Nineteen
I’d found five G. Smiths in the phone directory, and I decided to call every one of them. Four were women. The last one turned out to be male, but his name was Gary, not Gerald, and he knew nothing about bees.
If Gerald Smith didn’t exist, and I had a bad feeling that he didn’t, where were Manny’s honeybees and the hives? Had Grace lied to me about the name because she didn’t want me to know where Manny’s bees went? Or had someone lied to Grace? I’d have to try to find the right moment to broach the subject of the missing bees after the funeral tomorrow.
Putting that problem aside for the light of day, I went to work making good on my promise to Mom as soon as I was sure it was dark enough to cover my tracks.
September nights are cool in Wisconsin, perfect weather to move bees, although rain would have been even better for keeping the colonies snug inside their hives. I’d helped Manny move these two hives from his place to mine. I could do this alone.
I’d thought long and hard about where to stash the hives. Most homeowners don’t mind a few bees wandering into their yards as long as the busy workers didn’t disrupt their lives. But two entire hives, with thousands of workers in each, tended to make people nervous.
Stanley Peck’s place was an option. He had plenty of farmland and he seemed to have some bee knowledge based on the information he imparted to the mob about my bees and the distances they could fly. And he’d defended me against Lori. But I didn’t entirely trust him. He’d been part of her original group, and I hadn’t forgotten that.
Holly’s lake home was another possibility. But she had one of those totally pristine yards with everything in place, manicured, pruned, etc. My two box hives would stand out like warts on a baby’s bottom.
That left only one place. Grams’s house. The location was perfect—only a mile and a half from my house, so the bees would still be within their home flying area. I certainly couldn’t let her or Mom know what I was up to because then Mom would launch into one of her long-winded lectures intended to force me to toe her line, which happened to be covered with barbed wire. She’d made me promise to get rid of my bees because of politics, but she hadn’t approved of them from the very beginning. Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure she had ever approved of anything I’d ever done, past or present. Or future. That first-daughter syndrome again. I could spend the rest of my life trying to get her approval without any success.
How a sweet woman like Grams could have a cranky daughter like Mom amazed me.
Yes, Grams’s house was the answer. It would be easy to slip in undercover with the hives, without Grams or Mom even knowing. Here’s why:
? They both go to bed incredibly early.
? Mom uses earplugs because Grams can take down the roof with her snoring.
? Grams has refused to give up any of the family’s old farmland to developers, thus I had a significant area on which to hide the hives.
? She rents out some of the land to a farmer who planted corn this year (next year will be alfalfa), and he wouldn’t be out in the fields again until harvest time next month. Even if he did see them, he wouldn’t think anything of them.
? The green corn stalks had ripened to a beautiful fall yellow and would effectively camouflage the hives, since I had painted them yellow to match my house. Yellow corn, yellow stalks, yellow hive boxes.
I backed my truck into my driveway, and then dressed in coveralls, boots, a veil, and gloves, taking care to tuck in all my loose ends where a bee might wander in. Tight pant cuffs and sleeves work best when dealing with bees, so I rubber-banded myself. I even pulled my hair up into a ponytail to keep it out of my face. Then I closed off the entrances to both hives with wire mesh, gave them a few puffs of smoke from the smoker, which worked wonders in keeping them calm, started the truck engine because vibrations also help quiet bees for some unknown reason, and began trying to load the boxes into the back of my truck. That turned out to be harder than I thought. The hives were incredibly heavy.
Impossible to lift, in fact.
I gave up and called Holly. “I need you to help me lift something,” I said into the phone.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“So? You sleep all morning. I assume you stay up all night.”
“K, K (okay, okay). Where and when?”
“My house. Now.”
Good thing my sister didn’t ask what she was going to lift or she never would have shown up.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she said when I handed her the proper attire. “I’m afraid of bees. I might be allergic.”
“Bee allergies are hereditary,” I said, pulling that scientific fact out of thin air. “We don’t have it in our family.”
Holly sighed, one of those big, noisy, disgusted, why-me air releases that might cause a lesser woman to excuse her from the task at hand. After she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she got herself dressed in the protective clothing.
Getting her to take a position at the side of a hive was another thing. “They can’t get out of the hives,” I reassured her. “See the wire mesh? It’s literally impossible for them to get at you.”
With further coaxing, we got to work, gingerly loading the hives into the truck, being as careful as we could not to jar them.
The bees weren’t too happy. They fanned inside the hive boxes, causing a wild vibration and scaring Holly into a few dashes toward the house before we completed the task.
After tying everything down and shutting the truck doors softly, we were on our way.
Suddenly I felt the stress draining from my body. The farther we got from my house, the better I felt. Enough bad things had happened in the last few days without the added worry of Lori Spandle killing my last two hives of honeybees. The back of my neck and my shoulders ached from carrying around that fear. Tomorrow couldn’t come fast enough. My bees would be safe, no more stressing over them.
I checked my rearview mirror to make sure we weren’t followed. We weren’t.
“Where are we going?” Holly wanted to know.
“You’ll see,” I answered.
I cut the truck lights a quarter mile from the house, right after Holly figured out where we were going. I eased along with the windows rolled down, smelling earth and green growth. Crickets sang and bullfrogs croaked. The ground leading into the field was rough, causing the truck to bounce. I slowed down to a crawl for the hives’ sake.
I headed to the far side of the cornfield, where the early-morning sun would warm the hives. The boxes were just as heavy as they’d been when we loaded them up, but getting them down was definitely easier. I picked the most level spot I could find, we finished placing the hives, then we both got back into the truck and I moved it a distance away.
“Stay in the truck,” I said to my sister. “They are going to be angry once I open up the hives.”
“Great. Just great,” Holly said, hunkering down.
The wire mesh across the entrances came away easily.
I ran like crazy when I saw bees crawling out of the hives. Their collective hum was loud and angry, just as I’d predicted.
Honeybees navigate by the UV patterns of the sun, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fly at night. They will fly toward light. So when I opened the truck door and realized I had forgotten to disable the interior light, they flew right in after me.
Not to mention that I’d left my window down.
I slammed the door shut. The guard bees stayed with me. Holly screamed as though her life was ending. The bees unanimously decided that we were the bad guys. They went to town on my hands. One stung me right through the gloves that were guaranteed to be sting-proof. At least the veil protected my head and eyes. Who knew what kind of attack they were mounting on my sister; I was too busy to look.
Holly and I jumped out of the truck and ran in different directions, leaving the doors wide open.
Then we met up and sat in a ditch for a long time. Holly, in spite of all her screaming, hadn’t been stung at all. Not once. I had six or seven throbbing areas. Before returning to the truck, Holly took the opportunity to get what was bothering her off her chest.
“Don’t ever, ever ask me for a favor again,” she said. “You owe me big-time for this one.”
“I know,” I said. We crept back to find the truck empty of bees.
“I have to check on them one more time,” I said.
“Please, let’s get out of here,” Holly begged. I could hear panic rising in her voice.
“Relax,” I said. “I have it down pat this time. I just want to make sure they’re settled down and that I haven’t forgotten anything important, like removing all the wire mesh.”
“Trust me, you removed all of it.”
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight without double-checking.”
“Take me home first. Please.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
I adjusted the truck’s interior lights so they wouldn’t come on this time, made sure all the windows were closed, shushed Holly’s whimpers, and stumbled through the dark, listening. Sure enough, the honeybees were still riled up.
And they already had a visitor.
Did I mention that skunks like to position their bodies near beehive entrances and lap up as many guard bees as they can? Why the stings don’t deter them is anybody’s guess. Manny had had an ongoing war with skunks, and he’d taught me what he knew, a lesson that was about to be wasted on the current situation. I might have heard the skunk’s warning stomp if the bees hadn’t been making so much noise. And I might have seen the skunk raise its tail if the moon had been shining, instead of the pitch-black darkness I stumbled through.
I’d never been skunked before. Trust me, it’s the nastiest thing imaginable. At least the musk didn’t hit me in my eyes, thanks to the bee veil I still wore. But the fumes came close enough that I felt the burn. And my stomach churned. I didn’t feel too good.
On top of that, Holly must have smelled me staggering back toward the truck, or her night vision was better than mine, because she locked me out. I peeled off as many of my clothes as possible—the veil, gloves, and overalls—and threw them into the back of the truck. Everything reeked of skunk musk. And I mean everything. Including my jeans and top, which should have been protected by the overalls.
“Let me in.” I banged on the window on her side. “I don’t smell now that I took off the overalls.”
What a lie, but I was desperate.
In answer, Holly scooted over into the driver’s seat, started the truck, and drove away.
I gaped at my disappearing taillights.
As much as I didn’t want to do it, I stumbled over to Grams’s house and rang the doorbell. After I rang several times, a light came on and Grams opened the door in her nightclothes.
“Oh, my,” she said, closing the door to a tiny crack. “You’ve been skunked.”
“What should I do?” Don’t cry, I warned myself. Remember, big girls don’t cry.
“I’ll be right back.” The kitchen light went on. Through the window, I could see her preparing a wash with hydrogen peroxide and soap and some other things. Mom walked into the kitchen. Their mouths moved. Mom glared at the window. I ducked back where she couldn’t see me.
When Grams opened the door, I could hear Mom. “Story, this is completely inappropriate. The next time you do something this foolish, don’t come to me.”
I hadn’t come to her, just to keep the record straight. I’d come to Grams, who shoved her concoction through the door. “Soap up with this,” she said. “Make sure you get it all over. Then use the hose to rinse off.”
“I have to do it outside?”
Mom answered by calling out, “You bet you do. What? We’re supposed to let you inside smelling like that?”
“What happened to all the family intervention? Aren’t you supposed to be helping me?”
Nobody answered.
I went behind the barn and striped down, lathered up, rinsed, and did it again until my skin was raw. Then I realized I didn’t have any other clothes to wear besides the smelly jeans and top. I couldn’t bring myself to put on the skunked clothes. I’d rather run naked through downtown Moraine.
Which might happen if Holly didn’t come back.
Since I come from an overall type of family, I found a dirty pair hanging in the barn and put them on, adjusting the buckles so my private parts stayed private. Then I rummaged around until I found what I needed.
That skunk would be back, if not tonight, then tomorrow. He’d scratch on the hive entrance until the guard bees came out to investigate. He could wipe out both colonies if I didn’t do something fast. I dug out two pieces of plywood and drove nails through them, setting the nails in an inch apart all over the boards. Then I walked back, hauling my masterpieces to the hives and adjusted the boards, nails up, in front of the entrances. If the skunk wanted bees, he’d have to walk over nails.
I heard a motor and turned to see my truck idling a short distance away.
The drive home was quieter that the ride over. In fact, I was pretty sure my sister wasn’t speaking to me.
I went to bed for the night, what was left of it, and decided this day was way up there on my list of worst ones ever.