The Music of Bees Read online

  He’d pulled out his sketchbook once or twice, but it depressed him to look at the scenes he’d drawn from his old life. He tried to comfort himself with the idea that he could still draw sitting down. But that thought made him so angry that he threw the book across the room.

  He’d started lifting weights just to pass the time, and felt surprisingly better. When the weather improved, he ventured out on his own, waiting until his parents were at work. He went farther each time, getting stronger, until he was doing this orchard loop at least twice a week. Moving his body was such a relief.

  At his last checkup in Portland, his neurologist was thrilled.

  “You’re fit as a fiddle, kid,” Dr. Gunheim said, tugging at the waistband of his chinos as he sat at the computer.

  Except I can’t use my fucking legs, Jake wanted to say.

  “Any questions?”

  Jake was glad he’d asked his mom to stop coming into the exam room with him. He wasn’t even embarrassed to ask, and Dr. Gunheim didn’t seem surprised. What eighteen-year-old boy wouldn’t wonder about his dick? Unfortunately, Dr. Gunheim didn’t have any definite answer.

  “It’s very likely you’ll have adequate sexual function, but we’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll make you a urology appointment in a couple of months. You’re still healing, Jake. Try to be patient.”

  Patient? He liked Dr. Gunheim, but at moments like that, he felt like punching the guy in the side of the head.

  Now his own head throbbed. He looked across the orchard toward the tree line where the forest began. The green light of dusk had swallowed the sun. Venus brightened among the first faint stars. The evening breeze blew down off the hillside carrying the smell of pines. Jake’s gaze drifted. His eyes landed on his chair, which was on its side. Next to that, he saw a person, a short woman in overalls who looked older than his mom. She leaned forward and peered down at Jake. Her expression was worried and relieved at the same time. She reminded Jake of Cheney when he had brought Jake that turtle in his teeth—his brow furrowed with curiosity and worry at this unknown thing. It made Jake want to laugh, remembering that. Then the woman’s face folded into a frown.

  “Christ on a crutch, kid! What in the hell are you trying to do? Get yourself killed?” she yelled.

  5

  Scent Fanning

  Members of different colonies appear to recognize their hive-companions by the sense of smell, and if there should be a thousand stocks in the Apiary, any one will readily detect a strange bee; just as each mother in a large flock of sheep is able, by the same sense, in the darkest night, to distinguish her own lamb from all the others.

  —L. L. LANGSTROTH

  When a honeybee colony experiences a disturbance, even something as slight as a beekeeper opening a hive to evaluate honey caches or pollen sources, the bees’ first instinct is to communicate with each other. A few guard bees will fly out to evaluate the threat at hand, but most bees will immediately drop into the crouch that exposes their Nasonov gland and fan their wings, thereby spreading queen pheromone throughout the hive. This action, called scent fanning, is like a soothing roll call that tells the inhabitants all is well.

  Alice, by contrast, was alone in this moment of urgency and had no one to lean on for guidance or comfort. She hadn’t been in so much as a fender bender since high school, but she quickly recognized that yelling was inappropriate, especially given the circumstances—namely, that she might have injured a minor in a wheelchair. She peered down at the boy and lowered her voice.

  “Are you okay, kid? Can you . . . can you sit up?”

  The boy didn’t say anything, but he was still smiling. That didn’t seem right. Was he mentally delayed? Or what was it—cerebral palsy? Holy hell! Alice fumbled for her phone.

  “I’m calling 911,” she mumbled to herself.

  The boy’s smile disappeared then, and he put a hand up. “No. Don’t do that. I—I’m okay. I just need a minute. Catch my breath.”

  His voice was quiet but otherwise sounded normal, and it made Alice realize that she was crouching too close to him. She stepped back. What was he doing out here in the near damn dark? She looked around into the falling dusk and saw no one.

  “Are you by yourself?” she asked.

  The boy nodded.

  Alice felt guilt and shame pump through her body like a drug. She could smell her own sweat. She looked up and down the road, which was dark and quiet. Then she ran back to her truck, turned off the engine, and clicked on her hazard lights. When she returned, the boy hadn’t moved.

  She plunked herself down, crossed her legs, and watched the kid’s face. He blinked up at her, and she saw his chest rise and fall.

  “That’s good. Take some deep breaths. We’ll just sit here a minute,” she said.

  The dusk deepened, and the air darkened. The cockeyed headlights of the truck threw two arms of light into the orchards. In their beams she could see bees zipping around. The hazard signals ticked like a frantic kitchen timer, and Alice’s heart raced to match it. The kid was staring up at the sky.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said. She returned to the truck, grabbed her water bottle, and looked at the wreckage of nucs in the truck bed and the ditch. Hundreds of bees had alighted on the truck bed and were scent fanning madly. With their abdomens raised and their Nasonov glands exposed, they were spreading pheromone trying to locate their queens. What a mess. It would have to wait.

  She returned to the boy and held up the bottle. “Thirsty?”

  He shook his head, and Alice sat down next to him again.

  “Are you hurt?” she asked, and then cringed. He was in a wheelchair, for God’s sake. “Are you in pain?”

  He shook his head again. That hair! His beak-like nose stood out sharply on his pale face. In his skinny jeans and combat boots, he was as alien to Hood River County as if he had dropped from the sky.

  “Did you hit your head?”

  He nodded. “Not hard. It just kind of . . . bounced when I fell.”

  Alice realized she was holding her breath and exhaled.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jake.”

  “Jake. I’m Alice. Alice Holtzman.”

  He looked directly at her then and nodded. Alice felt herself relax a notch. She could smell the cold water of the irrigation ditch below them and was thankful the kid hadn’t fallen in. She squirmed as the gravel poked through her overalls. In the faltering light, the boy’s pale face was luminous under the crazy hairdo. Alice glanced at her watch.

  “Listen, Jake, I should call your folks and let them know where you are. Can you give me their number?”

  He shook his head and winced. “No. It’s okay. I’ll be up in a second. They aren’t home anyway.”

  That last part sounded like a lie and, given that they likely had cell phones, irrelevant.

  “Right,” she said slowly, not sure what else to say. Alice hadn’t been around teenage boys since she was a teenager herself.

  “I think I can sit up,” he said.

  He pushed himself up on his elbows and pulled the tangle of earbuds and sunglasses off his neck. He blinked and glanced around.

  “What’s that noise?” he asked.

  The air around them pulsed and vibrated. Alice could see the bees in a throbbing cloud above the truck in the waning light. Agitated questions thrummed through the air. Where was the queen? Was the brood safe? Were the guard bees on duty? Where was everybody? Where was home? Despite the more urgent situation of the boy in the chair, she felt hot tears spring to her eyes at what she had done to her bees. She cleared her throat.

  “It’s bees. Honeybees,” Alice said. “I had some beehives in the back of my truck, and they are a bit confused right now. I’m so sorry about this. I just didn’t see you. I was probably going too fast, but this is my road and I hardly ever see anyone out here. I cer
tainly didn’t expect—”

  She stopped, flustered. The boy was watching her, and she thought she saw the corners of his mouth twitch.

  “You didn’t expect to see a wheelchair ripping down Reed Road?” he asked.

  She didn’t know what to say to that.

  The boy shifted his weight and looked over her shoulder toward the truck.

  “So, honeybees? Why do you have bees in your truck?”

  “I’m a beekeeper,” she said, grateful for something to talk about. “Just a hobby, really.” She gestured down the road toward her house. “I have a few hives.”

  “Beehives. Whoa.”

  He watched the bees zipping in and out of the headlights.

  “They sound mad,” he said.

  Alice shook her head. “No, they aren’t mad. More like confused.”

  What had he said his name was? God, her memory! She tried to keep her voice calm.

  “They’re just kind of talking to each other right now, making sure everyone is all right. They’re supposed to be in their boxes. Some fell out of the truck when I hit the fence.”

  She looked at the side of his thin face. What were you supposed to do when someone hit their head? Ask them questions? Jake! His name was Jake.

  “How’s your head, Jake? Any better?”

  He touched a hand to his bald pate and nodded.

  “Do you know where you are? What were you doing out here?”

  He smiled at that. “Don’t worry. I don’t have a concussion. I’m on Reed Road. It’s April 10, 2014. I live in Hood River, Oregon, and Barack Obama is the president of the United States.”

  His grin faded, and he frowned.

  “But I can’t remember your name,” he said.

  “Alice Holtzman,” she said.

  “I’m fine, Mrs. Holtzman.”

  Well, the kid did seem okay. She glanced at the truck. She’d have to deal with the mess to get the boy home.

  “Listen, Jake, if you don’t mind, I’m going to check on the bees.”

  “Oh, yeah. No problem.”

  “You sure?”

  “Totally.”

  “You sit tight,” she said, rising.

  “Okay. I won’t go running off,” he said.

  She hesitated. Was that a joke?

  He waved a long arm. “Really, I’m fine. Go check your bees, Mrs. Holtzman.”

  “Call me Alice,” she said. “My mom is Mrs. Holtzman.”

  “Okay, Alice,” Jake said.

  Alice pulled on her gloves and veiled hat and flicked on a red flashlight, steeling herself for the damage. Seven nucs remained in the truck bed. She righted them and tamped down the lids. The other five were strewn alongside the road. She knew there would be lots of dead bees, but she had to focus on what she could salvage now.

  “Sounds like a horror movie over there,” the boy called.

  “No, it’s fine,” Alice called back. “I just need a few minutes to sort this out. You all right?”

  “Yup,” he said.

  In about twenty minutes she’d collected all the frames and put the nucs in some order. She was stung twice on her forearms. That couldn’t be helped. She had to concentrate on the ones she could save. Alice returned to Jake, who was sitting up with his back against a rock. With that hair and his long legs, he looked like some sort of exotic bird.

  Alice reached down and grasped one side of the wheelchair, and the kid glared at her. She recoiled, embarassed, and wondered how she had offended him.

  “I thought I’d have a look at your chair?” she said.

  His face relaxed, and the boy nodded. Alice righted the wheelchair and ran her flashlight along the right side. She noticed scuffs, presumably from his fall. But when she spun the wheel, it seemed true, which was good. She could still hear the bees, though the buzz was receding. There must have still been hundreds flying in the air.

  The kid shifted against the rock and gazed past her. “So, they, like, live in those boxes?”

  “Just temporarily,” Alice said. “They all have nice hives waiting for them at my house. Those boxes are for the commuter stage, like a cattle truck,” she said, now surveying the left side of chair, which seemed unmarred.

  “How do you get them back in?” Jake asked. “Tiny cattle dogs? Little lassoes?”

  She glanced at him and saw that he was smiling again. Funny kid, she thought.

  “Well, they’ll go back as soon as it gets dark and cold enough out here,” she said. “I need to give them a few minutes. Then I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “No rush,” he said.

  “Look, I’d feel better if I called your folks, though, Jake. Really.”

  He sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I got it.”

  He thumbed a message into his phone.

  “Done,” he said, and smiled.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t want your parents to worry. I feel bad enough about all this . . .”

  Alice tilted the chair to the right and spun the left wheel, which also moved freely and seemed true. She wasn’t the best mechanic, but the wheelchair seemed okay. She would insist on paying for any repairs. Did you tune up a wheelchair like a bicycle? she wondered.

  “Well, technically you didn’t do anything. I fell over trying to get out of your way. So I’ll just tell them you ran me off the road.”

  Alice frowned, still looking at the chair, and didn’t reply. Was he trying to be funny?

  “I’m fine, really. I was just . . .”

  His voice trailed off, and he looked past her at the truck. Then he shifted slightly to face her.

  “About the bees, Alice. Do you just wait until they get in those boxes?”

  She nodded. “Yep. They’ll find their way back. They want to get home.”

  “What happens if they stay out after curfew? Does the mom bee lock the door?”

  Alice set the chair aside but didn’t look at him. “If they don’t get home before the temperature drops, they just don’t make it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” she said, “if they don’t make it back to the hive at night, then they die outside. It’s too cold.”

  She saw a look of concern cross his face, surprising her. She clicked off her flashlight.

  “Most of them will be just fine. They’re hardy,” she said, wanting to reassure him. She was touched that a teenage boy might care about the fate of the small creatures.

  “My dad always called them tough little broads,” she said.

  He grinned at that and looked past her.

  “So, they can just go into any one of those boxes?” he asked.

  “You really want to know?”

  He nodded.

  Alice looked up into the twilight at the small bee cloud buzzing over the truck. She loved the story of the bees, which was like a fairy tale. Even if you were a scientist or a religious person, there was no denying that the bees had real magic.

  A hive of sixty thousand honeybees, she explained, had one queen—leader and mother to them all. And 97 percent of the other tiny golden bodies buzzing away in there were her daughters. The remaining handful was made up of males, called drones. Daughters and sons recognized the queen by her scent, which was called her pheromone. The queen pheromone said, “All is well.” It said, “We are together.” It said, “You belong here.”

  From the time they emerged from their capped cells, those golden creatures knew exactly what to do. The daughters were called worker bees, Alice explained to Jake as the light faded between them. The very first thing they did after hatching, when they were known as callow bees, was clean up the cell they were born in. Then they started taking care of the other baby bees, feeding them and capping the larvae cells and helping other newly
emerging callow bees learn how to contribute to the hive. She told Jake how workers got promoted up the ladder as they got older, moving toward the front door to receive nectar and pollen from the bees that flew around collecting out in the field; those were called foragers. Some workers eventually graduated to foraging or became guard bees, she explained. Guard bees kept watch at the entrance and only let in the other bees that belonged there.

  “How do they know?” Jake asked. “Who’s who, I mean?”

  They knew by the scent, Alice told him. As long as the queen was healthy and laying eggs, her pheromone kept them all united. If they had any worry, they would immediately stop what they were doing and expose the Nasonov gland in their abdomens, passing a distinctive lemony scent from bee to bee. The bees that foraged carried that smell with them and brought it back to the hive. The scent allowed the guard bees to identify them as residents and not robbers.

  “What do you mean? They rob each other?”

  She nodded. “Bees from hungry hives will steal honey, so everyone gets checked at the front door. Yellow jackets try to get in too. They’ll actually eat the larvae and eggs—carnivorous little bastards.”

  Whoops! she thought. Language! She glanced at her watch. How long had they been sitting there? She felt anxious to get the boy home.

  The buzzing had died down, and few bees remained in the air.

  “Almost done. As done as they are going to get, anyway.”

  Alice stood up, brushed off the seat of her overalls, and turned toward the truck. She didn’t want the boy to see her face. It upset her to think about losing even one bee.

  She shivered, feeling the sudden drop in temperature that was common on April nights like this one. She turned to face Jake and the problem of getting him up, choosing, as she usually did, to be direct.