Hour of the Bees

by Lindsay Eagar

  I’m retreading the fear I felt on our first day at the ranch, when Lu went missing and found a rattlesnake. What if my sister’s facing off with a rattler at this very minute?

  I recall my words: Alta’s going to get what’s coming to her. “That’s not what I meant!” I shout to the cloudless blue sky, dashing toward the barn, Lu bouncing on my hip.

  I keep losing everyone I’m supposed to be watching.

  Lu and I peer into the shadows, but there’s no Alta. And no Serge.

  “Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic,” I tell myself. Lu parrots the words back at me in toddler singsong.

  “That’s right, Lu,” I say brightly. “Everything is okay!”

  Bzzz.

  I jump. A bee!

  But it’s not a bee. It’s my phone buzzing with a message. I pull it out of my pocket with a shaking hand, wondering what I’m going to tell Mom or Dad if they ask how things are going… .

  But the message isn’t from Mom or Dad. It’s from Alta:

  Gone out. Be back by dinner.

  A new message arrives while I’m still trying to make sense of the first:

  DO NOT tell your dad.

  Gone out? Gone out where — and how? Alta hasn’t touched her car since she got here; it’s still parked out front.

  From the barn doors, I peer across the ranch. It’s like Alta and Serge have both grown wings and flown away, like Sergio worried Rosa would do in the story. I swallow the last of my fury at Alta — for now — because even though she abandoned me, at least I know she’s okay. What matters now is finding Serge.

  As Lu and I trudge around the ranch, calling out for Serge, the answer to how Alta sneaked off smacks me in the face: Marco. Alta must have had her boyfriend come pick her up, leaving the ranch without driving her own car. Technically not breaking the rules.

  I could almost admire Alta for her cleverness. She’s a slicker escape artist than Houdini.

  Or Serge.

  Should I call Dad? No, I think I’ll spare myself a scolding. Serge can’t have gone far — I cling to the hope that I’ll find him before Dad gets back from the store and realizes Serge was ever missing.

  I’m covered in sweat, my voice hoarse from shouting for Serge and singing silly songs to Lu to stave off a meltdown — his or mine, I’m not sure — when I hear the slamming of a car door.

  Uh-oh.

  “Carol!” Dad roars from the front of the house. “Get out here!”

  I hike Lu up on my hip and scramble around to the front yard, wondering how Dad knew right away that I’d messed everything up. I don’t have to wonder for long: Dad’s standing on the porch stairs, quaking with rage, pointing a finger at the driveway.

  His finely smoothed work has been destroyed with footprints sunk deep into the soggy cement. One side of his duct tape barrier is ripped apart, the ends trailing uselessly on the ground.

  “What happened?” I gasp.

  “Didn’t I tell you to keep an eye on Serge?” Dad says.

  “I tried!” I say. “But he wandered off when I was changing Lu. I’ve been looking all over for him!”

  “He’s right over there,” Dad snaps, and I follow his pointing finger to the fields, where Serge’s head barely pokes above a row of dried-out cornstalks.

  I let out a shaky breath and rest my damp forehead against Lu’s.

  “You have to stay with him, Carol. He could have wandered off and gotten lost, or gone to the ridge, or fallen down the porch stairs …” He gestures to the ruined driveway behind him. “And this, this is just — unacceptable.”

  I open my mouth and close it again, a flabbergasted fish. “I’m sorry, I just took my eyes off him for one second.”

  “Well, that one second just set us back a week.” Dad slaps the porch railing with open palms, cursing.

  “I didn’t mean to.” Every time I speak, my voice is smaller and smaller.

  “A week!” he says, looking like he’s lost his entire life savings. “One more week to re-prep and re-pour that driveway. Do you want to be here an extra week?”

  I shake my head.

  Suddenly he looks exhausted, like he ran to the hardware store on foot. “Or maybe I’ll try to cram it into our schedule. Stay up a few nights. I don’t know.” The guilt fills me to the brim.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I say again. I want to tell him about Alta, so he knows I’m not the only one who should be in trouble. But that’ll only add to his already rickety load, and Alta will fry me for tattling. Besides, with the mood he’s in, Dad just might blame me for her leaving, too.

  I open the screen door and step inside.

  “Carol,” Dad calls. “I’m sorry for barking. I am. It’s just … We want to get out of here as soon as we can, right?”

  “Right,” I say, hiding my face in Lu’s curls. I don’t lift my head as I walk through the dark house.

  After depositing a sleepy Lu into his port-a-crib, I head to Dad’s old bedroom and burrow into my sleeping bag, face-first. Keep an eye on things, keep an eye on things … Mom’s words chant through my head, and a bee finds my rhythm and adds a buzz as a counterbeat: bzzz, bzzz …

  I lie there, drowning in my deadly concoction of remorse and bitterness, and when I look up, the sun is on the other side of the sky. Alta strolls into the room and barely glances at me.

  “When did you get home?” I prop myself up on my elbows.

  “Now,” she says, like I asked the dumbest question in the world. She sets her purse on the bed and kicks off her sandals.

  “You were supposed to stay here and help with Lu,” I say, my teeth clenched. “Mom said so this morning.”

  “Well, something came up.” Her tone warns me to leave it alone.

  In the kitchen I hear Dad putting the dinner Mom made us into the oven. “Does Dad know you were gone all day?” I ask.

  “No, and you’re not going to tell him.” The way she says it — like it’s a statement of fact, like she’s already sized me up and figured me out … My anger melts, becoming exhaustion in my muscles.

  I stare at the sleeping bag and nod.

  “Good,” Alta says, and pats my head like I’m a Chihuahua. “Let’s go eat dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I say to Alta’s back, but she’s already down the hallway, has already forgotten about me. How can she forget so easily?

  On the porch, Serge is soaking his snake-stomping boots in the old-fashioned metal tub, cakey bits of cement breaking away from the soles and floating in the water.

  “I tried to walk to the pasture, but the ground wouldn’t stay still beneath my feet,” Serge says.

  “It was wet cement,” I tell him. “Dad was trying to fix up your driveway.”

  “Your father keeps trying to fix things that aren’t broken,” Serge says.

  “Grandpa?” I ask. The name still tastes foreign. Not quite right.

  He looks at me with his electric-blue eyes. “You want to hear the rest of the story,” he says.

  I cross my legs, scrunching myself up against the house.

  “Once upon a time,” I begin for him, and he continues with me, “there was a tree …”

  Once upon a time, there was a tree. It was taller than the crag where the eagles nested, tall enough to touch the clouds with its tippy-top leaves. It held still in the orange afternoon light, like it was straining to hear the conversation happening beneath its branches.

  Sergio finished saddling the wheat-colored horse and slung a bundle of wool onto its back. “You shouldn’t be going alone,” he said to his wife, for the thousandth time.

  Rosa threw a stone into the lake, skipping it six times across the pale-green water. “The crops need to be brought in,” she said. “Sheep need feeding, dosing, shearing.”

  “Then stay.”

  She smiled. “And waste a perfectly saddled horse?”

  Sergio laced his fingers in hers. “Tell me you’ll be fine. Tell me you won’t come home in a coffin.”

  “How do you
know about coffins?”

  He shook his head. “You think I’m just a silly shepherd? I remember Father Alejandro’s stories as well as you.”

  “I married you for your looks,” she joked.

  “Stay with me,” he whispered, so quiet she couldn’t hear. Perhaps he said it more for himself.

  Rosa looked at him. His eyes hadn’t changed, not in all these years. They were still the color of the sky’s first morning breath, blue and serious, the same eyes he had when he was the chubby boy whittling on the tree branch.

  Am I going too far? she wondered. To dream of leaving is one thing; to saddle a horse and ride away is quite another.

  “Remember how you made that wish?” Sergio said. “One hundred years ago you wished to leave the village, and here you are.”

  He stared at her like she was a magician, like she had transformed the lake into sand, and her doubts flew away. This was magic. Leaving, actually leaving, was a thing of magic. She never wanted him to stop looking at her this way.

  “A hundred lamb slaughters ago,” she said.

  “Lamb slaughters?”

  Rosa nodded. “How else are we supposed to measure time around here? A year might as well be a minute.”

  And a minute without you will feel like a year, Sergio thought.

  A breeze rippled the lake and blew warm air through Rosa’s hair, carrying the honey-vanilla scent to Sergio. Her signature trail of bees hovered behind her, a constellation of yellow against the black bark of the tree trunk. He wanted to wrap her close to him, pretend that these last few moments together really were an eternity. “Rosa, you must be safe.” He kissed her forehead. “If only you could take the tree with you …”

  Then his eyes lit up. He darted up the tree like a desert fox.

  “What are you doing?” Rosa called.

  “Chasing an idea.” Even with shepherd’s soreness making his arms complain with every move, he reached their favorite branch in seconds and pulled out his whittling knife, glancing around. He was reluctant to damage the tree, but the fear of death, of Rosa’s death, pulsed through him like his own heartbeat.

  Rosa climbed up next to him.

  Using the knife, Sergio peeled away a sliver of black bark. Then he waited. Waited for the tree to shudder, or cry. The tree wasn’t human, of course, but it was as much a part of their village as any of the villagers themselves.

  Moments passed, but nothing happened. He peeked at the tree’s bald spot. So the wood under the bark was black, too. A part of him had always wondered.

  “What are you doing?” Rosa whispered.

  “An experiment,” he said, “in the gift of the tree.” He slid the piece of bark onto a leather strip and tied it around her wrist. “I don’t know if it will work, but promise you won’t take it off.”

  She fondled the bracelet — strange, yet so familiar. “I promise.”

  The two of them sat side by side, legs dangling as when they were children.

  Beneath the tree, their sheepdog Inés lapped up lake water, then curled up beneath the tree for a siesta while the sheep lazed about in the pasture.

  But even in the village where years didn’t matter, time drained away. Rosa needed the remaining daylight to ride the twenty miles north, to the next mission.

  A stack of sheep wools was loaded behind her on the horse. Travelers had marveled for years at this wool — how thick, how soft it was. Wool that never wore out. Rosa had collected it for months, washed it herself, hung it to dry, and planned to sell it to pay to see the world. Her wedding gift from Sergio, finally coming to fruition.

  “Stay with me,” Sergio said.

  “Come with me,” Rosa countered, and for the thousandth time since she’d packed her bag, Sergio thought about it. About leaving his flock for the villagers to tend, about finding another horse, about leaving.

  “No,” he said. Rosa saw the same paleness in his cheeks as when he saw blood or bruises or scrapes.

  She would leave. He would stay. But she would come back. Sergio was someone worth coming home to.

  He hugged her, metering his breaths with hers, then kissed her. They climbed back down the tree together, and Rosa mounted the horse. She looked like a painting to him, her lips scarlet and full, her braid of black hair escaping her bonnet, her turquoise riding dress smartly buckled at her waist. More beautiful than the lake, more full of life than the tree.

  She rode up and over the ridge, a few rogue bees following her, and was gone.

  Sergio watched the ridge until the sun faded. He imagined eternity without Rosa and lost his heartbeat for a second. Then he laughed at his wife, her boldness, the way she rewrote the history of the village in one crazy move.

  Once upon a time, someone left the lake.

  Three months passed. Sergio helped the village bring the crops in, then spent the rest of his days doing manual labor: fixing roofs that had never leaked, straightening door frames that hung perfectly straight, tending to the sheep day and night like a butler. He did anything back-splitting, anything that wore him to the bone, so when night came, he was asleep before his head hit the pillow, lost in a black haze of dreamless slumber.

  Three more months passed. Six months total without Rosa, far longer than he’d hoped she’d be gone. Sergio pictured her bouncing around the world like a tumbleweed, rolling in any direction the wind blew. He didn’t let a certain phrase form in his mouth. He didn’t want to taste the words, but they swirled in his mind: I miss her, I miss her, I miss her.

  Inés shirked her sheepdog duties and lay by the door every night, sniffing the air and searching for her mistress.

  Sergio climbed the tree one evening and touched the spot where he had peeled the bark away with the knife. The raw, unhealed bark made his throat bubble over with bile. What had he done, cutting into the branch? What had he done, thinking a bracelet of dead tree-skin would keep Rosa alive?

  What had he done, letting her leave?

  “Have you heard from Rosa?” the villagers asked. “Have you gotten letters?”

  They could see it killed him to keep answering “No, not a letter, or a messenger, or a smoke signal, nothing.” So they stopped asking. They stopped mentioning her name.

  It had been three-quarters of a year since she rode away on that gold horse — a very quiet nine months, since the bees’ incessant buzzing was no longer part of Sergio’s days. The bees stayed near the tree, flying aimlessly among the blossoms, which seemed withered by the sand and heat and time.

  Sergio, too, withered. His worry withered him into a skeleton.

  When one year passed and faded into the next, he boarded up his shepherd shack from the inside. There he sat, surrounded by darkness, his hands whittling pieces of wood into unknown objects. Carolina, Rosa’s sister, slipped food through the cracks, since he had no will to keep himself fed or even alive. She and the other villagers pleaded for him to come out, to let the village grieve together for the loss of one of their own. For the tragic example of what happens when the gift of the tree is rejected.

  But he didn’t move. For months. Years.

  Until the day he heard her voice.

  “Sergio!” A kick on the boarded-up door. “It’s me, it’s Rosa! Let me in!”

  He couldn’t yank the boards down fast enough. Sunlight streamed in first and pained him, since he’d spent so many days in the dark. When he finally got to her, and saw that she had all her limbs and wasn’t bleeding or broken, he grabbed her. He stroked her face, tugged her hair, sobbed and sobbed as he planted kisses on her skin. Behind her, the bees were already buzzing.

  “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Sergio checked her neck, her fingernails, her ribs, searching for scars or burns.

  “Sergio, it worked.” She held up her wrist, the bracelet tied tight. “I should be dead, but the tree saved me.”

  She was down south in the Andes, walking with the horse along the canyon. A rock slide crushed her flat, but she and the horse jumped up and carried on without a scratch.
>
  “The gift lives on,” she said.

  Sergio touched the bracelet with trepidation. “How does it work, then? Does it radiate protection like sunshine?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. It works. Sergio, we must have a village meeting tonight.”

  “But you just got home.”

  “Gather everyone at the lake.” Her eyes glowed wild. “We must discuss what to do with the tree.”

  “What to do with the tree?” Sergio repeated. “What do you mean?” But Rosa walked past him to greet Inés.

  Once upon a time, a village chopped down a tree.

  One Saturday, as Mom’s on her way home from a shift, Dad realizes he forgot to thaw one of the frozen meals she made for nights like this.

  “Aw, shoot,” he says when he pulls the casserole dish of enchiladas from the freezer and it’s a solid brick of pulled pork, tortillas, and red sauce.

  My mouth waters. “How long will it take to cook?”

  He pokes it with a finger. Hard as a wall. “Hours,” he says. His stomach gurgles. He’s been doing ranch repairs all afternoon. He’s as hungry as I am.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll find us something else.” He opens the cupboards and frowns. There’s only Serge’s strange field-grown, dried-out, unrecognizable vegetables and Mom’s ingredients for made-from-scratch dinners.

  “Hmmm,” Dad says, clearly flummoxed by the lack of ramen noodles.

  “Sun cakes?” I suggest. Dad can really only cook this one thing. Luckily, they’re delicious.

  “Good thinking.” Dad ties Mom’s apron around his middle and turns a burner on the stove to medium.

  Sun cakes are really just Mexican pancakes with cinnamon and brown butter, but when I was younger, to get me to eat, Dad told me these round things on my plate covered in syrup had a special ingredient in them: sunshine.

  I fell for it every time. They were exactly how I imagined sunlight would taste: soft on my tongue, melting, with a hint of spice and a whole lot of sweet. Plus they were round and golden, like the sun.

  It was easy to believe in impossible things as a little kid.

  Within fifteen minutes, Dad’s whipped up a stack of pancakes taller than the carton of orange juice and is already working on a second batch.