Water Rites by Mary Rosenblum

floor, toward the brown humps of the mountains. The bushes crowded the road on either side of them, their scratchy, upright branches holding in the heat. The valley was flat as a plate, and the salt crept up out of the ground, making white crusts on the bush stems, coating everything with gray powdery dust.
    “They used to grow grass here, in the old days,” the Bee Man said suddenly. “Not for hay. Just for seed. It was cooler then. It rained. People had so much water that they grew grass in their yards, just to walk on. This whole valley was green.”
    He didn’t look at her, just talked. Nita walked a little closer behind him, so she could hear his words.
    “This is all tamarisk. Used to be a weed.” He flicked the dusty branches of the bushes that reached out above the racked asphalt of the road. “They engineered it to tolerate salt. And it’s tough. So now we pipe seawater over from the coast and save what sweet water we have left for drinking. Never mind that the salt kills the land.”
    He made it sound like the fields weren’t a good thing. Mama, Ignacio. And Alberto worked in the fields, weeding the little bushes, cleaning the soaker-hoses, and cutting branches for the grinder. Magic turned the ground up bushes into food. So Alberto said. What would you do without bushes? Nita wondered about that. Maybe this man remembered the old days. He didn’t look that old though.
    Papa had told her about the old days, when the riverbeds had been full of water like a cooking pot, when the rains had come soft and gentle and all the time. Nita didn’t like to think about Papa. Preoccupied, she nearly poked the Bee Man in the back with her pole as he stopped.
    “You stay here.” He shrugged out of his pack. “I’ll be right back.”
    He said the words too loud, like Alberto did, be he smiled at her again. Nita nodded, watching him drape a flimsy white scarf over his head. They were at the edge of the fields now. The empty land rose up in front of them, folded and rocky, streaked brown and dirty gray, dotted with a few dusty trees that still wore green leaves. She had never been beyond the fields before, and the bare land looked gray and empty.
    Clumps of spiny thistle, tufted with purple blossoms, clustered at the edge of the field. Nita watched the Bee Man bend over a piece of tree-trunk standing in the shade of a twisted oak. There weren’t any other trees around, and the heat beat at her. A water jug hung from the pack frame. Nita reached for the jug, sneaked a look at the Bee Man.
    The air around him shimmered like heatwaves above asphalt, and Nita heard a low hum. It sang peace. It sang a song of fullness, of enough to eat, of comfort and no fear. She put the jug down, took a step closer, eyes on the humming shimmer.
    It felt so peaceful. She hummed the sound in her throat. What would it be like to feel that way, always? She hummed louder, felt some of the song’s peace seep into her as she crept closer. The Bee Man’s head was wrapped in the scarf. It was so fine that Nita could see his face through the folds.
    The air around him was full of . . . bees. They landed on his shoulders and on the flimsy cloth, patched his faded shirtsleeves like brown fur, filled the air with their soft comfort-song. Nita watched him reach into the hollow piece of treetrunk. It was full of bees. They crawled across the backs of his hands, flew up to land on his scarf and on his shirt. She’d never seen so many bees in her life — just one or two at a time, crawling around inside the yellow squash blossoms in the little garden they watered with part of their ration, or with water bought at the public meter.
    “What are you doing here?” The Bee Man straightened with a jerk.
    Nita flinched at the stab of his fright. The bees felt it, too. Their soft song turned harsh, and they swirled around his head like summer dust.
    “Go back to the pack,” the Bee Man said sharply. “Right now! Run! Ow!”
    He winced as a bee stung him.