Jo Brown - An Amish Reunion

Daniel wasn’t sure what the elderly woman was trying to convey to him. Did she want him to leave her great-granddaughter alone so he didn’t have a chance to hurt her again, or was Grossmammi Ella hoping he’d court Hannah? He thought about assuring her that he had no plans to do either. Nothing had changed for him. He was working toward his goal, and it required every bit of his attention.

The door opening allowed him to avoid answering the old woman. In astonishment, he saw Hannah was dressed as she’d been when she’d left. Didn’t beekeepers wear protective suits to keep from getting stung? She held a small metal container with a spout like an inverted funnel on one side and small bellows on the other. The odor of something burning came from it.

“Is that all you’re bringing?” he asked.

“The smoker is all I need.”

“What does it do?”

She looked at the container and squirted some smoke into the air between them. “It baffles the bees. The smoke masks the chemical signals bees use to communicate with each other. They can’t warn each other I’m near. Otherwise, they’d believe the hive is in danger, and they’d attack. It’s an easy way to get close to a hive without getting stung.”

“A gut idea. I’m not fond of bees.”

“They’ll leave you alone if you leave them alone.”

“But we aren’t going to leave them alone.” He reached to take Shelby’s tiny jacket off a nearby peg. It was bright red, and the front closed with a zipper and was decorated with yellow ducklings, something no plain kind would wear.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asked.

“Getting Shelby’s coat on her. I’ll let you help your great-grandmother.”

“What? I’m not taking a toddler or Grossmammi Ella near the bees.”

“They could stay by the road and—”

“Don’t be silly.” She pushed past him and strode toward the front door. “You stay here with them, and I’ll go to the bridge.” Turning, she smiled, and something pleasant—something he remembered from when they spent time together—rippled through him. “I don’t need you to point out where the bees are. I can find them.” She left.

Daniel went out onto the porch with Shelby in his arms, her coat half on. Behind him, he heard Grossmammi Ella asking where everyone was going. He saw her struggling to get to her feet. He didn’t hesitate as he rushed back into the house, not wanting the old woman to fall.

Making sure Hannah’s great-grandmother was seated again and the door closed, he stared out the window as Hannah stepped over the stone wall beside the guardrail. She hurried down the steep hill toward the creek.

He wasn’t worried about her falling in. The current was sluggish because the water behind the dam upstream beside the remnants of the old mill was still partially frozen. Daniel wanted to get as much work as possible done before the water rose when the ice melted. Once the failing joists were replaced, he could complete the interior work even if it rained. Discovering the hive had threatened to destroy his timetable.

He had to make this job a success. The bridge was one of the few in the area not washed away by Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The wear and tear on the bridge couldn’t be ignored any longer. The original arched supports and the floor joists needed to be strengthened. Most of the deck boards would have to be replaced. The walls were rotted. Work he knew how to do, and he’d been pleased when the highway supervisor, Jake Botti, asked him to take over the project. It was the first step toward his long-held dream of becoming a general contractor.

Suddenly Shelby began chattering in his ear and wiggling. He set her on the floor. Once he took off her coat, she waddled to a chair and began to try to pull herself onto it.

Daniel’s eyes shifted between the toddler and Hannah who was standing by the bridge and staring at the beam where he’d found the bees. She squirted smoke at the opening several times. She paused, then squeezed the bellows on the side of the smoker again. The wisps of smoke swirled around her, making her disappear; then she emerged from the gray cloud and retraced her steps to the house.

He opened the door before she could. “Did you see them?”

“Ja.” She left her smoker on the porch, then came into the house. Motioning with her head toward the kitchen, she walked past Shelby who was focused on climbing onto the chair.

Grossmammi Ella didn’t acknowledge any of them as she continued to gaze out the window. Unsure if she’d notice if Shelby fell, Daniel grabbed the toddler before he went into the kitchen.

“Would you like some tea while we talk?” Hannah asked as she opened the cupboard and reached in for two cups.

“Sounds gut. I’ll put Shelby in her high chair, if you’d like.”

She shook her head. “Let her play on the floor. Next to the sewing machine, there’s a small box of toys I found in the attic. Will you get them out for her?”

He complied, trying to curb his impatience. He wanted to ask about the bees again. If Hannah couldn’t move them, work would have to be delayed until an exterminator could come to the bridge. Having promised he’d get the project done in six weeks or less, losing precious time might make the difference between finishing on time or being late.

Hannah didn’t speak again after she’d placed two steaming cups on the table. Sitting, she waited for him to pull out the chair across from her. She took a sip from her cup, then said, “You’re right. It’s a hive of honeybees.”

“Can you move it?”

She nodded as she wrapped her hands around her cup. “I’ll have to move it twice.”

“Why?”

“If we lived farther away from the bridge, I could move your hive once. Because I keep my own hives so close to the bridge, if I move those new bees to a new hive behind the house, they’ll simply return to the bridge and rebuild their hive. I’ll keep them in the cellar in the dark for the next couple of weeks or so. Then, when I put the new hive outside, the bees will have lost their scent trails to the bridge. They’ll become accustomed to the new location and stay here.”

He watched her face as she continued speaking of relocating the bees as if they were as important to her as her great-grandmother. Her voice contained a sense of authority and undeniable knowledge about how to execute her plan. The uncertain girl he’d known three years ago had become a woman who was confident in her ability with bees.

When she smiled, an odd, but delightful tremor rushed through him again. He dampened it. They were in the here and now, not the past.

“Daniel, I’ll need you to do one more thing for me as part of our bargain.”

“What’s that?”

“The hive is going to need a new home. I don’t have any extra honey supers, and it will take at least a week or two for some to arrive from my supplier.”

“Honey supers?”

“The boxes stacked to make a hive.”

He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he said, “Show me what you need, and I’ll build it. Anything else?”

“No. I’ve got the rest of the materials I need.”

When Hannah went to the back door, he scooped up Shelby and followed. Somehow he was going to have to persuade these two stubborn Lambright women they could trust each other. He wasn’t sure how.

Daniel faltered as Hannah walked to two stacks of rectangular boxes set off the ground on short legs. She glanced back as if wondering why he’d stopped, but she halted, too, when her gaze settled on Shelby. Hannah explained what size the four stackable boxes she’d need for the new hive must be as well as describing the cross braces that supported the frames for the honeycomb.

“Sounds simple enough,” he said when she finished.