Chapter Five #3
“Got a bee in here!”
“Don’t move,” Marsden said. “I’ll get it.”
But her dad swung his head like an enraged bull, pawing at the veil as though he could dislodge the bee from the outside.
“Dad, hold still!” Cassie cried.
Marsden tried to unzip the veil, but her dad shook him off with the panic of someone who had a stinger an inch from his eye. “Get it out of here!” he bellowed.
“Crap,” Marsden grunted. “The zipper’s stuck.”
“What do you mean, it’s stuck?” her dad snapped.
Marsden still had a grip on the veil as her dad thrashed. “If you hold still,” Marsden said through gritted teeth, “maybe I can pinch it through the mesh.”
“Pinch it? You can’t pinch it!” Her dad tugged furiously at the zipper. The bee was agitated, pinging off the veil, finally settling on his cheek. “I need to get this thing off!”
Cassie watched in horror as the bee crept toward her father’s eye. “Daddy, hold still! He’ll get it.” She didn’t see how Marsden was going to pluck the bee from her father’s face through the veil, especially the way her dad was flailing around.
Marsden managed to get hold of him again, but her father pushed him off with surprising strength, stumbling toward the woods, swatting at his head.
“Don’t run!” Cassie shouted, rushing after him.
They would have to tackle her father to the ground at this rate.
She could just picture it—taking down an eighty-five-year-old whose heart rate had probably shot through the roof.
Never mind a bee sting, he’d be lucky if he came through this without breaking a hip or suffering a heart attack.
He made it a couple of yards before tripping. A soft spot on the ground, not even a hole, just a slight depression where the earth took a little dip. He went down with a howl of pain.
Marsden reached him in an instant, whipping out a pocketknife and expertly slicing open the veil. He yanked it off as her father sat dazed, breathing hard, his injured ankle splayed awkwardly in front of him. “Too late,” he mumbled.
The bee had gotten him in the soft tissue of his lower lid, and the eye had already begun to swell. Cassie shook out the veil, jumping back when the bee fell out.
“It’s dead,” Marsden said. “They only have one sting.”
She kneeled in front of her father to assess his face. “This one’s a doozy.” The eye was puffing up fast, and the rest of his skin had a pasty color she didn’t like.
“Are you dizzy?” she asked. “How do you feel?”
Her father glared at her. “How do you think I feel? I got stung on my eye, and my goddamn ankle hurts.”
Marsden helped him gently to his feet. “Let’s get some ice on the eye and that ankle too.” They made their way to the truck, her dad grudgingly allowing Marsden to support him.
“What about the bees?” Her father cast a look at the box, which had toppled onto its side.
“Can you right it?” Marsden asked her.
“Me?” Cassie’s mouth went dry.
“It’s not hard,” Marsden said. “Just take it by the edges and set it upright.”
“Easy for you to say,” she muttered. But there was no one else to do it, and she couldn’t leave the bees sideways like that.
Her heart skittered as she lifted the box, careful to keep her fingers away from the screen.
The bees were riled up, banging around unhappily.
She gently set the box upright and stepped back.
“They’ll be fine,” Marsden assured her dad. “It’s cool today.”
Once inside, they got her father settled in his wingback chair with his foot propped on the ottoman. Frozen peas on his eye and a package of assorted vegetables around the ankle.
“That’s going to need an X-ray,” Cassie said.
He glowered at her around the peas. “It’s not broken. Look.” He tried flexing his foot but winced in pain.
“We’re going for an X-ray. No argument.”
Her dad leaned back and closed his good eye. He looked utterly defeated.
She kissed the top of his head, which was matted with sweat.
“Why don’t you rest now, we can go later.
” She tucked the vegetables more tightly around his ankle.
Her dad had always been a big believer in frozen vegetables.
When she sprained her ankle playing dodgeball in sixth grade, he’d packed it with a pound of frozen Birds Eye, and they played Scrabble to take her mind off the pain.
There was something comforting about frozen vegetables, a vestige of childhood when her dad could still make everything right.
To this day, she kept a package of peas in the freezer.
Her dad opened his good eye and fixed it on Marsden. “Can you do it, move those bees?”
Marsden, who’d been standing near the door, stepped forward. “Of course. Don’t worry about a thing, I’ll take care of it right now.”
Her dad struggled up and the peas slid off his face. “I’m going to be laid up for a while with this, this—” He looked down at his ankle but couldn’t come up with the word. Marsden waited quietly. “This trouble,” her dad said finally. “Might need some help till I’m back on my feet.”
“I’d be happy to help,” Marsden said. “Maybe we can discuss things in a day or two, so I know what you’re thinking. I might have some ideas about those mites.”
Her dad nodded, exhausted. He picked up the peas and closed his eyes again.
Cassie knew what it cost him to ask for help, the man who’d always managed everything.
Who’d been opinionated and overbearing but believed in his heart he was doing right for his family.
He’d been reluctant to accept help even with her mom, allowing someone in only so he could go to work.
Insisting he knew best what she needed. It had to be humiliating to bump up against his own frailty.
“Thank you,” Cassie said as she walked Marsden outside. “I’m sure you didn’t bargain for all this.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t worse.” Now that the crisis was over, he seemed uncomfortable, rubbing his thighs and looking off toward the field. “I’ll just go move those bees.”
“Can I see how you do it?”
He looked surprised but pleased. “Sure, it’s pretty simple.”
Back at the field, the bees chafed in their box, ready to be released. She wasn’t sure why she’d asked to come along when it would have been easier to let him handle it.
“I don’t have a veil,” she remembered.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. Just keep back a way. They’ll start flying around when I open it up.” He squirted sugar water through the screen. “Occupies them a little, so they don’t all rush out at once.”
Controlled release. That seemed like a good plan, although Cassie couldn’t blame them for wanting to get out of that box. It had been three days.
“How’d you get interested in bees?” she asked.
“My grandfather kept bees. Had a farm up in Easton. He used to let us suit up and help once in a while. My brothers weren’t interested but I loved it; anytime we went to his place I wanted to see the bees.
He grew lavender, made the best honey I’ve ever tasted.
” He produced a hive tool and pried open the round wooden cover on top of the box.
“Why don’t you take out a couple of frames from the middle of that empty hive.
Just set them on the ground next to it.”
Cassie did as he said, stepping back as a handful of bees arrowed out of the open box. Marsden bumped the box twice on the ground and most of the remaining bees fell to the bottom.
“You just dropped them on their heads!”
He smiled. “They’re okay. Gives me a minute to get the queen out. Here, take a look.”
She leaned in warily as he removed a tiny wooden cage with a couple of bees clinging to the top. “What are those bees doing?”
“Her entourage. There’s always workers around the queen. They feed and groom her. They all have jobs.”
“Every bee has a job?”
“And what they do changes during their life cycle. They’re programmed that way.”
A miniature workforce where everyone knew their role. No midlife crisis or angst about finding a meaningful career. When they finished one job they moved on to the next. “They just get to it, don’t they?”
“They do.” With his hive tool he flicked out a cork stopper from one end of the cage. “They’ll eat this little piece of candy and free the queen in a few days. Gives everyone a chance to get used to the new surroundings and accept her.”
He stapled the queen’s box to a frame in the new hive, then in one quick motion shook the box of bees upside down over the empty hive.
Cassie laughed as the bees tumbled out like peppercorns. “What about the rest?” A good number had clung stubbornly to the box.
Marsden set the half empty box next to the hive. “They’ll find their way in. Some just take a little longer.” He glanced at her with a hint of amusement. “I thought you’d be over in the next county by now.”
Cassie realized with a start she was close enough to see bees crawling up the frames inside the hive. She took a step back.
“Want to close it up? The rest can get in through the front entrance.”
She swallowed. “Maybe not.”
He gave her a moment, then gently set the cover on top of the hive. “That’s all right, you got to see how it’s done. Like I said, pretty straightforward. When the box is empty you can toss it or save it, whatever you want.”
More bees were finding their way out of the box, some congregating at the hive’s entrance like neighbors visiting on the front porch. Others were airborne, getting the lay of the land.
A couple of stray bees tagged along as she walked Marsden to his truck, then banked off in another direction. She glanced back at the hives, the new one sharply white against the gunmetal sky.
It had been quite a day, and it wasn’t even lunch time yet.