A Recipe for Bees (25 page)

Karl didn’t expect conversation from Joy, as Augusta did, and Joy was a help to him, handing him tools as he worked on the tractor, or carrying empty buckets behind him. It seemed so important to her that she did help. She followed him like gosling after goose. He was always giving her some little thing to do to keep her busy, but he seemed to think Joy was a puppy, born with the sense to avoid danger, not the helpless child she was. Once, as he was shovelling out a stall, a horse kicked Joy in the small of her back and Karl didn’t even notice. Augusta came out carrying coffee and found Joy sitting on dirty straw in the horse’s corral, dazed. She asked Karl what had happened but he only shrugged and went on shovelling. Augusta packed Joy
off to bed for a nap and it was then, as she was undressing her, that she found the red, perfectly shaped hoof mark on the girl’s back. Only by the grace of God had the horse missed booting Joy in the kidney or in the head. Another time the big ram butted Joy down again and again as Karl sheared sheep nearby. Karl, engrossed in clipping, didn’t hear the screams, but Augusta did, and carried the terrified girl off to the house. Joy was only bruised, but how much worse could it have been? Augusta worried Karl over that until he snapped at her. “She could have been killed!” she said.

“She’s all right.”

“You’ve got to watch her.”

“I watch her.”

“She doesn’t always know to get out of the way.”

“I said I watch her.”

“Especially when she’s around the animals. You’ve got to watch her with that ram.”

“Quit nagging.”

No matter what she said, he would go on working as he always had, in his own way. So Augusta worried Joy with her complaints. “Your father takes too many chances. You must be careful around the animals. You could so easily be hurt. You watch what you’re doing.” On and on she went, worrying, nagging, pleading with the girl. Somehow she believed that if she only said the words
be careful
, then Joy would; they were a blessing of sorts, and would protect her. If Augusta didn’t say them, well, all manner of catastrophe would happen.

All the years Joy was growing up, Augusta would have nothing to do with Olaf. She hadn’t set foot on the
Whorehouse Ranch once since they’d moved out. She’d seen Olaf only infrequently, when she happened on him in the streets of Chase. In all those years they hadn’t spent one holiday with him, and that suited Augusta just fine. Karl went to see him, though, often with Joy. Over the years Olaf seemed to accept her as a grandchild, and sometimes even sent her home with candies or oranges. Karl took Olaf presents and the food hampers Augusta might think to put together, and he spent a little time with Olaf during Easter Sunday or Christmas afternoon. Augusta imagined these visits as dreary affairs where they sat together at the kitchen table. Olaf hadn’t the knack for celebration. They might smoke pipes together, but there would be little in the way of conversation. They seemed to have no need for talk. Then, at some hidden signal, Karl would decide it was time to go home, and he’d say his goodbye.

The night Olaf died, Augusta dreamed that she saw her own father, Manny, wearing snowshoes and standing, of all places, in the snow of a pasture on the Whorehouse Ranch. It was night in the dream. The sky was black. But the snow was so white it seemed to glow, reflecting whiteness into Manny’s face. He smiled, but he didn’t wave or say anything. He did the awkward kicking dance of a man turning on snowshoes, and then shuffled away across the snow into the black.

Augusta woke from the dream with a start. The room was black. Karl snored. Why, seven years after his death, was she dreaming of Manny? And what was he doing at the Whorehouse Ranch?

The next morning at breakfast Karl said, “I’m thinking of going to see Father.”

“Say hello for me.”

“I suppose you don’t want to spend Christmas at the ranch.”

“If he wants to come here I won’t put up a fuss.”

“Well, I’ll tell him, then, that he’s welcome for Christmas.”

Karl still wasn’t home from the ranch by supper time. Olaf had no phone. It was the only time in their long lives together that she had no idea where Karl was. Finally, at nine, she made a thermos of tea, bundled up Joy and herself, and drove the Austin to the Whorehouse Ranch. The whole scene had the quality of a dream: a bed of sparkling white stretched out into the darkness on all sides of the cabin and outbuildings. The trees around were loaded down with snow. There had been traffic on the road; she could see many tracks leading to and from the farm. The cabin was so much smaller and shabbier than she remembered it. Icicles hung from a roof so heaped with snow that she wondered how the structure could support such weight. With Joy carrying the tea behind her, she creaked open the cabin door and was relieved to find Karl sitting at the kitchen table, in his father’s chair. A lit kerosene lamp sat on the table beside him. There was no fire going in the house; it was bitterly cold.

“They’ve come and gone already,” he said.

“Who?”

“The police and ambulance. They took him away. He’s dead.”

“Who?” she said again, stupidly. Karl didn’t reply. Of course he meant Olaf. All she could think was,
Finally, the old man’s gone
. It wasn’t happiness she felt at his death, just
relief. She was almost surprised that Karl felt differently, that he felt sadness or grief. “Where’s the dog?” she said.

“The dog?”

“The black bitch.”

Joy tittered and put a mittened hand over her mouth.

“She died after we left.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t you want to hear? How he died?”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

“I found him out there.” He pointed at the front door. “I found him where I found my mother. He laid himself out there and crossed his arms like she did and let himself die.” Karl drew in quick breaths but he wouldn’t let himself cry. He leaned on his knees and put his head in his hands.

“I’m sorry, Karl,” she said. But she made no motion to touch him. He looked so forlorn sitting there, head in hands, in his father’s red chair. The house was freezing. She sought out one of Karl’s red handkerchiefs from her pocket and wiped her nose, then took the thermos from Joy and poured them all a cup of strong tea, black the way Karl liked it. Joy held the cup up to her nose to warm her face, but didn’t drink from it. The house was deadly quiet. Their breath floated ghostly against the black behind the lantern. Augusta found herself humming, then singing quietly. Her voice echoed around the bachelor cabin.
Won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?

Joy said, “Did something happen to Grandpa?”

Karl showed his grief with little energy. He picked at his food; Augusta had to dress it up with gravy to get him to eat. Sometimes she’d wake to find he wasn’t there in the
bed with her, and when she went to find him, opening the downstairs door because he was nowhere in the house, she’d see him standing out in the half-snow, half-mud field. She worried for a while that he might join Olaf and Blenda out there, so she spent some sleepless nights watching that he came back in. He always did, tucking himself into bed with limbs so cold she’d have to rub them to get the life-blood going.

Joy didn’t seem to miss Olaf much; she was out making snowmen in the yard an hour after they got back from the funeral. Augusta felt a little sadness for not being kinder to the old man but, since he’d been dead to her those past few years anyway, she felt little else. In fact the years following Olaf’s death were good years. They had some extra money from the sale of the Whorehouse Ranch—not much, after the farm bills were paid off, but enough that she could buy those extras she’d been missing: a few dresses for herself, a set of pretty plates. Karl got his flock up to the number and quality he was after, and there were toys for Joy. Augusta went a little overboard, filling the girl’s room with toys she had always wanted for herself—dolls and stuffed animals. She once bought Joy yet another teddy bear and gave it to her in the store. Joy wasn’t impressed.

“A teddy bear? I’m too old for that.”

“No you’re not. It’s adorable!”

“I don’t like it. That’s for babies.”

“I’ve bought it for you.”

“It isn’t mine. You bought it ’cause you like it.”

Augusta glanced towards the counter to see if the clerk was watching this performance. She was. She stuffed the
bear into Joy’s arms but Joy wouldn’t hold it. She let it drop to the floor. “Pick it up!”

“No!”

“Everyone’s watching.”

“I don’t care.” Then Joy ran out of the store, leaving Augusta standing there with the teddy bear on the floor and everyone staring at her. She didn’t look at them. She retrieved the bear and stormed out after Joy, grabbed her by the arm, and forced her across the parking lot into the car, slamming the car door behind her.

Now, thinking of that day, Augusta felt the chill of embarrassment. Why had she forced that bear on Joy, and then punished her for not wanting it? She was such an independent child who almost never seemed to need Augusta. When she was ten the country school down the road she’d been attending burned down one night. It was a shock for her, the loss of the familiar. Nevertheless Augusta remembered the incident with warmth, because for once Joy needed comforting. She cried, huddled next to Augusta, as they drove past the black, smoking debris the next day. She cried for the loss of her desk and her books and the picture she’d drawn the day before; she cried for the unhatched chicks in the faulty incubator that the schoolboard later announced was the likely cause of the fire. But even then Joy had Karl’s practicality about her. After she had her cry, she said she was thankful that she’d brought home her new skates from school the night before.

After that fire Joy was bused to school in Chase, with the rest of the children from the valley. Both Native and white kids attended the school now; the Indian children were no longer forced into separate schools as they had
been in Augusta’s day. The family of one of the girls Joy went to school with turned up at the farm one day. Charlie Samson drove his Fargo pickup up the driveway with his daughter Patsy in the cab beside him. A number of adults rode in the back of the pickup. Presumably they were Charlie’s brothers and sisters, and perhaps cousins. They all piled out when Charlie parked in front of the house.

He knocked on the screen door, then stood back a step and waited. His daughter stood behind him. The rest of the group waited at the foot of the porch, on the pathway that led from the vegetable garden to the house. Augusta opened the screen door. “Hello?”

“I’m Charlie Samson. This is my daughter Patsy.” He examined her face. “Your daughter goes to school with Patsy.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Can I come in?”

“I don’t have enough chairs—”

“That’s all right. They can all wait outside.”

He nodded at the rest of the group and Augusta stepped aside to let him and his daughter through. She glanced at the group and closed the screen door.

“Is your daughter here? I’ve come to talk about your daughter.”

“Yes. Have a seat. Joy? Can you come into the kitchen, please?” Then to Charlie she said, “Do you want some coffee?”

“No thank you.”

Joy rumbled downstairs from her room and then, when she saw Patsy, stopped short at the doorway. “Come on,” said Augusta. “Sit.” Joy slouched in a kitchen chair and
stared at her foot scuffing against the table leg. “Joy, do you know Mr. Samson? He’s Patsy’s father.” Joy nodded. Augusta turned to Charlie. “Maybe you should tell me what this is about.”

“The other day at school Joy called Patsy a
squaw
. I don’t want anyone calling my girls that.”

“No. Of course not. Joy, did you call Patsy that?” Joy didn’t say anything. Her chin trembled. “I can’t believe Joy would say something like that. I don’t know where she got it from.”

“You don’t, eh?”

Augusta’s face grew hot. “No, I don’t. And I can promise you it won’t happen again, will it, Joy?”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“It won’t happen again.”

“Say you’re sorry.”

Joy glanced at Augusta and then started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she said, and ran back to her room.

After Charlie and his kin had streamed back into the truck and left, Augusta went up to Joy’s room and sat next to her. The bed was strewn with crumpled tissue. She was still sobbing. She blew her nose.

“We’ve never used words like ‘squaw’ in this house, have we?” said Augusta. “Karl never called a woman that, did he?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t understand,” said Augusta. “Why did you say it?”

“It wasn’t just me. Everybody was doing it. She started it. She was calling me names.”

“Names like what?”

Joy shrugged. Augusta couldn’t get anything more from her. When she tried to hold Joy, the girl shrugged away, then ran downstairs and outside. Augusta sat for a while in silence, thinking of Alice and how she’d called her
Siwash
. She thought of the names the Grafton boys had called her after her mother died. The five pale, white-haired Grafton boys had caught her alone on the schoolyard one day and danced circles around her, pretending they were Indians dancing around a fire. “Indian lover!” one of them sang out.

Then another: “Your mother was a squaw!”

“Hey, halfbreed! Who was
your
dad?”

“Augusta is a bastard, bastard.”

“I am not,” she said.

“Your mother was an Indian lover.”

“She was not!”

“Your baby sister was a redskin.”

“She wasn’t. She
wasn’t!”
Augusta pushed her way past the boys and ran off. They peppered her with rocks as she fled, and hurled names at her.
Indian lover. Halfbreed. Bastard
.

Her father was seated in the kitchen, drinking coffee. “You’re home early,” he said.

“I’m quitting school.”

He put down his cup and examined her face, deciding if she was serious. “Your mother wouldn’t like it,” he said.

“Well, she’s dead, isn’t she?” It was a stupid thing to say and she wanted to pull the words back and swallow them, but there they were, in the air between them. He didn’t say anything for a time. Finally, when she took a step forward to pour herself coffee, he said, “Well, if you’re not going
to school, you’re sure as hell going to get to work around here.”