Telling the Bees (12 page)

“The horse was galloping so fast,” Claire whispered, “I was afraid I might be knocked off by a tree branch and so I leaned down as far as I could until my face was buried in the flames on his neck and I closed my eyes, and that’s when I knew what it felt like to die.”

“Claire,” I said as gently as I could. The sound of my voice seemed to rouse her from the memory of her nightmare. “Why are you telling me this?”

Claire did not look up, but she nodded her head and began to scrabble the ground with the trowel even more furiously. “Because you’re the only one I can tell,” she said.

“But I don’t understand,” I protested.

“You don’t have to,” she said, picking up the fallen cross and working it back into the ground.

“But Claire,” I persisted.

“Let’s just say I’m too old to play with dolls and let it go at that.”

Seventeen

T
HE DRONE:
Distinguished by his large size, rectangular abdomen, and additional eye facets, he neither gathers honey nor guards the hive. His sole purpose is to mate with a newly emerged queen. Once that function has been fulfilled, the surviving drones are generally driven from the hive when winter comes.

H
ow does one measure time? Physicists now believe Albert Einstein may have been wrong, that subatomic particles may be able to move faster than the speed of light. From what I’ve read, this may ultimately alter the way we perceive the universe.

I find the implications of such calculations fascinating in the abstract sense, yet I am a simple beekeeper. Like my bees, I was raised to perceive time by the passing of seasons. It is, I admit, a less precise measurement, but it has for most of my life allowed me the comfort of predictability. Spring is the season of new life. Summer marks its fullness. Fall, the decline. And winter heralds both death and with the first blades of spring, the ultimate hope of renewal.

And then time fell apart.

It fell apart for me on that awful spring morning when I discovered Claire and Hilda Straussman’s lifeless bodies lying bound and gagged on their parlor floor. The memory of Claire’s eyes, fixed and milky with dead fright, plagued the certainty of my days and the silence of my nights.

Not that I am unfamiliar with acts of violence within the rhythm of the natural world, for even within the circumscription of my daily orbit I have witnessed my own honeybees driven to such hard-hearted acts against members of their own species that I shudder to recollect them. I have had, more times than I care to recount, the distinct misfortune of coming upon a horde of robber bees in the midst of a murderous raid on one of my hives and I have wept with grief seeing these hapless creatures pulling at one another and tumbling about the entrance to the hive in a brutal fight to the death. And if truth be told, though I am ashamed to admit it, on such occasions I have been tempted to curse the Good Lord for the hardness of His grand design even as I hasten to swat and kill these rogue maidens engaged against their own in mortal combat.

But while it pains my heart beyond measure to see this cruel perversion of a honeybee’s communal spirit, I have accepted the necessity of this harsh struggle. I understand the rhythm of the hive dictates that when honey is scarce or flaunted unnecessarily by a careless keeper, the inhabitants of a rival hive or a feral swarm are naturally driven to set upon their neighbors to steal their precious store of food. In such cases, I can only hope I am lucky enough to come upon these warring factions while there is yet time to stay the carnage. That this can be accomplished I know because I have gained a regrettable expertise in fitting the entrance of the besieged hive with small wooden cleats made to narrow the opening until no more than a single invader or two may enter at a time, thus improving the defensive odds in favor of the hive’s guard bees stationed on the inside of the landing board to repel such attacks.

If only the Straussman sisters had had such vigilance discharged on their behalf. At one time, I would like to think it would have been me. It should have been me.

Certainly Hilda could not defend herself nor, I fear, would not. Slowed as she was by age and a corpulent infirmity that resembled more each year the funereal fabric that had likewise shrouded her mother’s bleak spirit, I believe there was a large part of Hilda that would have welcomed the inevitability, if not the exact manner, of her demise. Which left only Claire—poor, proud Claire—whose delicate spine, though it seemed no thicker than a bird’s leg, refused to stoop even under the burden of all the years it carried. But for all her exalted pride, what defense could she hope to mount for herself and her sister, all alone and unprotected, against the senseless depravity of her fellow man or woman?

Such had been the connective thread of my tortured thoughts in the six long months that had passed since I’d last heard from Detective Grayson. I’d just come upon my number seven hive to find scores of dead bees, some with their attackers’ lethal stingers still embedded in their bodies, littering the landing board, and nothing but more dead bodies inside piled in heaps on the bottom cover.

Consumed as I was, working with feverish speed to nail the last cleat down to the landing board before all was lost to marauding interlopers, I make no excuses for my startled reaction to Detective Grayson’s sudden looming appearance on the doorstep of my honey shed, where I had gone to put away my smoker and bee brush.

“Sorry, Mr. Honig, I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” Detective Grayson demurred, extending one of his great bear paws and clapping me on the back in greeting as I bent over to pick up the tin smoker can and brush I’d just dropped.

“No need to apologize,” I assured the detective, who I noted had added a disturbing ring of shadows beneath his hazel eyes since our last conversation regarding Claire’s enigmatic excursion to Detroit. “You gave me quite a start, that’s all.”

“Sorry anyway,” he insisted. “So how you been doing?”

“I’ve kept myself busy,” I replied.

“That’s good to hear. I’ve been keeping pretty busy myself,” he said, and in the unnatural pause between his sentences I intuited his amiable grin was somewhat forced. “Maybe a little busier than I’d like.”

He pulled a color photograph from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. I recognized it at once.

“Can I ask you again what you might be able to tell me about this young fellow here?” he said. I noticed another slight hitch in his voice, this time between
young
and
fellow
that confirmed my suspicion.

“What can you tell me about him?” he pressed.

Only everything and nothing at all, I thought, but I did not say as much. Yet I could not repress a small sigh as I stared once again at the smiling face of the young Marine in the photograph that had mingled for so long among the other faded snapshots perched upon the Straussmans’ polished mantle. I handed the photograph back to the detective and turned to my workbench to put away the smoker and brush I’d retrieved.

“What is it you want to know?” I said. Having held my silence for so long, how much I should reveal at that particular moment was still a matter of debate in my mind.

“Well, Mr. Honig, I’d like to know why you didn’t tell me you knew who this was the first time I showed you his picture or how come you didn’t say anything about him when I asked you if the Straussman sisters had any next of kin?”

Why indeed?

When I thought for a moment of all the things I should have said or done in my life, all the real and imagined crimes of commission and omission, and all the reasons and regrets I had accumulated in the face of everything that had gone before, I could not help feeling this one small silence was the very least of my transgressions.

“My mother always told me to let sleeping dogs lie,” I said, though, in truth, it was not my mother who had made for me the most adamant argument for such discretion.

“Well, my mother had a saying of her own,” Detective Grayson said after a moment’s consideration. “She used to say that he is not an honest man who has burned his tongue and does not tell the company the soup is hot.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I think you do, Mr. Honig.” He narrowed his eyes and caught mine in his. “No more bee stories. No more BS.”

For once, I did not blink.

“His name is David Gilbert,” I said. I couldn’t swear that I felt better, but for the first time in what seemed like forever I didn’t feel worse.

Detective Grayson smiled. His eyes held mine, but it seemed to me the tension in his shoulders had eased a bit. He pulled his ubiquitous notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. “So, Mr. Honig, can you tell me how the heck to find this guy?”

I was sure at that moment that I was the only one who had known where David Gilbert had come from and, besides Claire herself, why he had left, but to my shame and sorrow I never cared to find out what had become of him since. In this deliberate dearth of concern, I had always been my father’s son.

“I’m sorry, Detective,” I replied with sincere remorse, though I believe the good detective had begun to find my abjurations ever less compelling than I intended, “I have no idea where he is or how to find him. I truly don’t.”

The detective, who had flipped open his notebook and clicked his pen at the ready, took a great measured breath.

“Well then, Mr. Honig, perhaps you can tell me this: When was the last time you saw our mysterious Mr. David Gilbert?”

Eighteen

R
OYAL JELLY:
A protein-rich secretion that comes from the hypopharyngeal glands of mature workers, it is fed to all worker bees for the first three days of their larval stage, but only to potential queens for the rest of their lives thereafter. It is the steady diet of this substance that turns the ordinary worker bee into a queen.

D
etective Grayson held the photograph up to my face again as if to prod my memory further, though I needed no such prompt. I could have told him without the slightest hesitation that it had been exactly eleven years four months three weeks and four days since I’d last set eyes on David Gilbert.

“Why don’t we go back to the house?” I said at last, removing my gloves and laying them on the workbench next to my smoker can and brush. “It’s more comfortable inside. I’ll make us a pot of tea and we can talk.”

“We can do that, Mr. Honig,” Detective Grayson said. “Just promise me you’ll play straight with me this time.”

“I have never tried to deceive you, Detective.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Then what are you saying?”

Detective Grayson let out another long sigh that reminded me of the temperamental radiator in our family’s old Buick.

“Did you know I’ve been with the police department for almost thirty years?”

I admitted that I had not been aware of this fact.

“Well, I have,” he said. “And I’m planning on retiring at the end of this year.”

I was not sure whether to offer congratulations or condolences, but the detective gave me no time to decide. Instead, by way of impressing upon me a certain self-imposed deadline to his investigations, he proceeded to digress into a brief account of his plans to sell his house, buy several reasonably priced acres of land in Idaho, and perhaps take up fishing as a hobby.

“If you’re looking for a retirement avocation, perhaps you should consider beekeeping. As Saint Ambrose discovered, beekeeping is an excellent way to develop the virtue of patience,” I said with no irony intended. I further told the detective that much like Saint Ambrose, he clearly possessed a keen sense of observation, which had served them both well in their chosen vocations.

“Okay, Mr. Honig, you win.” The detective uttered a soft laugh—more of a grunt, really. He tapped the photograph one more time. “What do you say we just cut the chitchat and you tell me all about the last time you saw this guy?”

In the dim light of the honey shed, David Gilbert’s scimitar grin flashed like a glint of steel across the dark contours of his face.

“October 15, 1981,” I said at last. The detective slipped the photograph back into his jacket pocket and nodded, waiting for me to proceed, and so I did. I told him how I’d stopped by the Straussmans’ house that day to bring them a jar of freshly harvested honey and to tell Claire about a new brand of foundation frames I’d just read about in one of the mail-order catalogs I subscribed to.

“I don’t believe the company that makes them is still in business, but I couldn’t say for sure as I haven’t had the need to order any new foundation frames in quite some time. Not since I made the acquaintance of young Mr. Sweeny,” I explained. “He lives about three or maybe four blocks from here, just past the railroad tracks. He’s really quite a fine carpenter, especially for this day and age. He builds custom cabinets for a living, I believe, but he has the wherewithal to construct foundation frames for me, and at a fair market price.”

“Mr. Honig, if you don’t mind, we were talking about the last time you saw David Gilbert.”

“Of course,” I said, removing a clean rag from a drawer in my workbench. I began to wipe down my smoker can, as was my habit before placing it on a shelf in my tool cabinet next to several cans of motor oil I always kept on hand for emergencies. A place for everything and everything in its place.

“I was more than a bit surprised to see David Gilbert that day as he hadn’t been to the house for quite some time. Not since he graduated from high school.”

The detective began to scribble in his notebook as he stood beside me.

“To be quite honest, Detective, I’d always assumed David Gilbert would go away to college,” I said. “Of course in my day a high school diploma was considered a luxury.”

“When was that, Mr. Honig?”

“That would have been the Great Depression, Detective,” I said, “well before your time. Or David Gilbert’s, for that matter. Most of us did whatever we could to help support our families back then. Besides, there was a perfectly fine public library less than a mile down the road, my father used to say, so what did I need with school?”

“But what about David Gilbert?”

“Well, after the war it seemed like all the young boys couldn’t wait to leave the family farms and businesses to go off to college. And David Gilbert was such a bright boy, I naturally assumed that’s where he’d end up. But the fool went off half-cocked and joined the Marines just as soon as he turned eighteen.”

“When was that?”

“Oh, heavens, that would have been almost thirty years ago at least. Nineteen sixty-three at the latest?”

“What happened to him then?” the detective prodded.

“I believe he was stationed out of state for a spell. Texas, or Arizona, perhaps. Somewhere in the Southwest. If I recall correctly, he got married to a Mexican girl not too long after he reenlisted. Carmella or Carmelina, I believe her name was. Something like that. She wasn’t especially fluent in English, but she was quite a lovely girl. I only met her the one time, but I remember she had a sweet smile and a spark in her eyes such as I hadn’t seen since Claire was a young girl.”

“Do you remember anything else about her or her family?”

“Not really. But as I said, I hadn’t seen or heard anything about David Gilbert for quite some time, so I was a bit taken aback to find him and his family, sitting bold as you please, right there in the parlor with Claire and Hilda that day. He and Carmen—yes, I believe it was Carmen—they had a little girl with them. Tina or Tini, I think they called her. Just a slip of a thing, really. Straight dark hair like her mother’s and his, but fair-skinned and delicate. She was a pretty little thing. Quiet, but sharp. You know how you can just tell with some children, even if they don’t say anything, that they’re taking it all in.

“As far as I could tell, they were all getting along just fine at first. Claire and Hilda had brought out the company tea set, and they were sitting around the parlor chatting about David Gilbert’s travels, and Carmen’s family, and then all at once Claire and him got into a horrible argument. The little girl had gone off with Hilda somewhere else in the house by the time David Gilbert and Claire started shouting back and forth at each other, until Carmen began to cry, and then he went looking for the little girl and as soon as he found her he gathered up their belongings and stormed out of the house with his wife and daughter and that’s the last I ever saw of him or his family. It was the last Claire or Hilda ever saw any of them either, as far as I know.”

“As far as you know?” the detective repeated.

“I can’t be certain,” I said, closing the door on my tool cabinet and turning back around to face the detective. “I never spoke another word to Claire or Hilda after that day.”

I stepped past Detective Grayson and out into the sunlight again. I waited for him to follow, and then, locking the door of the honey shed behind me—a regrettable habit I’d acquired in recent years as the face of the neighborhood had begun to change—I ushered the detective across the yard.

“So what was this fight all about?” the detective persisted.

I considered how best to put my answer. I did not wish to air Claire’s dirty laundry in public if I did not have to.

“They disagreed over the proper way to raise a child,” I said, which was true enough, and enough said as far as I was concerned.

“Doesn’t seem like much to start a family feud over.”

“I suppose not,” I said. “But Claire had a way of letting her emotions run away with her.”

“So what about you?” the detective said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You say you never spoke to Claire after that day,” the detective pressed. “How come?”

Again, I weighed my words as best I could. “Well, Detective Grayson,” I said, “let’s just say that I allowed myself to be dragged into the fray against my better judgment.”

“Sort of stuck your nose in where it didn’t belong, eh?”

“I suppose you could say that,” I replied. “Though, to be quite honest, I did so most unwillingly.”

“Well, meaning no disrespect, Mr. Honig, but in my line of work I’ve found that despite what anybody says, people seldom do anything they don’t want to do.”

“You may be right,” I acknowledged. “At least, in the general sense. But I can assure you I had no desire to meddle in the Straussman family’s affairs.”

“I believe you, Mr. Honig,” Detective Grayson said. “I just have to wonder why you didn’t see fit to tell me about all this earlier?”

“I was raised to believe that what went on between families in private should stay that way.”

“Are you sure that’s the only reason?”

What I was sure of was that Detective Grayson was sincere in his desire to solve this one last troubling case, that it would somehow be a satisfying coda to his long career. I could only hope he might allow me my own motivations.

“If I thought for a moment that this long-ago spat had been germane to Claire’s murder, I assure you I would have been more forthcoming,” I said.

“Well, how about from now on you just answer my questions and let me be the judge of what’s relevant?”

It was a fair request. While I had not deliberately set out to mislead him, I had most certainly allowed him to proceed under some faulty assumptions through my guilty silence.

I nodded my assent.

“Okay, then,” the detective said, “what can you tell me about David Gilbert?”

I took a deep breath.

“I believe he was stationed at the Tustin Marine Base the last time I saw him, if that will help.”

“I believe it will,” Detective Grayson said, his voice softening just a bit.

“Please, let’s go inside where it’s warm,” I said. “I promise I’ll do my best to answer any more questions you have.”

“Sounds good.”

Taking the detective’s elbow in my hand, I turned him gently toward the house. As I mentioned before, I never did acquire any real fondness for tea, but the detective’s stomach seemed to be bothering him a bit, judging from the way he grimaced and grabbed at his belt from time to time as we walked. Though having no love of tea for tea’s sake alone, I suggested that a soothing pot of chamomile might do us both a world of good.

“I should warn you now,” I said as we reached the foot of the porch stairs, “I really don’t know much more about David Gilbert than what I’ve already told you.”

“We’ll see,” he said as he followed me up onto the porch and through my back door. Once inside the kitchen, the good detective at first declined my offer of toast and honey. But I insisted.

“It’s eucalyptus,” I said, setting the jar down on the kitchen table next to the plate of buttered toast I had prepared while the water was boiling. “Do you take cream?”

“No thanks,” he said. “I don’t care for it.”

“Nor do I,” I said. “I prefer a spot of honey to sweeten my cup. Would you care for some?”

The detective shrugged. I took his indifference as acquiescence.

“David Gilbert loved honey on toast,” I said. “I believe that’s why Claire took up beekeeping herself. And by that I mean not just helping us out, which she had been doing on and off since we were adolescents, but taking on hives of her own. That came many years later. She must have been in her mid-twenties by then. Both her parents were still alive, as I recall, but they didn’t get around as well as they used to. Not that they ever spent too much time out in the orchard even when they were able. Mr. and Mrs. Straussman weren’t what you would call out-of-doors types. But then again, neither was Claire, except when it came to bees. My father and I helped Claire set up her first hive, way out there beyond the almond trees,” I said, pointing to the north end of the Straussmans’ orchard, where patches of weeds, nut hulls, and rotted fruit littered the ground.

The detective’s eyes followed the direction of my gesture. Then he pulled his battered notebook back out of his jacket pocket, where I assume he had replaced it during our walk from the honey shed to the house, and he set it down next to his teacup.

“It was the eucalyptus honey that did it,” I said, placing a chamomile tea bag in his cup and mine.

“Did what?”

“Why, it’s what got everything started,” I replied. “Claire decided she wanted a hive of her own right after David Gilbert’s first taste of eucalyptus honey. It was from a jar I’d given her on her previous birthday—shortly after the war, I believe. No, on second thought, it would have had to have been a bit later than that because David Gilbert wasn’t born until the war was almost over and Claire didn’t start keeping her own hives until he was at least five years old.”

The detective opened his notebook, and I poured hot water into his teacup and mine. We sat for a moment, allowing the fragrant steam to rise from our cups. I dipped my teaspoon into the jar of eucalyptus honey I’d set on the table and stirred a dollop into the detective’s cup and then another into my own. The aroma was intoxicating. I let my mind wander.

“I want to surprise him,” Claire had confided. My parents had gone off to church, while I stayed home to clean up the breakfast dishes. Claire had come knocking on our back door just as I was wiping the last plate dry. She seemed surprised when I opened our back door.

“Is your father home?” she’d stammered. “Or your mother?”

“No. It’s Sunday,” I said.

“Of course.” Her shoulders drooped just a bit as she turned to go.

“Is there something I can help you with?” I said. Holding the door open with my shoulder, I wiped my hands dry with the dish towel.

“No. No, thank you, Albert.” She started down the porch steps, but then stopped and turned.

“Do you know how much your father would charge me for one of his beehives?”