The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

“Um, and Mr. Holtzman, ma’am? Al Holtzman?” Harry asked.

Alice chuckled. “Oh, my email address? I’m Al Holtzman. Al for Alice. There’s no Mr. Holtzman. That okay with you?”

Harry blushed and stammered, “No, ma’am, I mean, yes, ma’am,” and managed, “Thank you for the interview.”

Alice watched him struggle, amused. He hesitated and then asked if the thing with the ladder was a regular part of the job.

“No, no. That was what you might call a bad decision,” she said dryly. “It was more irregular than regular.”

This statement renewed Jake’s mirth, and he laughed until tears ran down his cheeks. Harry looked at him worriedly as Jake rolled himself up toward the house.

Harry and Alice sat at the picnic table, and after she’d dealt with the stingers, Alice opened her laptop to glance through Harry’s résumé again. She asked him where he was living, and he said BZ, that little nothing town high up in the woods. She ventured that must be boring compared to New York. Harry shrugged and mumbled it was fine.

Not a talker, then, Alice thought. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and gestured out at the bee yard. “I have twenty-four hives now, and by the end of the summer I would like to be up to fifty. My goal is to have one hundred by next summer.”

The job was pretty simple, she explained. She wanted someone who could follow directions, lift up to one hundred pounds, and take initiative in seeing what else needed to be done. She needed new hives built as part of the expansion process. Besides the beekeeping, there was the field to mow, fences to mend, and a few apple and pear trees to tend to. There was no end of small projects, she realized, looking around. Things had gotten away from her in the past year.

“So, a little carpentry, some heavy lifting, and help keeping the place shipshape,” she said in summary.

Harry nodded.

Alice waited for him to say something, realized he wasn’t going to, and glanced back down at the computer screen, searching for something else to ask.

The back door banged open, and Jake rolled toward them with a tray of iced tea and glasses balanced on his lap, whistling.

Harry glanced at him and back to Alice. “Is your son, I mean. Is he . . . sick?” Harry asked in a low voice.

Alice felt a flare of anger on Jake’s behalf.

“He’s not sick. He’s paraplegic,” she said flatly. “And he’s not my son. He’s—”

She stopped, flummoxed, not knowing how to explain Jake. “He’s a friend of the family,” she finished.

Harry reddened and mumbled an apology.

Jake lifted the tray onto the table. “Okay if I sit in, boss?” he asked.

Alice nodded and turned back to the computer. “So—light construction skills. What can you tell me about that?”

She saw Harry take a deep breath and sit up straight.

“I’m good with a table saw, planer, jointer, sander—the basics. I learned to use all that stuff working for my mom and stepdad. That’s Romano Landscaping,” he said, gesturing toward his résumé on her screen. “We worked small commercial and residential jobs on Long Island. A little bit of everything.”

Landscaping, irrigation systems, and pruning, Alice read. That could all come in handy with the future orchard, she thought.

Alice nodded with approval. “You worked for your mom. Trustworthy, I guess?” she said.

Harry said nothing. There was a long pause. Alice shut her laptop and suggested they all have a look at the bees.

From outside the apiary, Alice explained the basics of the hive setup and the orientation of the yard. The air was full of darting golden bodies. The untrained eye would see only random motion, but if you watched the flight patterns as she did, you could see that each group was working its way to a specific destination and back again. The yard hummed; a breeze stirred the grass and then the branches of the big fir trees. A flicker called, “Cheer!” from the shadowy woods. Alice swung the gate open and eyed the closest hive. She grabbed a pair of clippers from the toolbox and trimmed the grass down in a few quick snips. The mower couldn’t get this close, and the ladies didn’t like the noisy weed eater. This was the kind of random task she needed help with, she explained. Proper ventilation was key to hive survival. That meant keeping entrances clear of grass in summer and snow in winter. She leaned down to trim another entrance as she talked.

The three of them moved along the perimeter of the bee yard, and Alice pointed out the difference between the brood boxes and the honey supers. She explained how they became heavy with honey and brood later in the summer. That was why she needed a strong back. A full honey super could weigh up to one hundred pounds.

She talked briefly about how she could increase the number of hives with splits and swarms but didn’t want to go into too much detail. She gestured at the fallen ladder and the cluster of bees that had regathered in a buzzing clump in the same tree.

“That was a swarm capture gone wrong,” she said. “It’s usually fairly easy.”

Harry nodded, looking unconvinced, and Jake snorted. Alice eyed the swarm and considered asking the young man to help her capture it as a kind of test. A glance at her watch on her still-throbbing arm told her she needed to get back to the office. So she walked Harry to the barn, where she showed him an empty hive, pulling out the frames so he could understand where the bees built the wax, laid the eggs, and stored the honey. Jake sat listening, his face intent.

“I can teach you everything you need to know. I’d probably start you on yard maintenance and grass cutting. Like I was saying, ventilation is pretty important as it gets hotter, so grass is a daily chore.”

Was she offering him the job? The idea of interviewing