The Music of Bees Read online

  “Pastoral Beauty,” Harry wrote in the left-hand column of his notebook. He couldn’t remember what “pastoral” meant, exactly—something outdoorsy—but it had a nice ring to it. Anyway, it was a good list word—short and punchy.

  This list-making strategy was something Harry had employed for at least two decades of his young life. It was a habit conceived of the day he perched in a booster seat in the back of his mother’s Lincoln Town Car, clutching an orange crayon in his four-year-old fist. That was the day his mother had driven out of Mississippi and toward New York City, leaving his father and the sweltering South behind. Harry could barely remember his father. But he remembered the wet heat of the summer day and the joy on his mother’s face when they reached the city limits of Hattiesburg. She lit a cigarette and rolled down the window.

  “What’s in New York, Mama?” he asked.

  She blew smoke out the window and looked at him in the rearview mirror.

  “The Statue of Liberty, son. And the Empire State Building. Broadway, where all the famous actors go. Central Park has a pond and a zoo. In New York, they have policemen on horses. You’re gonna love it, Harry.”

  She smiled, waving the smoke out of her face, and Harry wanted to believe her because he liked it when his mother smiled.

  “What about Daddy?” he asked.

  There was a pause, and then she said, “Nope. Not your daddy. Your daddy will not be in New York.”

  At least that was the way Harry remembered it—the smell of cigarette smoke, Patsy Cline on the radio, and his mother singing along. In his mind’s eye, Harry could see the orange crayon and the paper. He’d drawn a horse, a policeman, and a caged tiger on one side of the page and a stick figure of his father on the other—thereby marking his first tally of life’s pros and cons. Harry continued to use this strategy as a young man. The list-making helped, or at least Harry liked to believe it did, as he so often found himself stuck between the now and the next.

  “Analysis paralysis,” Sal teased him. “Kid couldn’t decide his way out of a paper bag.”

  His mother would shush his stepfather, saying Harry was doing just fine, that he was actively considering his options when he made the lists. However, not even she would say that Harry was doing anything remotely active now—living in his uncle’s trailer off of Highway 141 in the woods near BZ Corner. Harry had been content with his situation until recently. He liked the peace and quiet. Those were two more items for the left-hand column. And privacy. Harry hadn’t seen a single person since his uncle left. Only chattering birds and flashes of small creatures in the underbrush.

  “Wildlife,” he wrote under “Privacy,” although wildlife wasn’t always a positive element to rural life. The golden grosbeaks that flashed down onto the sunny driveway were beautiful. But the aggressive raccoon guarding the trash pile was not. Harry was almost certain he’d seen a coyote, its lanky brown body slung low to the ground, skulking around the edges of the property.

  “My propity!” Uncle H was always saying, his Mississippi accent still strong even after decades out west. “Private propity! They got no reason to trespass up here into my bidness, do they?”

  Harry was unclear about who “they” might be, seeing as nobody had visited his uncle in the two months Harry had been staying there. Feisty Uncle H—short for Harold, last name of Goodwin—didn’t welcome visitors. Harry conjectured there’d been a fire sale on “No Trespassing” signs at the hardware store since dozens of them hung along the overgrown driveway all the way to the mailbox. Uncle H had affixed them with nails, tacks, and duct tape. Tattered and windblown, they added to the general atmosphere of neglect that surrounded the dilapidated trailer.

  Harry wondered whether his uncle really owned any “propity” here in the dark woods near BZ Corner. It seemed possible that he was just squatting and whoever owned the land couldn’t be bothered to move him or didn’t know he was there. BZ was really nothing more than a wide spot in the road just north of Hood River. In his short time there, Harry had determined that people who lived in BZ seemed to be of three types: 1) God-fearing retired loggers who liked to hunt, fish, and keep to themselves. 2) The cagey and unemployed, who were shifty-looking enough that you wanted to steer clear. 3) Second homeowners from Portland who’d built rustic vacation homes they rarely occupied.

  Harry wouldn’t say it to his face, but Uncle H seemed to be firmly in the second category. It was unclear how the old man had landed here or why he’d stayed. He had a daughter and grandchildren in Mississippi still, Harry’s mom said. Harry had no idea where he got his money, of which there seemed to be little. When he sent Harry to the store, he’d pull crumpled ones and fives out of his pockets to pay for groceries. Harry’s status as a guest was tenuous enough that he didn’t ask questions. The only thing that kept his uncle from lumping him in with those other trespassers to his “propity,” Harry thought, was that Uncle H always liked Harry’s mother, Uncle H’s sister’s daughter.

  “Your mama, she’s a good woman. Bona fide heart of gold,” he’d say whenever she came up in conversation. “Genuine article.”

  Still, the issue of “propity” was part of the reason Harry was staying with his uncle in the crummy little trailer in the woods. Namely that Harry didn’t have any.

  The trailer. That would definitely go in the right-hand column.

  “Sorry, Uncle H,” he said aloud, “but it is a genuine, bona fide piece of crap.”

  The trailer had seen better days. Among its failings: Loose siding that banged in the wind and ragged insulation spilling out of cheap paneling. It had no running water, spotty electricity, and great holes in the floor. At night Harry could hear mice skittering behind the walls. At some point the stairs had given way, so when Harry had arrived in February, the old man, who was nearing ninety, was using a homemade ladder to climb in and out of the trailer. He seemed as unfazed to see his great-nephew walking up the muddy drive unannounced as he was to climb in and out of the trailer for twice-daily trips to the outhouse. Uncle H hadn’t questioned the young man’s story about wanting to see the West. If he had talked to Lydia about Harry’s “trouble,” as his mother liked to put it, Uncle H didn’t let on.

  Harry liked his uncle, who seemed content to hold up the conversation for both of them for hours on end. He talked about his years as a railroad engineer for BNSF, traveling from coast to coast. How he hitchhiked through every province in Canada as far as the remote territory of Newfoundland, facing the wild Labrador Sea. He regaled Harry with tales of the fine-looking women he’d met on his travels. Harry was a good listener. Perhaps that was why, after he had been there for a week, his uncle didn’t ask when he was leaving. Instead, Uncle H sent him into BZ for groceries and ice for the cooler, which he used since the refrigerator was broken. Harry procured the small supply of what Uncle H deemed staples: Jif, macaroni and cheese, Spam, potatoes, light beer, toilet paper, and Cheez-Its. After that, Harry did the shopping every three or four days.

  The two fell into an amicable routine. Uncle H enjoyed a captive audience for his stories and endless games of cribbage. Harry, stuck as he was between the recent debacle of his past and the uncertainty of his future, was happy to pause there, suspended between what he had done and what he might make of himself. As the spring rains swept through the great woods, the two of them sat at the dinette in the mildewed trailer playing cards or reading from Uncle H’s library, which consisted of wildlife guides, Pacific Northwest history books, and a few ragged mysteries. Uncle H yanked gleefully on his shock of white hair whenever he beat his great-nephew at cards, which was often. In the afternoon, Uncle H curled up and napped. When the rain lightened, Harry poked around in the woods above the river. Once he had tried to tidy up around the trailer, sorting through the trash to see what might be salvageable or recyclable, but his uncle yelled at him to mind his own goddamn business and get his hands off his things. He stomped up the ladder with a ferocity t
hat alarmed Harry, given his age and the integrity of the ladder, and slammed the flimsy door. Harry had spent the rest of that day down by the river. By the time he came back, Uncle H was frying up Spam and potatoes for dinner. He waxed Harry at cribbage for the hundredth time and didn’t mention the incident.

  After that, Harry stuck to sanctioned chores, like repairing the exterior of the trailer and reinforcing the ladder. Harry was handy with that sort of thing, and his uncle seemed to appreciate it. He’d also walk or hitchhike to the small grocery store. He stood with his thumb out, willing himself to look safe and friendly in his greasy pants and knit cap. People probably stopped faster for the old man tottering down the shoulder of Highway 141, he thought. The sight of Uncle H in his long johns worn under shorts and tube socks might have been the reason social services had shown up two days ago. Or, rather, the not-sight of him, after Harry took over the shopping.

  BZ was a small community. Someone must have noticed that Uncle H hadn’t made the trip for a while. Nobody would have recognized that his great-nephew was shopping for him. Harry never spoke to anyone at the grocery store. Uncle H had no phone, so nobody could call to check on him. Harry had heard him grumble that his doctor nagged him to get a phone. So, although Uncle H might not have been surprised to see the county folks, Harry had been.

  When the white sedan and ambulance rolled slowly up the driveway two days ago, the old man was sleeping, as he had been doing more and more, and not just on rainy days. Harry was outside taking a leak, standing on the edge of the clearing where the woods began. A car emblazoned with a “Hood River County Official Use” seal led the way. Two women climbed out—a passenger in pink hospital scrubs and the driver in khaki pants and a navy cardigan. Harry saw a guy about his age climb out of the ambulance. The sedan driver said something to him and he nodded, leaned against the door of the ambulance, and began thumbing through his phone. The two women walked toward the trailer.

  “Hello! Mr. Goodwin?”

  The driver pulled off her glasses as she approached the door.

  “Mr. Goodwin? Are you home?”

  Harry felt an urge toward hospitality mixed with a sense of protectiveness. He moved to step into the sunlight and introduce himself as the great-nephew to and namesake of Harold Goodwin. He would ask these people who they were and what they needed. He would climb inside and help his uncle down the ladder, even though Uncle H got mad when Harry offered help.

  But Harry didn’t do any of that. Instead, he turned around and ran. He couldn’t say how long he sprinted the narrow game trail above the river, but when he finally stopped, sweating and panting, he found himself deeper in the woods than he’d gone before. He collapsed on the loamy dirt and tried to slow his hammering heart. He thought of his mother. “Exasperating!” she would say. Like when, in first grade and unable to work the stiff button on his new jeans, Harry had wet himself at school. When she picked him up, she asked, “Harry, why didn’t you ask a teacher for help?” Harry just shrugged and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Exasperating,” she had muttered for the first of a thousand times.

  Sitting with his back against a log, Harry would not have argued. He had no reasonable explanation for running. He could not put this childlike panic into words befitting adult behavior. Surely, he could do better than this. At least no one had seen him. He stood up and started back to the trailer. He breathed deeply and rehearsed the words in his head.

  “Hello. My name is Harry Stokes. I’m Mr. Goodwin’s great-nephew, visiting from Long Island. How can I help?”

  That was what he would say. When he got back to the trailer, however, the driveway was empty. Harry sighed with relief. He wouldn’t have to say anything after all, but he would be ready next time. He climbed into the trailer, buoyed by the luck of the near miss.

  “Hey, Uncle H,” he called. “You awake in here?” His uncle didn’t answer because his uncle wasn’t there. Harry climbed outside and checked the outhouse to confirm the sinking truth. Those people had taken him away.

  That was two days ago. Harry figured they had taken Uncle H to the hospital in that ambulance, and part of him was relieved. Uncle H had been sleeping a lot and acting strange. Last week he had looked up during a hand of cribbage and scowled at Harry.

  “Who let you in here?” he growled.

  “You did, Uncle H,” Harry said nervously.

  The old man’s frown relaxed, and he laughed.

  If Uncle H had mentioned his great-nephew, the county people might not have believed the kooky old man. Harry planned to hitchhike down to the hospital and check on him. But he hadn’t gone that first day or yesterday. Today was day three. He could have at least called from the pay phone in BZ Corner. He didn’t want to think about why he hadn’t. He was ashamed of himself, which made his hunger disappear briefly. He put the thought away and cast his gaze down the overgrown driveway.

  “Security,” Harry wrote in his now-full left column. However, those assets were growing decidedly less attractive in the face of other facts: he was dirty, hungry, a little worried about food poisoning with the cooler situation, and slightly miserable waking up alone in the dark woods. He didn’t feel close to his uncle, exactly, but Uncle H had been someone to talk to or at least listen to. However, the weeks Harry had spent at his uncle’s hadn’t put him any closer to solving his own problems, which were considerable. He flipped back to that list, which was growing.

  Under the header “Spring 2014 Status Report,” he had written the following: “Problems: Homeless (not counting trailer), Jobless, Checking account: $318.57, Owe Mom and Sal $1,468.25.”

  He sighed. Harry needed money. He knew his mother would send him some if he asked. She always did, saying it was just to help him get on his feet. But this wasn’t a crisis. He’d simply run out of money like he always did when he hit a dead end because he had no plan. No, he couldn’t call his mother. Besides, she’d ask about Uncle H. He felt a lead weight in his stomach thinking of the old man alone at the hospital.

  Harry turned the page and wrote a new list.

  “April 2014 Tasks: Update résumé, Apply for jobs, Go see H, Call Mom.” He drew an arrow and moved “Go see H” to the top of the list, which made him feel better.

  The idea of looking for work made his stomach clench. Work was not the problem. Harry was a hard worker. The problem was interviewing, talking to people, closing the deal.

  “You don’t follow through, kid!” Sal would yell. “That last place offered you a job and you never called back! What the heck is wrong with you?”

  Exasperating.

  Harry had no reasonable explanation. How could he describe the paralyzing set of questions a new situation would present? What was the best route to drive to work in the morning? What was he supposed to wear? Did people bring a lunch, or did they go out? What if he had to use the bathroom, like, really use the bathroom? He couldn’t ask anyone those questions, so it was easier to come up with white lies: the pay was bad, the hours were lousy, the manager seemed like a jerk.

  Harry tapped his pen against his upper lip. Getting a job would be harder than usual this time, not just because he was living in the woods without a car. There was also the nagging detail that Harry was a criminal. Or had been. Past tense. But he had served his time for that. It was behind him, he told himself. First things first. He had to find his uncle.

  He grabbed a towel, soap, and a change of clothes and walked into the woods toward the river. For all the vagueness of the term “pastoral beauty,” Harry had truly become enamored of the great dark woods around Uncle H’s place. The days he rambled through the trees above the river he found himself shocked by the beauty of the simplest things: the electric-green moss growing on a tree trunk; an unexpected sunbreak lighting up the ghost of a tree snag. Once, as he tramped along, a handful of small birds, squabbling among themselves, had flown out of the trees and directly across his path. They’d been so engross
ed in their spat that they hadn’t even noticed him. “A quarrel of sparrows.” That was what the bird book called them. Another night, just before bed, Harry stood outside in the darkness and looked up at the stars, which were so bright there far from any city, brighter than any he’d ever seen. Then he heard the deep, pulsating call of an owl throbbing through the woods around him. Harry could not have said which tree the great bird sat in, as the call seemed to be everywhere at once. The hoot came again, and Harry felt it settle into his chest and fill his heart. A child of the suburbs, he had never been so close to such wildness and had not known it would stir such feeling in him. He would have called it happiness if someone had asked him. But there was nobody to do so.

  Harry walked the trail to a small sandbar on the river where the wild current circled back on itself and created a calm eddy. He stripped to pale gooseflesh, took a deep breath, and jumped into the icy water, which shocked the breath out of him. He toed the sandy bottom before scrambling out to soap his hair and body in the fragile sunlight. Then he jumped in again, scrubbing himself clean.

  Back on the bank, he dried off and pulled on the cleanest of his two pair of pants and one of his uncle’s shirts, a tartan wool with the tags still attached. His body tingled as he walked back to the trailer. He shaved in the small mirror his uncle had hung on a tree. Bald at twenty-four, or balding, anyway, he sighed. He had considered shaving it all off but remembered how a high school dare had revealed his bumpy Neanderthal skull.

  Yet he wanted to do something to mark a change and a fresh start. When he’d first come west, he planned to get a tattoo but couldn’t decide on the right image. He’d spent an hour in the tattoo shop in Seattle, flipping through the books before leaving with a sheepish wave. The big guy looked up from the customer he was working on and jerked his chin at Harry.