Moe Pritchard is 61, runs a 12-hive apiary outside Asheville, North Carolina, and has held the same grudge for 32 years. He doesn’t attend class reunions, won’t drink the local pinot noir his ex-wife used to love, and until three months ago, refused to even harvest lavender honey, the scent of which used to cling to her hair for days after she worked in their backyard garden. He’s got calluses thick as leather across his palms from prying apart hive frames, a faint white scar wrapping around his left wrist from a nasty anaphylactic reaction his first year keeping bees, and a habit of staring holes through anyone who asks about his life before he moved back to the mountains in 2013.
The October air at the weekly downtown farmers market smells like pressed apple cider, fried apple pies, and the sharp, sweet tang of the wildflower honey stacked in glass jars on his table. It’s 10 a.m., the crowd is just picking up, a group of kids chase a golden retriever past his stand, yelling so loud the few bees lingering near the open jar of sample honey buzz off in a huff. He’s wiping smudges off a jar of sourwood honey when she stops in front of his table, boots scuffing the wooden planks underfoot.
She’s in a faded red flannel rolled up to the elbows, dark jeans cuffed over scuffed work boots, a smudge of charcoal on the edge of her jaw, and a canvas tote slung over one shoulder printed with a line drawing of a bee holding a tattoo gun. She leans across the table, close enough that Moe can smell pine soap and vanilla on her, and picks up a jar of sourwood, turning it over in her hands to catch the sunlight through the thick golden honey. “Heard this is the only stuff that’ll cut a COPD cough bad enough to let an old man sleep through the night,” she says, voice low, warm, like she’s sharing a secret.
Moe’s jaw tightens. He knows exactly who she is. Clara Voss, 37, tattoo artist over on Haywood Road, daughter of the real estate agent his ex-wife left him for six months after their 1991 wedding. He’s seen her around town before, has purposely turned the other way every time, but this is the first time she’s come up to his stand. He almost tells her he’s sold out, almost packs up his table right then and there, but she’s looking up at him with hazel eyes that crinkle at the corners when she smiles, and he can’t make the words come out.
“Your dad?” he says, short, gruff, like the words taste bad on his tongue. She nods, sets the jar down, her forearm brushing his as she reaches for a sample stick to dip into the open test jar. The warmth of her skin seeps through the thin cotton of his work shirt, and Moe freezes, half expecting that old, burning anger to rise up, the same anger that used to make him punch holes in drywall when he was younger, that made him leave the state for 20 years. It doesn’t come. Instead, he feels something light, fluttery, like the beat of a bee’s wing against his palm.
“Dad still talks about your honey,” she says, licking the honey off the sample stick, slow, like she’s savoring it. “Said he’s never found any better, even when he traveled down to Georgia for work. Tried to come find you a few years back, but you chased him off your property with a hive tool before he could say two words.” Moe huffs a laugh, he remembers that day, had seen a car pull up the driveway, recognized the license plate, had been ready to throw a full frame of bees at him if he didn’t leave. “He deserved that,” Moe says, and she snorts, nods, doesn’t argue.
She admits she’s been driving past his apiary for three months, hiking the trail that cuts along the back edge of his property, just to watch him work the hives early in the morning. Said she saw the handwritten note taped to his shed door last week, the one that says “Bees don’t care who you’re mad at”, and decided she finally had to work up the nerve to talk to him. “I didn’t just come for the honey for him,” she says, leaning in a little closer, so their knees almost touch under the table, no space between them now. “I came because I wanted to meet the guy who writes dumb notes on his shed and makes honey that tastes like the mountains feel in September.”
Moe stares at her for a long minute, the hum of the market fading into the background, just the faint buzz of a bee lingering near the sample jar, the smell of her pine soap, the warmth of her arm still pressed to his. He’s spent 32 years letting that old grudge define every part of his life, shutting out anyone even remotely connected to that old pain, convinced letting any of it in would break him. For the first time, he doesn’t want to run. He lifts his hand, brushes the charcoal smudge off her jaw with his thumb, the rough edge of his callus scraping her soft skin a little, and she shivers, doesn’t pull away, doesn’t flinch.
He grabs two jars of the sourwood honey, wraps them in brown paper, shoves them across the table to her, no charge. He scrawls his personal cell number on the lid of one with a black permanent marker, writes “lavender honey harvest saturday 2pm” under it, even though he hasn’t made lavender honey since 1991, harvested the first batch last week on a whim, couldn’t explain why he did it until right then. “Tell your dad if he wants to apologize sometime, I’ll listen,” he says, and she grins, tucks the jars into her tote, her hand brushing his when she takes them, her fingers lacing with his for half a second before she pulls away. “I’ll be there Saturday,” she says, “I’m bringing my rescue pit, he thinks bees are flying snacks, don’t yell at him.”
She turns and walks across the market parking lot, the golden October sun gilding the edges of her dark hair, the retriever from earlier trots up to her, she stops to scratch his ears, laughs loud enough that Moe can hear her all the way across the lot. He reaches for the jar of lavender honey he stashed under the table, twists the lid off, breathes in the sweet, soft scent, and for the first time in 32 years, he doesn’t feel the heavy, hot weight of old anger sitting in his chest.
