Hinley Gouch hated animals on the loose, having so long and selfrighteously denied the animal in himself.
But Keff was not one to deny the animal. Not when he carried my kicking Gallen downstairs to her auntie; not when he lifted the hitch end of the iron flatbed and clamped trailer to tractor with one mighty Keff-heff.
I balanced on the flatbed while Keff drove; the iron sang under my feet, and the trailer end swung with the switchbacks. We climbed the orchard road, and for a while the evening grew lighter; we were catching the day's end-glow, which the mountain held last.
When we reached the top of the orchards, near St Leonhard, Keff waited for a more final dark.
'Been in the bee business long, Keff?' I asked.
'You're a smarty, for sure,' he said.
And the scarce neon from Waidhofen, the pale lights along the river, winked at us way below. The fresh white paint on the bee boxes took a greenish cheese-color; the boxes dotted the orchards like gypsy tents - living a secret life.
Keff slumped on the tractor seat, crouched among hand clutch and foot brakes, gearshifts, gauges and iron parts; he sprawled using the great wheels as armrests in some warlike easy chair.
'It's dark, Keff,' I told him.
'It'll get darker,' he said. 'You're the one who's picking up the hives. Don't you want it darker?'
'So the bees will be faster asleep?'
'That's the idea, smarty,' said Keff. 'So you can sneak up and close the screen door on them. So when you start juggling them awake, they can't get out.'
So we waited until the mountaintop was just another sky-shape, until the moon was the only color, and far-off, blinking Waidhofen gave the only signs of night people awake under lantern and bulb.
Keff would do it this way: I balanced on the trailer, and he drove through the tree rows of one orchard and then another. He'd stop at a bee box and I'd creep up to it easy. They had a little entrance the size of a letter slot in a door. There'd be a few sleepy bees on the ledge outside; I'd nudge them into their house, extra gently, and then I'd pull the screening down over their only entranceway, and exit.
When you picked up the box, the hive woke up. They hummed inside; like distant electricity, they vibrated your arms.
The boxes were very heavy; honey leaked between the bottom slats when I lifted them up to the flatbed.
Keff said, 'If you drop one, smarty, it'll split for sure. If it splits, smarty, I'll drive off and leave you.'
So I didn't drop any. When they were on the flatbed, six or so, I had to brace my back against them so they wouldn't slide. First they'd slide toward the tractor on a downhill pitch, then they'd slide to the rear end when we climbed.
'Scramble, smarty,' said Keff.
They fitted, fourteen on the flatbed floor, that was the first tier. Then I had to stack. With a second tier on, they didn't slide as easily; there was too much weighing them down. But I had to leave one space off the second tier so that I could load a third tier. I had to stand on a bee box with another bee box in my arms. Then I had to crawl over the second tier to fill out the corners.
'Three tiers is enough, huh, Keff?'
'Don't let your feet fall through,' said Keff. 'You'll be stuck, for sure.'
'For sure I would, Keff.' Honey-mucked, knee-deep, a prowler crashed into the home at night.
Keff would do this: I braced the hives and he crossed the road, working one side and then the other, moving down the mountain. He kept the orchards even on each side, but crossing the road was the problem. Coming up out of one ditch and down into the other, the flatbed would tilt enough to rock the second-tier boxes on edge. I braced, and Keff would do this: kill the engine, turn off the headlight, let all the groans and snaps of his tractor parts cease and be quiet. Then he listened for cars on the road; if he heard anything, he'd wait.
Well, it took such a long time for the tractor and trailer to cross, and the road was too winding to be safely spotting headlights. So Keff would listen for engine sounds.
'Is that a car, smarty?'
'I don't hear anything, Keff.'
'Listen,' he said. 'Do you want to get broadside in the road and have somebody drive through the hives?'
So I'd listen. To the tractor's manifold singing its heat. To the talkative bees.
I was stung just once. A bee I'd brushed off the door-stoop ledge, and who hadn't gone into the house, got caught in my shirt cuff and got my wrist. It made just a little burn, but my wrist got fat.