A Recipe for Bees

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  Then there was nothing. Karl was gone. Her father was gone. Everything was gone. She’s wasn’t in the chapel any more; she was—where? My God, she thought, it’s a kitchen! She almost laughed. There she was walking down the aisle towards a kitchen sink. It wasn’t the kitchen of the Whorehouse Ranch; it was the kitchen of her home farm, her mother’s kitchen, Manny’s kitchen. She looked down at her dress. It was no longer the pretty garment she had chosen for her wedding day; it was a ratty old house dress, and her hands were in a sink full of sudsy warm water. She was evidently searching for something in the water. Something had been lost. A ring. She had lost her engagement ring. Then there was another hand in the sink with hers, also searching. A man’s hand. Whose hand? This hand found hers beneath the water and took hold. Then suddenly she was back in the chapel, holding the Reverend’s hand. He had taken her hand and Karl’s, and was joining them.

  Augusta never told Karl about that vision. She couldn’t bring herself to discuss any of her premonitions with him. He simply wouldn’t have believed her. She’d tried telling him once, during their courtship. As they sat in the International on Bald Mountain looking over the farms and the South Thompson below, she asked him, “You ever had a dream that came true?”

  “Dreaming don’t get you nowhere.”

  “I mean a dream you have in your sleep.”

  “I don’t dream.”

  “You must dream. Everybody dreams.”

  “If I do I don’t remember.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “No.”

  “How about a feeling, then? You get a feeling something’s going to happen and it does.”

  “You believe in that kind of thing and somebody’s going to make a sucker out of you.”

  Augusta knew that a man who didn’t dream and, what was more, didn’t care, wasn’t a man to trust with a thing like a premonition. Karl was so like her father in that regard. Manny wouldn’t have known a miracle if Jesus himself had walked across the waters of the South Thompson and slapped him with a trout. Although Helen had often talked in the morning about the day to come as if she already knew it. “A good day for sewing,” she had once said, staring out the window at the road that led to town, and that was the day the sewing-machine salesman knocked on the door.

  “ ‘One for sorrow, two for mirth,’ ” she had said, looking out over the birds on the fence near the marshland. “ ‘Three for a wedding and four for a birth.’ Four magpies. Cows will be calving today.” Sure enough, three of the five pregnant cows picked that day for calving.

  They were little coincidences, easy to dismiss, and nothing was said of them. But there were other times, like the day when Manny cut himself so badly on the mower, when Augusta was convinced her mother had some sort of fore-knowledge. What were they doing together? Washing dishes, likely lunch dishes, when Helen stood straight and gasped. “Your father’s in trouble. Quick, get one of his leather belts. I’ll saddle a horse. Meet me outside.”

  Helen and Augusta rode together on the same sling-backed mare to the field where Manny had been mowing hay. When they reached him he was sitting on the ground next to the mower, gripping his wrist. Blood was pouring from his hand onto the green, freshly cut grass. The sickle bar on the mower had become jammed and he had been attempting to free it when he sliced the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. But this accident had only just happened. It had taken Helen and Augusta ten minutes to reach him. Certainly he hadn’t called to them. How did Helen know? That was, in fact, what Manny asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Helen. She wound the leather belt tight around his arm as a tourniquet.

  “You’ve been fooling with it again, haven’t you?” he said.

  “I haven’t been fooling with anything.”

  “But how did you know? It’s the devil’s work.”

  “It’s God’s work. I’m here helping you, aren’t I? You’d be out here bleeding to death otherwise.”

  “I’m not bleeding to death.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Augusta didn’t think it was the premonition business that Manny minded, exactly; it was that his wife had a skill he didn’t have, a powerful one, too. Manny himself was forever finding omens of bleak events after the fact. His favourite was a hen’s crowing. Although Helen’s yard was full of crowing hens, he refused to believe a hen ever crowed. That would be unnatural. Crowing, like fighting, was the job of the rooster. So when some misfortune took him by surprise—a pig having its leg broken in the confusion of a truckload of pigs on the way to auction—he remembered that a hen had crowed unnaturally just that morning, and hadn’t that been a sign of the coming day’s bad luck? Spooky.

  So it was from her mother’s side that Augusta’s ability was passed on. Even Joy showed some budding signs of having the gift. She had had her own premonition of Gabe’s illness. She had dreamed that she and Gabe were walking down the main street in Chase but that they were from a different time, not the time of the street. Another Gabe walked down the sidewalk towards them. Joy was afraid because she knew that if the two Gabes met, her Gabe, the one walking with her, would disappear. And that was exactly what happened. As the two Gabes passed each other, Joy’s Gabe started to fade, lose colour, become transparent. She picked him up and put him in a shopping cart in an effort to save him but he continued to fade, just as the other Gabe, a stronger, surer Gabe, kept on walking away. Perhaps it wasn’t a premonition, Augusta thought. Maybe the dream was only a reflection of what was happening in real life. Joy’s Gabe was fading away. His words flew from his grasp like so many swallows. He’d be talking quite animatedly and then he would fade. His sentence would trail off and he’d stare into space. Once, when Augusta was asking him some question or other about the hives, he said, “Could you slow down? I can’t listen so fast.”

  But then Gabe had never been much for small talk, even before he got sick. During that tense visit when Joy brought him home to the farm for the first time, he hardly said a word. Augusta filled the silence with chatter about bees. The kettle whistled.

  “I’ll get it,” said Gabe. Augusta was a little uncomfortable having this strange man make tea in her house. On the other hand, it was nice being served for a change. He made the tea, found cups in Augusta’s cupboard and milk in the fridge. He poured milk in all their cups, though Karl drank his black, often with a lump of cheddar at the bottom. There was a long silence during which even Augusta couldn’t think of anything to say, and all four of them drank their tea. It was Karl who eased things a little. “I haven’t had tea with milk since 1945,” he said. “Not bad.”

  Joy and Gabe were married just two months later, not five months after they met at a Christian retreat. Although Augusta didn’t condone their haste, she did understand it. Good fundamentalist Christian couples often got married soon after they met. It is better to marry than to burn. But then, Augusta and Karl had been married only four months after the stud-horse man’s visit. They had spent their honeymoon night in the Kamloops Plaza Hotel. She had no memory of that night—it had long ago been heaped over by other memories, thick and pungent, of Joe in a similar room in the same hotel. And in any case, that honeymoon night hadn’t been her first time with Karl. They had lain together, tormented by mosquitoes, on a bed of pine under heavy clouds that threatened rain. They hadn’t undressed; they’d simply pulled down their underwear. After he was done, Karl kissed her soundly and said, “That was good.” Augusta had felt no pleasure at all. It was over quickly and it had hurt. From the start, Karl’s lovemaking was brief, to the point, practical, and in the dark. It all had such a disappointing sense of hurriedness about it. The voice of the old Swede haunted him even in matrimonial intimacy, Augusta was sure of it. She could almost hear his voice over Karl’s shoulder: Don’t you have something better to do? Hurry up, hurry up. What’s the hold-up? Can’t you do anything right?

  Augusta moved her things—a trunk of clothes, a chair, some bedding, and a few dishes—into
the old Swede’s cabin, onto the W. H. Ranch. She slept with Karl in Karl’s childhood room, which had only one short, thin partition dividing it from Olaf’s sleeping quarters—a partition that did nothing to stop Olaf’s snores from waking Augusta at night.

  Olaf doled out bits of money for Karl and Augusta’s purchases at Colgrave and Conchie’s general store in Chase, but he gave Karl no wages and Augusta no housekeeping allowance, so she was forced to ask for it, to come begging to him if they needed groceries. He griped bitterly if they went into town more than once a week, or if he saw what he thought was an unnecessary item—like Kotex—in her grocery bag. Augusta had to tear up one of the old flannel sheets she had brought with her and use those scraps for sanitary napkins.

  Olaf whittled away at Augusta as he must have cut down his wife. It started right off, as soon as she took over the household chores. He took one sip of her coffee and made a face. “This ain’t coffee,” he said. “This is Englishman’s coffee. Brown water.” He dumped the pot outside and made his Swedish coffee, so thick and bitter that even he needed to keep a sugar cube in his mouth when he drank it. He complained about her dishwashing habits. “Why aren’t there any cups clean? Why do you use so many cups in a day? Use the same one all day; rinse it out after you use it.” He complained about her cooking. When she first cooked lamb chops he threw one to Bitch. She sniffed it. “Look,” he said. “They’re so dry even the dog won’t eat it.” When she left the old porridge pot soaking overnight in the wash-basin, he gave her hell for that too. “I couldn’t make my porridge this morning ’cause I didn’t have a pot. You want me to starve?”

  Augusta didn’t defend herself against his complaints—not at first, in any case. She learned to make thick coffee, and stayed downstairs after Karl and Olaf were in bed to clean the pots that needed soaking. She tried to please Olaf, but it was an impossible task.

  On top of that Olaf was never without Bitch, and the dog barked and snarled and nipped at her skirts every time she came near the old man. “Does he have to keep that dog inside?” she asked Karl. They were taking their morning coffee together outside under the big maple, to eke out a bit of time alone. They hadn’t been married a month.

  “She’s the only pet I’ve ever known him to have,” said Karl. “He brought her inside as a pup after my mother died.”

  “She stinks. And she’s always at me, barking and pulling on my skirt. I’m sweeping up hair every day. She’s brought fleas into the house. Fleas!”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “You can ask him to keep the dog outside.”

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “Yes you could.”

  “It’s his house. I can’t be telling him how to run it.”

  “I’m running the house now, aren’t I? I’m the one cleaning up after that mutt! I should have some say!” Karl examined his feet. “Well, I’m going to say something.” Augusta marched into the house, into the kitchen, where Olaf sat drinking coffee and smoking his first pipe of the day. His wool pants were slung over the back of his chair where he habitually left them before retiring to bed. He was wearing the long underwear that he slept in and hadn’t yet put his socks on. His toe-nails were overgrown and one big toe was red, infected from an ingrown toe-nail. The bitch was lying behind his chair, nose on paws. The dog and Olaf looked up in unison when Augusta marched into the room. “I’d like to talk to you about that dog,” she said, blunt as a rock.

  “What about the dog?”

  “I want it kept outside. The house is no place for it.”

  “It’s my house. My dog. I’ll keep her inside if I want.”

  “But I’m the one cleaning up after her.” Augusta took a step forward with her hands out, to further emphasize her position, and Bitch was suddenly there, between them, barking and nipping at her skirts. Olaf didn’t call her off. He sucked his pipe. Augusta took a step back and the dog followed, barking, snarling, baring its teeth. Augusta turned and fled, and the dog chased her as far as the front door. Karl was still under the maple, cradling his empty cup. “Did you see that?” she yelled at him. “You see what kind of welcome I’ve got here?”

  Karl mumbled some endearment in apology and reached out a hand to cup her cheek, but she shook her head away. His bashfulness, so sweet in the beginning, was now the mark of a weakling. Well, she supposed at the time, she should count her blessings. At least Karl wasn’t demanding and jealous, as her father had been with her mother. Manny had always tried to keep tabs on Helen’s whereabouts, what she was doing, fretting over any man who might tip his hat to her on the street, especially a stranger.

  “Who’s he, then?” he’d say.

  “Mr. Wallace,” said Helen. “He and his wife bought the Michaels’ house. I sold his wife eggs last week.”

  “Looks like a dandy.”

  “He’s a lawyer. A very nice man.”

  “I don’t like the looks of him. You stay away from him, hear?”

  “I can’t sell my eggs and honey if I’ve got to stay away from everyone.”

  “You watch out for him. You don’t know what men like him are capable of.”

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know his type.”

  The infrequent dances were the worst for Manny as they attracted bachelors from miles around: herders and cowboys, lonely and bushed and sick for female company. There was always a shortage of women dance partners, and it was a niggardly husband who hogged his wife all for himself. So Manny was forced to stand back against the wall, with his arms crossed, watching his wife dance with other men.

  The dances went on in the schoolhouse, with the desks pushed back into the corner, on Saturday nights—but only until midnight, as right on into the fifties there was no dancing on the sabbath. The RCMP drove there from Chase just before twelve to make sure of it. No alcohol was allowed inside a public building so there was no booze in the schoolhouse. There were few drinking places in the area at the time—Yep Num, who owned the café and rooming-house in Chase, rented a room to men so they could sit and drink—but there were plenty of bootleggers. In Chase an English butcher named Miller made beer and sold it along with his meat, and there were stills hidden all over the mountain sides, especially across the lake in Celista. Home brew was passed from man to man around the back of the schoolhouse, where the horses were tied and where fights were taken. There was almost always a fight at these things, though no man ever seemed to get seriously hurt. The Christmas dance was the worst for it. If there was a fencing dispute, or a suspicion over a missing cow, or an unpaid debt, the bitter feelings floated to the surface on booze, or were carried to the front on petty jealousies over who danced more than his share with the schoolteacher.

  When a fight erupted it went outside and took all the men with it. It was so like a cock-fight, with a circle of men egging the fighters on. The women and children were left in the schoolroom by themselves to wait for the men to come to their senses. No nice woman dared go outside, not at any point, not until it was time to go home and she and her children left accompanied by her husband. No woman except one of the Grafton girls, who was given to sitting in cars with men and their beer. When the fight was done the men swaggered back in, laughing, to seek out partners for the next dance.

  Manny got into a few of those fights himself as he challenged any man who had more than one dance with his wife. The son of one of those men got a group of boys together the following Monday and threw rocks at Augusta. She was perhaps eleven at the time. They followed her home after school for that whole week, hurling rocks at her, almost always missing, but terrorizing her out of her skull. One of them was a snotty-nosed Grafton boy, she remembered that.

  What moved boys to throw rocks, she wondered now, as she drank her tea. Just today, boys had thrown rocks at the train. The train was passing a playing field behind a school, and along the fence that separated the tracks from the schoolyard boys were lined up, facing the train. Augusta couldn’t see the expressions on th
eir faces, but she could see their hands raised and she lifted hers to wave back before realizing that they weren’t waving at the passing train. They were throwing rocks at it. One rock banged against the side of the train, and Augusta flinched back from the window. Boys had done that in her day as well, thrown rocks at trains, at the windows of abandoned homesteaders’ shacks, and at neighbours’ dogs, not to shoo them away but for the fun of it, to see the dog run. She supposed that was partly why those boys had thrown stones at her so many years ago. She had run home and, crying, breathless, finally told her mother about the boys’ harassment. The next day Manny walked with Augusta to school and, out on the school grounds, cuffed the ears of all three boys and told them to leave Augusta alone. Of course Manny’s visit only made things worse. The boys did stop throwing rocks at her, but took up words instead; every afternoon they ran after her, calling her all manner of obscenities. She wouldn’t tell Helen or Manny again. Instead she learned to avoid the boys on the schoolyard, to scuttle home right after school before they took a notion to go after her. She was always on guard, watching for them, and if the boys came her way she fled, often to the girls’ five-seater outhouse behind the school. She avoided the eyes of boys, held herself close and contained, and learned to be invisible.

  In the forties a man like Manny was called a leghorn rooster, after the small scrappy birds that strutted around the yard as if they owned it and dared anyone to say they didn’t. He might have even liked the nickname, as he was always going on about the “pecking order.” He saw the true natural order of things there in the chicken coop: man at the head, protective and paternal, and under him a hierarchy of women who in turn ruled over the children. He ignored the fact that given free run of the fields, the hens mated with nearly every rooster, not just the nastiest one, and that there were plenty of bossy hens who beat up on deferential roosters. Helen had one of those roosters in the scratch run at the time, a bird Manny had named Sorry, as he thought any rooster who let hens boss him around was a sorry rooster indeed.