Bee-Loud Glade (21 page)

29

M
y garden grew funny that first year, tangled and stubby and snarled. My tomatoes were too close together and my carrots were too far apart. My pumpkins rolled on long vines into the pea patch, and some of my potatoes were too deep and others were not deep enough. But I learned from my errors, I took mental notes and saved seeds from my harvest the way I'd heard could be done. And over time my planting improved, my vegetables flourished, though that first season strained my appetite, especially after the garden became my major food source. And I wasn't much better at fishing.

But I've gotten the hang of it, over the years.

And oh, that first harvest, those first fruits of my vines—the first bite of tomato I'd ever taken, in my whole life, that didn't come from a can or a store or the dank, dark dump of a truck. My God, that tomato. That carrot, that bean. Those peas. I could go on, but there's no use describing what needs to be felt to be known, what needs to be tasted and on the tip of your tongue to make sense.

Once my garden was planted, it took time to settle back into routine, into my
new
routine, because now I had more to do than float on the river all day. I had crops to water, I had weeds to weed. I had ladybugs and green worms and brown moths to keep an eye on and make sure they weren't eating my food, at least not too much of it. We'd made a silent agreement, the insects and I, that we could share my garden if we did it with mutual respect. I would leave enough for them if they left enough for me, and from the start we found our balance.

The birds have been another story, right from that first day of planting. I chase them off, they return. I chase a bird in one direction and three others land behind me and have at my harvest. I tried making a scarecrow of sticks lashed with vines and my cast-off tunic to bulk up the body, but it worked no better than I'd expected it would—it looked too much like me, all bones and blanket, and the birds clearly had no fear of me, in the flesh, what little there was of it, so why would they fear a scarecrow in my image?

I've tried throwing rocks but I've never struck one single bird and, to be honest, I've never tried very hard—I'm not sure I want to hit one, because what would I do after that? I don't know how to butcher a bird, and they aren't big enough to be a meal in themselves. It took long enough to work out how to fish and what to do once a fish had been caught. Birds are a whole other warm-blooded ball game.

Once my garden was growing, once I'd reached a truce with the bugs and a stalemate with the birds—they were going to get some of my garden, and there was nothing to be done about that, so I'd just plant a bit more than I needed—my days took on the shape they still have. Breakfast and tea at sunrise, a short morning swim, a few hours weeding or planting or picking produce, back to the river in the afternoon before turning my crops into dinner. It didn't take long for my life to fall out on those lines. After the seeds and tools first appeared and after several days' wonderful backbreaking labor—backbreaking, veil-lifting, bodybuilding hard work—the garden didn't need me every minute so I headed back to the water as much as I could.

And one of those post-planting mornings, on the way from my cave to the river and passing the blackberry patch, I spotted something strange in the bushes—a branch out of place, too straight, too thick, with no offshoots or sprigs aspring from its sides. So I stopped to investigate, expecting another microphone poorly concealed or some other unwelcome device. But what I found was a bamboo fishing pole, leaning out of the bushes as if meant to be found. It had a hook and a round wooden float on the line, painted red and white, and there it was waiting for me. It was as brand new and antique all at once as everything introduced into my garden, but none of its hardware corroded by rust.

I held it in my hands, testing the weight, wondering when it had been delivered and placed in that bush. I practiced some baitless casting like I'd tried in a few fishing video games at which I'd never been good. I didn't know how to fish, I'd never cast a real rod or hook and I'd never baited one either, but I did know enough to use worms, and I knew where I could find some of those.

I wasn't sure, at first, that I wanted to fish, that I wanted the blood and bait on my hands. Later, of course, I would have to, but when I thought it was only a choice, when I still thought the fishing pole and garden were more of Mr. Crane's whims, I wasn't in a hurry to use it. So I spent that day swimming instead, the fishing pole on the bank with my tunic, and I carried it up to my cave when I went to lunch, to lean against my wall out of harm's way until I wanted to use it or until Mr. Crane told me to.

Only a few days later, some sprouts were beginning to emerge from the dirt in my garden—carrots, if I recall correctly, but those first shoots might have been something else. In all the excitement, my scribe seems to have missed making record of that. Buoyant on the thrill of having made something grow, of having actually brought life and green growth to the garden, I floated in the river and in my head all at once. As I drifted, eyes on the sky and two lion-shaped clouds in aerial combat, I spotted something at the edge of my eye. Turning, rolling on the water toward the far bank, I saw a brown wooden box up in the crook of a tree. So I swam toward the shore, and shimmied right up, and found a box built like my paint box had been: brass latches and corners, all looking aged.

It was heavy, and large enough to be awkward, so I had to haul it down to the ground before opening it to find what seemed to be a first-aid kit inside: not adhesive bandages or bottles of aspirin, but a crude (yet sharp) pair of scissors, clean cloth bandages, and a long, curved needle and thread. There were other tools and supplies that meant nothing to me, I had no idea what they were for, but I hauled the whole kit to my cave as I'd done with the fishing rod, too, wondering why I had found them. Was I meant to injure myself? Was it a request from Mr. Crane that I get hurt and play doctor? I wasn't big on the idea, so I waited to see what he said, if he said anything, rather than rush to break and splint a finger or gouge open one of my arms; I hurt myself often enough without doing myself in on purpose.

And my next discovery came a few weeks after that, I suppose, when the corn looked like stalks and the lettuce like leaves and I'd already eaten a bean and some peas—picked right from their shoots and their vines, straight into my mouth, and how did I go so long without knowing they tasted like that?

I was out in the garden pulling up weeds, which was tricky because I didn't know yet what all my plants looked like and had to wait for them to grow, to take on their shape, before I could identify the intruders hiding among them. I had nothing with which to make signs, and it was too late to make after the seeds had already been planted. And I made mistakes; I pulled up ungrown carrots and left other things growing that later spread through the garden so I had to fight them right down to their roots. Sometimes I had clues, sometimes the insects I'd reached a truce with let me know what were weeds and what weren't, because they only seemed to spend their time on the plants that were something to eat. Anything with no beetles or butterflies on it, I pulled from the ground and dug out its roots, and for the most part that worked.

While I worked at the weeding, I found a long crate half-hidden under some flowering bushes (what they were, I don't know, but the orange butterflies seemed to enjoy them), as long as my legs and with a loop of rough rope at each hand as a handle. I pulled it out of the brush and pried the lid off with a flat, sharp-ended stone, and found a collection of hand tools inside: a hammer, a chisel, a saw, what I knew was a plane, and other tools I had no name for at all. Was I meant to build something for Mr. Crane? Was I meant to take on some new project?

Though after seeing the sharp edges on the chisel and saw, the first-aid kit I'd found made more sense. Mr. Crane must have noticed how clumsy I was—or how clumsy I was at the time; my hands have gained confidence over the years, and I've learned to trust them at work. But it's no wonder he might have expected me to find trouble with some of those tools, at whatever he meant me to use them for.

At the end of the day, when I was done gardening and swimming, I dragged the crate back to my cave. It was almost too heavy to lift, and the box was too long for me to comfortably hold it aloft—too wide for my wingspan, and holding it longways before me made it too heavy out front and made walking almost impossible. So I gripped one of its rope handles and hauled it over the ground, tearing a dark, damp trench through the grass of the garden that I regretted as soon as I turned around and saw it. But what else could I have done? The tools had to get to the cave, and there was no other way they would get there—not with me hauling alone.

When I arrived on my doorstep, out of breath and exhausted with sore back and arms, I left the crate by my fire ring and stepped inside. Where I found Smithee standing over my pallet, poking his camera into my niches, photographing my pinecones and feathers and all of the treasures I'd found. He wasn't touching any of them, I don't think he took anything except pictures, but when he saw me behind him a guilty look crossed his face, for a second, before it settled into a sneer.

“Who are you going to tell?” he asked me. “Yes, you've caught me, but you're not going to say anything.”

Smithee let his camera fall on its strap so it bounced against his gray-vested chest and then settled. He stepped toward me, through the dim light of the cave, and something in his step made me think of a mugger, made me step back myself until I was almost outside the cave again. On the threshold, eyes both in the dark and the light all at once, I could hardly see for a second, and before my vision restored itself Smithee was right in my face.

“Am I scaring you?” he asked. “Am I making you nervous?” His voice wasn't professional any longer, it wasn't the tone of a butler. “At least I have your attention, for once.”

I think my face showed my confusion, and asked the question my mouth never would, because he explained.

“You've hardly noticed me here. And I'm sure you've never spent a moment thinking about all the other people who make this estate run—the cooks, the cleaners, the landscapers who tend to your cave, for fuck's sake.”

It was true, he was right: I hadn't thought about any of that. But I wasn't sure why I was meant to, and why Smithee expected that I would have been paying attention; that's not what I was paid for, it wasn't my job. Any more than he was expected to live in a cave, or to meditate on the shape of the clouds while going about his day's butling. I'd focused on doing what I was hired for and on doing it well, just like Smithee was doing his best at his job and, I assumed, all those others he mentioned were working at theirs. I worked for Mr. Crane the same as they did, and I couldn't help it if I liked my job better.

“You're as blind as he is,” Smithee snarled. “You're as inhuman and cruel and self-centered. You're just as helpless without the rest of us behind the scenes, polishing the walls of your bubble. You people make me sick. You make all of us sick, people who work for a living. And you probably don't even know it.”

I realize now that there was something to what Smithee said, though it's taken a long time to see it behind the screen of his confusing—at the time—rage. Which was all I could see at the time.

Smithee laughed, a cold laugh, a laugh that sounded like resignation and revenge at once. Then he stepped toward me again and, despite myself, I backed away.

“I was going to say that it will all change for you now. But I've just realized it probably won't, not with all the money he'll give you. You'll go on playing your games someplace else while the rest of us go look for jobs.”

Smithee advanced while he spoke, but he stopped at the crate of tools I'd dragged over and knocked open the lid with the toe of his shiny black shoe. He looked down, then reached into the crate and pulled out a hammer. “Maybe,” he said.

I looked around, knowing that Mr. Crane's cameras were watching, wondering if he was paying attention or if anyone was. Hoping there was someone up there in the house who saw what Smithee was doing, or what I thought he was going to do. Hoping they'd come running down from the house to step in, and maybe they would be able to tell me what it had all been about. But if someone was watching, they didn't come.

Smithee kept moving closer and I continued backing away, and we could have gone on like that for a while, making our way around the garden hour after hour like some kind of boring performance. But he raised the hammer up to his shoulder, as if he was going to swing—or more like he was going to throw the hammer out into the grass, which turned out to be better for me, because in that instant a howling came from behind me, a long, low howl I knew well.

Jerome charged toward Smithee, his whole body bounding so hard that the ground shook beneath and the tools rattled and clacked in their crate. He wanted to play, he'd seen Smithee's gesture and thought the hammer was about to be thrown the way I threw him sticks—he wasn't much of a cat, as I've said—and so here he was. But Smithee didn't know what Jerome's approach meant, and instead of throwing the hammer he turned and he ran, away from the cave toward the river with Jerome on his tail. I watched the two of them vanish over the hill, past the hives, and listened to Jerome's howl fading into the distance.