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

of the deep water and shivered in his SpongeBob SquarePants trunks. He started to cry when Ed handed him off to the teacher and turned to go. His father usually got angry when he cried. But this time, Ed squatted down and put his big hands on Jake’s shoulders.

“I’ll be right over there,” Ed said. “You’re gonna be just fine.”

Jake felt his worry leave him as his father squeezed his shoulder and went to sit in the bleachers. He stopped crying and climbed down the ladder to join the class in the shallow end. He kicked, paddled, and blew bubbles. His confidence grew until he did the inconceivable thing and put his head under the water. He shook his head to get the water out of his eyes and searched the crowd of parents for his dad. He saw him then, his face charged with something Jake hadn’t understood at the time. Jake thought Ed was mad that the lesson was taking so long. But now he knew it was fear. Ed was afraid Jake wouldn’t come out of the water breathing.

Jake paused in his circumnavigation of the yard. He considered this memory almost against his will, but he knew it was true. There were others. The smell of cigarette smoke as his dad ran behind Jake’s bike, holding on to the seat to balance him and clapping like crazy when Jake rode away. When he turned eight, his dad gave him a remote-control dune buggy and they spent the afternoon racing it up and down the bumpy driveway. His dad had laughed and looked like a kid himself. There were Sundays they all went to church together and his dad had walked with Jake to get a donut and a cup of hot chocolate from the parish hall afterward. That was all before Ed had stopped going to church, before he’d gotten fired from Middle Mountain Surveyors, where he’d been a supervisor, and gone to work for Klare Construction. Jake had been too little to understand why his father had gotten fired. He just knew things were different after that.

Jake stared out at the ridgeline and chewed his bottom lip. He shook his head. To that handful of good memories, there were just too many years of bad ones. He remembered Ed throwing down the Christmas turkey because his mother suggested he go to mass with her in the morning. Ed yelling at the Chavezes, their nice neighbors, for playing ranchero music during a Sunday afternoon barbecue. And later, kicking their little dog when it wandered over into the Stevensons’ flower bed and lifted its chubby leg to pee. When Jake grew the mohawk, his father sneered at him once or twice about his freak hairdo and then stopped speaking to him. Jake preferred the heavy silence to the ugly things Ed said, like those he had screamed at Alice.

The thought of going home made Jake feel cold to his core. He wasn’t physically afraid of Ed, but the idea of being back in that man’s house made him feel trapped. He pushed himself along the perimeter of the yard, feeling the emotion rise in his chest. He couldn’t possibly go back to that cramped house, the air so thick with tension you could almost smell it. The hours of waiting to be alone, which was only slightly less terrible than being in the house with them. So, what then? Could he live and work here? What if Alice changed her mind? He barely knew her, and she didn’t owe him anything.

Jake hit a divot, and his front right wheel stuck. He rocked back and forth to free himself. As he struggled, his certainty grew. He could not go back to his parents’ house. Impossible. He’d move into adult foster care first, or that shitty group home in The Dalles that his caseworker took him to. Everyone else there was twice his age, and some of them were mentally retarded. “People with intellectual disabilities” was the correct terminology, his caseworker reminded him when they were back in the car. The language didn’t matter; he could never live there. He wasn’t like them, he told her. But now even the group home seemed preferable to living with Ed. He felt sick at the thought of rolling back up the ramp under his father’s gloating gaze. No way. No fucking way!

He pushed harder, and the chair went over. Jake’s shoulder hit the dirt with a thump. He could feel gravel on the side of his face, and the familiar weight of despair began to descend on his heart. This was his life now, his fucking body. He heard a low growl then, and when he looked up, he saw the plucky rooster standing on one leg, glaring at him. The sight of the overly confident little bird made him laugh out loud, and Ned stalked away. Jake lay gazing across the barnyard, willing himself to slow his breath. No one was likely to come along, which made him feel grateful. He picked a pebble off his cheek and gathered himself.

First things first. To stay here he had to pull his own weight somehow. To begin with, he had to get off the fucking ground. Slowly, he dragged himself over to the fence, pulling his chair with one arm, grateful for the hours he had spent lifting weights out of boredom. It took some time, but he managed to sit up and right his chair. He set the brake and pulled himself up and in it. He sat in the sunlight, sweating, victorious, and exhausted. Then he rolled back up to the house.

From the kitchen he surveyed Alice’s small, tidy rooms, which were conveniently wheelchair-accessible in the most basic ways. The living room was a problem, though. A big bookcase stuck out into the hall, and a labyrinth of small tables crowded the room. The path to the barn and around the apiary was problematic too. He knew he needed help.

Jake hesitated,