The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  When he awoke, the woods were quiet. The previous day’s events came at him out of order, like cabinet doors popping open—the deli-samples lady frowning, the bees falling out of the air, Yogi with his eyes closed, the kid with the mohawk, the burrito man, his uncle struggling to breathe, the empty hospital bed. He sat up and swung his legs over the bunk. The catfish clock said it was after 1:00 p.m.

  He looked at himself in the mirror, his shirtless skinny torso above sagging long johns. He stood up straighter and took a deep breath. This was the first day of a new life, he pledged to himself. He would fix this place up—get the water going again and rewire the electricity. He could start over here. He would save up and get a car. He would meet people. He thought of Yogi and the kite beach. Why not? Maybe it wasn’t so hard to make friends. He opened the door and climbed down the ladder to take a whiz.

  Something shifted in the trash pile, and a shape moved toward him with an animal swiftness. Cougar? Coyote? Rabid raccoon? It was large and white and brown. It was that thing lurking in the woods last night. He was sure of it.

  Harry yelped, scrambled for the ladder, and lost his footing. He heard a strange whining sound. He turned to see the creature standing stock still. It had a broad brindled body, large paws, and a long, thick tail. Where a head should have been there was a large plastic bucket labeled “Premium Chicken Feed.” The dog’s bark was muffled by the plastic. Harry stood and approached slowly, grasped the container, and pulled. As it came free, Harry saw an enormous pair of ears, wide eyes, and a giant mouth, which the dog opened to reveal a huge set of teeth. Harry stepped back, and the dog exploded at him.

  The big snout hit him first and then the paws pummeled his chest before stopping abruptly. When he opened his eyes, he saw the dog cantering away in a wide circle around the clearing. It turned on a dime and galloped back to Harry, threw its paws on his chest, and licked his face before running off again. Harry watched the big animal running in wide, happy circles. It tore into the woods toward the river and then loped back, soaking wet, and dropped at Harry’s feet with a soggy thump.

  Harry had never been around dogs much, but this one seemed to be smiling. He reached down, tentative, to pet its head. The animal shoved its snout into Harry’s hand and snorted, then flipped over on its back, exposing matted fur and a pink belly. Harry patted it, and the dog wriggled on its spine. A squirrel scolded, and the dog jumped up and bolted away. Harry laughed, relieved, and realized he still needed to pee. As he reached into the fly of his now muddy long johns, he heard the sound of an engine and turned. A Jeep rumbled up the driveway and stopped. The seal on the door read “Hood River County Sheriff’s Department.”

  The short man who stepped out was dark-haired and wore a neatly pressed brown uniform. He glanced at Harry, who still had his hand down his fly. He took it out and then didn’t know where to put it, so he clasped his hands behind his shirtless back. The officer reached into the car and pulled out a hat, which he placed on his head and straightened with both hands. It seemed too big and somehow made him look like a Boy Scout. He shut the Jeep door and marched up the driveway, his shiny shoes kicking up dust. The guy was Latino and about Harry’s age. He was handsome and had a super-clean shave. Harry fingered his upper lip regretfully.

  “Good morning, sir,” the man said. “I’m a deputy with the Hood River County Sheriff’s Department.”

  With two fingers, he extended a business card, which Harry took, glanced at, and then, having no pocket, closed in his hand. The deputy asked if this was Harold Goodwin’s residence.

  “Yes,” Harry said, finding his voice, “he’s my uncle. Was my uncle.”

  The man nodded, his face impassive. “I’m sorry for your loss, sir. We understand Mr. Goodwin passed.”

  Harry nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “He’d been sick for a while, so . . .”

  His voice trailed off as he followed the deputy’s gaze around the mess of the yard, the outhouse, the garbage pile, the crazy ladder.

  “We’ve been trying to get in touch with your uncle for some time,” the man said. “I went to see him at Skyline the last time he was admitted. The county condemned this trailer in January, but your uncle refused to talk to me.”

  He held up a piece of paper with a formal-looking stamp on it. “I’m going to have to ask you to vacate the premises. There’s a crew coming to pull it out.”

  They’d be hauling the trailer to the landfill, he said. Harry should clear out anything he wanted to keep immediately.

  His heart sank. So much for his plans to fix up the trailer. So much for a fresh start.

  “But I—I don’t have anywhere else to live,” he said. He needed two weeks, he explained. He had just started a new job, and he’d have some money to get a place when he got paid.

  The cop was unmoved and said there was nothing he could do about it. He shrugged and tucked the paper inside his jacket.

  That shrug. Flickers of memory. Sam sitting in front of him during his one visit to the jail.

  “You volunteered to drive, man,” he’d said, and shrugged.

  The school principal picking up the phone to call his mother as Harry sat, snot running down his upper lip, insisting he hadn’t been the one stealing money from the little canteen at the junior high.

  “Don’t be such a follower, Harry,” the principal had said.

  Moira catching his eye at the barbecue and waving but not coming to talk to him.

  Harry felt a small flame ignite in his chest. The flame formed a word, and the word was no. He was tired of being the nice guy and not getting a break. He just needed a break. Two weeks was all he needed.

  He heard a thumping noise, and the dog thundered out of the woods behind the deputy, his body sleek and wet from the river. He tore between the two men, then back again, grazing their knees. The cop yelped, and Harry started to laugh, but then he saw the gun. A squirrel scolded, the dog disappeared, and the gun flashed in the sunlight. Harry’s eye followed the barrel as it whipped up to the sky and past his face. He closed his eyes.

  The sound of the gunshot was deafening, and Harry put his hands over his ears as time slowed. When he opened them, the small guy was on his knees with his hat off and his face the color of paper.

  “Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!” he said. “I didn’t hit you, did I? Did I?!”

  Harry looked down at his bare arms and chest, which were streaked with mud from the dog, and shook his head.

  The deputy stood and paced, swearing and clutching his hat. He said something about getting written up again and how they were going to dock his pay or fucking fire him this time. He was such an idiot, he said, clearly to himself and not to Harry.

  “Thought it was a fucking wolf or a coyote or something!” he said, his voice rising. “I mean, they send me up here into the damn woods by myself and this hijo de puta comes flying—!”

  Then he lapsed into rapid Spanish that Harry couldn’t understand.

  Harry felt bad for the guy and started to reassure him, to tell him it was fine, that nothing had happened. That was what he would normally have done. But then that flame came back, the small coal in his chest. No, it wasn’t fine. He could have been shot! He just needed two lousy weeks. And he still needed to pee. He watched the cop stop pacing to check the safety again on his gun. He felt some kind of resolve settle in him then. Harry squared his shoulders and looked the guy in the eye, stating his case again. Please, he said.

  The deputy shook his head. “I’m really sorry, man. I wish I could help you, but the crew is already scheduled. And I’m new. Nobody listens to me. They think I’m a moron. And if anyone finds out about the gun—”

  He looked like he might cry and looked away. He really did seem sorry. Harry asked him to wait a minute, saying that he had to take a leak. While he was peeing, he looked around the yard, at the trailer, and at the Schwinn, and he formed a plan. He walked back to the deputy
, who was leaning against the Jeep and turning his hat over and over in his hands.

  “Can you give me a ride to town?” Harry asked.

  The guy sighed and looked out toward Highway 141.

  “I can’t take you now. I have a meeting at the Mt. Adams Ranger Station. But I can swing back by here in a couple of hours, on my way down the hill.”

  Harry nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  The deputy left and Harry gathered his stuff, which didn’t take long.

  While he waited for the guy to return, he sat on the steps with his notebook and made a list about his goals for the new job. The dog returned from its sprint through the woods and curled up at his feet. They both dozed in the afternoon sunshine.

  When the deputy reappeared, Harry climbed into the front seat of the Jeep and slung his backpack at his feet. From Uncle H’s trailer, he took only two of his uncle’s wool shirts, the bird book, and the cribbage board. He cast a final look back at the trailer as they pulled away. It would soon be in the landfill. The garbage pile would be raked clean. The angry raccoons would return in the dark and find nothing.

  The dog paced happily in the back seat, thrilled to be on the move. The deputy, who said his name was Ronnie, had agreed to take him to the animal shelter after he dropped Harry off.

  Harry looked out the window as the Jeep sped down the highway. He would go to work. Then he would figure out where to stay. He thought of Yogi. He leaned back in the seat and felt the breeze on his face. He asked himself what his place was within this beautiful atmospheric moment—just this one. Right here. Right now. He waited, listening to the universe, listening hard. But there was no answer.

  15

  Queen Right

  There is one trait in the character of bees which is worthy of profound respect. Such is their indomitable energy and perseverance, that under circumstances apparently hopeless, they labor to the utmost to retrieve their losses and sustain the sinking State.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  Honeybees have been clocked flying as fast as twenty miles per hour—a speedy clip for an insect that weighs about a tenth of a gram. But that is nothing compared to the velocity at which news travels in a small town. Alice found the Hood River News propped on her desk in the morning. Pete’s front-page photo had captured Alice and Stan holding the clipboard between them like a couple cutting a wedding cake. Stan was smiling, and Alice was not. The headline read, “Watershed Alliance Rallies against Cascadia Contract.” Alice was identified as Alice Holtzman, county resident. Someone, probably Nancy, had drawn a smiley face over their heads in ballpoint pen.

  Alice scanned the story, which said nothing she didn’t already know. Pete detailed the watershed group’s objections to the county contract with SupraGro and briefly mentioned the lawsuits other communities had filed against the company in the past. There was no quote from her, although the caption said she was among other “concerned citizens” at the rally. Thanks for nothing, Pete. The county had offered no official comment, the story read.

  She dropped the paper into the recycling, sat down, and turned on her computer. The door to Bill’s office opened, and Nancy came out, giggling as she closed it. She grinned at Alice. Nancy was forty-six years old but would wear that naughty little girl face to her grave, Alice thought.

  “Good morning, Miss Front Page!” she said, wiggling her fingertips at Alice. “It’s all paparazzi and tall dark strangers these days, eh?”

  “You’re here early, Nance,” Alice said. Nancy never got to work before Alice.

  Nancy pointed over her shoulder at Bill’s door. “He’s in this morning.”

  She opened her email and saw the message: all-staff meeting, Wednesday 9:30 a.m. It was dated 7:36 p.m. yesterday. Since when were they supposed to be checking email after hours?

  Her stomach dropped as she read the message. All county employees were expected at a mandatory review of compliance agreements with privately held stakeholders. It was about the watershed protest, Alice thought. Alice had been through this before when the Cascadia oil train had derailed in Mosier and threatened the county drinking water, orchard irrigation, and the entire watershed along that stretch of river. The normally polite citizens were angry and had staged a protest downtown. The county lawyers had convened a similar meeting then to remind them that as county employees, they were bound to silence respecting local contracts. Translation: don’t talk about the oil spill.

  At the time, Alice hadn’t thought much about the county’s defensive posturing. She’d been busy helping her parents move, and though the oil spill distressed her, she really believed the county would do the right thing, which was to force Cascadia to clean up the sidelined railcars and greasy oil before they began running trains along the river again. They should also make Cascadia set speed limits to decrease the likelihood of a future derailment. Only the county hadn’t made Cascadia do any of that. It had taken a lawsuit from the watershed group, hadn’t it?

  Alice fumed as she scrolled through the rest of her email. Why not let people talk to each other? They were members of this community, not county robots. And wasn’t the county supposed to be looking out for its residents?

  Apparently, Alice wasn’t the only one who missed the after-hours email. There was a scramble for seats in the conference room. Bill sat at the head of the table, breathing through his nose and drumming his fingers on the table. He tugged his sweater down over his belly as he waited for people to settle.

  Nancy was teasing the new intern, Casey, about a picture of his girlfriend on his phone. The kid was blushing up the back of his neck into his red hair. Alice could smell the hot plastic stir stick in Nancy’s eternal cup of coffee. Chairs squeaked and groaned as people made room for each other.

  Bill cleared his throat. “Good morning. Thank you, everyone, for being here. I think you all know why we’ve gathered, so I’ll get right to it.”

  And back to my golf game, Alice thought.

  Bill put on his glasses and read from a piece of paper. “‘All employees of Hood River County are bound by the individual nondisclosure agreements they signed upon entering employment, and which are understood to renew automatically each year. Said agreements include any and all county business as well as affairs among and between individual contractors and private corporations.’”

  Bill dropped the paper on the table and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, coughed, and mopped at his mouth. “I’ll turn it over to Legal now for the specifics.”

  The county’s lead attorney, Jim Murphy, gave a general wave from where he sat at the front of the room. Skinny and amicable, Jim wore a faded button-down shirt and rumpled khakis. He opened his laptop and began to explain the fine print of the nondisclosure agreement. Alice wasn’t really listening. She was thinking about the Cascadia oil spill in Mosier. She was thinking about the neonicotinoids in SupraGro pesticides that had killed the bees in Nebraska and other states. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bill lean back in his chair and thought he was looking at her, but he was looking past her at Nancy, who was still whispering to Casey.

  Jim, reading through the legalese, suddenly stopped. “Yes, Rich. Question?”

  All eyes turned to Rich Carlson, who had his hand up. Rich lowered his polyester-sheathed arm and folded his hands in front of him like an altar boy.

  “How would that last article affect an employee of the county? That section about communication with the media, I mean?”

  Jim looked down at the screen and back at Rich. “Well, I think the terms are pretty clear, Rich. It just means that no county employee is authorized to speak to the media regarding any county policy unless so directed by the leadership of the organization. In other words, no interviews.”

  “Thank you, Jim,” Rich said. He glanced at Alice, leaned forward, and typed on his laptop, his thin lips curled into a smirk.

  Alice thought of Pe
te’s photo, and her face grew hot.

  “Anything else there, Rich? Okay, then. I’ll keep going,” Jim said.

  After the meeting, Alice waited for her colleagues to file out of the room. She could see Rich talking to someone in the hallway and blocking everyone’s way out. He tapped his bald spot with his fingertips as he talked. The memory arose of the mistletoe, Rich’s dry lips. She shuddered. Jim, one of the last to leave, caught her eye and winked.

  Alice returned to her office, hoping to find Bill. She wanted to go over the drafts of the waterfront project regulations for her afternoon meeting at the building site. But Bill’s office was dark. Alice sighed. He’d probably headed home already. Nancy’s chair was empty too. Alice sat down, knowing she should work on the weekly compliance reports. Instead, she opened Google and typed “SupraGro honeybee death.”

  There it was, story after story, and not just on beekeeping forums. There were articles in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oklahoma Observer, and Huffington Post. The most recent lawsuit was in Sacramento, where commercial beekeepers had reported losses of 75 percent over the year before. Scientists had traced the deaths to SupraGro used on almond orchards in and around California’s Central Valley. That lawsuit was significant because the almond industry was so heavily dependent upon commercial beekeepers. California had so few honeybees remaining that it had to truck in hives from all over the West to pollinate its crops. That meant that the bees that had died had come from Oregon, Washington, Montana, and Canada. An estimated seven million honeybees died during a five-day period.

  Alice kept reading, poring over the stories about SupraGro’s refusal to even consider the science behind the complaints in county after county around the West. When Nancy returned, Alice reopened her reports and ignored her colleague, who wanted to gossip about Jim Murphy and his much younger wife. She pouted when Alice wouldn’t join her for a smoothie at Ground and left. The morning dragged. Alice tried to focus on work, but her mind was drawn back to the news stories about the bees and the multistate lawsuit against SupraGro. Stan had to know about that, didn’t he? Was the Watershed Alliance in that fight? Alice itched to make some phone calls, calls she couldn’t make at work—to Stan, Chuck Sauer from the local beekeeping club, and that guy at the state ag office . . . What was his name? Michaels?