The Hummingbird's Daughter_ A Novel - Luis Alberto Urrea [90]
She allowed her hand to linger in his grasp for a moment, then pulled it away slowly. Her fingers slid down his.
Aha!
He stood tall!
“You are,” she said, “quite charming.”
“I am a man without grace,” he demurred. “Any elegance I display is only inspired by you.”
She smiled and looked at the ground.
“I am only a cook,” she said, automatically offering up a ritual response so he could show his mettle.
All right, all right—he could rise to this challenge.
“You are the essence of springtime in a woman’s form,” he said. “I have never seen anything as pure as your gaze. If I have grace, it is a reflection of your own.”
She breathed in and blinked.
Cantúa was coming.
Time to risk it all:
“Gabriela, forgive me for being so forward. I hardly know you.” The father was getting closer! “But when I see you, I honestly believe I might finally be permitted to believe in God!”
She put her hand over her heart.
“Bless me,” he crooned.
“Don Tomás!” Señor Cantúa bellowed. “I have ten pounds of bees on my walls!”
He was frantic.
Tomás shook his hand and said, for Gabriela’s benefit: “My dear and noble Maestro Cantúa! This kind of problem is exactly why you should call on me. At any hour of the day or night, I count it as an honor to watch over you and your precious and saintly Gabriela.” He tipped his head to the furiously blushing Gaby. “I have faced armed Yaqui camps alone, my dear Señor Cantúa. I have ridden hundreds of miles from Sinaloa, braving the dangers of the road. And I raise bees! I fear not. So allow me to rescue you.”
He turned back to her.
“And you,” he purred.
They followed him to the shady corner of the building, and there, like some strange lava flow, was a bustling wedge of bees piling up on one another and sticking to the wall. The very weight of the huge mass of insects was making it slide down the wood of the wall, and those bees on the bottom scrabbled furiously to keep hold. Those that fell off circled back and piled on again.
“This is a swarm,” Tomás intoned. “At the center of this colony, we will find a queen. They are seeking a hollow tree or an empty barn to start a new hive. They have flown far, and they are thinking about bedding down on your wall for a good night’s rest.”
“He is so smart,” Gabriela whispered to her father.
“However,” Tomás continued, “they could very well choose the inside of your restaurant, and then you would have trouble. Now, the bees are your guests, and they will behave themselves. But once they go inside, then you are the bees’ guests, and they can be terrible hosts.”
“What would happen?” Señor Cantúa asked.
“You would have to burn the restaurant down, I’m afraid.”
Cantúa let out a small cry.
“Don’t despair, my good man,” Tomás said. “I am here.”
He fired up his trusty marijuana smoker, and then he opened the extra box. It had several waxed frames inside, ready for a new colony to establish itself. He threw a tarpaulin over the horse’s back to protect it from stings. He moved the wagon over to the corner of the building, where he could easily reach the swarm. He gave them a few happy puffs of smoke. It smelled good. By God! It smelled very good. He took in a lungful. What a perfect day! He pumped out great curlicues of luscious smoke!
He smiled at the Cantúas.
Carefully, as if working the bloomers off a schoolmarm, Tomás inserted his hands into the swarm.
“Dios!” Gabriela cried.
Cantúa crossed himself.
“I have never seen such a thing!” he said.
Tomás moved a huge load of narcotized bees to the frame and slid them into the opening. He did it again, only this time he held out the double handful and offered it to Gaby, who yelped in delighted terror and skipped behind her father. Tomás smiled now, in charge of the world—that smoke was certainly pleasant!—and put the new bees in with the rest. He used his hat to brush stragglers off the wall and they dropped and lazily flew until they found their sisters in the maw of the open box.
“He is so competent,” Gabriela said.
“They smell their queen,” Tomás noted. “Now