When Aubrey appeared, he had walked through the house and come out the front door, carrying a large book which he handed to Qwilleran. It was a very old, leather-bound, gold-tooled Bible with text printed in Old German. The beekeeper explained, "It came from Austria more'n a hunerd years ago. The old man's gonna leave it to me when he kicks the bucket. The cuckoo clock, too. It di'n't work, but I fixed it. Wanna see the cuckoo clock? It's on the wall."
"Later," Qwilleran said firmly. "Sit down and let's talk about bees. Do you ever get stung?"
Aubrey shook his head gravely. "My bees ain't never stung me. They trust me. I talk to 'em. I give 'em sugar-water in winter."
"Would they sting me?"
"If you frighten 'em or act unfriendly or wear a wool cap. They don't like wool. I don't know why. Bees never sting me. I seen a swarm of wild honeybees go inside an old tree, once. I went to look, and they swarmed allover me. I think they liked me. They was all over my face and in my ears and down my neck. It was a crazy feeling."
"I'll bet!" Qwilleran said grimly.
"I went home and come back with an empty hive. I hived the whole swarm. I think they was glad to get a good home. Bees are smart. If there's an apple tree and a pear tree, they go to the apple tree. It's got more sugar. The old man don't like honey. He likes white sugar. I seen him eat a whole bowl of sugar with a spoon, once. It made me sick. Would it make you sick?"
Piecemeal, with numerous digressions, the interview filled the reel of tape: A bee hive was like a little honey factory. Every bee had a job. The workers built honeycombs. The queen laid eggs. The field workers collected nectar and pollen from flowers. They brought it back to the hive to make honey. The door keepers guarded the hives against robbers. The drones didn't make honey; they just took care of the queen. If the hive got crowded, the drones were thrown out to die.
Qwilleran asked, "How do they get the nectar back to the hive?"
"In their bellies. They carry pollen in little bags on their legs."
Skeptically Qwilleran asked, "Are you telling me the truth, Aubrey?"
"Cross my heart," said the big man solemnly. "Wanna see the hives?"
"Only if you lend me a bee veil. They might think my moustache is made of wool."
"If a worker stings you, he dies."
"That's small comfort. Give me a bee veil and some gloves."
They walked down a rutted trail to the river, where all was quiet except for the rushing of the rapids and the cawing of crows. On the bank stood a shabby cabin with a paltry chimney and a hand pump on a wooden platform at the door. A lonely outhouse stood in a nearby field.
Aubrey said, "My family had six cabins they rented to bass fishermen. Two burned down. Three blew away in a storm. I live in this one. The walls were fulla wild bees, and I hadda smoke 'em out and take off the siding, and underneath the walls were fulla honey."
As they neared the cabin, Qwilleran became aware of a faint buzzing; he put on the gloves and the hat with a veil. On the south side of the building, exposed to the sun and protected from the north wind, was a row of wooden boxes elevated on platforms - not as picturesque as the old dome-shaped hives pictured on honey labels. The boxes were Langstroth hives, Qwilleran later learned, designed in 1851.
Aubrey said, "The bees do all the work. I take the trays of honeycomb up to the shed and draw the honey off and put it in jars. Those trays get pretty heavy."
"'Sounds like sticky business," Qwilleran said.
"I hadda crazy accident, once. I di'n't put the jar right under the spout, and the honey ran allover the floor."
The busy bees paid no attention to the journalist. He spoke quietly and made no sudden moves. "What do they do in winter?"
"They cluster together in the hives and keep each other warm. I wrap the hives in straw and stuff. They can get out if they want, but the mice can't get in."
"What about snow?"
"It don't matter if the hives are buried in snow, but ice-that's bad. My whole colony was smothered by ice, once."
It was a fantastic story, if true, Qwilleran thought. He would check it against the bee book at the library. "And now I'd like to see the cuckoo clock," he said. Truthfully, it was the interior of the mansion that interested him: the carved woodwork, the staghorn chandelier, the stained glass. The furnishings were sparse. The old man had sold almost everything, Aubrey said. Only one room looked inhabited. There were two overstuffed chairs in front of a TV, a large wardrobe carved with figures of wild game, and a gun cabinet with glass doors. The pendulum of the carved clock wagged on the wall.
"Who's the hunter?" Qwilleran asked.
"The old man shoots rabbits and makes hasenpfeffer. He shoots crows, too. I used to do lotsa hunt'n' with my brothers. I was a good shot." He looked away. "I don't wanna hunt any more."
The clock sounded cuckoo cuckoo cuckoo, and Qwilleran said it was time to leave. He paid for his honey and left with a new respect for the thick amber fluid. How many bellyfuls of nectar would it take, he wondered, to make a pint of honey?
He propped his purchases in a safe place in his car, where they would not tip or spill. Then he drove to Toodle's Market to buy something fresh for the Siamese and something frozen for himself. On the way he thought about the industrious workers and the hapless drones... about nature's way of converting flowers into food without chemicals or preservatives... and about the mild-mannered beekeeper who talked to his bees. Not a word had been said about the hotel bombing, an incident that was on everyone's tongue.
Arriving at the market, Qwilleran opened his car door and heard a sickening sound as glass broke on concrete pavement in a puddle of amber goo. He looked down at the disaster, then up at the sky and counted to ten.
7
A jar of honey spilled on a parking lot is not as bad as a jar of spilled honey mixed with broken glass. Qwilleran, having made this profound observation, notified Mrs. Toodle, and she summoned one of her grandsons, The three of them marched single file to the scene of the accident, Qwilleran apologizing profusely and Mrs. Toodle thanking him for reporting it, The situation tickled the funny bone of the young Toodle; it was almost as funny as the time he dropped a crate of eggs.
"You'll have to get every last bit of glass," his grandmother admonished. "If a dog comes along and licks the spot, he could cut his tongue," When her back was turned, Qwilleran slipped the young man a generous tip.
"That's not necessary," she said, having developed eyes in the back of her head after years of running a supermarket.
He bought some corned beef at the deli counter - enough for the cats' dinner and a late-night snack for himself, then drove downtown to buy flowers for Polly. At five o'clock she would be venturing out of doors for her first walk since having surgery. He parked in the municipal lot and walked to the florist shop. Downtown Pickax was a three-block stretch of heterogeneous stone buildings: large, small, impressive, quaint, ornate, and primitive. All were relics of the era when the county was famous for its quarries. Together with the stone paving, they gave the town its title: City of Stone. A Cotswold cottage, the Bastille, Stonehenge, and a Scottish castle did business side by side. To Qwilleran, Main Street was Information Highway; friends and acquaintances stopped him to report the latest scandal, rumor, or joke.
Today he bumped into Whannell MacWhannell, the accountant. Big Mac, a burly Scot, greeted Qwilleran with "Aye! There's a rumor the 'braw laird of Mackintosh' has ordered a kilt, tailor-made! You can wear it to Scottish Night at the lodge and the Highland Games in Lockmaster."