Heath
One Year Later...
It’s October and the hives are going quiet, as usual.
I do the rounds like every year. Combine the two weak ones on the north bench, check the weight of the boxes with a hand under the back edge, mouse guards on, entrances reduced to a slot.
Sound before smoke. Most of them are rolling low and content and one of them's up sharp, so I'll open that one tomorrow when it's warm and find out what she's telling me.
Eleven days again this September. Sixteen, actually, which is the longest flow I've had since I've been up here, and forty-four jars, and they went in fifty-two minutes with her behind the table taking the money and telling people what they were about to taste.
Moss is thirteen and has opinions about the cold now.
He got through the winter on a folded quilt six inches off the stove, and in February she started carrying him up the porch steps at night without ever announcing that she'd taken the job on.
He's stopped following me down the slope.
He follows her instead, at his own speed, and lies in the sun at the end of the second row while she works, and I've caught myself standing at the top of the yard watching the pair of them more times than I'd admit to.
There's a pup coming in December, to learn from him while there's still time to learn. She named her in June, which is presumptuous of a dog that isn't born.
The light's doing the four o'clock thing. Sideways through the spruce, gold on the boxes, the sage-green one lit up.
I stand at the top of the yard and let it happen the way I've let it happen for twelve years.
From the cabin there's a smell coming out the open window — something with pepper in it, and burnt sugar, and underneath everything the dark note, the resin, the tree coming through the insect coming through the bee.
She's singing something. Badly. She doesn't know I can hear her from up here and I've never told her.
I built this place so I wouldn't need anybody. I was right about the place. I was wrong about the rest of it, and being wrong has turned out to be the best year of my life.
The gate at the bottom of the road is open, hooked back with wire, same as always.
Anaya’s book came out in September and was a huge success. And the dedication always stuck with me.
Four lines on an otherwise empty page.
For the beekeeper. Who taught me that the rarest thing you make is the thing you can't keep for yourself.
THE END