Ron Hale, 58, retired IBEW lineman with 32 years of storm shifts and frozen knuckles under his belt, has avoided every new “community initiative” his small Ohio town has rolled out since his wife Diane died four years prior. He thinks the downtown bike lanes are a waste of tax money, the new craft brewery serves overpriced seltzer masquerading as beer, and the farmers market’s 2024 artist grant program is just an excuse for out-of-town kids to sell ugly pottery for $40 a mug. The only reason he braves the 82-degree August humidity every Saturday is Milt’s peach stand, the peaches so ripe they leak juice through the paper bag before he gets to his truck. He wears his faded work jacket even in the heat, a habit from years of carrying tools and climbing poles, the frayed IBEW patch on the chest frayed at the edges, a thin white scar slicing across his left knuckle from a 2007 line fire.
He steps up to Milt’s stall mid-afternoon, reaches for the fuzziest peach on the top stack, and another hand closes around the same fruit, their knuckles brushing. He pulls back fast, looks down, and meets the eyes of a woman with sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, freckles dusting her nose, calluses rough as his own on the tips of her fingers. She laughs, a low, warm sound, and tucks her hand back into the pocket of her cutoffs. She’s Clara, Milt’s niece, she says, just moved back from Chicago after a divorce, runs the glassblowing stall right next to Milt’s, here on the town’s artist grant. There’s a smudge of ash on her left cheek, a faded Flogging Molly t-shirt clinging to her shoulders, flannel tied around her waist. He mumbles his name, drops his gaze to the peach crates, and feels heat creep up his neck, a sensation he hasn’t had since he was 17 fumbling through asking Diane to prom. He buys a dozen peaches, twice as many as he usually gets, and walks away fast, already mad at himself for acting like a skittish kid.
He makes it three steps past her stall before he glances over, and stops dead. On the front edge of her table, lined up in a row, are thick, clear glass tumblers, etched with tiny power line poles, the ceramic insulators rendered in a soft, glowing blue. She catches him staring, leans in so close he can smell lavender shampoo and burnt sugar from her kiln, and says she designed the set for the local lineman scholarship fund. Her dad was a lineman too, she says, died on a storm shift when she was 12, she’s been donating half her sales to the fund ever since she started blowing glass. He leans in, runs a finger over the etchings, the glass still warm from sitting in the sun, and feels that tight, sharp pull in his chest he’s spent four years shoving down. He tells himself he’s being an idiot, that he’s too old for this, that wanting to talk to her is a betrayal of Diane. He mumbles something about the work being good, walks to his truck, and eats a peach on the drive home, juice dripping down his wrist, sweeter than any he’s ever had.
He shows up the next Saturday at 10am, tells himself he’s just there for peaches, even though he still has six left in his fridge from the week before. He brings a jar of wild honey from the beehives he keeps in his backyard, says he saw she sold honey sticks at her stall, figured she’d like the real stuff, no added corn syrup. Her face lights up, she leans in to take the jar, and her elbow brushes his, the rough fabric of her flannel scraping his bare arm. She offers him a root beer from the cooler under her table, and he sits on the folding chair next to her stall for an hour, listening to her talk about glassblowing, how you have to work with the heat instead of fighting it, how even a tiny, invisible crack can ruin a whole piece if you don’t catch it early. He finds himself telling her about the 2011 blizzard, how he spent 14 hours up a pole in -12 degree weather fixing the line for a town of 180 people, how you never fear the power, you just respect it. Milt winks at him from across the peach stall, and Ron ignores him, for once not caring what anyone thinks.
The sky turns black at 2pm the third Saturday, thunder rumbling low enough to rattle the glass on her table, and the wind picks up fast, sending paper bags and empty soda cups flying across the market. He helps Milt load his peach crates into his van first, then runs over to Clara’s stall, grabs the heavy crate of lineman tumblers before the wind can knock it off the table. Their hands wrap around the same wooden handle on the crate, her upper arm pressed tight to his, and he can feel the heat of her skin through his thin jacket. The rain hits two minutes later, cold and sharp, soaking through his hair, dripping off the brim of his worn work hat. They get all the crates loaded into her beat-up Ford Ranger, and she leans against the passenger door, rain dripping down her neck, mascara smudged a little at the corners, and asks if he wants to come back to her cottage. She’s got peach pie in the fridge, she says, fresh brewed coffee, a dry blanket by the wood stove. He hesitates for half a second, thinks of the photo of Diane on his kitchen counter, the note she left him before she died telling him to stop being so stubborn and live a little. He nods, says that sounds good.
They drive to her small cottage on the edge of town, rain tapping hard on the truck roof, Johnny Cash’s ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ playing low on the radio. She gives him a too-big flannel to change into when they get inside, lights the wood stove, and brings out two slices of pie and mugs of black coffee, sitting across from him at the scuffed pine kitchen table. Her foot brushes his under the table, and he doesn’t pull away. He takes a bite of the pie, sweet peach and buttery crust melting on his tongue, and for the first time in four years, he doesn’t feel guilty for enjoying it. He reaches across the table, brushes the smudge of ash off her cheek, his thumb lingering for half a second on the soft curve of her jaw.
