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

freak flag, his brand. Jacob Stevenson, who’d had the tallest mohawk in the history of Hood River Valley High School, had moved on. At the very least it seemed silly to invest hours fixing his hair now that he had so many other things to do. He looked at his reflection and reached for his scissors.

An hour later, Harry banged into the house for breakfast to find Jake flipping pancakes and smiling under his shiny, egg-bald pate.

“Wow! Whoa! Did you— How did you— Why did you . . . I mean, no, it looks fine . . .”

Jake grinned and ran his hand over his skull. “I know. Now I look like a cancer patient. But it was time. Want to feel it?”

Harry passed his palm over Jake’s skull, shivered, and dropped his hand.

“Badass, man,” he said.

They sat down to breakfast, and Cheney bumped around under the table like a small horse until Jake let him out the slider door.

“Go on, Cheney! Squirrel!”

The big dog took off in the wide galloping arc that was his morning ritual. When Jake returned to the table, Harry was wolfing down his breakfast like he was afraid someone would take his plate.

“Slow down, man! There’s plenty more,” he said, laughing, and Harry reddened.

Harry had really grown on him. Though he was six years younger, Jake felt almost protective of the guy. That day right after Harry got hired, when they were cleaning out the hives for Alice, he felt his envy leave him. Harry just couldn’t say anything right to Alice. He had asked that stupid question about her son and then went silent as Alice left the barn. A dead bee fell and grazed the back of his hand. He yelped and dropped the frame with a clatter.

Jake chuckled. “Dude. You need to chill out,” he said, holding his hands out, palms down. “Seriously.”

Harry swore under his breath and picked up the frame. He scraped the bees into the plastic bin as Alice had asked. Some of them missed and fell onto the floor. Harry scooped them up with gloved hands, grimacing.

Jake nudged the bin closer to the workbench.

“How old are you, Harry?” he asked.

“Twenty-four,” Harry muttered.

“Well, Alice is forty-four, so technically she’s old enough to be your mom. But not that guy’s mom,” he said, gesturing to the photo of Bud and Alice.

“I see that now,” Harry said with a sigh, scraping the frame.

Jake leaned back in his chair and watched Harry work. He was an awkward guy. But he had brought Cheney back, hadn’t he? Jake looked at the dog, sprawled out and snoring in the shop doorway, and his heart flipped over. Jake decided he was going to help him.

“Hand me those frames. I’ll brush the bees, and you can do the wax,” Jake said.

While they worked, Jake told Harry what he knew about Alice, her job, and her family. Jake told him how she wanted to grow the apiary. Harry listened, alert but not speaking. His eyes widened as Jake described how they had met, truck nearly colliding with chair. Jake glossed over her fight with Ed Stevenson, saying only that Alice had offered to let him come stay at the farm for a little while. He didn’t know how long.

“She’s cool, Harry. She’ll give you a chance if you work hard. Just stop saying stupid shit and try to relax, okay?”

Harry nodded. The two worked side by side through the first brood box. Harry retrieved the second one from the doorway, where Alice had parked them on the cart.

“That your longboard on the porch?” Harry asked.

Jake looked surprised. He hadn’t pegged Harry for a skater. He nodded. “Haven’t ridden it much lately.”

Harry paused, as if trying to decide if that was a joke. Then he said, “I rode a pintail cruiser in high school.”

“Serious?”

“Yeah. Old-school, I know. Did you see Lords of Dogtown?”

“Hells yeah!” Jake said, and quoted the line from the famous pool skating scene. “‘I can’t feel my feet! But then again, I can never feel my feet.’”

They both laughed, but then Harry looked at Jake’s chair and stopped laughing.

Harry pried another frame out of the box and brushed the bee bodies, less gingerly now, into the waiting bin.

“I was at the waterfront the other day, and I saw this dude longboarding around the parking lot with a kite. Like a kiteboarding kite, you know. But a really small one? He was hauling ass!” Harry said.

Jake couldn’t remember the last time he’d been to the waterfront and adjacent skate park, his old haunting grounds. He missed the water and the sky, the sight of Cheney galloping along the sandbar, chasing seagulls and biting the waves.

“This guy I met said he would teach me how to kite for free,” Harry said. “He said he’d lend me gear and everything.” His voice rose with enthusiasm and then trailed off. “I don’t know, though.”

“Can I come?” Jake asked.

“What?”

“To the kite beach. Can I come with you? And, dude, if someone offers you free kite lessons, you’d be stupid to say no. Just saying.”

“Yeah, sure. You can come with me. He said come down any day. He’s always there.”

Jake smiled to himself—the river, the wind, the sandbar. How long had it been?

The two worked together in a companionable silence until Jake left with Alice for the beekeeping meeting.

After that, their household had fallen into a routine of sorts as the days passed. It was uneasy at first. Harry was so awkward, nervous that he was going to say the wrong thing to Alice. He lingered out in the shop unless invited inside. His worry was palpable and made her cranky. One night, Alice came out to call them in for dinner, and Harry dropped the broom with a clatter. She stood in the doorway, surveying the room, which Harry had reorganized neatly. He began apologizing for moving things around, and Alice sighed and crossed her arms.

“Harry, we obviously need some ground rules here.”

She laid it out plainly for him. The shop was his domain, and he