Fair and Tender Ladies (36 page)

Well, when is he coming? I asked. I put Maudy back down on the floor where she always goes straight for the dog, it is real sweet how he acts with her.

May be tomorry, Oakley said. Or it may be next week. He'll come up here whenever he catches us a hiveful of bees, he said.

Wait a minute, Bill said. Don't he do anything else? Don't he have to farm?

Nope, said Oakley. He goes around these mountains place to place, and don't stay nowhere long. There's always somebody needing bees, or needing to split a hive.

What's that? asked Bill.

You'll see soon enough, Oakley said. Have you all got any more of that chicken? he asked me, and I got him some. Oakley
is
sweet. What is going to happen is all my fault, but I can't help it. I can't be no better. I can't do no different, either, I swear it.

Is this bee man married?
I asked all of a sudden to my surprise, and Oakley busts out laughing.
Hell no he aint married,
he says.
He roams these hills like a coonhound, what I hear. I hear that he has daddied him some babies here and there though.
Oakley winked at me. I could tell what he had on his mind, and we did it later of course, after Martha and me had done up all the dishes and bathed the babies and got the other kids to bed. Oakley sat on the breezeway smoking his pipe and staring out at the rural electrification, all this time. As soon as I sat down he reached for me but I jumped like a shot when he touched me.
What ails you, Ivy?
he says.

And I say,
Nothing.

For it is not worth telling. It is not worth it to try to say how I want to scream all the time or when I look out at the mountains I want to reach out and rip them all away leaving only the flat hard sudden sky. That is crazy. So I didn't say any of this. We went to bed and did it, and the next day, Honey Breeding came.

I was down in the springhouse.

Now I have to explain this. When you're down in the springhouse, your eyes get set to the gloom. Oakley built this little house right down in the creek two years back and cut out the steps going down here where it's so steep.

And I love it here! Honeysuckle vines have grown up all over the bushes along the path, and wild white roses all down the steps. Sometimes I go down there just to catch my breath. It is like another world. Well, we had been looking for the bee man to come all day, but he had not, so we had gone on about our business and it had got to be nearabout evening again and Oakley had gone off to help his daddy with a load of bricks and I had gone down in the springhouse to take some butter. I had little LuIda with me, she loves the creek. She always paddles her hands in the water while I do whatever I need to. It's hard to get her to start back. So I had ahold of LuIda's hand and we were climbing the steep stone steps. The air down there is cool and green, it has to come down through so many leaves. The steps are cold, wet. I always go down them barefooted, it feels so good.

He stood at the top of the steps, outlined against the sun.

Mam?
he said it again. He has a soft low pretty voice that sounds like it's right in your ear even when it's not.

What?
I said, putting my hand up to my eyes to try to see better. But the sun was a blaze behind his head, and I could not. The sun shot out in rays behind his head. LuIda started crying. She grabbed my knees and held on tight, and then I couldn't walk either.

What is it?
I said.

Where is your beegums, mam?
he said most polite.
I've got you a swarm up here in a sack.

Just a minute,
I said.

He stood right there while I made my way, pulling LuIda who cried and cried. He had somehow spooked her. I was out of breath when we got to the top.

You must be Honey Breeding,
I said.
My husband's been looking for you.

He might be sorry he found me.
Honey Breeding was looking hard at me. Now I was right at the top of the steps, but he never moved. He stood in my way with his arms folded across his chest.

I came up on a level with him. He is not a big man, Silvaney, not near as big as Oakley. He is skinny, wirey, with pale thick curly gold hair on his head and thick gold eyebrows that nearabout grow together, and hair all over him like spun gold on his folded forearms. I thought about Rapunzel spinning gold. I thought about the Brownies in the McGuffey Reader. For Honey Breeding did not seem quite real. He seemed more like a woods creature fetched up somehow from the forest, created out of fancy, on a whim. Honey Breeding seemed like a man that I had made up in the cool dark springhouse, like a man I had immaginned until he came true. He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, grinning at me. His hair held all the sun. His teeth were real white. Animal teeth. I remembered Oakley saying,
A bee man don't have no home.
His eyes were pale blue. He was grinning at me. I could not breathe.

Let me pass,
I said, but I couldn't help smiling.

Why yes mam,
Honey Breeding said like a gentleman.

LuIda chose this very moment to cry even harder, clinging onto my legs. Children—sometimes it's hard to figure what gets into them. Mostly, LuIda is real even tempered.

Honey Breeding stood back a little, and bowed like a man in a play.

Now let me tell you what happened.

When I passed close by him, it was like a current jumped from him to me—or me to him and back, maybe. I don't know. Or it was like we both had it in us, and it just leaped out when we met, out of both of us—it arched between us through the leafy air. Oh lord, I think I thought. LuIda pulled on my legs then and I slipped on the rocks and nearly fell. Oakley and the boys carried all these rocks, for the steps and the springhouse.

Honey Breeding caught my elbow.
Careful now,
he said. His voice ran all through me like a song.

And then I was up on hard level ground again, and he stood staring. LuIda cried. I stared back, I lost myself down in his eyes, I don't believe I have ever seen eyes so light in a full grown man. They are like cateyes. Granny used to have a cat with eyes like that.

The beegums are in the orchard back of the house,
I said finally. But it didn't matter what I said.

All right,
I think he said. He was looking at me. LuIda was crying. I picked her up all of a sudden and ran for the house, I could hear him laughing behind me, a nice laugh, a big laugh, like he had all the time in the world. I ran in the house and tore around doing first one thing and then another.

What has got into you?
Martha asked me. Even Martha noticed. But I couldn't say.

Then directly he came by the house carrying his sack, and went up in the orchard among the blossoms.
It is the best time in the world to start a beegum,
Oakley had said.
Early summer.
The orchard was a sea of pale pink flowers, and Honey Breeding walked right through them like he owned it, swinging his sack. He was whistling. He could whistle like a bird!

That is the bee man,
I told Martha. We watched him out the back door.

Honey Breeding laid down his sack in the high grass next to the beegums. Then he looked all around the orchard. He looked up at the house and nodded, as if he just
knew
we were watching him! This made me mad as fire. He took the head off one of the beegums and set it down on the ground. Then he untied the neck of his sack and reached down in there and came up with a big piece of dripping honeycomb and placed it down in the beegum, on those cross sticks. Then he put the head back on the beegum and licked his fingers. By then, some bees had got out of the sack. They were flying circles around and around his head. But Honey Breeding didn't wear a hat. He didn't have no gloves. He licked his hands again and looked back at the house, somehow he just
knew
we were watching. Then he grabbled around down in the bag for a little bit and came up with the Queen I reckon, or leastways with some bees he set right in the hole. He let the other ones go. They went buzzing around and around the beegum, around Honey Breeding. He grinned up the hill at us—at the house, at the window. He waved. He knew I was in there watching.

I'll be back,
he called.
You tell him. I'll be back.

By the next morning, those bees had all crawled in the beegum hive and settled. Oakley was tickled to death. But Danny Ray got stung real bad, three places, because he went down there when they were still swarming. We told him not to but he went anyway. I put soda on his bee stings, then tobacco, to take the fire out.

Did he say when he was coming back?
Oakley asked, and I said,
No. But he said he would. He just said he'd be here,
I said.

And as for me, I was in a fever. First I'd have a cold sweat, and then I'd have a hot flash. I got to thinking,
This must be the change of life. It must be.
And I went about my days like I was walking through a dream, like the days were all happening under water, and I was swimming through them. It reminded me of when Daddy used to take us swimming down in the Levisa River, Silvaney, you remember. You could open your eyes under water and see the big fish. I thought about getting Oakley to take me and the kids down there like we used to, but it was too early in the year I decided, and besides—I was afraid I'd miss him.

I didn't even leave the house, for fear I'd miss him.

Which I did not.

It was the following Sunday that he came. Oakley had gone off to church taking Bill and Danny Ray with him. I myself had got out of going because I had to stay home and cook. All of Oakley's folks were coming up Sugar Fork for dinner after church, so I was cooking a ham and Martha was devilling eggs. By then it was flat out summer, getting hot. I was sitting out in the breezeway wearing nought but a shift, I had ironed my dress to put on when it got closer to the time for church to let out, and why not? Nobody up here but women and children. I sat in the breezeway rocking in my shift. I leaned back and closed my eyes. I was real tired. I'd been up since daylight, making potato salad.

Thinking about me?
he said.

It was like he took shape in my mind. I sat bolt upright.

Lord, no,
I said.
What are you doing over here today?
At first I was mad as could be, but then I found I was grinning at him. He stood there real easy, smiling, with one hand on the rail.

Come on and go with me this time,
he said.
It ain't far.

All right,
I said. I stood up and hollered to Martha that I would be back directly, and left. Just like that. As easy as pie. I walked off down the path in my shift without thinking a thing about it, following Honey Breeding.

It was full June, the prettiest day.

How are you called?
he said once, and I said,
Ivy.

Well Ivy, he said,
We are going right down here by the creek, I seen some bees last time as I was leaving. You all are lucky,
he said.
This time it is going to be real easy.

We followed close by Sugar Fork, near where Granny and me had sat, and then when the path started down the holler and the creek went on, we went along by the creek. We went with it until it widened out into a little pool. Now I guess this pool has been here all along, but I can't swear it. It seems to me like I would know any pool along this creek, but I'll swear, I had never seen this one before.

Sit down,
Honey said, pointing at a big flat rock in the sun by the pool, and I did.

Take your hair down,
he said next, and I reached up and pulled out the pins. I have been wanting to cut my hair but Oakley won't have it, he says it's against his religion for a woman to cut her hair. Sometimes I sneak and trim it, but not so as he can tell. Anyway it is real long now and for the first time, that day on the rock, I was glad. I sat on the big warm rock with my hair falling all down around my shoulders. He had not looked at me yet. He had him a tub, a sack, some other things. The light came up from the creek and dazzled in my eyes, I could not see. It was dead on noon.

Bees love water,
Honey said.

He took some corncobs soaked in honey out of the tub and put them on another rock, and then came and sat down next to me. We were waiting. While we waited, he fooled with my hair and my neck. I could not breathe. He never kissed me. But the funny thing is, it was like I had known him. For ever, for always, years and years and years.

We were old hat, him and me.

First one bee came to light on the corncob, then another, then another, more, until the corncobs were thick with bees, bees lighting, flying up, flying down, buzzing, buzzing. It made me dizzy.

Wait now,
Honey said. He got up and they scattered, buzzing like crazy, and he followed them into the woods, not too far. I could hear him in the underbrush. Then I didn't hear him, and I figured he had found the bee tree. And sure enough, out he came after a while, with his swarming sack and the bees all around his head.

Stay back,
he said.
Let me go first.

I stood up like I was still in a dream. I had to shake my head to clear it. The sun off the water was blinding. I couldn't tell if I had been there for minutes or hours. I didn't care. I knew that Oakley's whole family was coming for Sunday dinner but I didn't care, I couldn't think about it. I followed him back up the hill, not thinking about it, not caring, I followed him past the house where Martha stood in the breezeway holding Maudy, staring out at us. What was she thinking? What does she know? Martha's eyes are big and dark, like her mother's. Maudy waved to us, she loves to wave. I followed Honey Breeding around the side of the house and LuIda came down off the porch and followed us too, through the orchard, dragging her blanket that she carries everyplace. I believe it used to be Beulah's. The orchard smelled so sweet.
You stay back,
he said. We sat in the grass and I leaned back on my elbows and looked up. It was like a ceiling of swaying frothy pink blooms, like a moving ocean of foam. LuIda lay curled up on her blanket. She sang a little song. I watched while Honey settled the second swarm in the second hive. He worked fast, yet he never seemed to hurry. And he never wasted a move, that I could see. Above us was pink flowers, blue sky, sun. It was getting real hot, even there in the orchard. Maybe I slept for a minute. It was like I was in a dream.