Hour of the Bees

by Lindsay Eagar

  A boat. A hand-carved wooden boat.

  “Grandpa, what is this? Where did this come from?”

  He pats the boat’s side. “It’s Father Alejandro’s boat. Remember? It’s still seaworthy. Come, Rosa. Hop in.”

  Now I’m the one who needs oxygen. I’m woozy, raindrops spiraling. “I’m Carol!” I say, my voice cracking. “Carol, your granddaughter! Grandpa, we need to get inside, out of the rain.”

  But he clambers into the boat and shoves off with a paddle.

  “No, no, no!” I shout, splashing into the lake after him. I grab the side of the boat and haul myself in.

  “Where are you taking us?” I ask.

  “To the tree!”

  The tree. Grandpa thinks the story is real, that it’s really happening.

  But it can’t be real, can it? It’s too impossible.

  But what about the lake? my brain asks. What about the boat?

  Grandpa rows us out into the phantom lake. I’m going to call it that, because it doesn’t actually exist. I’m hallucinating — I must be. I hit my head when I crashed Alta’s car, and now I’m imagining this huge green lake. My hand isn’t really in cool water; it’s dipping into the sand in the basin. This isn’t a boat; it’s a rock.

  “The bees, Rosa! See?” he cries, pointing up at the rain clouds. “They came back! They brought our lake back to us!”

  I was in bed just a few hours ago, wasn’t I? Maybe I still am. Maybe this is all just some crazy dream.

  The lake’s choppy in the storm, and we’re halfway across it. Lightning flashes.

  In the burst of light, I see a tree. A tall, fat, black tree that’s big enough to block out the sun, its outstretched branches crisscrossing like a spider’s web.

  The lake churns, and I grip the edges of the boat, my stomach carving itself out. “A tree,” I whisper. “How … ?” I remember the little seed I planted. But it couldn’t be that.

  Could it?

  Is dementia contagious? Maybe Grandpa coughed out a spore of his dementia and I breathed it in. His story of the lake, the bees, the magic tree that isn’t magic … it sprouted and grew in my own brain.

  Grandpa laughs. “That tree’s been there for thousands of years. Since this world was patched and sewn together. And we will never let the tree die again, will we, Rosa? We’ve come home, and the bees have come home with us!”

  “Grandpa, it’s Carol! And I think we should head back to —”

  To where? To the cold, dark house? To the highway?

  I was wrong. So wrong. I should have kept Grandpa at the Seville, where he’d be safe.

  I want to laugh at the bitter irony. Grandpa’s always been afraid to leave the ranch, but now it’s the most dangerous place on earth for him.

  As though proving my point, a wave hits.

  The boat capsizes, and we plunge into the water — so cold, I ache. All I see is green, and my arms and legs flail until they’re senseless. Somehow my head breaks the surface, and I find the boat, clinging to it like a drowning rat. I gulp water, choke, sputter.

  “Grandpa?” I scream, but then I spot him. He’s on the other side of the boat, trying to hold on to it with slipping hands.

  “Hang on!” I swim around and shove him as hard as I can up and into the boat. He flops inside like a fish. I’m still overboard, one arm draped over the boat, trying to catch my breath.

  “Rosa,” he sputters.

  “I’m not Rosa!” I cry. Suddenly I miss my name, my stupid, Spanish name. I want to hear my grandpa call me Caro-leeen-a, just like that. I want to wear that name every day. “Grandma Rosa’s gone,” I say desperately. “She died twelve years ago. Remember?”

  His expression doesn’t change. “The bees,” he says. “The bees.”

  My frustration rages, despite the icy water. “Caro-leeen-a, Caro-leeen-a!” I say until my throat is raw. Then I say it some more. I’ll keep saying it until I break through, until he looks up and sees Carolina, not Rosa.

  “We’re going to die, Rosa,” Grandpa says, and I feel like I’ve slipped underwater. “But I’m not afraid, because I’m not afraid to live. Not anymore.”

  “Don’t say that!” I choke, my throat slimy with lake water and snot. “I don’t want to die, not here, not like this!”

  Another wave scrambles the water, tossing me against the boat. My legs struggle to find the bottom of the lake, but it’s too deep.

  “I shouldn’t have brought us here.” I grip the side of the boat and feel a splinter in my palm, one I missed last week when I held on to the porch railing and refused to leave.

  The lightning flashes again, and a silhouette of the tree burns into my sight. When I squeeze my eyes shut, I see it still, white tree on black sky.

  A wave picks up the boat, and this time it slams against my head. I’m knocked to stars, my brain prickling. I float back in the water, Grandpa and the boat slipping out of my reach.

  I drift on waves, lightning flashing, rain still pouring. I could swear I hear buzzing …

  My back hits something underwater, something hard and scratchy. A tree branch, jutting into the lake. I let it hold me, lie on it like an open palm, and I pray for sleep. I’m so exhausted, so cold.

  Beneath me the branch moves. The tree drinks in the lake water and grows, lifting me, like a hand raising me to the skies. I stay flat on my back, the branch my bed. The only place to look is the sky, and it swirls black and gray.

  And gold.

  “Bees,” I whisper. “Bees.”

  As the lightning flashes, I see them in the millions. Each bee holds a drop of water, and as they fly, they toss the water into the lake. Drop by drop. Bzzz, bzzz, I hear, as I float in the tree.

  The bees brought back the rain, just like Grandpa said they would.

  They watered the seed, and the tree grew, and then they brought back the rain.

  Impossible.

  Then it’s black.

  I wake with a mouth full of water.

  My eyes won’t open. It’s too bright. I slept with my blinds open by accident.

  “Caro-leeen-a,” someone says. Time for school. One more minute, Mom.

  It’s too hot. My bed’s lumpy. This mattress is awful; I don’t remember it being this bad.

  I grab my pillow, but grainy wood meets my fingers.

  I pry my eyelids open, one at a time. The sun is heavy and round and white on the horizon, the sky a watery blue, and I smell my own dried sweat. It’s dawn in the desert, and I’m in a tree, flat on my back.

  The tree.

  Like a flood, it crashes back: Alta’s car, the jailbreak at the Seville, the lake. Sometime in the night, the bees stopped dropping water, then faded to stars. Stars became sunrise.

  My hair is crispy when I sit up, dried out like beached seaweed. I can feel my pulse in my head.

  With my eyes still half closed, I turn and peek behind me, down beyond the pasture. If I’d been imagining the events of last night — our boat ride in an imaginary lake — then I should see the golden desert stretching into the horizon. No bees, no rain, no lake.

  But I’m in a tree, above a green-glass lake.

  I stand on shaky legs and look down. Beneath me, the trunk stretches thirty feet down, black and twisted. Next to the trunk is the scabby stump of the old tree. I gawk at the green leaves springing from the branches of the tree I’m standing in, white blossoms surrounding me like a snowstorm. Bees dart about, buzzing in and out of the blossoms… .

  I spot the boat on the ridge, tippy-top, meatball on spaghetti. That must have been one crazy storm, to toss the boat up so high.

  But where is Grandpa?

  The fastest way down is to leap into the lake. I tighten my bracelet. It’s time for courage, just like Rosa. I hang my toes over the edge of the branch and put my hands up. I don’t wait to feel afraid. I just close my eyes and jump.

  The nose of the boat juts into the sand, like it’s been buried there since the dinosaurs. The top of the ridge is dry earth, so hot it�
��s crackling beneath me. I follow the pattern of shingled ground around the boat.

  “Caro-leeen-a.” I hear him before I see him, his voice nails on a chalkboard, a dust-choked muffler.

  “Grandpa?” I whisper as I creep around the prow, afraid of what I’ll see.

  My grandfather is on his stomach, pitched from the boat with arms and legs at odd angles like a busted toy.

  “Grandpa!” I screech and throw myself at his side.

  “Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “Water.”

  I blink tears away. This is all my fault. “I’ll get you some lake water. Hold on.”

  “No, chiquita.” Grandpa rolls onto his side. “The water. The bees.”

  “I … I know,” I say. “They brought it back.”

  For a minute I kneel here, baking in the sun. What do we do now? Grandpa can’t even walk. How will we make it back to the highway? Or even back to the house?

  Maybe I can find my cell phone in Alta’s car. Maybe I can call 911 again and give them directions before it’s too late.

  But that would mean leaving Grandpa here on the ridge, alone. Without his oxygen tank. Without his snake-stomping boots.

  Tears choke me. What do I do?

  “We need to get out of here,” I say, my words slurring with exhaustion. “Come on, Grandpa. I’ll help you up, then we’ll go to the house.” And once he’s inside, out of the hot sun, I’ll figure out what to do next.

  One more minute, then I’ll move. I’m so tired.

  I hear buzzing.

  No, not buzzing — rattling.

  A fat rattlesnake coils near Grandpa’s feet, its noisy tail paralyzing me. “Don’t move,” I whisper.

  But he’s trying to stand. “Bees, Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “I hear bees.”

  “It’s not bees — it’s a rattler!” I work to keep my voice from edging into shrillness. But Grandpa is on another planet. Slowly, laboriously, he folds his legs beneath him, so he can stand.

  “Please!” I tell him. “Hold still!” His bare feet are so white, they’re lilac.

  Grandpa stands, and the snake hikes up on its muscled body, scales glinting like rusty corn in the sunlight.

  “Grandpa!” I stretch out and push my grandfather out of biting distance.

  The rattler strikes. It happens faster than thought, a blur. I shriek and wait to feel fangs sink into my skin.

  But the bracelet — Rosa’s bracelet, made of bark as black as midnight — takes the rattler’s fangs.

  The bracelet is a shield.

  I laugh and tears fall like bombs in the dirt.

  “Caro-leeen-a!” Grandpa’s voice breaks with concern. He crawls toward me.

  This time the rattler gets him, right on the ankle.

  Grandpa crumples with the pain.

  The snake slides away, damage done, and camouflages itself on the ridge.

  “No. Oh, no.” I lean over my grandfather. His breathing is raspy, like he’s getting all his oxygen through a Capri Sun straw. He’s lily-faced with dehydration, his eyes blue holes in his face, wide and scared.

  “Aren’t you glad …” he says faintly, “you were wearing … that bracelet, Caro-leeen-a?”

  Caro-leeen-a. My name has never sounded so sweet.

  “What do I do, Grandpa?” I’m only twelve, just a little seed. I’m not smart enough or strong enough to fix this. My grandpa’s going to die, and it’s all my fault.

  He’s muttering to himself, a blend of Spanish and English, sense and nonsense, just as he did all summer. But it isn’t word salad. I know that now. It’s the truth. The twisted, demented truth.

  “Tell me what to do,” I say. “Please, Grandpa.”

  “Bees,” he whispers.

  “No. We need to get you out of here, right now,” I say. I’d hoped saying these words would invoke some kind of spell, that an actual plan would spill into my mind. “You stay here. I’ll run to the highway and —”

  “No,” Grandpa says. “Stay with me.”

  I swallow a sob and curl up against my grandpa, head on his chest, feel him rummaging for air.

  “Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”

  For a terrifying moment, he stops breathing and stops moving. His eyelids relax, and the rattlesnake bite stops bleeding, festering raisin brown in the sunshine.

  Grandpa takes another breath, but they’re too far apart for comfort. Too far apart to measure time. Don’t play on the ridge, Dad told me. It’s dangerous.

  None of that matters now.

  We bake in the sun. I fight the urge to sleep, seeing terrible snakes when I close my eyes. I don’t know how long we lie here, intertwined, as the sun climbs the sky. I don’t hear the cars pull into the driveway, don’t hear the squishy footsteps through the wet pasture.

  A hand with neon-orange fingernails touches my shoulder.

  “Carol.” Her voice is like it was when I was five and she was ten, and we’d play dress-up and I’d fall in the high heels and scrape my knee, and she’d lean over me and whisper my name, calling me back from the brink of pain.

  Alta.

  I’m pulled up into my big sister’s arms, almost forcibly, and she hugs me until all her muscles quake.

  “Grandpa … he’s … Alta, look, he’s …” I’m a snot-drenched, sunburned catastrophe.

  She strokes my head, shushing me. “The paramedics are here,” she says. “They’ll take care of him.”

  “I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m sorry.” The words are too insignificant to explain how I feel; maybe if I say them over and over …

  “Don’t you ever scare me like that again.” She pinches me, and it hurts so much, my eyes sting. But then she pulls me to her, tight enough to crush my ribs.

  “How did you find me?” My teeth grind into her skin when I talk.

  She leans back and peels a soggy leaf from my cheek. “When we got a call saying Serge was missing and then found your bed empty, we figured it out. But when you stopped answering your phone, we all thought —” She sniffles, tightening her arm around me. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Her voice is soft as lamb’s wool, and she rests her chin on top of my head. I’m suddenly introduced to another Alta, one I’ve never met: Soft Alta.

  “Your car!” I remember. “I ruined your car.”

  “I don’t want to talk about the car.” A storm of anger flashes in her words, not that I can blame her. “You’re lucky that I love you, little sister.”

  I gulp. “I thought … I thought we weren’t real sisters.”

  Alta looks like I smacked her, color draining from her cheeks. “Is that what you think?”

  “No.” I shrink. “It’s what you think.”

  Alta frowns. “I don’t think that.”

  “But that’s what you said. Remember?” I hear myself, echoing in my brain, sounding more like a needy, squeaky mouse with each word. “When we were cleaning Grandma Rosa’s closet?”

  “Oh, that.” She laughs, high and pretty like bells. “You can’t always trust what teenagers say. We blab any crummy thing that pops into our minds.”

  Yesterday, I would have accepted this lame excuse, and left it alone forever. But today I want more from my sister.

  “Alta … It really hurt my feelings.” I hold so still, I can hear her pulse.

  She thinks for a moment. “I’m sorry. I am. But I was miserable out here at the ranch, okay? Stuck here for a whole summer, with Mom on my case about every little thing. Plus you and Raúl and Mom and Lu — you’re, like, the perfect little family. My dad would never cook me sun cakes for dinner or sit next to me and laugh at some crappy movie on TV. He barely talks to me.”

  “I didn’t know,” I say.

  “And Serge didn’t want to talk to anyone but you,” my sister continues.

  “Wait, you wanted to talk to Grandpa?” I’m stunned.

  “Of course,” Alta says. She’s almost embarrassed. “He’s the closest thing to a grandfather I’m ever going to have.”

  “I
… I had no idea,” I say.

  She shrugs. “I’m sorry if it hurt you. But Carol, you’re my sister — half or step-or whatever you want to call it.”

  My waterworks begin again. Alta smooths my crunchy hair away from my face and holds me.

  Mom, Dad, and Lu reach us, and I’m wrapped into a family hug. While the paramedics carry Grandpa down the ridge on a stretcher, Mom and Dad alternate between yelling at me and squeezing me tight.

  Finally, my parents look around, taking in the ranch’s changed landscape. Dad gapes at the tree and the lake. “How … Where … I don’t …”

  “From the story,” I say, barely believing it myself. “Grandpa wasn’t making it up. It all really happened.”

  “Carol …” Dad says, the start of a warning. But he stares out at the transformed landscape and shakes his head.

  My family and I make our shaky way down the ridge. I’m convinced a snake is hiding in every crevice, but Alta is the very essence of brave, her face neutral, swollen cry-eyes already back to normal. She never once lets go of my hand.

  The paramedics insist on taking me to the emergency room too. I lie in the ambulance on a stretcher next to Grandpa, who clings to life, in the worst condition possible.

  I let them check my bones, my blood pressure, my temperature. But I don’t take my eyes off the tree, not until we drive around the mountain and it disappears. Then I turn my head to the side, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

  I have second-degree sunburns on my arms, neck, shoulders, and chest. Also minor heatstroke and dehydration. Doctors insist that I stay overnight and tell me I’ll have to cover up with long sleeves for the next six months.

  I have to grow new skin.

  Other than that, my night of reckless lawbreaking hasn’t done any major damage.

  Besides, of course, to Alta’s car. It gets a ride back to Albuquerque on a tow truck. Dad thinks Alta’s insurance will pay for most of the repairs. The rest I’ll have to pay for with lifeguarding money and extra chores for the rest of my life. I’m back to being Alta’s slave — just the way she likes it. And, if I’m being honest, the way I like it, too; it’s nice and safe being under her thumb.

  I’d take a harder diagnosis than sunburn, if it meant Grandpa would live.

  He’s not going to survive the day.