Kiss of the Bees

All the desert world needed water. The Desert People were so thirsty and cross that they quarreled. When u’uwhig—the Birds—came too near each other, they pulled feathers. Tohbi—Cottontail Rabbit—and Ko’owi—Rattlesnake, and Jewho—Gopher—could no longer live together. So Jewho became very busy digging new holes.

When the animals had quarreled until only the strongest were left, a strange people came out of the old deserted gopher holes.

These were the PaDaj O’othham—Bad People—who were moved by the Spirit of Evil. They came from the big water in the far southwest, and they spread all over the land, killing the people as they came until every man felt that he lived in a black hole.

The Desert People were so sad that at last they cried out to the Great Spirit for help. And when I’itoi saw that the PaDaj O’othham were in the land, he took some good spirits of the other world and made warriors out of them.

These good spirit warriors chased the Bad People but could neither capture nor kill them. And because his good soldiers from the spirit world could not destroy the Bad People, who were moved by the Spirit of Evil, I’itoi was ashamed.

“That must have been very interesting,” Monty Lazarus was saying.

Diana snapped to attention and was embarrassed to realize that she had once again allowed her mind to wander. Talking and thinking about Andrew Carlisle still had the power to do that. She had thought that writing the book about him would have cleared the man out of her system once and for all. Her continuing discomfort during this interview seemed to suggest that wasn’t the case.

She wondered if she’d said anything stupid. Whatever she had said, no doubt Mr. Lazarus would quote her verbatim.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m getting tired. What was interesting?”

“Interviewing Andrew Carlisle’s mother.”

Diana didn’t remember when the interview had veered into discussing Myrna Louise, but it must have. “Right,” she said. “It was.”

“She’s still alive then?” Monty asked.

“Not now. She died within weeks of the time I saw her. It’s a good thing I went to see her when I did. Other than talking to Andrew Carlisle himself, my interview with Myrna Louise was one of the most important ones I did for the book. I was nervous about seeing her after what I’d done to her son—leaving him blind and crippled. I had no idea how she’d respond to me. Just because a court had ruled I had acted in self-defense didn’t mean that would carry any weight with the man’s mother.”

“Didn’t you say in the book someplace that he tried to kill her once?”

Diana nodded. “He did, but she got away. What I found strange was that she didn’t seem to hold it against him. She told me that there wasn’t any point in carrying grudges and that he was her only reason for still hanging on. She said that if she was gone, he wouldn’t have anyone at all.”

“So when you went to interview her, how did it go?” Monty Lazarus asked.

“It was fine,” Diana said. “Myrna Louise Carlisle Spaulding Rivers couldn’t have been more gracious.”

The first time Diana had met Myrna Louise, it was mid-morning in the somewhat grubby lunchroom of the Vista Retirement Center in Chandler, Arizona. Andrew Carlisle’s mother, with a walker strategically stationed nearby, was seated on a stained bench shoved carelessly up to a chipped table in the far corner of the room. She looked up at her visitor from a game of solitaire played with a deck of sticky, dog-eared cards.

“You must be Diana Walker,” Myrna Louise said as Diana walked up to the table. “I’ve seen your picture before. On your books.”

“Thank you for agreeing to see me,” Diana said.

Myrna Louise smiled. “I didn’t have much choice, now, did I? I’m not going anyplace soon. I figured I could just as well.”

Her hair, an improbable color of red, was thin and wispy. Her face may have been made up with a once- practiced hand, but now there were a few slips. A dribble of mascara darkened one cheek, and some of the too-red lipstick had smeared and edged its way up and down into the wrinkled creases above and below her lips. The teeth were false and clicked ominously when she spoke, as though threatening to pop out at any moment.

“Anyway,” she added, “I wanted to meet you. I wanted to apologize.”

“Apologize? For what?”

“For my son, of course. For Andrew. He was a good boy when he was little. Good and so cute, too. I used to have the curls from his first haircut, but I finally threw them away when I moved here. Carlton made me get rid of them.”

“Carlton?”

“Carlton Rivers, my late husband. My latest late husband. Anyway, when I told him about what Andrew had done—or rather, what he had tried to do—he said I should just forget about him. He said I should forget I’d ever even had a son. He said I should leave him in prison and let him rot. Andrew tried to kill me, you see. The same day he tried to kill you, as a matter of fact. I got away, though. When he got out of the car at that storage place, I just drove myself away. You should have seen his face. He couldn’t believe it—that I was driving. I almost couldn’t believe it myself. I’d never done it before—driven a car, that is. Not before or since.”

Diana took a deep breath. “You’re not responsible for your son’s actions, Mrs. Rivers. There’s no need for you to apologize to me.”

“A reverend comes by and conducts church services here every Sunday,” Myrna Louise continued as though she hadn’t heard Diana’s response. “I tried to talk to him about Andrew once or twice after I found out about the AIDS business. I suppose you know about that?”

Diana nodded.