Free Hour of the Bees by Lindsay Eagar Page B

long it’s been since he was home.”
    I don’t say anything. We all know how much Dad hates this place. Mom about keeled over in shock when Dad brought up staying at the ranch to help Serge move. “He’s still my father,” Dad had said. “He needs help. There’s no one else but us.”
    “I know, but can’t we find a hotel?” Mom had said.
    Dad had snorted. “There aren’t any hotels, Patricia. It’s the middle of the desert. The middle of nowhere. If we could camp outside and not be roasted alive, I’d buy tents tomorrow. Nope, we’ll have to stay in the house . . . with him.”
    Mom had said, as an answer, “School starts August twelfth.” That’s when I knew my summer of sitting in Sofie’s front-yard hammock, walking to the gas station with Gabby for slushies, and splashing in the pool with my friends for hours flew out the window on an eagle’s feathered wings.
    I chew on a hangnail. “It has been a long time for Dad” is all I say. I mean it as a defense both for Serge’s gruffness and for Dad’s meddling in sheep affairs.
    “You don’t have to tell an old man about time,” Serge says. “I’m as old as time itself.”
    His top half disappears as he rummages deep in a metal bin. “But let me tell you something I’ve learned,
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. Measuring time isn’t as simple as adding or subtracting minutes from a clock.” He hauls out his sheep-shearing things. “You must find your own measuring stick.”
    “What do you mean?” I ask.
    Serge gestures to the pasture. “Some count sheep to fall asleep. I count sheep to count time.” He hands me a bottle of tonic and a gray rubber spoon.
    “I’m not touching sheep,” I say.
    “I’ll hold them,” he says. “You shovel in the tonic. One spoonful per sheep. Get it all the way past the tongue, or they’ll spit it back out.”
    I want to protest such a disgusting chore, but the shadows on the wall catch my eye. Four hands: two are mine, two Serge’s. His hands tremble, even in silhouette. Mine are young and steady.
    I can lend them out for a while. I’ll help Serge measure time.
    Serge fetches a sheep from the pasture while I uncap the bottle. Ugh! The stench of the tonic is so foul, my nose tickles. Serge tilts the poor sheep back, in a sort of choke hold: my first victim.
    I’ve never stared an animal square in the face. The sheep’s eyes bulge out from its skull in two different directions. It struggles, but Serge tightens his grip, so the sheep sinks back, relaxing, like a giant ugly infant succumbing to a lullaby.
    Now that I see a sheep up close, I understand why Dad didn’t think Serge should shear them. Its wool is scraggly, bug-ridden, and dirt-caked, a blanket of tangled split ends. Sheep are supposed to be puffy white cotton balls, clouds with legs. This sheep’s skeleton juts past its scrawny wool, like its bones are hangers for future wool-knit sweaters.
    This is what drought is. Skinny sheep; desperate biting flies; desert sand so dusty it hovers in the air, because the sky has more moisture than the land. The feeling of joints and muscles tightening, because heat makes bodies wring themselves out, mummifying us alive.
    This is the drought of my dad’s childhood, of Serge’s every day.
    A dying land.
    Lu’s bored with the saddle and is now banging two little garden shovels together to entertain himself. Serge and I dose sheep after sheep. Serge cradles their heads with such tenderness; he and the sheep have been doing this dance for years. I do my thing: hold nose, pour tar, insert spoon.
    “Oh, the sheep I’ve shorn in this barn . . .” Serge scans the rotting wood rafters above us. “Do you know how Raúl measures time? In money. And bills. Things that time turns into dust and blows away in one breath.” He waggles his finger. “You must find a measuring stick that means something,
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.”
    A sheep escapes Serge’s grasp and trots out to the pasture. Serge looks at me, a smile hiding in the corner of his