Johanna's Bridegroom

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?”