The Bee Tree

A Story by Jesse Hill Ford

SHE fished often. He knew so at once. From the very way she stood, legs together, relaxed. The white gravel lip of the lakcshore curved about the green water of the shallow inlet. She was fishing the stumps with a slender six-foot cane pole, her whole graceful body alert, her head held very still.

She raised the pole. It curved and then straightened. She had caught a bream. She knelt, removed the hook, and put the fish on the stringer at her feet. A white stone held the stringer in place against the shore. She put a worm on the hook, stood up. and with a practiced thrust of the pole dropped her line in beside the dark shadow of a submerged stump. The cork seemed to hover an instant on the green surface before it bobbed twice and swooped down again. This time she missed. She knelt and got another worm from the rusty can.

He eased the chain saw to earth and leaned his well-worn double-bitted ax against it. The lake stretched still and flat and far beyond her, caught by the midmorning calm of June. The Kentucky fishermen had long since run their lines and nets and had returned to camp. The Tennessee guides and their pale-skinned bass fishermen had come in fast metal boats and cast plugs at the stumps before sunrise, as soon as the mist was off the water. None of them would return now until dusk, when the big fish would begin slashing through schools of shad that dappled the surface after sundown. Thus, but for the woman he would have the shore all to himself. But for her he could begin the work he had come here to do. The bees, mindless of him, made a traffic in and out of the thick oak tree standing a few yards to his right in the shadow of the woods. On his left, in the meadow, green weeds swayed beneath the weight of grasshoppers.

In his mind he saw that but for her he would have felled the tree by now. The split white fragrant halves would have been laid open to the dark core. By now the wild honey would have been collected in lard stands. He would have carried the two five-gallon cans, his ax, and the gasoline power saw miles through the steep cool woods to his truck, parked just outside the game preserve.

She moved the stone, raised the heavy, wiggling stringer from the water, and walked slowly along the gravel shore to a place opposite the next stump. For the first time he saw her handsome face. She didn’t look to be quite thirty. Her brown hair was shoulder-length. She stooped and anchored the stringer with another stone. She straightened up and began fishing again. He sighed and sat down, in a dull way mindful of her straight, slender legs and of a tugging, awkward loneliness which the sight of her inspired in him.

He didn’t talk to women often, living to himself as he did, working when he found work, but even then doing only so much of it as would keep him going. Otherwise they would come after a man to pay taxes — them; they were his enemy, the government. They laid boundaries in the woods where neither men nor dogs would be allowed. They set seasons on what could be hunted when, and where. It came to him that she must be one of their women. They— who had everything, controlled everything, owned everything, and set closed season on everything but a poaching man like himself. At the souvenir stand on the highway wild honey brought fifty cents a pound, no questions asked. The souvenir merchant put the honey up in little jars that sold quickly at a dollar each. The demand was endless. EASING to his feel, he slipped quietly along the edge of the meadow and climbed a knoll covered by sapling pines. From the rise he could sec the shore for a long way down to the left. There was no boat, so she must have walked. She was three miles from Baker’s. Baker’s boat dock had motel rooms and a restaurant. She had come all this way alone, without so much as a dog for company. She must be passing her time while the man, her rich little husband, slept away the hot daylight hours back at the motel, waiting for the bass to start striking again, waiting for dusk. Satisfied there was no boat, sure that she was alone, he went boldly down to the gravel and walked slowly in her direction, along the white pebbly shore. He felt little thrills of excitement. Once he was sure that she must have seen him he went more slowly still, pausing to frown at submerged stumps, pretending he didn’t see her and thus getting only a few steps away before she finally moved. Seen close she was prettier than he had suspected from afar. “Have you lost something?” she said. “Me?” He cleared his throat trying to rid his voice of a slightly strangled sound. “The way you looked at the water,” she said. The sound ol her words was Northern — Yankee. “Oh, that. Looking for fish is all.” “Seen any?” “Oh, some.” He smiled. “You up at Baker’s?” “Yeah,” she said. “Good old Baker’s.” “I didn’t see no boat,” he explained. “I walked,” she said. “You want to hand me that can?” He picked up the can and got a worm. “Here,” he said. “I’ll bait it for you.” “Well, that’s what I call service.” She passed him her line. He threaded the worm on her little bream hook. He wiped his fingers on his trousers. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re from around here, I guess.” “All my life,” he said. “Just about.” “Well, don’t sound so happy about it. Don’t you like it here?” “I guess so,” he said. “It’s all right.” “You guess so.” She glanced at him, looking sideways. She was smiling. He couldn’t look for more than an instant at her sly brown eyes. Her beauty somehow embarrassed him. She was easy, used to men and not a bit shy and afraid. Her cheeks were sunburned, two pale red spots beneath her eyes. “Well?” she said. “Oh, I guess,” he said. He had a sudden urge to tell her things. “I was in Georgia once in the army. That wasn’t too hot,” he said. “I’ll bet,” she said. “So you were once a little soldier in a little uniform. Poor thing.” “Down in Georgia, that country is all flat,” he said. “Are you staying at Baker’s with just your husband, or did you bring along your kids?” She didn’t turn her head. “Well, listen at that,” she said. “I don’t have any kids, and I’m not married — not anymore. My husband was killed.” “Oh.” He couldn’t think what to say next. “Baker’s my daddy-in-law. I live at the dock and waitress at the cafe.” “Then you married Lon, that was killed over yonder,” he said. It began coming clear for him. “Where was it?” “I married Lon,” she said, nodding slowly. “It was Vietnam. You got another worm? Something’s trying to steal all my bait.” “They’ll do that sometimes,” he said. He got a worm and baited her hook again. He squatted down. He sat on one heel and picked up a few bits of pale rough gravel. Tiny brown spiders went searching among the stones nearest the water, appearing and disappearing. He chunked gravel at them. “Yeah, I knew Lon,” he said. Now that the connection was established he was sure he could go ahead and tell her. He could say: Look, I got a bee tree staked out up the bank yonder behind you. Being she was Lon’s kin and working at Baker’s, it was bound to be all right to tell her. Then he’d be safe to go ahead and cut the tree. “I moved here in March,” she was saying. “My home was in Illinois, above Chicago. Aurora. Ever hear of it?” “No, I suppose not,” he said. “Tennesseans are all the same,” she said. “Down here nobody is sure. You always reckon and suppose and guess and think so. Cagey as sin. I could close my eyes when you talk and hear Lon speaking. Lon never was sure of anything either.”

It made him uncomfortable, hearing her speak so of the dead. Any notion he might have had before, any little dream of getting fresh with her, went out of him. Only the lump of the notion remained where the notion once had been, something wedged deep in the roof of his throat, a thing no amount of swallowing would remove. Slowly he got to his feet.

“Look,” he began. “Look here a minute.”

“What?” Her eyes were gazing straight into his.

“Up the ridge yonder.” He pointed with his thumb. “Pm fixing to cut a bee tree.”

“But you can’t! That’s in the preserve, isn’t it?”

“That’s why Pm telling you,” he said. “If it wasn’t in the preserve, I wouldn’t have to tell you.”

“But if they catch you — are you crazy or something? You want a five-thousand-dollar fine? Three years in the pen?”

“They won’t catch me,” he said. “They might phone the airport for a plane if they heard the chain saw — that is, if they do hear it. By that time if they was to hear it, it will already be too late. Nothing only somebody saying they seen me when I done it, only that could cause me trouble. That’s why I had to make sure.”

“And here I was thinking it was my big brown eyes. Tell me, just what are you trying to prove?”

“Huh?” he said.

“Trespassing on federal property, cutting a tree, risking your fool neck for wild honey. Doesn’t it bother you to go taking what isn’t yours? Stealing?”

“It’s mine as much as theirs,” he said. “It’s more mine than theirs!”

“Whose?”

“Them,” he said. “The Law. Who are they to tell us?”

“Meaning I’m one of us, I suppose.”

He sighed. “If they came this way, well, they might ask you if you seen or heard anybody. I’ll give you time to get on away from here before I start cutting.”

“Otherwise I could stay here and fish, and when they came hunting you — if they came — I could lie to them,” she said. “Is that it?”

He frowned. “That’s not what I told you.”

“But that’s what you meant, isn’t it?” She took in her line and turned the pole, winding in line and cork. “You know,” she said, “in a way I kind of like you?”

He couldn’t fathom what she meant. “Are you still going to cut the tree?” she asked.

“I sure am,” he said. He turned quickly away in a rush of trembling anger. Her expression had mocked him. Just as suddenly he stopped still in his tracks. She was close beside him. She stood looking up intently into his face. “What do you think you’re doing?” he said.

“Going with you,” she said. “Pm going to watch you steal the government’s honey. Then if they ask me about it, I can swear you did it. You’re going to have a witness.”

“Oh,” he said. “Coming in where you ain’t asked! Nosing in other folk’s business!” Before he knew what he was doing he had taken both her arms and was shaking her as he would shake a man, but then, suddenly, not shaking her quite so hard but gently, and more gently still, not at all sure of himself. At last he was merely holding her by the arms without knowing what he must do next.

She leaned into him, her eyes closed. She trembled against him. Clumsily he put his arms about her. “I’m— I’m awful sorry,” he said. “I never meant to scare the daylights out of you!” Her arms held him. She was clinging to him. Her eyes opened. Her soft lips trembled.

“Pm awful sorry,” he began.

“Who’s scared?” She smiled up at him. Then he was kissing her.

“Not so fast!” she said after a moment. “Don’t get ideas! You’ll think I’m—She didn’t finish what she was going to say, but offered her mouth again.

He had never dared imagine that any woman so beautiful would even look at him; he was filled with a frightening awe. She was playing a trick of some kind, he decided. He kissed her, very gently this time, and pushed her firmly away from him.

“Where are you going?” she asked. He reached the edge of the meadow and looked back. “Still after wild honey?”

“You ain’t my kind. You ain’t one of us,” he said.

She came after him. “How can I prove —”

“You can’t,” he said, “because you ain’t.”

He was skirting the edge of the meadow. The grasshoppers went leaping and flying away, scattering in front of his heavy shoes. She was running beside him.

He stopped and picked up his hat from beside the chain saw and put it on his head. Then he unfolded the cheesecloth and draped it over the hat.

“You look like a bride,” she said. She was laughing. “A bride in her veil!”

Through the cheesecloth the image of her was softer, like something seen in the early hours of morning when mist rises and lingers in wet green mountain meadows. He tucked the cheesecloth veil into his shirt collar and buttoned the collar tight about it. He took the thick cotton work gloves from his hip pocket and put them on.

“You don’t mean you’re going to let me watch!” she cried.

“You’ll get stung if you don’t be careful,” he warned. And then, “No, it’s a free country here. I don’t fault anybody if they want to watch. Not a woman nor nobody else.”

“Not even me,” she said. “Not even a foreigner?”

He knelt to oil the saw.

“I see it!” she said. She had found the tree. “To think I’d ever see wild bees living in a wild tree. Oh!”

He looked up. She ran a few steps into the meadow. Her hands brushed furiously at her light brown hair.

“They go for your head. Now maybe you’ll heed somebody.”

“But I was only looking,” she said. “They flew into my hair.”

“Lucky you wasn’t stung,” he said.

“But I was.” She came and showed him her hand. He rubbed the red swollen welt between her linger and thumb. “It hurts. I wasn’t going to hurt them.”

He laughed. “You thought about their honey. Do that, and they try to sting you. Think about something else, and they leave you alone.”

“Why that’s true — I was thinking about honey.”

“Sure,” he said. “They’ve got a mind that can read yours. Never mind their honey, and then you’ll have it.”

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“George,” he said, and picked up the saw. “Get way back now and sit down or stand still as a stump.”

HE HAD a glimpse of her standing very still at the edge of the meadow, and a glimpse of wild flowers, and on beyond he saw a shimmering reflection from the water. He pulled the starter cord twice. The saw sputtered. It quickened and whined. He touched the edge of the chain to the tree. Damp sawdust grew little horns at his feet.

The bees almost covered him. Fiercely they came at first, but as he paused to brush them off they came on more lazily, until at last they seemed to be nuzzling after him. Now and again a stinger found his flesh. He put down the saw, shut the little engine off, and took up the ax. The rhythm of what he was about entered him so that he hardly felt the occasional numbing fire of the stings. Fat chips leaned from the wood at one stroke and flew away at another. He put the ax aside and started the saw again.

Beyond in the meadow, he saw the woman still watching him, pale yellow flowers at her feet, sunlight lingering in her soft hair. A little breeze had risen from the lake, rippling the blue-green surface, stirring the pale-blue dress about her legs. The chain saw shrieked one final gouging bite. One last muttering slash, and the tree shook. He drew the saw quickly back and silenced it.

The tree gave a moan and then, as always happened, its heart cracked and it lay gracefully, gracefully down. In his life nothing else came to earth like a great tree. It was as though man himself came down with it, so beautifully did it die. This one went leaning out toward the sunlit meadow. It went settling then, in a spray, a splash of bark and leaves.

He started the saw again and cut quickly down into the ruptured, oozing honeycomb. Taking his lard stands and his tin dipper and his knife, he set to work collecting the stuff, pausing now and then to hold his breath and listen for sound beyond the bees. There was no plane. So they would not have heard the saw’s howling. Small chance they would have anyway unless one of them happened to be outdoors this way, coming from the station upriver. The bees troubled over him still. A few died in the honey. He scraped them away, put lids on the lard stands, and finally stepped aside to rest.

“Rest” consisted of cutting a hickory pole and taking seine twine and firmly binding the big lard cans, one to each end of the stout, thick pole. This he would balance over his wide shoulders.

Carefully he toted everything to the meadow — saw, ax, knife, oil can, seine twine, and finally the full cargo of honey, taking his loot far beyond the ranging of the angry bees, taking everything a good distance before he was ready to remove the hat, fold away the cheesecloth, and stuff the sticky gloves in his pocket.

“That’s done,” he said aloud, but to himself. His habit was to talk that way, to discuss with himself what he would do next.

“So it is,” said the woman, behind him.

He turned, half-amazed. He had all but forgotten she was in the world. He stood looking at her, a great, slow barrel of a man about to load himself like a beast of burden for a far steep walk through the woods. “Now you seen how it’s done,” he said. “I have to get moving.”

He looked down at the full stringer of fish she held, and the fish still wiggling, still dripping wet. Now why, thought he, had she fetched her fish?

He bent down and put his broad shoulder under the hickory pole. Still bent that way he gathered things up in his arms, taking thought how each must be placed and balanced, how it must be held. “Now this,” he said aloud to himself, “and this.”

“You’re all different,” she said.

Loaded at last, he straightened slowly up. “Eh?” he said.

“Changed. When you work you’re not the same.”

“I must be going,” he said. So many things were on his mind.

“I want to come too,” she said, pole in one hand, fish in the other.

“Oh?” He paused to consider. “All right,” he said. “You bring the ax.” He dropped it. When she bent to take it up, he had a glimpse of soft pale skin at the back of her neck where her hair fell aside. She straightened and somehow put the ax across her shoulder with the cane pole. “Come along,” he said in his gruff voice. “It ain’t far.”

Together they set off through the woods.