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

and also because, as a point of personal pride, she tried hard to be conscientious.

Things were always crazy on Bee Day, an annual event in April, and she acknowledged that. After all, the Sunnyvale Bee Company saw hundreds of millions of bees move through their yard on that single day. When Alice arrived, she saw hundreds of bee packages awaiting pickup. Each small, screened crate held ten thousand bees, all buzzing with confusion at their recent sorting in the bee yards of southern Oregon from whence they came. The precious cargo, trucked in before dawn, had to be picked up, transported, and hived within twenty-four hours. Hundreds of beekeepers would descend on Sunnyvale to claim their bees on an average Bee Day, so things could get hectic.

The car in front of her crept forward and slammed on its brakes. Alice exhaled through her nose with impatience. She looked at her watch and sighed. Yes, Alice knew Bee Day would be crazy. That was why she had taken the day off. It was a Thursday. You could never count on the bees arriving on a weekend. They came, like babies, unpredictably and often inconveniently. Alice and other expectant beekeepers had to wait until those southern hives grew strong with populations of young bees and the early-spring showers tapered off. Pickups were rescheduled all the time. A betting man wouldn’t put money on Bee Day, as intransigent as it was. Alice knew that. That was why she had called two days before, like she always did, to reconfirm her order with Tim, the cheerful shop manager who’d been there, she knew, for more than twenty years. It was impossible to tell how old Tim was. He was one of those men who’d looked old at twenty, probably, losing his hair right after high school, and now seemed ageless. Unflappable Tim. Alice didn’t even know his last name, but for the past several years, Tim had been a regular part of her life. Not a friend, exactly. More like a friendly milepost, a happy marker that said it was spring, Oregon’s winter was finally over, and it was time for fresh life in the apiary. For all its inconvenience, Alice usually loved Bee Day.

But this year Tim hadn’t answered the phone when she called. Instead a young woman picked up and identified herself as Joyful.

“How can I help make your day amazing?” she’d asked.

Alice gave her name and order number while wondering if Joyful could possibly be her real name. Joyful had assured her that all orders would be filled as usual and that they would be thrilled to see her in two days. She hadn’t actually refused to look up Alice’s order, but she hadn’t looked it up either.

“Be well!” she’d said, and hung up before Alice could say anything else.

So as Alice stood watching Joyful with her blond dreadlocks hanging in her face as she pawed through the stack of orders and failed to find Alice’s, she had wanted to say, I told you so. She had wanted to say other things—things that would have disappointed her mother. Alice folded her arms over her chest, took a deep breath, and leaned on the counter.

“Miss, I called you two days ago. My name is Holtzman. Alice Holtzman. Hood River. I ordered twelve Russian nucs. Twelve nucleus hives.”

She tried to sound calm and shifted back slightly when she noticed she was tapping a blunt finger on the counter.

“No extra queens and no packages. Tim usually sets my stuff aside in the overflow yard.” Alice pointed to a gated area on the left. For years now, Tim had separated the orders of experienced beekeepers, like her, from those of the beginners who were more inclined to linger with questions, thereby creating their own buzzing confusion on Bee Day.

“Why don’t you just let me have a look over there? I’m sure I can find them myself.”

But Joyful, with her brows in a crease and her dreads in her face and who was not having an amazing day, would not be moved. She looked up from the mess of papers and fixed Alice with a stern gaze.

“Ma’am, I hear you saying that you are a longtime customer, and I do respect that. But we have a system in place here, and you are just going to have to wait your turn like everyone else.”

Alice flushed with embarrassment and drew back, pressing her lips together and feeling like a chastised child. She felt her breath catch and thought about Dr. Zimmerman, who asked her to note such moments. Alice hitched up her overalls and joined the clutch of other beekeepers milling around and chatting as they waited for their orders. Alice did not chat.

The spring sun grew warm on her head. She took off her sunhat and pulled her hair off her neck, which was damp with sweat. She glanced at her hands, her nails chewed to the quick, and shoved them in her back pockets. She shifted her weight from one foot to another, her feet swelling in her work boots. She glanced up and saw herself on the security monitor and looked away, tugging on the straps of her overalls. Being motionless made her nuts. Half an hour later, her order was discovered on the floor under Joyful’s Birkenstocked feet.

“Alice Holtzman, Hood River. 12 Russian nucs. No extra queens. Side yard. ***VIP!!!” was scrawled in red across the page.

Joyful looked miffed but didn’t apologize. She handed Alice the crumpled paper and pointed toward the overflow area.

This situation was nothing new to Alice. She was a Holtzman, after all. German-American, rational, she always planned ahead and thought things through like her parents had taught her. She tried to anticipate what might go awry and work in advance to avoid hiccups. She knew most other people were not as conscientious. She often found herself waiting for others to catch up with her thinking, having fallen short before they even started. So how did she account for this