Hour of the Bees (16 page)

O
nce upon a time, there was a tree. It was no longer the most beautiful thing in the desert. Emerald leaves, gone. Milky-white blossoms, gone. The boughs that braided themselves into a network of places to climb, places to sit, places to swing and leap from, gone. All that remained was the black trunk, stripped of bark and branches
.

Sergio’s only comfort when he saw the desecrated tree was that it was still a tree, technically. It still towered above the earth, its roots still clinging to the dirt like a burr clings to wool
.

Once upon a time, Sergio’s only comfort when he saw his sweating, screeching wife in the pains of childbirth was that it was still Rosa: still her rose-petal lips, though sometimes pursed in pain; still her mischievous eyes, shining with courage when not clouded by agony. It was still his hand she grabbed when a surge hit and shook the scream out of her
.

“It’s time,” she had said so calmly hours ago, patting her giant belly. Sergio had nearly jumped out of his skin. Time, at last, to meet his . . . daughter? Son? So far, he’d only thought of the little baby as a lamb, a bumblebee, a teensy new offshoot of Rosa blooming in her womb
.

But was it time already?

Eight months had rushed past since Rosa had returned. Eight months of the marriage Sergio had dreamed of: a wife who was there when he woke before the sun, who made him coffee with cinnamon. A wife who sheared the sheep while he held them, because this almost-violent task was the worst part of running a band. A wife who brought in bouquets of wildflowers for their home. A wife who relaxed with him by the fire in the evenings, a wife who was there when he fell asleep
.

Sergio had tried hard not to begrudge Rosa her travels. He was well aware that the woman he loved had a wanderlust that could never be contained, and to order her to stay home would be like putting a brightly feathered bird in a cold iron cage
.

But the joy of these last eight months, watching her belly swell with life while the rest of the village flirted with death, with their lamb-slaughter festivals and dangerous trips . . . This happiness was unmatched
.

Rosa let out one last, long, great moan, and then her head flopped back in relief. Her wailing was replaced by a much smaller, sharper wailing
.

Carolina was the first to hold the baby, and she swaddled the little one in a clean blanket. “A son,” she said, and Sergio’s next inhale was different, the most important breath of his life. Breathing as a father
.

Rosa reached for the baby, and Sergio reluctantly handed him to her, then tapped his foot until his son was in his arms again. “I see you have my mouth,” he said, “but I hope you only use it for smiles, not for frowns. And you have your mother’s eyes. Do you see the world like she does?”

And the thought filled him with fear
.

Once upon a time, Sergio, his wife, Rosa, and their infant son, Raúl, watched Inés chase a bird along the shore of the green-glass lake
.

“Such a spring we’ve had,” Sergio said. “The best I’ve seen in all my years.”

Rosa snorted. “Certainly we’ve had better springs,” she said. “No more flowers, no more shade. Just all this brown.” She gestured to the dying land around them. As if to illustrate her point, a hot, gritty wind blew past them
.

“There’s so much more to this spring than flowers,” Sergio said. He beamed at his wife and his son. The life he had always dreamed of — so what if the springtime was a little on the dry side?

“You’ll have to tell me if the summer is as lovely,” Rosa said
.

She looked at him, and he saw the answer to his unasked question right in her eyes, dead center
.

“A child should be with his mother,” argued Sergio
.

“Then come with me,” Rosa said
.

“Not when Raúl is so young,” Sergio said
.

Rosa sighed. “There’s still so much world to see,” she whispered, and for a second, Sergio didn’t disagree. How many nights had he spent alone in his marriage bed, imagining the far-off places his wife was? What was the view like, where she was?

They had a new world in their son to explore. But for Rosa, this would never be enough
.

Raúl grew strong, but slowly, like babies in the village always did. Sergio and Rosa relished every second they had with him
.

Rosa sang the baby to sleep, introduced him to all the lambs, let him feel the grass with his fat little feet
.

She rested her head on Sergio’s shoulder, and once Raúl was asleep, they watched the stars come out of their daytime hiding. Same stars for hundreds of years, trickling across the sky
.

But once upon a time, on an unremarkable day, Rosa packed a bag and saddled her horse. Sergio put Raúl on his hip, and the baby bobbed a chubby wrist up and down in farewell to his mother
.

“Three days,” she promised. “I’ll be back in three days.”

And she was. Sergio tended sheep and tended Raúl, and watched over the village while everyone was gone, as was his usual post. Rosa returned home, and she stayed for weeks, or months, or even years. Time didn’t exist when she was home. Then she left and returned and left again
.

When Rosa was home, the village was paradise on earth to Sergio. When Rosa traveled, the village was Sergio and Raúl’s father-son playground
.

“This is our lake, Raúl,” Sergio said. “And our village. And this is our tree, and we will never cut it down.”

The remaining lumber from the amputated branches was piled on the lake’s shore. The villagers had taken more than they needed — now Sergio saw the remnants of their greed every time he passed by the lake
.

“You haven’t made anything for yourself yet,” Rosa said to Sergio during one of her sojourns home
.

You haven’t left yet,
she meant
.

“I’m not interested in jewelry or trinkets,” he said
.

I’m not going,
he meant
.

But when Rosa pointed out that it was silly to let the wood go to waste, he dragged the lumber to the pasture, and with this supply of midnight-black wood he made himself, Rosa, and Raúl a sprawling, stunning ranch house. Not a talisman, or a bracelet, or a cart, or a boat. Not something for traveling
.

Something for staying
.

They used the old shepherd shack as a barn
.

Time whipped past him, and much of that time, he was alone with Raúl. Rosa bounced home, then bounced away days later
.

“Stay with us,” he’d beg her, but she’d smile that sly Rosa smile and slip out of his hands like a gecko. He lost track of where she was heading: the Alps, the Arctic, one of the oceans — it was all the same to him. She always brought things back for Raúl, whose toddlerhood stretched to fill many years, as though his body refused to grow on days his mother was gone
.

Sergio sheared the sheep dutifully, providing the wool for Rosa’s scarves. These scarves, she informed him, had quite a reputation by now. They fetched enough money to fund not only her own adventures, but those of the other villagers as well
.

Sergio replanted the crops and kept up with the communal gardens. Despite the parched land and the coarse winds that now howled across the oasis, the harvest was still enough to feed the whole village. Sergio saved what he could — stocking his pantry with can after can — but most of it rotted now before it was eaten
.

A ghost town doesn’t need food
.

Every year, when seeds went in, the dirt got drier. Hot wind blew sand into his eyes and lungs. The bright green of the oasis faded to a sickly gold, and all plants disintegrated to grit. Without the shade of the tree, the sun beat down in violent punches. For the first time, Sergio felt like he lived in a desert
.

Once upon a time, Sergio walked through the pasture, Raúl in a sling on his back, and heard the hiss of a rattler. Before he could spot it, the snake struck his ankle
.

The bite folded in on itself and healed before a drop of blood was spilled. “The gift lives on,” he said, relieved. But that evening his heart still thumped. Snakes had never been so bold before
.

He made a request: the next time Rosa traveled, she bring him and Raúl each a pair of boots
.

She laughed. No one in the village ever wore shoes
.

“Snake-stomping boots,” he said. “My bones feel old for the first time, and they tell me that things are changing around here.”

“Change is good,” she said, folding her arms. But she did bring the two of them each a pair of black leather cowboy boots, beautifully embroidered with fleurs-de-lis. Sergio never let Raúl leave the house without them. When Raúl’s feet grew, Rosa brought a bigger pair
.

Things changed in the village, yes, slowly. Rosa reported to Sergio that things were changing outside the village, too — but rapidly. It was a world of industry, she said, of horseless carriages that ran on steam, and women who wore trousers, and machines that let you stand in one corner of the world and talk to someone on the other side. “It’s the turn of the century,” she explained
.

“What’s a century?” he said
.

“Outside the village, no one measures time with sheep.” She spoke to him like
he
was the child, not Raúl
.

She brought home a new language. “English,” she said, “is the language of the future.” Rosa taught it to Raúl, and it was all Raúl wanted to speak
.

“What is this?” Sergio would point to a sheep when he and Raúl were cleaning the barn
.

“Sheep!” came the tiny reply
.

“No, Raúl,” Serge would correct
. “La oveja. Oveja.”

“Sheep!” Raúl would say, and clap at his own cleverness. “Sheep, sheep, sheep!”

And every time he said it, a cactus rolled over Sergio’s heart
. Sheep,
he tried saying, but it sounded too prickly a word for these white fluffy things he tended
.

But he learned enough English to keep up with his son, who was turning out to be as stubborn as his mother. Raúl asked about the world outside the village constantly, asked where the sky stretched to beyond the ridge, asked why he couldn’t go with
Mamí,
asked why the bees’ buzz sounded like an angry song, asked and asked and asked
.

“Another Rosa,” Sergio sometimes thought when he looked at Raúl, and his gut lurched with a mixture of pride and dread
.

Once upon a time, there was a tree. And they cut it down
.

They cut it down
.

Sergio never learned who did the chopping, but one day the hollowed tree was on its side. The stump was left, an ugly black wound on the land, a scab that would never heal. The sight of it made Sergio sick, like when he saw blood: stomach clenching, nausea spreading
.

“Too far,” he said to Rosa. “You’ve gone too far!”

“The tree lives on in our talismans,” she told him. “In the home you made from its lumber. In the canoe you built for the Father. In this bracelet you made for me.”

Once again, Sergio remembered that fateful day when he made the first cut into the bark of the tree. How had that one small act led to all of this?

Years after the tree was gone, the stump had shriveled and hardened, a pockmark on the lake’s shore. Sergio sat on the porch of this house he had built from the tree, in a cream wicker chair Rosa had brought back from one of her travels. One of those horseless carriages Rosa had told him about drove up the long, winding dirt road toward the house, rattling like thunder, snorting out peppery smoke
. What an ugly thing,
he thought, a rusty black beast with a humpback and a stench like sheep manure on fire
.

The beast pulled right up to the house, its rubber tires flattening the grass, and the driver said to Sergio, “I’m looking for the family of a Carolina de Vaca.”

Sergio stood, surveying the man suspiciously. “I am her brother-in-law
, sí.
”

The driver asked Sergio to come to the back of the beast and opened a door
.

Lying inside was a corpse, marble-eyed, staring at nothing: Carolina, Rosa’s beloved sister, dead
.

Sergio took the body from the hearse and laid her on Father Alejandro’s bed in the mission, flat on her back with her hands folded in prayer
.

Raúl asked, “What do we do now
, Papá
?” but Sergio had no answers. He didn’t know how to mourn
.

“We stay silent,” he said
.

They didn’t speak until other villagers returned, lighthearted, from their travels, chattering like magpies. They fell, gasping, when they saw the body. Death wasn’t supposed to happen, not to them
.

Rosa was the last to come home, and when she saw her cold, dead sister, she couldn’t speak for three days
.

“But how?” Rosa’s whisper was hoarse, shredded after three days of crying. “We know the gift lives on.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Sergio said bitterly. “Not anymore.” When the tree was chopped, the gift must have flickered, sputtered out its last sparks
.

Died
.

No, not a gift, he decided. The Father had been wrong. Gifts are not taken away. And he let himself use that word, “magic.” The magic had died
.

More bodies came back to the lake. More death, but now there was no lumber to build coffins
.

Once
upon a time,
there was a tree. But they chopped it down
.