He
was a huge Newfoundlander; dark and muscular.
Colette was a yellow lab, large by most standards, but diminished by her
companion. They looped across heathery
fields and bounded over streams full of koi.
The sun never rose; it never set; it burned golden in the powder blue of
the dream-world sky. In a lucid dream,
everything was brighter, smelled richer, felt fuller, tasted like heaven. In lucid dreaming, everything had
meaning. The Labrador
and Newfoundlander nipped affectionately at each other, as dogs do.
They topped a rise and she heard murmuring. A bee circled her, buzzing. She snapped at it and continued chasing her
friend. More droning; three more bees
joined the first. They flew in front of
her, diving at her tender nose. She yelped.
More singing, more bees. She stumbled as
a dozen sank into her thick mane, stabbing her with their stingers. She howled and tumbled down the hill.
The Newfoundlander
rushed to her side, devouring as many bees as he could. The whirring deafened her as hundreds of bees
attacked her, stinging and dying as she tried to outrun them.
The phone was ringing. Colette fell out of bed, gasping and
sobbing. Her skin was on fire, remembering
the dream-stings. She grabbed the phone
blindly, “What?”
“You’ve got a nosy neighbor.” The
usually gruff voice sounded dulled.
“Camp?”
“You need me to come and clean his
clock?” Slurred. Camp loved Bushmills.
“Camp, what time is it?”
“It’s – aw fuck – it’s only midnight.”
“In Wyoming Wyoming
“A-yup.”
“I’m in Florida
“Ah hell, Spooky, did I wake you?”
“I was being stung to death by bees.”
“No shit?”
“Don’t call me Spooky.”
Good natured silence balanced them.
“Deputy Fife doesn’t believe I’m a
credible witness.”
“His loss.” The tinkle of ice against
glass. “You doing OK?”
“Sure.” Colette crawled off the floor
and sat on the bed.
“Bees, huh.”
“You tried to protect me from them.”
“I was in your dreams?”
Always, but she didn’t say it.
“So, what do the bees mean?”
She took a deep breath. She realized he was giving her time to pull
herself together, to slip into her safe teacher-mode. “Bees represent betrayal, usually sexual in
nature. Mindless mob ruled by instinct
and preservation of a singular concept, fanatically so. Bees are ancient and the first insects to be
domesticated.”
“I know something about bees,
too. They can’t really fly.” The ice and glass tolled again.
“What do you know about Ralph Waldo
Emerson?”
“They were those mutant turtle things,
right?”
If she closed her eyes, she could
still smell his skin. “He wrote a
poem. Lots of poems, but there’s one in
particular. It’s creepy to me. I keep hearing phrases from it. ‘Alway, alway something sings’.”
“Do you – need some company?”
“Camp, this is the first vacation you’ve
taken since Noah launched his ark.”
“That wasn’t a no.”
“Are you fishing?”
“A-yup.”
Metaphysically, she threw herself at
him for a brief moment. “Be careful
where you put your hooks.”
“I keep them in my tackle box.”
“Nope.
There’s one scattered on your boat, hidden. Be careful not to get stuck by it.”
She heard him take a sip. “Good night, Spooky.”
“Good night, Camp.”
Excerpt from
Follow
the Bees
© Evelyn Rainey
Available for publication.
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