Robbing Honey
by Janice Daugharty
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 Janice Daugharty
First published in the Savannah Journal
Hiking the quick rise of the river bank behind Jack, to meet the sun slipping up the other side, Davey watches the raying round of his new brother-in-law like the glory off of Jesus in the picture at church.
Everything is different now, and Davey wishes with all his wild-beating heart that he hadn't come fishing this time.He wishes Jack hadn't gone and messed up and married his sister Mayre yesterday.Even Davey's generally keen sense of direction in the woods is off this morning.His sense of smell too.And he's been here a thousand and one times, teetering above the creek-width black water of the Alapaha in Jack's tracks.And he's always liked it.
He breathes deep, untangling a line from the cane poles in one hand while trying not to slosh the bucket of minnows and water in the other.Hoping to get back the feeling, he sniffs the bay blooms, but they smell as thick and musky as pear blossoms in a hot room.
Jack tramps along the bank, bamboos ripping at his green twill britches legs.He pays the thorny vines about as much mind as he does Davey, which is none.Davey knows Jack's thinking about Mayre; he can smell that too, like cold in his head.He's only eleven years old, farm dumb, but smart enough to know Jack and Mayre slept in the same bed last night.And it feels all wrong.Jack's like a
brother; Mayre, Davey's sister.His favorite sister who used to call out his spelling words when he got off the school bus each evening.Close enough in the porch swing that Davey could smell her girl-grownness, her slipping away.
Jack sidles behind a tupelo that juts out over the deep part of the river, goes on, and Davey comes in behind him, with the minnow bucket and the cane poles, placing each foot in Jack's giant boot prints.At the bowing tupelo, Davey is left to hang over the water--poles, bucket and body--while Jack stops and listens, his scrubbed shiny face at attention.Jack cups his ear the way he does when they're deer hunting.Davey stops breathing and listens too, but not because he gives a dang if it's a deer or not, or whether they never-ever fish that black water flowing below again.
Sun mirrors on the surface like wadded tin foil.Then he hears buzzing in the woods on the right and follows Jack's gaze to the thicket of bamboos and scrub oaks a few yards off the bank.
"Bees," Jack says and steps easy, his hard stocky body casting a heaped shadow on the vines."Come on."He doesn't look back.
Davey lets go of the tupelo and tiptoes behind, trying to imagine what Jack's doing following a swarm of bees.The humming sound comes louder as they step off into the spotted shade of gums and palmettoes.
Jack is smiling, his clear cropped teeth showing through thin waxy lips--his teeth have never before shown when he smiled.Davey doesn't know what Jack's up to, but whatever it is Mayre's at the center of it.Then Davey smells honey, a sticky sweet he can feel on his winter-white arms, and he thinks he does know what Jack's up to.
The swarm of yellow-striped bees buzz and hover round the brittle dead trunk of a sweetgum like prisms cast by a mirror.
Jack's more Indian than Jesus now as he tips toward the tree with his thick freckled arms cocked."Come up easy," he whispers.
Davey wonders if Jack's talking to the bees or to him.Sounds like he's gentling Davey's mama's milk cow.And somehow he feels Jack's making light of him, of his youth and what youth does and doesn't know--can't know.And he's glad Mayre has such a temper, that she'll be mad as usual when they get home and make Jack scratch his dumb square head the way he does when she flies off the handle."Flying off the handle" is what Davey's mama says about Mayre's fits.
Mayre, prettiest girl in the family, youngest, sweetest, the one all the boys came calling on, and her laughing, little squeaks making up in her throat like notes from a harmonica. She's really too leggy and short-waisted, her fine blond hair too thin, to be the beauty she is--a real mystery--but her eyes are aqua and wide.Sassy eyes that hold you.
Jack starts striking matches, grinning, and tries to set fire to his holey white handkerchief.The cloth catches, scorches, curls and flares up in a black half circle toward his thumb and finger.He holds it away as if it's nasty.When the white scrap smokes good, Jack tilts back and fans it, smoke arching to the arch of scattering bees.He laughs out, a sissy laugh, but high-pitched and evil.His reddish beard looks like thorns along his square jaw.
Davey feels weak--weak-stomached--watching Jack, and feels as if he's never seen this man before.Some stranger in their old fishing place.Some stranger Davey wishes he could leave there to fan the handkerchief and laugh, more devil now than Indian or Jesus.
"Come on."Jack makes a rolling motion with his other hand for Davey, while ducking beneath the scatter of bees and smoke.He crosses the purple-rust bed of leaves to the brittle, topped sweetgum with the hull trunk.Then he starts tearing dry splintered wood from the tree, fanning the handkerchief behind.The bees gather and heave in the cluster of scrub oaks off the river bank as if they're grouping to charge.
Davey, ducking low, tips across the dead leaves toward Jack.
"Look at that, will you?"Jack pokes his head in the hollow of the tree, right hand raising the handkerchief flag.His body's so stiff the waving hand looks like it doesn't belong.
Davey couldn't look inside the hollow if he wanted to--Jack's covering it with his body--and the scorched smell really messes up his sense of smell and direction in the woods.He doesn't know why, but he doesn't want Jack to know he's messed up or that he gives a hoot whether Mayre has married and moved out.
Jack says, "Umm, that's good!" licking two honey-coated fingers, and then he stares back at Davey as if he's got something on him."Dump them minnows and bring the bucket here."