The Honey Bus - Meredith May Page 0,11
Then he dropped down on one knee and opened his arms wide, signaling me to fall into them.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, squeezing me tight.
I peeled my arms from Grandpa’s neck and pointed at the bus.
“Can I go in?”
His workshop held a Willy Wonka–like spell over me. He’d built it himself, out of hand-me-down beekeeping equipment and spare plumbing parts, and powered it with a gas-powered motor taken from a lawn mower. When he bottled honey inside during the hottest days of summer, the whole bus rumbled as if it were about to drive off, and the indoor temperature shot above one hundred. Nothing in his secret workshop was official, or safety-checked, and the sweltering, sticky danger of it all made entry that much more irresistible. It seemed like magic to me that Grandpa brought honey supers inside, and emerged hours later with jars of golden honey that tasted like sunlight. Grandpa had the power to harness nature, like Zeus, and I wanted him to teach me how.
Grandpa stood up and blew his nose into a grease-stained rag, then shoved it in his back pocket.
“My honey bus? It’s not a place for little kids,” he said. “Maybe when you’re fifty, like me.” The bus was too hot and dangerous inside, he said. I could lose a finger.
Grandpa reached his long arm to the roof of the bus, where he’d stashed a piece of rebar that was bent at a right angle. He inserted one end of the rod into a hole where the back door handle used to be, and twisted to lock the bus. Then he put the homemade key back on top of the bus, out of my reach.
“Franklin, would you come get the suitcase!” Granny called out, in a way that sounded more like an order than a question. Granny had honed her leadership skills with decades of practice keeping elementary schoolchildren in line. I was a little afraid of her, and always tried to be on good behavior because her presence inherently demanded it. Not only of me, but of everyone in her orbit. Grandpa’s ears perked at the sound of her voice.
I followed Grandpa to the station wagon. He fetched our one shared suitcase from the back and we walked to the front door, trailed by a handful of bees attracted to the honey stuck to Grandpa’s boots.
My grandparents lived in a tiny red house with a flat, white gravel roof that looked like year-round snow. Grandpa said it turned away the sun and was cheaper than air-conditioning. The house had two bedrooms, and a kitchen wrapped by an L-shaped room with redwood paneling that served as both the living and dining room. A large brick fireplace that took up half of one wall was the main source of heat. Next to it was a windup grandfather clock, and on the opposite side of the house, floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Santa Lucia Mountains, which formed a natural barrier between our house and Big Sur on the other side. The kitchen was painted baby blue and was home to Grandpa’s black dachshund, Rita, who slept under the stool next to the washing machine. There was one bathroom, decorated with brown-and-silver-striped wallpaper, and a low-flow showerhead that misted weakly.
Granny led us to the spare bedroom that used to be Mom’s when she was a girl. It had since been painted a cantaloupe color. I stepped inside and immediately saw my world shrink: Matthew would sleep in a cot in the corner, and I would share the double bed with Mom. We would put our clothes into a Victorian marble-topped vanity with two lavender-scented drawers. My room in Rhode Island suddenly seemed like a castle in comparison to this small box, so crowded by beds there was no space to play.
Mom immediately closed the curtains to the sun, sending a shadow over the walls. Granny steered Matthew and me back into the hallway.
“Your mother needs some peace and quiet,” she whispered. “Go on and play outside.”
Granny had a voice that never suggested, but always instructed. We immediately understood the first unspoken rule of our new home—Granny was in charge. She would be the one to set our daily routine, plan the meals and make decisions for Mom, Grandpa, us.
Mom didn’t join us for dinner that night, so Granny put a bowl of tomato soup and toast on a tray for her instead. She set a crystal vase with a rose next to the bowl, like hotel