We started on the meadow between the Menton farm, the main road and the narrow Alabast River, which, despite its fancy name, this far south wasn’t much more than a riverbed. Here I had assembled the majority. Twenty-six bee colonies. We started on a shocking-pink hive. It was helpful that there were two of us. Tom lifted the box while I changed the board. Removed the old one, which was full of debris and dead bees from the winter, and put in a new, clean one. We had invested in modern bottom boards with screens and removable ventilated pollen trays last year. It had been expensive, but it was worth it. The air circulation improved and the cleaning was simpler. Most beekeepers operating on this scale had dropped changing the bottom boards at this time, but I didn’t believe in letting things take their own course. My bees were going to thrive.
A lot of debris had collected on the bottom board in the course of the winter, but otherwise everything looked good. We were fortunate, the bees stayed calm, few flew up. It was good to see Tom out here. He worked skillfully and quickly, was back where he belonged. Sometimes he wanted to bend his back, but I stopped him.
“Lift with your legs.” I knew several people who had ended up with slipped discs and spasms and no end of back troubles because they had been lifting wrong. And Tom’s back would have to last for many years, withstand thousands of lifts. We kept working without a break until lunchtime. We didn’t say much, just a few words, and only about the work. “Hold on here, like that, good.” I kept waiting for him to ask for a break, but he didn’t mention it. And as the hour approached 11:30, my stomach was growling, so I was the one who suggested a bite to eat.
We sat on the edge of the flatbed and dangled our legs. I had brought along a thermos full of coffee and some sandwiches. The peanut butter had been absorbed by the spongy bread and the slices were sticky but it’s incredible how good everything tastes when the air is fresh and you’re working outdoors. Tom said nothing. He was definitely not one for small talk, this son of mine. But if that was his preference, it was fine by me. I’d gotten him out here, that was the most important thing. I just hoped that he was enjoying it a little and felt it was good to be here again.
I finished eating and jumped down onto the ground to work again, but Tom was still toiling away. He took baby-size bites and stared intently at the sandwich, as if there were something wrong with it.
And then suddenly he came out with it.
“I have a very good English teacher.”
“Is that right,” I said and stopped. I tried to smile, even though there was something about the way he said this completely ordinary thing that gave me a lump in my stomach. “That’s good.”
He took another bite. He chewed and chewed, apparently unable to swallow.
“He’s encouraging me to write more.”
“More? More of what?”
“He says that…”
He fell silent. Put the sandwich down, gripped around his coffee cup, but didn’t drink. That was when I first noticed that his hand was shaking a little.
“He says that I have a voice.”
A voice? Academic nonsense. I forced a grin, I couldn’t be bothered to take this seriously.
“I could have told you that a long time ago,” I said. “Especially when you were little. Loud and cutting it was. Thank God your voice changed. It didn’t happen one day too soon.”
He didn’t smile at the joke. He just sat there in silence.
The grin slid off my face. He wanted to say something, no doubt about that. He was sitting there with some burning issue on his mind, and I had a strong suspicion that it was something that I absolutely did not want to hear.
“It’s good the teachers are satisfied with you,” I said finally.
“He really thinks I should write more,” Tom said softly, with an emphasis on really. “He said I can apply for scholarships, too, and maybe continue with it.”
“Continue?”
“A Ph.D.”
My chest tightened, my throat grew constricted, I could taste the raw flavor of peanut butter in my mouth, but was unable to swallow.
“Is that right. So he said that.”
Tom nodded.
I tried to keep my voice calm. “How many years does one of those Ph.D.s take?”
He just stared down at the toes of his shoes, without answering.
“I’m not exactly getting any younger,” I continued. “Things don’t run by themselves up here.”
“No, I know that,” he said quietly. “But you do have help?”
“Jimmy and Rick come and go as they please. It’s not their farm. Besides, they don’t work for free.”
I started working again, lifted the dirty boards over onto the flatbed. The woodwork in the frames hit the metal on the flatbed with a rude clang. Yes indeed, we had heard from teachers before about how Tom was good with words. He’d always gotten As in English, there was obviously nothing wrong with his head. But it wasn’t English we had in mind when we sent him to college. He was supposed to learn economics and marketing, prepare the farm for the future. Expand, modernize, make operations more efficient. And maybe make a proper website. Those were the kinds of things he was supposed to learn. That was why we had scrimped and saved for his tuition, ever since he was a little boy. We hadn’t treated ourselves to a single real vacation in all those years, not once. Everything had gone into the college account.
What did an English teacher know? Probably sat there in his dusty college office full of books he pretended to have read and slurped tea and wore a scarf while he was inside, trimming his beard with embroidery scissors. While he gave “good” advice to young boys who happened to be good at writing, without knowing shit about what he was starting.
“We can talk more about that later,” I said. We never had that talk. He left before we had the chance. I decided that “later” was a long way off. Or maybe he was the one who decided that. Or maybe Emma. Because we were never alone in the same room, Tom and I, not on one single occasion, the rest of the time that he was home. Emma cooed around us like a wood pigeon on speed, served, cleared, talked and talked about absolutely nothing.
I was so tired during those days. Fell asleep on the couch all the time. Had a long list of jobs I was supposed to do, old hives that needed maintenance, orders I needed to follow up on. But I didn’t have the gumption. It was like I was going around with a mild fever all the time. But I didn’t have a fever. I even took my temperature. Snuck into the bathroom and found a thermometer at the bottom of the first-aid kit. Light blue with teddy bears on it, Emma had bought it for Tom when he was a baby. It was supposed to be especially quick, the instructions said, so as not to disturb the child any longer than necessary. But it sure had to stay in long enough. Somewhere or other in the house I could hear Emma cooing and Tom answering from time to time. And there I was, with the cold metal tip in my butt, that had been in the backside of my son hundreds of times. Emma was not the kind to think twice about checking his temperature, and yet again I felt my eyes fall shut while I was waiting for the digital peep that told me my body was as it should be, even though it felt as if I had run a marathon, or how I figured that had to feel.