The Summer

In the summer of 1931 a man named Harold Pell walked into a field outside Dayton to look at a fence, and did not come back from the fence.

The fence was fine. It was inspected twice afterward, once by the sheriff and once by a man who simply liked fences, and both agreed it was among the better fences in the county.

Harold was found three days later in the middle of the field, lying very straight, as if someone had measured him. He was wearing his own hat. That was the only part anyone could explain.

The sheriff asked around. Nobody had seen anything. A woman two farms over said that at about four o'clock she heard a man ask what time it was, and then nothing, and then a long nothing, and then bees.

There were no hives within six miles. There was one in the field the next morning.

Harold Pell had told several people that summer that the hat was always wrong.

The man with the hat was questioned on a Tuesday. He arrived early. He was asked where he had been that afternoon. He took off his hat, looked inside it for a long moment, put it back on, and said, "Later than you'd think."

The sheriff wrote this down. Nobody has ever been able to read the sheriff's handwriting, including the sheriff.

He was released by dinner. The hive was in his wife's yard by Friday. No one remembers who moved it. The bees did not seem to mind the trip. They minded him immediately.

The case is still open, technically. It is kept in a drawer in Montgomery County under a label that reads "Field, fence, man." Every few years someone opens the drawer, reads the label, and closes the drawer.

He never went back to Dayton. He did not go near fences. He was polite to everyone for the rest of his life, including the bees, which they took as an insult.

Near the end, a nurse asked him if there was anything he wanted to get off his chest. He said there was a bee on it.

There was.