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

a change and a fresh start. When he’d first come west, he planned to get a tattoo but couldn’t decide on the right image. He’d spent an hour in the tattoo shop in Seattle, flipping through the books before leaving with a sheepish wave. The big guy looked up from the customer he was working on and jerked his chin at Harry.

“Sometimes it takes a while to decide, bro,” he called.

Was he sneering? What if he was? Harry felt like such a nerd. Why did he care what that guy thought, anyway, some stranger?

Harry shaved his skinny jawline and chin but left the stubble on his upper lip. He’d grow a mustache. Out on the river, he’d seen some kayakers with mustaches lately. Guys his age. It could be cool.

He pulled his beanie over his damp hair and grabbed his backpack, which contained his notebook, a pen, a bottle of water, and a slightly dented orange. Harry walked down the gravel drive past the collection of tattered “No Trespassing” signs to the highway and turned south, warming up as he went and looking up at the great dark trees.

“Where you off to, little Harry Stokes?”

He could almost hear his mother’s voice. She always asked that when she saw him readying to leave the house when he was a boy.

Harry, short for Harold. Harold Stokes. Middle name of Courtland. The whole thing was ridiculous, really. Harold Courtland Stokes III. It sounded like some country club member you’d read about in the Times. His parents’ families were poor, but ostentatious names were common in the South. Of Harold Courtland Stokes II, Harry had a fuzzy memory of a tall man laughing as he dabbed whiskey on Harry’s tongue with his pinky, cigarette smoke curling around his big hand.

One afternoon when he was in high school, he’d screwed up the courage to ask his mother about his father as he helped her unload a truck full of compost. How did they meet? Why did she leave? Did his father ever ask about him?

“Your father is a jackass,” she said, mashing out her cigarette with the heel of her boot and pulling on her gloves. He didn’t ask again.

When she took Harry north to New York, Lydia had wanted to become an actress. Instead she ended up waitressing at a Long Island golf club, where she had met and married a nice guy named Sal Romano. Sal ran a landscaping business and had been the only father Harry had ever known. Good old Sal.

Harry heard an approaching car and turned, sticking out his thumb. It was a Subaru wagon with a young family inside. The father never took his eyes off the road. The mother flicked her gaze at him and away. Guilt. Fear. Two car seats in back. Harry couldn’t blame them. He kept walking.

Sal and Lydia had announced in January that they were selling the Long Island house and moving to Florida for good. Sarasota, where they’d been wintering, had won them over. Sal was sick of the landscaping business, especially after Hurricane Sandy. Lydia was tired of the snow. In Sarasota, she’d taken up pickleball, and Sal wanted to sit by the pool and read the tomes of military history he favored. Harry struggled to hide his disappointment.

“That’s great!” he’d managed. “Here’s to you guys!” He raised his beer to clink with their wineglasses. His enthusiasm was feeble, and he knew it showed. It wasn’t lost on him that their announcement coincided with his parole officer signing off on him two weeks earlier, leaving him free and clear to leave the state if he liked. Living in their basement was always meant to be temporary, but it weighed on him, the thought of moving on by himself. His mother set down her wineglass and reached a hand across the table, her eyes misty.

“You’re gonna be just fine, Harry. Fresh start, honey. And if you ever need a place to stay, you can always—”

“Bup-bup-bup!” Sal held up his big hand like a stop sign. “Don’t get carried away, Lydia hon.”

He raised his glass again.

“To Harry’s future,” he said. “May it be as bright as his mother’s eyes.”

Lydia sniffled and raised her glass. Harry had forced a smile and swigged his beer.

The wind picked up, and a chill spiked down his neck. He buttoned up his uncle’s wool shirt. The sun went behind a cloud, and the pavement in front of him freckled with raindrops. Harry pulled his cap lower and hunched his shoulders.

He heard the whine of an approaching engine and stuck out his thumb. A Ford Econoline van lumbered past and pulled over. Harry jogged up to the window and saw a young woman behind the wheel. Bright blue eyes under a red trucker cap over brown braids and a plaid flannel shirt. She smiled and rolled down the window.

“Hi! Um, I’m, like, totally lost! Do you know the pullout for the upper Klickitat run? I’m delivering lunch for a Wet Planet rafting trip.”

Harry knew the pullout was just down the road. He often saw the bright yellow rafts clear the rapids behind Uncle H’s place and eddy out at the sandy beach. He pointed south and explained where to turn off.

The young woman giggled and rolled her eyes. “I’m terrible with directions. Can you just show me?”

That was how Harry found himself in the warm, dry van, munching on an enormous pastrami sandwich from River Daze Cafe in Hood River with the beautiful Moira. After she dropped off the lunches, she climbed back behind the wheel and asked Harry where he was headed.

“I’m going down to Hood River if you want a ride,” she said.

He hesitated. He didn’t want to explain about his uncle, so he just told her he was looking for work.

“I don’t know what you’re looking for, but there’s more jobs in Hood River than BZ,” she said.

Harry nodded, deciding he would go see Uncle H on the way home from Hood River.

Moira turned up the music.