The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  When she finished, her teacher, Miss Tooksbury, patted her pretty hands together and urged Alice’s classmates to do the same. Alice was rolling up her pictures when David Hanson yelled from the back of the room.

  “You can’t be a farmer! Farmer’s wife, you mean!”

  He collapsed across his desk with hilarity, and the room erupted with laughter. Alice stood frozen at the front of the class. Miss Tooksbury scolded David, saying that Alice could be anything she wanted.

  “Yes, even an astronaut, David,” she said, frowning.

  But as Miss Tooksbury glanced at her and away again with narrowed eyes, Alice realized that her teacher didn’t really believe that she could be an astronaut or a farmer. It was the first time she understood that adults sometimes lied. After school, she told her father about it as she helped him cut and sand tree stakes for the new grafts. Al listened, nodding, but didn’t say anything. She pressed him, even though she knew that her father spoke only when he had something to say.

  “But she’s my teacher,” she said, her voice rising to a whine. “And she thinks David was right!”

  Her father stopped sanding and looked down at her, sawdust motes floating in the air between them. “Is Miss Tooksbury here cutting tree stakes?”

  Alice shook her head.

  “Will she be here tomorrow when we start grafting new seedlings?”

  Again, Alice shook her head.

  “Well, I guess we know that Miss Tooksbury is not learning to be a farmer. But who knows? People change.”

  And that was all he said about it. Alice hugged him harder than usual when she went to bed that night. Al Holtzman was a man of few words, but she knew he thought she would be a great farmer.

  And yet, thirty-four years later, Alice was not staking trees or grafting stock. Al was dead, the orchard was gone, and Alice was still working at the county planning department. She wasn’t a farmer or even a farmer’s wife.

  On Monday, as she drove to work, she considered what had happened between fourth grade and the age of forty-four. Her situation was not unusual. People let go of their childhood dreams and repackaged their lives into practical, predictable boxes, right? The idea depressed her and made her feel even worse about Jake.

  It had been late afternoon when she returned from Little Bit and unloaded the hay bales from the truck. Jake was out in the apiary when she got back, so she waved and called out what she was doing. He watched her use the tractor to position the bales in a windbreak, and the activity eased the strangeness of her departure since they couldn’t talk. When Alice finished and walked over to the apiary, he beamed and gestured around with wordless happiness. Her heart sank. She couldn’t tell him then. Anyway, it was nearly dinnertime. One more night wouldn’t hurt, she thought.

  After the kid disappeared into the guest room, she drafted a concise explanation of why he needed to go home. She would just be matter-of-fact about the physical part of the job. She rehearsed it, so that he could only agree and call his mother. The whole thing would be over after breakfast and he’d be gone when she got home from work. She was cheered at the thought of how quiet her house would be. She slept well, and when she awoke that morning, she knew it was the right thing to do. She just needed to be alone.

  Alice found Jake waiting in the kitchen with a pot of very strong coffee. She choked on her first sip, but Jake didn’t notice because he was talking about the bees. He’d been up until 2:00 a.m. reading her Backyard Beekeeping book and had all kinds of questions about drones, their gathering areas, whether the drone population could be used to measure the health of the hive. Varroa mites and the controversy over treating or not treating. Against her will, Alice was drawn into the conversation because they were very interesting questions. Then she was running late and realized she would have to talk to him about leaving after work. She swore under her breath as she sped toward town.

  She parked in the county lot and stood on the sidewalk, looking down the hill toward the water. It was windy already. Kiteboarders and windsurfers formed bright clusters on the white-capped river, most likely locals stealing a bit of water time before work. The waterfront would be packed with tourists by June. She could see the long strip of green grass where people congregated—wind chasers and spectators.

  She had been looking at that view for her entire life and never tired of it—the emerald swath of grass, the sandbar spilling into the river, and the craggy cliffs of the gorge rising up out of the water. Memories of summers past burbled to the surface of her mind. Not now, she said, and put them firmly away.

  “Morning, Alice!”

  The voice at her shoulder made her jump. It was Rich Carlson, the county’s human resources and finance manager. As usual, Rich was in a suit when everyone else adhered to the dress code Alice described as “farm-casual.” In twelve years Alice had never seen Rich without a tie. Not even at the summer picnic. He stood on the sidewalk batting a rolled-up newspaper against his thigh. Rich was a black hole of time on two legs. He could suck up the better part of an hour just stopping by your desk to shoot the breeze. Alice had felt uneasy around Rich even before the office Christmas party six years ago when he’d cornered her under the mistletoe. She jerked away, and his dry lips grazed her neck. Whenever she found herself alone with Rich, she remembered that—the feel of scratchy polyester, his aftershave that smelled like car freshener.

  “Morning, Rich,” she said, faking a smile.

  “Big day today,” he said, flashing a toothy grin. “You folks in planning ready for our meeting with CP?”

  Alice kept the smile on her face and groaned inwardly. Like so many western towns, Hood River had grown with the arrival of the railroad in the nineteenth century. Cascadia Pacific, for its part, had developed from a rail line company into a huge conglomerate that now included fiber-optic lines and right-of-way contracts with tech companies as well as other seemingly unrelated twenty-first-century diversifications. Alice had completely forgotten that the Cascadia Pacific reps were coming that day for the annual interagency meeting. Representatives from Forest Service, farmers alliance, and the watershed group would be there too. Alice knew it was an empty gesture to show CP shareholders that they had good relationships with their small-town nodes, but it was mandatory.

  “Ready as we’ll ever be, Rich,” she said.

  Rich loved meetings. He took copious notes on his laptop and filed them away for who knew what use. Alice felt sorry for the employees in his department. Sifting through Rich’s constant email thread must be a part-time job alone. Alice stole a glance at her watch. She had a little over an hour to pull herself together.

  “. . . Spent the weekend reformatting my reports,” Rich was saying, “so everyone can have access. I keep a master copy on the server. I’m grabbing a coffee at Ground. Care to join me?” He gestured down the street.

  Alice couldn’t think of anything she’d rather do less. She held up her mug. “I’m all set. Thanks anyway.”

  Rich made no sign of moving out of her way.

  “Well, I’d better get to it,” she said, and stepped around him.

  “Go get ’em, tiger!” Rich swatted her shoulder with the newspaper as she passed. Alice flinched and felt a lick of anger pass over her.

  As usual she was the first one in the planning office. Nancy’s chair was empty, and Bill’s door was closed. She flipped on her computer and found the department profile, which she would need to submit for the CP meeting. She copied last year’s report and began updating it. It wouldn’t take her long. The financials were the main thing. She shot an email to Debi Jeffreys, the office manager, sweating as she typed and marking the subject line “urgent.” Debi was often crabby when asked for such things. Alice would have preferred to get the financials from the accounting department directly, but because Debi was also hugely passive-aggressive, she insisted that all requests go through her. In her email Alice apologized for waiting
until the last minute. Debi wrote back immediately with the attached files.

  “You’re not the only one who forgot,” she wrote. “But the only one to apologize for waiting until this morning! ;)”

  Alice sighed with relief to have caught Debi in a good mood. She opened the spreadsheet, scanned it for the pertinent information, and cut and pasted it into her report, working quickly through the first three pages. The numbers were solid across the board—building permits, transportation filings, taxes. She could do this work in her sleep.

  The Hood River County Planning Department was supposed to be a stepping-stone for Alice. But when she looked back, it was easy to track how she’d become lodged there. After high school, she went to OSU and double majored in ag and business. At home, Al was the tree specialist and Marina handled the books. Alice wanted to be prepared to do both. She had graduated with honors and worked for a couple of years at a wheat farm with a small cattle operation in the Willamette Valley as operations manager. By the time she went to Eugene to do her master’s, the little farm had been gobbled up by the booming wine industry. She didn’t think much about it because she planned to return to the orchard.

  She moved home in 1996 and worked alongside her father on evenings and weekends. The planning department would be temporary until Al and Marina were ready to hand off the farm. Only that hadn’t happened. Alice had watched things get increasingly difficult for her parents—regulations, fees, and prices too low for the small producers. Then came the spraying regulations. When they decided to sell, she understood, though it pained her.

  So she dug in. Her boss, Bill Chenowith, had made it clear that she was first in line when he retired. It was the one carrot Bill always held up—his position as county planning director.

  At her annual review in March, he’d thrown it out as a parting salvo.

  “You know I’m thinking of retiring soon, Alice,” he said. “I’ve always said you would be the best candidate for the transition.”

  She was ready for that challenge. And this past year, work had given her something to focus on, disappear into. Her job might be boring and predictable, but it provided neat, safe borders to operate within. She took a sip of coffee and focused on the spreadsheets. Mindless, mechanical work—it was a relief.

  In the conference room, Alice noticed that the Cascadia Pacific rep, a trim blond man from Seattle, was the only person wearing a suit besides Rich. He seemed like a nice guy, despite the meaningless corporate language: “community building,” “shared prosperity,” and “blue-sky thinking.” This was just a demonstration of a small town’s fealty to a big corporation that funded their local grants and made big donations to the schools and parks. In exchange, CP got the right of way to run their fiber-optic cable along the county easement and down the heart of the Columbia River Gorge to support the tech companies that were moving in. Better to call it what it was—a financial exchange, an arranged marriage, if you will. But nobody would do that.

  Many of her colleagues had their laptops open. Rich was banging away, taking meticulous notes. Others, she could tell, were reading their email. Nancy was looking at pictures of her kids on Facebook. Her big silly grin gave her away. Alice’s mind wandered to the bees. She jotted down some notes in her notebook—building materials, paint for new hives. She would stop by the salvage lumberyard and see what she could find for hive stands. She thought about Jake again and his wild enthusiasm. He had followed her through full checks on three hives, asking questions and holding her tools as she worked her way down the row, which was helpful.

  She felt a flash of anger at herself. What are you going to do? Have the kid follow you around and hold your tools?

  “. . . Celebrating twenty years of interagency partnership!”

  The CP rep was wrapping up, and everyone was clapping.

  “And as part of our mission to diversify, we have become the regional distributor for SupraGro, which produces value-added products for the farming and ranching sector. We hope to be the bridge between SupraGro and local farms, ranches, and orchards. Here’s this year’s catalog, and my contact information is on the bottom. Please get in touch with any questions, and thanks again!”

  The shiny catalogs were shuffled around the conference room table. Bill thanked the CP rep for the presentation. There was more clapping, and people started to leave. Alice pushed her chair back but found the one next to her still occupied by Stan Hinatsu, from the Hood River Watershed Alliance. Stan was about Alice’s age, Japanese-American, with salt-and-pepper hair. A nice-looking guy, she had always thought, but now, brandishing a handful of the colorful cardstock, he looked angry.

  “SupraGro!” he sputtered. “Are they kidding? They destroyed the salmon watershed in the north Sierras. In Truckee. There was a huge lawsuit.”

  Alice vaguely recognized the name of the little California town.

  “They’re going to just slip this in like we won’t notice?” He stood and called down to the other end of the room. “Excuse me! Bill? Bill! Can we have a conversation about this last item?”

  Bill was talking to the CP rep. He hitched up his khakis and threw an empty smile in Stan’s direction.

  Stan gathered his things, muttering, “. . . Completely unacceptable. I can’t believe—”

  He strode toward the door and called out, “Bill! I’m going to call you and set up a meeting!”

  Bill smiled blandly and waved. Stan shouldered his way out of the room.

  “What was that all about?”

  Nancy stood next to Alice’s chair with a Styrofoam cup in her hand, shifting her pleasant bulk from side to side, her pink floral skirt swinging. “What’s ol’ Stan-o upset about now?”

  Nancy had a new perm and was wearing earrings to match her purple-framed glasses. Like Alice, Nancy was a longtime county employee. They’d gone to high school together—Nancy graduating two years before Alice. Nancy laughed often and still carried herself with the same enthusiasm she had as a cheerleader at Hood River Valley High School. They were both Bill’s assistants by title but tacitly accepted that Alice really did most of the work. Bill came in late, left early, and couldn’t be bothered with paperwork, which was pretty much what the department was all about.

  “Something about SupraGro and a California lawsuit,” Alice said.

  “Drama queen,” Nancy said, rolling her eyes. “Always upset about something, those tree huggers.”

  Alice felt defensive. She liked Stan. “I don’t know, Nancy. Remember when those Cascadia trains derailed in Mosier? Stan’s group was the one that made them clean it up.”

  Nancy made a face and laughed. “Jeez! Don’t be so serious, Alice. It’s Monday morning. By the way, did you get in touch with the Heights folks last week? I was waiting for those housing numbers from you so I could create the forecast.”

  They walked back to their office together.

  Alice felt restless for the remainder of the day. At lunch she walked down to the river, past the kiteboard beach, and east toward the waterfront hotels, the museum, and the little marina, sheltered from the wind. Sailboats bobbed in the light breeze, their rigging clanging lightly. She saw Bill’s boat among them—the Kathy Sue, named for his wife of forty years. She looked up at the old brick buildings climbing the hillside above Oak Street. Hood River was still a nice little town. Everyone turned out for the Fourth of July parade and the high school homecoming game. People refrained from honking and braked for turkeys, which ranged through town in the fall.

  Alice walked to the middle of the bridge and looked down at the river. Two fly-fishermen stood hip deep in the water, and the sunlight glinted off their lines as they swirled them back and forth in the air. Mount Hood rose up to the south, placid under spring snow.

  She loved this place, but she had never expected to end up parked at the county planning department for her entire career. A life lived outside was a good life, her parents
had always said. Her heart surged as she thought of her plan of growing the apiary and earning enough money to put in a little orchard at her place. She needed to hire someone to help get things going. That was even more reason she needed to send Jake home, Alice thought. The kid would understand. And if he didn’t, well, that wasn’t her problem. He had parents, didn’t he? He wasn’t her responsibility.

  She spent the rest of the day immersed in the mammoth task of scheduling assessments for the town’s commercial buildings. One by one her colleagues left until it was just her, Nancy, and the red-haired college intern, Casey. Nancy had talked him into happy hour at the taqueria and tried to convince Alice to come too so it wouldn’t look like she was hitting on the poor kid.

  “Margarita Monday, Alice!” Nancy sang, and did a salsa step next to Alice’s desk, snapping her fingers.

  She begged off, saying she had chores at home.

  “Suit yourself, amiga,” Nancy said. “Guess it’s just you and me, Casey.”

  Her laughter rang through the lobby as they left.

  Alice knew she was stalling. She drove south toward her house and thought about picking up tacos at Nobi’s on the way home. She felt a flash of impatience. She was not cooking dinner for the kid again. She wanted to be irritated, she realized. She needed to justify sending him home. But she liked the kid, which was not insignificant. As a rule, Alice didn’t like most people she met. But there was something special about this boy. And she was the one who had invited him. What had that grand gesture been about, anyway? She argued with herself all the way home.

  Alice descended the long curve of the driveway and saw a truck parked in front of her house. Her stomach dropped as she heard rising voices, then yelling. Another Stevenson family fight? Of course Ed Stevenson would come looking for his son. Why hadn’t she thought of that? Her heart raced. She dreaded confrontation, but she’d be damned if Ed Stevenson thought he could scream at anyone at her place. She rushed up the walkway and threw open the door, ready for a fight.