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

“Sure. I know. You aren’t on the clock. You aren’t a county employee right this moment. You are Alice Holtzman, concerned citizen. Right?”

She heard the click of the camera and saw Pete out of the corner of her eye.

“No. I mean, yes. I am a concerned citizen. I care about this community and who we do business with. Of course I do.”

Click, click, click, went the camera.

“Right, that’s all I’m saying,” Stan said.

Click, click, click.

“But I don’t— I’m not— Dammit, Pete. Would you stop?”

Alice’s voice rose. She glared at Pete, who seemed only half-embarrassed.

“Public meeting, Alice,” Pete said, and shrugged as he swung his camera toward the rest of the crowd.

Alice turned back to Stan, who was still smiling.

“Look. Yes, I am a concerned citizen, but don’t quote me and try to make me out as some sort of envoy for the county. I don’t even understand the situation yet.”

But she understood enough. She just didn’t know what in the hell she was supposed to do about it. Stan must have seen that on her face. He held out the clipboard.

“Just give me your email, Alice. We want to keep you informed.”

She exhaled, took his pen, and scribbled her email address.

Click, click, click.

When she looked up, Pete had blended into the crowd. She was irritated to notice Stan was even more handsome when he smiled.

“Thanks, Alice. I’ll be in touch, okay?”

“Sure, Stan. See you later.”

She walked along the river where the sun had fallen behind the ridgeline and the sky had turned light green above the trees. The west wind caressed her face.

What had Dr. Zimmerman said? Disrupt old patterns. Find a path out of the old way of doing things to forge a new one. It might feel uncomfortable, but the only way out was through. Things needed to feel different to become different, she said. Well, “different” was one word for it, Alice thought. She walked until the path ended at the water, and then, because she had no other choice, she turned around and went back the way she’d come.

13 Overtones

One who carefully watches the habits of bees will often feel inclined to speak of his little favorites as having an intelligence almost if not quite akin to reason.

—L. L. LANGSTROTH

Jake sat in the afternoon sunlight in front of the hives and closed his eyes, feeling a warm hum in his chest. He marveled at the sound he heard, the everyday noise of the bees at work. He wondered why none of the beekeeping books talked about this musical droning, this golden anthem, this song. It seemed so significant to him. He’d asked Alice what they were saying, but she hadn’t known either. She said the how of it involved the vibration of their delicate wings, which was easily heard when a bee was in flight. But she didn’t know what they were communicating inside the hive. The queen and most of the workers lived their entire lives within the pulsing, lightless interior, so sound must have been some kind of tool. Maybe they heard the tone as Jake did. To him it said, “We are here and all is well.” It said, “We are home.”

Jake hadn’t felt at home since he was a very small child, but he felt something close to it now. This new feeling had lodged in his chest. He put a hand on his sternum and felt his breath rise and fall. What was this feeling? It took him some time to name what he felt. Calm. The time he spent with the bees, those minutes and hours, were building a sense of calm in him, slowly but surely, just as honeybees built out their honey stores.

Even though he had been living with Alice for more than two weeks, Jake still felt a burst of relief each morning when he awoke and realized that he was not at his parents’ double-wide. This morning he’d lain in bed and listened to the alarmed call of quail and the whirring of the birds Alice said were mourning doves. He pulled himself out of bed when the rooster had been shouting for a while. Alice rose first, and he could hear her making coffee in the kitchen. That made him miss his mom a little, but not enough to want to be back in that house.

His mom hadn’t said much when she stopped by the other day. Though he had assured her over the phone that he was fine and Noah could grab his stuff, she’d insisted on seeing him. She brought a duffel bag of his clothes, boxes of single-use catheters, his laptop, and his trumpet, which she must have dug out of the back of his closet. Lastly, she pulled his longboard out of the back seat of her car, which made Jake smile. Good old Mom. She would think of that.

They sat at the picnic table under the shade of the great cottonwood tree, and Jake told her about the bees—the queen, her workers, and the drones. He described the pair of owls he heard calling to each other in the woods at night and the coyote he saw at the edge of the pond at dusk. He didn’t tell her that every time he saw that coyote, his heart clenched thinking of Cheney.

His mom sat with her hands balled in her lap, and Jake knew she wasn’t really interested in the bees. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. She took off her glasses, pulled a tissue out of the cuff of her sweater, and dabbed at her eyes.

“Mom, it’s okay, really. I’m fine here. You don’t have to worry.”

She shook her head and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. “I’m your mother, Jacob. It’s my job to worry about you.”

The unspoken questions hovered there, pressing down on them. What would happen to Jake? What