Free Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum Page B

pain to ease off some. Jesse was climbing down after him. Something stung his cheek, cold and wet. Water? Dan saw a thin, dark streak on the rock face. Another drop stung his face. Water was seeping over the falls. Had it actually rained upstream somewhere, or was the Pipe leaking? Dan looked up.
    Amy knelt on the edge. It was her, this time, not Jesse. Her lips moved, shaping silent words.
    I’m sorry?
    Dan felt another drop on his face, like a tear. “I love you,” he whispered.
    She faded and vanished as Jesse reached the bottom.
    “You can stay if you want.” Her smile was crooked and frail. “I’ve got a lot of space.” She pulled the necklace from her pocket, stared at it for a moment, then fastened it around her neck. “Looks like Sam’s waiting.” She shaded her eyes. “I bet he’ll give us a ride back up to the house.”
    “Yeah, he probably will.” Dan found his stick where he had dropped it sliding down from the highway, and straightened. “He probably will.” Dan looked up at the ledge once more but it was empty. He knew it would be empty. Step by painful step, he climbed back up to the highway with Jesse.
    * * *

THE BEE MAN
    N ita Montoya’s brother sold her when she was fifteen — to the Bee Man who came around sometimes to sell honey to the field hands. At least, that’s what her other brother, Ignacio, called it. Selling. Alberto had slapped him and they almost started fighting, even though Ignacio was only two years older than Nita and a lot smaller than Alberto. Mama screamed at them both, and they stopped, but their bitterness scorched Nita, made her want to hide. There was no place to hide in the camp unit they lived in.
    “She’s a good girl,” Alberto told the Bee Man. “She works as hard as any boy and she minds real good, even if she can’t talk.”
    The Bee Man was old. His curly hair had gray in it, and his long face was lined and folded, brown as old leather. Alberto turned to look at her, and Nita flinched. He was mad. His anger hurt her, like the ache in his back hurt her when he came in from working the bushes, like Ignacio’s hating hurt her. Like Mama hurt her. Nita drew a line in the dust with her toe, wishing that she didn’t have to feel their anger and their aches. Alberto was mad because the foreman had tried to put his hands under Nita’s shirt, back behind the machine shed. Nita rubbed out the line, remembering the time she’d gone to the outhouse late and the foreman had been back there with one of the women. When he’d trapped her behind the machine shed, put his hands on her, his hot sticky excitement had been scary, but it had made Nita’s skin prickle with strange feelings.
    She had run away when the foreman touched her, but Alberto had seen them. Now he was mad.
    “You go with the man, Nita,” Alberto said to her, too loud and too slow, the way he always talked to her, as if she couldn’t hear. “You’re going to live with him now. You mind him.” He wasn’t looking at her any more. He was looking at the jug of honey in his hands. The honey looked yellow as pee.
    “Come on.” The Bee Man smiled at Nita. “You carry these, all right?”
    Nita took the pole he handed her, balanced it across one shoulder. It was a hollow piece of plastic pipe. More jugs — mostly empty — hung from each end, bowing the pole in front and behind, making it bounce as Nita walked. She followed the Bee Man down the dusty lane that led from long rows of units to the main road that led through the ag camp. Dust whirled away from their feet, and Nita’s shift stuck to her sweaty back.
    The Bee Man felt . . . quiet. She studied the curve of his shoulders and back, bent beneath a heavy pack. His hair straggled down his neck in loose curls. He felt like the fields, dry and dusty, like the wind that never stopped blowing.
    It wasn’t a happy feeling and it wasn’t a sad feeling. It was just . . . quiet. Nita relaxed a little as they walked across the sunbaked valley