We here at Meeting House were saddened last week to hear that the Robert Frost house in Ripton, Vermont, had been vandalized. We hope that the revelers who ransacked the beloved New England poet's home took time the next morning to feel at least a trace of guilt.
We are excited and uplifted to present another wonderful story. This week, Merle Drown shares his story "Hank's Honey." Merle Drown is the author of stories, essays, plays, reviews, and two novels: Plowing Up A Snake and The Suburbs Of Heaven. He edited Meteor in the Madhouse, the posthumous novellas of Leon Forrest, published by Northwestern University Press in 2001. Barnes and Noble chose The Suburbs of Heaven for its Discover Great New Writers series. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Hampshire Arts Council. The father of three sons, Merle lives with his wife Pat in Concord, NH, where he earns his living by hook, crook, pen and ink. "Hank's Honey" is from his collection-in-progress, Shrunken Heads, miniature portraits of the famous among us or Balzac in a nutshell.
Read on!
Hank's Honey
First the bear destroyed Hank’s hives. With wood from his portable mill, he built new ones. Then the mites killed his bees. He bought new colonies and again started over. Most of the honey he gave away, keeping a dozen of the twelve ounce plastic bears because he liked to sweeten his toast before driving truck for the town.
Hank had started over before. Thirteen years ago his wife had taken up crystals. He’d thought she’d wanted to buy old glassware. By the time he understood, she’d moved in with her girlfriend, leaving their nine year old Kyle behind.
Two bachelors, Hank told his son. Hank stopped drinking, not because he’d loved the bottle, but so I won’t turn into a backwoods coot, he told Kyle.
You aren’t backward, Kyle said. Mom’s backwards.
When Kyle turned eighteen, he moved to his mother’s ratty apartment over the Laundromat, saying his father’s narrow, country two story was too neat. You mean I won’t let you smoke pot, Hank said, and she will. She and her sweetie.
Starting over this time broke his heart, turning down Kyles requests for fifty bucks, crying but not calling when Kyle’s name showed up in the newspaper’s Police Log, spending Father’s Day alone.
Then he bought the bees.
He’d hoped the bear wouldn’t make him start over again, but he was fifty years old now. He knew he might have to. So he squeezed a little more honey on his morning toast, and decided this year he’d keep more plastic bears for himself.
