The Beekeeper's Bullet

by Lance Hawvermale

  “When we’re finished here, we can try to locate your lost things where you went down.”

  “Not much reason for that, I should think. I don’t anticipate shooting my way out of Germany, and I suspect the fire claimed everything else. Besides, you’ve done enough for me already. At any rate, I’ve no matches.”

  Ellenor fetched flint and steel from a tin inside the shed. She put dried pine needles into a metal can with a cone-shaped lid, then got the needles burning. A few seconds later, a line of black smoke issued from the can. “Let’s go.”

  Alec carried the tools. He watched her obliquely as they walked toward the pines, the sun casting warm shadows beside them. What was she doing out here? An American expatriate in rural and rustic Deutschland in the middle of a war—she was as puzzling as she was lovely. She stood four inches shorter than Alec himself, with a slender jaw and eyes the color of the grass on which she walked. She wore no jewelry. She needed none.

  They passed between the pine trees, and on the far side of the hill, supported on short stone platforms, were two stacks of white boxes. Each stack stood three boxes high. They were awash in what looked to be a hundred million bees.

  Alec stopped.

  “Put on the veil,” she said, and kept walking.

  He fumbled the hat to his head, found it to be too small, removed it, adjusted the strap, then tried again, all the while watching her as she moved among the shifting cloud of buzzing wings. Fearlessly she knelt beside one of the stacks and scrutinized the narrow opening in the bottom box.

  Alec buttoned his sleeves at the wrist, thrust his hands into his pockets for protection, and slowly approached.

  Without looking up, she told him, “The foragers, all females, bring back nectar and pollen, and other bees help them remove the load so they can head back out again. They can find food and water up to two miles away.”

  Alec halted ten feet from her, holding still. “How, uh…how do they find their way back?”

  “No one knows for certain. If you look closely, you can see the bundles of pollen on their rear legs. It’s fascinating, really.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “They won’t hurt you unless you’re aggressive.” Wearing neither veil nor gloves, she watched them in silence for a solid minute, unperturbed when they alighted on her hair. Finally she stood, took the lid from the nearest box, and held her burning can over the fury inside, drenching the bees with smoke.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

  “Calming them.”

  “It calms them to choke on smoke?”

  “They’re not choking.”

  Alec watched in wonder, his veil occasionally probed, his plan momentarily forgotten.

  She set the can aside and lifted a wooden frame from the middle of the box. It was a slab of honeycomb with hundreds of bees clinging to either side. She held it close to her face and squinted.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Eggs.”

  “And…do you see any?”

  “The queen’s laying, all right. I see brood in different stages, some of these less than three days old.” She leaned the frame against the outside of the box and pulled on a pair of gloves that covered her to the elbows. “The smoke has most likely driven her into the bottom box. This is where you earn your keep.”

  “Right.” He exhaled. “For king and country, and all that…” He headed into the chaos of wings and noise. As the bees surrounded him, he wanted to laugh at his own timid response. He’d performed barrel loops thousands of feet off the ground. He’d shot men dead in their cockpits, their planes silently turning like falling leaves all the way to the ground. Other times he’d raked them with so many bullets that their petrol caught fire and they burned alive during their descent. He’d lifted off and landed safely more often than ninety percent of all pilots in the RFC, and here he was, frightened of angry insects.

  “Something funny?” she asked.

  “Just delirious, darling.” Instantly realizing what he’d said, he gave her an apologetic look. “Forgive me. That darling part just came out. I didn’t mean to—”

  “That’s all right.”

  “It’s just that being a pilot…I mean, in the military we get rather…”

  “I said it’s all right.” She smiled gently at him to let him know. “Now can you please lift this damn box for me?”

  He lifted the damn box.

  A whirlwind waited within. The box was heavy, perhaps four and a half stone—over sixty pounds—but his aching body responded. His strength was returning. The load wasn’t easy on his left hand, so he set the box down quickly, bees everywhere. They didn’t seem particularly intent on attacking him, but rather more anxious than anything else. “Now what?”

  “Now we look for what doesn’t want to be seen.” Placing the smoker aside, she used a small steel pry bar to work free one of the ten frames in the lowest box. She extracted it slowly, holding it by its edges with the sun over her shoulder; bees covered it entirely.

  “An odd occupation, beekeeping,” Alec observed.

  “No odder than flying in the air.”

  “I’ll grant you that. May I ask you a personal question?”

  “You needn’t request permission.” She carefully removed a second frame. “Besides, I already know what you’re going to ask, and the answer is dandelions.”

  He had no idea what to make of this. “I…suppose I was going to ask how you came to be here in Germany, speaking the language so fluently, raising bees…”

  “I left my home and crossed the Atlantic because of a dandelion growing outside my bedroom window. I’d just finished reading The Prisoner of Zenda. Are you familiar with the book? At any rate, I was feeling adventuresome. I wanted action and derring-do. I was also younger and much more prone to girlish fancies. I went straight outside, plucked the dandelion from the ground, blew its little pieces into the wind, and made a wish.”

  “You wished for adventure?”

  “Essentially, yes. I wanted to be Somewhere New.” She said those two words with clear capitalization. “I hadn’t the faintest idea where I might find Somewhere New, but that very evening I met the new owner of a Bavarian bakery, and two days later I was learning German from his wife.”

  “Your wish came true?”

  By now she’d made it to the fifth frame in the box, her face less than a foot away, fearless without her veil, her eyes searching the crawling, humming mass. “I manage to put money away every month,” she said. “Father pays me adequately, and I couldn’t ask more from my surroundings. It’s a lovely life.”

  “You mastered the language quickly.”

  “Perhaps I’ve been here longer than you think.”

  “I suppose that could be true. For some reason I assumed that you were—”

  “Found her!” She got to her feet and motioned him closer with a tilt of her head. “Come see.”

  Alec did as she instructed. He gazed at the frame with its countless little cells, some of them capped with a hard brown shell, many of them open and holding little bits of color. He followed where she pointed until his eyes located a bee twice as long as the others, escorted by a retinue of agitated attendants. “That’s the queen?”

  “She looks healthy.”

  “I…suppose she does.”

  “Do you see how the cells around her hold little grains of rice? Those are eggs. And she’s managed to find just about every cell without missing any, which is very good news. There’s nothing worse than a spotty brood pattern.”

  He nodded gravely under his helmet. “I do so hate a spotty brood pattern.”

  Then something amazing happened: Miss Ellenor Jantz laughed. She shook her head at him, smiling, and then returned the queen’s frame to the brood box, along with the others. A few minutes later, they’d packed everything back up as they had found it, leaving the bees to recover from the intrusion. As they returned to the shed, Alec removed his headgear. “You answered my firs
t question in a way that was both surprising and satisfactory. May I ask you another?”

  She hesitated before replying. “Why do I get the feeling this is one I may not want to hear?”

  “Because you’re intuitive. I’m going to ask you to—”

  She held up a hand and stopped him. “Let’s just enjoy the walk for a while before you go and spoil it.”

  He saw the wisdom in that. “Agreed.”

  And so he found himself talking to this woman about normal things, things that they could see and hear and touch, things they found important or frivolous, things that revealed quiet pieces of themselves, and just before he changed his mind, Alec asked her to be his accomplice.

  Chapter Eight

  Ellenor said no.

  “Please, if you’ll just hear me out…”

  “There’s nothing to hear. I won’t be party to…to whatever you’re proposing.”

  “You’d rather me wait out the war’s end here in your tool shed?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then at least consider it. Please.”

  She saw the desperation in his blue eyes and was not moved by it. He could be charming one moment and distant as the horizon the next, and now he was somewhere in the middle, simultaneously manipulative and honest. Had they met before the war, say in a train station on a shared bench, what would they have discussed? Books? Art? The rising popularity of the telephone?

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” he said.

  After a moment, she sighed. “If I were to aid you, I’d betray Father and all my friends.”

  “You’re not betraying anyone. I’m not some kind of saboteur out to cripple the German war effort. I’m not planning on hurting anyone or stealing secret documents or—”

  “You’re stealing an entire airplane.”

  “Yes, quite. You’re right. I’m taking something that doesn’t belong to me. I’d pay for the bloody thing if I could, or have it shipped back when I’m done with it, but neither of those actions seems very practical at the moment. I just want to save my sister.”

  “I understand that.”

  “If you understood it, you’d see that I have no choice in the matter. I lost a dogfight and got shot down. By the grace of the old gods, I survived. And I will save my sister, who likes to remind me that she’s one minute older than I am. I want to hear her say that again. And after I get her the hell out of Germany, I’ll return to my aerodrome and face a military court-martial, and even if they throw me in a French jail until the war is over, it will be worth it. Sarah will be safe.”

  “There’s no way to contact her?”

  “What would you suggest? A letter? The post hasn’t traveled between countries here in three years. Same can be said for the telegraph service. Perhaps I’ll tie a string to a pigeon’s leg.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Sarcasm isn’t becoming.”

  “Oh, there’s nothing sarcastic about it, Miss Jantz. Believe me, I’ve considered all options, no matter how farfetched they might sound.”

  “And after all of that consideration, you’ve concluded that I’m the only thing standing in the way of your reunion with your sister.”

  “What’s standing in my way are miles and miles of German wilderness. I need that plane. But I can’t get it without your assistance. It is physically impossible.”

  “And after you fly away, then what happens to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ll know I helped you.”

  “You’ll tell them that I forced you to cooperate.”

  “You forced me?”

  “At gunpoint or something. I made you do it. They’ll have no reason to believe otherwise.”

  “So I’m to play the role of the terrified damsel in this game of yours?”

  “It’s no game.”

  “Isn’t it? You flyers are all the same, aren’t you? You behave like boys without rules, rich little vandals who do whatever they please. I read the newspapers, Mr. Corbin-Dawes. I know the stories of pilots wearing tuxedos in their planes because they’d been carousing in Paris or Munich until sunrise, drinking and fornicating. I’ve heard about the license you’re given by your senior officers to do as you please so long as you all keep killing the enemy in between the clouds.”

  “Most of those pilots you’re reading about will die before their mid-twenties.”

  “And that’s your excuse for recklessness?”

  “It’s as good an excuse as any. Better than most.”

  Ellenor tried to imagine herself caught up in such a world, where the guillotine would drop when you were twenty-nine years old, so you sucked the marrow out of everything you encountered along the way. Maybe he had a point. But that was no reason for her to join him in this escapade. “Captain Voss will shoot you dead before you’re off the ground.”

  “By the time they wake up and realize what’s happening, I’ll be in the air.”

  “What if they post a guard at night to keep watch over the planes?”

  “Have they posted one yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “This can work,” he insisted, inching closer to her, as if the proximity would help convince her. “We’ll clear the chocks from the wheels. I’ll get in and prime the controls. You’ll rotate the propeller—”

  “Yes, because I have such experience as a propeller-rotater.”

  He grinned a little. “I’ll teach you. It’s actually more difficult than it sounds. You have to do it in such a way that your momentum doesn’t tip you forward into the blades when the engine catches.”

  “I’m liking this scheme more and more every second.” She crossed her arms. “Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you manage to lift off without getting one of us arrested or killed. Won’t the German pilots just jump in their own planes and hunt you down?”

  “It will be completely dark. They can’t see shit in the dark.” He bit his lip and tried again. “I’m sorry. They can’t see very well at night.”

  “And neither can you. How will you find Metz?”

  “I’m timing this operation so that the sun will rise about half an hour after I’m in the air. That gives me enough time to avoid pursuit in the darkness, but it also—”

  “Also it means you’ll soon have light to find your way to Metz.”

  “One would hope.”

  She didn’t like it. Too many things could go wrong. What if she wasn’t able to work the propeller correctly? What if Voss was awake with a loaded gun nearby? What if they didn’t believe her when she lied about her role in the theft?

  “You’re thinking about it,” he observed. “You’re considering saying yes.”

  And then Ellenor did something she hadn’t done since she was twelve and mad at her cousin Richard for throwing mud at her: she gave Mr. Alec Corbin-Dawes the middle finger.

  His eyes widened. He actually pulled back a little in surprise. And then he laughed.

  In that laugh, Ellenor saw her decision. Most would think her scandalous for making such a crude gesture—a lady’s hands weren’t supposed to be capable of such ghastly semaphore—but this was war, and she was, after all, an American. And having been born in a hardscrabble territory before civilized statehood arrived, she recognized the unbelievable daring in his plan and was drawn to it. By helping him, she risked everything. But she was in a toxic mood because of her dead bees and in no condition to listen to reason.

  “Teach me about the propeller,” she said.

  ****

  When Alec was a boy, he’d met the famous British artist John William Waterhouse. Alec’s father, a typesetter at the Derby Evening Telegraph, dragged his two children to a public showing of various high-brow paintings, determined to impress upon them the virtues of culture. The artist himself was in attendance, and at some point Alec was shuffled to the front of the small crowd and stood looking up at a man with a pointed black beard.

  “I like your painting, sir,” Alec mumbled after getting a say something
poke in the side from his sister.

  Waterhouse crouched down and looked him in the eyes. “Which one?”

  “The woman in the boat.” Alec pointed at The Lady of Shalott.

  “Ah. Painting that one made me sad,” the artist said.

  “Why?”

  “I’m not certain. I wish I knew. Do you paint, young man?”

  Sarah answered for him. “Alec draws.”

  “Ah, an illustrator. I should have known. You’ve that look about you.” He reached into a coat pocket and produced a graphite pencil. “Here. Use it wisely or foolishly, as it suits you.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Waterhouse winked.

  Now, twenty years later, Alec remembered that pencil as he used a blank page in a beekeeping journal to render a diagram of the Rumpler’s engine. Only an inch of the pencil remained, locked away in a lacquered box in his parents’ cellar. “Forgive my artistic skills, Miss Jantz. Or the lack thereof, as the case may be.”

  “You’re being modest. And it’s ‘Ellenor.’ Miss Jantz is the sensible woman who teaches Father’s children and is learning to cook Sauerbraten. She’s not the airplane thief.”

  Alec sketched a side view of the Rumpler’s six-cylinder engine to demonstrate how it connected to the propeller, and as he worked, he said her name in his mind: Ellenor. He was entrusting his life to her. If she decided he wasn’t worth the trouble, she’d inform the Huns of his plot, and he’d be arrested and executed the next morning at dawn. At best, he’d spend the rest of the war inside some medieval-era German prison, shackled to the wall.

  “You’re actually quite good,” Ellenor said as the image came to life on the page.

  “Sarah always chided me for wasting my talent.”

  “Maybe when the war is over…”

  “I could become an artist? Give up the glamorous life of a flyboy to take up the brush?”

  “Would that be so bad?”

  “King George said he’d give Fritz a proper swatting and end the war by Christmas. That was three years ago.”

  The two of them stood in the supply shed, the door open wide to permit sunlight to illuminate the small space. The journal was splayed open on the lid of a hive box—what Ellenor called a super. Resting in a tub nearby was a brown-yellow mass of unprocessed wax cappings, the remains of Ellenor’s most recent honey harvest.