A Recipe for Bees

by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

  “She’s all right.”

  “You’ve got to watch her.”

  “I watch her.”

  “She doesn’t always know to get out of the way.”

  “I said I watch her.”

  “Especially when she’s around the animals. You’ve got to watch her with that ram.”

  “Quit nagging.”

  No matter what she said, he would go on working as he always had, in his own way. So Augusta worried Joy with her complaints. “Your father takes too many chances. You must be careful around the animals. You could so easily be hurt. You watch what you’re doing.” On and on she went, worrying, nagging, pleading with the girl. Somehow she believed that if she only said the words be careful, then Joy would; they were a blessing of sorts, and would protect her. If Augusta didn’t say them, well, all manner of catastrophe would happen.

  All the years Joy was growing up, Augusta would have nothing to do with Olaf. She hadn’t set foot on the Whorehouse Ranch once since they’d moved out. She’d seen Olaf only infrequently, when she happened on him in the streets of Chase. In all those years they hadn’t spent one holiday with him, and that suited Augusta just fine. Karl went to see him, though, often with Joy. Over the years Olaf seemed to accept her as a grandchild, and sometimes even sent her home with candies or oranges. Karl took Olaf presents and the food hampers Augusta might think to put together, and he spent a little time with Olaf during Easter Sunday or Christmas afternoon. Augusta imagined these visits as dreary affairs where they sat together at the kitchen table. Olaf hadn’t the knack for celebration. They might smoke pipes together, but there would be little in the way of conversation. They seemed to have no need for talk. Then, at some hidden signal, Karl would decide it was time to go home, and he’d say his goodbye.

  The night Olaf died, Augusta dreamed that she saw her own father, Manny, wearing snowshoes and standing, of all places, in the snow of a pasture on the Whorehouse Ranch. It was night in the dream. The sky was black. But the snow was so white it seemed to glow, reflecting whiteness into Manny’s face. He smiled, but he didn’t wave or say anything. He did the awkward kicking dance of a man turning on snowshoes, and then shuffled away across the snow into the black.

  Augusta woke from the dream with a start. The room was black. Karl snored. Why, seven years after his death, was she dreaming of Manny? And what was he doing at the Whorehouse Ranch?

  The next morning at breakfast Karl said, “I’m thinking of going to see Father.”

  “Say hello for me.”

  “I suppose you don’t want to spend Christmas at the ranch.”

  “If he wants to come here I won’t put up a fuss.”

  “Well, I’ll tell him, then, that he’s welcome for Christmas.”

  Karl still wasn’t home from the ranch by supper time. Olaf had no phone. It was the only time in their long lives together that she had no idea where Karl was. Finally, at nine, she made a thermos of tea, bundled up Joy and herself, and drove the Austin to the Whorehouse Ranch. The whole scene had the quality of a dream: a bed of sparkling white stretched out into the darkness on all sides of the cabin and outbuildings. The trees around were loaded down with snow. There had been traffic on the road; she could see many tracks leading to and from the farm. The cabin was so much smaller and shabbier than she remembered it. Icicles hung from a roof so heaped with snow that she wondered how the structure could support such weight. With Joy carrying the tea behind her, she creaked open the cabin door and was relieved to find Karl sitting at the kitchen table, in his father’s chair. A lit kerosene lamp sat on the table beside him. There was no fire going in the house; it was bitterly cold.

  “They’ve come and gone already,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “The police and ambulance. They took him away. He’s dead.”

  “Who?” she said again, stupidly. Karl didn’t reply. Of course he meant Olaf. All she could think was, Finally, the old man’s gone. It wasn’t happiness she felt at his death, just relief. She was almost surprised that Karl felt differently, that he felt sadness or grief. “Where’s the dog?” she said.

  “The dog?”

  “The black bitch.”

  Joy tittered and put a mittened hand over her mouth.

  “She died after we left.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t you want to hear? How he died?”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “I found him out there.” He pointed at the front door. “I found him where I found my mother. He laid himself out there and crossed his arms like she did and let himself die.” Karl drew in quick breaths but he wouldn’t let himself cry. He leaned on his knees and put his head in his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Karl,” she said. But she made no motion to touch him. He looked so forlorn sitting there, head in hands, in his father’s red chair. The house was freezing. She sought out one of Karl’s red handkerchiefs from her pocket and wiped her nose, then took the thermos from Joy and poured them all a cup of strong tea, black the way Karl liked it. Joy held the cup up to her nose to warm her face, but didn’t drink from it. The house was deadly quiet. Their breath floated ghostly against the black behind the lantern. Augusta found herself humming, then singing quietly. Her voice echoed around the bachelor cabin. Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?

  Joy said, “Did something happen to Grandpa?”

  Karl showed his grief with little energy. He picked at his food; Augusta had to dress it up with gravy to get him to eat. Sometimes she’d wake to find he wasn’t there in the bed with her, and when she went to find him, opening the downstairs door because he was nowhere in the house, she’d see him standing out in the half-snow, half-mud field. She worried for a while that he might join Olaf and Blenda out there, so she spent some sleepless nights watching that he came back in. He always did, tucking himself into bed with limbs so cold she’d have to rub them to get the life-blood going.

  Joy didn’t seem to miss Olaf much; she was out making snowmen in the yard an hour after they got back from the funeral. Augusta felt a little sadness for not being kinder to the old man but, since he’d been dead to her those past few years anyway, she felt little else. In fact the years following Olaf’s death were good years. They had some extra money from the sale of the Whorehouse Ranch—not much, after the farm bills were paid off, but enough that she could buy those extras she’d been missing: a few dresses for herself, a set of pretty plates. Karl got his flock up to the number and quality he was after, and there were toys for Joy. Augusta went a little overboard, filling the girl’s room with toys she had always wanted for herself—dolls and stuffed animals. She once bought Joy yet another teddy bear and gave it to her in the store. Joy wasn’t impressed.

  “A teddy bear? I’m too old for that.”

  “No you’re not. It’s adorable!”

  “I don’t like it. That’s for babies.”

  “I’ve bought it for you.”

  “It isn’t mine. You bought it ’cause you like it.”

  Augusta glanced towards the counter to see if the clerk was watching this performance. She was. She stuffed the bear into Joy’s arms but Joy wouldn’t hold it. She let it drop to the floor. “Pick it up!”

  “No!”

  “Everyone’s watching.”

  “I don’t care.” Then Joy ran out of the store, leaving Augusta standing there with the teddy bear on the floor and everyone staring at her. She didn’t look at them. She retrieved the bear and stormed out after Joy, grabbed her by the arm, and forced her across the parking lot into the car, slamming the car door behind her.

  Now, thinking of that day, Augusta felt the chill of embarrassment. Why had she forced that bear on Joy, and then punished her for not wanting it? She was such an independent child who almost never seemed to need Augusta. When she was ten the country school down the road she’d been attending burned down one night. It was a shock for her, the loss of the familiar. Nevertheless Augusta remembered the incident with warmth,
because for once Joy needed comforting. She cried, huddled next to Augusta, as they drove past the black, smoking debris the next day. She cried for the loss of her desk and her books and the picture she’d drawn the day before; she cried for the unhatched chicks in the faulty incubator that the schoolboard later announced was the likely cause of the fire. But even then Joy had Karl’s practicality about her. After she had her cry, she said she was thankful that she’d brought home her new skates from school the night before.

  After that fire Joy was bused to school in Chase, with the rest of the children from the valley. Both Native and white kids attended the school now; the Indian children were no longer forced into separate schools as they had been in Augusta’s day. The family of one of the girls Joy went to school with turned up at the farm one day. Charlie Samson drove his Fargo pickup up the driveway with his daughter Patsy in the cab beside him. A number of adults rode in the back of the pickup. Presumably they were Charlie’s brothers and sisters, and perhaps cousins. They all piled out when Charlie parked in front of the house.

  He knocked on the screen door, then stood back a step and waited. His daughter stood behind him. The rest of the group waited at the foot of the porch, on the pathway that led from the vegetable garden to the house. Augusta opened the screen door. “Hello?”

  “I’m Charlie Samson. This is my daughter Patsy.” He examined her face. “Your daughter goes to school with Patsy.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “I don’t have enough chairs—”

  “That’s all right. They can all wait outside.”

  He nodded at the rest of the group and Augusta stepped aside to let him and his daughter through. She glanced at the group and closed the screen door.

  “Is your daughter here? I’ve come to talk about your daughter.”

  “Yes. Have a seat. Joy? Can you come into the kitchen, please?” Then to Charlie she said, “Do you want some coffee?”

  “No thank you.”

  Joy rumbled downstairs from her room and then, when she saw Patsy, stopped short at the doorway. “Come on,” said Augusta. “Sit.” Joy slouched in a kitchen chair and stared at her foot scuffing against the table leg. “Joy, do you know Mr. Samson? He’s Patsy’s father.” Joy nodded. Augusta turned to Charlie. “Maybe you should tell me what this is about.”

  “The other day at school Joy called Patsy a squaw. I don’t want anyone calling my girls that.”

  “No. Of course not. Joy, did you call Patsy that?” Joy didn’t say anything. Her chin trembled. “I can’t believe Joy would say something like that. I don’t know where she got it from.”

  “You don’t, eh?”

  Augusta’s face grew hot. “No, I don’t. And I can promise you it won’t happen again, will it, Joy?”

  “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  “Say you’re sorry.”

  Joy glanced at Augusta and then started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said, and ran back to her room.

  After Charlie and his kin had streamed back into the truck and left, Augusta went up to Joy’s room and sat next to her. The bed was strewn with crumpled tissue. She was still sobbing. She blew her nose.

  “We’ve never used words like ‘squaw’ in this house, have we?” said Augusta. “Karl never called a woman that, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t understand,” said Augusta. “Why did you say it?”

  “It wasn’t just me. Everybody was doing it. She started it. She was calling me names.”

  “Names like what?”

  Joy shrugged. Augusta couldn’t get anything more from her. When she tried to hold Joy, the girl shrugged away, then ran downstairs and outside. Augusta sat for a while in silence, thinking of Alice and how she’d called her Siwash. She thought of the names the Grafton boys had called her after her mother died. The five pale, white-haired Grafton boys had caught her alone on the schoolyard one day and danced circles around her, pretending they were Indians dancing around a fire. “Indian lover!” one of them sang out.

  Then another: “Your mother was a squaw!”

  “Hey, halfbreed! Who was your dad?”

  “Augusta is a bastard, bastard.”

  “I am not,” she said.

  “Your mother was an Indian lover.”

  “She was not!”

  “Your baby sister was a redskin.”

  “She wasn’t. She wasn’t!” Augusta pushed her way past the boys and ran off. They peppered her with rocks as she fled, and hurled names at her. Indian lover. Halfbreed. Bastard.

  Her father was seated in the kitchen, drinking coffee. “You’re home early,” he said.

  “I’m quitting school.”

  He put down his cup and examined her face, deciding if she was serious. “Your mother wouldn’t like it,” he said.

  “Well, she’s dead, isn’t she?” It was a stupid thing to say and she wanted to pull the words back and swallow them, but there they were, in the air between them. He didn’t say anything for a time. Finally, when she took a step forward to pour herself coffee, he said, “Well, if you’re not going to school, you’re sure as hell going to get to work around here.”

  “I won’t do any more farm work than I’m already doing. I spend all my time here. I never get out. I’ll get a job.”

  “What job? Who’s going to hire you?”

  Yep Num, the Chinese man who owned the café in Chase, was known and liked for his habit of giving out sweet ginger, lichee nuts, and Chinese lilies at Christmastime to his few lady customers. Perhaps he thought Augusta pretty. Whatever the reason, he hired her with no experience and no references. It was a small café and waitressing there should have been easy but she had little talent for it. Manny drove her to work. She was dressed in the white uniform Yep Num had supplied and she felt stiff and awkward in it. She had no real clue of what was done at the café. She could count on one hand the number of times she’d been to a restaurant. Shyness made her stomach tie up in knots, so she hugged it and lurked at the back of the café, hoping to make milkshakes all day. But she was scared, too, of the milkshake machine. Yep Num had to prompt her to serve customers, and more than once she caught him and the crib-playing patrons gaping at her and shaking their heads. What were they saying? Were they talking about her mother in the way the Grafton boys did? At the end of the day Yep Num told her she wasn’t suited to the job, and the expression on his face told Augusta that he thought her lazy. Well, she wasn’t lazy. What did that Chinaman know? Shyness made her muddled and stupid, and if he’d given her a week to get used to the place she might have excelled as a waitress, as Joy did so many years later. Maybe then she might have gone on to something more than marriage and mothering. But what did it matter now? Things went as they went and there was no changing them.

  The Saturday after Charlie Samson’s visit, the Reverend placed his hand on Augusta’s as they sat having coffee. Joy happened on them as she passed through the kitchen on her way outside, and stopped dead in her tracks. “Let go of her!” she shouted.

  “Joy, he’s only—”

  “Let go!”

  “Joy!”

  “It’s all right,” the Reverend said, and withdrew his hand. “Your mother and I were just talking. I wasn’t hurting her.”

  “You’re a liar,” said Joy, and she ran out of the house, the door banging behind her. The Reverend stood to go after her.

  “Wait,” said Augusta. “Let her cool off. She doesn’t like company when she’s angry.”

  “I should talk to her,” said the Reverend. “Explain.”

  “Something else has been bothering her. I think the kids at school have been giving her a hard time.” She told him about Charlie Samson’s visit. “She won’t talk to me,” said Augusta. “Maybe you could take her out for a drive or something? See if you can’t get her to talk?”

  The Reverend gave Joy his bamboo fishing rod to use and took her fi
shing at Deep Pool that afternoon. Joy stood near him, facing towards the reserve village, trying to cast as he had instructed. Out of the blue she said, “Was my grandma an Indian lover?”

  “What?”

  “Jenny Rivers said my grandma had a baby with an Indian.”

  “You’re going to have to ask your mother about that.”

  “She did, didn’t she?”

  The Reverend reeled in his line but said nothing.

  “Are you ever going to marry Mom?”

  “Why would I marry your mother? I’ve already got a wife. And your mom’s got your dad.”

  “But you love her, don’t you?”

  “There are a lot of ways to love somebody.”

  “Are you my father?”

  “No! Wherever did you get that idea?”

  Joy shrugged.

  “Karl’s your dad, and he’s a good dad. Why would you want another one?”

  The Reverend didn’t say anything more, but he told Augusta about the conversation. “Maybe you should talk to her about it,” he said. “All of it.”

  “I will if she asks.”

  “I think she has a right to know.”

  “I said I will if she asks.” But Joy didn’t ask, not then.

  Eight

  THE REVEREND PASSED away in 1969, in his bed, asleep. He had never retired, never left the church he so often complained about. He’d preached into his seventy-fifth year. The whole town turned out for his funeral. Lilian took Augusta’s hand as she and Karl stood in the condolence line, and in front of all those gossiping people of Chase she kissed Augusta’s cheek. “You were such a good friend to Gavin,” she said. “I don’t think he would have stayed in this town if he hadn’t had you to talk to. And I didn’t want to move. You made my life so much easier. Thank you, my dear.”

  So there it was, Augusta supposed, forgiveness, though perhaps there was nothing to forgive. Karl took Augusta’s hand then, and led her from the church to the truck. It was the first time she could remember him taking her hand in public, in front of all those eyes.