A Recipe for Bees (14 page)

The kitchen was as hot as the honey house, as Augusta was canning that day. At one point she felt she’d suffocate from the heat, it was so stifling, and so she walked outside for some cooler air and a break from the work, wiping the sweat from her forehead with her apron. Why she wandered over to the honey house and peeked through the window she could only guess at now. Certainly she had her suspicions. Harry and Helen were both in there, labouring away. Helen had covered the floor in newspaper and would change the paper several times that day as it became gummy and difficult to walk over. Harry’s smoky skin glistened in honey and sweat. Helen was stickier yet, as she was the one uncapping the comb. Neither of them saw Augusta peering through the small window in the far side of the room. Harry stopped turning the extractor for a moment and reached over to wipe a dollop of honey from Helen’s lip, then licked his finger. Helen grinned at him, running her tongue over her lips. It might have been a scene from the Song of Songs.
Your lips, my promised one, distill wild honey
. Augusta didn’t rush in to accuse her mother, or to backtalk as Joy did decades later. She turned on her heel and walked back to the house and went on canning plums as if she’d seen nothing at all.

• • •

“All that doesn’t much matter any more,” said the Reverend. “It’s all in the past.”

Augusta bounced the rod up and down. “I had a premonition she would die. I saw her coffin. I told her so, too. She wouldn’t believe me. Or maybe she did. She just didn’t want to hear about it.”

“I don’t suppose she would.”

She had told Manny about the vision first, as he had been right there in the garden when it happened. She thought now that he’d even been the reason she’d had the premonition. Manny went fishing by himself, now that Augusta was becoming a young woman, and when Augusta asked to go with him he said, “Stay here and help your mother.” It seemed that the more she blossomed, the more he withdrew his affection. Hungry for it, she one day put on that pretty, childishly flowered blouse that almost hid her breasts, made him coffee and a plate of butter fingers, and took them out to the vegetable garden, where he bent hoeing between the rows. She plastered sweetness on her face, willing the child to the surface, the woman to submerge, hoping for that smile of his that had edged away, hoping for his hand on her shoulder in congratulation for this small effort of helpfulness. He smiled when he saw her coming down the row, all right, then stretched and took out his red handkerchief to dry the sweat on his forehead. “Putting on the dog there, aren’t yah?” he said. She looked down at her blouse. “What’re you all dressed up for?”

Augusta shrugged.

“Well, what you got there?”

“Coffee. Thought you’d be hungry.”

“I am. I am.” He took the cup and ate the cookies from the plate as she held it, then handed back the cup, the handle all smeared with soil. He smiled his thanks and said, “That’s my girl.” After taking the plate and cup back to the kitchen and slipping them into the soapy dishwater in the sink, she skipped back outside and wrapped her arms around Manny’s waist. He dropped his hoe, took her arms in his two fists, and pushed her away. “What’re the neighbours going to think?” he said. “You’re too big for that! Go on with you!”

She stumbled back. What did he mean? She must have done something shameful to be punished so, but what? All she’d done was wrap her arms around him in lovingness.
That
was the shameful thing, it must be. She felt suddenly dirty. The soil under her shoes—the garden, the sky—whooshed away from her in all directions. She stared at her feet, the only solid objects in all the swirling around her. For a moment the spinning subsided and she was no longer in the garden. There was a hole, a deep rectangular hole, in front of her feet. An open grave. She held something in her hand—rosemary, a clutch of rosemary. In the grave there was a simple wooden casket—whose casket? Her hand tensed, squeezing the rosemary so the air became thick with fragrance. Then the rosemary, the grave—everything—melted away in a whirl of motion, and when it finally stopped she found herself standing in front of her mother’s huge rosemary mound, her hands pinching the buttons of her blouse.

She stared at the rosemary redolent in the warm evening air. Why was she standing here? Her father chopped into the soil right behind her. Her father. The
cup of coffee. The plate of butter fingers. His hands pushing her away. “Mama’s going to die.”

“What?”

“She’ll die.”

She heard her father’s footsteps coming towards her, but she couldn’t move. She felt transfixed by the rosemary. Then his hand was on her shoulder and the spell was broken. He was angry. “What’re you talking about? Who’s going to die?”

“Die?”

“You said, ‘Mama.’ You said your mama was going to die.”

“I don’t know. I saw—I don’t know what I saw. I saw Mama’s coffin. There in the rosemary.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“No. I saw it. Mama’s going to die!”

“Stop that! Stop it!”

“I saw!”

“You shut up now. Quit your crying. You’re working yourself into a fit. She’s not going to die. And don’t tell your mother about this. It would scare her.”

But Augusta did tell her mother about the vision she had seen in the rosemary. She told her that very day, after pouring them each a cup of tea. She filled in details, the tan in the wood of the coffin (likely poplar, she thought), the gravel that surrounded the grave, the pungent smell of rosemary.

“And what is it that I’ve died of?” said Helen.

“I don’t know.”

“And when will this happen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want it to happen.”

“I doubt that it will. I believe you saw something. I’m just not sure we need to give it much credit.”

“You remember when you knew Dad cut his hand on the mower? It was like that.”

Helen flushed for a moment. She drank her tea. “Even if I believed you, what can I do? I don’t know when I’ll die, or how. I don’t know any more than anyone ever does about their own death. I think it would be best if we forgot about it. And you understand you’re to keep this within this house. You’ll be thought balmy if you go off talking about it.”

But she had told the Reverend and he hadn’t thought her balmy. He had placed his fishing pole beside him and poured them both tea from the little ceramic teapot he’d brought. “That’s a gift, you understand,” he said, “from God. That you can see the future.”

Augusta sipped her tea. “It doesn’t feel like a gift,” she said. “I should be able to use it, shouldn’t I? I should be able to help people avoid things. I couldn’t stop my mom from dying.”

“No, it’s not like that. You musn’t think you have the power to control things.” He patted her hand. “You know what I think? I think you take too much on yourself. You worry too much. You need to get out. Be with some women friends. How about getting a job? The health unit in Kamloops is looking for women to help the elderly make meals or clean house, or to watch babies when their mothers go to the doctor.”

“I don’t have a car. Olaf wouldn’t stand for it—me driving the truck into Kamloops every day.”

“I’ve been thinking of getting a truck myself. It would
be so much easier when we help a member of the church move. And there always seems to be something to haul to someone’s home. Last week I took Lucy Guterson’s old washer out to Mrs. Reed’s because hers had broken down. I had to borrow Alfred Campbell’s truck to do it. I’m forever borrowing his truck. Well, the upshot is, if I get the truck, I could lend you the Austin. Or you could have it, for that matter.”

“Oh, I couldn’t. That’s too big a gift.”

“I’ll lend it to you then, for as long as you need it. You need to get out. Be with other women. Get a little money for yourself. It’s not healthy to be cooped up on that ranch all the time.”

“I come to town Saturdays. I fish with you.”

“That’s not enough. You need women in your life. You need a little money of your own. They own you too much, that Olaf and Karl. I don’t want to see you slide away as Mrs. Olsen did.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know the story.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”

“Why? What did they tell you?”

“That she died of cold. During a blizzard. She must have lost her way.”

“There was no storm. She walked out into the night when Olaf and Karl were asleep and lay in the snow. Karl found her body in the morning. She went to sleep with her hands crossed over her breast and died of exposure. She was a romantic, locked away in that bachelor house. That ranch has a history of misery, for women.”

“She killed herself?”

“Karl and Olaf must have had their reasons for not telling you. It was important not to say anything then, you understand. You know how this town talks. In any case, I’m certain she’s gone to a better place. Death was a relief for her. But don’t make her mistake. She had no women friends. She had no money for the little luxuries that feed a woman’s soul. The house was as bare as any bachelor’s cabin. No curtains. No pretty dishes. No music. No flowers. They’d pinioned her. Do you know that when anyone visited, she’d hide from them? You’d catch a glimpse of her looking out the window, and when you knocked you’d hear her scuttling away like a frightened mouse. She died a slow death. I saw it coming and I didn’t take care of her. I let her slip through my fingers. I’ve never forgiven myself. I won’t make that mistake again. Do you understand me?”

His earnestness surprised her, frightened her, pleased her. No man had ever paid her that much attention, not Karl, not Manny. It made her feel giddy to be held in such high regard by this important man, to be his friend. She felt chosen.

The Reverend’s attention had given her the confidence to try for some changes on the Whorehouse Ranch. She nudged Karl’s knee, and he cleared his throat. “Father, Augusta would like to spend more time with me, alone.” When she nudged him under the table a second time, he rephrased it. “We need time alone together, when I’m not working.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell her not to expect so much. This is a farm. We’ve all got to pull our weight. You get plenty of time off in the winter.”

Karl took Augusta’s hand and glanced at his father. “But just Sundays off. Or one day during the week. Surely one day a week.”

“One day you’ll inherit this farm and you can run it as you please. But now it’s my farm and I’ll run it. If you don’t like it you can go someplace else and get a job, but don’t expect there to be a farm to come back to if you do. I can’t run this farm by myself. It’ll be in ruins if you leave.”

“No one’s talking of leaving, Father.”

“Waiting for me to die, eh?”

“It’s not like that, Father. No one wants you to die.”

“You’d be happy if I kicked off tonight. You’d be celebrating.”

“Father, please!”

“She’d be celebrating. And I’m only trying to work it so there’s something to leave my son.”

Augusta sighed. “I wouldn’t be celebrating.”

Olaf pointed his chin at their hands clasped on the table. “None of that here.”

Karl pulled his hand away. Augusta slammed her fist on the table and noisily cleared away the dishes.

The old Swede lowered his voice, but he knew she was listening. “Some men have to spank their women,” he said, “to get them to listen. I only had to spank your mother once. But some women, well …”

“Yes, Father.”

After they were in bed and she’d scolded him for agreeing with Olaf, he whispered, “What was I supposed to say?”

“You could have said no, for heaven’s sake! He was telling you to spank me, as if I were a child! He’s got you wrapped around his finger.”

“He’s an old man. He’s got old ideas. We’ve got to humour him.”

“You’re not humouring him. You’re playing the slave to him! You do everything he says, at our expense. At
my
expense!”

“Shush! He’ll hear!”

“I don’t care if he hears.” But she had lowered her voice.

“When I disagree with him he gets so upset,” said Karl. “He’s not well, you know. His heart could go at any time.”

“He’s healthy as you and me. And in any case he’s had his time here.”

“What’re you saying?”

“We’d be a lot better off if he were gone, wouldn’t we?”

“Augusta!”

“You don’t even see it, do you? You don’t see what he’s done to you. He’s made you small. He’s made you afraid.”

“Enough nagging!”

Why didn’t she bang her fists against the wall, or flail on the floor at the injustice of her treatment, at her husband’s unbelievable submissiveness to that small, ugly man. Why didn’t she storm around the house breaking things, as she so often dreamed of doing?

She couldn’t bear being thought a nag, but she couldn’t stay silent for long either. Not a week after trying to get Karl some days off, she was at it again. They’d been talking of Karl’s day in town. “Ronny Carver and Percy Martin came looking for a job today,” said Karl. “I told Ronny no. I said Percy could come talk to you about lambing next spring.”

Olaf snorted. “Good. Ronny’s useless. His folks would have done better if they’d drowned him and raised a pig instead.”

“You’re not hiring Percy Martin,” said Augusta. “He was the one who raped Shirley Matthews, just when we were engaged.”

“Shirley dropped the charges,” said Karl.

“A man can’t rape a woman,” said Olaf. “Ain’t possible. A ram can’t mount a sheep lest she wants it. She just goes running off. It’s a thing women make up, so’s they aren’t to blame for messing around.”

“You can’t be serious,” said Augusta.

Olaf glanced briefly her way and then addressed Karl. “Tell your wife she’s going into town too much.”

“She’s sitting right here, Father.”

“Tell her!”

“I heard what you said,” said Augusta.

“Tell her to stop seeing that Reverend.”

“Not this again! We’re just fishing, for heaven’s sake.”

“Tell her to stop seeing that Reverend. She’s dirtying our name.”

“I’m doing no such thing.”

“They’re only fishing, Father.”

“She’s just like her mother, isn’t she? For once in your life stand up for yourself!”

“Father, please!”