as sheltered and strong as yours always has been. May we each of us find our way through the coming darkness.

  My love & despair,

  Isabelle

  PART TWO

  There we see before us, in miniature, the large and simple lines of our own disproportionate sphere.… Spirit and matter are there, the race and the individual, evolution and permanence, life and death, the past and the future.

  Who shall say where the wisdom resides that can thus balance present and future, and prefer what is not yet visible to that which already is seen?… Each man makes his own choice, or rather, perhaps, has it thrust upon him; and this choice, whether it be thrust upon him, or whether, as is often the case, he have made it without due reflection, this choice, to which he clings, will determine the form and the conduct of all that enters within him.

  —THE LIFE OF THE BEE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  APRIL 2001

  Hells Canyon was in the full of its counterfeit spring, that single month of lushness—the bushes and lower hills green, even the river green in a headlong rush of growth, a frenzy of moisture. Silva found everything full of portent: the slap of river against shore, the arrangement of bunch grass on barren slope, the way the canyon swallowed the sun. In the hard, dry air of Two Rivers, it had been impossible for her to remember what it’d felt like to be subsumed with moisture, everything damp.

  The Larkins Ranch was on several acres of flat land adjoining the Snake River. A tidy cabin and old barn sat surrounded by century-old black locusts, curl-leaf mountain mahoganies, and tall ponderosas, a rushing creek off to the side lined in serviceberry brush and hackberries. The vegetation softened the raw harshness of the basalt bluffs climbing nearly ten thousand feet into distant peaks—the Seven Devils. Even the names of the place some version of menace. She pushed back the trepidation that welled in her gut—being so close to everything now. A line separating what would be from what had always been.

  By the time the jet-boat driver, Mack, powered down into an idle, aiming for the tumble of boulders that made up the ranch’s docking, the sun was low in the sky. A day spent bucking rapids, skirting cliffs, and parting bends of smooth water—the presence of water the only soothing thing about this place. Each beach crescent they’d passed had been graced with a stunted hackberry tree sculpted into a wild bonsai. Reminded Silva of long days spent with Eamon rowing the Sound, studying trees.

  Eamon’s nighttime st
ories had been stories of the world’s trees, each connecting somehow to the other. He made Silva feel a part of it—a family formed out of roots that stretched across the continents, across what could be known of human existence and beyond.

  Once, when Silva was eleven, they’d taken a road trip to see the giant sequoias in Northern California. They’d walked around their god-size trunks in hushed awe. It was like traveling to another world and communing with ancient beings full of deep, reverberating power. Their thrumming treeness overtook you, reshaped you into something new and better.

  As Mack secured the boat, Silva pulled her wind-knotted hair into a ponytail and gathered her belongings. Wind-chaffed and raw, she was as numbed by the hours spent jet-boating through the rushing canyon air as much as she was by the reality of what she’d done, transporting herself this close to the lion’s den, armed with nothing but a pebble in her slingshot.

  A tall mailbox perched a few yards up the slope along a path leading to the lawn above—mail delivered by jet boat, like everything else in the canyon, the Larkins Ranch the last stop of a seventy-mile stretch of nearly uninhabited canyon, the end of boatable river, leaving fifteen miles of wild water above until the dam and the visitor center. No roads, no access other than trails miles away from anything, the canyon well suited for people either running away or running toward something bigger than themselves.

  Mack helped Silva unload her boxes and then the five bonsai, their trays spilling pebbles from Trawler’s beach onto this new shore, each move a further realignment, an uprooting of the very molecules that made up the air and water and soil of their existence. He took Silva on a tour of the grounds, told her to keep watch for snakes, and recited a stream of clipped instructions. He knew the Larkins Ranch well—the sickly poplars, the overgrowth of ivy on the pump house, where the porch boards had warped and come loose. He left Silva a list of grounds duties and the outfitting schedule—the groups dropped off by boat to meet with Nick and pack into the Seven Devils’ alpine lakes—then showed Silva how to light the cantankerous stove and prime the pump that ran water from the creek to the house, and how to operate the water-generated power and short-wave radio—the only means of communication besides the mail he would boat up once a week along with any supplies Silva would need.