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

“I’ll have to give her hell for that,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, Amri called to say her friend had been arrested and might need representation. The intake clerk said you and everyone else were charged with disturbing the peace. Want to tell me what happened?”

Jake explained about the Watershed Alliance, the sit-in, and the attack from the gang of men.

Ken’s face grew somber. He jotted notes down as Jake talked.

“Sounds to me like there’s potential for assault and battery charges,” he said.

“Alice is the one you really need to talk to,” Jake said. “She probably got arrested too. Otherwise she would have bailed me out by now. Alice Holtzman. I live with her.”

“I’ll be right back,” Ken said.

He went back inside and returned a few minutes later with Alice, who looked pleased.

“Young Amri has rescued us, then? I guess I must have made a great impression on your new friend.”

Jake felt his face turn red and didn’t speak.

Outside the courthouse, they found Amri sitting on a bench under a cherry tree exploding with pink blossoms. She held Cheney’s leash loosely, and the big dog was leaning his full weight into her knees like he had known her forever. Amri smiled when she saw Jake, and he felt the world crack wide open.

“Hi there,” she said, standing.

“Hey,” Jake said.

Cheney yawned, wiggled his rump, and shoved his head in Jake’s lap like he’d just seen him five minutes ago.

“Thanks for taking care of him. And for calling your dad,” he said.

“Well, Cheney kind of found me in the ruckus,” she said, scratching his ears. “Anyway, that’s what friends are for.”

Her green eyes shone, and Jake’s heart felt too big for his body.

Amri sat next to him in the back seat of her dad’s Subaru while Ken talked to Alice about the protest as they drove back to the fairgrounds. Jake was intensely aware of the proximity of his arm to Amri’s arm on the seat. He felt the magnetic force of her nearness like the electric charge that pulled pollen to a honeybee. When the car hit a bump and his arm brushed hers, he felt a jolt run through his body.

By the time Ken dropped them off at Alice’s pickup, the story was all over the news. Peaceful protesters had been attacked by a vigilante mob in the Hood River South Valley during a sit-in to protest pesticide use on local orchards. By nightfall, thanks to Casey’s live-tweeting, the story had gone viral. Within two days, Stan Hinatsu had fielded calls from reporters in Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, and Berlin. The Hood River story emboldened other small towns around the country to speak out, and within a week, SupraGro was under fierce attack.

At a gathering the following week at the watershed offices, Jake sat next to Alice and listened to Stan recount how SupraGro, not admitting any formal connection to Fred Paris and his goons, had agreed to pay restitution to the people injured in the attack on Fir Mountain Road. The company also said it was reassessing its contract with Hood River County.

“It looks like we have made them hit the pause button. You all did this together, folks! You should be damn proud of yourselves,” Stan said.

Stan shouldered his way through the celebrating throng to Alice and Jake. He smiled at Alice.

“So. How about that beer at pFriem?”

And Alice said yes.

Jake watched them, but he was miles away. He was thinking about how he had pulled himself into the truck while Alice exchanged contact information with Ken. As Ken drove away, Amri rolled down her window, leaned out, and waved at him. Jake waved back, and as the car disappeared over the rise in the road, he felt like his heart had gone with it, leaving his body empty, like a fickle swarm abandoning the hive.

26 Bee Day

Although when bees commence their work in the Spring, they usually give reliable evidence either that all is well, or that ruin lurks within, if their first flight is not noticed, it is sometimes difficult, in the common hives, to get at the truth.

—L. L. LANGSTROTH

Jacob Stevenson had the highest exam score in the history of the Oregon State University Master Beekeeper Apprentice Program—125 percent, counting an extra-credit question about queen rearing. Even before it made the program newsletter in April, he was pretty sure about it. Over the fall and winter, he’d done much of the course work online and attended local bee group meetings toward his certification. The day of the test, his mom drove him into the OSU campus in Portland. It was a Saturday in mid-March. The weather was wild—a spring chinook blowing rainbows and spattering showers down the gorge. He watched a squall bluster over the river, and his stomach did somersaults. However, as soon as he started the exam, he felt very calm. He knew this stuff inside and out because it mattered to him. So, although he was pleased to earn a more than perfect score, he was not terribly surprised.

Of course, the test only accounted for half of the Master Beekeeper certification program. The second half involved forty hours of community service. For this Jake had partnered with a science teacher at May Street Elementary, agreeing to help the third- and fourth-grade classes develop their own hives. Since January, Jake had been teaching them about the life cycle of the honeybee. Using photographs and drawings, he’d explained about the worker bees, the drones, and the queen. He told the kids how bees turned nectar into honey and about the various threats to a healthy hive—varroa mites, wax moths, starvation, and, most important, human-made pesticides.

As another part of community service, Jake had helped connect local beekeepers with graduate students who were studying the impact of commercial pesticides on honeybees. After the dustup with SupraGro, OSU’s extension office hosted a group of