A Bee in Her Bonnet

  “Why are you doing this to me?” she said, and for the first time since he’d known her, he saw distress—almost alarm—in her eyes and felt her trembling in his embrace.

  He halted abruptly, partly to spare her hands, but mostly because he’d never seen Poppy so undone. He placed her back on her feet, and she attempted to walk away from him. She could barely hobble. Not only did her knee hurt, but she’d been kneeling in the same position for an hour. She probably felt stiff as a board.

  He reached out to help her, and she pushed his hand away. “You must really hate me,” she said. He heard the sob in her voice even if she didn’t show it on her face.

  “Hate you? We don’t like each other very much, but I don’t hate you.”

  She inched her way toward the house, walking as if she’d never used her legs before. “And yet you’re so eager to humiliate me in front of my family.”

  His mouth fell open. “Why would I want to humiliate you?”

  “You know how foolish I would look if you carried me into the house like a baby. You always have to be better. You always have to win.”

  His irritation grew like a toadstool in the damp grass. Did she really think he’d try to hurt her feelings? He took a few steps to get in front of her. It didn’t take much. She moved like an old man with two wooden legs. “Poppy, stop.” She tried to go around him. “Will you stop for one minute so I can say something?”

  She stopped, but he didn’t know if it was because he asked her to or because she had lost the ability to walk.

  He wanted to reach out and take hold of her shoulders so she wouldn’t fall over. Something told him that would be a very bad idea. “Poppy, I would never purposefully embarrass you. We don’t like each other, but neither you nor I are mean like that.”

  “You weren’t trying to humiliate me?”

  He slumped his shoulders. “I was trying to help.”

  She pursed her lips and looked away. “I don’t need your help.”

  He pointed to her knees. “Oh, I’d say you definitely need help. Most girls do not find it embarrassing to be carried when they are hurt.” He flashed a cocky grin. “And if I’m the one doing the carrying, most girls would find it exciting.”

  She snorted her disapproval. “I’ve never met anyone as proud as you are.”

  He took a bow. “Stubborn and arrogant. My two best qualities.”

  “Jah. Your very best ones.”

  Luke huffed out a breath. “Poppy, you’re obviously in a lot of pain. Why do you want to do this to yourself? It’s no trouble for me to build the chicken coop. I’ve laid many a floor by myself.”

  “I want to learn,” she said.

  “Not a good enough reason with blood trailing down your leg.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay then. To prove I can do anything you can do.”

  He pinned her with a no-nonsense look. “You can’t, and you’re not going to prove anything if you faint from loss of blood.”

  “I won’t faint.”

  “Maybe I’ll faint.”

  She seemed to be biting back a tart reply. “I need to help you.”

  “Why?”

  She lowered her eyes and stared at a spot on the ground just to the left of Luke’s foot. “You’ll say it serves me right.”

  He tilted his head in an attempt to get her to look at him. “I promise I’ll try to keep my mouth shut.” No matter how much she irritated him.

  She nibbled on her lower lip. “I think the chicken coop might be my fault, and I want to help rebuild it if I’m responsible.”

  “It wonders me why you would think that,” he said.

  “Boys don’t exactly like me.”

  “That’s no reason to chop down your chicken coop and tip over your beehives.”

  “Menno Kauffman kicked his dog, and I gave him a fat lip.”

  “Recently?” he said.

  “Sixth grade. Marty Hoover picked on the little kids all the time. I got in my share of fistfights with him.”

  “Recently?” Luke asked again.

  “Eighth grade. In fourth grade I shoved Alvin Lambright’s face in the snow when he threw rocks at Rose.” Poppy slumped her shoulders. “There’s a long list of boys who would be very happy to see me get my comeuppance.”

  He shook his head. “Poppy, that was a long time ago. Alvin Lambright is married with two children, Marty Hoover lives in Nebraska, and Menno Kauffman has so many girlfriends, he wouldn’t have time to take an ax to your chicken coop. They’ve all been baptized, Poppy. Why would they break their vows to get petty revenge for something that happened years ago? Not even Alvin Lambright is that much of a dumkoff.”

  Her lips twitched. “You think Alvin is a dumkoff?”

  “He once left his boots in the oven to dry and baked them to a crisp.”

  The twitch became a grin. “I’ve never thought all that highly of Alvin. But even if it isn’t my fault, you won’t talk me out of helping.”

  “That wasn’t my intention, even if I thought it would work. You won the race. I’ll keep my word.” He held out his hand. “If you don’t want to be carried, will you at least let me offer an arm to lean on so you don’t fall and injure your other knee?”

  She grimaced and wrapped both arms around his. “Only until we get up the porch steps.”

  “Do you want me to give you a stiff shove into the house?”

  They found another dead mouse on the porch. Luke picked it up and tossed it into the bushes.

  “That’s my job,” Poppy said.

  “You’d end up in a heap if you tried to bend over.”

  Poppy opened the front door, and Luke followed her into the house. The kitchen and sitting area were one big room, with a large wooden table directly in front of him as he walked in the door. The honey-colored wood floor had seen some wear. There were dents and divots everywhere, but the floor itself had been laid tight and straight. Being a carpenter, he noticed things like that.

  Even at nine in the morning, the great room felt warm and muggy. All the windows were open, and a slight breeze teased the curtains back and forth. An elegant white cat with yellow eyes and a flat pink nose lounged on the window seat to Luke’s left. The cat regarded Luke with something akin to disdain before turning away and turning up its nose. Luke was obviously beneath the cat’s notice, but he wasn’t offended. He hated cats.

  Poppy’s Aunt Bitsy sat at the table jotting things down in a notebook. Some of the folks in the district whispered behind their hands that Bitsy Kiem was odd and not to be trusted. She did have some unusual habits, like wearing earrings and coloring her hair strange shades of green and pink, but Luke knew Bitsy as the no-nonsense woman who’d come to their house every week when his dat had cancer and helped his mater with chores and baking. Her apple pie had been the best treat in the world to a boy who had been asked to carry the weight of the farm on his very small shoulders.

  As far as he was concerned, Bitsy could wear earrings and tattoos all day long.

  She looked up from her notebook and propped her chin in her hand. “I told Rose not to feed you.”

  Luke didn’t even attempt to guess what she meant. “Poppy’s been hurt.”

  Bitsy frowned, scooted her chair out from under the table, and stood up. “Again?”

  “It’s not bad, B,” Poppy said, her voice betraying the pain she felt.

  Bitsy bustled over and pinched her fingers around Poppy’s ears. “What happened, little sister? Are you all right?”

  “Her knee has a big gash in it,” Luke said. He wasn’t about to let Poppy talk her aendi out of the emergency room.

  Bitsy folded her arms across her chest and eyed Luke with suspicion. “Every time you come around, Luke Bontrager, my Priscilla gets hurt. This is becoming a very bad habit. What did you do this time?”

  He swallowed past the big lump in his throat. “We had a race.”

  Poppy nudged Luke aside. “It was my fault. I was going so fast I fell at the finish line.”

&n
bsp; “Did you win?” Bitsy asked.

  Poppy bloomed into that smile Luke found sort of interesting. “Jah. I’m faster.”

  “Then it was probably worth it,” Bitsy said, eyeing Luke as if Poppy had put him in his place but good.

  He clenched his teeth. Poppy hadn’t proven anything except that she had better shoes to run in.

  Bitsy pulled a chair from the table and pointed to it. “Sit, Poppy, and let’s have a look.”

  Poppy obeyed her aendi without arguing or rolling her eyes. Why was it always such a battle between him and Poppy?

  Bitsy pulled the hem of Poppy’s dress past her knee. New blood mixed with the old.

  “You’re going to need a tetanus shot,” Luke said.

  “It wonders me if you’ve been to medical school, Luke Bontrager.” Bitsy didn’t seem to care that lockjaw was a horrible way to die. “You think you know so much.”

  He wasn’t about to back down just because Bitsy questioned his intelligence. “She could die without a tetanus shot. And she’ll need stitches yet.”

  Bitsy simply twitched her lips and knelt down to get a closer look at Poppy’s knee. She pressed her thumb lightly around the gaping wound and pulled the skin this way and that to ascertain how deep the cut went. “How bad does it hurt?”

  “Not bad,” Poppy said, hissing at her aunt’s touch.

  Why did she have to be so brave? Most girls would have made a terrible fuss. It wasn’t bad to make a fuss. It was what girls did.

  “Let’s clean it up,” Bitsy said. “And though I don’t want his head to get any bigger, Doctor Luke is right. It’s very deep.”

  Poppy glanced at Luke. “It looks worse than it is. I just need a Band-Aid and a little bit of antiseptic spray. I’ll have a nice scar in a few weeks.”

  “You won’t even be able to bend your knee,” Luke said.

  “Ever again?” Bitsy asked, with mock innocence.

  Luke could be just as bullheaded as the Christners. “She needs stitches.”

  “You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room,” Poppy said.

  “Why should I talk to you? You won’t listen.”

  Poppy narrowed her eyes. “The last time I listened to you, we spent hundreds of dollars at the emergency room, and my hand wasn’t even broken.”

  “I’m not the only one who thought it was broken,” Luke said, his blood almost to the boiling point. He just wanted to build a chicken coop. Was that too much to ask? He looked at Bitsy and made one more attempt. “Will you see to it that she goes to the doctor?”

  Bitsy studied him as if she were looking at a horse to buy. “I think you two can work that out between yourselves.”

  You two? Did she mean him and Poppy? Poppy would argue with him about which way was up if she had a mind to. They couldn’t work out anything between themselves.

  Bitsy went to the other side of the butcher-block island and pulled a metal bowl from the cupboard. She ran some water in the bowl, grabbed a washrag and towel from a drawer, and took the hand soap from the counter. She put her supplies on the floor next to Poppy’s chair and knelt beside her. Starting at the bottom, she scrubbed the blood from Poppy’s leg while Luke tried to decide where to fix his gaze. He wanted to make sure Bitsy washed Poppy’s knee properly, but he wondered if he should have been staring so faithfully at her exposed leg. He didn’t want her to think he had any interest in it.

  When Bitsy washed the cut, it started bleeding hard. Luke filled another bowl at the sink, and Bitsy squeezed the clean water onto the wound to flush it out. Cleaning it made it look that much worse. Wouldn’t Poppy consider getting stitches?

  He didn’t need to ask. The set of her jaw told him all he needed to know. Poppy was immovable.

  He heard the words come out of his mouth before he had time to think. “I could glue it back together for you.” Why not? He’d glued his lip back together once. If she refused to get stitches, super glue was a gute second choice.

  Poppy eyed him suspiciously. What had he done to make her so doubtful? Dan said he was grumpy, but he was only ill-tempered when people deserved it.

  Poppy always deserved it.

  Oh. Well. Okay.

  Maybe he’d given her reason to be wary. He did, after all, just ask for permission to touch her knee, and he’d acted pretty grumpy about it.

  “I thought you wanted me to get stitches,” she said.

  “It’s plain you aren’t going to follow my advice, and that knee needs something. I glued my lip together before. Remember?”

  “You glued your lip together?” Bitsy said. She looked to the ceiling. “Lord, where are You hiding all the smart boys?”

  Bitsy had a reputation for talking to Gotte right out loud. At least Luke knew right where she stood with heaven. He grinned and pointed to the tiny scar on his upper lip. “I glued a cut closed. It might work on Poppy’s knee, Lord willing. Do you have super glue?”

  Bitsy nodded. “Any Amish fraa worth her salt keeps super glue on hand. You never know when you’ll have to glue something back on, like the cat’s tail.”

  Luke studied her face to see if she was joking. He couldn’t tell. He glanced furtively at the cat, but its tail, if it had one, was tucked underneath its body. “Okay then,” he said. “If you agree, Poppy, I’ll see what I can do about your knee.”

  “Will I still be able to help with the chicken coop?”

  He thought about telling her no, but he suspected that if he said no to the chicken coop, she’d say no to the glue. “After I put you back together, you shouldn’t bend your knee or the cut will tear apart.”

  “I can hammer boards with one leg out straight.”

  Of course she could. She’d do it standing on her head if she had a mind to.

  He tried not to growl. “You can still help with the chicken coop if you promise not to do anything to rip the wound open.”

  Poppy frowned as if she wanted to argue but couldn’t decide if she should. “I promise.” She dabbed blood from her knee with Bitsy’s towel. “What do I need to do?”

  Luke felt like smiling, but Poppy would probably take any show of happiness as gloating. “Bitsy has cleaned it out well.”

  “I’m glad you approve, doctor,” Bitsy said.

  He ignored Poppy’s unsympathetic aendi. “It needs to be as dry as possible.” He scooted a chair in front of Poppy. “Prop your leg on this, and keep your knee straight.”

  Bitsy rummaged through a drawer for the super glue while Luke washed his hands. After taking the glue from Bitsy, he positioned himself on the floor next to Poppy’s leg, and she handed him the towel.

  She leaned in to watch him work, and he caught a whiff of that pleasant honey-and-vanilla scent she always seemed to carry with her. Today the vanilla had a slight hint of cinnamon that made him remember that wonderful-gute apple pie with cinnamon. He loved cinnamon. And apples. And pie. Poppy Christner pie.

  He cleared his throat and concentrated on the slow work of drying the moisture from Poppy’s wound, trying his best not to hurt her in the process. He occasionally glanced up to check her expression, but all he saw was fascination in her eyes. If he was hurting her, she didn’t care.

  “Well,” Bitsy said, returning to her place at the table. “Do your best, and don’t glue your fingers together.”

  “I’m more likely to glue my finger to Poppy.”

  Bitsy frowned. “I’m not letting you hang around here just because you’re glued to my niece.”

  Luke kept a straight face. “I don’t mind sleeping on the floor on a sleeping bag.”

  Poppy looked at Luke, cocked an eyebrow, and twitched her lips as if she were trying not to smile. It was the most adorable look he’d ever seen from her. His heart hopped in his chest like a startled grasshopper.

  “Don’t worry, young man. If you need to be detached from Poppy, I can cut off your finger. I’m good with a meat cleaver.” She casually jotted something in her notebook as if she hadn’t just threatened him with a s
harp object.

  Luke chuckled, though he didn’t doubt Bitsy might seriously consider cutting off his hand just to be rid of him.

  Once he dried Poppy’s cut, he took the lid off the glue and carefully pressed the two edges of the cut together. He ran a thin line of glue along the jagged skin and then went across the wound again with another layer.

  Keeping the wound pressed together with his fingers, he glanced at Poppy. “Don’t be alarmed. I need to hold on to your knee like this for a few minutes.”

  “Don’t get fresh,” Bitsy said, not even looking up from her notebook.

  Luke forced his lips together to keep from grinning. It didn’t work. “I’ve never heard the bishop preach against boys holding on to girls’ knees.”

  “That’s because you missed church yesterday,” Bitsy said.

  Luke shook his head. “I was there. Erna King fell asleep and slipped off the bench in the middle of the minister’s sermon. You gave her a hand up. The minister didn’t say anything about knees.”

  Bitsy nodded. “Okay, then. You have my permission.”

  He looked at Poppy. “Do I have your permission?”

  Was she blushing? Probably just flushed from the pain. Then again, a boy she didn’t like very much had his hand on her knee.

  “Why do you have to hold it?”

  “It needs to dry completely so I can apply another coat. Every gute carpenter knows you have to let the bottom coat dry or you’ll mess up the paint.”

  Poppy regarded him with her brilliant green eyes. “Okay. Just don’t get your germs on my cut.”

  “I washed my hands,” he said, before falling into an uncomfortable silence. He didn’t have anything to do but sit on the floor with his hand on her knee and try to look busy.

  Poppy must have felt the awkwardness creeping between them. She gave him a half smile. “Denki for fixing my knee. I don’t like the hospital.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “The last time I was a patient in a hospital was at my own birth,” Bitsy said. “It was not a good experience.”

  “You remember when you were born, B?”

  “Jah. But I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday.”

  Poppy craned her neck to look at her aunt. “What are you writing? You’ve been at it all morning.”