Queen Sandy Friedly

Sandy Friedly

Cortney sat high in the apple tree, watching the back door. Jake had come home from the ranch stinking of manure and bourbon and wrapped his big angry hands around her neck, all for asking him to wipe his boots better. She’d bolted for the car keys, but he grabbed her purse. When he turned, she billyclubbed the back of his knee with the fireplace poker. She ran for the tree. No way would he look up there. He never has. Fighting back wasn’t something she ever did, so it took them both by surprise. It was leaving that she was good at. She’d left Jake many times, but he’d always convince her to come back. “I can change,” he’d say. “I will change.” Each time she’d look into those startling blue eyes, him crying, and see the man she loved, the one who didn’t try to kill her most of the time, see the kid whose own father had actually roped him like a calf. Even the draft had rejected him, a thyroid problem of all things. How could she, of all people, let him down? Three branches below her in the apple tree, hung a bee swarm throbbing like a beating heart. It was the size of a holiday ham, about five pounds, she figured. Cortney knew the behavior of bees, their honey-filled bellies, their female stings, their need to move on. On warm days like this swarms loosen, letting the bees free to fly about. Some even crawled on the ground. A bee circled her knee. Another marched up her arm. Her hair tingled with bees. Cortney slipped her ponytail down the back of her shirt and popped up the collar. She missed her father, a beekeeper back in Idaho, and thought how it didn’t seem that long ago, really, that she’d helped him harvest the honey. She remembered licking her sticky fingers, chewing on honeycomb, always so calm in that buzzing world. She had been in that apple tree many cold nights, the branch on which she sat her cradle of safety. Now it was warm, the scent of apple blossoms filling her nostrils. Above, through the sun-dappled canopy, soared a perfect blue sky. Thousands of cellophane wings vibrated, filling the air with electric hum, and somewhere in that dark swarm a patient queen waited. She touched her neck where Jake had choked her, swallowed the soreness in her throat. Movement inside the house caught her eye, Jake peering out the bedroom window, calling 42

her name. She’d met him at a rodeo, a ranch hand who chewed clove gum instead of tobacco, who liked Beethoven as much as Johnny Cash. Early on he displayed a temper, but she brushed it off as moodiness, something she could smooth out with love. How could she have known it would turn into this? Cortney studied the swarm, remembering the time she jabbed epinephrine into his thigh after he’d stepped barefoot on a bee. She had to move fast or he would’ve died. The bees kept landing on her, testing her stillness. A shoulder here, a finger there. One disappeared in the cuff of her jeans. She knew to let them go about their business. She and her father would count the stings to see who got the most. Now what was she going to do, compare bruises with her husband the rest of her life?

Cortney glanced back at the house. Jake. Filling up the doorframe, dusty hair stuck out like an explosion frozen in time. She stiffened. He walked to the side of the house tipping back a bottle of beer, favoring that right leg. He took a piss on the asparagus. “Cortney!” he yelled. “Cort! Where’re you?” She couldn’t see all of him through the branches, but the further he walked away from the tree, his whole self came into view. He took the path to the barn and disappeared inside. Tired of straddling the branch, she swung a leg over sidesaddle. Her body ached as if it’d been in a car accident. Jake walked out of the barn, rolling up his sleeves in the hot sun, a coiled rope looped over his shoulder. He stopped to hold the beer bottle against the back of that knee for a moment, glancing around. “Come out come out wherever you are.” He drained the last of the beer and tossed the bottle into the weeds. What a waste, she thought, like apples rotting on the ground. She’d go back to Idaho. Work at that restaurant where the tips were so good. She imagined herself in college, anywhere but Winnemucca. She had to be brave, to end this. Her pulse raced. A dull headache thumped against her skull. When Jake reached the edge of the yard, she yelled, “In the tree!” He limped closer, scanning the branches, mouth an oval of surprise. He cocked his head. “What’re you doin’?” he asked. He stepped forward, then noticed the bees orbiting the tree and moved on back. He craned his neck and through a wider opening in the branches they found each other. A rosy sunburn colored his face, except for the white band across his forehead always shaded by a hat.

“It’s okay,” he slurred. “No one’s gonna hurt you.” He beckoned her down, scooping up the air with his long, hard arm. “No thanks,” she said, her voice dry and raspy. She breathed, steadied herself. “Don’t need any matching accessories.” She pointed to her neck. “Come on,” he said, letting the rope slip from his shoulder and down his arm. He hooked it with his fingers. “Didn’t mean to scare ya.” “Like the time you pulled that gun on me.” “It wasn’t loaded.” “I didn’t know that.” “Watch this,” he said, and began feeding the rope through a loop at the other end to make a lasso. He widened his stance, an attempt to gain better balance, but that knee troubled him. “Got me good didn’t ya?” He tilted his chin at her, sneering. “I aimed for both legs, but I’ll take it.” “Let’s call ‘er even, then, drive into town. Drink a few beers, put some quarters in the Jukebox.” “I think you’ve had enough.” He cast the rope out with a flick of the wrist and twirled the flat, sloppy circles of a drunk. “Watch,” he said. “I’ve been practicing.” He twirled the rope faster but it hit his leg, so he had to start over. Courtney noticed the bees stirring on the ground. One traveled across the toe of his boot, another danced knee-high between his legs. It only takes one, she thought. Only one. Jake fixated on the rope and whisked his hand faster. He twirled the rope higher into a wider circle. Around and around it went. He dropped it over his body, raised it up and down, up and down like a yo-yo, sucking a bee here, a bee there, into the whirl. “This here’s called a wedding ring.” He began whistling The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Cortney watched his face, saw him wince, an arm flinch against a sting. But he kept twirling that rope. “Ya coming down or what?” he asked. “In due time,” she said. The rope spun above his head. He eyed her like a calf. He started to say something else, but coughed. “Can’t stay up there all—” He coughed again, struggled to clear his throat. He coughed again, strained, “Can’t stay—” He cleared his throat again, a gritty whisper this time. Then came the hacking, the wheezing. His eyes filled with panic. 44

His lips swelled into fat tubes. “Cort!” he choked, hobbling, tripping on the rope. Courtney slapped both hands over her ears and looked away. She heard the wild gasping. Saliva coated the inside of her mouth. A cold sweat beaded her forehead. She pressed her hands harder against her ears until they hurt. It felt like forever, but when the only thing she could hear was the electric hum of bees, she climbed down, branch by careful branch. After dropping to the ground, she couldn’t move. She didn’t want to move. She doubled over, hands on her knees, taking a moment to gather herself, to take the first step forward. And when she did, it was if she had occupied someone else’s body. Her legs carried her but she couldn’t feel them. Jake’s eyes had swelled shut, his face like risen dough. She bent a knee, checked his limp wrist for a pulse. The only things moving were venom sacks still pumping poison into his body. An acne of blisters crawled along his arms. Cortney stood tall, wiped her eyes, her nose on her sleeve. Burning climbed like a fever on her left thigh, her arm below the right elbow, the flesh where a bee had found its way in at the neckline. But what was that after all? A few stings were nothing.