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

shallow. Time slowed. She held herself very still and waited for her breath to leave her, waited for that tightening in her chest. But it didn’t happen. This was different. Her vision, instead of blurring, sharpened, and so did her hearing. She heard the scornful yawp of a crow and felt the brisk breath of the spring chinook on the back of her neck. Instead of feeling like she might splinter into a thousand pieces, she felt a hot, white coherence. It hovered over her head like a blessing.

Ed still said nothing, his face pale and sharp. He seemed to shrink into himself. Alice glanced at Tansy, who was gripping the railing of the wheelchair ramp with one hand, her eyes closed, her mascara making tracks down her cheeks. She knew who she’d married.

“What can you do for the boy, anyway, Alice?” her father’s voice murmured in her ear. Alice stepped back and exhaled.

“I should go,” she said, looking away from Ed and down at the boy. “But I have a proposition for you.”

She handed him the Ace receipt with her phone number and email address.

“Thing is, I’m hiring. I need help around the bee yard. No experience necessary, and it’s part-time. I just posted the ad today. Check the job board on gorge.net. If you want to give it a whirl, call me.”

She heard herself telling him that room-and-board was negotiable as part of the wage. Never mind that she had scoffed at the idea of WWOOFers that very morning. The words just kept tumbling out of her mouth.

The boy looked at the paper, expressionless and clearly as surprised by the idea as Alice was herself.

Ed roared back to life then. “Lady, you need to mind your goddamn business! I’ll kick your ass from here to Odell if you don’t get off my driveway!”

“Edward, please!” Tansy grabbed her husband’s arm.

Alice felt the white heat descend again and entertained the joyful fantasy of harming this man. She could hear the neighbors opening their windows and doors to listen. The rational part of her knew she could never hurt anyone. Of course not. She was a Holtzman. Still, she felt that strange feeling course through her—a wildness that somehow made her feel deadly calm. She looked directly into Ed’s eyes.

“You go ahead and do that,” she said evenly. “And I’ll call the sheriff. He’s my brother-in-law.”

“Lady, if you know what’s good for you—” Ed hissed.

“Sounds great to me, Alice!” Jake exclaimed at her elbow. “I’ll come with you now, actually. Have a look around.”

The boy’s mother had retreated, her arms folded, against the porch.

“Jacob,” she sobbed.

Ed sneered down at his son. “Working man, huh? How do you think that’s gonna go for you?” he spat.

Jake’s eyes blazed as he stared up at his father. “I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we? Eddie.”

When he called his father Eddie, Alice saw the man shrink back. He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

The boy drew himself up taller in his chair, as if Alice’s fury lit something in him too. It burned bright in his eyes and bore him forward. And then Alice found herself driving out of the dusty yard, past the vanquished donkey, and into the bright April sunshine with eighteen-year-old Jake Stevenson on the seat next to her, his eyes blazing and Bruce Springsteen blaring through the speakers.

What in the hell have I done now? Alice thought.

7 Bumbling

I discovered that bees often recognize strangers by their actions, even when they have the same scent; for a frightened bee curls himself up with a cowed look, which unmistakably proclaims that he is conscious of being an intruder.

—L. L. LANGSTROTH

If Harry had learned anything in nearly a quarter of a century of life on earth, it was that upon first impression, most people thought he was a dumbass. He couldn’t really blame them. He was a follower and sometimes went where others led despite the “Wrong Way” signs posted at every turn.

“Don’t be such a people pleaser,” his mother said. She’d been saying that since fourth grade, when he let some older boys “borrow” his lunch money and came home hungry. She was trying to help him, he knew, but it was really just a nicer way of saying he was a dumbass.

“Those boys don’t want to be your friends, son,” his mother said. “You know how you can tell?”

Harry shook his head and bit into the peanut butter sandwich she’d made him.

“Because they want to take something from you. Friends should just be friends because they like each other.”

Harry nodded, not really understanding. He would think of her words the next time he lost his lunch money. And the day he let the neighborhood kids ride his bike off the jump in the vacant lot and came home with a bent wheel. Then there was the time he got arrested for helping his friends move a truck full of stolen flat-screen TVs.

“What were you thinking!” his mother yelled in the car after she bailed him out. It wasn’t a question he could answer. Harry slumped against the seat with shame and fatigue. He’d spent the night in jail next to a drunk old guy who smelled like pee and mustered up the courage to call his mother when he couldn’t take the smell any longer.

“Harry! Explain yourself, son!”

His mother rarely yelled, saying it was undignified, so her doing so then underscored the seriousness of the situation. But Harry had no explanation for her. He could only acknowledge that he’d been stupid enough to let his friends talk him into driving a truck of stolen TVs to a buyer who had turned out to be an undercover cop.

What had he been thinking? Certainly not that Marty’s rationale made any sense.

“Dude. Nothing has changed since Occupy,” Marty said one afternoon, as they stood outside the Three-O-One Saloon. “The one-percenters still have