Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe - The Promise of Summer - The Man Who Punched Trees & Rosemary Honey

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

“A hive of bees is like a harvest kitchen. They gather up the summer: the heat of the sun, the warmth of the rain…” This week on the podcast, two Stuart McLean stories to whet your appetite for summer. In the first, Dave remembers an incredible woodland encounter from his youth in Cape Breton; in the second, Eugene puts Sam and Murphy on the trail of a bee line.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the Apostrophe Podcast Network. Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Welcome. The trilliums are up in my neck of the woods. They are spring ephemerals, woodland flowers that bloom in the spring and do their best to steal a sliver of sunshine while they can, before the big dogs come out. The beech trees, the maples, the oak, shading the forest floor with their leafy branches. Trilliums only have about five weeks. It's their only chance to

feel the sun. Soon the trees will be leaf-covered again and green, and the forest dark and fertile. and the forest dark and fertile. But not yet. Right now, it's trillium time. Each trillium is like a mini trumpet, sounding the joy of spring and reminding us what's possible. One single trillium is beautiful, but it's not showy. It's probably not even something you'd notice if it were all on its own. The sound one trillium trumpet makes on its own isn't loud enough to drown out the crunch of the dry leaves or the squish of the loamy earth underneath. But when they work together, when there are many, not just a few, They are something that's impossible to ignore. They wait patiently all winter, waiting for their time to bloom, and then they rise up and blanket the forest with joy. They blanket the forest with the possibility of something that is too powerful to ignore,

the possibility of summer summer and the promise that its time will come again soon. That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast, the forest and the lessons it can teach us, the promises it makes us. We have two stories that fit the bill. We're going to start with this one. This is the man who punched trees. The branch came down in the spring. No one saw it happen. It happened overnight. Someone could have been killed if they'd been there. That's what everyone said in the morning. been killed if they'd been there. That's what everyone said in the morning. By breakfast, half the neighborhood had been over to take a look. It was lying half on Jim Schofield's front lawn and half on the street, as thick around as your thigh where it snapped off. It missed Jim's fence and

the Chuddery's Jetta, but just. By noon, the city had come and gone, and all that was left were some leaves in the gutter and small branches on Jim's lawn. No harm done. But that wasn't the end of it. Next week, some guys arrived with drills and clipboards and poked around for over an hour. Everyone knew the tree's number was up. It was a magnificent tree, a maple, and for as long as anyone could

remember, it had arched over Jim's corner lot with the benevolence of a sermon. It had something to offer every season. In the spring, a rainfall of flowers, the excitement of seeds. In summer, the benediction of shade. You could almost feel the temperature drop as you walked under its graceful shadow. But best of all, the red glory of autumn. But best of all, the red glory of autumn. Jim's maple tree sang its way through the years, and now it would be singing no more. It took them a day to bring it down, buzzing around the branches like hornets with their mechanical crane and chainsaws. Sam saw the crew from the city arrive in the morning.

He kept returning to the living room window all day. The forlorn witness. By the time Dave came home, both the truck and the tree were gone. You'd think it would take longer, said Sam. It should have taken a week or something. But it took a day. They came and they went and they carted it away. And that was that. 100, 150 years gone. The corner looked barren.

Sam looked bereft. After supper, Dave said, let's go check on Jim. What he meant was, let's check out the hole on Jim's lawn. Jim was sitting on his front porch. He was looking at a brochure. The man from the city had told him they'd be back with a replacement. He said Jim could choose what they planted. Jim held up the brochure. He had three choices. He could have a honey locust, a ginkgo, or a little leaf linden. Why not a maple, said Sam. They should plant a maple. said Sam. They should plant a maple. They want smaller trees, said Jim, so they don't get in the wires or, you know, and he waved his hand around his yard so they don't come down in storms. Jim didn't sound happy. They were quiet for a few minutes, squinting at the upturned soil where the tree had been, strangely exposed

to the rays of the evening sun. Dave was the first to say something. Dave said, can you tell them not to plant anything? Jim said, what? Dave said, tell them to leave the place alone. the place alone. I have an idea. When they got home, Sam looked at his father and said, what's your idea? And Dave sat on the front stoop and padded the stair beside him. He grew up with trees, Dave did. He grew up with trees all around him, on the mountains and the woodlots and the tree shaded streets of Big Narrows, Cape Breton. But most fish never noticed the water they swim in. Dave never noticed trees until the summer he was 11. The summer he met Gabriel Dubois. That was the summer he went to the Dubois farm with Billy Mitchell, who was 12 and who had been to the old man's house before with his big brother.

Dubois' place was in the hills on the far side of the Macaulay farm. If we take him crab apples, said Billy, he'll pay us. Billy knew a crab apple tree that grew along the fence line at the back of Macaulay's. They left their bikes in the graveyard and followed the fence in. They had an old rucksack and they filled it with apples and took turns carrying it up the mountain road to the blueberry field where they stopped and rested. As they sprawled there, all sweaty under the August sun, Dave pulled an apple from the bag and held it all red, waxy, and perfectly sweet-smelling.

He shook his head and then he bit into it. And as soon as he did, he spat the mouthful out with a groan. It was the tenth he had tried. How can they look so good, he said. When Billy didn't answer, he said, why does he want them anyway? Makes jam, said Billy, who was on his way again. Come on. Actually, it was jelly he made.

Crab apple jelly. Though he hadn't made it for years. Mostly because it wasn't him who made it, it was his wife. And that summer, Ellen Dubois had been dead a decade, maybe more. He would pay the boys for the apples, nonetheless. And any other boys who brought him apples. He had his reputation to maintain. And besides, he liked the idea of boys messing around in trees. He liked it when they

showed up with their bags of apples. Come on, said Billy. And he helped Dave put on the backpack and then tramped off to the far corner of the field where he stepped around a big maple and slipped out of sight onto a path that Dave didn't know existed. Come on, he called again. Dave looked back over his shoulder and then hustled to catch up. and then hustled to catch up. Almost immediately, they were walking downhill, down through the quiet, cool forest, past the large rocks and through a ravine.

After a while, the path leveled and wound through a stand of cedars, skirted a tamarack swamp, the ground spongy from the beavers who lived there before they were born, back when Ellen Dubois was putting up her jams and jellies. On the far side of the swamp, they started up again through the pines and the stands of birch and maple into the back hills. They came out on the edge of an overgrown field, the grass up to their waist, crickets flying all around, the house, paint all peeling, the gray shed, the fading barn. Billy said, come on. Dave said, are you sure? It was spooky coming out of the woods like that and finding the place.

No road or anything. But he had come this far, so he followed Billy, brushing his hand along the top of the grass. He pulled out a stalk of Timothy and stuck the sweet, pale end of it in his mouth and chewed on it nervously. They found the old man behind the shed. He was wearing a faded green work shirt, matching work pants, suspenders, leather boots, untied. He was splitting wood, logs scattered around him. We bought you crab apples, Mr. Dubois, said Billy. He was unshaven and sweaty. He took the bag and pulled out an apple. He bit into it and swallowed. He actually swallowed. Eh bien, he said, from the tree by the old fence back of Macaulay's. Billy looked at Dave. The look said, see, I told you.

They stood on the porch, peering into the kitchen while the old man rummaged around, opening cupboards and drawers. When he found what he was looking for, a slab of something wrapped in cheesecloth, he carried it to the kitchen table. It looked like a brick of plastic, about the size of an encyclopedia. He got a hammer from under the sink and hit the plastic with the hammer. A piece broke off. He hit it again. He handed each boy 50 cents and a piece of the plastic-looking stuff. For the walk back, he said.

And that, said Dave, is when the goat walked into the kitchen. Dave and Sam were still sitting on the front stoop. Sam had half a popsicle in his hand, little red drops pooling on the ground in front of him. Sam said, a goat? It was in the living room watching television. He said the goat was sick. He said he was nursing it. This is Archie, said the old man, nodding at the goat. He's not feeling so well. So we said hi to the goat, said Dave, and then we left. What was it that he gave you, said Sam? The thing he broke with the hammer. Homemade spruce gum, said Dave. They put it in their mouth when they were through the field, when they were back in the forest.

You had to work at it to get it going, said Dave. It was brittle and it crumbled. You had to hold it in your mouth and work up your saliva and work it together. I didn't like it at first. It's not like store-bought gum. It's not sweet. What does it taste like, said Sam? Tastes like the forest, said Dave.

Tastes like trees. Could you blow bubbles? I don't know, said Dave. I forget. I remember it was pink like bubble gum and it tasted like the forest, like a forest in the spring with lots of birds. He went on about the gum for some time, about how Gabby Dubois would go in the winter with a chisel attached to the end of a long pole and collect the hard sap bubbles from the spruce trees. How he would take it home and put it in his sap bucket and melt it down and pick out the little bits of bark and then strain the sticky liquid through cheesecloth and let it set in a tin pan. When it hardened, he would break it into pieces

and dust them with cornstarch and then he would wrap the pieces in wax paper and take them to Macdonnell's store. You could buy a piece for two cents. You remember that, said Sam? Well, truthfully, said Dave, he wasn't doing that when I was a boy. That was from my dad's time, but he was still making it. He was the real deal. No one knew the forest like Gabriel Dubois. That's what Dave's dad, Charlie, had said that night when Dave told them they'd been to his place.

We sold him crab apples, said Dave. Charlie smiled and said, did he give you any spruce gum? Dave leaned back onto the stairs and pointed over at Jim's yard. It's strange with the tree gone, he said. Sam said, is Gabby the guy with the exploding tree? Ha, said Dave. I forgot I told you that one. I shouldn't have ever told you that one.

I should have showed you. Tell it, said Sam. I like that one. I shouldn't have ever told you that one. I should have showed you. Tell it, said Sam. I like that one. Well, said Dave, it was the next summer. We used to hike all around. Sam nodded. Dave said, we'd see him sometimes. Where, said Sam? Just around, said Dave. In the woods, I mean. Anyway, one day we were down by the swamp digging. For what, said Sam? For around, said Dave. In the woods, I mean. Anyway, one day we were down by the swamp digging. For what, said Sam. For water, said Dave. The ground's all spongy down there. We thought maybe there was a buried lake. And he showed up and he started to, wait a minute, wait a minute, said Sam. Like you'd be in the woods and he would show up and you'd talk to him? Dave said, yeah. you'd be in the woods and he would show up and you'd talk to him?

Dave said, yeah. Sam said, that's just creepy. Sam said, you wouldn't let me do any of this. They did see a lot of him that summer. He was like a new word, Gabriel. You live your whole life and you never notice it ever. And then one day you read it somewhere and you look up the meaning in the dictionary. And once you do that, poof, you come across it everywhere. Like it was there all the time, except until you knew what it meant, you couldn't see it.

They met him by the creek, by the swamp, and at the trouting pond. At the pond where we fished last summer, said Sam. Right there, said Dave, on the mountain. They'd be swimming or something. You'd be swimming, said Sam, interrupting. What's wrong with that, said Dave. First off, said Sam, there were no lifeguards. That's right, said Dave.

Second off, said Sam, he was a stranger and he gave you candy. Well, gum, said Dave. But only once or twice. Mostly he gave us nuts. Same difference, said Sam. Now, wait a minute, said Dave. He wasn't technically a stranger. We saw him lots. In the woods, said Sam. You would freak out if I told you I met a man in the woods who gave me nuts. You have a point, said Dave. Sam said, whatever. Dave said, anyway, if you'll let me continue. We were down by the swamp and he came out of the woods. That was another thing about him. He never walked on the paths or anything.

He would just walk right through the forest. And he'd stop and talk to us, you know, say hi or whatever. And that day as he walked away, he took his axe and Sam said, he had an axe? Dave said, he always had an ax. Sam said, brother. Dave said, and that day as he walked away, he walked by a birch tree. He goes by it. And then he stops and he turns around and he looks at it and he shakes his head like he doesn't want to do what he's going to do next, but he does it anyway. He stops. He puts his axe down. This is a big birch tree, right? Like a full-grown tree. And then he swings at the tree with his bare fist and when he hits it, the tree explodes, says Sam. That's right, said Dave. There were three of them there that afternoon, and they all saw it.

Billy Mitchell, Gordy Beeman, and Dave. You could ask any of them. They'd tell you exactly the same thing. Gabriel Dubois wound up, punched the tree, and the tree exploded. With his bare fist, said Sam. With his bare fists, said Dave. Now, Billy, Gordy, and Dave, none of them said a word. They just stared with their mouths hanging open while he walked away. When he was out of sight, Billy Mitchell said, Did you see that? What had happened was not only impossible, it was beyond belief.

The tree actually exploded. Gabriel Dubois hit the tree and there was a sound like a whoof, and then a puff of smoke or something, and the tree was gone. It vanished into thin air. It was like a movie, said Dave. Sam said, and it was a big tree. It was a huge tree, said Dave, a huge tree. They went over to see it, like they were sneaking up on an animal that might have been dead,

but also might have been alive, which is to say they were careful going up to it. And when they got there, it was gone, said Dave. There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Sam. It was gone, said Dave. There was nothing left of it. Nothing, said Sam. There was a pile of soda, said Dave, and bark, like a hollow tube of bark, like the skin. Of course, you know what happens then. Uh-uh, said Sam.

Well, the only question was, who was going to go first? We pulled straws, said Dave. Billy won. Won, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws, said Dave. Billy won. Won, said Sam. Well, said Dave, I don't know. They pulled straws and Billy got the short one. And they found a birch that looked the same size. It looked exactly the same.

And Billy took off his shirt and he wrapped it around his fist. He was a pretty determined kid, said Dave. You got to give him that. What happened, said Sam. He broke his knuckles in four places, said Dave. That's how they learned about yellow birches. That's how they learned when a yellow birch dies, it doesn't fall over,

but stands straight and tall and rots from the inside until all that remains of it is a tube of birch bark standing there looking like a tree, looking like a tree and just waiting for someone with a crowd of boys to amaze. It was all about choosing the right tree, said Dave, but it took us a while to figure that out. I don't see what any of this has to do with your plan for Jim's yard, said Sam. I'm coming to that, said Dave, and he stood up and he went into the kitchen. I'm coming to that, said Dave. And he stood up and he went into the kitchen.

What I'm trying to explain here is that Gabriel Dubois knew everything there was about trees. He used to make maple syrup every year. Now, lots of people in Cape Breton used to do that. The Macaulays still do. And they make good syrup, don't get me wrong. That's the syrup we get every year. But they make it from sugar maples. That sugar bush we walk through on the way to the pond in the summer, that's the Macaulays, and that's a good maple bush. It's on the south side of the mountain and everything you'd want, but those are sugar maples. And sugar maples are what everyone taps. Gabriel Dubois used to tap silver maples.

And the syrup he made, well, I wish you could try some. It was so light and so sweet. It was like heaven. He used to put it in jam jars. Why doesn't everyone use silver maples? Because you can't make enough. So you can't make money. There isn't as much sap. But he didn't care about that. He used wooden buckets and beech wood taps. And when he collected the sap, he made the syrup the native way.

They didn't have iron pots. So they couldn't boil it. Did you ever think of that? You know how they did it? Sam shook his head. Dave said they let it freeze up and then they skimmed off the ice over and over so it got concentrated. That way it never tasted burnt. Not many people in Big Narrows ever got to try his stuff. How come, said Sam. Because it all went to a fancy hotel in Halifax.

They'd come every year and pick it up. But you did, said Sam. That's right, said Dave. But only when I was older and moved away. He was quite a guy, said Dave. He made all sorts of stuff. made toilet water from witch hazel he sold in the drugstore in Bedeck. Toilet water, said Sam?

After shave, said Dave. And cough medicine from the wild cherry trees. He sold it to the doctor. When I was a kid, that's what they'd give me when I was sick. Gabriel Dubois cough syrup. True. Dave had been talking for over an hour all about Gabriel Dubois. Dead and gone now, what? At least 40 years. And now he was rummaging through the fridge. Sam was sitting at the kitchen table. The floor around the fridge was littered with food, jars of jam, hunks of cheese,

half a leftover chicken, a jug of orange juice. Dave was leaning into the fridge, wrestling with something buried deep in the back. Finally, he backed out and held up a dented cookie tin. Aha, he said. What is it, said Sam. Dave put the tin down on the table. Sam reached for it, but Dave shook his head. Dave said, just a minute. I'm nearly finished. There was this big oak that belonged to old Mr. Nettleship. I guess it was on the lawn in front of his store. This is a long time ago. This is before I was born. I never saw the store. The store burnt down before I was born.

And when it did, Mr. Nettleship built further down the street near the bridge where the hardware is today. The plan was they were going to widen the street where his old store was. And to do that, they were going to take down the oak. door was. And to do that, they were going to take down the oak. But when the day came, and they came to take it down, Gabriel Dubois was sitting at the bottom of the tree. The way they tell it, he was tipped back on a kitchen chair he got from the Maple Leaf Cafe, and he wouldn't let them do it. He said, the tree's been here maybe three, four hundred years, and no road was that important. He said, cars have wheels.

They can go around it. He saved the tree. And they started calling it Gabby's Oak. And eventually they put a little bench under it and called it Gabby's. People used to say, I'll meet you at Gabby's. And when they said that, they meant the bench under the oak tree. And he was right. The cars went around it, no problem. Well, it turned out it was the biggest oak for miles, maybe on all of Cape Breton, as far as I know. After the big flood in 1954, the mayor nailed a yardstick on it and marked the spot

where the water stopped. People would check it every year. And if Gabby Dubois is right, that tree must be 500 years old now. Dave sat down at the table. He was wrestling with the tin lid of the box. He said an oak tree needs help getting its seeds around. They're too heavy to blow in the wind the way maple keys do. They just fall straight down, and there's not a lot of room under a 500-year-old oak tree for another one to grow. Dave had the lid off the box now. He handed it to Sam. Sam peered in.

Acorns, he said. Yup, said Dave. The tin was filled with small plastic bags, each holding a dozen or so acorns from Gabby's tree. I brought them back a few years ago. I had this idea that I'd mail a couple of them to everyone who ever lived in Big Narrows. I wanted to have a hundred of Gabby's oaks growing all over the country. But you didn't do it, said Sam. Well, said Dave, haven't done it yet.

Next day before breakfast, Dave and Sam headed over to Jim's. They were carrying a spade and a watering can and the cookie tin. When they were finished, Sam emptied the water can on the freshly turned soil. Then he picked up the tin of acorns and gave it a gentle shake. Then he picked up the tin of acorns and gave it a gentle shake. The acorns made a pleasing rattle. Gabby's oaks, said Sam. He looked at his father and held up the tin. Gabby's oaks, said Dave.

They both smiled. Then Sam said, well, where to next? That was the story we call The Man Who Punched Trees. Naturally, it has another name too. We also call it Gabriel Dubois. We recorded that story in Mabou, Cape Breton, and Nova Scotia in 2010. We're going to take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes with another story. So stick around. Welcome back. Time for our second story now.

This is a story about the promise of summer and the rewards of patience. This is Rosemary Honey. Just as redemption can only come to those who have lost their way, just as true love only embraces the love lost, so too are dreams handed out. Oh yes, they come to those who have hitched their wagon to a star,

but even stargazers have a lost and a longing. For before you can dream, you have to long. And before you can long, you have also had to have lost. For ten years, Dave's neighbor, Eugene, now well into his nins, all spotted and brown with age, has spent his summers sitting in his backyard garden, tipping back precariously in his old kitchen chair, a little cigar in one hand and a tumbler of his famous homemade wine on the table in front of him. And with a dreamer's eye, he's watched over his garden, over the sticky grapes hanging in the shade of the grape arbor, over the languid eggplant and the waxy peppers,

over the fattening red tomatoes and the promise of sweet corn. But more than anything, over the fragrant and silvery bed of rosemary that grows in the sandy soil by his shed. Sometimes in the impatient afternoon, he struggles up and makes his way back there. He grabs a stalk of the rosemary, crushes some of the precious needles between his rough fingers, and inhales the resiny aroma of lemon and pine.

The sand always transports him to the hills of Calabria, back to the dusty little town of Rondi where he grew up, to the farm where the dreaming began. It's been like this for ten years. For ten years since he planted it, Eugene has watched over his rosemary patch like a fretting uncle. He prunes the bushes every fall, covers them for the winter, feeds them from the big dusty bag of fish meal in the spring, and then dotes over them in the summer.

and then dotes over them in the summer. Maria, his wife of over 70 years, learned many years ago that if she wants some fresh rosemary for a chicken she's roasting or a bread that she's baking, that she should not go out there with her shears and take it. Eugene has made it clear that the rosemary bush is not meant for her kitchen, not for her stove, not for her oven, not for the bottles of oil that line the window

infusing the sun. If she needs some, she has to wait until the old fool is napping. Even then, she's careful to snip from the middle of the bush so he won't spot that she's been there eugene sits in his chair and watches over his rosemary patch like an old cat all sleepy and languid looking but watchful all the same he sits and watches, and while he watches, he dreams. This summer, his dream came true. Sam!

It was more a whisper than the command he meant it to be. At 90, Eugene doesn't so much order as beseech. Sam! There was barely enough oxygen on this heavy August afternoon to breathe, let alone carry the old man's voice across the yard and over the fence. Barely audible over the electric buzzing of the cicadas, he called a third time. And this time, Dave's son, Sam, lost in the torpor of his own summer dreams, looked up and saw the old man waving at him impatiently. Come here.

Last summer, Sam would have walked around, out his yard and across the driveway. out his yard and across the driveway. But this summer, long of leg and coltish of mind, he vaulted over the fence, pleased with his own grace as he jumped. Sam, said the old man. He was too caught up in his dreams to be impressed by the flight of boy over fence. He was waving his cigar so close to Sam's face

that the smoke stung the boy's eyes. Sam, said Eugene, pointing. What do you see? He was staring at Sam with, well, almost indignation, as if the boy was about to tell him there was nothing to see, that he was imagining things. Sam followed his gaze to the back of the garden. Flowers, said Sam, uncertain of what it was he was supposed to notice.

What else, said Eugene, who sounded urgent, almost frantic. Sam had never seen him like this before. The shed, said Sam, peering back there, puzzled. No, no, no, said Eugene. The flowers, the flowers. What else about the flowers? They're blue, said Sam, and white. The old man was shaking his head.

Not that, not that, not the color of the flowers. I don't know what you're asking me, said Sam. What else do you see, said Eugene, in the rosemary? What do you see in the rosemary bush? Bees, said Sam. There are bees in the rosemary. Bees, said Eugene. And he slumped into his chair, his eyes closing, exhausted.

Honey, bees, he whispered. This was the moment he had been waiting for. This is what he'd been dreaming about. Rosemaryemary honey. The old man's eyes were still closed. He was breathing fast. Mr. Conte, said Sam. He was getting a little scared.

Mr. Conte, are you all right? It was so long ago. So long ago now, the memory was like a black and white movie, all flickering and faded in his mind. His grandfather, the path up the sun-soaked hill, the hot summer wind, the tree with the strange carvings, marks his great-great-grandfather had cut into the trunk, marks that claimed that tree and its honey for their family.

He thought of them often these days. The buzzing of the bees, the puffing of the smoke pot, clouds of smoke under a cloudy sky, all gone cloudy in his memory. The camera of his mind panned from the tree onto his grandmother in her kitchen, her black apron and dress, the yeasty smell of homemade bread, the salty tang of fresh goat cheese, and on the rough kitchen table, the very table he had in his own kitchen today, the famous jar of honey, rosemary honey. In all his life, nothing had ever tasted so clean, so fragrant, so flower-like. The old man opened his watery eyes. He looked up at Sam.

I need your help, he said. He was holding his arms out. Sam bent down and Eugene grabbed onto him and pulled himself out of his chair. And they walked to the end of the garden, the old man and the boy. And when they got there, they stood in front of the rosemary patch, and Eugene pointed at the bees. Follow them. Find

out where they go. How do you follow a bee? How do you follow a bee along a beeline? To follow a bee, said Eugene, you must think like a bee. How do you think like a bee, said Sam. Eugene! It was Maria. I will tell you tomorrow. Now go, go. And he waved his hand in the air dismissively.

When Sam came back the next afternoon, he brought his friend Murphy with him. I told you not to tell anyone, said Eugene. This is my friend Murphy, Mr. Conte. You've met him before. We can trust him. He's going to help us. Murphy nodded. Eugene looked Murphy up and down. Murphy took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt.

It's a move Murphy believes makes him look smart. Sit down, said Eugene. Both boys sat down at the table. Turns out following a bee is not a complicated business. It's very simple, said Eugene. I've done it myself in the old country. They would take a plate, like this one. Eugene was holding a plate in front of him. They would cover the plate, like this one. Eugene was holding a plate in front of him.

They would cover the plate with honey. Eugene picked up the spoon that was in front of him on the table and dipped it in the jar of honey that Maria had brought him. He held the spoon over the plate. Not too much, he said. Just enough. Then they would set the plate with the honey on the ground by the rosemary bush. And this is the important part.

You have to watch it carefully. When he said this, his right eyebrow crawled high on his forehead like a caterpillar. The boys watched it, mesmerized. The bees will come to the plate and eat. And when they are full, they will fly

back to their hive. The boys would sit and watch. and they would move the plate along the line the bees were traveling on, the bee line. They would be like pawns on a chessboard. They would follow the bees back to their hive one move at a time. I'd do it myself if my legs weren't so old. Then Eugene reached into his pocket and pulled out his package of miniature cigars. Smoke? Both boys shook their heads.

Eugene shrugged. He was trying to thank them. They didn't seem to care. They started the next morning. It took them five days to find the hive. Every day, inching their plate of honey through the neighborhood, down the street past the Turlington's house, along the alley behind Lawler's Drugs.

It made them feel important. Even better, it made them feel old. They each took a book with them, and they pretended to read their books when people walked by them. They were, after all, working undercover. They were, after all, sworn to secrecy. One afternoon, the bees that had been flying away from them were suddenly flying towards them.

We've overshot, said Murphy. We've gone too far. So they backtracked, and they found the hive in a tree on the edge of the park. There was a hole in the tree as round as a baseball bat, and there were bees everywhere, circling the tree with the certainty of summer. That's it, said Murphy. We found it, said Sam. In a tree, said Murphy. In the park, said Sam. Eugene smiled. He didn't think they'd have the patience. You're sure it's the right one? you're sure it's the right one these ones and he gestured towards the bees on the rosemary bush

we followed them said Sam we're sure said Murphy take me to the shed they helped him up and they walked beside him to the back of the garden and into the cool damp garden shed and he stood by the door and told them what he wanted them to do. And they did as they were told.

They pulled wooden boxes off the shelves. They pawed through the boxes until they found what he was looking for. It looked like a lantern with a spout. It was his great-grandfather's smoker. He sent them off to gather twigs. He got them to soak pine needles in water. He taught them how to light it. And once it was going, he told them that they were going to pretend

the doorknob on the shed was the hole to the hive. Back and forth, back and forth, he said as they snuck up on the shed, smoke pouring out of the smoker's spout. Slowly, he said. Slower, he said. Move like the priest with the thurible. They both stopped and looked at him. Like what, they said? Never mind. Never mind. Just go slowly.

Don't excite them. Slower. Let the smoke do the work. It puts them to sleep. No not yet. Not yet. Now. Now you can reach in, but not too fast. You don't want to make them mad. Slower than that. Okay, now you're in. You feel for the honeycomb. You take just a bit. The top layer.

You take yours. You leave them theirs. Half and half. That's fair. It's important to be fair always, especially with bees. He was afraid he was asking too much of them. If they made a mistake, if they went too fast, if they used too little smoke, if they panicked, if any number of a thousand things went wrong, a bee sting is no joking matter. It's like having your finger slammed with a hammer.

And when you are fighting bees, there can be too many fingers, too many hammers. Why weren't they back? They'd been gone over an hour. Surely it shouldn't take an hour. It took two. Fifteen minutes to get the honey and an hour and three quarters to get their nerve. They spent the first hour and three quarters staring at the tree, studying it, considering it, arguing about it. They stared and they studied and they argued for an hour and three quarters and then they moved in. They decided Murphy would work the smoker and Sam would stick his hand in the hive. He's your neighbor, said Murphy It went off without a hitch And now they were back

They were standing in front of him, standing beside his picnic table All three of them staring at the dripping piece of honeycomb lying on the newspaper on the table It was the size of a bread plate Don't we have to wash it or something, said Murphy. Beside the honey, there was a bottle of Eugene's homemade wine. And beside the wine, three wine glasses. Eugene picked up the bottle and opened it with great ceremony. It was from seven summers ago, his best year ever. He poured out three glasses of the dusty brick-colored burgundy. Then he picked up his glass and held it in the air in front of the boys. Grazie, he said. Murphy picked up his glass and

held it up in the air and cleared his throat and stared directly at Eugene and said cent anni you should live for a hundred years Sam looked at Murphy and whispered where did that come from? the godfather, said Murphy. And the two of them dumped their wine on the ground. As if she'd been waiting for a cue, Maria Conte came out the basement door carrying a large wooden tray. There was cheese on it, a bowl of coarse sea salt, a loaf of homemade bread, and a dark green bottle of olive oil. Manja, she said, manja.

Everyone watched Eugene. No one said a word. He chewed and he chewed and they waited. And slowly, slowly, ever so slowly, he began to grin. A hive of bees is like a kitchen at harvest. They gather up the summer, the heat of the sun, the warmth of the rain, the softness of the mornings and the long afternoons. Above all, they gather up the flavors of the flowers. They gather it all up and mix it together and cork it in wax. Benne, said Eugene. Benne, bennene benne benne

there was a tear running down his cheek you did a good job he said I wish I went with you I should have gone Sam looked at Eugene for a moment and then he stood up and said, We'll be back in a minute.

Come on, he said to Murphy. They were longer than a minute. But when they came back, they were pulling Sam's old wagon. They set it up by the picnic table. And then they helped Eugene get out of his chair and into the wagon. And off they sat. He sat there holding the sides tightly, all hunched over. Each time he saw someone walking towards them, he straightened up.

He straightened up and sat as straight as he could, staring straight ahead as they passed, just daring them to say something. They followed the beeline. They followed the beeline that they had followed all week, or they followed it as best they could. And as they did, they showed him the way it had been. They come over that fence, they said. They come through those trees.

They stopped five yards from the tree and the park. And they stood there and they stared. After a few moments, Eugene began fussing with his coat. He was looking for something. When he found it, he held it out and smiled at the two boys. A leather sheathed knife. A knife that had once belonged to his grandfather. He held his arms out the same way he had held them out the week before when he had called Sam and Sam had vaulted over the fence.

He said, I want to mark this tree with my family mark. So everyone will know it is our tree, our honey. Sam helped him up and over to the tree. When he got there, Eugene leaned against the trunk, but he couldn't manage the knife. He tried, but he wasn't strong enough. He leaned against the tree for a moment, breathing fast, and they waited until he handed Sam the knife. You do it. Sam took the knife and said, I don't know how to No, Conte, Mark.

Your mark, Sam. This tree is your tree. Last summer, Sam would have been scared to cut into the tree, unsure of what you were allowed to do to a tree in a park. A few years from now, he'll not be around for the old man to call. But this summer, this summer he was around, and he was the perfect age for the command. So while Eugene waved the smoke machine, Sam and then Murphy carved their initials six inches above the entrance to the hive. They are not perfect. Sam's S looks like an eight,

but you can tell what it is if you're foolhardy enough to get close. The bees will live in that tree for many years yet. The boys will never take honey again. But Sam will come back every year and look at the mark, even after the bees have left. And he will remember this moment always, this moment standing by the tree holding the knife just after he's used it. He will remember that moment.

And he will remember the moment in Eugene's backyard, eating the honey, and how it was both sweet and bitter all at once how it burned his throat he will remember these things but most of all he will remember how he and Murphy spent a week of this past summer on the Trail of Bees. Thank you. That was Rosemary Honey. We recorded that story in Campbell River in 2010. All right, that's it for today, but we'll be back here next week with another Dave and Morley story. Wally the janitor. Wally the caretaker. World famous W, cover-alled, wool-capped, and more often than not, unshaved Wally.

Wally, who is best known and most loved for the lunch hour every April when he climbs up onto the school roof, and then with every kid from kindergarten to grade eight gathered below him, all of them howling with delight, Wally balances like a knight on a castle turret, balances on the very edge of the school roof and tosses down one after the other an entire year of roofed tennis balls. That's next week on the podcast. I hope you'll join us.

Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe Podcast Network. The recording engineer is a tiny trumpeter named Greg DeCloot. Theme music is by Danny Michelle. And the show is produced by Louise Curtis, Greg DeCloot, and me, Jess Milton. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long for now.