The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (14 page)

“I don’t know. You wake the others while I check it out.”

Deborah grabbed a flashlight from the wooden crate that served as a nightstand and opened the bedroom door. Smoke billowed in. Thick, dark smoke. Fear gripped her. “Hurry! Get up! Come on, girls. Everyone up.”

She glanced back one last time to make sure they obeyed, pulled her housecoat sleeve over her mouth, and scurried down the hallway. The smoke thickened. It stung her eyes and burned her throat.
Lord, have mercy.

“Mudder! Mudder!” She pounded on the door to the tiny storage closet that served as her mother’s meager bedroom. “Fire! Fire!”

The door flew open and Mudder popped out, her long blond braid bouncing behind her. “Where?”

“It looks like it’s in the kitchen. The girls are waking the others.”

Together they flew down the hallway, through the front room, to the kitchen. Deborah slammed to a halt, Mudder at her side. Flames shot through the door, making it impossible to go any farther. The heat blistered her face.

“We have to get everyone out.” Mudder tugged her back. “Caleb!”

“I’ll get him. You get John and Eve. Meet out front.”

Coughing and choking on the smoke, they ran. Deborah forced away thoughts of what they were about to lose and focused on the fragile, dear lives that were so much more important.

She pounded on doors and rousted her brother and cousins from their crowded bedroom. Together they ran into the pouring
rain. Thunder boomed overhead, making Deborah duck for no reason that made any sense. Lightning spiderwebbed across the sky. Were they any safer out here in the elements?

“Let’s go to the barn,” Caleb screamed over a wind so strong it knocked the boy back a step. “I don’t want to get hit by lightning.”

“We have to put out the fire.” Deborah gasped, her lungs aching for air stolen by the furious gale. “We need to get to the well.”

Holding hands with Caleb, she trudged, heads bent against the pelting rain, to where Onkel John had begun pumping water from the well and handing out buckets.

“Will the rain put it out?” Deborah wiped dripping hair from her face, aware of her drenched nightgown and housecoat. She’d never been outside her bedroom dressed this way. “All this water and it won’t douse the flames?”

“The inside will keep burning until the roof is gone.” Onkel John thrust a bucket at Cousin Obadiah, who slung it down the quickly forming line. “We have to salvage what we can. I sent Rufus to get Leroy, Andrew, and the others. Leroy will get to the store and call the fire department.”

“How far away are they?” She slid into the line next to Obadiah and slung the bucket to Frannie on her other side. One bucket of water that would have no impact on the flames now lighting up the front room like daylight.

“It’s volunteer. They’re all at home, asleep in bed.” John’s voice grew deeper, more hoarse, whether from the smoke or emotion, Deborah couldn’t say. “It’ll take them a bit, but they’ll be here.”

It didn’t matter. They had to try. She thrust the now-empty bucket back at John, who kept the water coming. Without speaking, they worked in tandem in a futile assembly line.
Take, swivel,
hand off, take, swivel, hand off. Full, empty, full, empty.

Deborah stopped thinking about anything else, forcing herself to ignore the tickle of the rain on her face and her straggling hair on her cheek. After a while, the muscles in her arms and shoulders burned with fatigue. Her throat ached from the smoke and her lips cracked and bled. Still the blaze refused to be extinguished.

“Let me.” Hands tugged the bucket handle from her weary, numb fingers. She glanced back, then up. Phineas towered over her. A gust of wind whipped. His straw hat went sailing across the yard, revealing tousled, too long, black curls. Too late, he slapped a hand to his head. “I’ve got this.” He didn’t yell, but his husky voice carried. “You chase my hat.”

“Nee, I’m fine. I can do this.” He could go to the end of the line with the other men. She didn’t need his help. She could carry her weight. “There’s room between Obadiah and Caleb. The more hands, the better.”

He muscled his way past her and grabbed the next bucket coming down the line, bypassing her without a second look.

She slapped her hands on her hips, prepared to scold him for being so presumptuous. So presumptuous as to take from her a task her arms could no longer bear. “Fine,” she sputtered, suddenly aware of her nightcoat and her hair slung down her back in a braid. “I’ll look in on the kinner.”

“Aenti Susan is bringing food.”

She wasn’t sure if his words were meant to assure her, to tell her to get something to eat, or to direct her to help. Surely he didn’t think he could tell her what to do. She had enough people doing that.

“Go on, you look done in.”

The quiet assurance in the words told her he expected her to
do what he said, but only because it made sense, not because he wished to lord it over her. Nee, more like he had some sliver of concern in him for her.

Why, she couldn’t imagine. He seemed to barely tolerate her presence. He didn’t want her around. Certainly didn’t want to share anything with her or spend time with her.

“We’ve got this.”

His words were almost drowned out by the sound of sirens still in the distance but coming fast. Deborah whirled. The lights flashed red and white and yellow up and down with the deep ruts and grooves in the dirt road that led from the asphalt highway to the farmhouse.

By now most of the house had been reduced to smoldering flames. She backed away but didn’t leave in search of Susan. Her stomach, soured by the overwhelming stench of burning wood, rubber, and fabric drenched in water, demanded she think of something else, anything but food.

More than a dozen Englischers in fireman jackets with thick, yellow reflecting lines on them streamed from two fire trucks that looked plenty worse for wear and several pickup trucks that surely were their personal cars. They didn’t unfurl hoses or ask about water. They huddled together, hands on hips, and surveyed the scene. They spoke among themselves and then to Leroy, John, and the other men.

The bucket line slowed, then stopped. Phineas trudged in her direction, his bare feet sinking into the mud, making squelching noises. When he looked up, his expression told her when he registered her presence and he veered to the right, away from her. “Wait, Phineas, why aren’t they doing anything?”

“Too late.” He wiped at his soot-covered face. His sleeve came
away black. “They’ll just stick around and make sure it doesn’t spread and treat what they call the hot spots.” He paused next to her, his hunched posture speaking volumes about his weariness. “You best go inside.”

“Go inside where?” She flung her hands in the air, then pointed at the pile of smoldering remains. “There?”

“The barn.” He ducked his head and looked at his feet as if he’d never noticed them before. “You don’t want to stay out here in your . . .”

He cleared his throat. Heat scorched Deborah’s cheeks and her neck. Her ears burned. “There’re no clothes in the barn, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“The women are gathering clothes right now. Susan and the others, they’re bringing food and clothes.”

In the drab dawning of a gray day, she saw something in his expression. A genuine concern for her. “That’s gut. You’re right. Danki.”

“Don’t thank me. I didn’t do nothing.”

The sour tone was back.

“Fine.”

She turned and slipped and slid her way across the muck, resigned to the thick coat of mud that covered her feet and legs. It matched the soot on her arms and face. Even opening the barn door proved to be almost too much for the shaking muscles in her arms.

Inside, she found Rebekah sleeping, the little ones stretched out around her on old horse blankets spread across piles of hay.

Hazel curled her small body around Rebekah’s feet, her eyes closed, her fat fist clutched against her mouth. Rachel and Hannah lined up as if they were in their bed, side by side, arms and legs
all tangled up. Deborah wished she could do the same. When she closed her eyes, she saw flames shooting from the kitchen, destroying the braided rug on the floor, devouring the oak table and benches, incinerating the Burpee seed catalog on top of a pile of mail strewn over a battered, old pine table, licking up the walls until it consumed a calendar hung there. The bedding in their small bedroom. Her letters. From Josie and Aaron. All gone. The fire’s appetite had been voracious. It had taken everything from a family who had little.

She bent her head and searched for words of prayer. None came. They’d traveled halfway across the country to start a new life here, and that new life hadn’t lasted two months. Between the two families, fourteen people were now homeless. No house in this tiny district had room for that many people. It would be better for everyone if Deborah’s family of six returned to Tennessee. Wouldn’t it?

What
now, Gott? Home? Please let it be home.

How dare she ask? Who was she to question God’s plan? He had one, no doubt. For the life of her, Deborah couldn’t figure out what it was. “Rebekah, Rebekah, wake up.” She couldn’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts anymore. She knelt and touched her sister’s face. “Wake up.”

Rebekah stirred. “Did they save anything? One dress . . . my shawl . . . my bonnet? Our Sunday shoes?”

“Nothing.” Deborah dropped onto the hay and sat cross-legged, close enough to smooth Hazel’s tangled, wheat-colored curls. The little girl sighed and stuck her thumb in her mouth. Something she hadn’t done in at least a year. “Not a stitch of clothing.”

“What will we do?”

“We’ll make the best of it.”

“Like Daed always said.” Rebekah’s face crumpled. A tear slid down her cheek, teetered on her lip, then disappeared. “I miss Daed.”

Whatever
it
was. “Me too,” Deborah whispered as she hugged her little sister tight. “Me too.”

“I miss home.”

“I know.” Deborah hugged harder. “Me too.”

She had to convince Mudder this trip had been a mistake. They would all go home. Together.

FOURTEEN

“There you are!”

Trying to ignore the irritation in Stephen’s tone, Abigail smoothed the pile of dresses Susan had given her and climbed down from the buggy in front of John’s barn so she could face Stephen. She hadn’t been avoiding him. She’d been busy collecting clothes for the kinner. They couldn’t traipse around all day in their nightclothes. She forced herself to meet his gaze. Soot darkened his white-blond beard. Smudges on his cheeks looked like black paint.

He held out both hands as if to embrace her. They were black as well. Water soaked his pant legs, the hems were ragged, and his boots were covered with mud. He looked like a horse that had been ridden hard and put up wet. She took a step back. “You look tuckered out.”

“I’m fine. I wish I could’ve done more.” He tucked his dirty fingers in his suspenders and shrugged. “We did what we could. Thank Gott no one was hurt. He will provide.”

“He will.” Her heart knew this, but her head still wondered why it was necessary to take everything in one fell swoop. Hadn’t
they started over once already? “I do feel for John and his fraa, though.”

“It’s just stuff. They’ll leave it all behind when they leave this earth anyway.” He snapped the suspenders as if to punctuate his optimistic statement. “When I first heard, I came running to make sure you were all right, but I couldn’t find you and I was needed on the water line.”

“Susan took me to find some . . . things for the kinner.” Things remained as awkward as ever between them, ever since the kiss in front of his house. The kiss and the fall and the discovery that he lived in a pigsty. “We fled the house in our . . . with nothing more than our . . . nightclothes.”

“Jah.” His face reddened under the caked dirt and soot. “Gott will provide.”

“We’ll be fine.” Except for the part of her and her five children not having a stitch of clothing to their names or a bed to lay their heads in. That was selfish of her. John and Eve had lost everything too, including their home. “I’m taking these to the barn. The girls need to get dressed.”

Heat curled around her neck and warmed her cheeks. Stephen ducked his head, his ears turning red. “Jah, go, go.”

Hugging the enormous pile of clothes to her chest, Abigail started toward the barn. She had dresses and fresh prayer kapps for her four girls and Eve’s three. They could string blankets across the last stall and make a changing room. She’d brought soap, and she could send Deborah for water. They could scrub up. Everyone would feel better with clean faces and some food in their stomachs.

“Abigail.”

Startled, she glanced back. Stephen trailed after her. He
chewed on his lower lip, making his beard bob. She stopped and turned. “What is it?”

His hand gripped her elbow, leaving dirty fingerprints on her sleeve as he steered her away from the barn door and around the corner. She stumbled to keep up. The dress on the top of the pile toppled to the ground. She grabbed at it, missed, and it landed in a puddle of water. “Stephen!”

“It’ll wash.” He snatched up the dress and wadded it in a ball. “I wanted to say something to you.”

“So I gathered.”

He turned the balled-up material over in hands the size of bushel baskets. “You have no place to live now.”

True. Anyone could see that. Still, she tried to be patient. As patient as she could be after a sleepless night of storm and flame. “That is true.”

“I was thinking.”

Something in his ruddy face made Abigail wince inwardly. Nee
.
Not now. Not today. “In the midst of all this upheaval, how could you have time?”

“I can do more than one thing at a time.” He sounded wounded. “I think a lot when I’m working. My mind does one thing, my muscles another.”

A good skill to have. Abigail worked to soften her tone. “What did you think about?”

“Why wait until November? Why not go to Leroy now? Ask him to announce next Sunday? We could get married two weeks later. Then it would be right and proper for you and the kinner to move into my house. Problem solved.”