Sins of the Bees

by Annie Lampman

  Warily, Silva walked to the office building and looped Tiko’s reins around the front porch rail, tying Juniper to it as well and telling him to stay as she tried to push away her fear. The dog refused, stood starting at her in appeal with his brown eyes, as ill at ease as she was.

  A small herd of elk stood clustered nearby behind a tall double-wire fence, their smell a powerful wild musk even though they looked tame, sedately chewing their cud, lifting their heads to stare. They were surprisingly large up close, their hair twitching against biting flies, their eyes watching with aplomb. Animals meant to roam wild, to run free. Tiko snorted and eyed them warily. She was afraid he would shy, pull back against his reins and injure himself, but instead he let out a low nicker and the elks’ fawn-colored ears tipped toward him.

  “Have you come for a tour?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Startled, Juniper let out an alarmed bark, and Silva turned, her heart thudding in her chest.

  The woman stood to the side of the office, a child next to her, the soft lines of her face undermining the boldness Silva had tried to work up as she’d ridden in. The farmers market woman—a Lenite whose beauty likely marked her as one of Len’s wives, her child likely another of Len’s fated progeny. Not the kind of woman who belonged in a militant cult in a dried-out patch of nowhere surrounded by herds of fenced elk and a cemetery laid full.

  “The tour? Yes,” Silva said, her breath coming in shallow bursts.

  “My name is Faith,” she said, then looked over at Tiko and Juniper. “I will have Isaac bring water, keep an eye on them.”

  Faith spun on her heels, her long skirt swirling and her child scampering behind, casting wary looks at Silva. Silva followed them, trying to act as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening, while all the stories of this place rang as one loud alarm in her head.

  The office was cool and smelled of meat and musk. Faith radioed in a call for water for Tiko and Juniper and came back with a small gilded book. “Tours are free. You just need to sign our guestbook. We like to keep track of who we’ve served,” she said, looking at Silva with an examination that felt uncomfortably intimate—as if Silva was someone she’d been expecting.

  Pen in hand, Silva hesitated, Faith’s anticipation making her uneasy. Finally, under the listing of dozens of names, she signed Isabelle Fullbrook, surprised by the immediate effect it had on her. The softly voweled name seemed to always be a part of her—a twin identity as familiar as her own.

  Faith took the book, glancing down at Isabelle’s name quickly before closing it. “Calving finished a month ago. The calves are with their mothers, too young for viewing. The main herd is above the river for grazing, but we have one of the big bulls here out back,” she said, gesturing toward another two-layered wire fence outside. She held the little girl’s hand as they went out, the two of them different-size versions of the same. Just as Silva and Isabelle had been. An inheritance of powerful genes marking appearance and temperament, drawing them together like a mime’s invisible mirrored reflection. She wondered if Faith had recognized her, too.

  When they approached a fenced pen, Silva spotted a magnificent bull elk, blond with age, lying peacefully in his sawdust enclosure, the orange tag hanging off his ear moving to the rhythm of his ruminating. His enormity and musky scent betrayed the docile nature of the scene—antlers as wide-stretching and thick as tree limbs. Even lying down, his head hanging lazily, his rack was as tall as Silva. A placard hung on the wire above him, a name carved into it.

  “This is Nehemiah,” Faith said. “The other trophy bulls, Ezekiel, Mordecai, and Zachariah, are out to pasture.”

  Silva looked at Faith quickly, thinking perhaps the Old Testament names were some kind of joke, but Faith was all seriousness. This place wasn’t meant for joking, for taking things at more than face value.

  Faith pointed to a group of spike elk pacing the back perimeter like prisoners looking for release. “We keep the young bulls separate from the others,” she said in her practiced tour-guide voice. “Up there is our order-processing center—everything from jerky to antler velvet.” She looked at Silva again and then turned to walk to the new building.

  One of Silva’s gregarious mainland clients had once remarked how you could tell inbred, rural people by their eyes, miming a slack-jawed, cross-eyed stare, but Faith’s eyes were lovely—wide-spaced and oceanic blue. She looked like someone Isabelle would have painted.

  Inside the order center, wide tables and shelves were stacked high with hides and antlers. “We ship all over the country,” Faith said, sitting the little girl down and walking to a chest freezer. She retrieved a small plastic packet out of its depths and handed it to Silva. “Paradise pepper jerky. The Lord has blessed us. May His blessings be upon you as well,” she said.

  Silva thanked her and put the jerky in her pack, her stomach revolting at the smell of it.

  “So this is all a part of Almost Paradise?” she asked, as if she didn’t already know about Len Dietz, about Meg Larkins and Isabelle.

  “It is,” Faith said, holding Silva’s eyes for a long moment, assessing her as if she were someone of interest. “We are all one family. God’s Family.” She gazed at Silva with meaning, her little girl playing with a scrap of elk hide she’d picked up off the floor.

  As they turned to leave, a tall, clean-cut boy hobbled in through a back door hidden behind a stack of hides, his leg encased in some kind of brace, a bulky mechanical apparatus that looked homemade.

  He stopped uncomfortably when he saw Silva. No more than fifteen, a scattering of freckles on his otherwise smooth face, he was hovering on the brink of manhood—chin squaring with the definition of testosterone, shoulders beginning to widen, lanky and ill at ease in his own skin, like the young bulls pacing behind the fence.

  “Isaac, this is our visitor,” Faith said, tipping her head slightly, looking at the boy with some kind of meaning Silva couldn’t decipher, some communication translating between them.

  “Isabelle,” Silva said, reaching out to shake the boy’s hand, the same three-lined tattoo inked inside his wrist.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said with a voice deeper than his body, his blue-eyed gaze questioning the world. He looked like she felt—a caged animal looking for escape. A boy neck-deep in this place, in these people. He reminded her so much of Nick, she had to look away.

  “Isabelle. A lovely name,” Faith said, studying Silva.

  “My grandmother’s name,” Silva said, watching for recognition—a confirmation that she’d known Isabelle, but Faith just nodded, her expression carefully veiled.

  “To the greenhouse next?” she asked, giving nothing away. She turned to Isaac. “It’s time for Ruth’s rest. Will you take her, please?” she asked.

  Silva felt as if she’d walked into a trap, flummoxed by Faith’s strange expectation and formality coupled with her softly accented voice, Isabelle’s paintings resting in her pack—a host of troubled girls waiting for the end.

  Isaac hobbled over to the girl and scooped her up. “Nap time,” he said, the firmness of his tone quelling the child’s protest. He glanced at Silva as the child’s lower lip quivered. “Hush now,” he said to the little girl, all tender brusqueness, more at ease with handling a child than Silva had ever been.

  She was unable to keep herself from watching as he carried the child back to whatever was hidden behind the door from which he’d come, something about the boy pulling at her like a word she couldn’t remember, like a question she couldn’t define.

  Outside, as Faith led Silva to the greenhouse, she tried to see where he’d gone, but all was as empty as when Silva had ridden in. Everyone tucked out of sight from the intruder, holed up in some bunker along with stockpiles of weapons and food. She wondered if the house was Len’s, if that was where Nick and his mother had once lived, where Isabelle might be, hidden away with the rest of his women.

  Inside the greenhouse, the heavy warmth and humidity and the smell of compost were an overwhelm
ing presence, row after row of heavy-leafed plants in raised beds separated by wood-chipped walkways. For the first time since arriving, Silva breathed in deeply, trying to settle her stomach, the smell of humus and soil and green growth like a memory before time.

  Faith walked the rows, talking of harvest, the tomato and pepper plants’ immature fruits hanging like ornaments—months earlier than they would be producing if grown traditionally, outside. Silva imagined the Almost Paradise women working the plants and then “putting up,” like her mother had. Not much different than the New Community women working their gardens together, joined by belief and structure, hard work and kinship. Trust in a bigger whole.

  Maybe that was how they converted people, how they’d drawn Isabelle in, and before her, Nick and his mother. All that concerted attentiveness, all that unrestrained growth. Everyone looking for belonging. Everyone wanting to be seen, to be loved and cherished. None of them any different from anyone else trying to find a place in the world.

  Faith guided her alongside the grow-boxes overflowing with produce: chives, cilantro, parsley, leeks, lemon balm. Silva bent to touch the oversize heads of purple-tipped lettuce.

  “We’ve been blessed with plenty,” Faith said, fixing her eyes on Silva with a veiled mix of sorrow and resignation. The same look Isabelle had captured in her paintings of the girls.

  Silva wanted to ask her where Isabelle was, but instead she asked, “Do you think it’s too late to plant in the canyon?” Trying to speak in the only common language she shared with Faith, hoping she wasn’t giving away too much—marking herself from the canyon, from the Larkins Ranch, although they probably already knew all of it, already knew about the garden she’d planted. They seemed to know everything else.

  Faith calculated. “The river has a long season. Harvest would be later, but the lower elevation is more forgiving. More access to water. More protected from storms.”

  Silva couldn’t help wondering if there was more context to Faith’s comment. If she, too, were trying to communicate in code. She could still feel the little girl’s eyes like holes into her soul, Isaac looking at her with a hidden wild fervor. She imagined Nick as an indoctrinated teen not much younger than Isaac, convincing himself and Len Dietz what a good convert he was, what a good Lenite he was and would forever be.

  Nick had been Len’s real conversion prize, bringing with him thousands of acres of land and a beautiful mother who’d borne Len a son—even if they had both died. No wonder Len wouldn’t leave Nick alone. Nick was his unfinished business, a repudiation of his power—an opponent who knew too many secrets. And now Silva was connected to Nick and the ranch, as well as Isabelle.

  “You belong to the Larkins Ranch?” Faith asked, her expression carefully indistinct. As if she could hear Silva’s thoughts, as if belonging could be mapped by mere presence.

  Silva nodded carefully, Isabelle’s paintings in the rucksack like a weighted entity.

  “The garden there has long been fallow. It’s good someone is working the grounds again,” Faith said, studying Silva. She ran her hand through a patch of fennel, releasing the deep earthy fragrance of its stalks. “We had an Isabelle, too. She loved painting in the garden, the greenhouse. She was very gifted in her talents.” Everything was past tense, as Faith watched Silva closely. She’d known the reason for Silva’s visit all along.

  Hands shaking, Silva shrugged off the rucksack and pulled out the pregnant girls.

  Her porcelain mask slipping, Faith took the paintings carefully, studying them with an equally matched sorrow.

  Silva tried to steady herself, her emotions rising like a storm. She looked at Faith, squaring herself against all that was about to come. “I’ve come for Isabelle,” she said.

  And you, and you, and you, she wanted to add.

  “You shouldn’t have,” Faith said quietly, handing the paintings back to Silva.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  * * *

  Where have you gone? You, and you, and you, and me. I am here, she says, but where are you? You are me, you say, but where am I? Are you me? No, you are you, I am me, she is you, and I am she.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MAY 2001

  The air was thin and harsh, the waves of heat like a physical force. Silva’s face felt stretched tight as she rode away from Almost Paradise, as if the skin were pinned back behind her ears, as if pulled anymore she would crack, fissures opening up like canyons in her flesh.

  By the time she reached the ranch, she was weak with nausea and pain. When she pulled Tiko up at the corral and dismounted, she nearly fell over, her knees gone wobbly, her insides roiling. Her guts clamped down so hard this time that she had to run for the outhouse, leaving Tiko lathered with sweat. She unsaddled him after, her whole body tilting and on edge, as if she were locked in a ship’s hold on a storm-tossed sea, preparing for her own sinking.

  Juniper on her heels, she hobbled to the cabin, her nerves jumping as though she were short-circuiting, her body and mind both in equal distress. All the agony she’d pushed away making up for lost time, flooding in like a tidal wave that pulled her out into the deep.

  At first she thought her body’s distress was a direct reaction to the Almost Paradise visit—but as it grew worse, she realized that it was something more, something with teeth. A bright-white cramping pain, tearing her from the inside out. She ran, stumbling, from the house to the outhouse over and over again, until she couldn’t leave the outhouse at all, glad nobody was there to witness her guttural cries, grim with the fact of her own body’s purging, its instinct to empty itself with such violence that soon there was nothing more to expel.

  She curled in a fetal position on the board floor, her guts twisting, each cramp seeming to build in strength and intensity, her mind whirling with fragmented scenes, nightmares and reality blending together until there was no distinction from the other, each event shadowed with the weight of presentiment, as if she were indeed the product of a twisted prophecy, a foretelling that left no way open except the one leading to her own end. Living a preordained life that left her to sink into the fate of her own inescapable destiny, all of it some kind of surreal nightmare: searching for Isabelle among the fenced elk and greenhouse, Faith ushering her out, saying that she must leave, saying that there was nothing for her there.

  Nick had been right. Silva didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere.

  Her guts seizing with each systolic movement, her stomach a tight ball of pain between her ribs, she felt as if her whole existence was unraveling—a tapestry pulled apart thread by thread until nothing was left but a scrap heap of disconnected endings. Rows of headstones beneath a palaver tree marking the place where the Lenites buried their dead instead of a place to celebrate weddings or harvest, a place to pray for protection and gather for storytelling.

  Silva imagined Isabelle’s grave there, too—her final act of defiance, documenting a dozen pregnant girls who would never be able to speak in her defense. They clamored against Silva’s consciousness demanding, What will you do?, calling out for retribution, recompense. Isabelle’s last word and testament. A woman who was already gone, who had been gone forever.

  * * *

  When the next wave of cramps hit, this time there was blood. A lot of it, not just some spotting. A warm, wet seep from between her legs that wouldn’t stop.

  She didn’t need a doctor to tell her. She knew that it was over. She could feel the absence inside her, wave after wave of expelling spasms, different than all the others. What her body had been trying to tell her all along, recognizing the outcome of its own certain destiny.

  As the bloody, clotted tissue purged from her body, she bent forward, sobbing, her forehead on her knees, the sounds coming from her animalistic, her voice as raw and torn as her insides. She felt as if she had been bleeding out for months now, as if when she closed her eyes the darkness would completely engulf her, just as it had before. A beginning in darkness and an ending in darkness. Her body shed
ding anything beyond its own driving need for survival.

  She told herself that this was the outcome she’d wanted in the beginning, anyway. On the island, running and running, trying to jar her body loose. Wanting to slip forever into the sea’s dark depths. She’d been headed to the same place all along. Nothing left to keep her.

  * * *

  When it was finally over, when her body had shed the last of what she had thought might be able to sustain her, she pushed herself up on shaking hands and knees and stuffed a wad of toilet paper in her underwear, the outhouse full of the heavy mineral smell of blood and shit.

  Juniper was waiting for her outside, circling her with concern, following her as she crawled to the bonsai on the porch. She labored to transport each tree out to the yard, the center of her being radiating with pain, her limbs like rubber, mucous and tears dripping off her face, her heart beating a crescendo, a pulsing agony as relentless as her own blood.

  She set the trees in a rough circle and curled up in the middle of them, the grass’s fresh dampness seeping into her clothes, sunlit droplets of water hanging on the blade tips like prisms. Juniper sat next to her and whined quietly, nosing her. Silva’s mind jumped from one disconnected detail to another: a pot of congealed stew, cold and fat-scrimmed, that she’d found after coming home from the hospital, Eamon’s last supper. The perfumed, dusty smell of Isabelle’s old wool coat that Eamon had kept in the back of his closet. The feel of her mother’s work-strong hands weaving field daisies into her hair.

  She wanted to rend her clothes, cover herself in ashes, mourn until there was nothing more to give. She craved the early numbness that had come in the days after Eamon’s death—an unfeeling blankness that’d felt deeper than sleep or waking. The kind of reverberating silence she’d hoped her own death might deliver.