Johanna's Bridegroom (2 page)

Johanna landed barefoot in the grass and straightened her
Kapp
as she hurried toward him. “Is J.J. all right?” she asked.

Speechless, Roland stared gape-mouthed at her. She was breathing hard but otherwise seemed no worse for her wild careen across the field. All he could think was that she had come. Johanna had come, and she’d find a way to save his son. But what he said was, “Are you crazy? You? A grown woman with two children? To ride that horse bareback like some madcap boy?”

Johanna...the woman who might have been his...who might have been J.J.’s mother if not for one stupid night of foolishness.

“Are you finished?” she asked, scolding him as if he was the one who’d just done something outrageous. Her chin went up and tiny lines of disapproval creased the corners of her beautiful eyes—eyes so piercingly blue and direct that for an instant, he didn’t see a delicate woman standing there. In a flash, he saw, instead, Johanna’s father, Jonas Yoder, as strong a man in faith and courage as Roland had ever known.

Johanna walked to the base of the tree, her gaze taking in J.J. and the writhing mass of bees above him. “Hi,” she called.

“Hi.” J.J. grinned at her, despite the two bees crawling over his chin. “Look at all the bees,” he said. “Aren’t they neat?”

“Very neat,” she answered softly. She tilted her head back. “That’s a lot of bees.”

“A hundred, at least,” J.J. agreed.

Roland stifled a groan. “There must be thousands of them,” he whispered.

Johanna smiled, ignoring Roland. “You’re a brave boy. Some people are afraid of honeybees.”

J.J. nodded. “They’re nice.”

“I think so, too.” Johanna glanced back at Roland. A bee lit on her
Kapp,
but she didn’t seem to notice. “Do you have a stepladder?”

“In the shed.”

“Could you go get it? Irwin should be coming anytime with my bee equipment. When he gets here, bring it to me. Keep Irwin away.” She grimaced. “He makes the bees nervous.”

“They make
me
nervous.” Roland looked from her to J.J. and back at her again. “Are you going to smoke them? I’ve heard that calms them.”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt.” She glanced back at the swarm. “They’ve left someone’s bee box somewhere, or a hollow tree,” she said to J.J. “Or maybe an abandoned building.”

“Why did they do that?” the boy asked.

“Probably because their queen was old or the hive got too crowded. They’re being so friendly because they don’t have honey to protect.” She shrugged. “They’re just looking for a new home.”

“Oh.”

“Were they in the tree when you climbed up there?” she asked.

J.J. nodded. “I wanted to see what they were doing.”

“He’s been singing to them,” Roland said, swallowing to try to dissolve his fear. “He just didn’t understand how dangerous it was.”

“The bees didn’t sting me,” J.J. said. “They like me.”

“Do they like it when you sing?” Johanna asked. And when J.J. nodded, she added, “Then you can sing to them, if you want to. I sing to mine all the time.”

J.J. giggled. “You do?”

“The ladder,” she reminded Roland as she continued to watch J.J. in the tree.

Roland backed away slowly. He was still sweating and his hands and feet felt wooden, but some of the awful despair that had paralyzed him earlier had ebbed away.
Johanna didn’t seem alarmed. Obviously, she had a plan.

He turned and ran. “Don’t leave him.”

“Don’t worry,” she called after him. “We’re fine, aren’t we, J.J.?”

“Ya, Dat,”
he heard his son say. “We’re fine.”

Pray to God you are.
Roland lengthened his stride, running with every ounce of strength in his body.

Chapter Two

“H
oneybees are wonderful creatures,” Johanna told J.J. He nodded, still seemingly unafraid of the dozens of insects crawling in his hair and over his body. J.J. was calm and happy, which was good. Far too many people feared bees, and she had always believed that they sensed when you were afraid. “Do you like honey on your biscuits?” she asked, trying to distract him while they waited for Roland to return with the ladder.

“My
grossmama
makes biscuits sometimes. And my aunt Mary.
Dat
doesn’t know how.” A mischievous grin spread across J.J.’s freckled face, and he blew a bee off his nose. “
Dat’s
biscuits are yucky. He always burns them.”

“Biscuits can be tricky if you don’t watch them carefully,” Johanna agreed. She glanced from the boy to where Blackie grazed. When Roland got back, she’d ask him to catch the horse and walk him until he cooled down. A horse that drank too much cold water when he was hot sometimes foundered.

Absentmindedly, Johanna rubbed her shoulder. It had been years since she’d ridden a horse, and tomorrow she’d feel every day of her twenty-seven years. Not that she’d admit it to Roland or anyone else, but jumping a three-rail fence bareback hadn’t been her idea. It had been Blackie’s. And by the time she realized that there was no opening in the fence and no gate, it was too late to keep the gelding from going over.

In spite of his high-spirited willfulness, Johanna was fond of Blackie. He had a sweet disposition and he never tried to bite or kick. Despite
Mam’s
salary from teaching school, money from the farm, and the income from Johanna’s bees, turkeys and quilts, money was always tight. If anything happened to the young driving horse, the family would find it difficult to replace him.

“Here comes
Dat,
” J.J. announced.

“Remember to think good thoughts,” Johanna said aloud. In her head, she repeated the thought over and over.

“J.J., did you know that a community of bees thinks all together, like they have one brain?” she asked him, in an attempt to keep her composure, as well as help him keep his. “This swarm has drones and workers and, in the middle, a queen. The others all protect her, because without the queen, there can be no colony.”

“Why did they land in this tree in a big ball?”

“They’re looking for a new home. For some reason, and we don’t know why, they couldn’t live in their old house anymore. They won’t stay here in the tree. They need to find a safe place where they can store their honey, protect the queen and safely raise baby bees.”

“Uncle Charley said that when a honeybee stings you, it dies.”

Johanna nodded. “Uncle Charley’s right. But a bee won’t sting unless it’s afraid, afraid you’ll hurt it or that you’ll harm the hive. That’s why we stay calm and think happy thoughts when we’re near the bees.”

“They like me to sing to them.”

She smiled at J.J., wondering how so much wisdom lived in that small head. “Who taught you about bees?”

The little boy’s forehead wrinkled in concentration, and Johanna’s heart skipped a beat. She’d seen that exact expression a hundred times on Roland’s face.
You think you can put the past behind you, but you can’t.
All this time, she’d been telling herself that she didn’t care anymore. And she’d been wrong. Her throat clenched. She’d loved Roland Byler for more than half her life, and in spite of everything he’d done to destroy that love, she was afraid that some part of her still cared.

“Nobody told me,” J.J. said solemnly. “Bees are my friends.”

Johanna nodded. “You know what I think, J.J.? I think God gave you a special gift. I think you’re a bee charmer.”

“I am?” He flashed another grin. “A bee charmer. That’s me.”

Roland halted behind Johanna with the ladder over his shoulder. “Where do you want this? I brought some old rags and matches, in case you want to try to smoke the swarm.”

“No sign of Irwin?” Johanna looked back toward the house. “He should have been here by now.”

“I saw your buggy coming up the road. He’ll be here in a few minutes.” Roland glanced up at his son. “Are you all right? No stings?”

“Ne, Dat.”
J.J. grinned. “I told you. Bees never sting me.”

Roland frowned. “I don’t know what possessed you to climb up in that tree when you saw them. You should have better sense.”

“
Atch,
Roland,” Johanna said, as she put a proper mental distance between them. “He’s a child. He’s naturally curious. You don’t see bees swarm every day.”

“It would suit me if I never saw another one. I don’t like bees. I never have.”

“Then it’s best if you stand back from the tree,” she cautioned. “If you’re afraid, they’ll sense it. It might upset them.”

“I can’t see that bees have much sense about anything,” Roland said. “How big can their brains be?”

“They’re smart,
Dat.
Johanna said they pro...pro what the queen.”

“Protect,” Johanna supplied.

“Protect the queen,” J.J. repeated with a grin.

“No need to fill the boy’s head with
lecherich
nonsense.” Roland used the Pennsylvania Dutch word for ridiculous. “Just get him down out of there safely.”

Johanna rolled her eyes and reached for the ladder. “Let me do that. You might startle them.”

“Don’t you want to wait for your equipment?”

“I’m not going to need it,” she said, eyeing the swarm. “J.J. and I are doing just fine. Give me the ladder.”

Roland opened the wooden stepladder and set it on the ground. “It’s too heavy for you to lift,” he muttered.

Johanna bit back a quick retort.
Men! She might not be as tall and sturdy as her sister Anna, but she was strong for her size. Who did he think lifted the bales of hay and fifty-pound bags of sheep- and turkey food? And who did he suppose moved her wooden beehives?

She lifted the ladder onto her shoulder and carried it slowly over to the apple tree. “Sing to the bees, J.J.,” she said. “What do they like best?”

In a high, sweet voice, the child began an old German hymn. Johanna settled the legs of the ladder into the soft grass and put her foot on the bottom rung. She joined in J.J.’s song.

“Let me steady that for you,” Roland offered.

She shook her head. “
Ne.
Let them get used to me.” She began to sing again as she slowly, one step at a time, climbed the ladder. When she was almost at the top, she put out her arms. “Swing your leg over the branch,” she murmured. “Slowly. Keep singing.” J.J. did just as she instructed, and she nodded encouragement. “Easy. That’s right.”

As J.J. put his arms around her neck, she blew two bees off his left cheek.

He broke off in the middle of the hymn and giggled. “They tickle.”

Instantly, the sound of the swarm’s buzzing grew louder.

Behind her, Johanna could hear Roland’s sharp intake of breath. “Come to me,” she murmured. “Slowly. Keep singing.” Another bee took flight, leaving the child’s arm to join the main swarm. She caught J.J. by the waist, and the two of them waited, unmoving, as bees crawled out of his hair and flew into the branches above them. She brushed two more bees off his right arm. “Good. Now we’ll start down. Slow and steady.”

Sweat beaded on the back of Johanna’s dress collar and trickled down her back. Step by step, the two of them inched down the ladder, and it seemed to Johanna that the tone and volume of the colony’s buzzing grew softer.

As J.J.’s bare feet touched the earth, the last bee abandoned the child’s mop of yellow-blond hair and buzzed away. “Go on,” Johanna said to the boy. “It’s safe now. Go to your
dat.
”

She threw Roland an
I told you so
look, but her knees felt weak. She hadn’t thought the boy was in real danger, but one could never be certain. And she knew that had anything bad happened to J.J., she would have felt responsible. She’d been frightened for the boy, nothing more, she told herself. And all those silly thoughts about Roland and what they’d once meant to each other could be forgotten. They could go on as they had, neighbors, members of the same church family, friends—nothing more.

A shout from the direction of the barnyard and the rattle of buggy wheels bumping over the field announced Irwin’s arrival. “If you don’t mind, Roland, I’ll set up a catch-trap on the bench there. The water is what drew the swarm here in the first place. And if I can lure them into the nuc box, I can move the whole colony back to our place.”

When he didn’t answer, she glanced at him. No wonder he hadn’t heard her. Roland’s full attention was on his child. He was still hugging J.J. so hard that the boy could hardly catch his breath.

“Unless you’d like to keep the bees,” Johanna added. “I’ve got an extra eight-frame hive that I’m not using. I could bring it over and teach you how to—”

“You take the heathen beasts and are welcome to them,” Roland replied.

“If you’re sure, I’ll be glad to have them. But it’ll take a few weeks for the colony to settle in to a new hive, before I can move them. Of course I have to lure them into it first.”

“Whatever you want, Johanna.” His dashed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Thank you. What you did was...was brave. For a woman. For anyone, I mean. You saved J.J. and I won’t forget it.”

Johanna ruffled the boy’s hair. “I think he would have been just fine,” she said. “The bees like him.”

J.J. grinned.

“But you’ll keep well away from them in the future,” Roland admonished.

“Obey your father,” Johanna said.

“But I don’t want to stay away from them,” the child said. “I want to see the queen.”

Roland gave him a stern look. “You go near them again and—”

“Mam! Mam!”

Johanna looked back to see Jonah, wearing his bee hat and protective veil netting, leaping out of their buggy. “I remembered the lemongrass oil,
Mam,
” he shouted. “Irwin forgot, but I remembered.”

J.J. wiggled out of his father’s grasp and stared in awe at Jonah’s white helmet. Jonah saw the younger boy and positively strutted toward the tree.

It was all Johanna could do not to laugh at the two of them. She raised a palm in warning. “Thank you for the lemongrass oil, Jonah, but you won’t need the hat. These bees have had enough excitement for one day.” She gave her son
the look,
and his posturing came to a quick end.

“Hi, J.J.,” Jonah said as he removed the helmet and tucked it under his arm. “Did you get stung? Where’s the swarm?”

J.J. pointed, and the two children were drawn together as if they were magnets. Immediately, J.J., younger by nearly two years, switched from English to Pennsylvania Dutch and excitedly began relating his adventure with the bees to Jonah in hushed whispers.

“Both of you stay away from the swarm,” Johanna warned as she directed Irwin and Roland to carry the wooden hive to the bench beside the water. Irwin lifted off the top and she used the scented oil liberally on the floor of the box. “Hopefully, this will draw the bees,” she explained to Roland as they all backed away. “Now we wait to see if they’ll decide to move in. We’ll know in a day or two.”

“I brought your suit and the smoker stuff,” Irwin said.

“
Danke,
but I don’t think I’ll need it,” Johanna answered. “I didn’t know what I’d find.” She looked around and saw that Jonah and J.J. had caught the loose horse. “You can take Blackie for me, Irwin. Jonah and I can drive the buggy home.”

She watched as the teenager used the buggy wheel to climb up on the horse’s back and slowly rode toward the barnyard.

“Can I drive the buggy home,
Mam?
” Jonah asked.

Johanna laughed. “Down the busy road? I don’t think so.” Jonah’s face fell. “But you can drive back to Roland’s house, if you like.” Nodding, Jonah scrambled back up into the buggy, followed closely by J.J.

“Don’t worry,” Johanna said to Roland. “They’re perfectly safe with our mare Molly.” It was easier now that the crisis had passed, easier to act as if she was just a neighbor who’d come to help...easier to be alone with Roland and act as if they had never been more than friends.

“
Dat,
I’m hungry,” J.J. called from the buggy seat.

Jonah nodded. “Me, too.”

“I guess you are,” Roland said to J.J. as he and Johanna walked beside the buggy that was rolling slowly toward the barnyard. “We missed dinner, didn’t we? I think we have bologna and cheese in the refrigerator. You boys go up to the house. Tie the mare to the hitching rail and you can make yourselves a sandwich.”

J.J. made a face. “We’re out of bread,
Dat.
Remember? The old bread got hard and you threw it to the chickens last night.”

Roland’s face flushed. “I’ll find you something.”

“How about some biscuits?” Johanna asked, walking beside Roland. “If you have flour, I could make you some.”

“
Ya!
Biscuits!” J.J. cried.

Roland tugged at the brim of his hat. “I wouldn’t want to put you out. You’ve already—”

“Don’t be silly, Roland. What are neighbors for? I can’t imagine how you and J.J. manage the house and the farm, plus your farrier work, just the two of you.”

“Mary helps with the cleaning sometimes. I’ll admit that I don’t keep the house the way Pauline did.”

“It won’t be the first messy kitchen I’ve ever seen. Let me bake the biscuits,” Johanna said, eager now to treat Roland as she would any neighbor in need of assistance. “And whatever else I can find to make a meal. If it makes you feel any better, Jonah and I will share it with you. It’s the least I can do for your gift of a hive of bees.”

“A gift you’re more than welcome to.” He offered her a shy smile, and the sight of it made a shiver pass down her spine. Roland Byler had always had a smile that would melt ice in a January snowstorm.

“The thought of homemade biscuits is tempting,” he said. “There’s a chicken, too, but it’s not cooked.”

She forced herself to return his smile. “You and the boys do your chores and give me a little time to tend to the meal,” she said briskly.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you about the kitchen. I left dirty dishes from breakfast and—”