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

Road. He didn’t know any of them, but it was easy to tell who was who. The guys who had started the fight sat together glowering at the rest of them. Jake sat as far away as he could with the PSU students and a guy named Casey who said he had worked with Alice. Casey sat on his hands, as if trying to keep his khakis from getting dirty.

“College boy,” one of the older men sneered. His squat nose sat crooked in his face, and his collar was torn.

Casey paled but then turned back to Jake, his face brightening.

“I was live-tweeting the protest,” he said, his voice low. “And it was totally blowing up Twitter! We got retweeted by a reporter with the Associated Press out of Los Angeles and Reuters in New York.”

Casey said his video of the attack on the protesters had been shared by people all over the country before deputies had confiscated his phone and laptop.

Jake craned his neck around the room. He hadn’t seen Noah, Harry, or Yogi since Ronnie had handed him off to another deputy. The guy didn’t fingerprint Jake or take his picture. He just asked Jake to sign a piece of paper confirming that he had been processed through the county jail for disturbing the peace.

Jake had refused, his anger bordering on rage. The deputy had hauled him out of his chair and belted him into the front seat of the van, repeating the process in reverse at the jail. Then they bumped him roughly up the stairs into the building. The whole thing felt like an assault.

“I’m not signing that. I shouldn’t be in here at all. And you banged the shit out of my chair. Plus, your guys left my dog out there.”

“Suit yourself,” the deputy said, and pushed him down the hall into the cell. Jake yelled that he’d sue for ADA discrimination, but the guy just walked away.

Jake felt sick thinking of Cheney. He didn’t have a tag on his collar. Maybe Harry, wherever he was, still had him. He couldn’t bear losing Cheney again. He thought of Amri too, who had been in that clusterfuck because he’d invited her. Was she okay?

The guy who’d sneered at Casey was glaring at him now. He looked Jake up and down and smiled meanly. “Freak,” he spat.

Jake felt a wildness surge through him. He’d forgotten all about his chair. He’d forgotten to worry that people might be staring. How must he look to this guy: shaved head, Doc Martens, anarchy shirt, and wheelchair. There had been a time he might have cared what a guy like this thought of him. It seemed so preposterous now. He 100 percent did not give a fuck. Yeah, this is me, he thought. He felt his voice in his throat, and it climbed to a shout. He threw his head back and laughed with an unhinged kind of joy. The guy shrank back. He left Jake and Casey alone after that.

•   •   •

Alice demanded to use the phone.

“I want to call my lawyer,” she told the sheriff’s secretary. Denise had herded all the ladies into the courthouse staff room. There were only about twenty of them, and she said it seemed impolite to put them in the basement cells with all the men. Alice knew Denise from 4-H years ago. They hadn’t exactly been friends, but they’d been friendly enough.

“Come on, Neesie. You can’t just keep us in here all day.”

Denise shook her head. “Sorry, Alice. You’ll just have to wait for Ron. I don’t know what they are going to do with you all.”

Alice sat back down with a woman from Riverkeeper named Kate and put an ice pack on her jaw. The college students were all sitting cross-legged on the floor talking about their weekend plans and seemed no more worried than if they were waiting for the bus. She guessed they had more practice at this sort of thing.

So much for a peaceful protest. She thought of the big orange truck and its driver. She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was past noon. The truck would have finished Osaka’s orchard by now and probably the next two down the road. Her heart sank. She thought of the guys from the beekeeping association who had showed up for her. And sweet Doug Ransom with his daughter. The Mexican-American Workers Union too—people who picked fruit in the orchards and bore the brunt of injury from the chemicals used. It was like none of them mattered, she thought. Money wins again.

She thought about her remaining hives. The large-scale use of SupraGro would inevitably poison whatever her foragers brought home. She could try feeding them, though she didn’t think the surplus sugar water would discourage their collecting instinct. Perhaps some might survive the summer regardless. Like her dreams, the bees now faced extinction. She would guard what she had left. It was all she could do.

•   •   •

Jake didn’t ask any questions when the deputy called his name and led him out of the basement.

The door swung shut behind him, and Jake looked for Alice but didn’t see her. The only other person in the lobby was a man Jake had never seen before. He stood and walked toward Jake. He was a trim man with a kind face, shoulder-length hair, and a white shirt and blue tie. He extended his hand.

“Hi, Jake. I’m Ken Christensen,” he said. “I’m Amri’s dad.”

They shook hands.

“It’s nice to meet you, circumstances notwithstanding,” Ken said. He held out a manila envelope.

“Here’s your phone and wallet,” he said. “They gave them to me at the front.”

“Thanks,” Jake said. “Is Amri in there?”

Ken shook his head, and Jake breathed with relief.

Ken sat down on a bench and pulled out a yellow legal pad. “Did she tell you I was a lawyer?”

Jake shook his head. “She said you were an old hippy,” he said without thinking.

Ken laughed, and Jake saw that he had the same dark green eyes as