I had kept thinking about Randy and his plan all through dinner. Call it a premonition, call it a vision, call it intuition, call it whatever. I just knew something was about to go wrong. I headed down the path that night towards Shamus’ shack with a feeling dread ever growing in my stomach. It was like I had just eaten a bowl of honey bees and they were stinging me from the inside. When I was close, I could just make out someone at the end of the path crouching in the palmettos. It had to be Randy, and as I tried to get closer to stop him, I saw somebody walking from behind the shack trying to sing with a great slur in their voice, “But come ye back when summer's in the meadow… Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow… 'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow…Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.” I froze on the path at the singing; it had to be Shamus, coming down the opposite path behind his shack from the beach. As he stumbled up to the stoop, wildly swinging the crate of jars, he nearly fell. Several of the jars are flung from the crate and one smashed with a crash of breaking glass. “Ah, damn it…” Shamus clumsily puts the jars down and staggers to the shack groping for the key. Somehow he gets back to the beehive with the money pot inside and unlocks the door. He drops the envelope into the pot and after several tries finally gets the door closed, but not locked. He ignores the dropped jars and heads straight into the shack and goes to sleep on the cot. After a moment or two, I see Randy start to head to the beehive and open the door on it. I stood motionless, as I hear the board on the front stoop of the shack creak. I see Shamus’s silhouette move from the outline of the doorway and disappear into the darkness surrounding the shack. I want to shout, but cannot. I can only watch in complete frozen fear. I hear a roar of laughter from Shamus and an off guard, cut short yelp from Randy. In the dim light, I see the figure of Shamus move across the white background of beehive next to the one containing the money jar. At that point, I ran. It was a coward thing to do, but I ran down the path, ignoring the palmettos as they cut my arms and face in the darkness. I did not stop until I reached home, too scared to go in, just sitting outside the house breathing hard and sweating. Finally, I went into bed after my breathing and sweating had abated. Momma gave me a strange look, but said nothing as I went off to my bed. That night, I kept having dreams about Shamus and what he did to Randy. In the end, I never saw what he did to Randy, but I heard his laugh over and over again.
The next morning, my mother found me curled up outside, asleep in the hammock that hung between the two coconut trees outside our front porch. Not taking care to lie diagonal, I had cramps in my legs so bad I could almost not walk. She asked me what I was doing out there and why I had not stayed in for the night. Being ashamed for running away, I told her I woke up to a bad dream and went to walk it off. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I decided to sleep in the hammock until everyone else awoke. She told me next time to lie diagonal and that I should go wash for breakfast. After breakfast she said, “You need head out and get me that honey like I asked for.” At that moment, my heart sank into my shoes, and it must have showed. Momma was looking at me and I could not hold back the tears or the words. I spilled everything I knew, and everything I thought I knew about Randy and his dealings with old Shamus. To add insult to injury, Momma had me tell the story again to Poppa. He left out to fetch the constable to check up on Randy to see if he was alright.
The constable, my Poppa, and Randy’s poppa all made their way to Shamus’ shack later that day. I was not there, but this I heard from my Poppa as he relayed the incident to me years later once he felt I could handle the truth. Upon entering the clearing near Shamus’ shack, they noticed that the shack looked empty. All of Shamus’ belongings were gone, and the boat was gone. Around back the big false honey hive was open and the earthen pot was over turned, empty. Those things did not stick in my mind. What Poppa told me next, will live forever in my memory. There were no bees. It was as if Shamus took them with him. As they began to look around, they noticed no hives had any bees coming or going. In a rage, Randy’s Poppa kicked one of the hives over. As it fell, it cracked opened. The constable must have noticed something, for he told Mr. Jones to wait away from it. After peering down at the broken hive, he called my father over and told Mr. Jones to stay where he was. Poppa went over and saw something that will haunt him forever. Partially embedded in the bees wax combs was a familiar shape. It was the shape of human hand. Randy’s father, crazy with grief comes running over and starts to tear apart the hive. Inside is Randy, half embedded in the wax. The bees were sealing him in. That was not all. It also appeared that his blood was mixing with the honey sealed in the combs. After that, the constable rounded up my father and Randy’s and got them out of there. Rumor has it; there was a body in each of the hives, and the oldest being a youth that disappeared 20 years ago. Each body perfectly preserved in bee’s wax, but devoid of any blood, as if the wax and honey pulled it from the corpses.
I turned 86 last week. All that happened over 70 years ago. The little
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