Brittany Bees and the Snow Globe

Brittany Rees had lived in Dunton long enough to know one thing for sure. A funeral here was never just a funeral.

She was forty-two, a typesetter at Gerrard's Print Shop, and she'd learned to read the town's calendar by its events. The casserole line at the Methodist hall. The folding chairs. The way somebody always brought a guitar.

So when her boss, Nate Gerrard, posted a note by the time clock saying the shop would close early Friday for his uncle's funeral, she knew what was coming. Half the county would show up. There'd be food. Stories. Probably singing.

She just didn't expect the bees.

* * *

The funeral was held at Gerrard's Bee Yard, a patch of scrubby land behind Hutchins' Feed Store where the uncle had kept a dozen hives for, as far as anyone could tell, most of his natural life. His name was Walt Gerrard. He was eighty-one. He'd died in his sleep in the little cabin at the edge of the yard, which everybody agreed was the best way to go, and said so, loudly, over and over, all afternoon.

Brittany parked her old Corolla on the grass shoulder and followed the sound of laughter. That was the strange part. Laughter. At a funeral.

There were maybe sixty people there. Folding chairs in wobbly rows under a big maple. A rickety shed with its door hanging crooked. A folding table at the front loaded with punch bowls and cookies and what looked like four hundred deviled eggs.

And there, in the middle of everything, stood Nate Gerrard.

Brittany stopped walking.

Nate was fifty-one, and at the shop he was quiet. Careful. He wore reading glasses on a chain and spoke in complete sentences and never, ever laughed at her jokes, even the good ones. She'd worked for him eight years and she was pretty sure the most emotion he'd ever shown was a long sigh at a misprinted invoice.

But this man by the chairs, this man in a good jacket with his sleeves rolled up, this man was hugging a wide woman in a sun hat and slapping a skinny old guy on the shoulder and laughing. Actually laughing. Head back, hand on his knee, laughing.

"Well, hold on," Brittany muttered to herself. "Who is that?"

"That's Nate," said a voice beside her, and she jumped. It was Darlene Hutchins from the feed store, sixty-something, holding a Tupperware of rolls like a shield. "You work with him, don't you? You look shocked, hon."

"I am shocked," Brittany admitted. "He's... different out here."

"Oh, honey, this is the real Nate. This is what Walt did to everybody. Loosened them up." Darlene nodded toward the shed. "You want a deviled egg? There's a rumor they're pickle-flavored."

"I do want that," Brittany said.

* * *

The service itself was short. A cousin read a poem about bees that nobody quite understood but everybody nodded at. Somebody's twin boys, both grown men in their twenties, tried to carry the urn and nearly dropped it, and the whole crowd gasped and then howled, and Walt's sister hollered "He'd have loved that, you clumsy ox!" and that set the tone for the rest of the day.

Because after the poem, it stopped being a funeral and became a potluck.

Brittany found herself drafted into punch duty. She didn't mind. She liked being useful at things like this. She stood behind the table with a ladle and a stack of paper cups and watched the whole strange reunion flow past her.

"He made mead," she heard a man tell another man. "Walt. Made his own mead out of the honey."

"I know. I had some in ninety-eight."

"You remember the Olerud wedding?"

"I remember the Olerud wedding."

"They had to carry Gene's father to the car. Walt's mead. Man put hive product in a jug and it was basically a weapon."

Brittany poured punch and grinned. A woman in a green blouse leaned over the table and said, "Is that the honey wine everyone talks about? Please tell me somebody brought some."

"There's a jug," the woman whispered, "but it's being guarded."

"Guarded by who?"

"By common sense."

Nate drifted by while she was ladling. He had a cookie in one hand and a paper plate with exactly one deviled egg on it, and he looked lighter than she'd ever seen him. Almost floating.

"Brittany," he said, like he was surprised to see her. "You came."

"You closed the shop, boss. Where else would I be?" She held up a cup. "Punch?"

"Sure." He took it and drank and made a face. "Lord. This is the good punch. Somebody put actual fruit in it."

"That's the rumor."

"You didn't have to help with the table," he said. "You're a guest."

"Your family looked overwhelmed. Sixty people and one punch bowl is a crisis." She shrugged. "Besides, I like watching you be a person."

He blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing bad!" She laughed. "It's just, at work you're all... invoice this, kerning that. Out here you're hugging cousins. It's nice. Suits you."

Nate looked down at his cookie like it had said something. "Walt always said I worked too much. He said it every time I saw him. 'Nate, you're wasting your one life counting other people's commas.'" He smiled at that. "He was right, probably."

"He sounds like he was a character."

"Oh, he was!" Nate shook his head slowly. "You have no idea. Wait till the stories start. Some of these people have been storing Walt stories for forty years like squirrels."

The jug of mead did eventually get opened, around four o'clock, and Brittany had a thimble-sized cup of it just to say she had, and it tasted like a campfire that had learned to be sweet. Darlene had two cups and got louder both times.

* * *

It was getting on toward five when the crowd thinned. The sun dropped low and gold through the maple. Chairs sat empty in crooked rows. Someone's kids, no, someone's grandkids, were chasing each other between the hives until a woman yelled at them, and the hives themselves hummed on, low and steady, like the yard itself was still on shift.

Nate appeared at her elbow again.

"Hey," he said. "You got ten minutes? Before they start tearing down chairs?"

"Sure. What's up?"

"I want to show you something." He nodded toward the shed. "It's Walt's stuff. Family's going through it tomorrow but I got first look, sort of, on account of being the only one who can tell a grasshopper from a bee, apparently."

Inside, the shed smelled like wax and old wood. Shelves lined the walls, crowded with jars and tools and smoke puffs and things Brittany couldn't name. And on a workbench in the middle, sitting in a neat row like an exhibit, were snow globes.

"Snow globes," Brittany said. "Your uncle kept bees and snow globes."

"Twenty-some of them. He got one every winter from somebody or other. Look." Nate picked one up and turned it gently. A tiny Eiffel Tower. Another one, a lighthouse. A third, a little city street with a tram.

"He never traveled anywhere," Brittany said.

"Nope. Everybody else traveled for him. That was the deal. You go somewhere, bring Walt a snow globe." Nate set the lighthouse down. "Aunt Rosa used to say it was the only souveniring that fit in a beehive."

Then he went quiet. His hand stopped over the last one at the end of the row.

It was cracked. A long pale split ran down one side, and the water had mostly gone out of it. Inside, where a church or a snowman ought to be, sat a single fat golden bee, frozen mid-flight over a tiny white flower.

"This one," Nate said softly. "This was mine."

Brittany stepped closer. The bee had its little crown of fuzz painted on, gold flake wings, all of it tiny and perfect under the hairline crack.

"He gave it to me on my thirtieth birthday, so, twenty-one years ago. He said, 'Nate, this is a time capsule. Everything important fits inside a snow globe if you make the world small enough.'" Nate turned it in the light. "I thought he was being corny. Now I'm standing here at fifty-one and I think he might've been right."

The crack glittered. The bee hung there over its flower, going nowhere forever.

"Can I hold it?" Brittany asked.

"Yes. Here." He put it in her palm like it was made of eggshell.

It was lighter than she expected. Mostly empty, since the water had leaked out years ago. The bee just sat there in dry air over its flower.

"It's beautiful," she said. "Even busted."

"He never fixed it. I always meant to ask why." Nate scratched his jaw. "Maybe he liked it better cracked. Something about that. Things that survive a fall."

Brittany went to hand it back and that was when the noise outside doubled. More cars. Doors slamming. Somebody had brought a fiddle. An actual fiddle, out by the hives, and a whole chorus of whooping.

"Good lord," Nate said. "It's getting bigger. I thought funerals got smaller as the day went on."

"Not this family."

"No. Not this family." He winced at a particular loud cheer. "Listen, do you want to... I mean. It's loud out there."

"You want to hide in the shed from your own family?"

"Temporarily."

"From the fiddle."

"Mostly from the fiddle."

They were already inside, though. Had been. She laughed and set the snow globe down on the workbench, careful, right at the edge of the row like it belonged there.