Beehive Read online

  “He does that, you know. You can’t let it get to you.”

  “I don’t know where he is, Ma. No one knows where he is. I bet he doesn’t even know where he is.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Did something happen, between you I mean?”

  “Ron, it’s just the same.”

  “What about his job?”

  “If he’s in Washington I guess he isn’t working. I don’t know.”

  The whole conversation seemed to be about a movie we saw the week before: interesting, but of no consequence. I stared at the sleek black phone machine — Elizabeth’s, of course: high-tech and style together would be extravagance for me — until I felt like the machine was a communications black hole. Information went in, but nothing came out. My mother and I spoke across dimensions.

  She said, “Ron, you all right?”

  “Should I call the police, Ma? Should I?”

  “Won’t do much good. He’s drunk in a heap somewhere or back on the road. Maybe he’ll be back here tomorrow.”

  “I shouldn’t do anything?”

  “What can you do, Ron? It’s in God’s hands. Only Christ can save him, Ron, you know that.”

  Time to go.

  “Yeah, Ma, OK. Call me if you hear from him, will you please?”

  I freed myself from the phone and called Jim. He said Saturday would be soon enough, could Elizabeth come? That got us out there that day.

  19.

  “Elizabeth, you’ve g-g-got to see this!” Jim called, thwacking his thigh to release the stuck consonant.

  “Where are they putting it all?” I wondered aloud to Jim. My eyes danced watching Elizabeth bound over from her Adirondack.

  “They have so much room in there.” We stood together and stared up and down the stacked supers weighted with frames full of honey.

  “Look at the bees?” Elizabeth asked. “Look at you guys! Big macho football players nosing around in beehives.”

  “I wouldn’t put your nose in that hive. I think these bees would take that too.”

  “What am I supposed to see?” Elizabeth stood as close to me as she could. Despite her cool around them, she never felt comfortable with the bees. She learned so fast about them I never needed to tell her twice to avoid the entrance to the hive, to stand still when around them, to keep her hair tied back so they wouldn’t be tempted to burrow into it.

  “Do you see that bee on the corner of the landing board?”

  “The one talking to the others?”

  I could see what she meant. The bee I meant busied herself unloading her pilfered honey to the nectar bees. “Yeah, but she’s not talking. She’s passing off goods.”

  “Don’t they do that whenever they come in from the fields?”

  “Uh-huh, but this is different. She’s got honey there, not nectar.”

  “She stole it,” Jim said.

  “Where from?”

  Jim pointed across the copse to Langley, a small hive named because they constantly intrigued, mostly against their queens, replacing even healthy, laying ones. They already had supercedure cells built as a threat against the queen they had raised just six weeks before. “She just went over there, pushed her way p-p-past one of the guards, sucked up a bellyful of honey and came home.”

  “So?”

  “Bees don’t do that,” I told her.

  “Looks like some bees do.” Her eyes teased me.

  “That’s the point. Watch what she does next.”

  A couple of the guard bees came over to the thief and she touched antennas with them and then began to crawl up the side of the hive which faced Langley. She came back to the landing board and then flew a few fast tight circles around the hive. Some of the older bees came out of the hive, talked to her again, and again she flew around the hive and climbed the side facing Langley. Soon a group of bees were doing the same thing. Then they came back to the landing board for a frenzied huddle.

  “Just like the locker room before the game,” Jim whistled.

  More bees piled on. There looked to be a couple of hundred. “They’re going to ransack the place.”

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  “You saw what that bee did?”

  “Fly around, crawl around, touch antennas. Sure.”

  “She just told them where she found that honey and they’re getting ready to go on a raid.”

  “All of them?”

  A couple hundred bees buzzed in an excited mass by the landing board. I pointed to the fuzzy brown ball. “Most of those guys. A lot of guard bees, the bigger, stronger ones. Yup.”

  “Bees don’t steal, Lizzie,” Jim explained. “They collect nectar, they process it, they f-f-fan the nectar to evaporate the liquid and turn it into honey. But the Control Tower has gone from industry to indiscretion.”

  “They still do collect nectar,” I added, “but it’s a big hive. Some of them would rather just take the honey other hives make.”

  “They’re taking off!” Elizabeth cried, and she leaned against me.

  They charged straight for Langley, most of them. Langley guards sent out a warning, and the spooks inside dropped their plots against their queen and flew to the hive entrance.

  Bees don’t fight in uneven odds, usually, so most of the bees just fluttered around frantically while the guards battled one-on-one against the invaders. If a guard dropped, wings torn, abdomen punctured, sometimes another worker would take her place. But often as not the victor bee sucked up what honey it could and took off for home. One defender stung a departing thief and they both fell to the ground, but for the most part, the Control Tower won and Langley let them. Better than three-quarters of the strike force returned home with Langley’s ready-made riches in their sacs.

  “They been doing that two weeks so far, that I’ve noticed,” Jim told me when it was over.

  “Enough to ruin any other hive?”

  “No, they’re all strong this year. Langley’s the weakest, what with their new queens all the time. But I think the Tower just likes to show some muscle, now and again.”

  “Maybe there’s something screwy with one of the supers or one of the frames. Maybe it just too tall for them to evaporate it right.”

  Elizabeth interrupted. “So these bees raid the others? What’s the problem with it?”

  Jim explained, “Usually bees only rob the weak. After a few raids, the weak hive gets discouraged, kills the queen, stops c-c-caring for brood. Can be trouble.”

  “But that’s not happening.”

  “No, they take only a little each time, not enough to really hurt the other hive. Looks more like these bees are just out for a joy ride.”

  “Of course, that means we lose the honey they take, unless we decide to harvest the Control Tower.”

  Jim and I looked at each other and then at the tall, slender obelisk of life in front of us. Neither of us wanted to disturb the Tower, either the building or the bees inside, but we couldn’t figure out what to do.

  Elizabeth said, “Maybe the bees want you to harvest some honey, and that’s what the raids are trying to say. They’re big enough to destroy the other hives, right? So they must have some purpose in not doing it. Maybe they want you to raid them.”

  Jim laughed and nodded at me. “What do you say, pal?”

  “When she’s right,” I put my hand on his shoulder, “she’s right.”

  “Let’s go get the ladder and tools.”

  “And nets. I’d rather be covered if Elizabeth is wrong.”

  20.

  On the drive home in the lengthening, lingering evening, Elizabeth said to me, “It’s begun. The Lebanon thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What I’ve been working on. We set it in motion this weekend.”

  “Shou
ldn’t you be at work then? Should I drop you off?”

  She shook her head and watched the pale light coming toward us through the dusk. “There’s nothing I can do now but wait” — she sighed — “and hope that I was right.”

  21.

  Looking back, I can see how my life spun out of control that week. I didn’t notice while I lived it, though, sort of like driving a big car around a tight curve: you lose control of the vehicle well before your tires squeal. A mass of metal hurtling along pavement at sixty miles an hour will kill anything in its path, and most people know that, so the moment those G-forces start to build we correct ourselves.

  Most people survive highways, but life? What forces build to tell you trouble’s ahead? Forgetting appointments, locking keys in a car, leaving mail unopened? You sure? Then most people live life out of control.

  During the week, I scoured the paper every day, hunting up tidbits about Lebanon. I wanted to know what Elizabeth had worked on, and starting Monday of that week I hardly saw her. She flew to New York Wednesday, called Thursday, came home Friday, but the papers said nothing about her, about her work, about the Middle East even. I thought for a moment she’d lied to me, that the youth uprising in Jakarta had something to do with her, but I laughed away the thought. Not that she’s beyond lying, particularly about her work. But Elizabeth is beyond a student demonstration gone wild with rocks and bottles and sticks, like what happened in Indonesia. She thinks bigger than that.

  Later I realized that two short notices played a part in her complex scheme. One division of the Sixth Fleet began maneuvers South of Cyprus, “in preparation for any further breakdown between the governing parties on the island.” And wildcat strikes slowed shipping in Tyre. If I had been Elizabeth and she me, she would have added something together from those notices. But I kept hunting for “Dateline: Beirut,” and it never showed. My head buried itself in newspapers hours each day and came up at sunset empty.

  The pit of my stomach felt empty too, wondering what had happened to my father. No use talking to Ma, she seemed gone about him. But he went beyond just seeming gone. Dad had disappeared. As quickly as he had shown he vanished, and I had nowhere to turn. A hero would have taken to the streets to look for him. Me, I called the police.

  “Have you tried the homeless shelters?”

  “He’s not homeless. He has a very nice home in Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland Park?” That’s a ritzy district of DC.

  “No, Ohio.”

  “So why are you calling us?”

  “Because last time I saw him he was here.”

  “In DC?”

  “Yes. Have you picked up someone named Stutzer for drunkenness or vagrancy? That’s all I want to know.”

  He grumbled something. “Hold on.” The telephone gave that familiar click into blackness, and I stared out my office window for close to twenty minutes before a different voice came on the line.

  The voice gave no salutation, just words like from a procedures manual. “We don’t book drunks and vagrants. They go into a holding tank overnight, and in the morning we let them go. Each precinct has a tank, they take down their names, but they don’t go onto a computer.” I didn’t answer. He hadn’t asked a question. “You the one looking for the drunk, ain’t you?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you got a question? I can put in a request, you should have information in a week. Or you can call each of the precincts and talk to the night clerk there. Eleven to seven. They know. Won’t tell you where the man is, just if we’d seen him.”

  “How many precincts are there?”

  “Lots. Listen, have you tried the homeless shelters?”

  My heart also felt empty. You might think this is silly, and I suppose it is, but I missed the Control Tower. Jim and I smoked the bees into a stupor that Saturday and broke it all down, just like Elizabeth suggested. We left them three supers, nowhere near enough room for so many bees. And we caged the queen, to keep her from laying for a week, cut down the size of the hive. Bees, except queens and drones, live four weeks, maybe a little more in spring. A small mesh cage, with the queen and a half dozen attendants, fits in the top of the hive, so the bees can have their ruler nearby, but she can’t get to the combs to lay brood. Coop her up for a week and the population will drop by a quarter a few weeks down the line.

  When the smoke cleared and the bees rousted themselves, they seemed forlorn. Few foragers ventured out. For a hive packed tighter than a cluster, they remained very quiet. It made my heart ache to see that they felt the loss as keenly as I did.

  22.

  Friday night, when Elizabeth came home, we had a celebration. Growing up as I did, I learned to give thanks for even the smallest peace. You know how sometimes you get to the end of the day and say it was a stupid day. The bits and pieces don’t fit, like assembling a ceiling fan and finding the plastic packet of bolts didn’t come with nuts. From the inside, it felt like a stupid week, nothing going right, never enough time, never enough of anything.

  So when I called Elizabeth and she told me she’d be home in time for dinner and not have to go back to work that night, I planned a private party. On the way home I stopped at the Red Sea, her favorite Ethiopian restaurant, and ordered food for half a dozen, an excess of everything she loved. I snagged a bottle of chilled Möet from the liquor store downstairs.

  She beat me home for the first time in recent months and I heard the shower shut off as I locked the door behind me. We keep a picnic blanket in the front hall closet and I spread that on the living room floor. I arranged the food on a couple of the large crystal platters Elizabeth already had when we moved in together: a layer of enjira, the flat spongy bread Ethiopian food comes with, and gigantic mounds of chicken in berber sauce, chickpeas and egg plant, okra with nuts, all separated by cigar-rolls of that sweet and sour bread. I filled the bucket with ice for the champers and set out two glasses.

  She must have heard me then because she called my name. “You hungry?” I answered.

  “Starved.”

  I kicked off my shoes and pulled a chair up close enough to lean back against it. I called out, “I have a craving for Ethiopian.” She came in, her hair wrapped in a towel, fists tightening the belt on her blue-and-green ikat kimono. The stupidness of the week ended when I popped the champagne at just the right moment, the perfect sound effect to her surprise party.

  “Ron, you are a dream.” She kissed me and sat on the other side of the platters, her back against the couch. I poured. She toasted, “To a quiet weekend.”

  “A quiet weekend!”

  “There too much food here to eat.”

  “Not if we stay in all weekend eating it.”

  “Do we have to get dressed for dinner?”

  “Aren’t I overdressed already?”

  She wrinkled her nose at me. “You’re always overdressed.” I worried a split second she was ragging on my wardrobe, so poor next to hers, but I knew she meant something else. She rolled some chicken and berber in enjira and fed me. I did the same for her, but clumsily, so I got to lick some that dribbled around her mouth.

  We ate and drank and played until the weird emptiness of the week became vague memory. We lay on the couch and cuddled, sipping the last of the champagne and trickling it back and forth in our kisses. I wanted to be inside her robe, nuzzling, kissing her all over. I asked her, “How was work?”

  “Perfect. Perfect. Everything is going just as we planned. The General is there now. I think we’re going to win this one big.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What can I give you for a reward?”

  Her small hand danced around my zipper. “How about this?”

  “Will you give it back?”

  “Only when I’m done with it.”

  But before we could move, the phone rang. If
I hadn’t had the champagne, I would have felt the tug of the G-forces then.

  23.

  I volunteered to drive her to the Pentagon. While she dressed, I made coffee for the both of us, herded up the leftovers, tried to shake myself back into the week.

  “The plan was simple, that was why it went so well,” she told me in the car. “Lebanon is just the name we give to a patch of land where they grow and process hashish. That’s the whole story. The valleys grow the stuff. The cities process it. The ports ship it. The Lebanese make money and have power according to how many valleys, how many processors, how many ports they control. All the presidents of Lebanon this century, and who knows how far back, they’re all from big hashish families. They’re gangsters, that’s all.

  “So we occupy the ports, we set up shop on the roads. All we want to do is confiscate the hashish we find, we’re not there to attack. But if they bring pistols, we have machine guns; they have machine guns, we bring tanks; they get tanks, we sink their boats. It’s gangsterism, but it works. All we want to do is talk to them. We need their land, we need their connections, but we can’t get them to talk.

  “They want weapons from us. We can’t give them weapons, what with the balance of power in the Middle East. And we can’t invade them. We can’t even have the Israelis invade them for us, though they’d love to. We tried it, sort of; it didn’t work. And with the hostage situation, its a PR trap. Any time you go into Lebanon, the news comes out dirty. The only hope is some negotiated peace between the factions, under our protection. We get the land, we get the connections, they keep their hashish.

  “It was working, you know, that’s the thing. In not even a week, it worked. The Sixth Fleet has fourteen tons of hash in its holds right now. But who can the Lebanese complain to? So they agreed to talk. The press gave us ten days’ grace, ten days’ silence to see what we could do. I think we would have made it.”