Hour of the Bees Read online

  Contents

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  The Beginning

  Acknowledgments

  Something flies too close to my ear. For a moment, its buzz is the only noise in my world.

  “Hey,” I say, out of reflex, and swish my ponytail like it’s a weapon.

  “What?” Dad turns off the radio. The quiet brings attention to how bumpy the highway is.

  The bug zooms out the truck window, its jeweled body glittering black and gold in the sunlight. A bee. “Nothing,” I say, contemplating the grim view. It’s been mile after mile of “nothing” for more than an hour. Up ahead, a line of mesas comes into view, flat as tabletops and crumbling along the edges, rock-cakes going stale, eternally baking. I snap a picture with my phone, but on the screen the mesas blur into red smears beneath an empty sky.

  “Are you sure we didn’t miss a turn? Maybe we’re in Mexico.”

  Dad snorts. “Trust me. I’d rather go to Mexico.” He switches his twangy rock music back on and checks his rearview mirror. My mom and one-year-old brother, Lu, follow in the minivan, the only other vehicle on the road.

  My legs ache from being cramped in the truck for almost three hours. “How much longer?” I groan.

  “Excited, are we?” Dad says.

  No. Definitely not excited. Instead of a summer filled with pool parties and barbecues, I’ll be spending my days on a dusty sheep ranch with a grandfather whom I’ve never met. At least Mom and Dad are dreading it, too. I’ll have some company in my misery.

  We turn off the highway and rattle down a long dirt road for about ten minutes. As we curve around the base of a mesa, Dad lets out a sigh. “There it is. Home sweet home.”

  Across the rose-colored land, a rundown rambler sits in a browned pasture, its roof sagging, the porch beams warped with age. The entire property is tucked between the buttes — out of sight, out of mind. Forgotten by civilization. Grandpa Serge’s two-hundred-acre sheep ranch, the place where Dad grew up.

  My dad may have grown up here, but he also left the first chance he got. I can see why.

  Dad pulls into the gravel driveway, right next to the house, and kills the engine. “Now, Carol, don’t be nervous.”

  “I’m not,” I lie, and take a wobbly breath.

  I squint until my eyes focus through the bright white desert sun. The ranch is literally in the middle of nowhere. No hint of the highway or of the rest of New Mexico; the ranch is its own little city, the sheep its woolly citizens.

  Dad told me this was still a working sheep ranch, but other ranches just outside of Albuquerque have hundreds of sheep. Here I count only a dozen sheep, moping in the massive pasture — if you can even call it a pasture. The grass was once green, I’m pretty sure, but is now the color of swamp water, and crunchy. Hasn’t Grandpa ever heard of a sprinkler?

  I swallow my disappointment. I’ve been trying to think of the ranch as a summer getaway, almost a vacation, only a few hours from my room, my school, my friends. But it might as well be on Mars.

  Home sweet home, indeed.

  Dad holds out a wrinkled and worn pamphlet titled “The Seville’s Guide to Dementia for Caregivers.” How many times has he made me read this? How many times have we already had this conversation?

  “Let’s go over it one last time,” he says. “Our number-one goal this summer is …”

  “… not to upset Grandpa,” I recite.

  “No confusing sentences, no complicated questions, no loud noises, no word puzzles,” Dad lists.

  No talking about Grandma Rosa, I add silently. But that’s always been Dad’s rule.

  “If he gives you any problems, come find me.” Dad shifts in his seat.

  The Seville — the assisted-living facility we’re moving my grandpa into — filled our heads with horror stories about how dementia can transform even the sweetest grandparents into kickers and biters. “What happens to grandparents who aren’t so sweet?” Dad had wondered.

  Mom comes to my window, Lu slung on her hip. “Are we ready to go in?”

  “Well, we didn’t drive all this way for the scenery,” Dad says.

  I laugh for Dad, for his tiny joke. He fumbles slamming his truck door shut, then drops his keys in the dirt. I’ve never seen him like this — like a nervous kid.

  I step onto the scorching desert dust, so hot my sandals are useless. The air feels like it’ll drown me. I grab my Gatorade from the truck and take a swig.

  Mom grasps Dad’s hand until their knuckles turn white, and they walk up the driveway together, looking like they’re about to knock on a rabid stranger’s door, when it’s only Grandpa Serge.

  But he is a stranger, I remember. To me.

  “Last time I saw you, you were climbing out of the backseat of the sheriff’s car.”

  The gruff greeting sends butterflies into my stomach. In the shadows of the porch, the outline of my grandfather hunches in a wicker chair. The legendary Serge.

  “That was years ago. You’ve seen me plenty of times since then.” Dad’s turning red.

  “Well. Here you are.” Grandpa Serge doesn’t sound especially happy about this. He stands, and when he comes into the light, I hold back a gasp. I’ve only seen pictures of Serge, and Dad warned me he might seem different in person, especially now that the dementia has gotten hold. But I’m not prepared for just how different.

  A skinny green oxygen hose links behind his ears and feeds into his nostrils. His skin, in the photos, was always ripe brown, earned from hours sizzling in the desert, working the ranch — but now it’s pale, and hangs from his bones like it’s melting. And his eyes … His eyes in the photos are true blue, clear as the midday sky.

  But the eyes of the Serge before me are watery blue, like faded jeans. They move beyond me and focus on some invisible person on the ridge. Those eyes are what I think old looks like. The Serge I know from those few photographs Dad showed me at home — that Serge is nothing like this version, a rusty old man parked on the porch like a leaky, broken-down car.

  This is why we’re here, I remind myself. Because Grandpa is sick.

  “Rosa.” Serge points right at me, and the butterflies in my stomach flap so hard, I worry they’ll leave bruises.

  “No, I’m Carol,” I say quickly. “Not R —” But I can’t say it, the forbidden name.

  “This is Carol,” Dad cuts in. “Your granddaughter. And here’s Lu, your new grandson.”

  “Yes, I know,” Serge snaps. “Carolina. And Luis.”

  Mom taps the back of my shoulder. “Say hello,” she prompts.

  “Hi, Grandpa, it’s nice to meet you.” The words come out exactly like I rehearsed them, thankfully, because my mind is focused on Serge’s skin, how it folds and wrinkles, mottled with splotchy sunspots. Lumps pop out on his face and neck, like tiny marbles under the skin. Those were there in the photos, I remember, but subtler because his face was fuller, his skin tighter. What are they, anyway? Measles that never healed?

  “Hola, chiquita,” he says. “El gusto es mío.” The pleasure is mine, he says in Spanish, his eyes glowing. And then, in English, “You look just like her.”

  “P-Papá …” Dad stutters, as if there’s more to say. He’s been gone for twelve years — there is everything to say. Before he can fill in the blanks, something hobbles down the porch steps, a crea
ture with frizzled black fur and a wet nose.

  “Inés?” Dad whispers. “No way!” He kneels to scratch behind the ears of this mangy dog, grinning at Mom and me. “Inés was my dog growing up.”

  I pat the old dog’s rump as she walks past me on stiff, arthritic legs. I’ve always wanted a puppy — Mom’s never let me have one — but this is not exactly the dog I pictured. Her bloodshot eyes droop at half-mast, and her fur is peppered white and gray around her snout.

  Mom balks. “How is she still alive?”

  “Some dogs live longer than you think,” Dad says.

  “Not for thirty years, Raúl.” The dog brushes against Mom, and she backs away, suspicious, like it’s a zombie. The dog flops into the dry grass and lets Dad rub her belly.

  “You’re right,” Dad whispers to Mom. “This can’t be Inés. Must be one of her puppies.”

  “More like her puppies’ puppies,” Mom mutters.

  “What’s the dog’s name, Papá?” Dad asks.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t remember Inés,” Serge says.

  “Of course. But this isn’t Inés,” Dad says.

  “Who else would it be? Inés is the best sheepdog in the state.” My grandpa shakes his head. “What else have you forgotten about your home?”

  “You’re right. Sorry.” Dad looks at each of us, silently communicating that we should let the old man believe this is the thirty-year-old Inés.

  A great silence follows, tossed over all of us like a quilt. I want to talk, but this is a historic moment, and a scary one. Dad hasn’t been home in years — since before I was born. That’s why I’ve never met my grandfather. The moment is a pulsing, living quiet, about to smother us, but I keep my mouth shut.

  “Serge.” Mom saves the day. “Remember me? Raúl’s wife, Patricia? It’s so good to see you.”

  A grunt from the porch.

  “We’re going to bring our things inside, okay?” she adds gently.

  Serge says nothing, just walks to the other end of the porch and starts scrubbing a wool blanket in an old-fashioned metal tub. Weird.

  “Is it the dementia,” Mom whispers to Dad, “or is he always so …” She searches for the word.

  “Prickly?” Dad finishes. “No, that’s just my dad.”

  Grandpa Cactus, I think.

  “Carol.” Mom pulls me aside. “Could you stay out here with Lu? Dad and I want to go in first; we don’t know what state the house is in.”

  “Sure,” I say, fanning myself with the Seville pamphlet.

  “And keep an eye on Grandpa, too, please.” Mom sets Lu in the dried brown yard and disappears through the front door, gripping hands with Dad again, like the dark house is haunted.

  “And Grandpa, too,” I whisper.

  The name “Grandpa” tastes weird. It doesn’t fit. “Grandpa” is for someone who always keeps his cookie jar full, someone who gives bear hugs, someone who keeps a straight face while spinning a yarn at the dinner table.

  I climb up the creaky porch stairs and bend over the railing to get a visual of Lu. He’s scooted his way over to the gravel driveway and is tossing pebbles at the dog. She’s being so patient with him, considering he’s disrupting her afternoon siesta.

  I tighten my swinging black ponytail. I can already wring sweat from my hair, and we only just got here. I’m no stranger to the desert, but at home, in Albuquerque, I could hide from the heat in the pockets of shade, in frozen yogurt shops, on the cool, fresh-cut grass between houses.

  Here, there’s nowhere to hide.

  I peer around me. The ranch house is the tallest thing for miles, until the land rumples up into a ridge, a kind of mesa that never was — a wall of rock that makes the ranch seem like it’s in a bowl. No trees, though there’s a scabby black tree stump on the edge of the pasture, so there was a tree at some point. Whose bright idea was it to chop it down and get rid of the only shade for miles and miles? No sounds, except the swish-swish of Serge washing that blanket. Quiet and flat.

  The desert seems alive and breathing, a huge, sandy monster that sucks moisture from bones and blows the dry, dry air up, where it rolls and churns and boils.

  Another bee buzzes around my shoulder and lands on my earlobe.

  “Go away!” I wiggle my body and swat at the bee. The dog lifts her head and sniffs in my direction. Finally the bee carries itself away, until its lace-thin wings are camouflaged against the beginnings of sunset.

  “Are you dancing for rain, chiquita?” Serge is behind me, still washing that blanket.

  “No, I don’t know any rain dances.” The dog rests her head back in the grass, and she dog-sighs. Lu throws another pebble at her and laughs.

  “We need a rain dance,” Serge says. “My bones are so dry, they itch.”

  “It’s almost the rainy season, isn’t it?” I say. We relearn about New Mexico’s desert water cycles every year in science. It’s mercilessly dry until July, then it rains in buckets through autumn — sometimes so much that the rivers flood. Monsoon season, we call it.

  “No rainy season in this desert,” Serge says. “No rain for a hundred years.” He folds himself in half, spine curled, trying to pull the blanket out of the tub. But the striped maroon wool, heavy with water, is too much for him to lift with his shaking hands, which are frozen into claws. Useless hands. Old hands.

  The Seville pamphlet warned that this can happen. Body parts shut down without notice.

  “Here, let me help.” I unhook the blanket from his fingers and re-rinse it. To my relief, he lets me.

  “Where are your boots, chiquita?” Serge says.

  “It’s too hot for boots.” A bead of sweat rolls off my forehead, proving my point.

  “Fiddle-faddle.” Serge clacks his own boots on the porch floorboards. They’re as antique and leathery as he is, real cowboy boots, embroidered with vines and fleurs-de-lis. They look like they were once black, under layers of dirt and sheep grime. “Everyone needs a pair of snake-stomping boots here.”

  I dip the blanket in and out of the tub, relishing the chilly water. “Why?”

  “Snakes are braver in the drought,” Serge says. “They didn’t use to be so bold.” He pantomimes crushing a snake beneath his heel. From the grass below, the dog softly growls.

  “No rain for a hundred years,” Serge continues. “No rain makes the ground crackle, makes it harden. Makes it sharp. Like walking on a shattered stained-glass window.”

  I glance down. Through my sandal straps, my feet are already coated in cinnamon-red dust.

  “And no rain for a hundred years means no bees.”

  “Bees?” I echo.

  “Sí. No rain means no flowers. No flowers means no bees.”

  “I saw a bee earlier,” I say. “Two of them, actually.”

  “Here?” He frowns. “No, no bees in a drought.”

  The heat and my grandpa’s circling words and sentences are making me dizzy. I dig my fingernails into the links of the wool, but the last flakes of soap refuse to wash away. “This wool is impossible!” I toss the blanket back into the water.

  Below the porch, Lu laughs and babbles, “Impah! Impah!”

  “Impossible, yes.” Serge plucks that word from the air like a fish from a river. “Bees, impossible. But it’s only impossible if you stop to think about it.”

  He tries to stand, and his legs tremble like cold noodles. I rush to be his crutch but he barks, “I can do it.”

  Your loved one with dementia may seem cross with you or snap at you when you’ve done nothing wrong, the words from the Seville pamphlet recite in my mind. He yanks himself away and plops back down in his wicker chair. “If you see any more bees, chiquita, tell me. The bees will bring back the rain.”

  “Don’t you mean the rain will bring back the bees?” I ask, hoping my correction won’t upset him.

  But he shakes his head emphatically. “No. The bees will bring back the rain. But first we need the bees.”

  This is one of the things that happens when
you have dementia, the pamphlet warned — it’s called “word salad.” Serge will arrange words in a way that doesn’t make sense, like saying the bees will bring back the rain. I should stop pressing him, but I’m trying to understand.

  “So it never rains here?” I say.

  “No rain for a hundred years,” he responds.

  “Then where does your water come from?” Please, please, tell me there’s still running water at the ranch. If this becomes a camping situation — brushing teeth with bottled water, sponge baths, no ice for drinks in this thick heat …

  “The ranch has wells,” Serge says, “but we don’t waste water. Every drop counts. No rain for a hundred years.”

  No wasting water. That explains the pasture. From the porch, I can see the creosote bush and yarrow that have crept through the grass, belly high to a horse at this point. Soon this will be all the sheep have to eat: scrubby, thorny, wild desert plants.

  Well, since we’re not supposed to waste water … “The blanket needs to soak a little longer,” I say, and it sinks to the bottom of the tub. “Maybe overnight.”

  “Yes, drought dries everything to bones,” Serge says, seeming not to hear me.

  Dad says our brains are like a strand of Christmas lights, and Serge’s lights are shutting off, one by one. Dementia means Serge confuses names and faces. He forgets what day it is, what year it is, his memories a deck of cards that keeps shuffling and reshuffling. He loses things, he’ll put the milk back in the cupboard instead of the fridge, or he’ll forget to eat altogether.

  When Serge fell last winter and almost broke a leg, a paramedic called Dad and said it was time. Time to move Serge off the ranch and into an assisted-living facility, before he really hurts himself.

  I guzzle my Gatorade. One drop falls from the bottle and sizzles, evaporating as it hits the dirt. A few sheep wander into the yard from the pasture, bleating at me with bulging black eyes.

  No rain for a hundred years … It sounds like something from a book, an evil curse from a grudge-holding fairy who wasn’t invited to a party. Except curses in fairy tales always come to an end, and here the sky is cloudless for miles. Forever. If this is drought, it’s miserable. Every inhale scratches my lungs.