The Hive

Gary Curtis didn't know that his neighborhood was infested, teeming with underground colonies, nests concealed under pressure-treated decks, larvae gestating, writhing, and crawling in the pre-fab walls and garage attics. The subdivision, a cluster of cul-de-sacs within commuting distance of Boston, had been the placid home of the Curtis family since Gary was two. Home from college with the summer months stretching out before him, Gary felt for the first time an uneasiness in the order, the sameness, the stillness, and the quiet. Something just below the surface. He couldn't tell if it were just him.

The east side of the house needed paint, there was no question of that.

"It has to be done and this is the perfect week to do it," insisted Gary's dad over a meatloaf dinner.

"Gary, you should help out around the house more, especially until you find a job," his mom agreed.

"Gary, you're practically useless," teased his younger sister Lisa.

The next morning, while Gary was still asleep, Dad laid out a ladder, brushes, rollers, scrapers, and five buckets on the lawn before he left for work. There was no shortage of supplies. That wasn't the problem.

The problem, Gary identified halfway up the ladder, was the large beehive tucked under the overhang of the roof. Bees--or hornets, wasps, yellow jackets, he hadn't gotten close enough to confirm--clearly occupied that section of the house. The hive was a swollen, swarming globe of gray paper, a malevolent Chinese lantern. A steady stream of drones flew off to do business in the neighborhood's flower gardens.

The sun blazed in the cloudless blue sky. Gary picked up an old tennis ball and threw it across the yard for Jake, the dog. The dog stared at Gary, panting and smiling. Gary did not know about the ticks in Jake's body, burrowed in and inflated with blood, rotting his brain.

"Way to go, Jakeus erectus," said Gary.

The bees were definitely the problem. They would, most likely, elect to sting him if he tried to paint near their home. Gary was worried enough about the high elevation painting before he saw the nest. Now all he could imagine was a haze of angry stingers raising welts on his face, his eyelids puffing until he went blind, lost his grip on the ladder, and backflopped into his mother's herb garden.

Gary really wanted to paint the house. He was psyched, actually. He had been home for two weeks and hadn't done much except half-heartedly pursue waiter jobs in town and play old Nintendo games with his little brother Doug. He never would've thought that the house needed a paint job unless Dad assigned him the task, but he was glad to do it. He had never painted a house, or anything really, and looked forward to picking up a new skill. He awoke proudly that morning before his 10 am alarm, ate a banana on the back porch, and prepared to face the day.

It would feel good to work with his hands after a year of freshman seminars, petty roommate squabbles, uninspired essays scrawled in blue booklets. That night, when he met up with his friends to get drunk, they could talk about brush sizes, ladder placement, how many coats of weather-all it took to finish the job. The beer would taste sweeter, and it would look cool to wear his canvas shorts flecked with the marks of his labor.

"I will obtain the knowledge of men," Gary said to Jake in his Charlton Heston voice.

But the bees! The bees were in the way. How long had they been living there? Dad warned about bats behind the shutters, but never said anything about bees. Gary stared up at the nest, scraper in hand, his Walkman headphones hanging around his neck, still playing a Springsteen tape. The nest would have to go, sooner or later. The house really did need painting, Gary could see. The old layer was beginning to chip and flake. The bees and a fresh coat of paint could not coexist.

He went in the garage and got a broom. Maybe he could knock the hive down and get it out of the way. He went back to the ladder and assessed the situation. He would have to climb the ladder with broom in hand and hit the nest at the right angle so it didn't fall on him or get lodged on the ladder. Then he'd have to scramble down the ladder and quickly shoot the angry nest into a trashcan and close the lid. He walked back to the garage to get a trashcan but on his way decided against the knockdown scenario. At the same moment, a Saab pulled into the driveway.

It was his sister, three years his junior, and her boyfriend. This boyfriend, with his navy blue 9000 Turbo convertible, was something new. Lisa had met him at the prep school where she played field hockey and lacrosse. Gary couldn't recall his name. Greg? Jay? Mark? He had met him once before, last week while playing The Legend of Zelda in the living room, and had to defer the television so they could watch a movie. Gary hadn't decided how much he hated him yet.

Gary walked around the garage to meet them in the front yard, wiping sweat from his brow. He met them at the fence.

"Hey, Lease," he said.

"Hey," said Lisa. "You remember Jay, right?"

"What's going on," said Jay, extending his hand over the fence. He wore wrap-around sunglasses and a yellow Abercrombie and Fitch visor.

"Looks like someone got up before lunch today," said Lisa.

"Yeah, well, I'm getting a head start this morning. I'm working on the house, doing some painting. How about you? You working today?"

Lisa lifeguarded at a local pond.

"Yup, my shift starts at two. We're going to have lunch here, then Jay's going to drop me off. Is Mom coming home today?"

"Nope, she's driving Dougie to baseball camp."

"I knew that," said Lisa. "I thought she was coming back tonight."

"She left a message saying she was going to spend the night and come back tomorrow. She left dinner money for us; yours is on the kitchen counter."

"Well that's good to know," said Lisa. "What's the broom for?"

Gary realized he was still carrying the broom.

"Nothing."

There was an awkward silence and shuffling of feet. Jake whined and licked Jay's kneecaps through the picket fence.

"So you go to Skidmore, right?" said Jay.

"Yeah," said Gary.

"Do you know Jeff Roberts? He's a sophomore, or he's going to be a junior, I guess. He plays soccer."

"I'm going to go inside and pee," said Lisa.

"No, the name doesn't ring a bell," said Gary.

"He's a great sweeper. He probably could've played D-one, if he was faster. Skidmore's D-three, right? Is it in the Eastern College Athletic Conference?"

"I don't know about that," said Gary. He stared at a curling black whisker on Jay's neck. He wondered how much force it would take to yank the whisker out.

"Well, I'm going to go wait inside," said Jay.

"Sure," said Gary. "I should be getting back to work."

He went back around the house and climbed part way up the ladder to take another look at the hive. He hoped he had imagined its presence, but it was still there. He went a few rungs closer.

Definitely bees, not hornets or wasps. Honey bees. Peaceful harvesters of nectar, living symbiotically with flowers and the sunny side of the Curtis' colonial. Or vicious killer bees. He heard those things were migrating farther north every year. He backed down.

Gary tried to remember the last time he was stung by a bee. He remembered the first time. It was on the Yule Log ride at Santa's Village in northern New Hampshire. He was seven years old. It hurt like a bastard, right in the back of his neck, as his family ascended a water slide in a giant log. He was already scared of the approaching 50-foot drop and the sting sent him into hysterics. He struggled against his harness, wanted to jump out of the Yule Log to escape the pain. After splashdown, the ride attendants told his mom that he was banned from the attraction.

Standing perplexed at the bottom of the ladder, Gary saw his neighbor Mr. Fellows walking his Irish setter past the house. Gary pretended not to notice him, but it was too late.

"Is that the Curtis boy? It is! Your father mentioned you were back."

"Hello, Mr. Fellows," said Gary, "how are you?"

"I'm quite good, my boy. How's college life treating you?"

Mr. Fellows ran a car dealership. In local commercials he often appeared beside a dancing walrus, the poor sack who served as the mascot of Quality Autos, probably a staff mechanic trying to feed his family. His license plates read "FNE-FLW."

"Oh, I like it. Lots of work, lots of fun, you know."

"How 'bout them college women, eh?" said Mr. Fellows, smacking his lips.

Gary knew something about Mr. Fellows and Mrs. Fellows that his neighbor didn't know he knew. When Gary was younger, he held a paper route in the neighborhood. Because he was such a responsible young man, neighbors often entrusted him with extra duties, like collecting mail or watering plants while they were on vacation. The Fellows asked Gary to collect their mail, water their plants, feed their cat, and walk Toby, the Irish setter, while they had a second honeymoon in Aruba. Gary enjoyed walking through their empty house, looking in the rooms, flipping through the channels on their wide-screen TV, using their bathroom. Once in those two weeks Gary took a bottle of beer from the basement refrigerator, and more than once Gary pleasured himself on their leather couch with the aid of a Talbot's mail-order catalogue that had arrived for Mrs. Fellows. In a more curious mood one afternoon, Gary looked through their bedroom drawers. He didn't really know why. Because he was 13 and he could. Among Mrs. Fellows' undergarments he found an unmarked videocassette. The video was shot in the bedroom, and Mr. Fellows wore the walrus head and held a leash attached to his wife's neck. Doug now delivered their newspapers.

"What you need is some smoke," said Mr. Fellows. Jake and Toby sniffed at each other through the fence. Toby was also dying from the inside, although his owner couldn't tell.

"I'm sorry?" said Gary.

"Smoke will take care of your bug problem. That's what the beekeepers use. Puts 'em right to sleep."

He knows about the nest, thought Gary, he knows about everything.

"I've got some smoke bombs you could use. Left over from our woodchuck fiasco. Those critters tunneled in like the Vietcong, but I fixed their wagon."

"Sure, I mean, I guess I could give it a try."

"Excellent. They're back in the tool shed, but I'll bring them by later."

Smoke could work, thought Gary. He could smoke them, then knock the nest down while the bees were pacified and disoriented. He went to get the trashcan. The phone rang twice inside the house.

"Gary! Phone!" Lisa called out the kitchen window.

"Throw me the cordless," said Gary.

"Why? Just come inside! It's one of your stupid friends, they can wait."

"I'm busy! Just throw it out the window!"

Lisa pulled up the window screen and lobbed the phone onto the lawn. Jake swooped in and grabbed it in his jaws, retreating to a far corner of the yard. Gary gave chase with the broom, dislodging the phone after a few strategic pokes.

"I don't believe it," said Gary, wiping Jake's drool off on his shorts. "Hello?"

"Hey, man, I've got innertubes." It was his friend Kyle, who lived across town and had his own apartment above his parents' garage. That's where they did most of their partying.

"You've got innertubes. So what?" said Gary.

"So what? So what?" Kyle was shouting. "So it's a beautiful day, I've got six huge innertubes from the dump and two 30 packs, and unless I'm mistaken you have no excuse but to drive around and find girls with me so we can go to the river, float around, and get shitcanned."

"You want me to go tubing? Right now?"

"Hello? Hello!? Is this thing on?!!!"

Gary lowered the volume on the receiver.

"Yeah man, I know. Sounds great. Thing is, I've got to paint the house today."

"Oh. Is that going to take you all day?" said Kyle.

"Yeah, probably. I haven't even started yet. There's bees on the side of the house."

"Bees, huh? You mean wasps or hornets or regular bees? Getting stung by a hornet frigging kills."

"Just regular bees as far as I can tell," said Gary.

"Well listen," said Kyle. "Just get a stick or something, knock them outta the way, slap some paint on your fancy house and meet us at the river."

"Yeah, I don't know. Look, I'll call you later."

Walking to the garage, Gary found a plastic grocery bag hanging on the fence. In it was a package of smoke bombs and some kitchen matches. He grabbed a garbage can and some gardening gloves out of the garage and went back to the ladder.

Gary paused as he put a match against the striking surface of the box, holding the fuse of a smoke bomb in his teeth and the broom between his legs. Was someone trying to tell him something? What exactly was happening here, on a sunny day in his backyard, when previously the world asked nothing of him? Was this one of those life-defining moments, an event that would confirm his place in the great struggle, another in a long series of challenges big and small that has distinguished man from ape, the hunter from the hunted? A sign, vision, epiphany, intuition, hallucination, prophecy? Was he a malleable wax figure in Plato's cave? What if the bees won, outwitted him, as they very well could, beat him back from the walls of their fortress and send him off the ladder to his death or paralysis? It would all look like an accident. Laughing at this, Gary struck the match, lit the fuse, and headed up the ladder with the broom.

The bomb emitted a cloud of pinkish-red smoke as Gary held it in his gloved right hand. Good, he thought, the glove didn't catch fire. His other hand gripped the broom and the ladder simultaneously, and as he clanked up the ladder he questioned how effective this method would be. Perhaps he should have lit a cluster of bombs on the ground and knocked the hive into the target zone.

He climbed by his sister's bedroom window and through the smoke saw her lying on her bed with Jay. They were making out, Jay's hand under her tank top. Gary froze on the ladder, the red cloud swirling out of control as the bomb reached the peak of its powers. He made eye contact with Jay, then after a puff of smoke wafted in his face and its sulfuric odor summoned memories of 4th of July sparklers and cap guns, saw Lisa's angry face in the window.

"Gary, what the fuck! Get out of here!"

Lisa drew her curtains forcefully and the smoke bomb flew from his hand as he fought to keep his balance. The bomb landed in a birdbath and was extinguished with a hiss.

This impenetrable hive! Nature's devious, ingenious design! Gary was ready to give up. He pitied the bees. What gave him the right to smash their fragile, modest habitat for the superficial improvement of his own? Strong winds or a severe storm would do them in eventually, and where would winter leave them? They chose to settle under the Curtis family roof because it promised safe haven. The queen bee, or whoever made the executive decisions, had talked it over with the hive and selected their house. In a required class called Language and Identity Gary had watched a Nova video on nonverbal languages, where he learned that bees communicate by flying in complex patterns. Bees speak through the language of dance, said the voice-over. A bee had seen their house and danced: Safety! We shall settle here! Our new home! Construct a nest! May the future generations prosper! Gary couldn't bring himself to shatter their world, to be the hunter who slaughtered the dancers.

He scraped the first story and moved the ladder to scrape the far side of the second story. He had begun to paint the first story when his father returned from work.

"Hey Gary, how are things coming?" said his Dad. He wore his casual Friday pink polo shirt and khakis and sipped a can of Sprite.

"Hi, Dad. It's going all right." Gary didn't want to mention the hive.

"Looks pretty good so far. I'll be able to help you finish up tomorrow. 'We can finish it together, son.'" He said this in his corny Father Knows Best voice.

"Well, I started early. I thought I'd be able to finish up today. I ran into some problems."

"Mixing the paint? That cranky old ladder?"

"No, with some bees."

Gary pointed up at the nest. In the gathering twilight the nest appeared larger, shadowy.

"I'll be," said Dad, squinting. "I never noticed that. Did they get you?"

"No, but I couldn't get near them. I thought about knocking it down."

"I know what we can do. I've got just the thing," said Dad. He went to the garage and returned with a pole saw, a gas can, and one of Gary's old hockey sticks. "Good, we can use this trashcan."

Gary stared as his Dad emptied gasoline into the trashcan and positioned it on its side beneath the hive. There was no turning back now, thought Gary.

"Now Gary, this will probably go against everything I've ever taught you regarding fire safety. But there's nothing wrong with improvising."

He handed Gary the hockey stick and raised the pole saw.

"Ready? Now back up. When I knock it down, you've got to come in and shoot it in the trash as fast as you can."

His Dad took a stab at the hive, then another. It swayed, then dropped to the ground. As Gary approached with the stick, it shook with activity as if about to explode. Dad brought the trashcan closer, Gary swept it in, and Dad clamped the lid on.

"Nice shot Killer," said Dad. Killer was Gary's old hockey nickname. He seemed to be getting a big kick out of this. He handed Gary a book of matches. "Now finish them off."

Dad lifted the lid and stood back as Gary dropped a match in. He could feel the heat of the flames on his face as the can ignited. The sound of the gas igniting, that sucking thump of air, seemed to quiet the entire neighborhood. Gary felt as if thousands of eyes were watching their backyard pyre. He watched a single bee--was it the queen?--escape from the fire and circle the can as if thinking of a way to rejoin the hive. It might have been a trick of the setting sun, but the bee's wings glowed orange, flying on fire, and Gary watched the bee land on his father's neck. Gary didn't say anything. He thought he could hear the intensified hum of its wings, like giant rotor blades, beating inside his head. Dad put the lid back on the can, then recoiled with his hand on his neck.

"Damn! The one that got away."

They gathered the buckets and brushes together, took the ladder down, and brought the extermination supplies back to the garage. Dad turned on the watering hose, put out the fire, and dumped the ashes on the pile where they put grass clippings and dead leaves.

That night Gary had a nightmare. His sheets twisted, his body soaked with sweat, he saw Dougie folding a newspaper to throw on the Fellows's porch. The front door exploded and Mr. Fellows was there, shoving smoke bombs down the mouth of the walrus of Quality Autos. Mrs. Fellows appeared through the pinkish-red smoke, swinging a spiked dog collar and heading for Dougie. On the lawn he saw Lisa lying on an innertube with Jay, who had a bushy fisherman's beard and was rubbing it all over her body. And on the roof was his father, torching beehives with flames shooting out of his fingertips. The bees swarmed out, roaring, flying on fire, then burning up, the ash falling on Gary's face.

The bees struck at midnight. Not just bees, either. Bees, bumblebees, hornets, wasps, yellow jackets, killer bees from Venezuela, inner-city bees, bees that had contracted malaria and West Nile virus from mosquitoes. They descended en masse on the Curtis residence, a whirling dervish of rage, blacking out the street lamps. They entered the house through the keyholes, plumbing, holes in screen windows, the chimney, the mail drop, the doggy door, the laundry exhaust, where holes were drilled for telephone and cable wires. They flew past his sleeping father and sister and swarmed into Gary's bedroom. They hovered above his bed and the queen danced a war dance. And while Gary slept they stung him with 10,000 poisonous daggers, bayonets, ice picks, syringes, and scalpels. No point on his body was spared, the bees made sure of that. But the bees were merciful. The attack was so precise, its duration less than a second, that Gary never woke up and felt nothing.