#212 King Bee-T.C. Boyle
Wow, what a nightmare! A couple has trouble conceiving a
child. They look to adopt but do not want to wait the many years it would take
to adopt a new-born of their choosing. They get duped into adopting a 9
year-old boy named Anthony. He appears at first to be the Norman Rockwell
archetype of the American male child, but things turn quickly.
“The smile was a regular feature of those first few
months—He stopped smiling when the trial period was over, as if he’d suddenly
lost control of his facial muscles. It was uncanny. Almost to the day the
adoption became formal—the day that he was theirs and they were his—Anthony’s
smile vanished.”
His calm demeanor turns to erratic behavior, foul language
and an obsession with bees. He likes bees because they have no mercy, “You fit
in or you die.” Nothing seems to rid him of his psychotic behavior and he goes
in and out of institutions and youth prisons until he becomes an adult, scarier
and even more bee-like.
There are obvious literary links here, from the Kafka-esque
alienation insect references, or a twilight zone story arc. Personally, I see a
lot of Stephen King in this story, which is something I wouldn’t have expected
from Boyle. This is a fun outlier so far in this collection.
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