The thought of Buddy blindsided her, and loneliness reached up and grabbed her by the throat. She reached for the sleeve of cookies and ate them one after the other, trying to stuff back the growing ache. It didn’t work. She grabbed her keys, banged out the door, and waved at the kid.
“Errands!” she called.
He waved back.
Alice jumped in the truck and sped up the road into the blinding light of the setting sun. Being in motion helped calm her. Somehow being in the truck with the windows rolled down and the wind in her ears made it easier to hold her grief within the confines of her body. Otherwise she might have split in two. Once she had driven halfway to Seattle with no memory of the long drive. Just mile after mile of telling herself to pull it together now, Alice. You can do this. Shove it back down in there. As long as she made it to the county planning department by 8:30 a.m. five days a week, no one had to know that Alice Holtzman was made of a million tiny broken pieces held together by cookies, solitary driving, and the sheer determination not to go crazy in public.
She felt the warm evening air blow across her face and she focused on her breathing. She named the familiar landmarks as she passed them, only letting her mind settle on the surface of things. McCurdy Farms, Twin Peaks Drive-in, Western Antique Aeroplane and Automobile Museum, Eagle One Thrift, Novedades Ortiz, Bette’s Place, Hood River County Library. Just this building and the next. Concrete and bricks and no need to think of her feelings. She worked her way into town with this strategy and found herself at the waterfront. She decided a walk would clear her head.
The sunset turned the river into a ribbon of gold, easing her clenched heart with its beauty. A handful of kiteboarders were riding the evening wind, early-season keeners who were milking every minute. Up near the park, she could see a small crowd gathered under the picnic shelter. Alice drew closer and moved toward the curb to maintain her solitude. She spotted Stan Hinatsu up on a small rise on the lawn with a sign that read, “Keep SupraGro Out of the Gorge!” Alice recalled how angry he had been at the end of the CP meeting. She drew closer and stood at the back.
“. . . Coal they ship through our communities and along the river. I don’t need to remind you that the Cascadia Pacific train that derailed in Mosier spilled a load of Bakken crude oil less than one hundred yards from the Mosier Community School. Now it’s not just the trains. Cascadia recently bought SupraGro, a pesticide company that’s being sued by community groups in Nebraska and Northern California for devastating local watersheds. And as part of that partnership, Cascadia is offering their products at a deep discount to local farmers and orchardists for use here in the Columbia River Gorge. That will affect every single water source in the valley. I’m talking about communities from Parkdale and Pine Grove to Mosier and the Dalles. And water sources from Dog River and Hood River to the White Salmon and the Klickitat. The runoff will go directly into those watersheds we get our drinking water from, that our kids swim in, and that the salmon spawn in.”
It was absolutely urgent, he said, to take action. Stan asked people to call their county commissioners, attend the city council meeting next week, and volunteer to canvass locally.
Alice listened, nagged by a thought. She pulled out her phone and googled SupraGro. There it was. SupraGro had decimated local honeybee populations in those California and Nebraska towns—commercial outfits and hobby farms like hers. Even a research farm that was associated with the University of Nebraska. Thousands of hives had died. Millions of bees.
Alice had read about it on a bee blog, which linked to an article in the Washington Post. The bee part was buried at the bottom of the story about the lawsuits, which centered on drinking-water safety. The story said that the bees had been devastated either through the water contamination or the spray. Years later they hadn’t recovered, and losses continued year after year in those towns where the pesticide company still had a stronghold.
Alice heard the click of a camera next to her and saw Pete Malone snapping a photo of Stan and the crowd. She liked Pete, who had been in her AP English class senior year. He had been writing for the Hood River News for decades. Pete was always there asking questions and taking photos—the county fair, city council, the annual Wild Weiner Days and Dachshund Dash. Pete caught her eye and nodded.
Stan was wrapping up. He thanked everyone for coming and asked them to like the Facebook page for Hood River Watershed Alliance. As he finished, people turned to each other and started talking, for in Hood River, even environmental activism offered a chance to chat. She saw Stan shouldering his way through the crowd and was startled when he stopped in front of her.
“Hey, Alice,” he said. “Thanks for coming out. It’s nice to know that someone from the county is paying attention.”
“What? I— No, sorry. I was walking by and stopped to hear what you were talking about. I’m not here for the county or—”
Stan smiled at her and rocked back on his heels, his arms crossed over his clipboard. “Sure. I know. You aren’t on the clock. You aren’t a county employee right this moment. You are Alice Holtzman, concerned citizen. Right?”
She heard the click of the camera and saw Pete out of the corner of her eye.
“No. I mean, yes. I am a concerned citizen. I care about this community and who we do business with. Of course I do.”
Click, click, click, went the camera.
“Right, that’s all I’m saying,” Stan said.
Click, click, click.
“But I don’t— I’m not— Dammit, Pete. Would you stop?”
Alice’s voice rose. She glared at Pete, who seemed only half-embarrassed.
“Public meeting, Alice,” Pete said, and shrugged as he swung his camera toward the rest of the crowd.
Alice turned back to Stan, who was still smiling.
“Look. Yes, I am a concerned citizen, but don’t quote me and try to make me out as some sort of envoy for the county. I don’t even understand the situation yet.”
But she understood enough. She just didn’t know what in the hell she was supposed to do about it. Stan must have seen that on her face. He held out the clipboard.
“Just give me your email, Alice. We want to keep you informed.”
She exhaled, took his pen, and scribbled her email address.
Click, click, click.
When she looked up, Pete had blended into the crowd. She was irritated to notice Stan was even more handsome when he smiled.
“Thanks, Alice. I’ll be in touch, okay?”
“Sure, Stan. See you later.”
She walked along the river where the sun had fallen behind the ridgeline and the sky had turned light green above the trees. The west wind caressed her face.
What had Dr. Zimmerman said? Disrupt old patterns. Find a path out of the old way of doing things to forge a new one. It might feel uncomfortable, but the only way out was through. Things needed to feel different to become different, she said. Well, “different” was one word for it, Alice thought. She walked until the path ended at the water, and then, because she had no other choice, she turned around and went back the way she’d come.
13
Overtones
One who carefully watches the habits of bees will often feel inclined to speak of his little favorites as having an intelligence almost if not quite akin to reason.
—L. L. LANGSTROTH
Jake sat in the afternoon sunlight in front of the hives and closed his eyes, feeling a warm hum in his chest. He marveled at the sound he heard, the everyday noise of the bees at work. He wondered why none of the beekeeping books talked about this musical droning, this golden anthem, this song. It seemed so significant to him. He’d asked Alice what they were saying, but she hadn’t known either. She said the how of it involved the vibration of their delicate wings, which was easily heard when a bee was in flight. But she didn’t know what they were communicating in
side the hive. The queen and most of the workers lived their entire lives within the pulsing, lightless interior, so sound must have been some kind of tool. Maybe they heard the tone as Jake did. To him it said, “We are here and all is well.” It said, “We are home.”
Jake hadn’t felt at home since he was a very small child, but he felt something close to it now. This new feeling had lodged in his chest. He put a hand on his sternum and felt his breath rise and fall. What was this feeling? It took him some time to name what he felt. Calm. The time he spent with the bees, those minutes and hours, were building a sense of calm in him, slowly but surely, just as honeybees built out their honey stores.
Even though he had been living with Alice for more than two weeks, Jake still felt a burst of relief each morning when he awoke and realized that he was not at his parents’ double-wide. This morning he’d lain in bed and listened to the alarmed call of quail and the whirring of the birds Alice said were mourning doves. He pulled himself out of bed when the rooster had been shouting for a while. Alice rose first, and he could hear her making coffee in the kitchen. That made him miss his mom a little, but not enough to want to be back in that house.
His mom hadn’t said much when she stopped by the other day. Though he had assured her over the phone that he was fine and Noah could grab his stuff, she’d insisted on seeing him. She brought a duffel bag of his clothes, boxes of single-use catheters, his laptop, and his trumpet, which she must have dug out of the back of his closet. Lastly, she pulled his longboard out of the back seat of her car, which made Jake smile. Good old Mom. She would think of that.
They sat at the picnic table under the shade of the great cottonwood tree, and Jake told her about the bees—the queen, her workers, and the drones. He described the pair of owls he heard calling to each other in the woods at night and the coyote he saw at the edge of the pond at dusk. He didn’t tell her that every time he saw that coyote, his heart clenched thinking of Cheney.
His mom sat with her hands balled in her lap, and Jake knew she wasn’t really interested in the bees. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She took off her glasses, pulled a tissue out of the cuff of her sweater, and dabbed at her eyes.
“Mom, it’s okay, really. I’m fine here. You don’t have to worry.”
She shook her head and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “I’m your mother, Jacob. It’s my job to worry about you.”
The unspoken questions hovered there, pressing down on them. What would happen to Jake? What kind of life could he have? Could he take care of himself? Could he get a job? Go to college someday? These questions had arisen when his life exploded a year ago, and no clear answers had yet emerged. Jake avoided talking about the specifics of his circumstance with his mother, but he knew she was just as aware of them as he was.
“Look, Mom. You’re awesome, but I’m still . . . I’m stuck in this town. I need to figure things out. And living with Dad really wasn’t helping. At all.”
She wiped her eyes and nodded. She didn’t even try to defend Ed, which was a relief. Jake hated it when she said his father didn’t mean the things he said and that he really loved Jake. Blah, blah, blah. Anger flared in his belly, thinking of that red, jeering face. He clenched his fists on the table.
“He’s such an asshole, Mom!”
Tansy shook her head, reached into her purse, and took out a cough drop. Jake watched her unwrap it, put it in her mouth, and fold the paper into a small square that she tucked into her purse. In this way she composed herself and donned the serene face she wore whether she was praying or watching her meathead husband shout at the TV or something worse. Jake had first seen that look when Ed threw his dinner plate at the wall and stormed out of the house. His mom swept up the mess and made macaroni and cheese for ten-year-old Jake, humming “Make Me a Channel of Your Peace.”
Now she tried to smile.
“You’re a smart boy, Jacob. You’re going to make a good life for yourself. If you want to stay with Mrs. Holtzman for now, that’s fine. She seems like a good Christian woman, and we are grateful for her kindness.”
Jake smothered a smile as he recalled Alice swearing a blue streak when she had flooded the tractor engine the day before.
His mom squeezed his hand again. “I will always help you, honey. And I will pray for you every day.”
She hugged him and made him promise to call her at least once a week. He watched her drive away and felt a little sad. Sweet Mom.
When he dug through the duffel bag later, he found his sketchbook among the neatly folded jeans, shirts, socks, and underwear. He was startled to realize he hadn’t drawn anything since before the accident. He flipped the book open, and images jumped out like scenes from someone else’s life. Noah riding an ollie at the skatepark and Noah with his trombone. There was one of the cheerleaders in a lineup behind the jazz band at a football game, their faces blurred. There was a group of kids in the bleachers, and one girl with blue hair and braces was making the others laugh.
He turned the page, and his heart somersaulted. Cheney’s sleek body leaping off the dock at Lost Lake. Cheney with his face out the car window, smiling into the wind. Cheney asleep at the end of Jake’s bed, his great monster head resting on his paws, looking somehow dainty. It hurt to remember, and Jake shut the sketchbook.
He picked up an envelope with “Jacob” written on the front. Inside were ten $20 bills and a couple of prayer cards—one of the Virgin Mary Queen Mother and one of St. Giles. His mother had jotted a note on the back of that one: “Son of an Athenian, and a hermit, Giles is the patron saint of the disabled.” Jake laughed. Only Mom. Under the cards was another piece of paper. It was an official form from the state of Oregon. His mom had filled it out, removing herself and Ed as his guardians. As a fully emancipated adult, Jake would now receive all disability checks directly, the form read. She’d filled out the change-of-address section as Alice’s and stuck a stamp on the envelope for him. His monthly disability check was paper-clipped to it, signed over in her perfect script.
Jake shook his head. “Wow! Way to go, Mom.”
He underestimated her. The flowery dresses, carefully curled hair, and polite Christian demeanor concealed a woman of action. Most of the time, she kept the peace and sailed around her brooding husband. She had her limits, though. Jake remembered the time she grew tired of asking Ed to pick up his empty beer cans from the living room in the evening. One day when he was at work, she gathered them in a trash bag and put them on the floor next to the couch with a pillow and a blanket and went to bed early. Ed came home to a dark house, no dinner, and a locked bedroom door. They never spoke of it, but after that his cans went into the recycling.
Jake’s stomach dropped when he thought of what would happen when his father noticed the check was missing from the joint bank account. Jake had heard them arguing about it a couple of weeks after he’d returned home from the rehab center in Portland.
“Jacob needs to be saving for his future, Edward.” His mom’s voice came through the thin wall of his room. Ed said something he couldn’t hear.
“That is not true, Edward,” his mom said.
Jake cracked the door.
“Boy ain’t going nowhere. Always been lazy. Sure as hell not giving him any more of a free ride than he’s already getting.”
Jake clenched his jaw, remembering. Right, Ed. Just joyriding over here in my wheelchair. Still, he hoped his mother wouldn’t suffer the brunt of that.
Now he listened again to the golden reverberation of the hive in front of him. He itched to get closer and see the intricate interior life. He thought about Harry, and his belly roiled with jealousy. The guy didn’t even seem interested in the bees. Jake already knew so much from what he’d read. But the damn hives were too tall, and Jake knew he couldn’t do the work Alice needed.
He looked at Hive No. 6, which included two brood boxes and one honey
super stacked above the hive board. The cover was well above his head. There was no way he could even open the top as he had seen Alice do, let alone see the frames. It was so frustrating. In all the time since he’d been home from rehab, he hadn’t let himself care about anything. Nothing had penetrated the dark bubble he lived in as he relinquished any expectations for the future. Now this shining, living thing called to him—this magical hive life. He flexed his hands, wanting to work. It was right in front of him, but it was impossible.
Jake rolled past the newest hives that Alice had brought from Portland and stopped dead. Painted white and marked No. 13 through No. 24 in black grease pen, these new ones were just one brood box tall. Jake paused next to No. 13. He could easily reach the frames of this hive, he realized with growing excitement. He should wait and ask Alice, he thought. She would be home in a couple of hours. But then he thought, What the hell? What harm could it do?
He closed his eyes and saw the steps he’d watched her take so many times—lighting the smoker, cracking the top, a puff of smoke, easing the top off. He could do that. He listened to the hum, felt it buzz in his chest cavity like there was a golden hive inside his own body. Then he heard something else. The new sound was a completely distinct tone. He listened closely and heard it again. It was an ethereal note somewhat higher than the others, like an overtone. What was that? He had to know.
He grabbed a hive tool and a pair of gloves. When he tried to pull a hat and veil over his head, it wouldn’t fit over his hair. He dropped the hat and eyed the smoker. He’d read that not all beekeepers used smoke anyway. The beekeeper in the OSU videos he’d been watching didn’t even wear a veil or gloves. He dropped the gloves too. He was just going to go in like that—light and fast. He maneuvered his chair in close so No. 13 was on his right, which was his strong side. He closed his eyes and listened. The hum settled in his chest. His breathing slowed, and he heard it again, that golden note above everything else. He hummed along, matching it. He inhaled, exhaled, and cracked the top. It popped off easily because the hive was new and not yet well sealed with propolis. Then he jimmied the inner cover off and set it aside. A trio of bees buzzed up and out, flying around Jake’s face. He sat very still with his hands in his lap and his eyes closed.
The Music of Bees Page 15
