HIVE

The sky was blue as a vein the day I killed my father. It wouldn't stay that way; the ice blue eventually giving way to eerie grey, then the red of sick blood. Everything tilted that day, the world shifted and lurched on its invisible spine, revealing things in new dimensions, ugly as those cubist paintings you see on TV; ugly but beautiful. Secret. I've looked for that beauty every day since. I've found glimpses of it in the craquelature on the ceiling of my room at Joondalup, the boys' home, in the wrinkles of worried faces in hospital waiting rooms, in the marbled beef from cattle I boned. Even yesterday, as I hitched a boat to my car in the rain, I caught it in the twisting swirls of grey water racing down the gutter outside the fibro flats I live in. But I've never found it. Not the complete beauty — whole, tiny and perfect enough to turn on your palm — that I saw that day.

I woke late that morning. I was ten years old, and rarely slept past dawn. By the sunlight blaring in under the torn pull-down blind, it was past eight o'clock. There was no school on, so no watching Mum rush about looking for her keys; she'd gone to Cumby to see Aunt Trish, her sister. It was just me and Dad at Canterbury.

Canterbury was a saucer of hard, red land lipped by black rock hills. A river ambled through it, always made sluggish by the heat of summer and the dread cold of winter mornings. As often as not, the bed was dry, just a seemingly endless path of brown skullcaps running north-south. The waters, barely wide enough to rate a creek, held no fish that I ever saw – they were wise enough to stay away. At weekends, when I wasn't needed for tarring, rounding, drenching or shooting sheep, I would fossick in the riverbed for diamonds. I'd read at school about diamonds, and how ordinary they appear uncut, and found a stone I was convinced was a diamond that would change us forever, and make us rich beyond imagining. Dad took a hammer to it to show me it was worthless quartz. Our lot was not to find gems among the stones.

I learnt, three or four years ago, that half of Canterbury had been bought by the government and flooded to make a dam. In all likelihood, our white house with the rust-red roof was demolished. But in my dreams, the house is still there, but deep underwater. And I am inside, swimming through its rooms and down the hall in the gloom, accompanied by schools of grey catfish as I strain, lungs burning, through the kitchen, past the old Kelvinator fridge, to the back door. Which is always locked.

But that morning – when I was ten and the bad dreams had not yet started — the back door was wide open when I crept into the kitchen. I was sore, and confused. Either something good had happened, but bad things were due today, or vice versa. All I was certain of was that there was no school today, and Dad had left the back door swung wide. I looked out, squinting. Across a hundred yards of red dirt was the shed – where I could just make out movement. Dad was fixing something on one of the tractors. A glint, like a blue diamond, and a puff of orange flame – he was brazing.

'Dad!'

The flame swung low. Like insect eyes, the green-black goggles turned toward me.

'You want tea?'

The goggles were fixed on me a long moment. Round and inscrutable. Dark. Then, a hint of a white smile below, and Dad shook his head.

I nodded, and turned to make breakfast. In the fridge, the raft of yellow cream floating on the milk was almost gone – Dad liked to eat it with a spoon when Mum wasn't watching. I carefully poured a glass, unable to dislodge the dark stone in my belly that said something was wrong. But what? I opened the cupboard and reached to get out the honey flakes – then stiffened as if electrified. On the front of the box, benevolent cartoon bees buzzed around the bowl. I'd remembered.

For weeks – months, really – I'd pestered my parents to let me build a bee hive. My obsession with bees had started in the school library. Researching for a class project on the conquests of Alexander, I found a photograph of an ancient Persian amulet in the shape of a bee. This shiny, glinting insect of gold and mother of pearl and polished anthracite lodged in my mind, as determined to stay as a real bee's barb. Starting my own hive, I could have dozens – thousands! – of living, delicate, gold bees! I saw myself donning the keeper's hat, cool as Steve McQueen in his silver suit to battle The Towering Inferno, smoker in hand, ready to plunge into the dark, moist, sweetly dangerous mystery of my own hive...

Mum and Dad were set against it. Mum because she felt there was insufficient pollen for bees to survive on in Canterbury, and Dad because he didn't need to waste his time driving me three hours to hospital covered in bee stings. My protests, my research, charts showing bee range and numbers of flowering trees, and tables highlighting limited likelihood of allergy were in vain. My hive was forbidden.

But I'd ordered a Queen, anyway.

Lunchtimes in the school library gave me the time to look up beekeeping suppliers in the classifieds of city newspapers. I couldn't afford a smoker or frames for a hive, but I knew I could make them, and did. I had started making my hive from a warped and peeling dog kennel that I'd found hidden in long whip grass near the station's original mud-brick house, about a mile from ours. I'd begun constructing frames for the hive from the scraps of windows and door jambs left in the cadaverous place. My experimental smoker was hidden skilfully in the work shed, along with a paper bag full of wattle twigs, the closest thing I could find to pine needles. What I couldn't fabricate was the essence of a hive — the Queen. She, some workers, drones and foundation wax would cost me $18, delivered. I timed things well, saving pocket money for weeks with a view to having her arrive in her dark, perforated box in the school holidays. Which started today.

All I had to do was be the first to our letterbox, two miles from the house, when the postie drove up in his dusty van some time in the afternoon. The original station house was halfway to the post box, in the lee of a rocky rise; so, to while away the morning, I'd finish the comb frames in the hive. Congratulating myself on my cleverness, I packed a lunch, made a mix of cordial, and packed them in an old cardboard school port that had almost outworn its usefulness. I left the back stoop to go to the shed. Stepping on to the red dirt and into the sun seemed to drop fifty pounds on to my bag; the light was blinding and the heat solid enough to chew. I hurried to the shade of the shed.

My father was at back of a tractor, one hand leaning on the frame holding the PTO shaft he was working on. His other held the oxy wand, and the flame hissed idly into space, a titian snake with nothing to bite. He was forty-one, then, and I could see the grey at his temples. He wasn't moving, and the goggles stopped me seeing where he looked.

'Dad.'

He didn't stir.

'Dad?'

Slowly, he turned. Again, the black discs of the goggles regarded me, some giant beetle with a fiery stinger. Then, his hand holding the oxy torch swung up, the arc of a flaming arrow, right to his head, and pulled the goggles off his eyes. They fixed on me, and a slight frown folded the skin above his nose, as if he was concentrating, trying to put a name to my face.

'Hey.'

He was staring at me, hard, like I was a Rosetta Stone that could unlock some puzzle that had frozen him. For the first and last time in my life, I felt uncomfortable under my father's gaze. I shifted the port on my shoulder.

'You okay?' I asked.

He nodded slowly. His lips were dry, and he hadn't shaved. 'Are you okay?'

Now I was really flipping out. Dad sometimes became a bit vague when Mum went away – but I thought that was just because he missed her. This was unsettling. And I had things to do.

'I'm going to the old house for a look. I've got lunch.'

Dad nodded, and his eyes ratcheted down to the flame in his hands. He shut it off.

I turned and stepped into the sun.

'Michael,' he said.

I stopped and looked back. With me in the sun and him in the dark, he was just a shadow. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he was looking at me. Framing words. Important words. I waited, baking.

'Nothing.'

I nodded, and turned and ran.

The old house was now just a shell perched up a gentle, dusted rise that led to a sharp outcrop above. The hill and the rocks were the highest part of Canterbury; over the rise was a steep gully that flooded in rain and was treacherously spiked with broken branches any other time. But the house was in a good spot, overlooking the plains of ruddy dirt and brown grass. Just a mile away, near a solitary grove of gums, was our house. In the far distance, I could see a puff of red dust anchored by a shifting spot of grey-white – our sheep. I had laboured in the sun for two hours, pulling down window frames with the hammer and chisel I'd spirited from the shed, cutting them as best I could, one foot pinning the timber to the rotting verandah, one hand inexpertly hacking with a rusty saw. Twice I'd hit my thumb with the hammer. The sharp pain took my mind away from my aches.

I'd cut the roof from the old kennel, which sat like a forgotten sedan chair surrounded by bowed, worshipful grass. The frames slotted into the top box, and I'd fashioned a bottom box for the brood. Somewhere dark where she could squirt out more and more servants. And an heir.

I clawed up the rocky hillside to the skeletal remains of a tree that afforded a bit of shade. I checked for ants and sat, but the hot earth scalded my buttocks, making me wince. After removing my lunch from the bag, I sat on it, crushing it – its usefulness finally passed.

Now, the day was at its high hinge. The sun hunched overhead, and the horizon had cooked to a colourless plasma full of potency. I unfolded the sandwiches, and chewed, looking over the abandoned farm house. It was big, with wooden floors that must have been fine before the roof thatching dislodged, and sun and rain twisted the boards. The walls were solid, apart from odd cracks in the corners of doorways and windows. And the view here was... well, breathtaking. But even when my parents had bought Canterbury a decade and a half ago the house was long empty. Why? Why abandon a perfectly good house?

'Because she wasn't s'posed to be here.'

I yelped and jumped from the voice at my right elbow. I lost my footing on the sharp shale and fell on one knee, bending my already wounded thumb under my hand. But that pain came later; now, I was staring wide-eyed at a woman who'd appeared silently from nowhere.

'Snuck up on ya?'

She was sitting on her haunches next to my crumpled school bag. She wore a plain floral shift, and her skin was black as coal. Pureblood. Her hair had grey in it, but it was thick and, once, it would have been as black as her skin and her eyes. But that could have been a million years ago; she seemed rooted to the ground, solid as rock. Smiling at me. Maybe laughing.

'Come on. Not gonna bite ya.' She grinned. 'Not yet.'

I blinked, not moving. She rolled her eyes, showing pearl white, and gestured me with mock annoyance to come back. I stole a look around. My father was a mile away. Beyond him, the nearest neighbour was five or more. I was alone with her.

'Young Michael, innit?' she asked, patting the bag. I cautiously sat, and nodded. She was staring out across the plain, just the thinnest sliver of eye visible under her thick lashes. My heart was pumping, and sweat was leaking out of me everywhere. But her skin was dry. Black and dry and smooth. Beautiful. Still.

'And what's your name?' I asked.

I wasn't sure if she'd heard me. She didn't move, just kept watching the vista. I was about to ask again, when she said: 'You'd know it if you heard it.'

She turned and looked at me, and smiled. Her teeth were perfect white.

'But you can call me Joan, eh? Like St Joan. St Joan d'Arc, eh?'

I nodded. I'd read last term how the Maiden of Orléans had burned for heresy.

'Old d'Arcy, eh? That's me, eh? Dark? d'Arc? Geddit?'

I watched her to see if there was meanness in her words. But her smile seemed sincere. I nodded again.

'No, they wouldn't burn me. I just hide somewhere black, they never find me,' she chuckled. But her eyes didn't laugh – they were watching me carefully, the sliver of curved black glinting, reminding me of something. This was the first time I'd sat with a black woman. The Aboriginal settlement was twelve miles south, and the only black kids at school were the Douglas brothers, and no one in their right mind sat with them. There were blacks in town, usually sitting in groups of three or four under the fig tree near the Great War memorial; Mum always hurried me past them. Dad had hired a black stockman when I was little. Bill, Dad called him. He had his own horse. But he'd stopped working for us by the time was five, and I'd never asked why he left.

Joan turned gain to the view, humming contentedly to herself, idly cleaning under her nails with a thorn. Then I remembered what I was thinking when she'd arrived – I'd been thinking ...

'About the house,' she said, and looked at me. Her eyes were black pearls. 'You were lookin' at the house. Still alright lookin' even though she's getting' old. Bit like me, eh?' She grinned, and I opened my mouth to answer, but couldn't think what to say. She shook her head – don't worry.

'Thought I'd tell you why the white fellas give 'er up.' She raised her eyebrows – do you want to know?

'Yes.'

'Didn't like the colour,' she said. She paused, then burst into deep laughter. It bounced off the rocks and carried away in the breeze. For a guilty moment, I was afraid Dad would hear it, look out, and somehow see me all this way away talking to an abo.

'Only kidding,' said Joan. 'No, this is not ground for building. This is special ground. Precious ground. You can feel it, can't you, Michael?'

I thought about that. 'It's got a good view.'

She laughed again, deep and good, refreshing as a waterhole. 'Good view, yeah.' She sniffed. The sound echoed slightly off the rocks above and the red mud walls below. 'No, this a wunona place. A place to come and sleep, dream the understanding of things. But you sleep here every night like them folk,' she nodded down at the empty house. 'You see too much.' She stopped and looked at me. I could feel her eyes testing me, poking to see if I understood.

'Bad dreams?'

She nodded. Good.

'This place gave them nightmares?'

She shifted. For the first time, I noticed the pattern on her dress wasn't flowers at all, but intertwined insects, the petals wings.

'Not nightmares. Just things. Things how they are.' She shrugged. 'Seein' things how they are, it's not everyone's cup of tea.'

I looked at the house. In its time, it would have been the only structure in a hundred square miles. If every night in it were plagued by fitful dreams, you'd feel truly isolated. No one to hear you. Nowhere to run. Alone and haunted.

'Where's that postman of yours?' asked Joan.

'I don't know,' I answered. And my heart did a sickening drop. She knew I was waiting for the mail. I looked at her. Again, she was still as stone, a black sphinx watching the whipsnake dust road a mile away. How did she know?

'I know lots of stuff, Michael.' She looked at me, and winked. 'I know you don't have bad dreams.'

My mouth was dry. The cordial had gone into my gut, soaked into the bread, making a hard ball that sat queasily. She was right. I never dreamt. I woke each morning in a muzzy headed malaise that dissipated by breakfast. But I never remembered what went through my head in the night.

'Are you... are you a kadaitcha woman, Joan?'

I'd heard that the Douglas boys had an uncle who was a kadaitcha, a medicine man. He pointed the bone at some bloke who'd sold the family a dud washing machine, and the salesman had wasted away and died just two months later. Joan looked at me, and raised her eyebrows. Maybe impressed that I knew the word. Maybe offended.

'No such thing. Not me. Just a silly old black bitch, eh? Talkin' shit with a silly young white fella.'

She smiled. It was a brilliant smile – pure black and pure white. I'd remember it many years later, walking across the checkerboard tile floor of a chateau foyer in Marseilles, back when I had money. I'd broken down there, curled on the marble staircase, sobbing. All the other tourists shrank away.

But then, that kiln-dry midday, everything was in equilibrium. The future hadn't started, and the past hadn't unveiled. Joan held the scales. Smiling.

I smiled back.

Everything was still. Silent. No breeze threw sand at the dead tree trunk we sat under. No crows called their kin to meat. No hint of the dust storm that was brewing at the edge of the world, ready to cover this awful day. Just an ignorant white boy and a mysterious black woman, talking shit.

'Talking shit,' I said. It was the first time I'd sworn in front of an adult. I turned to see if I was in trouble. Joan just smiled at me. But not at what I'd said, I know now, but at what was coming.

'You a gamblin' man, Mister Michael?' asked Joan.

I thought about that. I'd gambled my parents wouldn't learn that I'd bought stuff through the mail against their wishes. I'd gambled that they wouldn't find my secret hive here in the special place. Even gambled that I could come up with a year's worth of excuses to visit my hive once it took hold.

'I reckon,' I replied.

'Righto, then,' said Joan.

Still on her haunches, she dusted her hands, like a sideshow huckster readying to display some sleight of hand. And I noticed that the pattern on her dress wasn't made of generic insects. It was a pattern of bees. Blue and green and yellow, with honeycomb wings. My jaw slid open.

'You watchin' my arse or my hands, boy?' asked Joan.

She was smiling again.

I dragged my eyes to her hands. She held them both in front of her as lightly clenched fists. I could see the sweet gradation of her skin colour from the black back of her hand to the coffee colour of a glimpse of palm; the stark crescents of white nails on black whorls. And not a drop of sweat.

'Two choices: left or right.'

She turned her closed fists toward me, grinning.

If the sun heating the earth makes a sound, I heard it then. Because there wasn't another noise. Everything was deathly still.

'What's the deal?' I asked.

'Well. You pick one. You pick the right one, you get another choice. You pick the wrong one, you go away from here and never come back up. Never have no bad dreams. Never have no good ones, neither.'

Her lips pulled back further. Her eyes closed tighter – just thin slices of shining white and glistening black. And I remembered, then, what her eyes reminded me of: the Persian bee brooch, with its stripes of mother of pearl and polished coal stone. Untouched by time. Ancient, arcane beauty.

'What if I don't choose?'

Joan cocked her head and laughed.

'Oh, I reckon you'll choose, Michael. You're a gamblin' man.'

She was right. I would choose. And I did. Before I could stop myself, I tapped her right fist.

She smiled, and uncurled her fingers. On her umber palm sat a bee. A bee unlike any I'd seen. At least, never with my eyes.

It was large, half as big as the rolls of ten cent pieces checkout girls crack open into their tills. Its body was gold-furred, and its eyes were sapphire. The bands on its body, instead of brown and yellow, were silver and blood red, shining like a crystal. Its legs were jet black and long. It used one slender leg to draw its divinely fine antenna down for preening. It was the Queen. The Queen I dreamed of, and the Queen I'd forgotten. Flooding back came my memories of the weeks after I'd first seen the Persian brooch; my nights then were filled with dreams where I'd started my own hive. In the dream, I'd wake to a golden morning and go to the ice-white hive. I'd crack it open in the yellow sunlight, cocooned in a safe aura of sweet blue smoke, to open the brood box and find her. Not plain and bloated, as I found real Queen bees later to be, but gemlike and breathtaking and perfect – exactly like this.

'Remember?' asked Joan.

I nodded, transfixed. The Queen flexed her wings, flawless teardrops of mica. The insect's eyes glittered under the white sun. A hundred eyes watching me.

'It's not real,' I whispered.

Joan shrugged. 'Take it. See.'

I stretched out my hand. She opened her other fist – empty – and took my wrist. Her skin was dry and cool, and her grip strong as iron. She dropped the bee into my palm. I could feel its weight, the touch of its fine feet on my pale, wet skin.

'See?' asked Joan. 'You do dream.'

The bee stung.

The pain shot into my hand and up my arm – like flames, it burned, dwarfing the throbbing in my thumb, the stab in my knee, the bruises on my neck and...

'And?' asked Joan.

And the other pain.

The pain that came at night. When I couldn't breathe. When my head was pushed against the mattress. When Mum was away. The pain I dreamed, and forgot I dreamed.

'It's no dream, Mister Michael.'

The acid burning of the poison spread from shoulders, up my neck, into my face.

I screamed.

But it was muffled by the pillow. And the sobbing behind me.

The poison tightened my throat and filled my eyes. Everything was on fire. Everything was red and swollen, ready to burst. The sky, the land, everything – except Joan. Black as ash. Still as rock. She smiled.

'Remember, now?'

The world flooded. My eyes swam wet. I was drowning, unable to breathe. Underwater, with the back door locked.

I nodded.

The pain stopped.

Hot air sucked into my lungs. My heart sprinted to catch up.

The world was quiet, except for my snotty breaths sucking in and out, echoing. Joan, carved from black granite, watched the sky. Snivelling, I followed her gaze.

A quadrant of the sky was closing over in a red-black eyelid. Dust storm coming.

Then I remembered: the bee.

Joan still held my left wrist, but my right palm was empty. I looked around. The jewelled bee was seated, again, on Joan's hand. As I reached for it, her fingers closed over it – a fine obsidian cage.

'Gamblin' man?'

I looked up to her face. All trace of smiles were gone. Her eyes watched me, cool as the insect's.

'You want your daddy dead?'

I blinked. And felt the first touch of a breeze. Air drawn from the north, down toward the hungry dust storm.

'No.' My voice was a weak croak.

Joan cocked her head.

'No wonder you white folks lie so good. Start 'em early. But man...'

She looked at the bee turning itself in her hand, sparkling in the sun, red on red, white on silver. 'Your dreams, they are beauties.' She looked up at me.

'Tell you what, Gamblin' man. Left or right. Left, I let you go, you run and save your daddy. Right, you keep your dream.'

The haze preceding the storm crept over the sun, casting a pewter pall over the plain. In the far distance, the sheep were running. The pernicious eyelid of the dust crept closer to our house. I figured ten minutes was about how long it would take to get there.

'You are a kadaitcha woman,' cracked my whisper.

Joan looked down on me. Her skin was cold as ice.

'Whatever you want, Gamblin' man. Just choose.'

I looked down at the farm house. A small white building under a huge, red wave. How can so much poison come from such a little thing?

I tapped Joan's right hand, which held the Queen bee.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then, she let out a sigh, and rocked back on her haunches. The flowers of her dress were nondescript. Not bees, just flowers. Plain daisies. She chuckled, and casually dropped the bee into my palm. I quickly cupped my other hand over it.

'Know why the real Joan Darky got all burned up?' asked Joan.

My eyes were locked on the dust rolling toward our house.

'For wearin' pants. They just didn't like seein' a girl in pants. Still, she hadn'a worn pants, none of us would know her, would we? Funny how people got to die to get a point across.' Joan hummed to herself.

We sat for a while, me cradling my jewelled bee, and her rocking gently on her heels, humming as the storm came closer. Wind began to whip our hair, and devil-devils swirled in the dirt around us. As the sky grew dark, Joan stood.

'Reckon you oughta get into that house, Gamblin' man.'

Her eyes were dark tar drops in shadows.

'No need for you to come back up here.'

With that, she turned and stepped lightly away up the escarpment and over the rocks. Gone.

I hurried down the hill, sliding on the loose rocks, and reached the old mud-brick house as the dust storm hit. Wind red and thick as cow blood howled around me. It grew so thick, I couldn't see. And the storm lasted so long, I lost time. A minute seemed an hour. An hour seemed ten. I forgot where I was, and tried to get to the kitchen, before remembering this wasn't our house. I couldn't breathe, so I pulled off my shirt and tied it around my face. Finally, I curled in a corner and waited.

When I woke, I was covered in a second skin of dust. Sunlight filtered weakly through the open window hole. The day was nearly done. I sat up. Both my hands were open, and empty. The bee, if there ever was a bee, was gone.

I found my father hanging by his belt in the shed. The police later told my Aunt Trish he died just before the storm hit, because there was no red dirt in his lungs. I grew quite close to Aunt Trish after Mum went funny. Mum killed herself, too, some eighteen months later, swallowing a bottle of diphenhydramine pills. I hated to disappoint Aunt Trish, but things like school and work became pointless mirages to me.

I survived a series of boys' homes, where the abuse my father dealt was commonplace for some others, but never for me. As I grew older, money and jobs came and went. Dreams returned vividly; not just the one where I was caught in the drowning house, but other dreams. Dreams where I chose Joan's other fist. Where I run across the red dirt, lungs afire, racing the storm. Finding Dad standing on the tractor with a belt around his neck, not yet stepped off. Being able to talk him down... but never doing so. Being there to watch him fall.

I saved, and travelled to the Middle East, searching. I found a brooch not unlike the one I wondered over as a child – but never the exact golden bee that caught my eye. Finally, I tried my hand at beekeeping. I laughed as I stuck my hand in my first hive, knowing it was right and I'd come out unscathed, which I did. I'd had enough stings. Now I run a honey farm. But every time I open a brood box, my breath stops for a moment, and some small part inside me flutters in hope. But the Queens are always drab; never the blood and silver bee that haunts me.

Tomorrow, I am driving home to Canterbury. They've had no good rain in a year, and the new dam, I hear, is low. I've hired a boat. If the water is low enough, I'm rowing over to the rocky escarpment there. It's a special place. I'm a gambling man, you see, and I'm happy to lose some dreams.

© This work is copyright, 2004: Stephen Irwin