The Beekeeper's Son (The Amish of Bee County Book 1) (12 page)

“I had a special friend.”

He figured as much. A girl like her. It surprised him she wasn’t already married.

“He left Tennessee and moved to Ohio.”

“Sorry.”

“Gott’s will. At least that’s what he says.”

“Sometimes people like to call their actions Gott’s will because then they can do what they really want to do.”

“Aaron’s not like that.”

“So you thought.”

“So I thought.”

They walked in silence for a stretch. Phineas didn’t try to find another topic of conversation. They had nothing in common, except geography. He had never had a special friend, likely never would. The dusk deepened as clouds blotted the stars and moon. It became harder to see the rutted road in front of them. Deborah stumbled a few times but still said nothing.

At the intersection, she veered right. He followed.

“You don’t have to keep walking with me. It’s out of your way and it’s been a long day. You’re surely tired. And I schtinkich.”

“I’ve gotten used to the smell.” He didn’t want this time to end. Not yet. Tomorrow things would go back to the way they always were, but for tonight, for just this one time, he wanted to walk along the road with a pretty girl. “You can’t walk around out here alone at night.”

“It’s only another mile or so.”

“It’s dark.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark.”

“Me neither. Only what’s in it.”

Deborah chuckled, a soft sound that said she would acquiesce. “It says something about you that you would admit it. Especially to me.”

“You, being a woman?”

“Me, being almost a stranger.”

“Not so strange. Okay, maybe a little.”

They both laughed then, the sound light and more than a little surprised.

The silence grew again, filled only by an owl hooting and barn swallows cooing.

“Can I ask you a question?” Her voice sounded much wearier than it had a few minutes earlier. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“Shoot.”

“Why don’t you go to the singings?”

The dusky blanket of night worked to his advantage. She couldn’t see the firestorm of red that surely crept across his scarred face. He cleared his throat.

“You don’t have to answer.”

He wasn’t a coward. Or maybe he was. He’d gone to one singing when he turned sixteen. Four years ago. “It didn’t suit.”

“You don’t like singing?”

“I don’t like making people—girls—uncomfortable.”

“Why would you make them uncomfortable?”

“You seem like you’re smart enough. You can figure it out.”

Her pace slowed. “Because of your scars?”

He fought a sudden knot in his throat. He’d set all this aside long ago. Why would it bother him now? “Because there’s no point. The idea that I might show an interest in more than friendship with any one of them scared them silly. It showed on their faces.”

The looks. He’d seen them all despite their best attempts to hide them. Pity.
Poor
Phineas.
Compassion.
Poor
Phineas, it’s not
his fault.
Fear. Fear he’d want to walk one of them home and they’d have to say yes because they were good girls who didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
Poor
Phineas, please, Gott, forgive me,
but don’t let him pick me.
He could play volleyball or kickball or baseball with them, but walk them home and steal a kiss in the moonlight, no, that was a different skillet of fish too hot to handle.

“Like you said, you’ve known each other forever. If they’re your friends, the scars don’t matter.”

Easy for someone so pretty to say. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why? I won’t say anything.” She crossed her arms and halted in the middle of the road. “I miss talking to my friends.”

Was she asking him to be her friend? He’d never really had friends. Not that Will and Jesse and the others hadn’t tried. Things had changed after the accident, and they eventually left him alone to his books and his binoculars and to the rituals of harvesting honey and caring for the beehives. She was lonely. He understood that; moreover, his heart hurt for her. His heart wasn’t used to such a thing. He’d been turned inward for so long, he’d forgotten how to look out. Swallowing hard, he forced himself to gather the words he kept locked inside. “The scars matter.”

“Why?”

“Don’t play dumb. Those singings are about pairing up. Finding the person you’ll court and marry. Who would want to . . . marry . . . this?” He pointed at his face, even knowing the clouds scudding across the sky hid the light of the moon needed to illuminate the ropy scars. “If you said they don’t bother you, you’d be lying.”

“If you said you weren’t feeling sorry for yourself, you’d be lying.” Her tone was tart. She sighed, a sound like a small child missing her mother, such a sad sound. “Just like I would be. We both need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves.”

“You haven’t been here long enough to know what I need to do.”

“I know what it’s like to be lonely.” The tartness returned. “I know what it’s like to walk down this road and feel all alone.”

“I like being alone.” It wasn’t a lie. He’d gotten used to it. Embraced it.

“I don’t believe you.” She stopped at the entrance to the gravel drive that led to her Onkel John’s house. “No one wants to be alone.”

The clouds over the moon drifted apart and the light illuminated her face. She looked so sad something caught in Phineas’s throat. She also looked beautiful. Plain folks didn’t talk much about that sort of thing, but she was pleasing to the eye. In a place so desolate, a man couldn’t help but know beauty when he saw it. That was why he spent so much time looking for birds. They were beautiful, especially in flight. So many times after the accident, he raised his head to the skies and watched them soar effortlessly and longed to do the same. To fly away from the loss and the hurt and the pain.

And the thought that he’d done this to himself and to his mudder. He swallowed the ache in his throat. “I’ll walk you up to the house.”

Her head cocked, her gaze glued to his. She didn’t move or speak.

“Deborah?”

“I would like to see the birds you watch sometime.”

“You would?” Nothing could’ve surprised Phineas more. “You want to bird-watch?”

“I want to see what you see.”

“I do it to be alone.”

“You don’t need to walk me.” Her pique made her voice high. She took two steps away from him. “I know the way.”

“Wait.” For some reason he couldn’t bear to leave her on a sour note. “Fine. I’ll show you. We’re past the migration season, but there’re still a few birds around.”

She halted and turned back. “Are they pretty?”

“Some. I’ll let you know when.”

He turned away, not sure what had just happened.

“Phineas.”

He looked back. Deborah waved at him, a quick, see-you-soon sort of wave. “You’re wrong.”

“About what?”

“It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

“You been talking to my daed?”

“Nee, but I’ve heard he’s a wise man.”

“Good night, Deborah.”

She waved again. “See you, Phineas.”

“See you, Phineas.”
She didn’t really see him. Not under the inky dark of a cloudy night. For the first time in his life, he’d walked a girl home. Phineas hardly knew Deborah, but they had talked as if they’d known each other forever. His body felt curiously light, as if his feet didn’t touch the hard dirt still warm from a sun already set.

Dark. It was dark. She couldn’t see his face. That was it. She could forget about his ugly mug when they spoke under the cover of dark.

How he wished it could be the same in the harsh light of day.

The ebullience he’d felt only seconds before dissipated like air from a pierced balloon. He tried to remember the stench of manure instead of the sweet voice and lovely face. The sound of his name spoken by her voice fluttered in his ears like the tiny, silky wings of a hummingbird.

Anger washed over him. He worked so hard not to want what he couldn’t have, and here it was again, slapping him in the face at the least expected moment. He needed to stay away
from Deborah Lantz. She would go home or she would find someone to be her special friend and he would end up hurting and alone.

Again.

TWELVE

Deborah fanned her face with a section of
The
Budget
she’d finished reading for the third time. The news from Tennessee only made her that much more homesick. Right now they were probably fishing at the pond on the Bylars’ farm. They would fire up the grill, set a big pan of grease on it, and deep-fry the fish dunked in flour and spices. There’d be red cocktail sauce. Her mouth watered at the thought of the spicy horseradish. And tartar sauce. And potato salad and coleslaw. The Brennamans or the Gringriches would bring homemade ice cream. Josie would bring an apple pie, because everyone knows it goes best with vanilla ice cream.

Aaron wouldn’t be there. He’d be long gone to Ohio on his big adventure. Most likely he’d picked out a girl at the first Sunday night singing. By now he was driving her home in his aenti’s buggy.

A fly buzzed her face. Deborah swatted it away with the newspaper. Flies and mosquitoes. She’d counted a dozen bites on her legs and ankles. The thought made her bend over to scratch. It only made the itch worse. Still fanning, she leaned back in the lawn chair, watching Leila, Rebekah, and the cousins play a fast
and loose volleyball game. She should join them. Fun. They all could use fun. Still, she didn’t move, held in her seat by the sheer weight of the humid evening air.

Leila smacked the ball over a net that had holes in a number of places and sagged in the middle. Frannie whopped it back so hard it knocked Rebekah back two steps. She collapsed in a gale of laughter for no apparent reason.

They were having fun. It was Deborah’s own fault she was having none. The thought made her squirm. No one liked a whiner. She rose, determined to throw off her sourpuss attitude.

“Want this last piece of watermelon?” Eve trotted toward Deborah, carrying a plate that held a thick wedge of watermelon so juicy liquid dripped off the side. “My eyes are bigger than my stomach.”

Deborah couldn’t help herself. Her gaze went to Eve’s thickening middle. Deborah had found her aunt retching in the sink the previous day. No doubt Eve was expecting again. Her skin looked pale under the flush of heat on her damp cheeks, and her fingers gripping the plate were swollen.

“The first slice was so nice and sweet, I do think I could make room for another.” Deborah took the plate and moved aside. “Have a seat. I’ll stand over here where I can spit the seeds. I want to play some volleyball in a bit anyway.”

“We could have a seed-spitting contest.” Eve settled into the chair without protest. “The boys love that.”

“The girls are having too much fun with their volleyball game.” Susan King chimed in from where she sat in the grass, her legs tucked primly under her. She and her brother, Mordecai, had come visiting in the afternoon. “Too bad Phineas didn’t come; he was a good volleyball player when he was in school. They used to
have some good games at recess. We could have the boys against the girls.”

“Why didn’t he come?” Mudder posed the question from her perch next to Onkel John on a wooden two-sitter swing suspended from a frame made of plastic PVC pipe. “There was plenty of food.”

“Phineas isn’t much for visiting.” Mordecai stood with one leg propped against the only tree in the front yard that qualified as a real tree. “He was headed out to the back forty with his binoculars last I saw him. Something about some bird he thought he saw yesterday.”

Deborah paused, the wedge of watermelon halfway to her mouth. Phineas hadn’t kept his word about taking her on his next bird-watching expedition. Even though this didn’t surprise her, it still caused a wave of something like . . . hurt to roll through her. He’d acted so strange during their late-night walk—one moment friendly, the next closed up like a jar of sour pickles with a lid that couldn’t be pried off. He’d said he would take her to mollify her. That was all. He didn’t need a silly girl like her for a friend. He’d made that clear. He didn’t need friends at all.

“Why would he do that?” Mudder patted her face with a handkerchief, her expression perplexed. “Is he hunting? What’s in season here?”

“We’re so close to the Gulf of Mexico, we see quite a few tropical birds around here.” Mordecai worked at his front teeth with a toothpick, his lips bared over a neatly trimmed dark beard shot through with silver. “Mexico isn’t too far off. We’re right in the path of lots of birds that head south for the winter and come back up to have their babies in the spring.”

“Why would anyone go hunting for them with binoculars?”
Mudder asked as she worked the handkerchief along the back of her neck and then under her chin. She sounded only half interested in the answer. The only bird hunting Deborah’s daed did was with a rifle when dove, quail, and turkey were in season. “Doesn’t sound like those are eatin’ birds.”

“Nee. But they’re right pretty.” Mordecai dropped the toothpick and smiled. Phineas would look like that if he smiled. “Sometimes it’s nice to gaze on something so bright and pretty in the middle of this dry, dusty place. Reminds us of Gott’s hand at work during the creation.”

Deborah followed the finger he extended toward the horizon. A dreary, desolate sight presented itself. The ground was so dry she could drop a match and watch an inferno birth itself, blossom, and spread in mere seconds. She inhaled the scent of dirt. So much dirt.

“Look yonder.” Mordecai pointed again. The others joined Deborah in swiveling to see what he saw. “Those look like thunder boomers.”

Black, menacing clouds hung low on the horizon. A sudden wind kicked up, causing a tumbleweed to flop its way along the fence line. Grit pinged Deborah’s face and got in her mouth.

“It’s moving pretty fast.” Susan wiped at her face with a sleeve, as if she had experienced the same nasty surprise. “We might actually get some rain out of it.”

The volleyball game stopped. Rebekah held on to the ball while Leila and Frannie took down the net. A sort of breathless anticipation seemed to hang over the yard. Deborah could feel the hopefulness that ran through each person, connecting them together.