The Heaven of Animals: Stories by David James Poissant Page A
Authors: David James Poissant
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sting is in my side. I see the bee caught in my shirt. It wriggles, trying to get free.
“All of the honey,” he says. “For you.”
I leap. I knock Aaron to the ground and pry the rake from his hands. I fling it like a javelin across the yard, far from the hive, and I sit on Aaron’s chest, hands pinning his wrists to the lawn.
A door opens, and a storm trooper steps out. Or that’s what she looks like, our neighbor dressed in white, some kind of beekeeper’s suit and what looks like a watering can at her side.
Her face is hidden behind something like a mask made for fencing, but, when she speaks, her words pierce the mask, clear and unfiltered.
“I don’t know what you kids are up to,” she says, “but, for the love of God, please don’t move.”
They say that, with enough adrenaline, you can do anything. You hear stories of men wrestling torn arms back from alligators and mothers lifting cars off their kids. I’m on top of Aaron, but I see too late that the weight of my body is nothing compared to what courses through his veins, and I see that I’ve failed him again.
“Please,” I say, and then I’m in the air. I’m flying. I’m falling. I’m tumbling, and I hit something, hard. The hive comes apart, the buzz turns to roar, and the moon, like magic, goes out of the sky.
I hear grunting and turn to see Aaron dragging himself toward me on his elbows. He’s like a soldier passing beneath barbed wire. The woman in the bee suit stands over him, pumping a thin fog from her can into the air.
I feel a sting, then another. My legs are lightning, and, soon, I can’t even look at Aaron, who’s no longer crawling, but rolling, a man on fire.
I look up, into the night, into the heart of the pulsing, vibrating ceiling above.
And then the swarm descends, looking, for all the world, like the end of the world.
Refund
T he evening began in argument. Luke’s first-grade teacher had called a parent-teacher conference, and Joy and I were expected that night at school. This was not the standard midyear check-in. For months, we’d been getting notes. Luke wasn’t finishing his schoolwork. Luke didn’t play well with others. Luke wasn’t paying attention in class.
Dinner was over, the table cleared of everything but a cup, a fork, and my son’s plate. On the plate sat a sad mound of boiled-to-death broccoli.
“No cookies,” Joy said. “No dessert until dinner’s done.”
Luke had never been big on vegetables. Even as a baby, he’d spit out anything green.
“Broccoli’s good for you,” my wife said.
“Not like this,” Luke said. “Boiled vegetables have no nutritional value. That’s what turns the water green, the vitamins and minerals. What’s left is fiber. And fiber just makes you poop.”
My son, six years old.
Joy sighed and shot me a glance. “C’mon, Sam, back me up on this.”
In the pantry, the Oreos waited, their torn cellophane and the stale ones I always skipped on my way down the row to the cookies that still snapped when halved. I said nothing. A limp stalk hung from Luke’s fork, wet and terrible, and all I could think was how I hadn’t eaten mine.
Luke didn’t whimper. He didn’t whine or cry. He was a quiet kid. If he had complaints, he kept them mostly to himself. His fork rose, pushed the pale, little tree past his lips and into his mouth. He chewed, eyes closed, hating it.
“Let the kid have an Oreo,” I said.
Joy’s look let me know that, once again, I’d fucked up. We were supposed to be a team, to put up a unified front. But we both knew who was Abbott in this marriage and who was Costello, who looked like the idiot and who called the shots. And, even if I got the boy’s laughs, it was Joy who got the last good-night kiss, the first hug home from school.
Luke shoveled what was left on his plate into his mouth, chewed, and chased the broccoli down with milk from a coffee cup, the blue one with the steam engine circling the side.
“Very good,” Joy
“All of the honey,” he says. “For you.”
I leap. I knock Aaron to the ground and pry the rake from his hands. I fling it like a javelin across the yard, far from the hive, and I sit on Aaron’s chest, hands pinning his wrists to the lawn.
A door opens, and a storm trooper steps out. Or that’s what she looks like, our neighbor dressed in white, some kind of beekeeper’s suit and what looks like a watering can at her side.
Her face is hidden behind something like a mask made for fencing, but, when she speaks, her words pierce the mask, clear and unfiltered.
“I don’t know what you kids are up to,” she says, “but, for the love of God, please don’t move.”
They say that, with enough adrenaline, you can do anything. You hear stories of men wrestling torn arms back from alligators and mothers lifting cars off their kids. I’m on top of Aaron, but I see too late that the weight of my body is nothing compared to what courses through his veins, and I see that I’ve failed him again.
“Please,” I say, and then I’m in the air. I’m flying. I’m falling. I’m tumbling, and I hit something, hard. The hive comes apart, the buzz turns to roar, and the moon, like magic, goes out of the sky.
I hear grunting and turn to see Aaron dragging himself toward me on his elbows. He’s like a soldier passing beneath barbed wire. The woman in the bee suit stands over him, pumping a thin fog from her can into the air.
I feel a sting, then another. My legs are lightning, and, soon, I can’t even look at Aaron, who’s no longer crawling, but rolling, a man on fire.
I look up, into the night, into the heart of the pulsing, vibrating ceiling above.
And then the swarm descends, looking, for all the world, like the end of the world.
Refund
T he evening began in argument. Luke’s first-grade teacher had called a parent-teacher conference, and Joy and I were expected that night at school. This was not the standard midyear check-in. For months, we’d been getting notes. Luke wasn’t finishing his schoolwork. Luke didn’t play well with others. Luke wasn’t paying attention in class.
Dinner was over, the table cleared of everything but a cup, a fork, and my son’s plate. On the plate sat a sad mound of boiled-to-death broccoli.
“No cookies,” Joy said. “No dessert until dinner’s done.”
Luke had never been big on vegetables. Even as a baby, he’d spit out anything green.
“Broccoli’s good for you,” my wife said.
“Not like this,” Luke said. “Boiled vegetables have no nutritional value. That’s what turns the water green, the vitamins and minerals. What’s left is fiber. And fiber just makes you poop.”
My son, six years old.
Joy sighed and shot me a glance. “C’mon, Sam, back me up on this.”
In the pantry, the Oreos waited, their torn cellophane and the stale ones I always skipped on my way down the row to the cookies that still snapped when halved. I said nothing. A limp stalk hung from Luke’s fork, wet and terrible, and all I could think was how I hadn’t eaten mine.
Luke didn’t whimper. He didn’t whine or cry. He was a quiet kid. If he had complaints, he kept them mostly to himself. His fork rose, pushed the pale, little tree past his lips and into his mouth. He chewed, eyes closed, hating it.
“Let the kid have an Oreo,” I said.
Joy’s look let me know that, once again, I’d fucked up. We were supposed to be a team, to put up a unified front. But we both knew who was Abbott in this marriage and who was Costello, who looked like the idiot and who called the shots. And, even if I got the boy’s laughs, it was Joy who got the last good-night kiss, the first hug home from school.
Luke shoveled what was left on his plate into his mouth, chewed, and chased the broccoli down with milk from a coffee cup, the blue one with the steam engine circling the side.
“Very good,” Joy