The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  10

  Hive Maintenance

  Requisites of a complete hive . . .

  1. A good hive should give the Apiarian such perfect control of all the combs, that they may easily be taken out without cutting them, or enraging the bees.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  Jake didn’t have the words to explain what he felt when Alice handed him the frame from the beehive that first morning. He was simply overwhelmed by the beauty of it. The wooden rectangle hung heavy in his fingers as he drew it toward his face. He saw a tapestry of multicolored pollen, capped honey, and glistening nectar. He breathed in the sweet aroma of fresh beeswax and fermented honey and felt the thrum of a thousand tiny bodies vibrating in unison. It hit him in the heart like a drug. The reverberation ran through his hands and up into his arms. His chest ached, and he thought his heart might explode. It was a calming weight, an invisible touchstone, a “You Are Here” marker.

  The pollen-dusted frame was covered with delicate white wax. Across this surface, fuzzy golden bees moved with purpose. They paid no attention to Jake. Some were busy packing away pollen; others wriggled deep into cells filled with honey. Bees were feeding larvae or carrying away the bodies of the dead. Forager bees, nurse bees, undertaker bees. Alice named them as Jake watched the living tapestry of gold, ochre, and scarlet. He breathed in the scent of it all, a fragrance sweeter than cotton candy, and felt the urge to press his face into it. But what he would remember most was that the buzzing mass seemed to inhabit his body. He could feel the resonance in his chest, like when he had played the trumpet. The feeling traveled from his solar plexus through his rib cage all the way into his beat-up, eighteen-year-old heart—a vibration of happiness and contentment. It made him want to sing. He didn’t say anything to Alice. He thought he would sound crazy. But the experience made him sure he wanted this job. He pored over Alice’s books late into the night, and the more he read, the more it felt like fate, like some sort of door opening.

  After Alice left for work, Jake sat on the porch and felt the west wind blowing over the ridgeline as the morning heated up. He watched the wind move through the trees on the edge of the woods, heard a flicker call from deep within the forest. The chickens fussed, and a dog barked. By force of habit, he stuck his earbuds in and turned on his iPhone, but then shut it off. He listened again to the wind, the birds, the faint song of chorus frogs in the distance. It was its own kind of music, and he wanted to hear it.

  He wheeled down the ramp to assess the limitations of the yard. Slowly, he moved along the perimeter to gauge where he couldn’t go with the chair. He was glad there was no one to watch him struggle across the uneven ground around the yard. He rolled past the apiary and moved toward the barn, maneuvering for the best line.

  He recalled the recent events at his parents’ place. His kind mom, who worked at the church and helped people all day long, losing her shit on Alice. Tansy Stevenson was a sweet, God-fearing woman who believed in helping her neighbors and loving her enemies. She decorated the kitchen with ducks and geese dressed in bonnets, and she loved watching funny cat videos on the Internet. But if anything appeared to threaten her only son, well, it brought out the pit bull in her. It was a small pit bull, more like an angry Chihuahua, but formidable.

  And that fucking story about Ed! Alice filled him in, briefly, in the truck. Jake had no trouble believing it, though it made him sick. Ed had used the belt on him when he was little. The whippings had stopped when a neighbor saw Ed smack Jake, then twelve, and threatened to report him. Ed never hit him again, but Jake knew he wanted to. No surprise Ed had been violent as a child.

  An unexpected wave of sadness washed over Jake then. His dad hadn’t always been so mean. He recalled the feeling of his father’s large hand over his as he walked to the edge of the pool for his first swimming lesson. Only five, he was afraid of the deep water and shivered in his SpongeBob SquarePants trunks. He started to cry when Ed handed him off to the teacher and turned to go. His father usually got angry when he cried. But this time, Ed squatted down and put his big hands on Jake’s shoulders.

  “I’ll be right over there,” Ed said. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

  Jake felt his worry leave him as his father squeezed his shoulder and went to sit in the bleachers. He stopped crying and climbed down the ladder to join the class in the shallow end. He kicked, paddled, and blew bubbles. His confidence grew until he did the inconceivable thing and put his head under the water. He shook his head to get the water out of his eyes and searched the crowd of parents for his dad. He saw him then, his face charged with something Jake hadn’t understood at the time. Jake thought Ed was mad that the lesson was taking so long. But now he knew it was fear. Ed was afraid Jake wouldn’t come out of the water breathing.

  Jake paused in his circumnavigation of the yard. He considered this memory almost against his will, but he knew it was true. There were others. The smell of cigarette smoke as his dad ran behind Jake’s bike, holding on to the seat to balance him and clapping like crazy when Jake rode away. When he turned eight, his dad gave him a remote-control dune buggy and they spent the afternoon racing it up and down the bumpy driveway. His dad had laughed and looked like a kid himself. There were Sundays they all went to church together and his dad had walked with Jake to get a donut and a cup of hot chocolate from the parish hall afterward. That was all before Ed had stopped going to church, before he’d gotten fired from Middle Mountain Surveyors, where he’d been a supervisor, and gone to work for Klare Construction. Jake had been too little to understand why his father had gotten fired. He just knew things were different after that.

  Jake stared out at the ridgeline and chewed his bottom lip. He shook his head. To that handful of good memories, there were just too many years of bad ones. He remembered Ed throwing down the Christmas turkey because his mother suggested he go to mass with her in the morning. Ed yelling at the Chavezes, their nice neighbors, for playing ranchero music during a Sunday afternoon barbecue. And later, kicking their little dog when it wandered over into the Stevensons’ flower bed and lifted its chubby leg to pee. When Jake grew the mohawk, his father sneered at him once or twice about his freak hairdo and then stopped speaking to him. Jake preferred the heavy silence to the ugly things Ed said, like those he had screamed at Alice.

  The thought of going home made Jake feel cold to his core. He wasn’t physically afraid of Ed, but the idea of being back in that man’s house made him feel trapped. He pushed himself along the perimeter of the yard, feeling the emotion rise in his chest. He couldn’t possibly go back to that cramped house, the air so thick with tension you could almost smell it. The hours of waiting to be alone, which was only slightly less terrible than being in the house with them. So, what then? Could he live and work here? What if Alice changed her mind? He barely knew her, and she didn’t owe him anything.

  Jake hit a divot, and his front right wheel stuck. He rocked back and forth to free himself. As he struggled, his certainty grew. He could not go back to his parents’ house. Impossible. He’d move into adult foster care first, or that shitty group home in The Dalles that his caseworker took him to. Everyone else there was twice his age, and some of them were mentally retarded. “People with intellectual disabilities” was the correct terminology, his caseworker reminded him when they were back in the car. The language didn’t matter; he could never live there. He wasn’t like them, he told her. But now even the group home seemed preferable to living with Ed. He felt sick at the thought of rolling back up the ramp under his father’s gloating gaze. No way. No fucking way!

  He pushed harder, and the chair went over. Jake’s shoulder hit the dirt with a thump. He could feel gravel on the side of his face, and the familiar weight of despair began to descend on his heart. This was his life now, his fucking body. He heard a low growl then, and when he looked up, he saw the plucky rooster standing on one leg, glaring at him. The sight of the overly confident little bird
made him laugh out loud, and Ned stalked away. Jake lay gazing across the barnyard, willing himself to slow his breath. No one was likely to come along, which made him feel grateful. He picked a pebble off his cheek and gathered himself.

  First things first. To stay here he had to pull his own weight somehow. To begin with, he had to get off the fucking ground. Slowly, he dragged himself over to the fence, pulling his chair with one arm, grateful for the hours he had spent lifting weights out of boredom. It took some time, but he managed to sit up and right his chair. He set the brake and pulled himself up and in it. He sat in the sunlight, sweating, victorious, and exhausted. Then he rolled back up to the house.

  From the kitchen he surveyed Alice’s small, tidy rooms, which were conveniently wheelchair-accessible in the most basic ways. The living room was a problem, though. A big bookcase stuck out into the hall, and a labyrinth of small tables crowded the room. The path to the barn and around the apiary was problematic too. He knew he needed help.

  Jake hesitated, then pulled out his phone and dialed. Noah Katz picked up on the second ring and acted like they had just spoken the day before, calling him the usual host of disparaging names. Like a true friend, he didn’t mention the months that Jake had avoided his visits and failed to return texts, emails, and phone calls. Good old Katz.

  After trading insults for a couple of minutes, Jake got down to business.

  “Listen, bro. I need a favor,” he said. “Can you come by today for, like, an hour? And bring someone with you who can lift things? Right. Cool. Yeah, now-ish would be great! Oh, and I’ll need to give you directions. I moved.”

  Jake hung up. It was so like Katz to say he could come right over, that he was already headed that way on some errand. Katz always had his back, even when he didn’t deserve it—like when Mr. Schaffer kicked him off the band bus in The Dalles for fucking around on the way to a football game. What had he been doing that time? Oh, right—lighting matches and flicking them at Matt Swenson in the back seat. The band director’s thin face was red with anger as he ordered Jake off the bus in the Walmart parking lot and told him to call his parents for a ride. He would not be performing with the jazz band at the HRVHS game against The Dalles, which would be the last game of his senior year. Schaffer hoped he understood that.

  “Poor me!” Jake said as he rose to leave. “No more football. Wah! Wah! Wah!”

  The girls around him tittered, and Schaffer flushed redder. Jake grabbed his trumpet case and slouched off the bus.

  “Later, skaters!” he yelled over his shoulder. Once off the bus he found Noah on his heels, leaving in solidarity. Schaffer yelled at Noah to get back on the bus. Noah just shook his head and waved, smiling. The band director slammed the door of the bus and drove off. Jake called his mom for a ride. While they waited, the two of them busked in front of the Walmart.

  Jake remembered how happy he felt to have Katz stand by him, even when he was being a jerk. Then his mom showed up, tight-lipped with disappointment, and Jake felt the deep, hollow regret of missing the last game of his senior year. At his mom’s suggestion, he’d apologized, and Schaffer had agreed to let him play in the spring concert, which was scheduled for the week after he had ended up in the hospital. Busking at the Walmart with Noah was the last time he had played his trumpet for any kind of audience.

  The two boys had always shared music, ever since they were in band as little kids. In high school, Noah had gotten more into old school jazz while Jake leaned further into the hard-core punk stuff—the Misfits, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. He turned it up loud when he skated or when he was at home to drown out his father’s voice and the drone of the TV.

  Noah was the one who had turned him on to Slapstick, a Chicago band from the nineties that mixed punk and ska. He liked the way the trumpet worked in there as the band laughed at itself for what it was or wasn’t, like in the song “Almost Punk Enough.” That described Jake. So much of it was posturing, for him. He knew that—the music, his hair, his clothes. But he did truly love his trumpet. As they sat in front of Walmart that day, Katz played the melody line of “Almost Punk Enough,” and Jake played mockingly over the top on his trumpet.

  “You need to start taking yourself seriously, Mr. Stevenson!” Schaffer had yelled at Jake’s back.

  Jake scoffed, but he knew Schaffer was right. Schaffer was the one who had suggested Cornish College of the Arts in the first place. It was Schaffer’s letter of recommendation that helped him get in, he knew. The band director came to see him once in the hospital, and Jake pretended to be asleep. What could he possibly say to him?

  Jake watched Noah’s truck descend Alice’s long driveway and smiled at the familiar sight of his beefy friend unfolding himself from the cab. Goofy Noah with his big hair and toothy smile. Jake groaned inwardly to see Celia in the passenger seat. He hadn’t banked on Katz bringing her. Jake thought he might have rounded up one of the guys to help.

  “Dude!”

  Noah high-fived Jake and leaned down for the acceptable man-hug shoulder bump. He stood back and appraised him. “The hair is looking super sad. What’s up with the ponytail? And look at this place! What the hell? You’ve gone country on me!”

  “You know it’s been my lifelong goal to be a farmer,” Jake said, leaning back and bracing his hands on his knees. “I’m just exploring my 4-H dreams.”

  “You are rocking it, dude!” Noah said, gesturing at Jake’s skinny jeans and Doc Martens. “I barely recognized you.”

  The passenger door creaked opened, and Celia, who everyone called Cece, climbed out. He had to smile at her, though he wished she hadn’t come. She leaned in to hug him, and Jake breathed in her girl smell of minty gum and perfume.

  “Hi, Jake! It’s so good to see you!”

  She looked down at him and pulled on her long black braid with one hand. Her brown eyes shone, and she looked like she might cry. Jake felt a flash of anger. Why did people think it made him feel better that his life made them sad? He threw up his hands in mock outrage.

  “Jesus, Katz! I told you to bring someone with muscle. Not this skinny little girl. La flaca, wey? Cece es la flaca. Maybe you shoulda brung your grammy instead.”

  Noah laughed, and Celia squealed in protest.

  “No soy la flaca, wey! Órale!”

  She flexed her muscles and gritted her teeth. Jake laughed. That was better. And Celia was strong enough to help Noah with what Jake needed anyway. He didn’t pause to let himself feel the awkwardness of asking for help. He led them into the house and showed them the furniture he needed them to move. Noah kept up a steady stream of jokes about Jake’s new farm boy identity, which helped.

  “How did you meet this lady?” Celia asked as she and Noah repositioned the coffee table. “Is she a friend of your mom’s?”

  Noah rolled his eyes at Jake. Girls always asked questions.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Jake said. And left it at that.

  The kitchen had less furniture but was a bigger deal, and here Celia was the hero. As the oldest girl in a big family, she knew all about cooking. She sorted the pots and pans and pantry items, putting what he would use every day close at hand. She also explained the difference between cooking and baking stuff. They considered the microwave, mounted too high above the stove to reach, and she scoffed.

  “You don’t need that thing. They stink and make a big mess anyway.”

  Jake took them outside to see the barn, the chicken coop, and the apiary. He avoided their eyes and briskly pointed out the rough sections in the path. He didn’t mention his fall. Noah found shovels and rakes in the barn, and Celia helped him work the dirt to level the path. Jake did a lap to test it and confirmed it was easier to manage. Noah said he would come back and give it another going over, but he didn’t make a big deal out of it.

  Jake offered to show them the hives, and though they were intrigued, they wouldn’t venture ins
ide the fence of the apiary. As Jake told them some of what he had learned, the honeybees seemed to sing to him. The air was full of golden bodies, some zipping off to forage and others returning. In front of a close hive—one of the new nucs from Sunnyvale—several dozen bees zinged wildly back and forth in short bursts. This was an orientation flight, Alice had told him.

  “The big kids are teaching the newbies how to find their way home. Isn’t that cool?” Jake said.

  Noah stood behind Celia, who stood behind Jake. Very cool, they agreed.

  “When you get the honey, I’ll give you my abuela’s recipe for torta de miel. It’s awesome. You’ll love it,” Celia said.

  Jake turned and smiled up at her. “Cece, you’re a genius. I need your help with one other thing.”

  Home ec class had been pass/fail and based on attendance, so Jake and Noah had goofed off in the back of Miss Trainor’s class and learned nothing. Celia, on the other hand, already knew how to cook for a houseful of people. She sent Noah to the store with a list, to which Jake had added hair product. While they waited for Noah, she talked Jake through some basics—scrambled eggs, pancakes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and burritos. When Noah returned, she helped Jake make his first dinner—chicken enchiladas with chile verde sauce.

  “And a salad. You need to eat your vegetables. No, seriously, you guys!” she protested as they mocked her, calling her the Veggie Nazi.

  It was after 5:30 p.m., and Alice still hadn’t come home. Jake was nervous, wiping down the counters and checking his phone.

  “Why don’t you guys stick around?” he said.

  Noah set the table for four. Jake took the enchiladas out of the oven and covered them to keep them warm. He started the rice like Celia told him to. Noah pulled out his phone to show Jake a video of their friend Mikey landing an Impossible at the skate park. Celia had already seen it several times and rolled her eyes as the boys leaned over the screen. She paged through the newspaper instead. Jake felt tired and happy. He’d missed Noah. Celia was a good one too. Not whiny or clingy. He thought about the last time they’d all gone to Lost Lake. Noah and Celia hadn’t been officially dating then. Celia had ridden in the back seat with Cheney draped across her lap. Cheney. The thought of his dog made his heart fold in half. Still, it was good to be with his friends.