He Should Have Told the Bees by Amanda Cox EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Amanda Cox
- Language: English
- Genre: Contemporary Christian Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
TWENTY-TWO YEARS LATER
The field dotted with white boxes hummed a song Beckett Walsh had tuned
her life to. Arms loaded with black cloths, she tramped through the field,
the tall grass thwacking against her rubber boots. At the center of the apiary,
she set down her burden. Though she’d never believed in these
superstitions, she’d made him a promise.
One by one she unfolded the repurposed tablecloths and draped each
hive. Every time, she said the same thing.
“He’s gone. He’s not coming back. It’s just me now.”
She swallowed and blinked her dry eyes. The bees’ capacity to
understand this loss was probably about as good as hers.
The early summer fever broke as the sun lowered behind the distant hills.
Thank goodness for that. She wanted to keep her promise, but wouldn’t
these cloths overheat her bees? Her bees. They were supposed to be their
bees. They’d always been theirs.
He’d brought home their first package of bees twenty-three years ago,
when she was only five. She could still remember stretching her hand up to
the mesh that made the sides of the small wooden box. The tight cluster of
bees clung to the top, the power of their delicate wings stirring air against
her palm.
At the memory, the ache inside her swelled, cutting away her breath. The
days, hours, years they’d spent in this field. Working side by side. Checking
queens. Diagnosing hive issues. Collecting liquid gold. Talking.
He’d always been a quiet man, but being out among the bees changed
him. Here, his pent-up words flowed freely, like the gentle brook that
formed the border between their field and the woods.
Mere days ago she’d listened to those low tones for the last time. Had she
known it, she might have paused her work, leaned in, and let his talk of
bees and their mysterious ways cradle her like an embrace. She clenched
the black shroud in her fists and swallowed hard as she draped another hive.
“He’s gone. He’s not coming back.” The words scraped past the knot in her
throat.
“Hey! What are you doing?”
Beck turned, searching for the small lilting voice that had jolted her.
A slender girl emerged from the brush at the edge of the field. She pulled
a bramble from the end of a honey-colored plait.
“This is private property.”
But the girl traversed Beck’s invisible boundary in her shorts and
mismatched knee socks. She marched up to Beck, picked a bur from the
flower-patterned sock, tugged the striped sock higher, and swiped at the
angry red scratch on her thigh.
“This is private property,” Beck repeated more slowly this time.
The girl plucked a long piece of grass and stuck it behind her ear. “I’m
sorry. I didn’t know. Where I come from there is no such thing as private
property. We are all one people. One land.” The girl pulled a small
notebook and a nub of a pencil from a neon fanny pack at her waist. She
scrawled something on it and stuffed it back into her pack. “I am learning
so many interesting things on your planet.”
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