Billy called: “Hey, Barney. When are we going to fly?”
Didn’t Billy understand? They didn’t need to fly. The Bumblebee would fly for them. He couldn’t speak now, couldn’t stop to explain it all to Billy. Tell you later, Billy the Kidney, tell you later. Trust me—did I ever lie to you?
He turned Mazzo’s head toward the Bumblebee, positioning himself carefully to meet the increasing weight upon his legs, and then slowly, agonizingly, beyond exhaustion and pain, beyond everything, he began to draw his legs back, arms encircled around Mazzo, head raised to the night.
“Here we go,” he yelled with all that was left in him.
He heard his voice loud and clear, skipping across the night and the moon and the stars. Triumphant, brave, beautiful.
And the Bumblebee flew at last.
21
SHE awoke suddenly, leaping from sleep, startled and disoriented, because she hadn’t realized she’d dropped off. Last thing she remembered was floating, drifting, listening to an old Simon and Garfunkel tune, “The Sounds of Silence,” on the radio, headachy, a bit troubled. Troubled by the Thing, of course, which was always with her now but also by that poor kid, Barney Snow. Funny, pathetic boy. That desperate cheerfulness of his. And the car he was assembling in the attic of that place. To give Alberto a ride. She sometimes doubted that there was a car, thought it real only in his imagination, but a small part of her delighted in the possibility of its existence.
Stirring in the bed, reaching to turn off the radio that emitted only small static sounds now, she decided she would buy him a farewell gift and drop it off at the clinic tomorrow before he left. She was also determined to see Alberto again, to insist that he admit her and Mother to his room. Without Barney Snow as a go-between, the link to Alberto was broken. And—
She was caught in midsentence, midbreath, caught and held, breathless, trapped, immobile, no pain, weightless, transparent like glass, but also breakable like glass. Then she was released, mobile again, and now a stab of pain, quick and sharp in her chest, and a flutter of the heart, her breath returning, the air rushing in to fill a deep cavity within her, arms and legs trembling, head light, the room swimming away from her. She had never felt like this before.
And she knew.
Knew what was happening.
To Alberto at the clinic.
Knew he was dying. At this moment.
And she, too, dying then.
But, strange, no panic, and no pain, just this breathlessness, as if she were the eye of the hurricane, waiting, dangling in time and space.
She managed to make the Sign of the Cross with a trembling arm. In the Name of the Father and the Son and the …
But wait.
Must be more than prayer.
Must pray, yes, like at the Hacienda. All the time she’d been there she’d been praying, even while doing chores maybe, but hadn’t known it at the time. But something must come out of the praying.
Like now.
God, please help Alberto. Make it easy for him, don’t let him have too much pain or panic. Don’t let him be alone. Be with him. Give him someone through You.
And me.
God, I don’t want to die.
She curled up in the bed, making herself a small target, knees drawn up to her chin, arms locked around her knees, waiting. But she didn’t want to simply wait, didn’t want to lie here like this, defenseless. Must do something, fight,anything. Even that poor kid, Barney Snow, did something. Put a car together in the attic. Like a bumblebee. Even if only in his dreams.
I don’t want to die.
She waited to hear her voice echoing in the room, resounding throughout the house, waking her mother and Mrs. Cortoleona, but realized she hadn’t spoken aloud, had screamed the words silently, but they were true, nevertheless.
I don’t want to die.
And I won’t die.
She raised herself from the bed, threw off the quilt, felt the cold touch of the linoleum beneath her feet, sat there like a boxer in a corner of the ring waiting for the bell, ready to fight.
She felt caught and held again, breathless, trapped. Still, in the way a clock is still when it stops ticking. She fought the stillness, sensed danger in it, struggled, twisted away, rose from the bed I don’t want to die stalked with stiltlike legs to the bureau I will not die felt again the stab of pain, held on to the bureau with her hands, held on to life with all the strength and will that she could gather. Dear God.
Then a last flutter, heart beating in a rush, blood pounding at her temples. And nothing. Emptiness. A void.
And she knew with a calm and cold and certain knowledge that Alberto was dead. His life extinguished, obliterated the way light becomes darkness at the snapping of a switch.
Anguish filled her as she stared at herself in the bureau mirror, saw her mouth open but wordless, her eyes wide with the despair and desolation that gripped her, overwhelmed by the knowledge that Alberto, her brother, her twin, her other self, was dead, gone.
What about me?
But suddenly it doesn’t matter about me.
Turning from the bureau, she was alive to a thousand sights and sounds springing to life around her. Could hear her veins and arteries churning through her body, her heart pulsing its marvelous rhythms, aware of light and color, everything vivid and dazzling, the glow of the lamp stunning her eyes, the air sweetly stinging her flesh, her body singing like a harp string plucked by knowing fingers. Whose fingers?
Ah, but she knew Whose fingers.
And that’s all she needed to know.
22
THE Bumblebee never stopped flying.
He had a trick he had learned, and the trick was the blinking of his eyes and in the blinking came the memory of the Bumblebee, gliding down the roof as if in slow motion, sleek and gleaming in the moonlight, gathering speed, wheels flashing as they turned.
He remembered clinging to Mazzo’s body, ignoring Billy’s voice calling from the skylight, and watching the Bumblebee’s course, unstoppable, not to be denied this flight to glory.
Free of the roof, the Bumblebee hung in the air for a sweet split second, suspended in time and space, the way a dancer pauses in a soaring leap, breathless, denying for a precious moment the laws of gravity, untouchable and unspeakably beautiful.
Then the Bumblebee disappeared, one moment there and the next moment gone, as if removed from Barney’s sight by some marvelous, mysterious act. He listened for the crash of the Bumblebee, the smashing and splintering of wood as it struck the ground below. But heard nothing. He laughed, delighted, knowing that the Bumblebee still flew, soaring out into space, unending in its flight.
In the bed he now occupied he was surrounded by a grayness, and out of the grayness came faces. The faces were always sad and unsmiling. He wanted to tell them: Hey, laugh, or at least smile a little, because the Bumblebee is still flying and we made it fly. Often, in the grayness, he searched for something, lost, beyond his reach. A face he had known. He tried to summon the face but couldn’t. Her face. But there was only a blankness in the grayness and a terrible loneliness and longing. He wanted to cry out for—who?
He watched and searched and listened in the loneliness, and heard another voice. It was voice that was familiar, but he could not identify it. Is there anything I can do to help, Barney? But the voice couldn’t help. It was the wrong voice, anyway. There was another voice that could help, a low sultry voice like a singer he had heard once but could not bring back now. Nobody could help anymore. Only the blinking could help.
He was grateful for the blinking. He didn’t know what he would do without the blinking. He got ready for the blinking by saying his prayers, In the Name of the Tempo and the Rhythm, repeating the prayer over and over, In the Name of the Tempo and the Rhythm, and then blinking rapidly, furiously, blink: Tempo, blink: Rhythm, and that’s when he saw the Bumblebee again, breaking through the grayness and the loneliness, glowing and glistening as it moved off the roof and across the sky, out
into the stars and the planets and beyond, always beautiful, always flying, always his.
Robert Cormier (1925–2000) changed the face of young adult literature over the course of his illustrious career. His many novels include The Chocolate War, Beyond the Chocolate War, I Am the Cheese, Fade, Tenderness, After the First Death, Heroes, Frenchtown Summer, and The Rag and Bone Shop. In 1991, he received the Margaret A. Edwards Award, honoring his lifetime contribution to writing for teens.
Robert Cormier, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway
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