Free September Song by William Humphrey Page A

at meals she had to slice his meat as for a child. His helplessness and dependency he blamed on Janet. But for her he would not have gone off the road that day. Ten years of motorcycling with a perfect safety record, despite Molly’s prediction that he was going to kill himself on that thing one day.
    â€œBut thank you for reminding me,” he said. “I’ll try not to forget. You might have pointed that out to her while there was still time. I tried.”
    â€œYour daughter, I said. Not your slave. She has got a life of her own.”
    â€œYes, and who does she owe it to?”
    She went down stiffly on her ruined knees to tie his shoelaces.
    â€œYou can’t stand in the path of true love, Seth,” she said.
    He snorted. “Love! Hah! She’ll see how long that lasts.”
    She was having the trouble she always had getting up off her knees. Looking down, he saw what appeared to be teardrops falling on the toe of his shoe. The readiness of women to weep over anything, or rather over nothing at all, exasperated him.
    â€œNow what’s wrong?” he asked as a matter of form.
    â€œNothing,” she said. Which was not what she meant but was what he thought.
    â€œNever mind,” she said. Which meant, “You wouldn’t understand if I told you.”
    He was satisfied to think that was probably right.
    Molly had asked the foreman of the land-clearing crew to take the day off, spare them the noise, the smoke, the dust.
    â€œI’m sorry, Mr. Bennett,” the man said in reporting this to him. “I wish I could oblige. Like the missuz told me, your people have always been married out of the house here, and now this is your last daughter, and all that. But I can’t afford to idle these men and these machines. Why, that one bulldozer alone costs a hundred and sixty dollars an hour. And of course I’ve got no say over the utilities people.”
    The telephone company was digging trenches for its wires with a rotocutter, the power and light company was digging holes for its poles with an auger. The screech of the one and the roar of the other could be heard from a mile off. Yet though these preparations went on, the building of houses had stalled with two. The promotional literature for the Garden of Eden Estates characterized one as Mediterranean villa, the other as Adirondack lodge. They stood within easy feuding distance of each other. The raw subsoil on which they sat was fertile ground for burdocks and milkweeds while the foundation plantings of azaleas and rhododendrons looked like faded funeral wreaths. Although his prospective son-in-law had brought a stream of prospective buyers to inspect these model homes, no sites had been sold. They would be of course when the market picked up again, but for now there had been a sudden downturn.
    â€œBad news from Wall Street. High interest rates. Tight mortgage money. You got out just in time, Dad.”
    â€œNo apologies,” he shouted to the foreman. “I appreciate your position. You know how women are. Sentimental. No head for practical affairs. You’ve got your job to do. You carry right on. The bride and groom will still be able to hear each other say, ‘I do.’”
    On his way to the cemetery he passed the beehives.
    In blossom-time, plying back and forth daylong laden with nectar, the bees had distilled and stored honey enough for themselves and for him to market, meanwhile incidentally pollinating apple blossoms as uncountable as the stars of the Milky Way. Thousands upon thousands of untiring helpers he had. They were his indispensable partners. In exchange for their services to him he kept their hives clean, protected them against the diseases they were prone to, in lean years wintered them over with sugar syrup. More than partners, they were his friends. He could let them crawl on his bare skin without fear of getting stung.
    Once, or rather always before, the hives had teemed like