Christmas in July

by Alan Michael Parker

  Blue the Dog doesn’t like kids either, so his behavior yesterday had been even more remarkable. I had never seen him care for a child until yesterday, when he had chosen to care for Christmas.

  What is the difference between liking and caring? I don’t know.

  A dog can smell toxins far beyond the abilities of a human. But a dog doesn’t believe in toxins or illness, not like people do. A dog has only the certainty of his senses and his affections. Blue the Dog has no beliefs apart from his knowledge, and this is his genius. And yet, from the very moment he sensed her, he had been certain about Christmas, finding her in the woods, guarding her on the porch, lying on her as she slept, the ninety-pound man-dog acting like a mother dog.

  The day would be hot. I liked the day so far, and I would be ready for the bees. In the backyard, I slowed my body into a series of morning poses, in the uncountable time I planned to be in time. From the flat work on my mat, moving into the grass, to the waist-high horizontal shapes I made, to the planes and the lines of reaching verticality, up, to the great embracing of size and scale, and back to the center of non-me, I moved my energy. I felt my energy pool and the surface of the pool shimmer. I came down into myself, drew down my energy into my lower extremities to end my poses with a long squat, a seated form. My hands no longer mattered. My arms and shoulders no longer mattered. My hair, my eyes, my nose, lips, mouth, chin—nothing mattered. Today was a favorite day, because it was the same as all days. Singleness.

  Squatting, the poses completed, I shaped my energy into one question: Why choose this girl, Blue the Dog?

  It was a moment for my early meal. I was hungry, and I needed to prepare the equipment to bring in the honey. Blue the Dog was somewhere in the woods. As he often did during my morning poses, he had disappeared, only to return muddy or a bit scratched up, and often with a prize from his hunt. I thought of his hunt as his morning poses, in a way, Blue the Dog moving his energy in his body, settling into his singleness too, but doing so kinetically, not in stillness, his singleness in motion, different from mine. A dog and a man moving and not moving, each in singleness. Each in the woods of his life: I liked that idea.

  Liking an idea is liking. The idea would be fine not to be liked.

  Blue the Dog was so happy to see her, he lifted his paw and scratched the air in a greeting, his eyes open wide. He even whined.

  “Blue the Dog,” I said. “Down. Make room.”

  The girl got into the truck, sliding next to him and shoving him back. “Move,” she said to Blue the Dog. “Hi,” she said to me. “I have permission. Aunt Nikki says she knows you, and she called your sister. She says you’re actually nice. Aunt Nikki says she loves your honey. You even plowed her driveway once, she said, when her regular guy didn’t come…so I’m allowed to hang out, I can help, but I have to be back by nine o’clock. Here,” Christmas said, reaching over Blue the Dog’s head to hand me a little package in a plastic bag. “Aunt Nikki washed your stuff.”

  “In what?” I asked. “In the washing machine? With detergent?” I took the bag and threw it out my open window, onto Aunt Nikki’s lawn. “No way.”

  “Snow Joe! Don’t do that.”

  “Toxins,” I said. “Not in my truck. And a plastic bag!”

  “Wow,” she said. “You gotta relax.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  I put the truck in reverse. I thought that driving backwards was what Christmas and I seemed to do together, so far. The thought gave me an inside smile.

  As I drove through the neighborhood, Blue the Dog pushed his butt hard against my thigh, his head in Christmas’ lap. He wiggled, wedged between us, connecting. I drove.

  “Blue the Dog,” she sort of cooed, making smoochie sounds and scratching both of his ears.

  “Blue the Dog says ‘thank you.’”

  “I see,” the girl said. “He talks.”

  “No,” I said. “Yes. Don’t see. Listen.”

  “What’s he saying now?”

  I didn’t answer. Once more, I didn’t know what to do with my feelings.

  “Crazy,” she said. “Blue the Dog says you’re nuts.”

  Christmas and I didn’t speak again until we got to my house, where I parked, and then she opened the door. Blue the Dog immediately sprang over her, down into the weedy gravel driveway, before dashing away into the woods.

  “Blue the Dog!” she called. “Come back, Blue the Dog!”

  “Probably something. He’s a dog,” I said.

  “I know that. But he has to stay with me, he has to…” She didn’t finish her sentence. She was distracted, having trouble unbuckling her seatbelt, and she punched her thumb at the release button a couple of times, something else in her actions. But then she got it.

  I unbuckled my belt too. My feelings were swirling.

  I waited.

  “I…I want to help,” she said, not getting out yet, the door open. She had feelings too. She tugged hard on her purple hat. “I hate it, I hate it.” She punched herself on the thigh. “I’m going to try…” She banged on the dashboard with a fist, twice, and then slid out, slipping down from the truck. “I want to help with the honey. But I get sick,” she said, looking back at me. “I’m not due for treatment until August, and I’m still…I get sick. I hate it.”

  I got out of the cab too, climbed down. I waited to know what to say. Christmas and I looked at each other, across the bank seat, neither of us closing our doors. Our doors were open—the thought gave me another inside smile.

  “You need to suit up,” I said. Whatever ridiculous thing she was wearing would be covered up: that was good. The bees.

  She adjusted her purple hat again. It said “Meg’s Team”—I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Were you in the war or something?” Christmas asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “World War I or something? Did you kill Nazis? You seem like you could.”

  “I don’t like children,” I said. “Children say awful things, and they mean them.”

  “Snow Joe! No need to get nasty.” Christmas slammed the door of my truck. “Jay Kaaayy.” She might have been giggling over there.

  “I’m trying to like you,” I said quietly, shutting my door so she didn’t hear.

  I led the way to the honey shed, where I had laid out the protective gear for Christmas to wear. She could suit up here, and then we would drive to the hives. The smoker and the coolers were already in the truck bed. What else? I took down the bee brush from the peg-board. Of course I had my knife.

  “Awesome!” she said, when she saw the suit laid across the workbench.

  “Check the drawstrings. Double and tight. Then meet me at the truck.”

  “We’re driving?”

  I stood there in the honey shed, made myself stay in myself. How could I cope with her noise, and her childishness? I needed to be clear to do my work, to communicate with the honeybees and settle my energy. They’re a strain of Russian bees that can be very aggressive. The bees know my feelings, and they move to the feelings I have, which is one reason they’re bees. She would not understand.

  I thought I might try another visualization.

  “Hey! When someone talks to you, it’s not cool to close your eyes.”

  I opened my eyes.

  “That’s better,” she said. “Look, there goes Blue the Dog.”

  We drove down the bumpy work road past the pines to the edge of the field, turned and then drove the rockier and even more rutted road by the dry swamp to the beehives at the south edge of the woods. Blue the Dog ran, and on occasion we saw him. At times, when I thought of Blue the Dog, I had a feeling that was a perfect sphere.

  I parked by backing in so we could load and unload easily. I began to haul the coolers, but Christmas wanted to keep her gloves on, which made her clumsy. She had worn sneakers for the honeying, okay. I provided her with the overalls, the jacket and gloves, and the Hamman veil, the good one with the built-in flat-brimmed hat. Now she wanted to jump around in
the oversized gear, and Blue the Dog had joined us, and she wanted Blue the Dog to jump too, but he wasn’t going to do that.

  “Blue the Dog, come on! We’re on the moon!” Christmas said. And then she stopped suddenly, and stumbled to her knees. “Whoa, I’m dizzy.”

  “Don’t puke in the suit,” I said, pulling down an empty, stacking the coolers, still working. Work ends when work’s done.

  “Oof,” she said, and she plunked down into the grass, falling over. “Wuh.”

  I didn’t know what to do. I kept working.

  Christmas was gulping under the veil. She had folded her arms across her chest.

  Blue the Dog watched her, checking with me, what to do, but watching her the whole time too, vigilant. Blue the Dog wagged his tail a very little.

  She rolled into a fetal position. That was wrong. She needed to spread herself, increase her surface contact with the air. The beekeeper suit might be a bad idea, I thought, too enclosed to release her toxins safely.

  I waited. She’s wasn’t throwing up yet.

  The coolers were unloaded. I sat on a cooler. For a long time, while she lay in the grass, I watched the treetops in the wind. I was enjoying their waving. The clouds didn’t care. Maybe I should do an afternoon pose, I thought, a better kind of waiting.

  “Snow Joe? Tell me something nice.” Her voice was quiet.

  I thought about what to say. I felt a need to answer. “It’s my favorite day,” I said. Taking the honey was my favorite, I thought. “But any day can be your favorite,” I said. “Feel it collect in you.”

  “How?” she was able to ask. She uncurled a little.

  “Singleness,” I said—and then I regretted revealing such a word so early. I turned away, to the dog. “Blue the Dog, stay,” I told Blue the Dog, because he shouldn’t run off once the beehives were open.

  “I can’t do anything,” she said, and then she moaned, and rolled back up into a ball of pain.

  She lay in the grass for a while longer. Finally, she uncurled, sat up again. She took a deep breath, made her mouth an O, exhaled, and repeated the action, again, slower. “The nurse taught me some breathing,” she managed. “It helps a little.”

  “I breathe,” I said.

  She made her mouth another O, but didn’t seem to be doing her breathing any more. The girl looked at me. “I’m going to stand up,” she said. Then she managed to do so, clumsily, in full beekeeping gear.

  We stood there. We were a pair. Blue the Dog was there too, in his different way.

  “Okay,” she said. She exhaled, another O. “Snow Joe, your head’s on backwards,” she said. “That’s what Grandma Josie used to say about nut jobs like you, for realz.” She looked at me. “Hey, what are you gonna wear? You don’t have a suit.”

  “This,” I said. “I wear everything. The world.” I opened both palms to show how I hold the air and the light. “See?”

  “Oh my God,” Christmas said.

  A smoker is a simple device, with a burn box, a bellows, and a spout. The bees don’t like the smoke. The bees react by flying into the hive and eating, although some of them buzz around a lot too, and they can get angry. The trick with the smoker is to keep it lighted, because there’s often a need for more smoke when the keeper starts pulling the supers—the racks—from the beehive, and the stealing begins. Christmas would handle the smoker, puff the bellows, and stay suited. Her job would be pretty easy, but essential. My job would be to wedge open the upper supers (the three smaller boxes on top of the big brood box) with the hive tool and cut through the propolis that the bees used to seal the hive tight. Each super contains ten frames. Each super would be rich with beautiful honey, loaded with honey, so much honey stored in the cells. I would slide out each heavy frame, the weight of the bounty almost too much. But Christmas would be able to help. Then I would use the bee brush to scrape the bees off of the frames—gently, with my apologies, remembering to acknowledge their goodness—to free the bees from their food and their homes, and once free, stash the frames full of honey in my coolers.

  We would take the coolers back to the house and leave them outside the honey shed. The bees would follow. Once the sun went down, the bees would go back to the hive, to the brood box, and Christmas and I could safely bring the coolers into the honey shed for extraction.

  A bee lives with himself.

  A couple of problems might be problems. If the cells were uncapped, the honey was either not ready or had gone bad. Uncapped honey ferments, too much water in the mix, the sugar content wrong. But the bees know, and they don’t care for uncapped cells. They are clear in their propagation.

  Another problem: Christmas could drop something. The frames, loaded with wax and honey, were hard to handle.

  Another problem: the bees’ anger.

  Another problem: me.

  I explained most of this to Christmas as I prepared the fuel for the smoker, some pine straw to light as a starter, to be followed by layers of burlap, which would burn heavily and slowly together, the smoke thick. I had always liked waving around the smoker, it felt kind of mysterious and powerful without being harmful. The smoker made me feel like a priest in an old religion, confusing my congregation, but I didn’t say that, because I don’t talk like that, it’s not me.

  We were twenty feet from the hives, close enough to watch the unpredictable swoops of the honeybees tracking their scents, diving the air currents, scuttling into and out of the hives. I have trouble telling each bee apart, even after all of these years—though oft times, and especially when the bees were busy in the spring, I would come out here just to watch and try to predict which hive a single bee might be headed for, maybe that one. They’re so fascinating, buzzing toward their friends, always a little heavier with their pollen pouches when flying home.

  Having the bee as my spirit animal, my fetish, helps me remember that looking happy isn’t the same as being happy. A lot of bees buzzing around make great sounds and their bodies are wonderful colors, and they have so many fascinating habits, and different pheromones, and as a human, I think they’re kind of merry, but that’s just my human ego. The bees have anger. That is how the bees are like me.

  Maybe I would incorporate the bees into my afternoon poses, practice a pose to honor them, a new movement in the air, something to include them in my singleness. Because I have long been capable of feeling like the worst kind of garbage, and the bees were also a reminder of who I am—a wanting man raising bees to steal their honey, process their sustenance, and then go to his indoor home and shut the door. A man who sells the bees’ honey as his own.

  “Can I light the smoker?”

  I think she had a fire complex. Children do.

  “Fire is a transition.”

  “Snow Joe. You’re so wise.”

  I looked away from her. She was making fun of me. People make fun of me, so I know.

  She actually did look like she was on the moon, swallowed up in my big beekeeper’s suit. “You’ll need to come out of the suit, between pulls,” I said.

  “Where?”

  “Reabsorption,” I said. “You’ll need to breathe. You’ll need to take breaks. To lie down and open your cells.”

  “’Course.” Christmas picked up the smoking can, stuffed at the bottom with the driest pine straw.

  We were almost ready. Blue the Dog was excited: he knew we were going to do something important. Five times he had done this. He whined, and I petted his head, sharing calm energy, me to him.

  “Blue the Dog,” I said.

  I buttoned the sleeves of my work shirt. I glanced at the girl—I would need to light the smoker for her, because that was difficult to do. For a moment, she looked like a real beekeeper. “Do you have any questions?”

  “Snow Joe,” she said. Her shoulders seemed to sag.

  She could become so suddenly different, I thought.

  “Snow Joe,” she said again, and sniffled. “I…I mean, what do you mean? You know a lot. I mean…” She was upset. “What do
you mean, ‘Do I have any questions’? Like how did I get cancer? I mean…did I catch it? How did it happen? I didn’t want to ask the doctors. I want to know, but I…” She lowered her head, the suit making a crinkling sound, her gloves too. “I mean, they think I’m just a stupid little kid. I mean, the question’s stupid, I know.”

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “Maybe everyone has cancer,” Christmas said, “but only some people get it. All I have is questions,” she said more quietly.

  I waited.

  We waited together.

  “What about animals?” I said.

  She looked at me. “Blue the Dog?”

  “Blue the Dog. Even the bees,” I said.

  Christmas sniffed. She looked up. “Or the trees—even the trees,” she swept her hand toward the woods. “What about your truck?” I waited. “No, not your truck,” Christmas said in a funny voice, her little girl’s voice. “That’s just a joke.”

  It was almost time.

  We looked at the truck. We couldn’t think the same thoughts together, I knew that, but it was good to remember.

  “Ready?” I finally asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. She cinched the Hamman veil, adjusted.

  “Now I have a question,” I said.

  “Shoot,” she said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Freako. You know.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Aunt Nikki said I could. I’m here to take care of you.”

  I didn’t know that answer.

  I must have stared at her.

  Her answer wasn’t the answer. Of course, to seek an answer is to believe that apart from singleness, an answer is to be found.

  I heard a red-winged blackbird, I think.

  Silence was impossible. There was no silence in me.

  I could feel now how we waited differently. That was the most important idea in the moment: we waited differently.

  “Blue the Dog found me. He told me,” the girl said at last.

  “My dog?” I said. “Blue the Dog? He talked to you?”

  There are the teachings and there is the life. There are the lessons that matter. What should I do with my feelings? I was standing there with Blue the Dog, a girl, the bees who don’t know us, and all of my feelings.