The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  Alice hung up, shoved her phone in her pocket, and put her hands over her face. She walked away from Jake and toward the row of devastated hives, which were closest to Doug’s orchard. She turned back toward him, and he saw the naked grief on her face. A knot of empathy rose in his throat. He heard an engine, and they both looked up to see a sheriff’s department Jeep rumbling down the driveway.

  “Jesus Christ. What now?” Alice muttered, and they moved together to meet it.

  17

  Glory Bee

  Although bees will fly, in search of food, over three miles, still, if it is not within a circle of about two miles in every direction from the Apiary, they will be able to store but little surplus honey.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  For all the solace provided by his notebook—lists of pros and cons, goals and aspirations, to-do lists and checklists and thoughtful word choices—Harry knew it was of no real use to him in moments like this, moments that really counted. Life was rushing at him, and no end of careful journaling could help him figure out what to do. The only words he could conjure to describe this present moment were “uncomfortable,” “unavoidable,” and “inevitable.” Only now did he recognize the main drawback of asking Ronnie for a ride. Namely, that he had to explain to his new boss why a sheriff’s deputy was dropping him off for his first day of work.

  “Tell the truth, kid! It’s easier to remember,” Sal’s voice echoed in his head.

  Nothing about that truth seemed worth sharing with Alice Holtzman. The truth was he was a homeless convicted felon. Even so, as he climbed out of the Jeep, Harry prepared to give it his best shot. This was a fresh start, after all.

  As Alice crossed the yard to meet him, Harry noticed the boy coming along with her. The sight of the chair and the hair, still surprising, distracted him. He dropped his bulging backpack at his feet and wiped his sweating palms on his pants and tried to rally. Surely, there was a shred of confidence in him somewhere. He lifted his chin and tried to feel brave.

  “Hello, Mrs. Holtzman,” he said. “Sorry I’m late.”

  Alice nodded at him, frowning.

  “So, this funny thing happened,” Harry began. “It’s kind of a long story. I was in Seattle in February, and it started to rain, and I went to Pike Place Market—”

  He stopped, kicking himself. Get to the point, Harry, he thought. Don’t tell her your life’s story. He started again.

  “And, so, my uncle lives in BZ Corner. You know, up north on 141?”

  No, he couldn’t start there, with the trailer and Uncle H’s death. Flummoxed, he lost his momentum and didn’t know what to say. Alice Holtzman had shifted her withering gaze to the cop.

  “Hello, Ronnie. I heard you joined the team,” she said.

  The deputy took off his hat, ducked his head like he was in trouble, and said, “Hello, Auntie Alice.”

  Alice frowned at him and looked back at Harry, who wanted to get back in the Jeep and go far, far away. Any scrap of bravery drained out of him under Alice’s gaze. He was a disappointment, plain and simple. There was nothing he could say to explain himself. He wanted to grab his bag and disappear up the road.

  Alice glanced down at his backpack like she’d read his mind.

  “Going somewhere, Mr. Stokes?” she asked.

  He heard his mother’s voice in his head.

  “Where you off to, Harry Stokes?”

  He shook his head and looked down at the gravel in the driveway, feeling vertiginous. The ground tilted, and each blue-gray pebble seemed to magnify and shrink away again. He dragged his eyes back up to Alice’s frowning face and opened his mouth.

  “It’s just . . . the place I was staying . . . the county condemned it. And then Ronnie came . . . and they are tearing it down, so I need to . . .”

  Harry ran out of words and breath at the same time. He didn’t know what else to say. Alice’s face wore the look he’d seen on other people’s faces his whole life: “dumbass.” He could already imagine the conversation with his mother, which would end with her offering bus fare to Florida. He’d ride back across the country on a smelly Greyhound like the one he’d taken west in February. Sal would be pissed off but would let him move in. Then what would he do?

  But now Ronnie was talking.

  “We had a big party for Abuela and Abuelo’s fiftieth last month at Aunt Connie’s,” he was saying. “We missed you. Man it was something! We did a whole roasted goat, you know. Birria and all that. Everyone was there but you and . . .”

  He faltered and then finished, “Everyone but you.”

  Alice just looked at him but didn’t say anything. Ronnie, who barely looked old enough to shave, had just turned twenty-one when his uncle died and Alice had only seen him once or twice since—at the funeral, of course, and once near the post office last winter, when she’d crossed the street to avoid being seen by her dead husband’s family. She didn’t return their calls and had pulled the shades when they drove to the house, which they’d stopped doing months ago. She watched Ronnie, her face blank, as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He turned his deputy’s hat over and over in his hands.

  She heard the crunch of Jake’s wheelchair on the gravel behind her. Ronnie looked over Alice’s shoulder at the young man with the mohawk in the wheelchair. Confusion passed across his face and then embarrassment as the silence bore down on them all. His eyes lit upon the beehives, and he smiled, as if grateful for something to talk about.

  “Oh! The bees! How are your bees doing, Auntie?”

  Ronnie’s mother, Evangelina, was from Michoacán, like so many Mexican immigrants to the valley. Consequently Ronnie was short and dark, but his dad was Buddy’s older brother, Ron. And when he smiled, her nephew looked so much like her dead husband that she could barely stand to look at him. He beamed at her now and pointed at the hives. She thought of her first hive, now dead along the western fence line, and how Buddy had brought it to her parents’ house that Saturday after the fair. Buddy laughing at himself in his bulky bee suit. Buddy tap-dancing across the yard in it to make her laugh. Alice’s heart, which had folded in two at the sight of her nephew, now broke wide open.

  She put her hands on her knees and struggled to breathe. The feeling came crashing down on her, and she couldn’t get away. She felt the hole inside her open up right there in the driveway. Her darling Buddy. The stupid, pointless circumstances of his death. Alice felt herself split in two, and her anguish poured out. It was a primal, animal grief.

  Ronnie froze, and Harry looked ready to run. The sounds that spilled from Alice’s mouth didn’t seem like English or even quite human. The two young men were at a complete loss—both silent and terrified.

  But Jake was unafraid. Sitting behind her in the driveway, he heard only her terrible sorrow. He recognized very clearly that Alice was in pain, which was something like the others probably couldn’t. He pushed his chair forward until he was right beside her. Then he reached out and took her by the wrist with his slender hand.

  “Hey, Alice. Take a breath.”

  He didn’t raise his voice, and he didn’t have to.

  She fell silent. She looked down at Jake and then back at her nephew.

  “Buddy,” she said.

  Her legs failed, and the ground caught her. She put her hands over her face and wept like a child, like she hadn’t since that day the state police came to her front door and told her that her funny, kind husband had been in an accident and pronounced dead at the scene. It washed over her again, the terrible loss that opened up and opened up until it was impossible to contain. It had finally flooded her life.

  Jake put his hand on her shoulder and patted her lightly. Alice sat in the driveway and wept with the sun shining down and the thoughtless beauty of spring swelling around them.

  “It’s okay, Alice,” he murmured. “It’s gonna be okay.”


  It was all he could think of to say, but in that moment, it was enough. His mother had said the same thing to him, over and over again last year as she sat next to his hospital bed. He hadn’t believed her then, but it had helped somehow, to hear it.

  Jake knew what it felt like when you finally understood that the life you had was gone and you would never, ever get it back. For him, it had come in a brutal moment, early in rehab, when he lay on a therapy mat, drenched in sweat and trying to relearn how to sit up on his own. That day he had felt like a broken version of himself.

  He had lived with that loss for more than a year now. Every morning the sight of the chair would bring it all back. His old life was gone, and he would never be okay again. But that wasn’t the truth at all. Now Jake understood that his life had been shifting imperceptibly for months. He didn’t feel broken, and he hadn’t for some time. He was becoming something else. Sitting there with Alice, he realized he had come out the other side. His reference point for the accident had been “before.” Now there was “after.” His after was the farm. His after was the bees. His after was helping his new friend Alice bear her terrible sorrow simply because he could.

  Alice sat with her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving. The three young men looked at each other and didn’t speak. They just waited, not knowing what else to do.

  Then they all heard it—a terrible sobbing bark, an anguished canine shout from the back seat of the Jeep and a scrabbling of nails at the window as the dog tried like mad to get to the boy he hadn’t seen in over a year.

  Years later, Jake was certain he would never forget the vivid details of the day Cheney came back. The sweet smell of lilacs hung thick in Alice’s yard. A thrush called out of the forest just past the meadow. He was wearing his favorite Ramone’s T-shirt. And he felt an impossible burst of joy when he heard the beloved, familiar bark that he’d thought was lost forever.

  Harry struggled with the Jeep door. It was bad enough that Alice Holtzman sounded ready to castrate them all. Now this stray he’d found was raising holy hell.

  Cheney leapt out of the Jeep and threw his lanky body at Jake, threatening to tip the wheelchair backward. He lapped furiously at the boy’s face. Then he ran to Alice and shoved his snout into her hair, before returning to Jake. Then he bounded off across the field like a giant brindled jackrabbit, singing a happy cry as if his joy was too large to be contained in his body and must be shared with the great wide world.

  Alice came back to herself then. She took out her bandana, wiped her face, and blew her nose. She pushed herself up off the ground with a small grunt and looked at Jake. The boy watched the dog sprinting in a wild figure eight with tears streaming down his face. He laughed and laughed and couldn’t speak.

  Harry was now certain he’d lost this job before he’d even started. “I’m so sorry. I just— I found him in the woods, and I couldn’t leave him up there. Ronnie said he’d take him to the shelter for me,” he said.

  Alice watched the dog tear back to the boy and collapse in his lap. Jake put his arms around Cheney’s neck and buried his face in the dog’s big crazy ears.

  Alice cleared her throat. “That’s all right, Harry. I think this dog belongs to Jake. Well, okay.” She took a deep breath. “Why don’t we all go sit down for a minute and get ourselves sorted? Come on, Ronnie. You can help me get some drinks.”

  And that was how Alice Holtzman, aged forty-four, assistant to the county planning director, beekeeper, orphan, widow, and mother to no one, found herself sitting under the cottonwood tree with three young men, drinking lemonade and listening to their stories. It was an odd little group gathered there, crying and laughing by turns. But it happened like that sometimes. Sorrow released a person from common constraints, and in their grief they could be their true, bald selves. If others chose to witness that, to truly see others, well, it changed everything.

  Jake sat with one hand on Cheney’s neck as if he couldn’t bear to stop touching him. He told them that Cheney had disappeared while he was in the hospital. Harry explained how he’d mistaken Cheney for a wild animal. Ronnie surprised them all by breaking down in tears as he told Alice how much he missed his uncle. Of course he did, Alice thought. Ronnie had grown up with Buddy. He’d been like a second father to the boy. Of course they missed him, all of the Ryans, as much or maybe even more than she did. Buddy had belonged to all of them.

  Ronnie wiped his sleeve across his eyes and sniffled. “I miss you too, Auntie. We all do,” he said.

  Alice reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “I’ve missed you too, Ronnie. I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you all. I really am.”

  Ronnie smiled and shook his head. “It’s okay, Auntie. We understand. Mom said you just needed time.”

  She smiled back. “I guess so,” she said.

  “Look out now, though. Once they hear, you won’t chase ’em off. The Ryans are going to be crawling all over this place. Salazars too. You know how we do! Always somebody’s birthday or anniversary or quinceañera. Oh, right. Angie’s is next weekend. Connie’s youngest. See, I told you! Now you are officially invited. All of you!” He gestured to include Harry and Jake.

  Alice laughed and said that sounded just great. She knew Ronnie’s dad would feel differently, but she didn’t want to hurt her nephew’s feelings, so she didn’t say anything. Ronnie probably didn’t know what had passed between her and Ron Senior on the day that Buddy died, all that had been said and could never be unsaid.

  Alice asked Jake to give Harry a tour of the farm. In the barn, he pointed out the tool bench, the chicken supplies, and the beekeeping equipment. Cheney padded alongside them, sniffing and marking fence posts as he went. Jake watched his skinny butt shift from side to side and saw his ribs poking through his dirty fur. The two young men stopped at the entrance to the apiary. Cheney nosed the air and snapped his big teeth at the darting golden bodies.

  “I guess Alice will show you the hives later,” Jake said, running his hand along the dog’s body from shoulder to flank, thrilling to touch him again. He hesitated, then said, “She had some bad news about them earlier today, so don’t ask too many questions, you know?”

  Harry nodded. He was shocked that he was still employed and wasn’t going to ask anyone anything. His stomach uncoiled loudly.

  Jake grinned. “Come on. You can help me with dinner.”

  The two young men went in the house, and Cheney ran around to the back porch to the slider door. Jake put the chicken chili on simmer and dug in the fridge for some scraps for the dog—leftover pancakes, which he mixed with four eggs in a pie pan. Balancing it on his lap, he opened the slider, lowered the pan to the porch, and watched the dog gulp it down. Jake retrieved the pan and filled it with water. The big dog emptied it three times and then collapsed with his nose on his paws and gazed up at the boy with loving eyes.

  Jake felt his heart swell and closed the screen door. “Tell me how you found him again?”

  Harry repeated the story about the chicken feed bucket, and Jake laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. They both pretended it was because the image was hilarious and not because Jake’s heart was mending back together.

  Jake filled a pitcher with water and handed it to Harry. He pulled plates and glasses out of the cupboards, and together they set the table.

  “So, is Mrs. Holtzman a friend of your folks or something?” Harry asked, laying out the silverware.

  Jake laughed. “No, she’s not. And don’t call her Mrs. Holtzman, or she’ll kick your ass. It’s Alice. Just Alice.” He paused and rubbed his scalp. “She, kind of, rescued me? I guess that’s the easiest way to put it. My parents . . .”

  He trailed off and shook his head. “I’m just staying here for a while.”

  Harry nodded. He wasn’t about to quiz anyone about their origins.

  “So, are you excited about the bees?” Jake asked, trying to keep the jealo
usy out of his voice.

  Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. The ad said light construction and chores. I don’t know anything about bees.”

  Jake grinned at him. “They’re pretty cool, man. That’s all I can say. They’ll kinda blow your mind.”

  Alice and Ronnie came inside, and the four of them sat around the kitchen table and ate Jake’s chili. Alice wanted to laugh but knew she shouldn’t. These poor boys had seen enough lady crazy for one day. Still, it was funny. Three dinner guests on Alice Island.

  Harry shook hands with Ronnie before he left. “Thanks, man,” he said.

  “No, thank you, man,” Ronnie said, his voice low. “Fucking gun. Jesus!”

  “No worries,” Harry said.

  Alice walked Ronnie out to the Jeep. She hugged her nephew and promised she would call the family about Angie’s party. Ronnie kissed her on the cheek and left.

  Alice turned back to the house and saw Cheney, his head cocked, considering Red Head Ned, who had locked the dog in his glare and was stalking toward him. Alice pointed at the chicken yard and said, “No chickens. Understand? Watch yourself there, big dog. Or you’ll be homeless again.”

  Cheney looked at her, blinked, and trotted back toward the house. She sighed. First a teenager, and now a dog and a twentysomething. She shook her head. She’d told Harry he could sleep in the bunkroom until he found a place.

  Alice shoved her hands in her pockets and cast a glance at her hives. Her eyes landed on the dead ones. Even from a distance, they looked so still. She would start there with Harry, she decided. She would have him take them apart and scrape out all the wax and bodies. First things first. There was still enough light to show Harry the bees.

  Harry’s introduction to the bees was quick, but not in the way Alice had expected. It took less than ten seconds for Harry to communicate to Alice, Jake, Cheney, and any neighbors within a mile that the bees scared the absolute shit out of him.