The Honey Bus

We quickly adjusted to the outdoor sounds of Carmel Valley, no longer jumping in terror when one of the peacocks on the hilltops let out a squeal like a woman being throttled, and learned to differentiate between the ambulance and fire sirens coming from the volunteer fire station down the block. We much preferred outside to inside, which felt more like a library than a home with everyone talking in hushed voices and being careful not to slam cupboards or clang dishes that might disturb Mom.

My brother and I ran loose and were becoming slightly feral, wearing the same jeans so many days in a row that the denim became more brown than blue, and bathing only when we remembered, which didn’t seem to bother anyone because it was right and good to save water in drought-prone California. Which is why Matthew and I got in supremely big trouble when we got caught hiding behind the oak trees at the top of the driveway with the garden hose going full blast, dousing unsuspecting drivers with sudden rainstorms. It was bad enough we’d pulled a dangerous prank, but it was even worse that we wasted precious water with a looming drought. Grandpa was letting his fruit trees die, and he was worried that there wouldn’t be enough flowers for his bees to make honey. Neighbors were rescuing gasping steelhead trout from what was left of the Carmel River, transferring them into water tanks in the back beds of their pickups and driving the fish to the mouth of the river, closer to the ocean, to release them.

I tried arguing that we had crimped the hose in between cars, but it didn’t win any points. Granny ordered Grandpa to spank us anyway. But he did it in a way that was more symbolic than painful, making a big showy swing with his arm and slowing to a pat by the time his hand reached our bums. But we yowled from the shame of it all.

The real lesson we learned from the spanking was that our grandparents were exact opposites. She was the disciplinarian, and he was the softie. When they shared the newspaper in the morning, she fretted over the political news and he laughed at the comics. She worried about reputation and appearances; he wore tattered undershirts dribbled with coffee stains and never bothered to clean the black grime from under his fingernails. She was tidy; he never threw anything away, collecting his possessions into indoor and outdoor piles that grew taller and thicker by the year, which in a certain light matched the professional definition of hoarding. She detested the outdoors; he had to be coaxed inside.

When Granny met Grandpa during a square dance at the elementary school in Carmel Valley, she was a forty-year-old single mother living in the little red house with Mom, who was then nineteen. Barely a few months divorced, Granny was trying to socialize again, and Grandpa, three years younger, was perfectly satisfied being single. When Grandpa twirled Granny around, she noticed the strength in his upper body, the care he took to get the steps correct. It didn’t hurt that she’d read about him already in Big Sur’s monthly newsletter, The Roundup, which dubbed him Big Sur’s Handsome Bachelor.

Grandpa wasn’t looking for a mate; he was just fine with his bees, and he earned a steady income as a plumber, learning from friends how to make water flow to remote cabins where there was no centralized water system; digging wells and climbing the steep Santa Lucia Mountains to divert natural springs and creeks to homes below.

Ruth and Franklin were an odd couple but a good dancing pair, and began attending square dances together, even traveling to the faraway ones in Salinas and Sacramento. On their third date, at a square dance in South Lake Tahoe, Granny asked him what his intentions were, and when he tried to dodge her question, she literally told him to “fish or cut bait.” No one had ever confronted him so directly, and he was impressed. He agreed to marry her, and she convinced him right then and there to drive across the border into Nevada so they could tie the knot immediately, giving him no time to change his mind. They drove until they located a Carson City courthouse that offered around-the-clock weddings, summoned a janitor to serve as witness, and at nine that night became husband and wife. Mom was a little surprised and somewhat dubious of her sudden stepfather, but she didn’t have time to get to know Grandpa. Four months after he moved in, she transferred from Monterey Peninsula College to study sociology at California State University, Fresno.

My grandparents knew scant little about one another when they married, but over time they learned to love their differences. He liked a cold beer; she preferred Manhattans. He spoke only when he had something to say; she spoke in monologues. But they fit, mainly because she liked to lead and he, averse to confrontation, willingly followed. He had no interest in power, prestige or money, and handed his income to Granny so she could figure out the bills and the taxes. They parted every morning for their separate worlds—hers in the classroom, his in the Big Sur wilderness—and then came together every night at the dinner table where he ate in silence as she lectured on a never-ending list of topics. Grandpa admired her mind, although he also had an Olympian appetite and could fill his plate four times in one sitting. This made him an excellent listener.

It didn’t take long for Matthew and me to adjust to the rhythms of our grandparents’ schedules. Granny preferred her afternoon cocktail lying down. After a full day of teaching grammar and arithmetic to a roomful of trying fifth-graders, her first order of business was to mix a Manhattan and recline on the orange shag rug in the living room, her head propped on a pillow and a newspaper spread before her. By now she had taught me how to make her drink, and I liked the daily ritual of it almost as much as she did. I poured brown bourbon into a tall blue plastic tumbler until it was two fingers high, splashed in some sweet vermouth from the green glass bottle and added two ice cubes and a neon red maraschino cherry. I swirled it around with a dinner spoon and brought it to her.

“Grazie,” she said, reaching up from the floor.

With a loud licking of her fingers, she flipped the pages of the free Carmel Pinecone that she’d picked up at Jim’s Market and told anyone within earshot what she thought about local politics.

“Goddammit all to hell, I can’t believe they want to put streetlights in the village! Excuse my French.”

Her outbursts were not invitations to respond. She kept her head down and continued her conversation of one.

“What do we need lights for? We don’t even have any sidewalks. Damn Monterey County supervisors!” she said, taking another gulp from her tumbler. Outsider politicians were always trying to modernize unincorporated Carmel Valley Village and ruin the reason people moved out to the country in the first place, she said.

I kept listening as I climbed into Grandpa’s recliner and wiggled the handle on the side, trying to get the chair to go flat. I believed Granny was exceptionally smart, and knew things that regular people didn’t. My opinion came from two sources: Granny herself, who had told me several times that her 140 score on an IQ test proved she was a genius; and secondly that she could predict the weather. I didn’t know that forecasts were printed in the newspaper, so when I’d ask her what the weather was going to be like and she’d foresee sun or rain or frost, I thought she had some direct line to the universe.

She dropped phrases in Latin and Italian every once in a while, which sounded cosmopolitan to me. As the cocktail hours piled up, I was slowly starting to adopt her worldview, dividing people into those who were wrong and those who were right. I didn’t know what a Democrat or a Republican was, but I had heard the words so often that I knew we were on the Democrat team. Granny’s world was black and white, and therefore easy to follow. She was right, and anyone who disagreed was dim-witted and therefore deserved our pity.

“It’s tedious being smart,” she’d sigh, swirling the ice in her drink. “Waiting for everyone else to catch up to you. One day you’ll know what I’m talking about.”

Granny was now reading about the gasoline shortage and flipping the pages with more force. I went to the kitchen and helped myself to one of her cocktail cherries, and then slipped away to Mom’s bedroom. The door, as usual, was shut, and there was no sound from inside. Mom had been in bed so long that she was becoming shimmery around the edges like a memory. I felt my mother more than I saw her, when she curled her body around me at night.

“Mom?”

I tapped lightly on the bedroom door. Nothing. I knocked a little harder. Her voice sounded like it came from under the covers, thick and muffled.

“Go away.”

Her words pinched, and I winced reflexively. Mom still liked me; I knew that. I reminded myself that she just wasn’t herself right now. Granny rounded the corner and spotted me lingering where I wasn’t supposed to be. “Come with me,” she said, placing a hand in the small of my back and guiding me to the kitchen. She lifted a wicker basket of wet clothes off the counter, and I followed her outdoors to hang the laundry. She dropped the basket on the ground with a thump under the wire clothesline that Grandpa had strung up between two T’s made out of plumbing pipes.

“Hand me the clothes,” she ordered. “I can’t bend down on account of my bad back.”

I passed her one of Grandpa’s white cotton undershirts, encrusted with drips of plumber’s putty and worn so thin I could see through the fabric. She snapped it into the wind once, then pinned it with clothespins. Then she reached toward me for the next item. I pulled out her floor-length quilted nightgown, the one covered in pink roses.

She cleared her throat.

“You know your mother is going to need everybody’s help to get better,” she said, contemplating the clothing in her hands. I knew what was coming. I was in trouble for knocking on the bedroom door again.

“I just needed Morris.”

Granny paused and faced me.

“Aren’t you getting a little old for a teddy bear?”

Her words were so horrible that I momentarily forgot what I was doing and dropped my favorite green-checkered dress on the ground. I couldn’t sleep without Morris tucked in my arms. He was my only possession, the only thing left from Before.

“Dad gave him to me!”

Granny bent down to pick up my dress, and she grunted like it really hurt. It looked like she was stuck, but she put her hand to her back and rose slowly, puffing out her cheeks with the effort. She shook the dirt off my dress and continued pinning.

“That’s another thing,” she said. “I don’t want you and Matthew mentioning your father around her. It only upsets her.”

Dad was the only thing I wanted to talk about, but his name had not come up once since we landed in California. Everyone acted as if Dad didn’t exist, and I was beginning to wonder if Matthew even remembered him. He had even started to refer to Grandpa as Daddy. Each time, Grandpa gently reminded him that he was a grandpa, not a daddy. It was like our life in Rhode Island was a movie, and the movie had ended, and that was that. Over and forgotten. If everyone pretends your dad doesn’t exist, does he?

Granny was staring at me, waiting for me to agree to never say Dad’s name. It was pointless to argue, because I would be taking Dad’s side against hers and that would have repercussions I could only shudder to imagine. It’s true I wanted Mom to get better. I didn’t want to keep thinking of her as a sick person, someone with a weak heart and faraway eyes. I wanted her to braid my hair again, read Winnie-the-Pooh to me, take me with her to the grocery store. If that meant having silent conversations about Dad in my head, then that’s what I would do. But before I submitted to Granny’s ultimatum, I had to ask a question.

“When’s he coming?”

Granny reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She shook one out, lit it and relaxed her shoulders with the first exhale. She stared at the honey bus as if searching it for my answer.

“Your father is not a very good man,” she said, keeping the back of her head to me. Then she indicated to me to hand her the next thing in the basket. Conversation over.

I put my tongue between my teeth to keep from calling Granny a liar. How dare she pick sides, as if she could just snip Dad out of my life with a swipe of her scissors? I had bat-ears; I knew that she talked about Dad with Mom sometimes, when their whispers floated out the gap at the bottom of the closed bedroom door. It wasn’t right that they could talk about him but I couldn’t—he was my father after all. I wasn’t dumb; I’d figured out that Mom and Dad were having a fight and this wasn’t a “visit” to California, but that didn’t make my dad bad and my mom good. He was my dad, and he was coming back. Granny had everything all wrong.

The sun was low in the sky, and the honey bus looked stage-lit with orange and yellow bulbs. Through the windows I could make out the shapes of three men crowded inside with Grandpa, passing honeycomb frames between them and shouting over the rat-a-tat of the machines inside.

I crept forward to get a closer look. The men had taken off their shirts in the heat and tied them to the overhead handrail. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but could tell they were swapping jokes, slapping one another on the back and doubling over with laughter. The men had an action-figure quality to them, their barrel chests rippling and shining with sweat as they hefted hive boxes and stacked jars of honey into towering pyramids. I studied their every move, even how their Adam’s apples bobbed with each swig of beer, and I silently willed them to wave me inside with a swing of their Popeye arms. These were the Big Sur friends Grandpa grew up with, the ones who had taught him to rope cattle and dive with a snorkel for the iridescent abalone shells that I had found in the backyard. These were big men with big hands who showed Grandpa how to build log cabins from redwood trees, how to hunt wild boar, or clear landslides off the coast highway with heavy equipment. They were living Paul Bunyans, the Big Sur mountain men who fended for themselves in the wild.

I patted down the tall weeds and made a little burrow for myself where I could sit and watch them work. They used thick, heavy knives blackened with burnt sugars to gently slice open wax-sealed honeycomb, exposing the orange honey underneath. They lowered honeycomb frames into the massive spinner, and cranked a handle protruding above it from left to right, using two hands and all their body weight to shift its position. I saw one of the men yank on a pull-cord several times and heard the lawn-mower motor sputter to life. The flywheel started to rotate and whine, and as it picked up speed, the bus began to rock slightly from side to side. The pump kicked in and forced the honey from the bottom of the extractor, up through the overhead pipes, and directed it to cascade in two streams into the holding tanks. It was nothing short of miraculous; like striking gold.

I stayed in my spot until the sun slipped behind the ridgeline and the crickets came out to sing. The men flicked on the construction lights in the bus and hung them from the handrails so they could keep working into the night.

I was drawn to the bus like a moth to flame, by an irrepressible longing that I felt as a physical ache, a gnawing in my belly to disappear into the secluded protection of an enclosed space like a submarine, or a bus. The honey bus looked like it was warm inside, and safe. I wanted the men to invite me to join their secret club, and to teach me how to make something beautiful with my hands. My pulse sped up when I watched them work together in a harmony of familiar dance movements, passing frames of dripping honeycomb between them and taking turns capturing the honey into glass jars as it flowed out of the spouts. I could tell the bus made them happy, and I believed it could do the same for me.

I was struck by a certainty, from some deep place inside myself, that something important was waiting for me in the bus, like the answer to a question that I hadn’t yet asked.

All I had to do was get inside.

3

The Secret Language of Bees

1975—Late Spring

I didn’t limit my snooping to the outdoors. I brazenly opened drawers, rifled through closets, and took a keen interest in what Granny and Grandpa had tucked away inside the house. Because my grandparents were old people, their stuff was old, too, and I enjoyed hunting for rare artifacts forgotten in the far corners of their history. I found arrowheads that Grandpa had unearthed while digging pipelines in Big Sur, and inside the cedar chest I dusted off a stack of LIFE magazines with JFK, Elvis, and the first astronauts on the covers. The kitchen cupboards held a boneyard of cooking gadgets that Granny had tried once and then deemed ridiculous.

One morning I dug out an Osterizer blender from deep in the back of the cabinet under the sink. I wedged the glass pitcher onto the base, put the lid on, pressed one of the buttons and it whined to life. For a bored girl with few toys, I suddenly possessed this most miraculous machine and a whole kitchen packed with mystifying things pickled in mason jars. I opened the pantry and selected a jar containing a bright green Jell-O-looking substance, unscrewed the lid and sniffed: mint jelly. That could taste good—I liked mint gum, as well as jelly on toast—so I scooped it into the blender and added milk. Figuring I needed more than two things to make a smoothie, I did another quick scan of the kitchen until my eyes rested on the cereal boxes lined up on top of the fridge. I dragged the stool over and pulled down the corn flakes, thinking it would make my drink thicker. I pressed the button for the highest speed and whirred it into a concoction resembling runny, lumpy toothpaste, which I poured into a ceramic mug and brought to Grandpa, who was at the dining room table watching the birds peck at seed he’d sprinkled on the deck railing.

Grandpa would eat anything. He chewed chicken gizzards, said cow tongue was so delicious it put hair on his chest, and devoured artichoke leaves whole. He’d even developed a technique to pull every kernel clean off an ear of corn, using only his lower teeth and running the cob back and forth before his mouth like the carriage return on a typewriter. I presented him with my milkshake. He took a swig and then needed a few seconds to come up with an adjective.

“Refreshing!” he said, chasing it down with coffee. “What’s it called?”

“Mintshake,” I said.

He nodded thoughtfully and strummed his fingers on the table, like a gourmand considering a tasting note.

“Let’s share it,” he said, sliding the cup back toward me.

It was a dare, all right. I could tell Grandpa was trying to keep a straight face as I reached for it, but just as I was about to take a drink, a low hum distracted us from our standoff. Grandpa reflexively turned toward the sound and tracked something flying in the air. I followed his gaze until I saw what he did—a honeybee hovering over the dining room table. It was suspended in the air with its legs dangling beneath its body, keeping itself in place by beating its wings so fast they became invisible. I set the cup down and leaned back in slow motion. The bee, watching my every move, began to slowly come toward me, flying in slow arcs left and right, inching closer with each swing.

My muscles tensed, and I willed the bee to please, please, go take a hike. But it was attracted to the sugary smell inside my cup, and determined to have a taste. When it was about to land on the rim, I swatted at it.

The bee emitted a shrill zzztttt! in response, and zoomed in an anxious circle above our heads.

Grandpa jumped out of his chair and grabbed my forearm so tightly I could feel him pressing bone. I startled, frightened by the sudden aggressiveness of his touch. He’d never gotten mad at me before; he always fake-spanked Matthew and me when Granny forced him to punish us for misbehaving. He leaned toward me until we were nearly touching noses and locked eyes. His words were deliberate and forceful, each one like the clap of a church bell.

“You. Must. Never. Hurt. Bees.” He didn’t look away until he was certain his words had landed in my brain. I must have done something truly awful for Grandpa to scold me, but I was confused. Bees stung people. They were pests, like mosquitos. Who cares if I smashed one? Wouldn’t I be doing the right thing by protecting myself?

“It was going to sting me!” I protested.

Grandpa’s eyebrows sprang up in disbelief. “Why do you say that?”

The bee was now slamming itself into the window trying to fly away. Its buzz rose to a shriek. I thought perhaps we should be having this conversation in a different room, but Grandpa was unperturbed by the sight of a stinging insect going berserk. I kept one eye on the frenzied bee as I tried to answer Grandpa’s question.

“Because bees always sting.”

“Come here,” Grandpa said.

I followed him into the kitchen, where he searched the cupboards until he found an empty honey jar.

“Go get a piece of paper,” he said.

I was eager to do anything to get back on his good side. I raced to Granny’s desk and pulled out a piece of her fancy stationery, and practically bowed as I offered it to him.

“Listen,” he said, cupping his ear and cocking his head toward the buzz. “It’s high-pitched,” Grandpa said. “It’s in distress. Do you see it?”

I followed the sound until I saw the bee gliding in a wobbly circle around the room, looking for a way out, until it rested on the dining room window facing the deck.

“There!” I pointed.

Grandpa crept softly toward it, hiding the jar behind his back. When he was directly behind the bee, he reached up and imprisoned it in one swift motion. With his free hand, he slipped the paper between the window and the mouth of the jar, forming a temporary lid. He stepped away, holding the trap in his hands, and the bee crawled up the glass, tapping the inside of the jar with its antennae.

“Okay, come get the door for me,” he said.

We stepped outside together, and instead of releasing the bee, Grandpa sat on the back step and patted the space next to him, signaling me to sit near.

“Hold out your arm.”

He tilted the jar as if he was going to release the bee onto my forearm. I jerked my hand back.

“It’s going to sting me!” I wailed.

He sighed like he was summoning all his patience, and then turned to me again.

“Bees won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt them.”

Most of my information about bees came from cartoons in which bees always traveled in bloodthirsty swarms terrorizing all manner of people, coyotes, pigs and rabbits. I mentioned this to Grandpa.

“That’s make-believe,” he said. “Honeybees don’t go on the attack. They will only sting to defend their home. They know that if they sting they will die, so they’ll give you plenty of warnings first.”

Grandpa reached for my arm again, but I tucked it behind my back, still uncertain. The bee was now incensed, banging into the walls of its glass prison. Grandpa set the jar down and spoke to me slowly and carefully.

“Bees can talk, but not with words. You need to watch how they behave to understand their language. For example,” he said, lifting a finger to numerate his points. “If you open a hive and hear a soft chewing sound, that means the bees are busy and happy. If you hear a roar, that means they are upset about something.”

I watched the bee get more frantic by the second.

“Two,” he said, holding up a second finger. “Bees will ask you to back away from the hive by head-butting you. It’s a polite warning to step away so they don’t have to sting you.”

I was starting to understand that Grandpa might know bees in a different way than everybody else. He spent every day with them, so he probably could tell what they were thinking. But that didn’t mean that I wanted a bee to crawl on me. I trusted Grandpa wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, but I couldn’t say the same for the trapped bee, who by the looks of things was now totally, royally, pissed. He reached for the jar again and brought it over to me. I shook my head no.

“You mustn’t be afraid around bees,” he said. “They can sense fear, and it will make them scared, too. But if you are calm, they will stay calm.”

“I’m still scared,” I whispered.

“The bee is more frightened of you,” he said. “Can you imagine how scary it is to be this small in a world that is so big?”

He was right, I wouldn’t want to change places with a bee. A little bit of my trepidation melted knowing the bee was also scared. I knew I wouldn’t hurt it, but the bee couldn’t know that for sure. I stretched my arm out again, ever so gently.

“You ready?”

I nodded as I watched the bee fall onto its back inside the jar, its six legs scrabbling to find footing.

“Bees are sensitive, so no sudden movements, and no loud noises, okay? You must always move slowly and quietly around bees to make them feel safe.”

I promised to hold still, an easy pact because I was too terrified to move. I tried to summon calming thoughts, but it was impossible to do on command. Grandpa tapped the jar on the underside of my wrist, and the bee tumbled out. It stood still as I held my breath, then it took a few tentative steps.

“Tickles,” I whispered. This close, I could see that a honeybee’s body was a miracle of miniature interlocking parts, like the insides of a watch. Its antennae, two L-shaped sticks that swiveled in sockets on its forehead between its eyes, searched the air and tapped on my skin, reminding me of a person without sight using a cane to get a mental picture of a place.

“What’s it doing?”

“Checking you out,” Grandpa said. “A bee’s antennae can smell, feel and taste.”

Imagine that. Having a body part that is a nose, fingertip and tongue together. As the bee got used to me, I got used to it. Grandpa was right. This small insect was not my enemy. I carefully lifted my arm until I could see into its eyes, shaped like two glossy black commas on the side of its head. Fear gave way to fascination as I studied how it was put together, so small, so perfect.

Veins crisscrossed its shimmering wings. It was furry, and its abdomen expanded and contracted with each breath. I looked closer at the stripes, and noticed that the orange bands had small hairs and the black ones were slick. The bee’s legs tapered to tiny hooks, and it was now using its front two pair to stroke its antennae. Cleaning or scratching them, I guessed.

“What do you think?” Grandpa asked.

“Can I keep it?”

“’Fraid not. It will die of loneliness if you separate it from its hive.”

I was beginning to understand that bees have emotions, like people, and like people they live in families where they feel safe and loved. They will lose their spirit if they don’t have the security of their hive mates. I was about to ask if we should return this bee to its hive when it parted its mandibles and unfurled a long red tongue.

“It’s going to bite me!” I shrieked.

“Shhhh, hold still,” Grandpa whispered. The bee tasted my arm tentatively, realized that I was not a flower and recoiled its tongue. The bee put its hind end in the air and fanned its wings so rapidly that I could feel a vibration on my skin. Then it lifted off and was gone.

Grandpa stood, reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“Meredith, never kill something unless you are going to eat it.”

I gave him my word.

That night when I got under the sheets, Mom was already snoring. I cleared my throat hoping that would wake her, and when that didn’t work, I jiggled the bed, just a little bit.

“Hmmmm?”

“Hey, Mom.”

She grunted and turned toward me with eyes closed. “What?”

“Did you know bees die after they sting?”

“Shhhh. You’ll wake your brother.”

I lowered my voice and whispered.

“Their guts come out with the stinger.”

“That’s nice.”

Mom rolled me away from her, then tucked her knees under mine and drew me to her stomach. I was about to brag about picking up a bee with my bare hands, but I felt her legs twitch and realized that she had fallen back asleep.

I lay there, my mind swimming with new questions about bees. Grandpa had just cracked open a portal to a secret microcosmos in our backyard, and now that I knew bees lived in families, I wanted to know everything about them. Which bees are the parents? How many bees in one family? How do they remember which hive they live in? What does it look like inside a beehive? Do they sleep at night? How do they make honey in there?

Grandpa had proven to me that I could get close to a honeybee without getting stung. I was coming around to the opinion that fearsome animals and insects rarely live up to the reputations foisted on them by circuses and monster movies. Grandpa was teaching Matthew and me that all creatures were sacred, with their own inner emotional lives. As part of our education, after dinner each night we climbed into the recliner with Grandpa to watch his favorite nature shows. I’d been astonished to watch male lions play with their cubs, aquarium octopuses reach from the water to embrace their human handlers, or elephants dig stairs leading out of a deep mudhole so a drowning baby could clamber to safety. So it made me wonder, what if bees were compassionate like that, and what if I could teach myself how to see it? As a girl needing to know that love existed naturally all around her, it was thrilling to realize that I didn’t have to wait for Wild Kingdom or Jacques Cousteau to be reassured. The mysteries of the animal kingdom were within my reach, anytime I wanted. That night when I went to bed, the confines of our small room expanded ever so slightly. I had found one good thing—a reason how California might make me happy.