Swarm (18 page)

“Ever been stung?” Thomson asked, jolting me out of my memory.

“Stung?” My foot came down in the deep edge of a brown puddle. I leapt back, my shoe and sock soaked through. “Shit,” I said and stood there like a crane, the broken rubber bottom of my runner dripping. It knocked everything loose. I opened my mouth and let out a trickle of thoughts: that I wasn't sure what Phoenix wanted from me, even if I could stay.

Thomson waved his hand, dismissing me. “Who's ever sure about anything? We're here; we make the bloody best of it.”

Carefully I set my foot on the ground and felt the water gush against the walls of my shoe. I felt chastised, uncertain how to respond, but Thomson went on as if he hadn't gotten angry with me, like everything was normal. We'd reach the bees by then. He set a hat on my head, fitted with a net that hung down from its peak like a veil. He tucked the hem of the net into the collar of my shirt and pulled a nest of blue and pink elastics out of his pants pocket. Holding my forearm, he lowered himself onto one knee and lifted my wet foot, surprising me. I swayed and grabbed his shoulder. He was solid, like a stone ledge. He slipped an elastic around my running shoe, the sole flapping loose. “Have to glue those,” he said and snapped the band in place, closing the gap of my pant leg. He did the same for my other leg, both wrists, but didn't bother with himself.

The bees were out. I stood back and watched them, crowded around the narrow slot of the hive's opening. Some lifting, floating over the fence, in search of blooms that hadn't come yet. By the brick wall, Thomson lifted the cover of a large wooden box. He pulled out a spouted tin can with a bellows attached and flicked a lighter to ignite the pine needles and wood splinters stuffed inside. Smoke leaked out the spout, and once it was burning, Thomson squeezed the bellows to release more. “They're pretty sluggish right now. But this calms them.”

“How?” I asked as he squeezed smoke around the top of the hive.

“It tricks them into thinking they have to evacuate. The smoke disguises the pheromones released by the guard bees that would otherwise tell the hive to attack.” When he said that last word I took a tiny step away, but Thomson had his hand on my back and he pushed me closer. He started to tell me more: how the bees gather up their stores, thinking the hive is on fire, when a sudden clanging startled us. We spun around to see a battered aluminum garbage can lid spinning down the road. “Christ,” Thomson breathed and paused to recover before he placed his hands on the hive lid and said, “Ready?” I nodded.

That was the first time he showed me the internal parts of the hive—the cells, waxed over in the general pattern of a landmass on a map. “Those bees are forming,” he told me. “From egg to pupa to adult worker takes twenty-one days. Complete metamorphosis.”

Bees landed on Thomson's bare hands and lifted away. He handed me the smoker and I puffed, directing the grey coils over the open hive. Bees settled in his hair, on the bridge of his nose. Gently, he swept them off his face. I was amazed by him, all those earlier tensions with Phoenix and Marvin and the other complicated fringes of my world forgotten.

Thomson pulled off a clump of wax that glistened with honey and held it up to me. “Taste.” I plucked it off his finger and slipped it into my mouth. Sweet and chewy. “Honey,” I said, but he wasn't listening. He was gazing at another frame he'd pulled out. “The queen is in there. Issuing orders. Laying eggs. Without her they wouldn't even exist. She's their empress, their meaning in life.”

His eyes were damp. He blinked back tears from the smoke that hung in our faces. I waved it away. He stepped back and I followed, watching as he held the back of his hand against his mouth and cleared his throat, hard. One hand still holding the frame, he turned away and coughed until he spat up. A splatter of mucus landed on the ground and I thought I saw speckles of black. His breath sounded hollow when he inhaled. When he finished, he lifted the frame close to his face and squinted.

“God,” he said. “Mites.”

He burrowed one hand under his sweater and pulled a pair of silver tweezers from his breast pocket. I watched as he knocked off a wax cap and pinched out the perfect milk-white body of a pupa and then a second one, spotted with red-black bits. His head abruptly lifted and his eyes found mind and I knew there was something wrong. We went frame by frame, peering across the surface of the cells, looking for infection.

We
were quiet as we walked back to the diner. Thomson kept clearing his throat and once he paused to pinch a stinger out of a red hump on his forearm. I asked if he was okay.

“Fine,” he said, but his voice sounded choked. The worry lines in his forehead were deep. The wind had calmed, but fat clouds were pushing across the lake and the air had turned colder. Still wet, my foot felt icy and it squelched against the pavement.

“Weather coming,” I said, like a farmer, but Thomson's gaze was pointed straight ahead, still burrowing into the imaginary depths of his hive. “What do they do? The mites.”

He glanced at me and seemed to consider whether or not to answer. I wonder now if he wasn't thinking about just giving them up. When it came his description was technical, delivered without emotion.

“They breed in the brood cells. They suck the bees' blood. They spread a virus that causes deformed wing. They're called the destructor. Ultimately, the colony will collapse.”

“Can we stop them?”

Thomson shook his head, impatient with me.

“I can help.”

He looked at me, gauging my intent, and when he spoke it seemed he'd decided to trust me. “I remember something about powdered sugar,” he said. “If we can get some of that.”

“Like cake sugar?” I asked, and he nodded. By then we were back at the diner. Phoenix and Zane were sorting through cardboard boxes that sagged on the tables, their corners black and soggy. Zane laid out stunted ears of corn and shiny green peppers with coin-sized soft spots grown fuzzy with mould. Phoenix held up a potato. Sturdy white vines climbed out of its eyes. I waited for her to look at me but she didn't.

“We should plant this,” she said to Thomson.

I picked up an ear of corn, tiny compared to the ones my family had grown.

“Any meat?” Thomson asked.

“Nothing we could trust,” said Zane.

“Bones?”

Phoenix gestured at the pot on the glowing burner. “Already on.”

“How much power is left?” Thomson asked.

“I brought the other panel outside,” said Zane.

“Clouds are moving in,” said Thomson, and I said, “It looks like rain.”

“We can't do anything about that,” Phoenix said, collapsing one of the boxes to bring in the back for the fire. “Where were you?” she asked, her gaze sliding over to me but barely connecting. I crossed my arms. Thomson slid into a booth. “The hives.”

“You went too?” she asked me.

“Yeah.”

“First time?” I didn't know what she meant. “Seeing inside a beehive,” she said.

“We have mites,” Thomson said before I could answer.

“Are they bad?” She went behind the counter and set a cutting board, knife, and vegetable peeler next to a pile of carrots.

“I don't know yet. I'll have to look again. Do you remember what we learned about the powdered sugar?”

Phoenix nodded. “I think it knocks them off.”

Zane had left so the three of us sat in a triangle, me in the booth with Thomson, Phoenix on the stool, as she told us what she remembered about the technique. We sipped the remains of the tea I'd made that morning, poured into a jug to free up the pot for soup. After a little while, Thomson leaned into the corner of the booth, his head nodding into sleep, and Phoenix turned to me.

“So you've found what you're interested in?”

I paused, plucked a strange, soggy bloom from the tea off my bottom lip.

“The beekeeping?” Her hands worked the vegetable peeler; the tendons made clear ridges under her skin.

“Sure. But not just that. The soup kitchen too.”

“You didn't seem so into it last night.”

“I've been working my ass off.”

“Huh,” she said.

“What?”

“Do the bees believe in the hive's mission? Or do they act because it's in their nature?”

“What do you want from me?” I asked, angry suddenly. Thomson came to and started sputtering.

“Excuse me,” he said, but it could have been
Leave her be
, and I could hear the wheeze in his lungs, that soft ticking sound as if he'd swallowed a clock. He walked quickly down the length of the diner to the back room. We heard the door slam.

“Is he okay?” I asked, but Phoenix didn't look up. The orange strips of peel curled on the counter like ribbons.

I tried again: “Shouldn't we find him a doctor?”

She continued to ignore me and I felt like one of those capped workers, locked away in a cell, silent. I couldn't stand it. “Last night . . .” I started to say, wanting only to clear the air, and Phoenix lifted her head, waiting.

I went over to her, sat on the neighbouring stool.

We were so close our knees accidentally bumped before I pulled mine away. I still had my tea, the mug set on the counter, my fingers wrapped around the handle. Slowly she reached for my hand, loosened my grip, squeezed my fingers so the knuckles crowded together. I wasn't sure what she was going to say, but I assumed it would be an apology of some sort so I tried to make it easier.

“It's okay,” I said abruptly and pulled away. I stood and walked to the pile of flattened cardboard boxes on one of the tables and gathered them up to carry them into the back. Thomson was coughing hard, the sound a low drone through the walls. I turned back to her.

“Phoenix,” I said, the boxes clustered in my arms like a collection of shields. She had moved on to slicing the carrots into orange rounds for the soup. She looked up from the knife in her hand. “Tell me the truth about him. Is he sick?”

“He's fine.”

I told her what I thought I'd seen at the hives. What he'd spat out: that hunk of mucus, spotted with soot or blood. “Maybe we should take him to a hospital.”

She stilled the blade. Her voice was hard. “He's fine,” she said again. “It's a cold.”

I stepped closer, all the flattened boxes shifting.

“Really? I don't think—”

“He's my father. He's my responsibility.”

As if he was a child. In the distance, his hacking had ceased as if he could hear us, but then I heard him groan.

“Stepfather,” I said.

She turned to stare at me. “Where's your father?” she asked. “Or Marvin, even, or anyone?”

It
was decided. I dropped the boxes in a clattering slide and went to the back room to grab my stuff. Thomson was on the couch, a cloth in front of his face gathering those early stains. Our eyes met, but it was me who looked away, pinching back tears. It was none of my business. Phoenix had made that clear.

“Sandy,” he said before I left the room.

I stopped, the clothes I'd worn down there that first night bunched in my arms. I knew how I appeared. My jaw hard, lips pressed together with rage. I hated her.

“Decide what you want,” he said. “Be careful. Don't be distracted by those flies.”

I knew what I wanted: not to have to leave him, to help with the hives, to be loved and valued and appreciated. But the thing between Phoenix and me felt too sticky and thick. I wanted to be free.

“Goodbye,” I told him because I figured I'd never see him again. I left hardly having heard him because I had no idea what he meant. All I knew was that I'd failed. Any belief that I was special, bound for bigger things like an important role down there, at the soup kitchen, melted away. And now I know how silly that sounds. From the vantage point of the island—living in the difficult wilderness, late summer approaching winter, I can see that I was tricked. Just as easily I could have been you, scratching your survival out of the earth, stolen eggs hot in your hands, but instead I still find myself looking back, thinking,
Where is my life?
It's like it existed somewhere else and I didn't find it. Like a city I've never visited—Tokyo or Paris—so I will never know that place, what it had to offer.

It
was strange that Marvin and Margo showed up that day, jingling through the door just as I came out of the back dressed in my old clothes, pulling on my winter coat. Relief surged in me. I grabbed Margo, hugging her with one arm, and felt her lipstick smear against my cheek as she spoke into my ear: “Where the fuck have you been?” I almost cried.

“Let's get out of here,” I said, grabbing Marvin's hand and tugging him toward the door. I knew Phoenix was watching, even with her back turned, scraping potato peels into the bin. I wanted her to see. Before I left, I swung out my arm and hit the side of the bowl of grasshoppers with the back of my hand. They flew across the counter, scattered all over the floor. The place went silent so the last thing I remember from the diner is the jingling of those bells over the front door, their delicate, tiny tinkling.

Outside, Margo spread her arms out and ran into the wind. I laughed. She wore a knee-length red trench coat and crushed velvet leggings. Black high-heeled boots. Phoenix didn't have anything on her, I thought. I grabbed Marvin's hand, slipped my fingers between his. I swung in front of him and stopped, kissing him. In the middle of the road, Margo wolf-whistled. The storm came then. The dark clouds Thomson and I had seen over the lake opened up and in a matter of seconds we were drenched. We ran, arriving at Marvin's squat breathing deeply, air burning in our throats. I felt almost hysterical, so high I could have sworn I'd been slipped a drug. If Walter had been there and handed me one of his pipes of chemicals home-brewed in the rented trailer Marvin told me he'd blown to smithereens I might have sucked on it greedily. Something in me wanted badly to be extinguished.