Hour of the Bees (20 page)

O
nce upon a time, there was a tree stump. An old man sat on the stump with more wrinkles in his face than there were cracks in the dirt. He looked at the bleak land around him and sipped his water. It tasted like the metal barrels that now held the water. He was always dry in the drought. Even his bones were dried out like jerky
.

He whittled a block of wood, eyes following the headlights that pulled in the driveway. A white car, with blue and red lights on the top: the police. Again
.

A sheriff stepped out of the car, and the old man took his time crossing the pasture to reach him
.

“Buenas noches,
Sergio,” the sheriff said. “How’s the night out here in no-man’s-land?”

“Hot.” Sergio waited. The sheriff always asked about the weather, and Sergio always answered with the bare truth. Weather was hotter than hell. Always
.

“Found something of yours trespassing in Sumpter’s Gulch.” The sheriff opened the back door of the car. “Come on out, Raúl. Time to face the music.”

A teenager in a flannel shirt climbed out and smoothed his black hair. “Thanks for the ride home, Sparky. Same time next week?”

The sheriff chomped his gum. “You pull this kind of stunt after next week, and I’ll be dropping your butt off at the jail, not home with Daddy. I know you have a birthday coming up. The big eighteen.”

The old man waited some more. This part was always the same, too. The sheriff coerced Raúl to confess the details of his misbehavior, then Raúl made some smart comment that stayed
just
on this side of appropriate. Finally, the sheriff peeled away, kicking dust all over the pasture
.

It didn’t matter what Raúl had been doing. For the old man, these nights blended together in one word: disappointment
.

“Help me with the sheep,” he said to his son, and tucked his whittling knife in his pocket
.

“Sparky’s got a real power trip going.” Raúl ran to keep up with the old man, who headed toward the barn. “We weren’t doing anything illegal.”

“Trespassing is illegal.” The old man felt like he had said these lines a hundred times; he wearied of them before they even escaped his mouth
.

“But we weren’t trespassing.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” his father asked, barely interested
.

“Me. Jacob. Neil.”

The usual suspects,
the old man thought. They were the last sort of boys he wanted his son hanging around
.

“To trespass,” Raúl said, “you have to set foot on private property. Technically, we didn’t set foot in the gulch.”

Sergio coughed
.

“Honest,” Raúl said. “We were in the tree the whole time
. Above
the gulch.” He smiled at his own cleverness. “Sparky’s trying to get us back for last week, when he thought we got into the school trash. We told him it was probably coyotes, but he doesn’t believe us.”

Sergio opened the barn doors, and sheep trudged out
.

“You’re not saying anything,” Raúl said
.

“What is there to say, Raúl?” Sergio sighed. “Every week you sneak away from the ranch. Every week a sheriff brings you home. You’re as predictable as the stars. Predictable as death.”

Raúl stared at the old man, at the mouth that always curved down, at the skin that was lumpy from bee stings that never healed properly, at the electric-blue eyes that looked straight through him. He hated this place, his dry, boring home. He hated his father, who looked so much older than his friends’ fathers. Or even their grandfathers
.

Sergio was right. Raúl ran off every chance he got
. Papá
never let him leave. Not for public school, not for a minimum-wage teenager job, not for a date. Raúl’s friends could only scrape up enough gas money to pick him up once or twice a week
.

He’d never been desperate enough to run all the way to civilization on foot, but tonight might be the night. He’d only been home five minutes, and he already couldn’t breathe
.

“The officer is right,” the old man said. “If you try these shenanigans after your birthday, you go right to jail. The world treats you like a man when you’re eighteen, even if you still act like a boy.”

“When does
Mamá
get home?” Raúl muttered
.

“Who’s to say?” the old man said
.

Raúl scoffed. “Then I’m going to Neil’s. Call me when she’s back.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” The old man’s face was a blank sheet of paper. “You’re grounded.”

“Grounded?” Raúl clenched and unclenched his jaw
.

“You insist on acting like a child, so I’ll treat you like a child.” The old man could barely look at his son — too much of his wife peered out through Raúl’s eyes
.

“You can’t ground me,” Raúl said. “I’ll be eighteen in a week.”

“Then you’re grounded for a week.”

Raúl kicked the barn wall. “You can’t trap me here forever.”

“Don’t talk to me about forever!” Sergio boomed. “You don’t know what forever means.”

“Oh, don’t even start with your weird tree stories.”

“Those stories are your heritage,” Sergio said. “Your roots, Raúl. You don’t remember. You’ve run away so many times, your memory’s lost in the desert.”

“They’re just stupid bedtime stories!” Raúl said. “I’m not a little kid anymore
, Papá
!”

He ran into the ranch house and threw his belongings into the suitcases
Mamá
had given him. If people’s yells had distinct flavors
, Papá
’s voice would taste like onions plucked before they were ripe, boiled in bitterness, and left in the refrigerator
.

Mamá
only yelled in excitement, never anger. Her yells would taste like stars and jelly beans, ones that wouldn’t stop jumping in your mouth. He adored his mom, even though she was always traveling
. Mamá
was warm like sunshine — no, she was the sun, and Raúl was happiest when he was orbiting around her
.

But he couldn’t stay. Not a day longer. He’d miss
Mamá
, but no one would understand his need to leave better than her
.

When the old man came in, he found his son latching his luggage, his drawers and closet empty. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere,” Raúl spat, “that isn’t here.”

Silence, and an angry stare-down between father and son
.

“What do you think is out there?” the old man asked. “You think life’s perfect everywhere else? You think it’s safe?”

Raúl knew what was out there. Books. Paintings. Girls. Fast cars. Birds other than eagles and vultures, animals other than sheep and rattlers. His shelves were lined with souvenirs from
Mamá
’s travels: Santiago, Madagascar, shiny New York City, snowy Alaska . . .

If he opened his mouth right now, horrible things would spill out, things he’d wanted to say to the old man for seventeen years. If he said those things, there would be a hole the size of the Grand Canyon between them
.

“Everything,” he said. “Everything is out there.”

“You’re grounded,” the old man reminded his son
.

“No! You can’t keep me here!” Raúl’s own yell tasted like rotten bell peppers and bleach. He pounded his fists into his suitcases, and he spoke the magic words: “You can’t even keep
Mamá
here for a full week! She’s too desperate to get away from here. To get away from
you
!” Those words had rolled around in his mind for years. He had been saving them up like coins, and they came out as bullets. Raúl didn’t care; he wanted them to hurt
.

Sergio quivered. He could see the rolling, raging lake inside Raúl. All that passion and fire should have reminded Sergio of Rosa, but instead, Sergio looked at his son, and it was like staring into a mirror
.

“You can’t keep Mom here, and you can’t keep me here, either.” Raúl grabbed all his bags at once, a bouquet of luggage
.

Sergio tried to stand in the way, but Raúl laughed and dodged him easily; the old man moved like he was a thousand years old
.

A door slammed, and Raúl ran into open, lonely desert, never looking back
.

Once upon a time, Sergio let the quiet wash around him — how still the house was and, without Raúl here, how much bigger
.

How much time passed? An hour, maybe? He refused to wear a watch, to measure time in that newfangled way
.

Then he heard the engine of a car. She was home
.

The old man walked outside, trying to set his face back to neutral. Rosa had no patience for his fights with Raúl. She thought her son should be free to come and go as he pleased. She had a selective memory, too. Had she forgotten about Carolina and the Father? Had she forgotten about death?

She grinned brighter than the white desert sun during solstice. “
Hola,
Sergio!” she cried, running to him. Her hugs still smelled like honey and vanilla. They held their faces close together
.

“Where are you coming from this time? Somewhere new, or somewhere old?” Sergio whispered
.

“Very old,” she said. “The oldest. The Cradle of Life in Ethiopia.”

This, too, was a routine conversation. Sergio didn’t care where she traveled to, not really, and Rosa had given up long ago trying to convince him that the world was fascinating. But it was routine, and such routines were difficult to break after marriages as long as theirs
.

“Are you wearing your bracelet?” he asked
.

She held out her wrist, the bracelet smartly tied. “You’re a worrywart,” she said. “Always fretting.”

Suddenly her smile turned into a gasp, and she bent over, arms holding her waist, as if something had snapped in her spine
.

“What is it?” Sergio grabbed her
.

Rosa closed her mouth, then rolled her eyes to the sky. She collapsed in the dirt, limbs buckling like a dropped marionette
.

“Rosa!” Sergio made her a pillow of his elbow and held her there
.

She stared at the sky as if she were on another planet. “Something’s . . . happening. Something’s wrong.” With obvious effort, she turned her head toward the house. “Where’s my Raúl?”

“Raúl is . . . gone.” Sergio hated that word. “I’ll get the truck right now and find him.”

“No.” Rosa coughed, and blood splattered the earth. She looked at her husband. “Stay with me.”

Fear. He never thought he’d see fear in those brave black eyes. He muttered prayers in Spanish under his breath while she coughed and coughed, the sounds of drowning echoing off the ridge
.

“So this is how it all ends,” Rosa whispered
.