The History of Bees

Chapter 40 GEORGE

I walked quickly across the field, towards the river. Past the oak tree. There was a knot in my stomach. They had to be somewhere.

I took out my cell phone, checked to see if anybody had called, maybe somebody had a swarm in their garden? But no. I would have heard it.

Because this wasn’t swarming. Of course not. I knew that much. No hive looked like this after a swarm. No swarm abandoned the old queen.

I went through the landscape with a fine-toothed comb, back and forth.

Nothing.

I took out my cell phone again. Had to straighten this out, get it under control, and I needed help.

I punched Rick’s number. He answered immediately; there was noise in the background, he was at the pub.

“Rick at your service!” He said it with a laugh.

I couldn’t answer, the words got stuck in my chest.

“Hello? George?”

“Yes. Hi. Sorry.”

“Is there something wrong? Wait a minute.”

It got quieter around him; he had probably walked out of the pub.

“Hi. Now I can hear you.”

“Yeah. Rick, I was just wondering if you could come over. To the field by the river.”

The laughter disappeared from his voice; he heard from my own that it was serious.

“What do you mean? Now?”

“Yeah.”

“George? What is it?”

My voice broke. “There’s stuff, a lot of stuff to clean up.”

Emma was crying. She was standing out in the middle of the field, under a tree, crying. The leaves threw shadows over her face, moving across her glistening cheeks. Maybe she’d tried to hide under the tree, hide that she’d broken down. But I found her, put my arms around her and held on tight, like I always did when she burst into tears. It helped, she calmed down. And I calmed down, too.

Around us lay hives I’d turned upside down, the candy colors garish in the sunlight. They were tiny houses, razed by a giant. And the giant was me. I hadn’t bothered to clean up. Had rushed across the field, checking one after the other, while the blood raged in my body and my breathing wailed in my ears.

I hadn’t lost all of them. A hive or two were just like before; the bees buzzed around and worked down there, as if nothing had happened, but there were far too few healthy hives. I couldn’t bear to count. Just kept going. On and on.

Rick and Jimmy had both arrived. They were working a short distance away from us. Rick walked slowly back and forth; for once he kept his mouth shut, his body swaying slightly, like he didn’t know where to begin. Jimmy had already started working. He lifted empty hives and stacked them together neatly.

“Something like this can’t just happen.” Emma sobbed into my sweater.

I didn’t have an answer.

“There must be something that’s been done wrong.”

I released her. “You think this is because of operational errors?”

“No, no.” Her crying abated. “But what about the feed?” She straightened up, her face was concealed by shadow, her eyes didn’t meet mine.

“Fine—good Lord, look at the calendar, you know this isn’t when they run out of feed!”

“No, of course not.”

She wiped her face. I stood there, my hands idle; I didn’t know what to do with them.

She looked out of the shadow under the tree, towards the field and the light.

“It’s very warm. Many of them are out in the sunshine all day.”

“They’ve done that every single summer for generations.”

“Yes. Sorry, but I can’t bring myself to believe they can disappear. For no reason.”

I clenched my teeth and turned my back on her.

“You can’t believe it. But that doesn’t make any difference now, does it.”

A lone bee buzzed past us.

“Sorry,” she said softly. “Come here.”

She lifted her arms again. Stood there, soft and safe. I let her hold me, buried my face in her sweater. Would have liked to cry like her, but my eyes were as dry as dust. I had trouble breathing. It was too suffocating, her sweater smothered me, the warm skin radiating through the fabric.

I pulled away. Began stacking some boards, but had nowhere to put them so I ended up piling them up on the ground. Tidying up aimlessly, haphazardly.

She came towards me, held out her arms.

“Hey…”

I had been betrayed, like Cupid by his mother. But I had no mother to cry to. No mother to blame, either, because I didn’t know who had betrayed me.

And I couldn’t bawl like a child swollen with bee stings.

I shook my head severely at Emma’s open arms. “Have to work.”

I took a few more boards and put them on top of the last, a tottering tower.

“Fine.” Her arms dropped to her sides. “I’ll go fix you guys something to eat.”

She turned around and left.

The evening sun was a fiery red hole in the sky. Hard rays and long shadows.

My body ached, but I just kept going. I had hives in seven different locations, and the same sight greeted me everywhere.

We’d come to the last place, the forest behind the McKenzie farm. A little grove in between the fields. The hives were half in the shade. Normally, they buzzed along with the birds in the trees and the flies swerving left and right. But now everything was silent.

All of a sudden Jimmy was there with three lawn chairs.

“We have to sit down now,” he said.

He found a spot a bit away from the hives. Rick and I plodded behind him. Rick hadn’t said a word all afternoon, I found myself wanting a story. Every time I looked at him, he turned away; maybe he wanted to hide his shiny eyes.

Jimmy pulled out a thermos and a package of cookies. Had he brought them? Or gotten them from Emma? I didn’t know. He pulled the plastic off the cookies and put the package between us. Then he poured coffee. We each took our cup. No toast this time.

The lawn chair squeaked. I tried to sit still, not move at all, the sound was wrong. It belonged to another time. Jimmy took a sip of coffee, slurped. That sound was wrong, too. An everyday sound. The cup securely in his hand, I suddenly had the urge to grab that sturdy fist and fling the coffee in his face so there would be silence. What was I thinking… Poor Jimmy. It wasn’t his fault.

We could talk about a lot, the three of us. About beekeeping. About farming, about tools, workmanship, carpentry. And about the village, gossip, people. Gareth, we could talk about him for a long time. Women, too, at least Rick and I could. Usually the conversation flowed freely. We always found something to talk about and to laugh at. Jimmy and I took the lead; the talk between us was like Ping-Pong, while Rick delivered the longest monologues.

But today we had no words. Every time I tried to say something, it got stuck. And I think the others felt the same way, because Jimmy kept clearing his throat and Rick looked back and forth between us and kept drawing his breath. But nothing came out.

So we drank the coffee and ate cookies. And tried to sit completely still, so the creaking of the chairs wouldn’t remind us that it was way too quiet. The coffee was tepid, had no flavor. The cookies went down, provided a little relief; only now did I realize that the craving in my stomach was hunger.

So we sat like that, while the darkness descended upon us, around us.

Into our bones.