The Boy and the Glass Hive

I texted my husband first. Rob works Saturday mornings at the Hartzler feed mill, running the scale house from five to noon, and he does not carry his phone on the floor. I sent it anyway. Gwen moved Dustin’s spot and told people his honey is grocery store syrup. I’m bringing the hive. Meet me at the house.

Then I walked to the bench outside the bank and sat beside my son, who had not moved.

“The hive,” he said. He had worked it out before I said it. He is quick, my boy. “Mom. The observation hive?”

“It’s in the garage.”

“They’d be cranky. It’s cold this early.”

“It’ll be sixty-eight by nine. You told me yourself the bees fly at fifty-five.” I watched his face. “Would you want to?”

He did not answer right away. He looked at the cracked asphalt behind the gazebo.

“I don’t want to prove anything to Aunt Gwen,” he said.

“Neither do I. I’m not doing this to her. I’m doing it for the next person who picks up a jar.” I took his hand, which he allowed because nobody was looking. “Anybody can say a thing about honey. Nobody can say it about a bee.”

He thought about that for a long moment, and then he nodded.

We carried the totes to the gazebo lot together. It was a quarter of eight, and the first trucks were backing in with their tailgates down. Arlo Voelker saw us from across the lot.

Arlo is sixty-eight years old and has sold sweet corn and brown eggs at that market since before it had a manager. He has a face like a hickory nut and a Farmall cap he has worn so long the bill has curled. He walked over without being asked, took one end of the card table, and helped me straighten the leg.

“Gwen moved you,” Arlo said.

“Yes.”

“Hm.” He looked at the corner by the bank, where Trudy was fluffing a candle display. Then he looked at Dustin. “That’s some of the best honey I have ever tasted, son. You know why? Because it tastes like clover and not like a bottle.”

“Thank you, Mr. Voelker.”

“I’m not being nice. I’m telling you what’s in the jar.” He tipped his cap back, took one more look at the corner by the bank, and went back to his corn.

I want to tell you about the bees, because the bees are the whole story, and because you cannot understand what happened that morning without understanding how my son came to have them.

Dustin’s grandfather was named Amos Rhodes. He was Rob’s father and Gwen’s father, and he kept six hives behind his barn on County Road 9 for forty years. He was a big, quiet man who smelled like smoke and wax. When Dustin was seven, Amos started taking him out there on Sunday afternoons, handing him the smoker and a pair of too-large gloves.

Amos passed four winters ago, in February. He left Rob the barn and left Dustin the bees. Four colonies were all that survived that winter, and Amos had written their numbers on the lids in grease pencil.

Dustin was nine years old. He sat in the kitchen the night we got the news, and he did not cry about his grandfather. He cried about the bees. He said they would not know who was coming.

Gwen was at that kitchen table too. She had her father’s hands. She put one of them on my son’s shoulder and said, “You will go out there and tell them yourself, honey. That’s the only way.”