He was Lord of the Sunbright Yard. He was Master of the Blue Pool. He wielded the Telescoping Pole with its Leaf Skimmer Net and wore neither shoes nor shirt. He quested around the pool and from time to time he would sweep his pole through the water and gather leaves into his net and dump them in a corner of the yard. Once there had been a rattlesnake in the pool hiding beneath the brick coping and he had taken it in his net and thrown it over the fence and back into the grassy hills from whence it came. That, and not his Bar Mitzvah, had been the day he became a man.
He heard a tree shake and the pool rippled in the wind and he leaned forward peering at something small spinning in the water. A honey bee was drowning. He thrust the pole into the water and moved the net beneath the honey bee and raised net and bee out of the water and laid them on the warm concrete. The bee was upside down in the net and he took a leaf and slid it beneath the bee and placed it gently on the ground. The bee righted itself and crawled off the leaf and he watched it dry itself, rubbing its legs together and against its body. Then he ran inside and came back with a cup of sugar water. He poured some by the bee and watched it drink.
Satisfied, he picked up his pole and resumed clearing leaves. Every few minutes he would glance at the bee. Suddenly it was heading back toward the pool. He had never known bees could walk that quickly and before he could reach it it had fallen in the wager. Again, he saved the bee, and he placed it farther from the pool. Within minutes it was already crawling back. He intercepted it and transported it by leaf to a corner of the yard. Thinking it was still thirsty, he gave it more sugar water, which it ignored as it headed toward the pool.
He battled the bee for hours. He moved it from place to place, offered it flowers and sugar water, he even brought it to the other bees in the yard, hoping they would intercede. At one point he went through the gate and placed it on the other side of the fence but it flew over the fence and then began crawling back toward the pool. He wondered why it didn’t fly straight into the pool, why it seemed to torment him with its slow and relentless crawling.
He tried placing it on a flower and it immediately walked off and fell to the ground where it sat dazed for a few moments before resuming its suicidal course. He placed obstacles in its path, built a great wall between bee and pool, which it easily climbed over. He considered trapping the bee but decided against it, felt it was inhumane. It was getting dark now and he knew he didn’t have much time. By this point the bee, in its lassitude, or in feigned death, would cease all movement for ten minutes or more. So he moved the bee one last time and waited. The bee remained unmoving for thirty minutes. He thought it might be dead and he nudged it with the stem of a leaf. The bee moved briefly and then resumed thanatosis.
He sighed, admitting defeat, and took a last look at the bee and went inside.
When he came out in the morning there was a dead bee in the pool. Somehow he knew it was his bee. He was crying as he lifted the bee from the water.