The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (6 page)

Grinning at the thought, Phineas waited while the smoke puffed from the smoker and drifted over the open hive. The bees settled into the super, retreating toward the level that held the queen bee. Such a life she had. Her every want and need taken care of, followed about by the worker bees who assured that she filled every cell with eggs that would bear new bees and sustain the colony. Plain women worked hard and they had the babies and counted themselves blessed. Phineas pushed the thought away. It would only lead to the path of discontent. Not today.

After a few seconds, he set the smoker aside and picked up the frame grabber. The first frame was covered in thick, white wax. Perfect. Ready for harvest. Ignoring the errant bees that explored the screen over his face and trundled along his sleeves, he grabbed another frame. Equally heavy. This would be a good harvest. Daed would be pleased. They would have a goodly number of jars to sell at the store and in town. They needed supplies to repair the shed and rebuild the chicken coop.

The words of an old Englisch hymn, sung with great gusto, broke the silence, louder than any screeching sirens, followed by peals of decidedly girl laughter. Startled, Phineas lost his grip on the grabber. The frame tumbled from his hands, landed on his foot, then bounced to the ground. Bees, buzzing with indignation, flew in all directions.

Phineas hopped on one foot, teeth gritted. Ignoring the pain
in his toes, he tugged on the frame, set it upright, then transferred it to the box. The wax had cracked and honey oozed in rivulets from the gaping crevices.

“Great.” He muttered, forcing himself to step away without batting at the bees that now swarmed the frames and him. The worst thing he could do would be to wave his arms around. With measured, careful movement, he picked up the smoker and applied another dose. The bees calmed and retreated into the super.

“Ouch, ouch!”

“Who is it?” He forced himself to keep his voice calm and collected. “Who’s out there?”

Deborah peeked from behind a cluster of halfhearted mesquite. Behind her, Frannie popped out. Each held a basket in her arms and had a silly look on her face.

“Sorry, Phin, we didn’t know you were out here.” Frannie made a bold move away from the trees. “We were just picking wild grapes. Mudder wants—”

“Hush, you’ve got them all riled up.”

“Ouch! Riled up? One of them just stung me.” Deborah plopped her basket in the straggly grass, wrung her hand, and then peered at it, her face contorted with pain. “It’s already swelling. What should I do?”

“For starters, hush.” He spoke softly, much as he didn’t feel like it. “If you’re calm, they’re calm. Stay where you are. I have to close the hive.”

To Phineas’s surprise, they did as they were told. He applied a bee brush to the frames, gently encouraging the straggling bees back to their home. That accomplished, he replaced the lid on the top and picked up the box of frames. “Let’s give them some peace and quiet.”

“Peace and quiet—”

“That means no talking.”

He stalked toward the two girls. Frannie knelt and picked up the fruit that had fallen from Deborah’s basket and handed it to her. The two kept pace with him.

They walked several yards before he decided to take pity on Deborah. He settled the box on a tree stump, removed the netting from his head, and turned to her. “Let me see.”

“What?”

“You don’t speak the language or your hearing is going?” He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Let me see.”

“I’m sorry about the bees. We were singing, and then we both forgot the words to the song at the same time—”

“Stop. Talking.” What was wrong with her? Didn’t she get that her voice, all high and fast, excited the bees? “Now.”

“You can’t tell her what to do.” Frannie frowned, squinting against the sun. “Me neither.”

Men always told women what to do. It was expected. Leave it to Frannie to buck thousands of years of tradition. “Fine, you want to get stung, be my guest.” He turned to pick up the box. “I have work to do.”

“Wait.” Deborah cradled one hand in the other, both clutched against her chest as if they pained her. “Did we hurt them?”

“No, you didn’t hurt them, but you could’ve been stung a lot more. You’re lucky honeybees really are mostly interested in nectar and not humans.”

“They sting people all the time.” Even with a hurt finger, she used her hands to talk. She sure did like to argue, worse than his brothers and sister even. “Caleb got stung at a picnic last year.”

“Those were probably yellow jackets.” And she didn’t know
a thing about bees. She really should go back to Tennessee. “They’re the ones who hang around sweet drinks. Honeybees are looking for flowers.”

“Well, fine, but it still hurt.” She stared up at him, something forlorn in her face that she hoped made him feel small and mean. “Caleb’s arm and fingers swelled up and we had to take him to the doctor. He almost cried.”

“But not you? You’re not going to cry over a bee sting.”

“Nee, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

Exasperated at his own waffling, he gritted his teeth. Her ignorance wasn’t her fault and she was in pain. He didn’t like seeing anyone in pain. “I’ve been stung a few times. Let me see.”

Her expression hesitant, she extended her hand. Her forefinger was swollen and red. Phineas squinted against the sun as he peeled off the latex gloves he used to extract the frames. “Let me get the stinger out.”

“Nee.” She jerked her hand away and hid it behind her back like a child afraid of punishment. “I mean—”

“Don’t be a baby.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“Hold out your hand, then.” He had work to do. The frames needed to be relieved of their loads and returned to the hive. He silently counted to ten in German and then in English. “It doesn’t hurt that much and it hurts more to leave it in. There’s a venom sac attached to the stinger. We need to get it out of you.”

Her chin lifted and her hand came out. “It doesn’t hurt, but go ahead.”

Despite his curt words, Phineas hesitated. He’d never touched a girl outside his family.
Don’t be an idiot.
Avoiding her gaze, he took her hand in his and bent his head close. Her fingers were thin
and fragile looking and her skin soft against his rough calluses. He swallowed, suddenly aware that the first time he touched her, he would hurt her.
The first time.
That made it sound like there would be a second time or a third.

Don’t be an idiot.

With as much care as he could muster, he used the nails of his thumb and forefinger to pluck the offending stinger from her finger. Her hand jerked, but she didn’t make a sound. When he looked up, she smiled at him.

Her smile enveloped him like an early-morning breeze. He couldn’t see anything else. It seemed he might forget simple things, like how to speak or breathe.

Don’t be an idiot.

He forced his glance back at her hand. “Better?”

She shook her hand as if that would help ease the pain. “No, but that’s okay. It will be.”

“If Eve has ice, that’s the best remedy. Keep it on there for about twenty minutes.” He resorted to reciting facts he knew by heart. No thought required. “If not, make a paste of baking soda and vinegar. It will help with the itchiness and swelling. Calamine Lotion is okay, but it wears off pretty quick.”

“We don’t have ice,” Frannie announced. “But I could run over to the store and get some.”

“Nee, it’s too far.” Deborah blew on her hand as if that would help. “Eve has some calamine I can put on it. It’s fine.”

Her cheeks were pink from the heat and her eyes light blue like the Gulf of Mexico on a sunny, cloudless summer day. Phineas had never seen a prettier girl. The thought only served to irritate him more. According to Daed, looks meant nothing.

In his case, they meant everything.

“Stay away from the hives and you won’t have this problem.” He picked up the box. He had work to do. Best to focus on that. Honey to harvest. Jars to fill. He didn’t have time to babysit girls. But he couldn’t help himself. He looked back. “And don’t be wandering around here barefooted. You know better, Frannie. You want to step on a rattler?”

“A rattler.” Deborah’s voice rose on the second word. “I thought you said they didn’t come out during the day.”

“Not much.” Looking unconcerned, Frannie scratched a red welt of a mosquito bite on her neck. “Everyone knows snakes can’t regulate their body temperature, so they stay in the shade when it’s hot.”

Frannie sounded an awful lot like she was quoting Phineas’s daed. They all did it. They couldn’t help it. Mordecai was a fountain of facts, some useful, some not.

“Yeah, like under the vines where you’ve been picking grapes.” Phineas barely contained the eye roll that so irritated his daed on many occasions. “You rattle their shade, they’ll rattle back.”

“I can’t wait to go home.” Deborah marched past Phineas, the pain in her hand seemingly forgotten.

“Anyone silly enough to howl around an open beehive and clomp around barefooted out here needs to head north to the city.” Phineas flung the words after her. Why, he had no idea. “Go on back to Tennessee. We don’t need you here.”

“I will.” Her gaze was glued to the ground in front of her, her pretty face creased with anxiety. “Just as soon as I can.”

“Gut.”

Her stride lengthened. In a second she’d be running, basket and all. “And I don’t howl. Or clomp.”

She might as well have said “so there,” like a little girl. Phineas
almost laughed. Almost. She didn’t look like a little girl, and he hadn’t been nice to her. He opened his mouth.

“Don’t. You’ve done enough for one day.” Frannie brushed past him. “Stick to talking to bees. I reckon you’re better at that.”

The truth of those words stung worse than any bee.

SIX

Abigail shaded her eyes with her hand, trying to see Stephen’s house in a blazing sun hovering near the horizon. Sweat trickled down her temples and buried itself in small tufts of hair that had escaped the confines of her kapp on the buggy ride. The washrag bath she’d taken after supper, knowing this would be the evening Stephen came to fetch her for a ride to his farm, had been for naught. Her dress stuck to her skin and her nose felt sunburned. And this, at eight o’clock at night. The buggy swayed. She grabbed the front board and held on. Stephen did like to keep a pretty pace, not necessarily a safe one, given the deep, rutted grooves in the road.

“That’s it. My place yonder.” Stephen shook the reins and the horse picked up even more speed. “Not much, but it’ll do.”

It would indeed. The two-story white and rust house sat back on the road with a huge metal shed that had seen better days behind it. Beyond it were the fruit orchards and the olive trees he had nurtured for several years now. He’d told her all about them in the letters. How he built a windmill and used it to irrigate. The greenhouse he’d built. The work he did for Englischers in their fields to earn the money to do all this so when the time came, he
could support a family. The house was a little bigger than John’s. Stephen must rattle around in it alone.

“How did you come by such a house?” He’d never told her much about his life since coming to Bee County. “It seems like a lot for a bachelor.”

“I bought it from Leroy’s cousin Josiah when he decided to take his family back to Tennessee.” Stephen turned the buggy onto the gravel road on his patch of land. He glanced at her and back at the road. “I know I’ve waited longer than most to marry. But I wanted to be prepared. I wanted a family, and it seemed like first things first. Working to have the means to support a family. Buying a place for the family to live.”

Always the thoughtful, measured person. A quality to be admired in a man. Yet he’d chosen to move across the country on his own to start a new life. That showed initiative and courage. “Moving here and leaving behind your folks in Tennessee must’ve been hard.”

“Not so hard.” He snapped the reins, his gaze on the road ahead. “My daed decided to leave the farm to my older brother. He said it did no good to subdivide it. It couldn’t make enough to support a family that way.”

Emotion stained the words. Something Stephen obviously didn’t like to think about. Abigail understood that. Families could be hard. “But you learned a trade and managed fine from the looks of it.”

“And I did. Carpentry. I did a lot of different jobs, mostly working for Englischers.” He nodded more to himself than her. “That’s why I came down here. This district needed more people and Carroll County was crowded. I had a hankering to have my own place and get a new start.”

Staying in Tennessee would’ve meant seeing her and Timothy at church on Sundays and watching their family grow. A new start would’ve looked mighty fine. She glanced at the neat rows of trees, heavy with brilliant oranges. “You’ve made it work. Does your family ever come out to see you?”

“Once or twice, but they’re getting up there in years and don’t travel much anymore. I don’t know if they’ll come for the wedding.”
Wedding
came out in a stutter. “Not to get ahead of myself.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” She tried to see herself walking across that bridge, Stephen at her side, his hand in hers. Her palms felt slick with sweat.
The
heat, just the heat.
“We have time.”

Stephen cleared his throat. “We’ll see, I reckon.”

“Your farm is nice. I like it.”

“You mean that?”

She wouldn’t say it if she didn’t mean it. Stephen had a lot to learn about her. The irrigation made his farm an oasis of green in the midst of so much drabness. “I try to always tell the truth. You seem to have a green thumb.”

“What I have is Gott’s blessing. All this comes from Him.” Stephen’s face creased in a sudden grin. He hopped from the buggy and scooted around to her side where he held out his hand to help her down. “What it needs is a woman’s touch.”

His fingers felt warm and moist around hers. “I’m fine, I can make it.”

He didn’t let go of her hand. In fact, his grip tightened. “It needs a flower garden. Well, maybe a cactus garden would be easier, but you know what I mean. And a good cleaning. The grass needs to be mowed.”