The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (2 page)

Bugs. No doubt, her little brother would love this place.

The letters Stephen had written to her mother had talked about Bee County as if it were a garden oasis. Deborah had imagined groves of citrus trees so laden with oranges and grapefruits that the branches hung to the ground. He described wild grapes, olives, and figs, filling Deborah’s mind with images of something downright biblical—an Eden sprouting up in Texas. Eden with palm trees. After all, Stephen said the Gulf of Mexico wasn’t far. He even said they could wade in the salty water if they had such a hankering.

Deborah definitely had a hankering, but it didn’t involve the ocean. She sidled closer to Leila. “This is the promised land?” She kept her voice down. “Citrus and orchards?”

Leila stuck Hazel on her hip and hoisted her canvas bag onto her shoulder. “Mudder sure thinks it is.” Despite the sweat on her face and the scraggly blond hair that had escaped her prayer
kapp
, Deborah’s younger sister didn’t look the least bit concerned about meeting the people who would be her new community. “She’s as happy as a bee on honeysuckle.”

Rebekah tittered and Hazel joined in, even though at three, she couldn’t know what was so funny.

“Are those twisted things trees?” Leila wrinkled her nose as if she smelled something bad too. “They sure are stunted looking.”

“Live oak, I think.” Caleb loved to share all the tidbits of information he squirreled away in his head from his beloved books. “The cacti are called prickly pear. The fat parts are nopales.”

He stumbled over the pronunciation of the last word. It came out
no-pails
. Whatever they were called, they didn’t look like they would be featured in the garden of Eden. They were more like the wilderness Deborah imagined when the bishop preached about the Israelites wandering around for forty years.

More thoughts she would keep to herself.

“Stephen mentioned the drought.” She tried to fill her voice with bright hope for the sake of her brother and sisters. After Stephen showed up in Tennessee for a wedding, Mudder had started to smile more. Deborah liked her mother’s smile. “Some of the fields are green. Look over there—see that garden. It’s nice. They irrigate. And there’s a greenhouse. I’m sure that’s what Stephen was talking about. That’s probably his farm there across the road.”

The farm would one day be their home if Stephen had his way. And he would. Otherwise, why had Mudder agreed to move here?

The door of the Combination Store opened and Stephen strode out, one hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from
the sun.
Onkel
John marched right behind him, along with their cousin Frannie. Stephen had the lightest white-blond beard Deborah had ever seen. It matched blond hair that curled under his straw hat, and he had eyes the pale blue of a summer sky. “You made it. I’ve been waiting for you. We didn’t know what time you would get here, or the whole district would’ve turned out to greet you.”

He stumbled over some invisible rock. His face turned a deeper radish red under his sunburn. He hadn’t changed at all in the four months since they’d seen him back in Tennessee. “It’s good . . . very
gut
to see you again.”

Mudder’s face turned a matching shade of red. “I thought you might be in the midst of chores.”

“I’m here.” Stephen stopped short a few feet from where Mudder stood, arms dangling at her sides. His massive, sunburned hand came out. Then, as if he thought better of the idea, he wrapped his fingers around his suspenders and snapped them. “I’ve been waiting to see you . . . and the
kinner
.”

Mudder wiped her hands on her apron, then smoothed her prayer kapp. Deborah opened her mouth to try to break the strange pause. Leila elbowed her. She closed her mouth.

“Well, don’t just stand there. Say hello to Stephen and your Onkel John.” Mudder slipped past Stephen and accepted a hug from her brother as if to show her brood how to do it. “I’m so grateful to be here. What a long drive. My legs couldn’t take much more of that. Come, kinner.” Mudder grabbed Deborah’s arm and tugged her forward. “Onkel John is offering us a place to stay in his home. I reckon the least you can do is say hello.”

Squeezing past Stephen without meeting his gaze, Deborah nodded to her onkel, who towered over her, the sun a halo around
the flat brim of his straw hat. He settled for a quick wave, while Frannie studied her sneakers as if caught in a sudden fit of shyness.

“Let’s get your things out of the vans. That’s our place right there yonder.” John pointed to an L-shaped house down the road from the store. “No point in moving the vans. I’m sure the drivers are ready for supper and a place to lay their heads. They’ll have to drive back to Beeville for that.”

“I’ll take care of it, John. Y’all visit.” Stephen strode toward the back of the first van, Caleb, Leila, and Rebekah straggling behind him. “I imagine the kinner are hungrier than bears and tired enough to hibernate for the winter.”

He chuckled. Deborah searched for the humor and couldn’t find it. Mudder had packed plenty of food for the trip. They’d turned the meals into picnics at the rest stops along the way. If she admitted the truth, those picnics had been fun.

“I’m Frannie, remember me?” Frannie had her mudder’s wiry frame, upturned nose, and freckles. She had grown taller since the last time Deborah had seen her, but she was still a bundle of sharp corners. “Come on, I’ll help you. Careful where you step. The horses have been decorating the road today. Don’t worry, y’all will get used to this heat.”

Thankful for a friendly face on someone close to her own age, Deborah veered in Frannie’s direction, careful to avoid the horse droppings she’d been so kind as to point out. Deborah wanted to put off the moment when she would have to enter one of the houses with rusty siding, desiccated by the wind and sun, and submit to the reality that this would be her home from now on.

Appearances meant nothing. She knew that. Still, hardscrabble dirt and the buggy junkyard next to the store and the sorry-looking houses bothered her. Because they didn’t look like
home. She liked her district with the neat yards, freshly painted wood-frame houses, plain but clean. She liked the pinks, purples, and yellows of the flower garden Mudder planted every spring. Would God find fault in these folks for not picking up the place a little, making it more pleasing to the eye? He created beauty, didn’t He?

God didn’t make mistakes and God made this place.

If God didn’t make mistakes, why did Daed have to die? What kind of plan was that?

Too weary to try to sort out her disconcerting thoughts and impressions, all tangled up like fishing wire and piercing hooks, Deborah led Frannie around to the back of the second van. A strange, shelled brownish-black creature with a pointy face, pink nose, and long, scaly tail trundled toward her on four short legs. It stopped within inches of her bare toes and sniffed.

She stumbled back, arms in the air, screeched, lost her balance, and plopped on her behind in a heap on the hard, rocky ground.

The ugly animal changed directions and scurried into the scraggly, brown grass, apparently as afraid of her as she was of it. “What was that?”

A man with a shock of dark hair hanging in his eyes under the brim of his straw hat tugged a trash bag of clothes from the van and plopped it on the ground. “I’ve never had anyone scream at the sight of my ugly face before.” Despite his nonchalant tone, a scarlet blush burned across his face, deepening the ugly hue of the thick, ropy scars that marred it. He had the same twang as Frannie, but it was at odds with his hoarse voice and the harsh sarcasm that underlined his words. “Guess there’s a first time for everything.”

TWO

Embarrassed heat coursing through her, Deborah scrambled to her feet. She brushed dry leaves from her dress with shaking hands. It had taken her less than two minutes to show her cousin and this stranger how clumsy she was. She tried to look away, but the man’s marred face seemed to hold her gaze hostage.

Deep, angry scars sprawled across his cheeks, nose, and chin. Gashes had healed in brownish-red ridges that made his stretched skin pucker in painful-looking zigzag lines. One misshapen ear hung at an odd angle, and the bridge of his crooked nose sported a permanent knot. “It wasn’t you. It was that strange animal . . .”

His gaze jerked from hers toward the overgrown weeds that lined the dirt road. “You’re telling me you screeched like a girl over an armadillo?”

“I am a girl, but that has nothing to do with it. It just . . . I’ve never seen an armadillo before. I’ve heard of them, but you don’t see many in Tennessee.” She shook her head, willing herself not to stare at the vicious scars. He had blue-green eyes that reminded her of the lake back home when the afternoon sun shone on its
shimmering water. They studied her with an unnerving, unwavering neutral stare. She forced her gaze to float over his shoulder. “Are they common around here?”

“You see them now and again.” He had a sandpaper-rough voice that suggested little use, or maybe his throat had been damaged by whatever had done this to his face. “That’s why they’re the mascot of the Lone Star State.”

“On the trip here, my brother read to us all about the Lone Star State. Sam Houston, the Alamo, Santa Anna.” It had passed the time, and whether she wanted to admit it or not, Deborah had found the history lesson interesting. And knowing more about her new home made the move seem less intimidating. “He didn’t mention the armadillos, though.”

“We eat armadillo all the time. It’s a delicacy. Eve’s serving it for supper in your honor. She’ll be awful offended if you don’t ask for seconds.”

“Give her a break, Phin. Daed asked you to help with the bags, not badger the new folks.” Frannie pushed past Deborah, her hands on her skinny hips. “She’ll figure out what’s what.”

“I know people don’t eat armadillo.” At least not where she came from. Deborah didn’t need her cousin to defend her. “I came here to help my family get settled. I’m going home as soon as I can.”

Even though the thought of being separated from her mudder,
bruder
, and
schweschders
was almost too much to contemplate. Nothing was more important than family. Not even her own happiness.

“It’s just as well then, if you think you’re too fancy to eat armadillo. Around here we eat what God provides and count ourselves blessed.” Phin tossed two bags over his broad shoulders
and strode toward her in an easy long-legged stride, as if his burden weighed nothing.

The rolled-up sleeves of his faded blue shirt revealed more scars on his hands and lower arms. “Besides, we have enough mouths to feed, and you’re too scrawny to be much of a workhorse.”

“I am
not
scrawny.” Deborah planted her feet. It appeared he would sideswipe her with the bags as he passed by in a straight line for Onkel John’s house. Certain she’d end up on her behind again, she took one quick step to the left. “I do as much work as the next person.”

“Don’t mind him.” Frannie hitched up the skirt of her gray dress, climbed into the back of the van, and dragged another bag toward Deborah. “He’s always like that.”

“Who is he?”

“The beekeeper’s son.” Frannie grinned. “Name’s Phineas King. Most folks call him Phin. He was dropping off some jars of honey at the store, and Daed asked him to stick around and help with the unloading. He was none too happy about it, but no one says no to my daed.”

“His daed raises bees for a living?” Deborah knew folks who did this, but it seemed impossible anything would thrive in this barren countryside. “You can do that around here?”

“With three hundred apiaries—that’s what you call the hives—you sure can. They’ve got them spread out all over their farm and ours too.” Frannie’s tone was matter-of-fact, not like she was rubbing in Deborah’s lack of knowledge on the subject of bees. “They sell the honey in the store. Folks come in from Beeville and all around the area to buy it. Mordecai—that’s Phin’s daed—sells bees to folks who want to start their own hives. They even make candles from the beeswax and sell them. Lip balm
too. Spearmint.” She smacked her lips as if she could use some balm right at that moment.

Deborah nodded and hoisted the bag on her shoulder, but Phineas caught her interest more than bees or lip balm. How much of that contrary nature came from having those scars? Plain folks didn’t set much store by physical beauty or looks in general. She didn’t even own a mirror. But she could see how Phineas might feel an outcast. Not that anyone would make a ruckus about his looks. Still, he might feel a bit self-conscious about it. She would.

No reason to take it out on her.

“By the way.” Frannie grunted as she hopped from the van and grabbed a battered leather suitcase. “He was joshing you about the armadillo. We don’t eat them. Some folks say they carry disease, and it’s not like they’ve got a lot of meat under those shells.”

Thank
You, Gott!
At least she didn’t have to eat armadillo. That was something. “What happened to his face?”

“The van he was riding in got hit by a semitruck when he was small. It sent him right through the windshield. Threw him up on the bumper of the truck and then out on the asphalt road. He landed on his face. Messed him up good.” Frannie dragged the suitcase through the weeds, the wheels bumping over the uneven ground making it twist and turn. “It killed his mudder and almost killed him. Some of the others were banged up, but not hurt bad like him. He hasn’t been right since.”

“What do you mean, he isn’t right?”

“He was eight when it happened, and he never did talk much after that. He keeps to himself.” Frannie wiped sweat from her face with the back of her dress sleeve as she tugged the suitcase up the steps to Onkel John’s front door. The bags Phineas had
been carrying were stacked next to it. He had disappeared from sight. “He talked more to you just now than he has to me in the last year.”

Her sly expression and half-suppressed giggle made Deborah stop with her hand on the green screen door with its black netting that made it impossible to see inside her new, if temporary, home. “He was just making fun of me.”