Swarm (13 page)

Patiently, he waited for me to get it, to remember what I'd learned. I focused and the thought crystallized, emerging from past lessons. “A swarm,” I said.

Thomson nodded. “A secession is underway.”

Wet darts of rain bit through my shirt and I shivered. The temperature was dropping as the day came to an end. I took hold of Thomson's arm. “You need to come inside,” I coaxed, working around his stubbornness, but he pulled away. The frame in his hands clattered against the corner of the hive. The sluggish bees buzzed closer.

“This colony is all we have left,” Thomson said, his voice loud in the empty clearing. The ground still imprinted with the square shapes of our old hives, some stolen last autumn, others, the empty ones, burned when we ran out of wood. In the midst of January, our skin aching with cold, the thought of rebuilding our bee stocks had seemed impossible. “Now half this hive is going to leave.”

It was Phoenix who had taught me first about swarms. In the city. Over the years, I'd seen it again and again, learned the complexities of the hives, the knowledge rising and falling as needed.

Swarms happen when the colony is disrupted, I knew, when it becomes too crowded, when another queen is ready to emerge. Half the bees stuff themselves with their stores and empty out of the hive. Clinging together, wrapped tightly around their queen, they settle close by. Scout bees search for another place to build. When they find one, they come back and dance out the directions. And then they disappear to a new home—a hollow tree, a crack in the rocks. But it was late in the season for a swarm. Neither colony—the one left behind or the new pioneers—would likely survive the winter. There was very little hope.

I wondered where you were. If you'd found shelter from the rain, lit a small fire, sat close to its warmth. My fingers found Thomson's arm again. Gently, gently, I said his name, cupped his sharp elbow, but he ignored me. He lifted the brood frame close to his face and spoke, as if to them. “We have to kill the larval queens.”

I dropped my hand to my side. He looked at me.

“It's the only way.”

They were alive in there, those new creatures, fattened on royal jelly, bound for special lives. I didn't want to kill them. As he reinserted the frame, the long robe swayed around his bony legs and he stumbled. I reached out and grabbed his elbow. When he'd found his balance, I pulled the lid off the plastic bin a few feet from the hive and reached in for my gloves. He wouldn't go back home until we solved the problem, stopped the impending split. I slipped my hands into the gloves, the palms yellow, the backs printed with blue tulips.

“Tell me what to do,” I said.

“Thomson
talked me through it,” I told Marvin later, at supper. He'd brought home a mallard and butchered it for supper in the yard. I'd noticed the pool of blood, kicked over with a lace of dirt, on our way home. What had he done to get it? It worried me, but as I helped Thomson into the house, the smell of frying meat made my stomach growl. A sudden emptiness inside me, like a floor fallen away. Thomson's belly also rumbled, but when I asked if he was hungry he said no. Right away he asked Marvin about the boat. Marvin shook his head. “No sign of it.” Thomson's eyes drifted downward, as if he'd lost an argument.

“What happened?” I asked Marvin as Thomson lay down. I pushed the blanket between the arm of the couch and Thomson's bare toes, calloused from years of wearing scavenged shoes that didn't quite fit. The plates landed on the table with a clunking sound. There were three servings, steaming, but Thomson was already asleep. Marvin roughly cut the third chunk of meat in two and gave each of us another piece. He divided the dandelion greens, giving more to me. “We should save some for later,” I said, thinking already about the plate I'd make up—not for Thomson, but for you.

“Why'd you even take him there?” Marvin asked.

“I didn't. He went by himself.”

“Where were you?”

“At Shannon's,” I said, annoyed.

Marvin chewed a large piece of meat, his cheeks rounding out like a squirrel's. The greens were bitter, too old, the leaves too big for harvest. I ate them anyway, first off, to get them over with. From the couch, Thomson spoke, surprising us.

“We wouldn't have had to do anything if you'd been paying attention.”

I wasn't sure what to say. My shoulders sloped over my plate, the food a central point, the meat succulent and rich, sinking inside me. It put me in a kind of trance broken harshly when my teeth came down painfully on a grain of shot. I pinched the lead nugget off my tongue and ate more carefully, pulling the meat apart with my knife and fork, afraid of chipping a tooth.

Finally, Marvin spoke, his words muffled, pushed out around his food: “Isn't it enough to be a fisherman? Do I have to be a beekeeper too?”

“You think you have a choice?” Thomson pulled himself up to look over the back of the couch. “You used to know better than that,” he said, but his voice faded away as he watched us eating, the duck fat smeared across our mouths.

“Give me some of that,” he said, and I carried my plate over and sat beside him, fed him. He didn't want much, only a few mouthfuls. The chewing tired him out. When he sank back on the pillow, uncased, one end speckled with old mould, I dabbed at the grease on his face and beard with the cuff of my shirt. “I'm not a goddamn kid,” he growled, and I pulled back. Some food had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and brought the rest of his meal back to the table. The leftovers I scraped onto Marvin's plate and I went back to my own supper. Marvin started to speak, but I shook my head.

“Leave it.” Thomson had stretched out on the couch, his breath deepening. Marvin finished his food, licked the residue off his plate.

It took a lot of effort to save the rest of my meal, but I did. In the kitchen, I scraped my leftovers onto one of the red paper plates, covered the food with several shredded strips of the old plastic wrap and left the meal on the porch. I'd already decided to assume the best. You were still out there, still needing me, on your own and hungry.

Marvin said nothing when I came back inside. I gathered the dishes as he rolled an herb cigarette in an old slip of blank paper torn from some book. On the couch, I pulled Thomson's feet onto my lap, wound the bottom hem of the blanket tight around his cold toes, swaddling them, picking at a hole in his sock that I'd have to mend soon. Marvin pushed the front door open and went outside.

The smoke from the burning catnip and mullein drifted through the screen door. Thomson tugged the blanket over his face, unravelling it from his feet, and turned toward the back of the couch. I felt his forehead. Fevered. Damp with sweat even though he was trembling. He muttered something. I stood to close the door.

“I've been watching that useless hive all summer,” Marvin said, tapping ash onto the floorboards. “You couldn't have defended me?”

“You have not.”

He exhaled: a drift of smoke tamped down by the dampness. “How do you know?”

I stepped outside. I didn't want to fight. At the far end of the porch, your plate sat, hidden by the coming dark.

Marvin pulled the spindly cigarette to his mouth. It hung from his bottom lip as he dug a hand into his pocket and pulled out a small swatch of fabric. White with a tiny red rose, half the bloom lopped off.

“That's all we found,” he said, and I held the scrap with my finger­tips. Its weave was loose; the edges frayed. “Caught on the edge of the Sharmas' garden fence,” said Marvin.

That hint made you real. I looked over at him, ready to talk about everything that I thought we could have. A family. But he ran through the rain to his shed. “My mind hasn't changed,” he called back as he opened the padlock, its metal scraping. A candle came on: four squares of yellow light in the window. I slid the small bit of material into my pocket and went in the house to Thomson, who was sitting up, coughing, spots of blood in the cup of his hand. I held his head and rocked him, tried to ease the panic in his eyes.

“It's okay,” I whispered, followed by all the placating, soothing words I could think of that he said he hated when he was well. Eventually he went back to sleep, sinking into exhaustion. Marvin was still in his shed, illuminated, his face bent over some task. Untangling a net or straightening nails. He rubbed his jaw, the rough brindle of his beard, turned salt and pepper in spots. I went to the outhouse. On my way back in, I saw that you'd taken the plate.

Marvin
needed my help the next morning so I went with him. I didn't want to leave Thomson, but the truth was that I needed a break. We left him dozing on the couch, a jug beside him, full of strong tea. Coltsfoot, I'd told him, because that's best for the lungs. Really, we'd run out and it was a brew of raspberry leaf and mullein. I worried out loud that he wouldn't drink it, that the jug was too heavy to lift, but he waved me away, impatient, and then called me back to ask me to bring him his book.

It was sunny and warm as we walked through the woods. The leaves had that ragged late-summer look, like they've been busy cleaning spills. Branches broke underfoot, cracking loudly. I looked around, peering eagerly into all the small rooms of the forest. One glimpse of you was all I needed, one set of eyes staring back at me. But there were none. Only the forest's usual emptiness that had made me claustrophobic when we first arrived, all that silence leaning into me that I've become used to by now.

My fingers twisted and tumbled the slip of fabric in my pocket as I followed Marvin, wondering why I wasn't in front. He clambered loudly through the woods while I walked quietly. We kept going like that, not speaking to each other, both of us worried about Thomson and the ship and opposed over what to do about you, about anything. I knew that Marvin was capable of changing his mind. I'd witnessed that once. I turned that memory over in my mind, like wiggling a stone loose, and quickly hid the worms beneath it, before saying loudly, “We could look for her ourselves.”

His back rippled with tension, shoulders rising under his plaid shirt. “We don't know anything about her, him, whoever.”

“She's taking the meals.”

“How do you know it isn't Eric or Graham?”

“The boys wouldn't do that.”

“Wouldn't do what? Steal from us? Take our food?” The words steamed out of him. His feet hit the ground harder—pushing through the overgrown weeds, pausing to kick a rock into a cross-stitch of plants I couldn't name. “How do you know?”

I just did—like I know that you are only a child. Not an enemy, a dangerous threat. I said as much to Marvin, but he didn't answer and so instead I held the small, flowered swatch between scissored fingers and asked, “Why did you give me this?”

Briefly, he glanced at me. His voice as it drifted back faded out in patches. “It doesn't mean anything. It's an object, barely anything.”

“So you weren't trying to give me hope?”

“I was trying to show you how little we have to go on. You can't make a real girl out of that.” Some words were clear:
little, real
. Anger grew in me, that he could tell me how things were when I already knew. Like in the city, although back then I'd believed him and he'd led me into deep water when only he could swim.

“Throw it away. It'll take ten minutes to decompose.”

“Like her?” I spat.

“Like anything that's only a fantasy.”

If I could have, I would have gone home, left him to do the job on his own, but there were supplies we needed to try to find for Thomson, to keep him warmer through the cooler nights, the coming winter. We had work to do, items to scavenge.

“What about Shannon?” he asked. “What about her baby? Have you seen how real they are—all those bones pushing through.” He paused. “She might not make it.”

“Did Mr. Bobiwash say that?”

“Why do you call him that? His name's Jack.”

I kicked a grey wedge of rock into the underbrush. I'd called him that since the beginning, since he appeared through the mist of our near starvation, helped us, taught us how to live. I didn't feel that we were equals, but Marvin wouldn't let it go.

“You don't call Thomson Mr. Ptacek,” he said.

“That's different. It's a different relationship.”

Blue chicory, sumac trees, and other plants lined the trail, tangled in ancient garbage blown around by the wind. A small cardboard box stained with red paste. White plastic bags twisted in blooming purple thistles. Even a Coke bottle, the residue of its contents turned tarry like old engine oil.

We climbed down the steep hill, the dirt hard-packed after years of use. Arms out, Marvin slid on the worn soles of his too-small work boots, catching himself in a run when he reached the bottom.
If he breaks his leg
 . . . , I thought, as I often do, but I'm finished warning him. He rounded a heap of plywood and splintered two-by-fours and disappeared. I heard clanging, the grind of metal, as he pulled things apart.

I was relieved to be alone. Marvin went his way and I went mine. Once every few weeks we went to that section of the dump—more remote and not thoroughly scavenged, so we still find interesting things. Once, a camera popped to the surface. A small silver box with a cracked black screen on the back. Shannon had just had her baby and I'd yearned to take a picture of her with the infant, its damp face squeezed shut. I thought pretending with a prop would keep my memory sharper so I took it home. In the city, I had lots of photographs, mostly from when I was a kid. They were stored in a wooden crate once used to ship yellow apples from China. Those fat ones speckled with rust spots, named Fuji, after a mountain. The pictures were left behind in the apartment I'd shared with Margo. I don't know what happened to them. I don't even know what happened to her, where she ended up, how she adjusted to her new life, whether she even survived.