Beehive Read online

  Sometimes — very rarely — a bee will get lost and seek shelter in a strange hive. Most often the guard bees will jump the intruder and that will end it. But it does happen that the bee might be allowed to join the new hive. She will work inside the hive until she loses the smell of her old home and then continue to perform the foraging her age suits her to. What does she think when she catches a whiff of an old hive mate on the stamen of a rose? Does she fill herself with nectar and huddle into the petals, waiting for night to come so the flower will close and cover her up?

  30.

  Monday I went to work late. I didn’t want to see Elizabeth go, but she needed my help to make her trip possible. I could say now that I had some deep foreboding, but it wouldn’t be true. I never liked it when she left, of course; but what made me feel the worst was watching her go. Maybe I felt like that’s how I would feel when she finally left for good — maybe that’s why I never complained when she called from work to say she had to leave town. But she needed me, and so I stayed, accepted deliveries, drove her to the State Department, kissed her good-bye.

  I felt fierce the rest of that day and all of Tuesday. I reworked all the mistakes my people made. Usually I did that after work, so they wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t feel bad. But the start of that week, I took things off their desks, redid them in a red pen and handed them back. By Thursday morning I had splattered enough red ink to color a good-sized sea, corrected everything I could correct. Since I saved the newspapers for the night now, my way of spending time with Elizabeth while she was gone, I had to fill my work-time with work. My fierce energy, though, had put me days ahead and so when everybody cleared out for lunch my desk was broad and open as a winter field. I stared at the phone ten minutes before picking it up and calling information in Ohio.

  I hadn’t even realized I had been thinking about Dad, but I must have been. I didn’t call my mother or any of the other family out there who might have known what had happened to him. I called the factory where he worked all his life. I wanted to know what they made of his disappearance.

  The personnel office did the right thing, I suppose. They wouldn’t tell me a thing. “I’m afraid that’s confidential information.”

  “I’m asking about my father. Is it still confidential?”

  “Unless we have Mr. Stutzer’s permission to release employment information, we could be in violation of his civil rights. I’m sure you appreciate that.”

  I appreciated it. I appreciated that if I didn’t get some news soon — about my father, about Elizabeth — I would explode. “Of course,” I said. “Do you think you could get me in touch with Mr. Hamlin?”

  Irv Hamlin had been my father’s savior throughout his terminal employment with the company. He went to bat for him on the desk job when other people would have canned him. I had talked with him two or three times about my father. He took me out for a drink in the middle of the afternoon once when I was in college.

  “We have an obligation to a long-term employee like your father,” he told me. “Sure, he’s going through a rough patch, but where else can he go? If we see him over this terrain, he’ll stick with us when he gets his footing back.” That stuck with me as I became a supervisor myself. No one’s perfect, but supervisors have to be a little less imperfect. We can’t really save anyone, but a little sympathy can turn into a lot of hope for someone in trouble.

  The phone clicked back to life. “Ron Stutzer! How have you been? Keeping the wheels of government spinning?”

  “Just sprinkling a little grease around.”

  “Good, good! To what do I owe the honor?”

  “Mr. Hamlin, have you heard from my father?”

  “Heard from him? What do you mean?”

  “He showed up here two weeks ago, the middle of a workday, and then just disappeared.”

  Irv said nothing for five long seconds. I had been noticing myself and others falling into silence lately, as though we were all priests stunned into ignorance by the sudden revelation that God looks more or less like a virus. “Irv?” I prodded. “Mr. Hamlin?”

  “Irv’s all right.” His voice embraced me less. He whispered now, like a comic-book spy into a watchband walkie-talkie. “I want you to know there was nothing I could do, Ron. I can only reach so far, and your dad went beyond.”

  “I understand. What did he do?”

  He let out a whistling sigh. “Must have been a month, six weeks ago. He went up on the catwalk above the plant floor and hurled a crowbar into the grinder. The teeth splintered. Two people got hurt, metal flying everywhere. People could have been killed. We were just lucky.”

  “A crowbar?”

  “Yep. Regulation crowbar.”

  “Could it have been an accident?”

  “Mhm-mhm. Nope. Your dad knows that machine; he was the first person we trained on it. We built a plexiglass screen under the catwalk to prevent just this problem. No one saw him throw the crowbar, but after the accident he was sitting up there, legs dangling down, over to the side where he could get a good pitch into the well. I don’t know what came over him. He wouldn’t tell me a thing. I was so damned angry with him I could hardly talk myself.”

  “So what happened?”

  “We put him on disciplinary leave. I heard he spent the whole day at Judy’s” — the favored bar near the plant — “and left when the shift let out. I’d guess he was hiding out from your mother, but I don’t know. How is she doing?”

  “I don’t know. I got nothing from her.”

  “What can she say? My youngest son got arrested for breaking into someone’s house last year. Seventeen-year-old kid gone deaf on metal rock. All I wanted to do was crawl into a hole. Someone you love does something bad you can’t understand, you look around for a place to hide.”

  “So what happened?”

  “Gave him a year’s probation, but I still think he has a drug problem. That’s why he was breaking in: to get money for drugs.”

  “I meant my father.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry. We have an early retirement plan, starts July 1 of the year the employee turns fifty-eight. He’ll be fifty-eight in October, so we agreed to keep him on the payroll until the end of June, provided he didn’t come back. We’ve been mailing the paycheck to your mother for years, you remember when I set that up, back when you were playing ball. After that, we haven’t heard from him. I can’t tell you where he’s gone.”

  31.

  The newspapers buried the reports on Lebanon in the second section, articles bigger than newsbriefs but not much more informative.

  They revealed doubts that the General had actually died.

  He might be dead. That was as much qualification as they offered.

  The press reported the opening of negotiations. A small delegation from the State Department arrived Tuesday for meetings with various officials.

  The Israelis moved a couple of tank battalions to the northern end of their little country. “We are not worried about a military invasion,” the local commander told a reporter. “We are worried about an invasion of refugees.”

  A scientist at the University of Texas in Austin discovered that a small amount of topically applied hash oil suppresses autonomic reflexes. “This might have application for coughs, allergies, even brain dysfunctions,” he said.

  A new Lebanese restaurant opened in SoHo, New York, to a warm review.

  The portion of the Sixth Fleet which had been running maneuvers south of Cyprus returned for refueling and refurbishing to Suda Bay, in northwestern Crete.

  Thursday, our softball team practiced for the first time; Jim couldn’t make it. We look ready to beat the league this year. First game Saturday.

  32.

  Friday morning, I found a memo on my desk from Mr. Bienenkorb: Come see me around ten-thirty. My boss’ imprecision always seemed odd in our line. Why not at ten-thirty? Before the meeting I
had Virginia type up a report that wasn’t due for a couple of weeks. Since my fury had put me ahead of schedule, there was no harm in letting Mr. Bienenkorb know.

  “Sit sit sit, Stutzer. Take a seat.” He closed the door behind me.

  I handed him the sheaf of freshly typed paper. “The report on zoning change processing. I don’t have the charts typed up yet. That’s always time-consuming.”

  “Very good.” He had a pair of half glasses he wore at the tip of his nose. To read, he had to crane his head back, like a man not sure of what he’d just heard or seen. Mr. Bienenkorb was in his mid-fifties and perpetually uncertain. “Looks all right.” He surveyed the front page again, not reading, just surveying. “All right.”

  “It’s only a draft, of course. I expect to make changes.”

  “No one’s reading for style, Ron. I wouldn’t worry about it much.”

  “But still . . .”

  “Uh-huh.” He leaned his elbows on his desk, hands together, and pressed his lips to his forefinger. Again the silence. At last he said, “Does it ever worry you how easily things can go wrong?”

  “Wrong, sir?”

  “You see, I started out looking to make my way in business. But in college I found out I didn’t have near the motivation of the real biz-ads — that’s what we used to call the guys in Business Administration, biz-ads. Nice ring, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So I turned toward accounting. Let them chase the dollars, they’re more likely to catch them anyway. I’ll just count them up, make sure they’re in the right place. I took the civil service exam during school, so I could get a summer job, and after graduation I took a job in the Small Business Administration. Just my speed. I wanted to do that for just a little while, learn the ropes while I prepared for the CPA exam.” He picked up a pencil. He kept fifty of them in a cup in his desk, all different lengths, but each sharpened to the quick. He surveyed the tip through his glasses. “I never got to take the exam.”

  He left a blank for me to fill. “Why is that, sir?”

  “I met a girl who believed in government as a civilizing force. CPAs did not impress her. Government officials did. I stayed with government, compiling statistics for this and that and the other. And I’m glad. You know why?”

  “Why, sir?”

  “A couple of reasons. I like the fact the statistics are so forgiving. With a couple million numbers to add, a little mistake this way or that won’t make a difference. It’s not that way with tax returns, let me tell you. I never even do my own. I also ended up marrying that girl. I could have been a lot richer if I married someone else. Who’s to know? I could also have ended up having a heart attack on the thirteenth green because every single tax return I filed got audited. So who can say?”

  “Not me, sir.”

  “So what’s been messing you up for the past month? You meet a girl?”

  I never let people at work know about Elizabeth. That’s one reason I call her instead other calling me. And it’s hard to be a boss if your people know that your girlfriend is much richer and more powerful than you. People just don’t take you as seriously. So I never talk about Elizabeth, even to Mr. Bienenkorb.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Is it something family? I heard about your father’s visit.”

  “Nothing has changed there, sir. Nothing different.”

  He stretched back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “You’ve been a good worker, moved along the old civil-service conveyor belt pretty fast.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nothing but the truth. So why the change these past few weeks?”

  “A lot of little things.”

  “That’s what I was saying before. Little things change big things. I don’t want to force a confession out of you, Stutzer. You got a problem, you can tell me, that’s all.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But if you’re beginning to think you might want to handle it with somebody, instead of alone, come talk to me.”

  “Thank you, sir. I will.”

  “Now get back to work.”

  33.

  Saturday coughed up a cool misty rain. Never fails we play the first game of the season in a winter mist, no matter how summery the weather got before. We pony up our own money to play in this league, instead of getting some local business to sponsor us the way most teams do. But that’s because we’re mostly former athletes; half a dozen of us played in the pros and the rest for major college teams. We still don’t win all the time, playing mushball against the blue-collar killers, but we intimidate the hell out of them with our uniforms, which have our names on the back and our team name — The Ex-Greats — on the front.

  Jim got me onto this team. We get a few new players every year through our clubhouse network. Two or three of the guys still work in professional sports, in coaching or broadcasting, and another few work the college and high school circuit. With so much firepower, it seems funny we lose at all, but that’s how it goes in sports: you train to take advantage of chance. If it worked out that better teams or players always won, there would be no sport. Same thing if it all depended on chance. We have the athletes, but the other teams train more together. When we win, we feel we ought to have, and when we lose, we blew it.

  So I get the most satisfaction sitting in the dugout, waiting for my turn to bat. I watch the ritual patterns danced out by men in uniform, a complex social order which makes no sense without a rule book. When I first started keeping bees I could easily get the same thrill, sitting back and watching their movements. They seemed so repetitive I knew they must fit pre-set rituals, but I didn’t know what they were. As I learned, I lost my wonder. But watching softball, I never lose my wonder. I think that, because when people play, I can’t ascribe the whole thing to instinct, like I can with the bees. It’s a mystery.

  We won the game handily, 11-2, 11-3, something like that, in part thanks to moist air, which made the ball slippery. I had a couple of hits. I’ve become master of the hard stroke, a slick drive through the infield. Weekend players seldom muster the reactions to cover a hard-hit ball and throw it on target. One of my shots went through the third-baseman’s legs and rolled around the left fielder two or three times before he made a wildly inaccurate throw. I made it all the way home on the error.

  When I got to the bench, Jim said, “F-f-fine hitting.” Even his uniform pants had a worn spot on the left thigh.

  “Just trying to hit it where they is.”

  “How’s my Lizzie?”

  “She’s gone.”

  “Gone?” He turned to stare at me. “Not gone gone?”

  “Just gone.”

  “Work?”

  “Yeah, of course, work.”

  He sniggered. “Don’t scare me like that, man. Where’d she go this time?”

  “Middle East.” I figured so much went down there he couldn’t tell where I meant.

  “Not Lebanon!”

  “I didn’t say Lebanon.”

  “I heard sad shit about that place. I hope to hell she’s not there.” I didn’t respond. Jim had to get up on deck. He walked out of the chain-link cage they set up for the teams and grabbed his black bat from the wooden rack. Taking a couple of swings he said, “The first of the new queens is p-p-pupating. She looks tough.”

  “How can you tell?”

  The batter hit a high fly, certain to make the third out. “She wears her fur in a Mohawk. Get my glove, will you?”

  34.

  The rest of the weekend I felt sorry for myself. I should have trucked out to the farm to see what had become of the Control Tower, harvest honey, tend the hives the bees already tended in a way that suited them more than anything I could do. But instead I wrapped myself in a blanket and stared at sports on TV. I used to do that every now and a
gain, before I met Elizabeth, but since we’ve been together — even when she was out of town on a weekend — I don’t do it. There’s always so much I can do for her: make a lasagna for the week, fix faulty plumbing, just attend the details of life she’s mentioned don’t suit her. But Sunday I felt like getting lost, like disappearing in the great wilderness inside. I wanted winds to pierce me, rain to soak me, trees and mountains and clouds to mock me. I wanted to shrink small as I could. I wanted to close myself in my cell and disappear.

  Monday morning I discouraged myself by waking up and muddled through the day hoping to make Tuesday different. It was, very. I woke early and alert, bought papers from around the world and sat at my desk before eight. The day flowed like a thousand others had before I’d slid into this unsurfaced month. Calls came in, problems erupted and resolved, and hours blistered along like fire in dry wood. The wintry weekend disappeared in a hot flash, the rare perfect summer day Washington gets only in May and September: high in the eighties, a blue-glass sky studded with clouds of magic-act smoke.

  Just before six, I parked my car around the corner from home and strolled out to the market. I figured to make myself a happy dinner: steak and onions, fresh spinach salad, a baked potato. I could see Jim sitting on the entry steps to my building as I rounded the corner. He saw me too and ran to meet me.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” he wheezed. “How are you d-d-doing?”

  “What’s the buzz? You look like you’ve been mainlining coffee.”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”