Setting Free the Bears - Page 40

'Come sit here,' I said, but she shook her head.

'They think he'll come back, Graff, because Auntie said you were lovers.'

'What sort of a job is it?' I said.

'You've got to bring in the bees,' she said.

'What bees?' I said.

'The bee boxes in the apple orchards,' said Gallen. 'The hives are full and ready to be brought in. It's a job you do at night, and they think that's the most likely time you'd be trying to leave with him.'

'And if I won't take the job, Gallen?'

'Then they arrest you,' she said. 'You're a vagrant, they'll say, and they'll lock you up. You helped him escape, and they can get you for that.'

'I could skip out tonight,' I said.

'Could you?' she said, and she went round to the other side of Siggy's bed: she sat with her back to me. 'If you think you could do that,' she whispered, 'I could help you do it.'

Well, I thought: Is it forsythia that turns the moon so yellow and sends it through my window to your hair - hues the air vermilion above your small, lovely head? 'I couldn't do that, Gallen,' I said.

She jingled her pocket of coins. 'I've got to go now, Graff,' she said.

'Would you come and tuck me in?' I asked.

She turned quick and smiled. Oh yes. Oh my.

'Don't you grab,' she said. And she came round to my bedside, put off my light. 'Get your arms under,' she said to the dark.

She tucked once and came round to my other side. I was wriggling an arm out, but she tucked too fast. Then she pounced her hands down on my shoulders; her braids fell in my face.

'Oh, I'm so clumsy,' she said, but she didn't let me go.

'Where's your room, Gallen?' I asked.

But by the time I'd untucked myself, she was out the door. Her foot shadows crept out from under the light slot, and I couldn't hear a thing amove in the hall.

I got up and opened my door just a bit, and peeked round the jamb; there she was, just waiting for me - not so angry that she couldn't blush.

'You never mind where my room is, Graff,' she said.

So I went back to my sad, saggy bed; I rumpled around a bit, trying to second-guess the world. Well, I thought, the bees are done with their pollinating now; the honey's come full and the hive's fat for tapping. Oh, look out.

Looking Out

I WOKE UP with a sun smell on my pillow. So I thought: Siggy is leaving Vienna now; he's had time to fetch his details, time to skulk in the zoo all night.

I saw him saying goodbye to the animals, trying to cheer them up.

'Bless you, Siggy!' said the fraught giraffe.

And the wallaroo cradled a tear in its fist.

'Graff,' said Gallen, under my door. 'They're down in the dining room.'

Well, I didn't feel very good about any of it; their conspiracy weighed in the air of the hall. It was like they'd left a door open to the cellar-dungeon; I could smell the foul, dank mildew of thoughts left down there to ripen and go mouldy, but I couldn't find the door, to close it.

They had a table in the dining room, near to mine, the wily Herr Burgermeister, dear Auntie Tratt, and the cider-smelling one - Herr Windisch, appleman and employer of the needy. He had withered blossoms caught in the cuffs of his pants.

Tags: John Irving Fiction
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