Elroy Voss, 62, spent 38 years carrying mail in rural Vernon County, Wisconsin, retired four years prior, and now restores decommissioned vintage post office boxes to sell at regional craft fairs. His wife Karen died of ovarian cancer eight years ago, and he’s avoided even casual one-on-one conversations with women since, convinced any flicker of interest would be a betrayal of the 34 years they spent together. It’s a stupid rule, he knows, but it’s the only one that’s kept the guilt at bay long enough to get out of bed most days.
Mid-August county fair, 82 degrees, humidity so thick you can taste the clover and fried cheese curds in every breath. His booth is wedged between a honey seller and a retiree who knits wool socks for hunting season, and he’s already sold three of his higher-end boxes by 10 a.m. That’s when Mara Carter wanders over. She’s 58, Karen’s second cousin, runs the maple syrup stand three spots down the row, owns a 120-acre farm north of town that’s been in her family since the 1920s. He’s known her since he was 22, always wrote her off as off-limits, family adjacent, not even a thought worth entertaining until that exact second.
She’s wearing a faded Green Bay Packers flannel tied around her waist, jeans caked at the cuffs with hay from feeding her cows that morning, silver hoop earrings glinting so bright in the sun he has to squint a little to look at her face. She leans in to run a finger along the edge of a 1968 PO box he sanded down and re-stained to a warm oak finish, her shoulder brushing his bicep when she shifts to get a better look at the embossed postal logo on the front. He freezes. He can smell the maple sugar hand cream she uses, the faint tang of pine from the trees she taps every spring, the mint of her gum when she breathes out. “You still have that little scratch on your wrist from when Karen’s old hound bit you back in ‘97?” she says, nodding at his arm, holding eye contact for two beats too long for someone who’s supposed to be just family, a little smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. He mumbles an excuse about needing to restock his price tags, and she laughs, loud and warm, says she’ll be back later.
He can’t stop glancing down at her booth the rest of the afternoon, watching her laugh with customers, wipe sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, heft full gallon jugs of syrup like they weigh nothing. Around 3 p.m. she brings him a maple milkshake, extra whipped cream, still frosty around the edges, sits on the edge of his folding table so close their knees knock when she crosses her legs. “Karen told me once if you didn’t stop moping around after she was gone, she was gonna come back and hide all your postal memorabilia in the cow pasture,” she says, soft, no teasing edge this time. He feels his throat tighten, admits he’s been scared to let anyone else in, that he thought it meant he didn’t love Karen enough. She reaches over, taps the back of his hand with her fingers, leaves them there for ten slow seconds before she pulls away to go help a group of tourists browsing her stand.
The fair shuts down at 8, dark storm clouds roll in fast over the bluffs, and it starts pouring before he can even get half his boxes loaded into his pickup. He’s fumbling with a frayed tarp over the last crate when she runs over, holding a big clear plastic poncho, ducks under his booth’s tin awning with him. There’s barely enough room for the two of them, so her back is pressed flush to his chest, he can feel the heat of her through her thin cotton t-shirt, the way her shoulders shake a little when a clap of thunder booms overhead loud enough to rattle the booth’s metal legs. She tilts her head back to look up at him, rain drops caught in her gray-streaked bangs, and she doesn’t pull away when he lifts a hand to brush one off her cheek. “I’ve been thinking about kissing you since I walked over here this morning,” he says, quiet enough that only she can hear it over the rain drumming on the awning. She grins, grabs the front of his faded USPS work flannel, pulls him down to her.
By the time the rain slows to a drizzle 20 minutes later, his face is sticky with her cherry lip gloss, his hands are tangled in her hair, and neither of them is making a move to leave. They load his boxes into the back of his pickup together, she tosses her syrup jug crates in next to them, and when they climb into the cab, she reaches across the center console, laces her fingers through his. The radio is playing old Merle Haggard, the wipers swish back and forth across the windshield, and for the first time in eight years, he doesn’t feel a twinge of guilt when he squeezes her hand. He turns onto the rutted dirt road leading to her farm, and doesn’t look back.
