“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