GRANDDAD CALLS IT BEDLAM-WEATHER, the sort of day that makes people act like lunatics. But me, I love the heat. I’d live half-naked in the blazing sun if I was allowed to take my shirt off. Of course if I took mine off, Riley would too and Mom’s made that a don’t-even-think-about-it item. Riley’s sitting in the sandbox by the fence: long sleeves, pants, goofy hat with the Arabian neck flap. He’s got the banged-up Tonkas, using them to fill his shoes with dirt. Brilliant kid, my brother. Sometimes I wonder just what goes on inside his big, dopey head.
This morning, the guy on the radio said the whole summer would be hot but Mom says the weatherman can’t predict a fart from his own arse so we shouldn’t put too much stock in it. The first day off school’s a scorcher, though, no question there. I just finished Grade Five and Riley, Kindergarten.
I feel a breeze blowing down from the Martinez place, warm and stale, the type of wind that carries angry bees. Everything around us seems clear, though. Nothing weird in the yard except the fact Riley has no shoes anymore. He’s completely buried them now, starting on his socks. I can’t blame him either. Shoes, socks, in this heat. I almost feel sorry for the little stink.
I put my comic down and stretch out in the hammock. The tarp on the woodpile beside me rises and falls with the wind; the wood beneath, un-chopped since last summer. This morning Mom got up from the breakfast table and pointed at it. She threw her coffee cup out the window and said, “Maybe this mug will chop that wood. No? Useless then, hey Gary. I guess that mug is useless.”
“Who wants to think about firewood in this heat?” Dad said, a clump of hair hanging down in an arc over his forehead. He smiled, but Mom wasn’t having it.
“Lots of bachelor suites in town without fireplaces,” she said. “Or you could always go live with your idiot father. He doesn’t have a fireplace either. Oh, Christ—Terry, Riley, go get ready. Your grandfather will be here soon.”
Riley glommed onto me after that like the grade A sissy he is. Every time Mom yells, he sticks closer than a blackberry stain. Once he even climbed in the top bunk with me while I slept. I woke in the middle of the night to find half my pyjama top clenched between his fists. Snuggling my shirt like a friggin’ teddy bear.
Mom’s cup still sits along the fence line; she has a pretty good arm.
We live on a big chunk of land in a woody development called The Acreage, twenty minutes from town. Dad doesn’t care one way or the other, but Mom likes having a big lot. She’s at the kitchen window right now, hands digging deep into the sink. There’s a tea towel around her neck which makes her look like a six o’clock TV boxer. A hot day like this gives her a boxer’s temperament too, so I’m glad to be outside.
Dad comes through the back door with his briefcase and a box of books to sell. He stands there sweating in his brown suit like he’s dressed for church. I picture him dragging his samples and order forms from house to house. People shaking their heads, holding their arms up, showing him the palms of their hands. Mom says he should be more aggressive, jam a foot right in the door. I look down at Dad’s shoes—they’re gleaming in the sunshine.
“You boys heed your mother, okay? She’s… I’ll be back later.” He takes a step towards Riley, then turns and picks up Mom’s coffee mug. He twists it in the sun for a long time, puts it in the box and walks around the house. I hear the car exhaust fluttering and spitting as he creeps away down the drive.
I roll up my sleeves and return to my comic, Turok: Son of Stone, my favourite series. Two men trapped in Lost Valley, trying to find their way home. In this issue, Andar is sick. He drank from the wrong pool and Turok’s searching for the medicine herb to cure him. I don’t know if Andar’s gonna make it, he looks pretty bad, and I don’t have the next comic where the story continues on. But maybe later I’ll get lucky. Granddad’s barber in town sells magazines in the back and each month he gives away old stock. Today, Granddad’s taking me with him while Cadwell Drace cuts his hair. Riley’s coming too. Mom’s orders.
I hear Granddad’s car zip up the drive and I jump from the hammock to meet him. Riley brushes himself off and follows. “Wait up,” he yells. I run faster.
Granddad drives a banana-coloured ’69 El Camino with an engine you can hear a mile away. A plume of dust follows the car, circling it like a sneeze when he comes to a stop in front of the house. He gets out and walks towards me, hunched over with his hand on his lower back, dragging one leg behind him. I know better—it’s Granddad’s rope-a-dope. As soon as he gets close, he fake punches me in the side and flips me over his shoulder, ducking under the doorframe into the house.
“Hey there, Rosemarie,” Granddad says. My mother comes around the corner, the tea towel still wrapped around her neck.
“Oh, Ernie. My God, put the child down. Your back… his head…”
Granddad fakes a muscle spasm and then sets me on the rug in front of the door. Riley trots in and Granddad spider-claws his neck until he squeaks out a laugh.
“Where’s Gary?” Granddad asks.
“You know him, always gone.” Mom throws her arms in the air, pinches her lips together so hard they almost disappear. “It’d be different if he had a good job, you know, but ah!”
Riley stops giggling and inches towards me.
Mom shakes her head, gearing up. I know what’s coming next and my grandfather must too because he scoops me up again, grabs Riley and says, “We’re going to town.”
AT THE BARBERSHOP, Mr. Drace lets me sit in the chair when he’s finished with Granddad. I tell him Mom usually does the haircuts in our family, and he grins and promises there’ll be no charge at all. Riley’s sitting cross-legged on the rug, sucking on a yellow Popsicle. He’s too chicken to want a seat in the big chair and that’s fine by me.
“Well, Terrence. What would you like? Longer in the back, thicker up top?” Mr. Drace says. He rubs my flat, red hair with his hand. Mom once called it a field of wilted poppies.
“I don’t know,” I shrug as he snaps the black cloak over me and ties it behind my neck. It’s hot underneath the cape but it covers my whole body and I like that. Mr. Drace holds his scissors by the blades, taps the handle against his chin as he examines my hair. I smell cigarette smoke on his clothes and a spicy almond cologne.
“So what about you? You got a girl in your life?” he asks, a continuation of the conversation he and Granddad had earlier. In the mirror beside me, Granddad waxes his moustache with his fingers. His hair, Brylcreem-ed back in perfect, grey lines that curve around his head like the grooves on a record.
“No way,” I say.
Mr. Drace laughs. A loud, smack of a noise.
“You hear that, Ernie? Another happy bachelor.” He starts to snip and a little orange tuft falls on my nose. He swishes it away with the end of his comb.
“Yup,” Granddad answers. But his forehead is wrinkled like he’s thinking about something else altogether.
Mr. Drace finishes the trim and rubs a drop of gel through my hair. “Yeah. That’s it,” he says. “You look like a bullfighter now, eh Terrence?” I look over to see what everyone thinks but Riley’s fiddling with a shoelace on Granddad’s wingtips, distracting him. I jump down from the chair and Mr. Drace gives me what I’ve been waiting for this whole time—a thick roll of comics wrapped with an elastic band. “See what you make of these,” he says. I stuff the roll in my back pocket and flip my shirt overtop.
Mr. Drace shakes my grandfather’s hand. “You going over to Gally’s?” he asks.
Granddad nods.
Then Mr. Drace gives him another stack of magazines. On the cover of the top one I see a car painted black with orange and red flames. There’s a woman on the hood wearing short-shorts but Granddad folds the book before I can really make it out.
“See you later, Drace,” Granddad says. At the door I hear him whisper something else before we leave. Something that sounds a lot like, “Wish us luck.”
GRANDDAD THROWS HALF THE MAGAZINES under his seat and the rest into a cardboard box in the back of the car. “Wait here,” he says, heading across the street. Beside me, Riley is quiet for once, his face red as an Indian paintbrush.
“Take off your hat,” I say.
“Mom told me…”
“Mom’s not here, goof. Take it off.” I grab his stupid flap-hat and pull it away. His hair is drenched.
I’m dying to check out the stories rolled up in my pocket, to see if Turok’s in there saving Andar, but by the time I finish wiping Riley’s dumb head and calming him down, Granddad’s back with some bags from the liquor store and grocery. He throws them in the back with the magazines and pulls a couple suckers from his pocket. I let Riley have the red one ’cause for sure he’d cry if I didn’t.
“We have to make a stop before I bring you boys home. It’s on the way,” Granddad says, firing up the car. He doesn’t say anything else but I know exactly where we’re going—Galeno Martinez’s house, the neighbour beside us in the acreage. Granddad picks up supplies for Galeno all the time but he usually drops us off before delivering them. It’s another of Mom’s rules and she reminds us about it every chance she gets.
Mom says Galeno’s a kook—sharp as an egg, she calls him—and even Dad says to steer clear of his place. At school, Jimmy Po from Grade Six told me Galeno has weird animals all over his yard like some kind of Hallowe’en petting zoo. Chickens and pigs right inside the house. I don’t know about that, but the real reason Mom and Dad want us to stay away is something else altogether. Galeno keeps honeybees. Tons of them.
Last year at a Canada Day picnic, Riley stepped on a bee in a patch of clover. His foot got all fat and spotty from the sting so now I have to carry Sudafed in my pocket wherever we go. If Riley ever got bit, Mom would blame me, like I have control over the world of insects. Like it’s my job to watch out for the dufus. I don’t know what the fuss is about anyway. It was just a case of the itches.
We pull into Galeno’s yard and Riley scrunches his face into a world-class pout. “Stay here,” Granddad tells us, heading for the door under the covered porch.
The steps are steep and the wood looks old, the colour of elephant skin. Some ragged chickens peck at the ground behind a fence to the left. They snap at each other’s feet, hopping around a blown-out truck tire while Galeno’s mongrel dog barks at them from the end of a chain. Raspberry bushes line one wall of the house, so wild and out of control they’re crawling right up on the roof. And off to the side, not more than a pee-stream away, sit a couple of big, pine beehives.
The hives are homemade jobs, long as coffins except skinny at the base. There’s a piece of tin roofing over the top and a bunch of holes drilled in the side for the bees to go in and out. I notice Galeno has a hat with a mesh face, some thick gloves, and two spray bottles hanging on hooks by the front door. I roll down the window to catch a whiff of honeycomb, and I hear the insects buzzing, loud and steady as a power line. I can almost feel the wing vibrations from here, from the cab of the El Camino.
Riley starts to fidget.
I’ve got half a mind to feed the little pecker to those hungry bees. Instead, I say, “Look at Granddad? Don’t see him freakin’ do ya?”
Granddad puts the box down and bangs on the screen door.
“I’m telling Mom,” Riley says. He wipes his nose with his sleeve.
“No you’re not.”
I pull out the roll of comics. Riley stops whining and peeks over my shoulder. I let him see just enough to keep him quiet. There are a couple of Unknown Soldiers in the pile, an Archie, and two consecutive issues of Turok. Straight off in the first one there’s a picture of Andar. He’s getting sicker.
Granddad yells at us from the porch. “Hey, you two. Come inside for a second,” he says. “I’ve got a job for you.”
WE WIPE OUR SHOES on a dirty, oval rug at the entrance. Then Riley clutches Granddad’s leg and we follow him down the hallway. Photographs line the walls on both sides of us: a sunrise over a lake, a group of women dressed in old-style skirts and bonnets, a man in a chequered shirt kneeling beside a dead deer, its chin propped up on the man’s boot. There’s another picture in a wooden frame with this same man. In this one, he’s wearing a suit, standing beside a woman in a flowery dress. She’s quite big but pretty as a movie star, and the man, all stiff and nervous like he’s got arrows taped to his arms. Galeno.
We go around a corner into the kitchen and Galeno’s there, sitting on a green chair at a matching table. His sleeves are worn and there’s a greasy sheen to his hair and forehead. Two stubby bottles of beer and a loaf of white bread sit in front of him. And although he’s a lot younger than my grandfather, to look at him, here in his kitchen, you’d swear he and Granddad were the same age. When he notices us, he teeters like he’s about to tip over.
“Want a little dough, huh?” He squints at Riley and me.
Granddad sits down on the only other chair in the kitchen and takes a swig of beer. “Sure they do. Look at ’em, Gally. Hard workers, the both.” He winks and I feel a little better about whatever it is Galeno wants. “They’ll be careful, too. Don’t worry. Gentle as two butterflies.”
“Well, go on then. Get to it.” Galeno points his finger at a closed door in the hall behind us.
“All right. I’ll get them started.” Granddad gets up, grabs a package of garbage bags from the groceries, and takes us into the room across the hall.
The room isn’t filled with pigs and chickens like I’d expected. It’s just a regular room, hot, stale, and dusty. There’s a bed covered with a beige afghan, two pillows with sunflowers on the cases, a chest of drawers, nightstand, a tall mirror hanging in the corner. And the bedroom curtains—deep orange and thick as a tarp—are faded in the middle in a perfect window-sized square.
“Sit,” Granddad says.
I move to the bed and Riley hops up beside me.
“Galeno wants to get rid of some stuff. Empty everything into these garbage bags, but do it carefully.” He sits down with us, deep into the mattress, and waits for the springs to stop squeaking. “Gally’s wife died. A time ago, but still. This stuff belonged to her and he wants it out now.”
Riley bounces his bum on the bed; I swat his arm.
“It’s all going to the Salvation Army,” Granddad continues, examining his hands slowly as if he was holding a small bird. Something made of glass.
“How?” I ask.
“Hmm?”
“How did she die?”
“Childbirth. The baby too,” he says. “So many years, they tried.” He shakes his head and leaves us to the job.
THE DRAWERS OF THE NIGHTSTAND are small so I get Riley started there while I open the heavy orange curtains. The window’s wedged closed with a long piece of wood that I have to dig out with my fingernail. There isn’t a screen in the room, but I open the window all the way anyhow.
Riley freezes in front of the night table, the whining-machine inside him firing up again. “Get going,” I say, grabbing a bunch of shirts from the dresser and shoving them into a bag. Instead of listening, Riley skulks over to the same drawer as me, his face scrunched up like he just ate a grapefruit.
“Be useful at least and hold the bag, bum-ass,” I tell him.
He grabs it and his arms drop.
“Hold it up.”
I toss a couple of sweatshirts and some socks into the bag, trying to ignore Riley’s annoying face. I’ve seen it a million times, the fat-lip thing he does when he knows it’s stupid to cry. I take one of the shirts, a light blue blouse with frills, and hold it to my chest, twisting like a swimsuit model to make Riley forget about being a suck-hole. He grins and I throw the shirt into the bag with the others.
At the bottom of the drawer I find a photograph, the same woman from the picture in the hallway. She’s sitting in a field of wildflowers staring at a daisy, her white dress spread around her like spilled milk.
When Riley’s not looking, I put it in my back pocket.
The next drawer holds Galeno’s wife’s underwear. I pull out a bra so big it looks like two catcher’s mitts sewn together. Riley gets the giggles and even I start to laugh. When I hold it over my head, Riley goes hysterical.
“What’s that?” he says after he calms down, pointing at the bra.
I take a closer look and see a flap opening in the middle of each cup like two trap doors fastened by silver buttons. There’s a price tag as well, hanging from a plastic wire. I throw it in the bag and clear the rest of the drawer in one big scoop.
Riley’s still laughing.
“Shut up,” I say.
“What for?”
“Shut up,” I say again, and I grab another bag from the pile.
GALENO AND GRANDDAD are still at the table when we’re finished, a few more empty bottles lined up in front of them.
“We’re done,” I say, and Riley comes up behind me, clinging to my shirt like a pondweed. I shake him off and move beside Granddad.
“Good boys, you two. You’re good boys, you hear?” Galeno says. He nods at us like we just put out a fire on his arm. Like we did something big. “Have a drink? All right? Something, I think.”
Galeno gets up. He stands for a second getting his balance, then moves over to the fridge. There are finger smudges all over the front and when he opens it, the light doesn’t go on. “Coke-y-cola, okay?” Galeno pulls a bottle out and smiles; his teeth are the same faded yellow as the armpits of his shirt. He takes two glasses from the cupboard and blows into them before pouring. Then he grabs some bread from the bag on the table, drizzles honey on a couple pieces and smoothes it out with the back of a spoon. One for me and one for Riley.
“From the bees,” he says, tilting his neck towards the window. “They work hard all the time. Taking care of the queen, building the combs. Like a giant family. One bee, alone, that’s worse than nothing. But together…” He lifts the honey jar to show us. A milky amber colour, like Mom’s strong tea with cream.
I take a bite of my bread. It’s a little hard but the honey is amazing and I gobble the whole thing in no time. Riley savours his though, licking the slice until it’s bare before eating it. For the first time all day, he’s being normal.
“You guys work hard too,” Galeno goes on. “Brothers, all the time. You don’t know how it is though. Don’t wanna ever know, you see?”
I don’t see, but I nod anyway and sip my Coke.
“Nothing lasts, eh Ernie? Nothing ever lasts.” Galeno puts his head down.
Granddad motions for us to finish our drinks. “Gotta take these kids home. You’ll be okay now, Gally.”
“Okay. I’m okay.” Galeno looks like he’s about to get up but he stops. Like he’s too weak, like he’s sick. “The box by the door. You take that for the boys, all right? You take that box,” he says.
The three of us carry the bags from the bedroom and pile them into the back of the El Camino, Galeno’s dog barking the whole time we’re in the yard. Then Granddad returns for Galeno’s box. He shows us before loading it in the back—twelve full mason jars. Galeno’s paying us with honey. Granddad wipes his hands on his pants, gets in the car, and we slowly pull away from the house.
THE DRIVE FROM GALENO’S takes less than a minute but it feels much longer. When we get close, Granddad reaches into his pocket and gives us each two dollars for our work. Riley’s more excited about the honey than the cash though, keeping his eyes on the jars like they’re going to fly away in the breeze. We never have honey around our place.
“Put your hat back on,” I tell my brother as we park in the driveway.
Granddad takes the honey from the back and hands it to me. “I’ve got to take these other things to the Sally Ann before she closes,” he says, messing my hair and squeezing Riley’s neck before getting back in the car. “It’s my fault we’re late, tell your mom. Don’t let her take it out on your dad.” Granddad’s talking to me but Riley nods too.
Just as he pulls away, Mom comes outside. “Where were you guys?” she says. “Bad enough your father… What the hell happened to your hair?”
“Well, Mr. Drace…”
“And what’s that?” Mom points at the honey with a wooden spoon stained pink from spaghetti sauce, her forehead dripping with sweat. Riley creeps behind me, quiet as a spider. Abandoning me, full face in the line of fire.
“Honey,” I say. Mom gives me one of her volcano-looks.
“I see that. Where did you get it?” She presses forward.
“Granddad took us,” I say. “So we went and helped and got some honey.”
“And some money,” Riley pipes in. He sticks out his arm and waves the bills in the air like two little flags.
“We worked for it,” I say. “Even Riley did, hey Riley?” His chin bounces off my back as he nods.
“Galeno Martinez?” Mom guesses. “With Riley? Are you crazy?”
“We were inside the whole time. Granddad said it was okay.”
Mom advances. She lifts the spoon and brings it down across the knuckles of my left hand. The spoon and the box both fall to the ground with a couple of muted pops. And the honey, watery from the heat, starts to run out on the soil.
“Your grandfather is an idiot. Just like his son. And you two should know better.”
Mom goes inside. Riley crouches down and pokes at the spilled honey while I rub my knuckles. I’m about to tell him most of the jars didn’t bust so he won’t start bawling but Mom comes right back out.
“Pick up that box,” she tells me. “Let’s go.”
I do what she says and we follow her, the whole left side of my shirt curled up in Riley’s fingers. He isn’t crying though. No grapefruit-face this time either. That’s something at least.
My arms start to ache from carrying the box. And the dripping honey leaves sticky lines all the way down to my knees. I keep thinking if Dad was here then Mom would have someone else to yell at and everything would be normal again. But we just keep walking.
When we get to the edge of Galeno’s driveway, about a hundred feet from the house, Mom grabs the box from me. “Stay here,” she says. Riley glances at the two long beehives. Galeno comes to the door and his dog starts barking from his chain. I strain to listen.
“What, exactly, the fuck is wrong with you?” Mom says.
Galeno shakes his head. It seems like he really doesn’t know what my mother is yelling about. He just stands there raising his arms, putting them back down. Scratching the back of his neck.
“Don’t shake your head at me,” Mom yells. She shoves the box of honey at him, knocking him on his butt; jars and broken glass fly all over the porch. One jar rolls slowly down the stairs, clunking each step like a boot, leaving a thick, sticky trail behind it. Galeno sits motionless while Mom screams, swarming around him in a frenzy that—even for her—seems excessive. Then something tickles my hand, I can’t ignore it. A bee walking around on my knuckles, going after the honey. I swat it away and back up a couple of steps.
That’s when I notice Riley isn’t behind me anymore.
His shirt is on the ground, his hat, his shoes. But no Riley. I look up and see him walking towards the side of the house, over to the hives. He slips off his pants as he walks, barely slowing down. There’s something long and thin in his right hand—Mom’s wooden spoon—swaying beside him.
Mom’s oblivious. Still screaming at Galeno, hunched over him like a grizzly bear. Riley’s past the far end of the house now; I start to run. “Hey. Hey,” I scream, but Galeno’s barking dog drowns it out. Riley’s already at the first hive, completely naked. He holds his arm up.
“Hey!” I yell again just as he brings the spoon down, hard, on the hive’s tin roof.
Mom stops yelling and turns. “Oh my God,” she says.
My brother beats the hive over and over like he’s cleaning a rug; the wood around the holes becomes dark with bees. They fly around him as he moves on to the second hive, whacking the top of it as well. They’re crawling on the tin and the spoon. The air, thick with them. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Then I feel someone’s arm across my chest. Galeno.
“Wait,” he says, running towards the hives. He has a plastic spray bottle in each hand, the ones from the wall. He starts spraying a fine mist over the bees and they focus on him. Landing on the honey stuck to his jeans, crawling all over the bottles. Riley steps backwards to get out of the way but he seems lost—squinting at the sun, the air, the yard—like he just stepped out of a cave.
“Get the boy,” Galeno says to me, still squirting the bees with the mist. “Slowly.”
I grab the end of Riley’s spoon and walk backwards, dragging him with me. Bees buzz in the tangle of his hair and a couple have landed on his chest and crotch. I feel one crawling around the outside of my ear. We keep moving until we get to the porch and then Mom brushes Riley off. Soon as she has him, I swat my ear, my shoulder, a few other places.
“What were you doing? Oh, Riley,” Mom says inside Galeno’s house, her voice fluttery, hardly sounding like her at all. She searches Riley’s body for stings. Checks his armpits, his fingers, the back of his neck.
The screen door bangs as Galeno finally joins us, welts swelling up on his hands and face. “Okay, now?” he says. “The mom and the boy. All okay now?”
DAD’S HOME FROM WORK by the time we get back. He examines Riley from head to toe—not a single sting, nothing. He’s lucky, my brother. Crazy as hell, but lucky. I go outside when Dad finishes his inspection. The sun is almost down but it’s still hot and the air smells coppery, like heat-lightning or a coming rain. No clouds anywhere in the sky though, and I don’t really know what that means.
Galeno must’ve told Granddad about the incident. We’re only home for an hour when he shows up in the El Camino, bouncing and skidding in the dirt as he slams on the brakes.
“Is he all right?” Granddad asks.
I nod from my seat on the stairs. He nods back, wipes the sweat from his chin, and goes through the door.
I stay outside and read in the fading light, flipping quickly through both issues of Turok. Nothing’s changed by the end of the comics and I wonder if those two will ever find their way out of the valley. It’s close to bedtime and everything is quiet, so I go in.
Granddad and Dad sit at the kitchen table, two tall glasses between them. Dad has my grandfather’s hand between his. When he sees me, he jerks his head, waving me on.
I walk past Mom and Dad’s room. A couple brown suits lie in a pile on the bed and there’s an open suitcase by the closet. I hear Mom in the bathroom but I don’t want to talk to her so I head straight to Riley’s and my bedroom.
Riley’s in his bunk already. His eyes are closed and his cheeks, shiny and damp. I pull the photograph I took from Galeno’s drawer out of my pocket and stuff it between the pages of a comic. After a few days when things cool down, I’ll bring it back over to Galeno. I’m sure he’ll want to keep it.
I shove the comic under my pillow and lean down to check Riley again. As soon as I look, he re-shuts his eyes and doesn’t move. Hardly even breathes, the little faker. It’s going to be a long night. Maybe a string of them. So I put on my PJs, the ones with the softest, baggiest shirt, and climb into Riley’s bed with him. I’ll only stay here for a little while though, just because he’s the way he is, just because he’s my brother. Just until he closes his eyes for real and actually falls asleep.