The Lava in My Bones (17 page)

Soon two boys appeared, talking and throwing a football back
and forth. One said, “Wow, check it out!”

“Holy shit.”

I ducked.

The silence was very long. When the boys spoke again, their voices sounded closer but shrunken, shorn of bravado. “Fuckin' awesome. I never saw so many together like that.”

“Wouldn't wanna piss 'em off.”

“Must be a honey pot there.”

“Throw the ball at them; see what they do.”

“You fucking crazy? Let's go.”

Soon I heard only the distant chuff-chuff of the ball being caught. I lifted my head, peeked into the visible sliver of street. Beside my eye, a curling thorn. My bees circled, circled.

In the distance I made out two pink, floating blurs. My heart pounded. My fingers clenched into fists. My entire body stiffened. Estelle. Estelle. Please, let it be Estelle. I heard a cry. They'd seen the bees. I pushed my face down between two rocks. The girls approached.

“So many!” A tinny, nasal voice. I recognized it instantly as Mary-Lou's.

“Oh my God.” A lower reedy voice. Millie McAllister. She'd assisted with the turd brigade. Two of Estelle's pals. If I couldn't get the queenpin, I could knock off her henchmen.

“There must be flowers on the other side of the hill.”

“Probably.”

I was surprised when three bees flew out of the spinning whirlpool and headed straight for the girls in their rayon dresses. Mary-Lou and Millie screamed.

I raised my head. They'd run out of the visible sliver of street.

Now was my chance. I jumped up and leapt off the hillock. My soles landed so hard on the ground, I lost balance and fell. The girls' backs were receding down Bluebird Lane. They'd stopped running and walked hand in hand, their heads down. The bee cloud reeled and roared. I inhaled deeply, joined my hands, locked my elbows, raised my arms above my head, pressed my two index fingers together to form a massive prong at the top of my body. I bent my torso forward and ran straight on.

My feet pounded against the earth like fists, and the whirring bee wings sent breezes down across my body and over the ground; leaves, dust, even pebbles were lifted from the earth. When I glimpsed a faint fog of pink just ahead, I rammed my feet into the ground with such force that my body lurched, then froze with my stinger aimed frontward. The bees hurtled forth like a flaming ball flung from a sling-shot. I spun around and ran back toward the hillock. Behind me, I heard a blood-curdling scream and Mary-Lou's “Oh, Millie! Millie!”

Without looking back, I jumped over the hillock and ran north into the woods where I followed a meandering, rock-strewn trail. I dashed along bare hills topped with sticks in teepee formations. I heard the cry of an ambulance, distant shouts. Into the woods I charged, past boulders draped with moss, through clouds of gnats that entered my mouth and flew up my nostrils. I reached a gravel road full of puddle-filled craters, turned west, and kept running. I stopped only when I came to the one-lane bridge. Its walls of steel criss-crossed upward to its roof, whose intersecting lines split the sky into triangles.

Arriving in my empty field, I threw my arms up, laughed, danced, and sang. Soon my bees appeared in the sky. They descended en masse. I fell to the earth and offered them the nectar that was only mine to give.

The following day, our principal stood before us in the school auditorium. Head bowed, he spoke solemnly. “Yesterday Millie McAllister was attacked by bees and taken to the hospital. She survived but is in great pain.”

It took all of my self-control not to burst out laughing. I bit my lower lip, put my face in my hands, and pretended to sob. I thought, next time I'll get Estelle.

After school I returned to the hillock and waited with my swirling bees. This time no one approached. Even the boys kept their distance. Between the thistle stems, I saw a distant cloud of pink. Again I ran with my arms pressed together above my head. I stopped a block away from the girls, afraid they might turn my way. I fled into the trees, but my wonderful bees charged on ahead. Both girls were attacked this time. Unfortunately neither was Estelle, but one was her cousin and the other an Estelle groupie.

The third day I returned to the hillock and saw boys kicking in the dirt and throwing rocks at trees, so I waited until they left.

Over the next week I sicced my bees on anyone wearing one of Esther's dresses. I discovered that I didn't need to use the hillock and could hide behind garbage bins, mailboxes, or wide-trunked
trees. Though I rejoiced in my daily successes, I was terrified of getting caught.

The townspeople viewed the first bee attack as a fluke. The second, an unlucky coincidence. The third was part of an emerging pattern. The fourth created panic. After the fifth, Cartwright was consumed by complete hysteria. We even got a headline in the
Labrador Gazette
: “Killer Bees Ravage Seaside Town.” In class, students sat quavering with fear. After school, parents drove their children home. I feigned anxiety and reminded myself not to smile.

All the next week there were emergency meetings of the town council, discussions between the mayor and biologists, doctors, and priests. After lengthy debate, the cause of the bee attacks was identified. The enemy was—flowers. The flowers had brought the bees here. Before roses and tulips grew in riotous profusion in Cartwright's gardens, our town was placid and safe. Innocent children were not attacked. If our streets could return to their former state, peace would prevail. The mayor made a public pronouncement: “All flowers shall be cut down and burned in order to starve these bees and make Cartwright undesirable to them. Anyone refusing to destroy their flowerbeds or who is caught with bulbs or seed packets faces fines.”

Throughout Cartwright, petunias, gardenias, calla lilies, and roses were placed in stacks and set on fire. The town was full of the smell of perfume and burning ruffage. Bonfires blazed in every yard. The Atlantic easterlies whipped the flames into such high walls of fire that people feared their wooden houses would be engulfed. There was a corresponding rash of couple break-ups.
Estelle lost all her boyfriends. No one talked of love anymore at the town council meetings.

Walking between the fragrant walls of flame, I threw my head back and snorted, delighting in the secret I carried in the very centre of my body.

“I told you something bad would happen when those bees came.” Mother was ecstatic. “Nobody believed me. They said I was the freak, but I showed those suckers.” Her increased confidence alarmed me. She immediately drilled me on Millie. Did I like her? Were we friends?

I kept my eyes lowered and muttered, “No, I don't know her …”

She delicately kissed my forehead. “Thanks for being so good.” Then she abruptly rolled back her head, opened her mouth and sang forth the Lotto-Labrador winners, “1–5–4–7–3. And the daily double goes to 2–4–8 …” She'd resisted secular speaking-in-tongues; glossolalia in all forms was a gift from God. Besides, I think Mother realized that she was so full of tensions that if she didn't release them, she'd explode.

The next day she went to the school, as she'd often done when you were here, Sam, and harassed the teachers. “Not enough is being done to protect students from bees. Security guards should be hired. I worry about my own daughter. And there's still too much teaching of science without values,” she added. She knew such comments did nothing, but she was feeling powerful and longed to assert herself.

“The people at that school have their heads up their butts,” she snarled, scooping lobster chowder into my bowl at supper. Then her mouth twisted; she sighed and said, “Apparently, now Sam is getting aggressive with the doctors. He makes snide, sarcastic jokes at other people's expense. He was never sarcastic with us. The doctors believe he's getting stronger. I'm not so sure.”

Something crucial is happening with you, Sam. You are about to commit a major act.

On the radio the announcer said, “The coast guard caught a Spanish boat inside the 370 kilometre limit. The ship was manned with illegal trawl-nets …” Then a woman's voice interrupted: “This just in. There has been another bee attack in Cartwright. Nancy Smitherson was attacked by a horde of bees while crossing the field near the main port.”

I dropped my fork. How could this be? I'd not ordered my bees to attack. I'd been at home all evening. But I knew that Nancy Smitherson wore dresses, never jeans. A prong of my fork curled toward me like an accusatory finger.

The next morning while I was skipping stones on the beach, Sandy Higginbott was attacked. Two days later Peter Fitsen, the town transvestite, was swarmed in his rayon jumpsuit when he went to the variety store to buy breath mints.

In my empty field I discovered that the satin scarecrow was more tattered and filled with holes than previously. Clearly I'd succeeded in programming the bees to assail anything in a dress, and now they did so without my prompting. I hadn't wanted the bees to attack indiscriminately. I wanted Estelle to
get nailed and, as yet, the bees hadn't poked a single needle into her alabaster skin.

In class while everyone gathered round to admire the new aquarium, I darted to Estelle's desk and snatched three blonde hairs from her chair back and stuffed them in my pocket.

Later I stole two pearl earrings from Mother's dresser drawer because they were identical to Estelle's. Armed with these weapons, I marched past the town limits. I stuck Estelle's hair on top of the scarecrow's stone head and taped an earring on each side. When my bees arrived, I held my arms up and repeatedly practised the long run and stabbing attack on Estelle. “Got her scent, guys? Remember it.” The bees spun round the mute body. “She's the one you want.”

Shivering, I stripped off my clothes and rewarded the bees for their travails. I shrieked and giggled as they licked the sweat from my skin. “Dropper, you're going too fast,” I sang. “Slim-slam, let Kim have some … Oh, Einstein, you silly boy, try to enjoy yourself for once in your life!”

We played for what seemed like hours. I ran my fingers through the grass as the bees leapt over me. I looked at the tattered “Estelle,” its stone face round as a giant eye. Straw fingers stuck through the holes in her dress. A light breeze blew and the three frail hair strands lifted like wings.

“You stupid bitch,” I yelled at it. “Pretty soon a hundred bees are going to sting your ugly face!”