Hour of the Bees (9 page)

A sheep escapes Serge’s grasp and trots out to the pasture. Serge looks at me, a smile hiding in the corner of his mouth. A triangle of light hits his eyes. They’re blue as cornflowers, every line in his irises pulsing. Rings in a tree trunk.

We work, Lu plays. Our conversations drift through every possible sheep topic: sheep diseases, the best lamb cuts for Easter dinner, the way these sheep used to have dark bones and long hair, but they’ve changed over the years . . .

If it was anyone else, I’d be bored to tears, but when Serge talks, it feels like the only sound. My ears are magnets for his words.

Lu munches on Goldfish crackers, and they look ridiculous and modern, too orange, out of place in this barn full of secrets.

By the time I spoon tonic into the last sheep’s mouth, I’m ready to drop. But Serge never stops moving, never tires, just trades the spoon in my hands for a pair of rust-splotched shears.

“Uh,” I say before he pats my shoulder.

“I’m not going to make you touch a sheep,” he answers. “But shearing wool is a handy skill to learn, even for a city girl.”

That’s debatable
, I think.

“This will at least make a good story to tell your classmates,” he says, fetching a sheep from the pasture.

Stories.

“You never told me the rest of the story last night,” I say. “Does R — I mean, does the girl ever leave the lake?” I don’t want to say the name “Rosa” aloud; after all, our number-one goal this summer is not to upset Serge.

Serge reaches around to the sheep’s belly and begins clipping. “Let me ask you something first, Caro-leeen-a. What would you have done? Would you leave the lake?”

I shrug. “I wouldn’t want to stay in the middle of the desert for eternity.”
An entire summer is bad enough
, I think, but don’t say.

“You would throw away the gift of the tree?”

My palms itch. This smells like a test, one I’m bound to fail. “I don’t know,” I fumble. “It’s a big world out there.”

Serge turns the clippers sharply at the sheep’s hind legs. “You’re right,
chiquita
. It is a big world, full of things that steal your breath and fill your belly with fire.” He pauses, holding out a shaky finger for emphasis. “But where you go when you leave isn’t as important as where you go when you come home.”

“So the girl did leave the lake,” I say, trying to steer him back to the story — that’s what I want to hear about. “She does leave, but she comes back? Is that what you mean?”

“Caro-leeen-a.” Serge’s whisper is rough, like a rattler’s dancing tail.

“Carol,” I correct him.

“Your name is Caro-leeen-a,” he says, louder. “Forget about the story for a moment. Close your eyes. Think of a tree.”

Grudgingly I shut my eyes and picture a gnarled, black-barked tree, with leaves so green they shine gold, branches reaching like fingers into a cloudless sky.

“The roots of a tree stretch deeper than you think,” Serge says. “No matter how far away you are when you bloom, you are always tied to your roots.”

I open my eyes. He stares at me, his forehead knitted with wrinkles.

“Your roots are part of you, Caro-leeen-a. You must never spit on them.”

The freshly shaved sheep in his arms bleats, and Serge pats its rump. “This wool!” He stretches out what he’s shorn so far, and it’s pathetically sheer, a few strands of sheep hair held together by air. “And Raúl said the sheep were too bony.”

The barn is mostly shadows, but Serge would have to be blind to miss the sheep’s bones sticking out from its skin so far that you can practically see the white of them. This isn’t good, usable wool — it’s garbage.

“Look, Rosa,” Serge says, and goose bumps prickle my arms.

“I’m Carol,” I say, frowning. What happened? He was fine just a second ago, wasn’t he?

“Have you ever seen such wool?” he says. “We’ll get fat coins for this wool, once you spin it into your magic scarves.”

“Carol. I’m Carol, your granddaughter,” I try again.

“It must be all this rain,” he continues, clipping the measly wool around the sheep’s neck. “A whole week of good rain. Rain always keeps the sheep happy, keeps them growing this happy wool.”

I check every wrinkle on Serge’s face for hints that this is a joke. But his eyes glitter sharp blue, no laughter in them. “It hasn’t rained in a hundred years, remember? The drought?”

But my words seem lost on him, adrift in the shipwreck of his mind. I should call for Dad — Serge is stuck in a memory.

“All this rain.” Serge holds his hand flat, as if rain is spilling onto it now.

But none of this makes any sense. Serge doesn’t have any memories of rain. The ranch has had one hundred years of drought, only drought.

He spots Lu in the corner, making a spooky castle out of red dirt. “Raúl!
¡Ven aquí, ahora!
You want to feel this wool! So soft, eh?”

“But that’s Lu, remember?” I say, and again, the words seem to go in one of his bat-winged ears and out the other.

“If we get any more rain,” he says, “our little lake is going to be an ocean. But that’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it, Rosa —”

Brrrk!

He’s cut off by the horrific noise of the clippers nicking the sheep’s leg. The sheep panics at the pain and flails, hooves scraping the barn floor. Blood trickles down its leg, spoiling the wool Serge just sheared.

Go get Dad!
my brain shouts.
Go get Dad!

But it feels like the architecture has been knocked out of my legs. My stomach churns, rolling like a stormy sea, but I can’t look away from the sheep, the cut, the waterfall of blood.

Serge breathes heavy. All the color’s drained from his face.

“Are you okay?” I ask shakily.

His eyes are watching other worlds, and he mumbles, “I’m not scared. It just makes me a little sick, is all.” It’s a line from his story.

“I don’t like blood either,” I say.

Serge nods, then pulls a wadded-up tissue from his jeans pocket and presses it against the cut. It isn’t that deep after all; the sheep’s just a dramatic bleeder. With the blood mopped up, Serge lets the poor sheep scamper out to the pasture, then leans into a wall, panting.

“We shouldn’t be shearing such bony sheep,” he says. “Drought’s nearly dried them out to dust.”

Like a light switch, his brain blinks back to normal. He loses that hazy, million-miles-away glaze. He packs the shearing tools and nasty tonic in the bin, leaving the pile of bloodied wool. “Thank you for your help,
chiquita
. These old hands are not as steady as they once were.”

My pulse calms when he calls me
chiquita
, not Rosa.

I scoop up my brother and we walk to the pasture, squinting, the sunshine blinding us after the darkness of the barn.

Lu burrows his face in the crook of my neck, a fuss about to spill out of him. It’s naptime.

Serge stretches his arms out. “Oh,
chiquita
. The land is dying. It’s been dying for a hundred years. But even the land still has its own ways of measuring time. Is it sunrise? Look for rosy pink in the sky. Sunset? The sky is burnt orange when the sun goes to bed. Is the eagle hunting? Watch him fly: if his wings flap, he’s in a hurry to find a tasty snake for supper. But if he’s soaring, then he’s just enjoying the view beneath him.”

My brother is heavy in my arms, asleep, or nearly there. But I stay at Serge’s side, trying to see the huge, empty desert through his eyes.

“The land measures time with the ridge. It gets taller every morning, like a child growing. Or the land measures time with the stars, twirling in the heavens. Tick, tick, tick, with every twirl.”

He swallows. “It used to measure time with bees. Flowers slept in winter, yawned open in springtime. But the bees took our lake and left. No more blossoms. No more bees. No more time.”

Bees again. Just when I thought he was back to acting normal.

The naked white sunlight beats down on us, the heat like invisible hands on my back, making me dizzy.

He nudges me, like one of my friends would do in the cafeteria. “Your turn, Caro-leeen-a. What can you see measuring time?”

My heart thumps. Another test. I shrug, but he shakes his head. “No, no. Tell me. What do you see?”

All right, fine. I shift Lu to free my hand, block the sun from my eyes, and scan the land.

The first thing I notice isn’t part of the desert. It’s a shiny red truck parked in the gravel driveway, a monster-size machine big enough to haul away a house.

A well-ironed man steps out in polished leather cowboy boots that gleam as much as the truck does.

“Who’s that?” I say.

But my grandpa barrels past me, snorting steam from his nose like a bull. “This is private property!” he shouts at the man. “You can’t park that here!”

“Hey, wait up!” I call, trying to run without jiggling Lu.

“Are you Raúl?” The man extends a hand. “We spoke on the phone.”

“Liar,” Serge spits.

“Mr. González, hi. Good to see you.” Dad trip-traps down the porch stairs and takes the handshake meant for Serge. “I’m Raúl. Thanks for driving out.”

“This is private property,” Serge repeats. “If you let him park here, then they’ll all park here.”

“What are you talking about?” Dad says.

But Serge has fallen into a full-on meltdown, shouting in garbled, jigsaw-puzzle Spanish that none of us can follow.

Your loved ones may lose their temper at seemingly little lost battles, or they may throw tantrums and yell when they don’t get their way
.

“Don’t be rude,” Dad says. “Mr. González is your real estate agent.”

“Quite a nice property you have here. Quite the potential. I’m anxious to see what we can do with it.” Mr. González flashes a smile that could glow in the dark.

Serge stares at his son as if Dad had strangled a sheep. “Wait until your mother gets home. Wait until she hears what you’re up to!”

My gut lurches. Serge is slipping again, down the rabbit hole of patchy memories.

Dad rubs his red-rimmed eyes. “
Papá
, Mr. González is going to find the very best people to take care of the ranch. We’re passing it on, remember?”

“Why do you spit on your roots, Raúl?” Serge says, and walks across the pasture, where he sits on the scabby old tree stump. From this distance he seems perfectly still, like someone painted him into the landscape.

“I’m sorry,” Dad says to Mr. González. “My mom passed away twelve years ago. Like I said, he’s tail-spinning into late-stage dementia.”

Mr. González shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. My aunt had Alzheimer’s. She could throw a mean punch before her time was up. We’ll make this whole process as easy as possible for your dad.”

The two men stroll off, clicking photos with their phones and chattering, sentences overlapping each other. My dad doesn’t even look at me.

Serge stays where he is.

I take Lu into the house and put him in his port-a-crib, a lump of frustration bubbling in my throat.

Back in the kitchen, Mom’s removing ancient layers of grime from the cabinets.

“So we’re really getting rid of the ranch,” I say, voice sharp enough to cut metal.

She notices my stink-eye and stops scrubbing. “Not getting rid of,” she says. “It’s just time to pass it on. Like Dad said. There’s your lunch.”

I nibble at the quesadilla Mom fixed for me. “How long has this ranch been in the family?” I ask after a moment.

“I’m not sure,” she says.

“Does Dad know?”

“I can’t imagine he’s ever cared about the history of the ranch,” she says with a chuckle.

“Well, he should,” I say. “It’s his history, his family. It’s his roots.”

Mom raises her eyebrows. “And now you care about your roots?”

I’m surprised, too — this sounds nothing like me. Caring about my roots? Worrying about what will happen to this ranch, this land? But try as I might to push this frustration away, my eyes sting with tears.

I hide my face with a glance out the window. Dad and Mr. González are still pacing the pasture. Are they debating how much this ranch is worth? Probably not much to the rest of the world — not much in dollars — but it’s Serge’s home. The place where sheep tell time.

“Will you go get Grandpa for lunch?” Mom asks.

“I’ll bring it out to him,” I offer.

Mom puts his quesadilla, rice, and banana onto a tray, and I carry it through the pasture. Inés hobbles along with me, and I match my steps to her arthritic old-lady pace.

A soft, hot wind blows the scrub around Serge’s snake-stomping boots. The dog nestles beside him, putting her head on his lap.

“Hi,” I try. “Brought your lunch.”

When he doesn’t acknowledge me or the food, I set the tray next to him. “I measure time, too. With changes.”

I clear my throat.

“Changes, like a stranger who shows up at the ranch in a red truck that looks too clean to have ever done a day’s real work. Changes, like when Alta cuts her hair short, with no warning, and now looks like she’s twenty instead of seventeen. Changes, like when Lu started crawling and it wasn’t safe to leave anything lying around the house anymore.”

The wind bends a weed into my sandal, tickling my foot. “Changes, like a new school in the fall. Junior high, where I have to learn new hallways, new lunch lines, new rules about what to wear and when to laugh.”