Hour of the Bees (24 page)

My grandfather is on his stomach, pitched from the boat with arms and legs at odd angles like a busted toy.

“Grandpa!” I screech and throw myself at his side.

“Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “Water.”

I blink tears away. This is all my fault. “I’ll get you some lake water. Hold on.”

“No,
chiquita
.” Grandpa rolls onto his side. “The water. The bees.”

“I . . . I know,” I say. “They brought it back.”

For a minute I kneel here, baking in the sun. What do we do now? Grandpa can’t even walk. How will we make it back to the highway? Or even back to the house?

Maybe I can find my cell phone in Alta’s car. Maybe I can call 911 again and give them directions before it’s too late.

But that would mean leaving Grandpa here on the ridge, alone. Without his oxygen tank. Without his snake-stomping boots.

Tears choke me.
What do I do?

“We need to get out of here,” I say, my words slurring with exhaustion. “Come on, Grandpa. I’ll help you up, then we’ll go to the house.” And once he’s inside, out of the hot sun, I’ll figure out what to do next.

One more minute, then I’ll move. I’m so tired.

I hear buzzing.

No, not buzzing —
rattling
.

A fat rattlesnake coils near Grandpa’s feet, its noisy tail paralyzing me. “Don’t move,” I whisper.

But he’s trying to stand. “Bees, Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “I hear bees.”

“It’s not bees — it’s a rattler!” I work to keep my voice from edging into shrillness. But Grandpa is on another planet. Slowly, laboriously, he folds his legs beneath him, so he can stand.

“Please!” I tell him. “Hold still!” His bare feet are so white, they’re lilac.

Grandpa stands, and the snake hikes up on its muscled body, scales glinting like rusty corn in the sunlight.

“Grandpa!” I stretch out and push my grandfather out of biting distance.

The rattler strikes. It happens faster than thought, a blur. I shriek and wait to feel fangs sink into my skin.

But the bracelet — Rosa’s bracelet, made of bark as black as midnight — takes the rattler’s fangs.

The bracelet is a shield.

I laugh and tears fall like bombs in the dirt.

“Caro-leeen-a!” Grandpa’s voice breaks with concern. He crawls toward me.

This time the rattler gets him, right on the ankle.

Grandpa crumples with the pain.

The snake slides away, damage done, and camouflages itself on the ridge.

“No. Oh, no.” I lean over my grandfather. His breathing is raspy, like he’s getting all his oxygen through a Capri Sun straw. He’s lily-faced with dehydration, his eyes blue holes in his face, wide and scared.

“Aren’t you glad . . .” he says faintly, “you were wearing . . . that bracelet, Caro-leeen-a?”

Caro-leeen-a
. My name has never sounded so sweet.

“What do I do, Grandpa?” I’m only twelve, just a little seed. I’m not smart enough or strong enough to fix this. My grandpa’s going to die, and it’s all my fault.

He’s muttering to himself, a blend of Spanish and English, sense and nonsense, just as he did all summer. But it isn’t word salad. I know that now. It’s the truth. The twisted, demented truth.

“Tell me what to do,” I say. “Please, Grandpa.”

“Bees,” he whispers.

“No. We need to get you out of here, right now,” I say. I’d hoped saying these words would invoke some kind of spell, that an actual plan would spill into my mind. “You stay here. I’ll run to the highway and —”

“No,” Grandpa says. “Stay with me.”

I swallow a sob and curl up against my grandpa, head on his chest, feel him rummaging for air.

“Caro-leeen-a,” he says. “I’m not afraid. Not anymore.”

For a terrifying moment, he stops breathing and stops moving. His eyelids relax, and the rattlesnake bite stops bleeding, festering raisin brown in the sunshine.

Grandpa takes another breath, but they’re too far apart for comfort. Too far apart to measure time.
Don’t play on the ridge
, Dad told me.
It’s dangerous
.

None of that matters now.

We bake in the sun. I fight the urge to sleep, seeing terrible snakes when I close my eyes. I don’t know how long we lie here, intertwined, as the sun climbs the sky. I don’t hear the cars pull into the driveway, don’t hear the squishy footsteps through the wet pasture.

A hand with neon-orange fingernails touches my shoulder.

“Carol.” Her voice is like it was when I was five and she was ten, and we’d play dress-up and I’d fall in the high heels and scrape my knee, and she’d lean over me and whisper my name, calling me back from the brink of pain.

Alta.

I’m pulled up into my big sister’s arms, almost forcibly, and she hugs me until all her muscles quake.

“Grandpa . . . he’s . . . Alta, look, he’s . . .” I’m a snot-drenched, sunburned catastrophe.

She strokes my head, shushing me. “The paramedics are here,” she says. “They’ll take care of him.”

“I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m sorry.” The words are too insignificant to explain how I feel; maybe if I say them over and over . . .

“Don’t you ever scare me like that again.” She pinches me, and it hurts so much, my eyes sting. But then she pulls me to her, tight enough to crush my ribs.

“How did you find me?” My teeth grind into her skin when I talk.

She leans back and peels a soggy leaf from my cheek. “When we got a call saying Serge was missing and then found your bed empty, we figured it out. But when you stopped answering your phone, we all thought —” She sniffles, tightening her arm around me. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Her voice is soft as lamb’s wool, and she rests her chin on top of my head. I’m suddenly introduced to another Alta, one I’ve never met: Soft Alta.

“Your car!” I remember. “I ruined your car.”

“I don’t want to talk about the car.” A storm of anger flashes in her words, not that I can blame her. “You’re lucky that I love you, little sister.”

I gulp. “I thought . . . I thought we weren’t real sisters.”

Alta looks like I smacked her, color draining from her cheeks. “Is that what you think?”

“No.” I shrink. “It’s what you think.”

Alta frowns. “I don’t think that.”

“But that’s what you said. Remember?” I hear myself, echoing in my brain, sounding more like a needy, squeaky mouse with each word. “When we were cleaning Grandma Rosa’s closet?”

“Oh, that.” She laughs, high and pretty like bells. “You can’t always trust what teenagers say. We blab any crummy thing that pops into our minds.”

Yesterday, I would have accepted this lame excuse, and left it alone forever. But today I want more from my sister.

“Alta . . . It really hurt my feelings.” I hold so still, I can hear her pulse.

She thinks for a moment. “I’m sorry. I am. But I was miserable out here at the ranch, okay? Stuck here for a whole summer, with Mom on my case about every little thing. Plus you and Raúl and Mom and Lu — you’re, like, the perfect little family. My dad would never cook me sun cakes for dinner or sit next to me and laugh at some crappy movie on TV. He barely talks to me.”

“I didn’t know,” I say.

“And Serge didn’t want to talk to anyone but you,” my sister continues.

“Wait, you
wanted
to talk to Grandpa?” I’m stunned.

“Of course,” Alta says. She’s almost embarrassed. “He’s the closest thing to a grandfather I’m ever going to have.”

“I . . . I had no idea,” I say.

She shrugs. “I’m sorry if it hurt you. But Carol, you’re my sister — half or step-or whatever you want to call it.”

My waterworks begin again. Alta smooths my crunchy hair away from my face and holds me.

Mom, Dad, and Lu reach us, and I’m wrapped into a family hug. While the paramedics carry Grandpa down the ridge on a stretcher, Mom and Dad alternate between yelling at me and squeezing me tight.

Finally, my parents look around, taking in the ranch’s changed landscape. Dad gapes at the tree and the lake. “How . . . Where . . . I don’t . . .”

“From the story,” I say, barely believing it myself. “Grandpa wasn’t making it up. It all really happened.”

“Carol . . .” Dad says, the start of a warning. But he stares out at the transformed landscape and shakes his head.

My family and I make our shaky way down the ridge. I’m convinced a snake is hiding in every crevice, but Alta is the very essence of brave, her face neutral, swollen cry-eyes already back to normal. She never once lets go of my hand.

The paramedics insist on taking me to the emergency room too. I lie in the ambulance on a stretcher next to Grandpa, who clings to life, in the worst condition possible.

I let them check my bones, my blood pressure, my temperature. But I don’t take my eyes off the tree, not until we drive around the mountain and it disappears. Then I turn my head to the side, and sleep, and sleep, and sleep.

I have second-degree sunburns on my arms, neck, shoulders, and chest. Also minor heatstroke and dehydration. Doctors insist that I stay overnight and tell me I’ll have to cover up with long sleeves for the next six months.

I have to grow new skin.

Other than that, my night of reckless lawbreaking hasn’t done any major damage.

Besides, of course, to Alta’s car. It gets a ride back to Albuquerque on a tow truck. Dad thinks Alta’s insurance will pay for most of the repairs. The rest I’ll have to pay for with lifeguarding money and extra chores for the rest of my life. I’m back to being Alta’s slave — just the way she likes it. And, if I’m being honest, the way I like it, too; it’s nice and safe being under her thumb.

I’d take a harder diagnosis than sunburn, if it meant Grandpa would live.

He’s not going to survive the day.

The doctors try to soften the blow.
He was already on his way out
, they tell us.
His heart wouldn’t have made it another month, another week
, they tell us
. We’ll try to make him as comfortable as possible; you take all the time you want to say good-bye
.

It’s remarkable he’s held on this long
, they tell Dad, when they think I’m sleeping.
His organs look like they’ve seen five lifetimes, not just one
. And through my grief, I smile.

Mom sets Lu on my bed. He tests it for bounciness and claps for himself. I laugh and cry at the same time, thinking of the day he found the rattler under the porch, how close we came to losing him, too.

Death is around every corner at the ranch. But now, so is life. Isn’t one always part of the other? An old tree dies; a new one is born.

A doctor pokes her head in the doorway. “How are we doing in here?”

I give her a thumbs-up, and she comes to check the clipboard at the foot of my bed.

“Drinking lots of water?” she asks.

I hold up my drained cup and nod.

“Good. Keep it up.” She smiles as she surveys my sunburn. “Your swelling’s gone down. Good. You must have been sitting in the lucky chair.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Lucky chair?”

She gestures to the antique-looking rocking chair where Alta sits. My sister jumps up. “Did someone die in this chair or something?”

“No, nothing like that,” the doctor says. “It’s made of special wood. Very old.” She touches the smooth black chair. “We call it the lucky chair because everyone who sits in it winds up feeling a little bit better.”

Black bark, wood grains swirling.

Dad shuffles in and is so choked up, he can only speak one word at a time. “He’s . . . almost . . . there . . .”

Alta pushes my wheelchair into Grandpa’s room. She’s cracking her knuckles, over and over, nervously wrenching them from their sockets, her eyes wide and fearful. My cool, composed older sister, an over-cried, overwhelmed mess.

“It’s like when Grandma Rosa died all over again,” she says.

I remember what she said in Grandma Rosa’s closet that day.
Saying good-bye before you’re finished saying hello
. I pull her hand into mine, not caring if it’s lame or babyish. “I’m scared.”

“Me, too,” she admits, and squeezes my fingers.

Sisters.

We crowd around Grandpa’s bed, all except Dad, who paces near the window, his hair standing straight up from him running his hands through it over and over.

My grandpa’s covered in tubes and lines that dig into his skin and round white electrodes that look like the tentacles of a monster. Brave, strong, dragonlike Mom goes first. She leans over Grandpa and kisses his leathery cheek.

“
Te queremos
, Serge,” she says.

Grandpa’s eyes flutter open. “Beautiful . . . Patricia . . .” His words come out in tiny bunches. “If your daughters . . . grow up to have . . . even half your strength . . .”

Mom quietly says good-bye, lets Lu babble to his grandfather, and then leaves the room to cry in private.

Dad is staring out the window, looking lost.

I guess it’s our turn.

I climb out of my wheelchair, still holding hands with Alta. Together, we walk over to the bed.

“Ah,” my grandpa says, and somehow rustles up enough life to beam at us. “The two brightest blossoms . . . on the tree.” He lifts his fingers to stroke Alta’s face. “I wish . . . your grandmother . . . could see you . . . Her beautiful granddaughters. She would be so proud.”