Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories Read Online Free Page A

breath. “You don’t think I’m going to let a man twelve years older than I am beat me up a mountain, do you?”
    Carl smiled. “You’re doing fine.” He slowed his step a little and began to talk, to take her mind off the climbing. “You know, that branch back there put me in mind of my uncle Mose. He used to come here bee-tracking in the summertime. Of course, bees need water in the hot summer to make honey and to cool the hive, so they fly to the nearest stream to get it. Well, my old uncle Mose would locate a bee watering place, and he’d sit down nearby, and just watch those bees leave with a stomachful of water. He’d follow their flight with just his eyes for as far as he could see them. Past that sumac bush or that service tree. After a while he’d move to that tree and sit and watch several more bees go by, and note the next place he lost sight of them. After a couple of short hops like that, he’d finally get to the hollow tree they were headed for. He’d mark the tree so he could find it again, and go on home.”
    He glanced back at Elissa. She seemed to be concentrating on the path. Her face glowed from exertion, and she pushed at her wet bangs with the wrist of one glove. Impulsively, he took the makeup case from her and tucked it under his arm. She did not look up.
    “Course now, the reason Uncle Mose would mark that tree would be so that he could find it again come fall,” Carl went on. “Long about late October, he’d come backdown the mountain with a zinc washtub, ax, rope, and a little box, and he’d set to work. He’d split that hollow tree open, catch the queen in a box, scoop all the honey out into the washtub, and carry it home. The bees would usually swarm on a branch, so he’d cut down the branch and take it home, where he’d built some hives in the back garden. Then he’d let the queen bee out of the box, and put the branch down beside the homemade hive, which had some of the honey put in it for the bees to winter on. The rest of the honey went into pint jars for the family. It took patience, but the results were worth it.” He turned to look at her.
    Elissa regarded him steadily. “I loathe bees.”
    They stood on the mountaintop, a narrow ridge of sturdy pines, and looked down at the little meadow cupped in a hollow below the summit. The land had been cleared and cultivated years before, and the little cabin, which sat in a puddle of sunlight at the edge of the garden furrows, seemed sturdy for its age. Brown winter grass stretched away to the forest which encircled it, and aluminum pie tins, strung from branches to keep the birds from the garden, twirled soundlessly in the wind. The stillness was so absolute that it might have been a sepia photograph from Carl’s family album, or a dream in which time elapses in slow motion. Carl tried to remember times he had been at the cabin, when the old folks still lived there, as though calling them to memory might make them come alive in the barren landscape. The rotting wooden boxes near the woods would be painted white and set upright. Uncle Mose would be moving among them in his coveralls and veil, bees hovering at his side. Grandfather would be sitting on the porch steps, soaping the sidesaddle Grandmother used when they rode to church. Without wanting to, Carl turned and looked at the gray headstones beneath the cedar trees.
    “Carl! I’m freezing! Are you going to stand up here all day?”
    He looked at her for a moment before he realized what she had said. Then he nodded and helped her down the embankment toward the meadow.
    Elissa wrinkled her nose at the sight of the cabin. “I don’t suppose there’s any heat,” she said flatly.
    “Just a fireplace. Whilden left us some wood.” He had known where to look for it—stacked in a pile by the kindling stump.
    As they walked through the garden plot, Elissa stopped to look at a child’s plastic rocking horse, set up as a yard ornament under a leafless dogwood.
    “How