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

touched a hand to his bald pate and nodded.

“Do you know where you are? What were you doing out here?”

He smiled at that. “Don’t worry. I don’t have a concussion. I’m on Reed Road. It’s April 10, 2014. I live in Hood River, Oregon, and Barack Obama is the president of the United States.”

His grin faded, and he frowned.

“But I can’t remember your name,” he said.

“Alice Holtzman,” she said.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Holtzman.”

Well, the kid did seem okay. She glanced at the truck. She’d have to deal with the mess to get the boy home.

“Listen, Jake, if you don’t mind, I’m going to check on the bees.”

“Oh, yeah. No problem.”

“You sure?”

“Totally.”

“You sit tight,” she said, rising.

“Okay. I won’t go running off,” he said.

She hesitated. Was that a joke?

He waved a long arm. “Really, I’m fine. Go check your bees, Mrs. Holtzman.”

“Call me Alice,” she said. “My mom is Mrs. Holtzman.”

“Okay, Alice,” Jake said.

Alice pulled on her gloves and veiled hat and flicked on a red flashlight, steeling herself for the damage. Seven nucs remained in the truck bed. She righted them and tamped down the lids. The other five were strewn alongside the road. She knew there would be lots of dead bees, but she had to focus on what she could salvage now.

“Sounds like a horror movie over there,” the boy called.

“No, it’s fine,” Alice called back. “I just need a few minutes to sort this out. You all right?”

“Yup,” he said.

In about twenty minutes she’d collected all the frames and put the nucs in some order. She was stung twice on her forearms. That couldn’t be helped. She had to concentrate on the ones she could save. Alice returned to Jake, who was sitting up with his back against a rock. With that hair and his long legs, he looked like some sort of exotic bird.

Alice reached down and grasped one side of the wheelchair, and the kid glared at her. She recoiled, embarassed, and wondered how she had offended him.

“I thought I’d have a look at your chair?” she said.

His face relaxed, and the boy nodded. Alice righted the wheelchair and ran her flashlight along the right side. She noticed scuffs, presumably from his fall. But when she spun the wheel, it seemed true, which was good. She could still hear the bees, though the buzz was receding. There must have still been hundreds flying in the air.

The kid shifted against the rock and gazed past her. “So, they, like, live in those boxes?”

“Just temporarily,” Alice said. “They all have nice hives waiting for them at my house. Those boxes are for the commuter stage, like a cattle truck,” she said, now surveying the left side of chair, which seemed unmarred.

“How do you get them back in?” Jake asked. “Tiny cattle dogs? Little lassoes?”

She glanced at him and saw that he was smiling again. Funny kid, she thought.

“Well, they’ll go back as soon as it gets dark and cold enough out here,” she said. “I need to give them a few minutes. Then I’ll give you a ride home.”

“No rush,” he said.

“Look, I’d feel better if I called your folks, though, Jake. Really.”

He sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I got it.”

He thumbed a message into his phone.

“Done,” he said, and smiled.

“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t want your parents to worry. I feel bad enough about all this . . .”

Alice tilted the chair to the right and spun the left wheel, which also moved freely and seemed true. She wasn’t the best mechanic, but the wheelchair seemed okay. She would insist on paying for any repairs. Did you tune up a wheelchair like a bicycle? she wondered.

“Well, technically you didn’t do anything. I fell over trying to get out of your way. So I’ll just tell them you ran me off the road.”

Alice frowned, still looking at the chair, and didn’t reply. Was he trying to be funny?

“I’m fine, really. I was just . . .”

His voice trailed off, and he looked past her at the truck. Then he shifted slightly to face her.

“About the bees, Alice. Do you just wait until they get in those boxes?”

She nodded. “Yep. They’ll find their way back. They want to get home.”

“What happens if they stay out after curfew? Does the mom bee lock the door?”

Alice set the chair aside but didn’t look at him. “If they don’t get home before the temperature drops, they just don’t make it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” she said, “if they don’t make it back to the hive at night, then they die outside. It’s too cold.”

She saw a look of concern cross his face, surprising her. She clicked off her flashlight.

“Most of them will be just fine. They’re hardy,” she said, wanting to reassure him. She was touched that a teenage boy might care about the fate of the small creatures.

“My dad always called them tough little broads,” she said.

He grinned at that and looked past her.

“So, they can just go into any one of those boxes?” he asked.

“You really want to know?”

He nodded.

Alice looked up into the twilight at the small bee cloud buzzing over the truck. She loved the story of the bees, which was like a fairy tale. Even if you were a scientist or a religious person, there was no denying that the bees had real magic.

A hive of sixty thousand honeybees, she explained, had one queen—leader and mother to them all. And 97 percent of the other tiny golden bodies buzzing away in there were her daughters. The remaining handful was made up of males, called drones. Daughters and sons recognized the queen by her scent, which was called her pheromone. The queen pheromone said, “All is well.” It said, “We are together.” It said, “You belong here.”

From the time they emerged from their capped cells, those golden creatures knew exactly what to do. The daughters were called worker bees, Alice explained to Jake as the light faded between them. The very first thing they did after hatching, when