The History of Bees

Chapter 6 GEORGE

Emma was right about the snow. By the next day it was already melting all over the place, running and trickling so you couldn’t hear anything else. And the hot sun beat down on the boards of the house, bleaching out the color on the south wall a little more. The temperature crept steadily upwards, growing warm enough for the bees’ mass defecation flight. They are clean creatures and won’t relieve themselves in the hive. But when the sun is finally beating down, they fly out and empty their bowels. I had actually hoped for this, that the winter would release its grip now while Tom was home. Because then he could come along out to the hives and clean the bottom boards. I had even given Jimmy and Rick the day off, so Tom and I could have the chance to work alone. But as it turned out we didn’t go until Thursday, just three days before he had to go back.

It had been a quiet week. We walked in circles around each other, he and I. Emma stayed between us, laughing and chatting as usual. She was clearly putting her heart into finding food that suited Tom, because there was no end to the number of fish meals she conjured up, how much “exciting” and “delicious” fish they had suddenly acquired in the frozen goods section at the store. And Tom, he bowed and scraped in thanks, was so pleased about “all the good food.”

When yet another fish meal had been consumed, he usually remained seated at the kitchen table. He read alarmingly thick books, tapped away feverishly on the computer or was completely consumed by some Japanese crossword puzzle thing he called sudoku. It apparently didn’t occur to him that he could move somewhere else, that outside the day was suddenly flooded with sunshine, as if somebody had put in a more powerful lightbulb.

I found things to do, of course, I knew how to stay busy, too. One day I even drove to Autumn and bought house paint. As I stood there painting the south wall, I could feel how the sun scorched the back of my head. And I knew that we could take the chance on a trip out to the hives. I didn’t really need to clean the bottom boards just yet, but it was the last chance for Tom, so it wouldn’t hurt to start with a few hives. The bees had already been out for a while; they gathered pollen when the sun was shining. He used to enjoy this. He always used to go out with me. Jimmy and I cleaned the flight holes a few times in the course of the winter, but apart from that we left the bees alone, so it was always a special occasion when we were out among the hives for the first time. Seeing the bees again, the familiar buzzing, that was a joyful get-together, like a real reunion celebration.

“I need help with the bottom boards,” I said.

I was already dressed to go out; I stood there in my rubber boots and overalls, in the middle of the room. My legs were restless, I was looking forward to this. I had folded the veil up, I could see better like that. I had taken out extra gear, too, held it out with both hands.

“Already?” he asked and didn’t look up. He was slower than molasses. Just sat there all pale in the glow of the laptop with his fingers on the keyboard.

I suddenly noticed how I was holding the suit and veil out a bit too far, as if I was going to give him a gift he didn’t want. I pushed both under my arm and put my other hand on my hip.

“It’s rotting underneath them. You know that. Nobody likes living in muck. You wouldn’t, either, even though student dorm rooms aren’t exactly known for being the cleanest.”

I tried to laugh, but it came out more like a croak. One of my hands was also at an odd angle. I removed it from my hip. It remained dangling idly at my side. I scratched my forehead just to give it something to do.

“But you usually wait a couple more weeks,” he said.

He looked up now. My boy’s eyes stared at me.

“No. I don’t.”

“Dad…”

He saw that I was lying. Looked at me with one eyebrow raised.

“It’s warm enough,” I hastened to say. “And we’ll only take a few. You’ll be spared the rest. I’ll take care of them with Jimmy and Rick next week.”

I tried handing him the suit and hat again, but he didn’t accept them. He basically gave no sign of moving, just nodded at his computer.

“I’m in the middle of an assignment for school.”

“Aren’t you on vacation?” I put the gear in front of him on the table. Tried to stare at him firmly, let my eyes say that he’d better help out now that he had finally decided he could be bothered to pay us a visit. “See you outside in five minutes.”

We had 324 hives. 324 queens, each with her own colony, located throughout the area in different places, rarely more than 20 in each place. If we’d lived in another state, we could have had up to 70 hives in one site. I knew a beekeeper in Montana, he had gathered close to 100 in the same place. The region was so fertile that the bees only had to fly a few yards to find everything they needed. But here, in Ohio, the agriculture wasn’t diversified enough. Mile after mile of corn and soybeans. Too little access to nectar, not enough for the bees to live on.

Emma had painted the hives, all of them, over the years, the color of candies. Pink, turquoise, light yellow and a kind of greenish pistachio color, as artificial as sweets full of additives. She thought it looked festive. For my own part they could just as well have been white, like before. My father had always painted them white and his father and grandfather before him. They used to say that it was the inside that counted—not the color. But Emma thought the bees liked them this way, that it made it more personal. Who knows, maybe she was right. And I had to admit that the sight of the colored hives scattered across the landscape, as if a giant had dropped his sweets, always gave me a warm feeling inside.

We started on the meadow between the Menton farm, the main road and the narrow Alabast River, which, despite its fancy name, this far south wasn’t much more than a riverbed. Here I had assembled the majority. Twenty-six bee colonies. We started on a shocking-pink hive. It was helpful that there were two of us. Tom lifted the box while I changed the board. Removed the old one, which was full of debris and dead bees from the winter, and put in a new, clean one. We had invested in modern bottom boards with screens and removable ventilated pollen trays last year. It had been expensive, but it was worth it. The air circulation improved and the cleaning was simpler. Most beekeepers operating on this scale had dropped changing the bottom boards at this time, but I didn’t believe in letting things take their own course. My bees were going to thrive.

A lot of debris had collected on the bottom board in the course of the winter, but otherwise everything looked good. We were fortunate, the bees stayed calm, few flew up. It was good to see Tom out here. He worked skillfully and quickly, was back where he belonged. Sometimes he wanted to bend his back, but I stopped him.

“Lift with your legs.” I knew several people who had ended up with slipped discs and spasms and no end of back troubles because they had been lifting wrong. And Tom’s back would have to last for many years, withstand thousands of lifts. We kept working without a break until lunchtime. We didn’t say much, just a few words, and only about the work. “Hold on here, like that, good.” I kept waiting for him to ask for a break, but he didn’t mention it. And as the hour approached 11:30, my stomach was growling, so I was the one who suggested a bite to eat.

We sat on the edge of the flatbed and dangled our legs. I had brought along a thermos full of coffee and some sandwiches. The peanut butter had been absorbed by the spongy bread and the slices were sticky but it’s incredible how good everything tastes when the air is fresh and you’re working outdoors. Tom said nothing. He was definitely not one for small talk, this son of mine. But if that was his preference, it was fine by me. I’d gotten him out here, that was the most important thing. I just hoped that he was enjoying it a little and felt it was good to be here again.

I finished eating and jumped down onto the ground to work again, but Tom was still toiling away. He took baby-size bites and stared intently at the sandwich, as if there were something wrong with it.

And then suddenly he came out with it.

“I have a very good English teacher.”

“Is that right,” I said and stopped. I tried to smile, even though there was something about the way he said this completely ordinary thing that gave me a lump in my stomach. “That’s good.”

He took another bite. He chewed and chewed, apparently unable to swallow.

“He’s encouraging me to write more.”

“More? More of what?”

“He says that…”

He fell silent. Put the sandwich down, gripped around his coffee cup, but didn’t drink. That was when I first noticed that his hand was shaking a little.

“He says that I have a voice.”

A voice? Academic nonsense. I forced a grin, I couldn’t be bothered to take this seriously.

“I could have told you that a long time ago,” I said. “Especially when you were little. Loud and cutting it was. Thank God your voice changed. It didn’t happen one day too soon.”

He didn’t smile at the joke. He just sat there in silence.

The grin slid off my face. He wanted to say something, no doubt about that. He was sitting there with some burning issue on his mind, and I had a strong suspicion that it was something that I absolutely did not want to hear.

“It’s good the teachers are satisfied with you,” I said finally.

“He really thinks I should write more,” Tom said softly, with an emphasis on really. “He said I can apply for scholarships, too, and maybe continue with it.”

“Continue?”

“A Ph.D.”

My chest tightened, my throat grew constricted, I could taste the raw flavor of peanut butter in my mouth, but was unable to swallow.

“Is that right. So he said that.”

Tom nodded.

I tried to keep my voice calm. “How many years does one of those Ph.D.s take?”

He just stared down at the toes of his shoes, without answering.

“I’m not exactly getting any younger,” I continued. “Things don’t run by themselves up here.”

“No, I know that,” he said quietly. “But you do have help?”

“Jimmy and Rick come and go as they please. It’s not their farm. Besides, they don’t work for free.”

I started working again, lifted the dirty boards over onto the flatbed. The woodwork in the frames hit the metal on the flatbed with a rude clang. Yes indeed, we had heard from teachers before about how Tom was good with words. He’d always gotten As in English, there was obviously nothing wrong with his head. But it wasn’t English we had in mind when we sent him to college. He was supposed to learn economics and marketing, prepare the farm for the future. Expand, modernize, make operations more efficient. And maybe make a proper website. Those were the kinds of things he was supposed to learn. That was why we had scrimped and saved for his tuition, ever since he was a little boy. We hadn’t treated ourselves to a single real vacation in all those years, not once. Everything had gone into the college account.

What did an English teacher know? Probably sat there in his dusty college office full of books he pretended to have read and slurped tea and wore a scarf while he was inside, trimming his beard with embroidery scissors. While he gave “good” advice to young boys who happened to be good at writing, without knowing shit about what he was starting.

“We can talk more about that later,” I said. We never had that talk. He left before we had the chance. I decided that “later” was a long way off. Or maybe he was the one who decided that. Or maybe Emma. Because we were never alone in the same room, Tom and I, not on one single occasion, the rest of the time that he was home. Emma cooed around us like a wood pigeon on speed, served, cleared, talked and talked about absolutely nothing.

I was so tired during those days. Fell asleep on the couch all the time. Had a long list of jobs I was supposed to do, old hives that needed maintenance, orders I needed to follow up on. But I didn’t have the gumption. It was like I was going around with a mild fever all the time. But I didn’t have a fever. I even took my temperature. Snuck into the bathroom and found a thermometer at the bottom of the first-aid kit. Light blue with teddy bears on it, Emma had bought it for Tom when he was a baby. It was supposed to be especially quick, the instructions said, so as not to disturb the child any longer than necessary. But it sure had to stay in long enough. Somewhere or other in the house I could hear Emma cooing and Tom answering from time to time. And there I was, with the cold metal tip in my butt, that had been in the backside of my son hundreds of times. Emma was not the kind to think twice about checking his temperature, and yet again I felt my eyes fall shut while I was waiting for the digital peep that told me my body was as it should be, even though it felt as if I had run a marathon, or how I figured that had to feel.

Once I had finally confirmed that I didn’t have a fever, I just went and lay down anyway, without saying anything. Let them carry on.

The cooing continued until he was sitting on the bus. Then, with Tom inside, his face plastered against the back window and relief painted all over his mug, she was finally silent.

We stood there and waved, as automatically as if we were full of batteries, hands up and down, up and down, completely in sync. Emma’s eyes became shiny, or perhaps it was just the wind, but luckily she didn’t cry.

The bus pulled out onto the road, Tom’s face shone faintly at us, smaller and smaller. It suddenly reminded me of another time when he drove away from me on a bus. Then, too, his face had shimmered faintly at me with relief. But also with fear.

I shook my head, wanted to get rid of the memory.

Finally the bus disappeared around the corner. We lowered our hands in unison, stood there watching the point where it disappeared, as if we were stupid enough to believe it would suddenly come back.

“Well, well,” Emma said. “That was that.”

“That was that? What do you mean?”

“We just have them on loan.” She dried a tear that the wind had nudged out of her left eye. I had a good mind to unleash a sharp retort, but let it go. I had too much respect for that tear. So I turned and walked towards the car.

She plodded behind me. It seemed she’d grown smaller as well.

I got in behind the wheel, but was incapable of starting the engine. My hands were so limp, as if worn out by all of the waving.

Emma put on her seat belt, she was always so particular about that, and turned towards me.

“Aren’t you going to drive?”

I wanted to lift my hand, but it didn’t work.

“Did he talk to you about it?” I said to the steering wheel.

“What?” Emma asked.

“About what he’s planning? For the future?”

She was quiet for a moment. Then it came, softly.

“You do know he loves to write. He always has.”

“I love Star Wars. Haven’t become no Jedi, though.”

“He clearly has a special talent.”

“So you support him? You think his plan is wise? Real smart? A good choice of direction?” I turned to face her now, straightened my neck, tried to seem severe.

“I just want him to be happy,” she said meekly.

“You do.”

“Yes. I do.”

“You haven’t thought about how he has to live as well? Earn money eventually?”

“The teacher has said that he has something to offer.”

She sat there with that large, open gaze of hers, completely sincere. She wasn’t angry, just had such an unshakable belief that she was right.

I squeezed the car keys in my hand, suddenly noticed that it hurt, but couldn’t let go.

“Have you thought about what we’ll do with the farm then?”

She was silent. For a long while. Looked away, fiddled a bit with her wedding ring, pulled it up over the first joint in her finger. The white band on her skin below was revealed, the mark from the ring that had been there for twenty-five years.

“Nellie called last week,” she said finally, into space, not to me. “They have summer temperatures in Gulf Harbors now. Seventy degrees in the water.”

There it was again. Gulf Harbors. Floating, even though the name of the housing development hit me like a shingle in the head every time she said it. Nellie and Rob were childhood friends of ours. Unfortunately, they had moved to Florida. Ever since that happened, they had been pestering us something fierce, not just to visit this so-called oasis on the outskirts of Tampa, but also that we should move there ourselves. Emma kept showing me new ads for houses in Gulf Harbors. Real cheap. On the market for a long time. We could find a bargain. A pier and a swimming pool, recently renovated, a common beach and tennis courts, as if we would need that, yes, it seems they even had dolphins, and manatees, carrying on and splashing around, right outside their front door. Who needed it? Manatees? Ugly beasts.

Nellie and Rob bragged like crazy. They’d made lots of new friends, they said, listing random names: Laurie, Mark, Randy, Steven. There was no end to it. Every week they had Sunday brunch together at the community center, a full brunch for only five dollars, with pancakes, bacon, eggs and fried potatoes. And now they were trying to get us to come down, all of us, yes indeed, they were nagging more people than just us, apparently wanted all of Autumn to come south. But I knew what it was really all about. They were lonely down there on their deep-water canal. It was wretched living so far away from family and friends, to have run away from everything they’d had around them their whole lives. Besides, summer in Florida, you can’t get closer to hell, sticky and hot and horrible, with insane thunderstorms several times a day. And even though the winter is probably just fine, with summer temperatures and not much rain, who wants to live without a real winter? Without snow and the cold? I’d told Emma this many times, but she still wouldn’t give up. Thought we had to start making proper plans, plans for our old age. She didn’t understand that I’d done just that. I wanted to leave behind something substantial, a legacy, instead of sitting there with a run-down vacation home that was impossible to sell. Yes indeed. I’d done a little reading about how things were on the housing market in Florida these days. There were good reasons why these houses weren’t sold the first weekend they were shown, to put it that way.

But I had another plan. Some new investments. More hives, many more. Trucks. Trailers. Full-time employees. Plans for agreements with farms in California, Georgia, maybe Florida.

And Tom.

It was a good plan. Realistic. Levelheaded. Before Tom knew it, he’d have a wife and children. Then it would be a good thing that his father had made proper plans, that the farm was in working order, well maintained, that the enterprise was adapted to the modern world, that Tom had worked here long enough so he knew the craft from the inside out. And that maybe there was a little money in the bank. These were uncertain times. I created security. I alone created security for this family. A future. But it didn’t seem like anyone understood that.

I got tired just thinking about it, about the plan. Before it had given me the energy to work extra, but now the road ahead seemed as long and twisted as a muddy wheel rut in the autumn rain.

I couldn’t bring myself to answer Emma. Stuck the car keys in the ignition, the key was slick with sweat and had created a red mark on the palm of my hand. I had to drive now, before I fell asleep. She didn’t look up, had taken off her wedding ring and was rubbing her fingers against the white band on the skin. She couldn’t fool me, but all the same she wanted to put our whole life in jeopardy.