The Music of Bees

by Eileen Garvin

  “Serious?”

  “Yeah. Old-school, I know. Did you see Lords of Dogtown?”

  “Hells yeah!” Jake said, and quoted the line from the famous pool skating scene. “‘I can’t feel my feet! But then again, I can never feel my feet.’”

  They both laughed, but then Harry looked at Jake’s chair and stopped laughing.

  Harry pried another frame out of the box and brushed the bee bodies, less gingerly now, into the waiting bin.

  “I was at the waterfront the other day, and I saw this dude longboarding around the parking lot with a kite. Like a kiteboarding kite, you know. But a really small one? He was hauling ass!” Harry said.

  Jake couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the waterfront and adjacent skate park, his old haunting grounds. He missed the water and the sky, the sight of Cheney galloping along the sandbar, chasing seagulls and biting the waves.

  “This guy I met said he would teach me how to kite for free,” Harry said. “He said he’d lend me gear and everything.” His voice rose with enthusiasm and then trailed off. “I don’t know, though.”

  “Can I come?” Jake asked.

  “What?”

  “To the kite beach. Can I come with you? And, dude, if someone offers you free kite lessons, you’d be stupid to say no. Just saying.”

  “Yeah, sure. You can come with me. He said come down any day. He’s always there.”

  Jake smiled to himself—the river, the wind, the sandbar. How long had it been?

  The two worked together in a companionable silence until Jake left with Alice for the beekeeping meeting.

  After that, their household had fallen into a routine of sorts as the days passed. It was uneasy at first. Harry was so awkward, nervous that he was going to say the wrong thing to Alice. He lingered out in the shop unless invited inside. His worry was palpable and made her cranky. One night, Alice came out to call them in for dinner, and Harry dropped the broom with a clatter. She stood in the doorway, surveying the room, which Harry had reorganized neatly. He began apologizing for moving things around, and Alice sighed and crossed her arms.

  “Harry, we obviously need some ground rules here.”

  She laid it out plainly for him. The shop was his domain, and he could rearrange it however he saw fit, and it looked nice and tidy, by the way. He was welcome in the house when he wasn’t working. She’d like him to take over table setting and dishes. He could use the computer. He could use the washer and dryer. But he had to stop apologizing every time he opened his mouth. If he didn’t stop doing that, she was going to have to ask him to leave. Jake knew this last part was a joke, but Harry didn’t.

  “Okay, Mrs.—I mean, Alice. I’m sorry— I didn’t—” he stammered, and clapped a hand over his mouth.

  Alice’s laugh rang in the rafters. “Don’t worry, Harry. I’ll give you that one for free. Now come in for dinner.”

  Now at the breakfast table with Harry, Jake pulled out the hive diary and told him about how the newest hives were developing. Harry had spent several days just catching up on maintenance around the farm for Alice. Now she wanted him to build brood boxes with top entrances for half of the newest hives so she could track their progress and compare them to the other hives with traditional bottom entrances.

  Harry nodded. “I’m building the first ones today,” he said. “For Hives Thirteen through Eighteen.”

  Out in the barn, Harry flipped on the shop lights. Jake rolled up to the workbench and pulled down one of the empty brood boxes onto his lap and flipped it over.

  “So how are you going to do the top entrances, exactly?”

  Harry explained how he would construct the new brood boxes like the old ones, only the entrance would be at the top. He pointed to Alice’s sketch of what she wanted.

  “I need to cut top entrances on the new boxes and then router out the ledges for the frames to hang on.”

  “They’re called rabbets,” Jake said, showing off. “The ledges.”

  “Oh. Rabbets. Okay, then I guess Alice is going to move the frames into the new boxes and use the same covers and everything?”

  “You don’t sound so sure, man,” Jake said.

  Harry’s brow furrowed. “I think that’s what she said?”

  “I’m kidding, Stokes! Yeah, we’re going to transfer the frames. Then we’ll turn the old boxes into upper brood boxes. So you’ll have to block the old entrances and add the rabbets to those?”

  “Yeah, I’ll need to make sure the frames hang right in those to . . . ,” Harry said.

  He put down the brood box on the workbench and stared at it. Then he went outside to look at the hives, then came back and looked at the brood box, mumbling to himself.

  Jake watched him.

  “Hand me that cover, would you, Jake?”

  He passed the cover to Harry, who continued to murmur to himself. He flipped the box over and put the top on, then poked a finger underneath the ridge to measure the space left there. He grabbed a tape measure from the bench and tucked it into the gap.

  “What’s bee space again? Half an inch?”

  Jake shook his head. “Three-eighths.”

  Harry straightened and grinned. He pointed at the brood box. “One down and five to go,” he said, grinning.

  Jake looked at him, puzzled. Harry showed him the tape measure.

  “There’s enough room for the entrance under the telescoping cover. And the rabbets are built into these boxes already. They’re reversible. All we have to do is flip them upside down, and voilà, the bottom entrance is the top!”

  Jake looked at the box, and his understanding dawned. “That’s another one for Stokes! Working smarter, not harder!”

  He high-fived Harry and rolled back, looking at the brood box.

  “We’ll still need to transfer the frames,” Jake said, his enthusiasm rising. “If we put the frames from Hive Thirteen in this one, then we can flip that brood box and transfer the frames from Hive Fourteen and so on. Super easy,” he said.

  These young hives, still only one brood box tall, remained accessible to him. He could do this on his own. He knew he could.

  “I think I could change them all out this morning,” he said, talking more to himself than to Harry. “I just need to put this one like this, and the other one like—”

  He took an empty frame and moved it through the air, trying to sketch the workflow of the transfer from the side of his chair. But it wouldn’t work. He couldn’t lean over two hives placed side by side on his right. And he didn’t have the muscle strength to work one on his left side. Jake felt the bitter edges of his physical limitations then.

  He let out a short, unhappy laugh. “Well, fuck. I can’t do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Reach over two box lengths. Or over my lap. It’s too far and—”

  He tried to laugh it off and turned the frame over and over in his hands. But this was it, he knew. He had reached the end of his time with the hives. These new ones would get their second brood boxes by next week, and they would be too tall for him to work. He couldn’t do this last goddamn thing. Disappointment rose in his throat and choked him.

  “There’s bee space, and then there’s Jake space. It’s fine. I just—Fuck!”

  He threw the frame, which bounced off the shop floor and landed near the snoring dog. Cheney jumped up and slunk out of the barn with a hurt look.

  Harry was watching him, perplexed.

  Just like my dad, Jake thought. I’m such an asshole. He pushed his chair after the dog, but Cheney had trotted out of sight. He sighed and spun his chair to face Harry.

  “Sorry, man. It’s just . . . frustrating. I thought I could, but we’ll have to wait for Alice. Still, she’ll be really psyched that you figured out how to reverse them. Nice job, Harry.”

  Harry was staring at a spot
just over Jake’s shoulder and mumbling to himself. He stretched his arms out on either side of him.

  “—To be able to slide under it. That’s fourteen times two, which is only twenty-eight. Not so bad,” he muttered.

  “Hold your hands out,” he commanded.

  Jake complied, and Harry stretched the measuring tape between them and then measured the width of the brood box.

  “—Times two. Yeah, that’ll work,” he said to himself. He straightened up and smiled at Jake. “You just need a workbench, man.”

  He measured the height of Jake’s chair from the armrests and Jake’s natural reach, and in half an hour, Harry had manufactured a portable table that could hold two brood boxes, side by side, over Jake’s lap. Jake rolled his chair under the table and laughed.

  “You’re a fucking genius, Stokes!”

  The older boy flushed with pleasure. “It’s no big deal. Just some wood and nails.”

  “Dude, you’re talking to someone who flunked shop class.”

  Now Harry laughed, incredulous. “Seriously? How does anyone flunk shop?”

  Jake leaned his bald head back, looked up at the ceiling, and counted on his fingers. “Let’s see: Don’t show up. Show up super baked. Show up late and fail to complete the assignment. Oh, and superglue a girl’s books to the desk.”

  That last one had been Noah’s idea, but Jake was the one who did it. It had somehow seemed hilarious that day. He laughed, but Harry wasn’t smiling.

  “Wow. That’s weird, man. I just . . . that doesn’t seem like something you would do,” Harry said.

  Jake cocked his head. “Which part?”

  “Well, any of it,” Harry said. “I mean, you’re so solid with everything around here.”

  Jake realized it was true. He wouldn’t fuck around like that at Alice’s. Not with the bees or anything at the farm.

  “That was before,” he said quietly.

  Harry nodded and eyed the chair. “But you graduated, right?”

  Jake barked a laugh. “Well, I have a diploma! They can’t take it back.”

  He shook his head and looked at the brood boxes, then out at the apiary. This was his new life, he reminded himself. He was assistant to the beekeeper. He knew what to do.

  “Listen, Harry. I think I can do this pretty quickly. But I’m going to need some help.”

  Jake told him to go wash his hands and face, brush his teeth, and change into a clean shirt.

  “Just trust me,” he said.

  When Harry reappeared, Jake pointed to the full bee suit, and Harry donned it without protest.

  “Tuck your pants into your boots. Here.” Jake handed him a pair of gloves. Harry pulled them on with shaking hands.

  “Sit down, man.”

  Harry sat, breathing sharp, shallow breaths.

  “Breathe, Harry.”

  The older boy inhaled a quivering breath and let it out in a puff.

  “Listen. If you are calm, they will be calm. If you freak out and slap at them like you did before, they will release a stress hormone and come after you. And you cannot drop the brood box or put it down fast, okay?”

  Harry blinked and nodded.

  “Good. I’m going to tell you what to do at each step. You just have to listen to me. Pretend you are in slo-mo. Like you are underwater, like Tai Chi. No joke. Can you do that?”

  “Yeah. I can do that.”

  Jake made him take ten slow breaths, and then he zipped the screened hood over Harry’s head.

  Cheney lay panting in the sunny grass and watched the two young men enter the apiary—one dressed like an astronaut and the other in an orange T-shirt and jeans, his bald head shining in the sun. Jake guided Harry through prying the first brood box from its stand using the hive tool. Then Harry slowly lifted the box up onto the makeshift workstation over Jake’s lap next to the empty brood box. Harry hurried to a safer distance and unzipped his hood. Jake sat with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and thinking through the steps he would take. When he opened his eyes, he saw Harry watching him. He loosened the top of the hive and gently lifted if off. Two or three bees buzzed out and hovered near Jake’s face, then around his shirt. One landed on his newly bald head, and he smiled.

  “Hello, ladies,” he murmured. “The movers are here. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  One by one, he loosened and transferred the frames into the flipped brood box with the entrance now at the top, and then he replaced the lid. He waved at Harry.

  “Okay, Stokes. This one is done. Take ’er back!”

  Watching Jake’s quiet engagement with the bees seemed to have emboldened him, and Harry was calmer then. The six brood boxes were transferred in an hour. They could see that the foraging bees were finding their way through the top entrances into the new hives. Jake slapped his palms together.

  “Shit, we’re done for the day,” he said.

  He glanced up at the big pines on the edge of the meadow, which were tossing their shaggy branches in the westerly wind.

  “Wind’s up! I say we hit the kite beach!”

  20

  Bee Dance

  Bees when on the wing intercommunicate with such surprising rapidity, that telegraphic signals are scarcely more instantaneous.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  Each member of a honeybee colony is united by a common bond—the pheromone of their mother and queen, a scent that spreads through the hive as a mark of belonging. That lemony pheromone is a constant reassurance to each of the fifty thousand murmuring bees that she is home. Humans have no such obvious interconnections, at least outside of their families. And Jake, of course, did not feel a sense of belonging even within his family home. Instead, home was something he yearned to escape, along with the entire town of Hood River.

  During his first weeks in the hospital, he’d drawn the map of Hood River over and over again in his mind. The Heights neighborhood where the locals lived and shopped. Downtown’s three square blocks of boutiques, bars, and restaurants, where tourists strolled along, coffees in hand, blocking traffic as they meandered through the crosswalks. The waterfront where locals and visitors converged. This last was Jake’s playground—the skate park next to the kite beach and the giant sandbar that spilled out into the Columbia. There he had run with Cheney and felt the lick of wind on his bare skin for what seemed like countless hours. Within those borders he had found some good and some bad, but he had expected to escape it all, if not for Seattle, then at least for Portland. But lying there in his hospital room, his hometown loomed on the horizon as a permanent holding tank. The day his mom brought him home from rehab, the streets were sloppy with slush and a gray ceiling of sky pressed down on the gorge. He felt a cold weight settle in his stomach when they turned in the driveway.

  As the months wore on, so did the crushing sense of claustrophobia. He would hear his parents and their neighbors leave for work in the morning and then listen to truck traffic barreling down Tucker Road all day. The same neighbors and his parents returned at the same time each evening. Even when he had been at the rehab center in Portland, he was sure that life ticked along unchanged in this small town. In his mind’s eye, buses came and went to May Street Elementary. In summer, the Elks Club banner flew over Jackson Park announcing Summer Family Daze. The pool rang with children’s voices and youth soccer games took over the playing fields on weekends. There was a pancake breakfast at the fire station, a line of classic cars in the Fourth of July parade, and the annual Wild Weiner Days and Dachshund Dash. Nothing ever changed around here.

  But now, driving through town with Harry, something had shifted. Jake had a strange sense that he had been elsewhere for a long time. He gazed out at the familiar backdrop and felt the glimmer of its beauty.

  Harry drove Alice’s old pickup, which was smaller and lower to the ground than her new truck. He had rigged a strap aro
und the steering wheel to give Jake better leverage for maneuvering in and out. There was plenty of room in the bed for the chair and Cheney, who jumped in and braced himself against the back window, smiling into the wind as they drove out of the valley and into town.

  Jake lay his arm along the open window and leaned his head back. As the truck dropped down into town, the view opened and Jake felt his heart crack wide open. He could see the broad expanse of the Columbia River with whitecaps whipped up by the wind, sunshine on the basalt cliffs to the north, and cotton candy clouds climbing into thunderheads to the west. He closed his eyes, breathing in the yeasty smell of pFriem Family Brewers mixed with the aroma of roasting beans from Dog River Coffee. The wind gusted mightily and buffeted the little truck.

  At the waterfront, Jake waited for Harry to grab his chair as he took in the scene in front of him. In the skate park, a kid dropped into the half-pipe and landed on the other side with a clatter. The long green swath of lawn was peopled with wet-suited figures pumping up kites. Out on the sandbar, the wide green river lapped at the sandy shore. Jake had practically lived down here during high school. He and Noah usually hit the skate park right after school and then just chilled on the grass until the sunset. In the summer the light over the ridgeline lingered until almost 10:00 p.m. He had logged hundreds of hours here. For a moment, he felt a deep pang of grief for that past life. But then Harry appeared with his chair, and he put the feeling away.

  Cheney strained at his leash as they moved toward the grass, and Jake found himself grateful for the ADA accessible path, which he had never noticed in the old days because he hadn’t had to. As he pushed his way along, he could feel people looking at him and the chair. If they met his eyes, they looked away like they were embarrassed. It felt like everyone was staring. Jake felt suddenly naked. Maybe this was too much exposure—going to the waterfront for the first time since his accident.

  But then he looked at Harry, who was scanning the crowd of kiteboarders, and noticed how pale he was. He hadn’t said much on the ride down either. Jake could see beads of sweat standing out on Harry’s forehead, and it occurred to him that it was he who suggested they look for Harry’s kiteboarding buddy, not Harry himself.