The Hive Beside His Garden

He did not turn around. He kept his eyes on that hive like it was the only thing he could stand to look at.

“The business is going under,” he said.

Lauren put her hand on his arm. He flinched and then let it stay.

“Hanson Trucking, out of Iowa Falls. They were half my work. Eleven trucks. I kept them running for six years.” He swallowed. “They folded in February. Owed me nineteen thousand dollars in repair bills. I’m never seeing a dime of it.”

“Joel,” Lauren said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I thought I could fix it before you had to know.” He laughed, but it was not a laugh. “That was the plan.”

He told it all then, standing at that fence. The county was taking bids on a maintenance contract for its road graders and plow trucks, steady work for three years. But you had to have a heated bay big enough to pull a grader into, and you had to have it up by October.

The rented bay in town was too small. So he had put eight thousand dollars down on a steel building kit, money they did not really have, and the delivery date was set for the end of June.

“Concrete crew had one slot,” he said. “Rain pushed the first Monday back two weeks, to this one. If I missed it, they couldn’t pour again until September, and then there’s no building by October, and then there’s no bid.” He looked at me finally. “That shop was my last bet. If I don’t get that county work, I’m done by Christmas.”

“So you ran over my bees,” I said. I said it quietly. I was not trying to hurt him. I just needed to hear him hear it.

“I ran over your bees.” He nodded slowly. “I knew they were there. I told myself you’d moved them. I told myself a lot of things. Mostly I was scared, and I was too proud to ask anybody for a week.”

He looked down at his hands on the fence. “Then I saw Mindy on her bike, coming home from the creek. She wouldn’t talk to me at supper. She hasn’t really talked to me since.”

Mindy had been standing very still beside me in my too-big veil. Now she walked over to the fence, slipped through the gap by the gate post, and stood in front of her dad.

She took the veil off her own head and reached up and put it on his. The brim sat crooked on his forehead. He did not move.

“You have to see the queen,” she said. “Aunt Gretchen showed me. You have to see her, Dad.”

Joel looked at me over her head. I could see his eyes through the mesh, and they were wet.

“It’s a new box,” I said. “The queen’s still in her cage. But I can show you the brood.”

I opened the lid, lifted the inner cover and drew out a frame of capped brood, holding it in the sun where he could see. Mindy stood next to him, explaining. Eggs. Larvae. Capped cells. The nurse bees.