Johanna's Bridegroom

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—”

“Hush, Roland Byler. I think I can manage.” Chuckling, she left him at the barn and walked toward the house.

* * *

An hour later, the smell of frying chicken, hot biscuits, green beans cooked with bacon and new potatoes drew Roland to the house like a crow to newly sprouting corn plants. The boys followed close on his heels as he stopped to wash his hands and splash cold pump water over his face at the sink on the back porch. Straw hat in hand, Roland stepped into the kitchen and was so shocked by its transformation that he nearly backed out the door.

This couldn’t be the same kitchen he and J.J. had left only a few hours ago! Light streamed in through the windows, spilling across a still-damp and newly scrubbed floor. The round oak pedestal table that had belonged to his father’s grandmother was no longer piled high with mail, paperwork, newspapers and breakfast dishes. Instead, the wood had been shined and set for dinner. In the center stood a blue pitcher filled with flowers and by each plate a spotless white cloth napkin. Where had Johanna found the napkins? In the year since Pauline’s death, he hadn’t seen them. But it wasn’t flowers and pretty chinaware that drew him to the table.

“Biscuits!” J.J. said. “Look, Jonah! Biscuits!”

“Let me see your hands, boys,” Johanna ordered.

Jonah and J.J. extended their palms obediently, and Roland had to check himself from doing the same. Self-consciously, he pulled out a ladder-back chair and took his place at the table. Both boys hurried to their chairs.

On the table was a platter of fried chicken, another of biscuits, an ivory-colored bowl of green beans and another of peaches.

“I thought it best just to put everything on the table and let us help ourselves,” Johanna said. “It’s the way we do it at home. I found the peaches and the green beans in the cellar. I hope you don’t mind that I opened them.”

“Fine with me.” Roland’s mouth was watering and his stomach growling. Breakfast had been cold cereal and hard-boiled eggs. Last night’s supper had consisted of bologna and cheese without bread, tomato soup out of a can and slightly stale cookies to go with their milk. He hadn’t sat down to a meal like this since he’d been invited to dinner at Charley and Miriam’s house the previous week. Roland was just reaching for a biscuit when Johanna’s husky voice broke through his thoughts.

“Bow your heads for the blessing, boys. We don’t eat before grace.”

“Ne,” Roland chimed in, quick to change his reaching for a biscuit motion to folding his hands in silent prayer. Lord, God, thank You for this food, and thank You for the hands that prepared it. He opened one eye and saw that Johanna’s head was still modestly lowered. He couldn’t help noticing that the hair along her hairline was peeping out from under her Kapp and had curled into tight, damp ringlets. Seeing that and the way Johanna had tied up her bonnet strings at the nape of her neck made his throat tighten with emotion.

Refusing to consider how pretty she looked, he clamped his eyes shut and slowly repeated the Lord’s Prayer. And this time, when he opened his eyes again, the others were waiting for him. Johanna had an amused look on her face, not exactly a smile, but definitely a pleased expression.

“Now we can eat,” she said.

Roland reached for the platter of chicken and passed it to her. “You didn’t need to clean my dirty kitchen, but we appreciate it.”

“I did need to, if I was to cook a proper meal,” she replied, accepting a chicken thigh. “It’s no shame for you to leave housework undone when you have so much to do outside. I’m only sorry you haven’t asked for help from the community.”

“We manage, J.J. and I.”

“Roland Byler. You were the first to help when Silas lost the roof on his hog pen. You must have the grace to accept help as well as give it. You can’t be so stubborn.”

“You think so?” he asked, stung by her criticism. Personally, he’d always thought that she was the stubborn one. True, he had wronged her and he’d embarrassed her with his behavior back when they’d been courting. He’d tried to apologize, more than once, but she’d never really accepted it. One night of bad choices, and she’d gone off and married another.

“Dat?” J.J. giggled. “You broke your biscuit.”

Roland looked down to see that he’d unknowingly crushed the biscuit in his hand. “Like it that way,” he mumbled as he dropped it onto his plate and stabbed a bite of chicken and a piece of biscuit with his fork.

“Gut chicken,” J.J. said.

“If you don’t eat all those biscuits, you can have one with peaches on it for dessert,” Johanna told the boys. “If you aren’t full, that is.”

“We won’t be, Mam,” Jonah said. “I never get tired of your biscuits.”

And I never get tired of watching you, Roland thought as he helped himself to more chicken. But he was building a barn out of straw, wishing for what he couldn’t have, for what he’d thrown away with both hands in the foolishness of his youth.

Johanna’s kind acts of cleaning his kitchen and cooking dinner for them had been the charitable act of one neighbor to another, nothing more. And all the wishing in the world wouldn’t change that.

Chapter Three

At nine the following Saturday morning, Johanna stood in the combined kitchen-great room of the new farmhouse that her sisters Ruth and Miriam shared. Ruth and Eli had the downstairs. Miriam and Charley occupied an apartment on the second floor, but the two couples usually took their meals together and Ruth cooked. Miriam preferred outdoor work, and Ruth enjoyed the tasks of a homemaker. It was an odd arrangement for the Amish, one that Seven Poplars gossips found endlessly entertaining, but it worked for the four of them.

“Miriam?” Johanna called up the steps. “Are you ready? Charley has the horse hitched.”

Today, Mam, most of Johanna’s sisters and the small children were all off on an excursion to the Mennonite Strawberry Festival, a yearly event that everyone looked forward to. Their sister Grace, who still lived at home but attended the Mennonite Church, owned a car. She’d graciously offered to drive some of them, and Mam, Susanna, Rebecca, Katy and Aunt Jezzy had already gone ahead with her. But there were too many Yoders to fit in Grace’s automobile, so Miriam was driving a buggyful, as well. Anna loved the Strawberry Festival, but since Rose was so tiny, Anna had decided to remain at home and keep Ruth company. Ruth was in the last stage of pregnancy with twins and preferred staying close to home and out of the heat.

“I feel bad going off and leaving the two of you,” Johanna said. “We had such a good time last year.”

Ruth settled into a comfortable chair and rubbed the front of her protruding apron. “Until these two are born, I don’t have the energy to walk to the mailbox, let alone chase my nieces and nephews around the festival.”

Anna smiled and switched small Rose, hidden modestly under a receiving blanket, to her other breast. The baby settled easily into her new position and began to nurse. “Don’t worry about us,” Anna said. “You’re so sweet to take my girls. They’ve been talking about it all week.”

“No problem. And your Naomi is such a big help with Katy.” Johanna threw a longing glance at the baby. “First Leah, then you, and Ruth in a month. It will be Miriam next, I suppose.”

“Miriam next for what?” Anna’s twin sister came hurrying down the steps in a new rose-colored dress, her prayer cap askew and her apron strings dangling.

“Kapp,” Ruth reminded.

Miriam rolled her eyes, straightened her head covering and tied her apron strings with a double knot behind her waist. “Satisfied?”

“Ya.” Ruth, always the enforcer of proper behavior when out among the worldly English, nodded. “Much better.”

“And what is it I’m next for?” Miriam asked, unwilling to have her question go unanswered.

Anna chuckled again. “A boppli, of course. A baby of your own. A little wood chopper for Charley or a kitchen helper.”

Miriam shrugged. “In God’s time. We haven’t been married that long. And it took Ruth and Eli ages to get around to it.” She glanced at Johanna with a gleam of mischief in her eyes. “How do you know it will be me? Maybe it will be your turn next. Look at you. You’ve got that look on your face when you hold Rose. You can’t wait to be a mother again.”

“She’s right,” Ruth agreed. “You’ve mourned Wilmer long enough. It’s time you married again.”

“To whom?”

Miriam laughed. “You know who. I’ve heard you’ve been at his place three times this week. And cleaned his house.”

“Only the kitchen. And he was only there the first day, the day J.J. was up the tree with the bees. The other two times he was off shoeing horses. I had to go check on the new hive. The swarm moved into my nuc box, and I’m getting free bees.” Johanna knew she was babbling on when she should have held her tongue. Arguing with Miriam always made things worse.

“I see,” Miriam said. “You’re going to take care of the bees.”

“Exactly. It doesn’t have anything to do with Roland.” Johanna sighed in exasperation. The trouble with being close to her sisters was that they knew everything. Nothing in her life was private, and all of them had an opinion they were all too willing to share. And the fact that they’d touched on a subject that had kept her awake late for the past few nights made her even more uncomfortable. First, she had to make up her own mind what she wanted. Then she would share her decision. “Who told you I went over to Roland’s three times? Rebecca or Irwin?”

Ruth chuckled. “Just a little bird. But we’re serious. It’s not good for your children to be without a father. You know Roland would make a good dat. Even Mam says so. Roland owns his farm. No mortgage. And such a hard worker. He’ll be a good provider. And don’t forget he’s got a motherless son. You two should just stop turning your backs on each other and get married.”

“Before someone else snaps him up,” Miriam quipped. “At Spence’s, I saw one of those Lancaster girls giving him the once-over. At the Beachys’ cheese stall. ‘Atch, Roland,’” she mimicked in a high, singsong voice. “‘A man alone shouldn’t eat so much cheddar and bologna in one week. Is not gut for your health. What you need is a wife to cook for you.’”

Johanna flushed. It was too warm in the house. She went to the door and opened it, letting the breeze calm her unease. In the yard, Grace’s son, ’Kota, hung out the back door of Charley’s buggy, and Anna’s Mae bounced on the front seat. She couldn’t see Anna’s Lori Ann or Jonah, but she could hear Naomi telling them to settle down. “It’s not as easy to know what to do as you think,” Johanna said to her sisters. “People change.”

“You haven’t changed,” Anna put in quietly. “What you felt for Roland years ago, that was real. It’s not too late for the two of you.”

Johanna looked back at Anna. “You think I should fling myself at him?”

Ruth folded her arms over her chest with determination. “It’s plain as the nose on your face that he still cares for you. If you weren’t so stubborn, you’d see it.”

“What happened before...between you and him...it hurt you,” Anna continued. “I remember how you cried. But Roland was young then and sowing his oats. Can’t you find it in your heart to forgive him?”

Not forgive, but forget. Could I ever trust him again?

“Miriam!” Charley shouted from outside. “Come take this horse! I don’t trust these kids with this mare, and I can’t stand here all day holding her. I’ve got work to do.”

“Go. Have fun,” Ruth said. “But promise me you’ll think about what we said, Johanna.”

“Please,” Anna said. “We only want what’s best for you and your children.”

“So do I,” Johanna admitted. “So do I.”

* * *

The Mennonite school, where the festival was held, wasn’t more than five miles away. Mam and Grace and the others were there when Johanna and her crew arrived. Jonah and ’Kota were fairly bursting out of their britches when Miriam turned the buggy into the parking lot, and Anna’s girls appeared to be just as excited. A volunteer came to take the children’s modest admittance fees and stamp the back of their hands with a red strawberry. That stamp would admit them to all the games, the rides, the petting zoo featuring baby farm animals, a straw-bale mountain and maze and a book fair where each child could choose a free book.

“There’s Katy!” Jonah cried, waving to his little sister. Katy and Susanna were riding in a blue cart pulled by a huge, black-and-white Newfoundland dog. Following close behind trudged a smiling David King, his battered paper crown peeking out from under his straw hat. David was holding tight to a string. At the end of it bobbed a red strawberry balloon.

“I want a balloon!” Mae exclaimed. “Can I have a balloon?”

“If you like,” Johanna said. “But your Mam gave you each two dollars to spend. Make sure that the balloon is what you really want before you buy it.”