The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (free ereaders txt) 📗

At least that was the way Harry remembered it—the smell of cigarette smoke, Patsy Cline on the radio, and his mother singing along. In his mind’s eye, Harry could see the orange crayon and the paper. He’d drawn a horse, a policeman, and a caged tiger on one side of the page and a stick figure of his father on the other—thereby marking his first tally of life’s pros and cons. Harry continued to use this strategy as a young man. The list-making helped, or at least Harry liked to believe it did, as he so often found himself stuck between the now and the next.

“Analysis paralysis,” Sal teased him. “Kid couldn’t decide his way out of a paper bag.”

His mother would shush his stepfather, saying Harry was doing just fine, that he was actively considering his options when he made the lists. However, not even she would say that Harry was doing anything remotely active now—living in his uncle’s trailer off of Highway 141 in the woods near BZ Corner. Harry had been content with his situation until recently. He liked the peace and quiet. Those were two more items for the left-hand column. And privacy. Harry hadn’t seen a single person since his uncle left. Only chattering birds and flashes of small creatures in the underbrush.

“Wildlife,” he wrote under “Privacy,” although wildlife wasn’t always a positive element to rural life. The golden grosbeaks that flashed down onto the sunny driveway were beautiful. But the aggressive raccoon guarding the trash pile was not. Harry was almost certain he’d seen a coyote, its lanky brown body slung low to the ground, skulking around the edges of the property.

“My propity!” Uncle H was always saying, his Mississippi accent still strong even after decades out west. “Private propity! They got no reason to trespass up here into my bidness, do they?”

Harry was unclear about who “they” might be, seeing as nobody had visited his uncle in the two months Harry had been staying there. Feisty Uncle H—short for Harold, last name of Goodwin—didn’t welcome visitors. Harry conjectured there’d been a fire sale on “No Trespassing” signs at the hardware store since dozens of them hung along the overgrown driveway all the way to the mailbox. Uncle H had affixed them with nails, tacks, and duct tape. Tattered and windblown, they added to the general atmosphere of neglect that surrounded the dilapidated trailer.

Harry wondered whether his uncle really owned any “propity” here in the dark woods near BZ Corner. It seemed possible that he was just squatting and whoever owned the land couldn’t be bothered to move him or didn’t know he was there. BZ was really nothing more than a wide spot in the road just north of Hood River. In his short time there, Harry had determined that people who lived in BZ seemed to be of three types: 1) God-fearing retired loggers who liked to hunt, fish, and keep to themselves. 2) The cagey and unemployed, who were shifty-looking enough that you wanted to steer clear. 3) Second homeowners from Portland who’d built rustic vacation homes they rarely occupied.

Harry wouldn’t say it to his face, but Uncle H seemed to be firmly in the second category. It was unclear how the old man had landed here or why he’d stayed. He had a daughter and grandchildren in Mississippi still, Harry’s mom said. Harry had no idea where he got his money, of which there seemed to be little. When he sent Harry to the store, he’d pull crumpled ones and fives out of his pockets to pay for groceries. Harry’s status as a guest was tenuous enough that he didn’t ask questions. The only thing that kept his uncle from lumping him in with those other trespassers to his “propity,” Harry thought, was that Uncle H always liked Harry’s mother, Uncle H’s sister’s daughter.

“Your mama, she’s a good woman. Bona fide heart of gold,” he’d say whenever she came up in conversation. “Genuine article.”

Still, the issue of “propity” was part of the reason Harry was staying with his uncle in the crummy little trailer in the woods. Namely that Harry didn’t have any.

The trailer. That would definitely go in the right-hand column.

“Sorry, Uncle H,” he said aloud, “but it is a genuine, bona fide piece of crap.”

The trailer had seen better days. Among its failings: Loose siding that banged in the wind and ragged insulation spilling out of cheap paneling. It had no running water, spotty electricity, and great holes in the floor. At night Harry could hear mice skittering behind the walls. At some point the stairs had given way, so when Harry had arrived in February, the old man, who was nearing ninety, was using a homemade ladder to climb in and out of the trailer. He seemed as unfazed to see his great-nephew walking up the muddy drive unannounced as he was to climb in and out of the trailer for twice-daily trips to the outhouse. Uncle H hadn’t questioned the young man’s story about wanting to see the West. If he had talked to Lydia about Harry’s “trouble,” as his mother liked to put it, Uncle H didn’t let on.

Harry liked his uncle, who seemed content to hold up the conversation for both of them for hours on end. He talked about his years as a railroad engineer for BNSF, traveling from coast to coast. How he hitchhiked through every province in Canada as far as the remote territory of Newfoundland, facing the wild Labrador Sea. He regaled Harry with tales of the fine-looking women he’d met on his travels. Harry was a good listener. Perhaps that was why, after he had been there for a week, his uncle didn’t ask when he was leaving. Instead, Uncle H sent him into BZ for groceries and ice for the cooler, which he used since the refrigerator was broken. Harry procured the small supply of what Uncle H