Morning Glory

up and find himself being studied. The same was true for Eleanor. There would follow quick mutual smiles and a sense of growing acceptance, each for the other.

At night in bed, they talked. He, of the bees. She of the birds. Never of the birds and bees.

'Did you know a male worker bee has thirteen thousand eyes?'

'Did you know the flycatcher makes his nest out of discarded snakeskin?'

'There are nurses in a bee colony and all they do is take care of the nymphs.'

'Most birds sing, but the titmouse is the only one who can actually whisper.'

'Did you know the bees’ favorite color is blue?'

'And the hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards?'

These discussions sometimes led to insights into each other. One night Will spoke of the worker bees. 'Did you know they work so hard during their lifetime that they actually work themselves to death?'

'No…' she replied disbelievingly.

'It’s true. They wear down their wings till they’re so frayed they can’t fly anymore. Then they just die.' His expression turned troubled. 'That’s sad, isn’t it?'

Eleanor studied her husband in a new light and found she liked what she saw. He lay in the dim lanternlight, contemplating the ceiling, saddened by the plight of the worker bees. How could a woman remain aloof to a man who cared about such things? Moved, she reached out to console, grazing the underside of his upraised arm.

His glance shot down to her and their gazes caught for several interminable seconds, then her fingers withdrew.

On a night shortly thereafter Will came up with another amazing apian phenomenon. 'Did you know the workers practice something called flower fidelity? It means each bee gathers nectar and pollen from only one species of flower.'

'Oh, you’re making that up!' Her head twisted to face his profile.

'I am not. I read about it in one of the books Miss Beasley gave me. Flower fidelity.'

'Really?'

'Really.'

He lay as he did every night during their talks-on his back with his hands behind his head. Silent, she regarded him, digesting this new snippet of information. At length she squared her head on the pillow and fixed her attention on the pale glow overhead. 'I guess that’s not so unusual. Some birds practice fidelity, too. To each other. The eagles, the Canadian geese-they mate for life.'

'Interesting.'

'Mm-hmm.'

'I’ve never seen an eagle,' Will mused.

'Eagles are…' Eleanor gestured ceilingward-'Majestic.'-then let her hands settle to her stomach again. A smile tipped her lips. 'When I was a girl I used to see a golden eagle in a huge dead tree down in the swamp near Cotton Creek. If I were a bird, I’d want to be an eagle.'

'Why?' Will turned to study her.

'Because of something I read once.'

'What?'

'Oh… nothing.' She twined her fingers and looked down her chest at them.

'Tell me.' He sensed her reluctance but kept his gaze steady, unrelenting. After some time she sent Will a quick peek.

'Promise you won’t laugh?'

'I promise.'

For several seconds she concentrated on aligning her thumbnails precisely, then finally quoted shyly.

'He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls.'

She paused before adding, 'Somebody named Tennyson wrote that.'

In that moment Will saw a new facet of his wife. Fragile. Impressionable. Touched by poets’ words, articulate combinations of words such as she herself never used.

'It’s beautiful,' he said softly.

Her thumbnails clicked together as she vacillated between the wish to hide her feelings and reveal more. The latter won as she swallowed and added softly, 'Nobody laughs at eagles.'

Oh, Elly, Elly, who hurt you so bad? And what would it take to make you forget it? Will rolled to face her and braced his jaw on a fist. But she wouldn’t turn, and her cheeks burned brightly.

'Did somebody laugh at you?' His voice was deep with caring. A tear plumped in the corner of her eye. Understanding her chagrin at its arrival, Will pretended not to notice. He waited motionlessly for her answer, studying the ridge of her nose, the outline of her compressed lips. When she spoke it was an evasion.

'For a long time I didn’t know what azure meant.'

He watched as her throat contracted and the florid spots in her cheeks stood out like pennies on an open palm. His hand burned to touch her-her chin maybe, turn it to face him so she would see that he cared and would never ridicule her. He wanted to take her close, cradle her head and rub her shoulder and say, 'Tell me… tell me what it is that hurts so bad, then we’ll work at getting you over it.' But every time he considered touching her his insecurities reared up to confront and confine him. Woman killer, jailbird, she’ll jump and yelp if you touch her. On the first day you were warned to keep your distance.

So he stayed on his own side of the bed with one wrist riveted to his hip, the other folded beneath an ear. But what he couldn’t relay by touch he put into his expressive voice.

'Elly?' It came out softly, the abbreviated name falling from his lips as an endearment. Their gazes collided, her green eyes still luminous with unshed tears, his brown ones filled with understanding. 'Nobody’s laughing now.'

Suddenly everything in her yearned toward him.

Touch me, she thought, like nobody ever did before, like I touch the boys when they feel bad. Make it not important that I’m plain and unpretty and more pregnant than I wish I was right now. You’re the man, Will-don’t you see? A man’s got to reach first.

But he couldn’t. Not first.

Touch me, he thought, my arm, my hand, a finger. Let me know it’s all right for me to have these feelings for you. Nobody’s cared enough to touch me for years and years. But you’ve got to reach first, don’t you see? Because of how you felt about him, and what I am, what I did, what we agreed to the first day I came here.

In the end, neither of them moved. She lay with her hands atop her swollen stomach, her heart hammering frantically, afraid of rejection, ridicule, the things she had been seasoned by life to expect.

He lay feeling unlovable due to his spotty past and the fact that no woman including his own mother had found him worth the effort, so why should Elly?

And so they talked and gazed during those lanternlit nights of acquaintance-crazy Eleanor and her ex-con husband-learning respect for each other, wondering when and if that first seeking might happen, each hesitant to reach out for what they both needed.

The honey was all bottled. The hives received fresh coats of white paint, their bases-as suggested in print-a variety of colors to guide the workers back from their forays. When Will left the orchard for the last time, the hives held enough honey to feed the bees through the winter.

He packed away the extractor in an outbuilding until the spring honey run began and announced that night at supper, 'I’ll be going to town tomorrow to sell the honey. If there’s anything you need, make a list.'

She asked for only two things: white flannel to make diapers and a roll of cotton batting.

The following day when Will stepped through the library doors, Gladys Beasley was immersed in lecturing a