A tale where everything went wrong. The boys should have known better, and the entire town weighed in before the dust even settled.

A Piedmont Lantern Story

Folks still talk about the day Jimmy Matthew and Jim Leroy tried to “help” Ol’ Man Caffey relocate his honeybees. Not because anybody asked them to. Not because they had the flimsiest shred of knowledge about bees. No, sir. They did it for the most Jimmy-and-Jim reason imaginable.

They were bored.

“Boredom,” Miss Lavinia Barnes said, “is the devil’s favorite trampoline.” And the boys jumped high that day.

It all started behind the old feed store on a warm Saturday morning when Jimmy spotted a pamphlet pokin’ out of a trash can. It read:

“Beekeeping for Beginners.”

Jimmy held it up like he had discovered gold.

“Jim Leroy,” he said, puffin’ his chest, “we’re beginners. This is for us.”

Jim Leroy squinted at the pamphlet.

“You reckon bees is friendly?”

“Oh sure,” Jimmy said. “They only sting mean people.”

That would have been the perfect moment to turn around, go home, and live long, peaceful lives. Instead, they marched straight to Old Man Caffey’s property where a great humming cloud floated above a stack of old hive boxes.

Now, Old Man Caffey was in the house sleepin’ off a medical procedure from the day before. He had left explicit instructions that nobody was to touch, disturb, glance at, or even think directly about his bees.

Jimmy Matthew didn’t recall these instructions.

Jim Leroy did, but he knew it wouldn’t matter.

“Alright,” Jimmy said. “I read ahead in the pamphlet. It says you’ve got to calm the bees before you move the hive.”

“You got a smoker?” Jim asked.

Jimmy frowned. “Well… no. But I got a Walmart bag and a stick.”

Thus, armed with nothin’ but a grocery sack and a sense of misplaced confidence, Jimmy approached the hive and flapped the Walmart bag with great ceremony.

The bees did not calm.

They reacted like someone had insulted their mothers.

A roar rose up, angry as hornets in a fan motor.

“Run!” Jim Leroy hollered.

“I am!” Jimmy hollered back, though his legs were movin’ in small circles rather than in a forward motion.

Now, this is where the Piedmont commentary chorus begins.

Up on the bluff, Miss Willie Mae Thornton was hangin’ out her laundry. She shaded her eyes.

“Well now,” she said, “either the Lord has opened a plague or them Cartwright boys done somethin’ foolish again.”

Her husband, Harold, stepped out to look.

“That’s bees,” he said. “And that’s Jimmy Matthew flappin’ like a wounded duck.”

Down on the street, Mr. Lonnie Greer saw the cloud approachin’ the hardware store.

“I told ‘em,” Lonnie shouted to no one in particular. “I told ‘em three years ago them boys needed licensed supervision.”

Over at Dot’s Diner, someone pointed through the window.

“Bees,” Dot muttered. “Always bees when Jimmy Matthew’s involved.”

Meanwhile, in the actual center of chaos, Jimmy had managed to wedge his foot between two roots. This gave the bees time to reconsider their strategy and choose violence.

Jim Leroy tried to help, but once a boy sees his friend covered in bees, instinct takes over. Jim smacked Jimmy with his hat, tryin’ to brush them off, which only made Jimmy think he was bein’ attacked by both bees and Jim Leroy.

“Quit hittin’ me!” Jimmy yelled.

“I’m helpin’ you!” Jim yelled back.

“You’re killin’ me!”

Eventually, Jimmy wriggled free, and the boys tore down Purdy Hill, arms pinwheelin’, bees in pursuit, terror in their souls.

They passed Miss Willie Mae.

“You boys repentin’ or runnin’?” she called.

“Both!” Jimmy shouted.

Down at the creek, they dove headfirst into the water. The bees, turnin’ up their little noses at this nonsense, drifted away.

Jimmy surfaced, gaspin’ and slappin’ his cheeks.

“Am I alive?” he asked.

Jim Leroy nodded. “Mostly.”

Jimmy wiped water from his eyes. “Well. Next time, maybe we oughta read the whole pamphlet.”

Jim Leroy looked at the soggy pamphlet Jimmy had stuffed in his back pocket.

“Jimmy,” he said softly, “this ain’t a beekeepin’ pamphlet. It’s a coupon book.”

Sure enough, the soaked paper now clearly read:

‘10 percent off honey products at Trammell’s Farm Supply.’

Jimmy stared at it a long moment.

“Well,” he said, “that explains why it didn’t have pictures.”

Back in town, the Piedmont commentary chorus made its final judgment.

Miss Willie Mae told the thrift store ladies, who told the barber, who told Preacher Reynolds, who announced on Sunday morning that if anyone saw the Cartwright boys fleein’ from a divine cloud, it was not the Apocalypse, only a lapse in common sense.

And Old Man Caffey, discoverin’ the commotion only after wakin’ up from his nap, declared:

“Next time I see them boys near my bees, I’m puttin’ up a sign that says, ‘Jimmy Matthew, go home.’”

But weeks later, when the story had been retold so many times that it resembled a folk legend, someone asked Old Man Caffey:

“You mad at them boys?”

He shook his head.

“Naw. Boys like that keep a town alive. Though I swear, if I had a dollar for every bee story involvin’ them two, I’d be a wealthy man sittin’ on a porch somewhere tellin’ lies of my own.”

And Piedmont agreed.

Because in that town, the boys did not just cause trouble.

They kept the stories flowin’.