Ron Hargrove, 58, retired woodshop teacher, had avoided the Morrow County Fair for three straight years. The last time he’d gone, he’d gotten in a shouting match with Gary Bennett outside the 4-H barn, two weeks after Gary led the school board vote to axe Ron’s 22-year-old program over a $12,000 budget shortfall. His wife had been gone five years by then, and the shop had been the only thing that got him out of bed most mornings, so he’d taken the loss personal, spent three years turning down invites to town events, sticking to his garage restoring 1970s fishing boats and drinking cheap lager at the VFW on Fridays. His neighbor’s 16-year-old grandson had begged him to come this year, said he’d entered a birdhouse he built from Ron’s old YouTube tutorials, so Ron caved, wore his scuffed work boots and a faded plaid flannel even though it was 82 degrees, kept his head down to avoid Gary’s campaign booth by the entrance, where the candidate was yelling about “cutting government waste” into a crackling portable mic.
He ducked into the beer garden line to avoid making eye contact, when a woman’s voice hit his ear, warm and rough around the edges, like she smoked a menthol every now and then after dinner. “You’re Ron, right? The woodshop teacher?” He turned, and it was Clara Bennett, Gary’s wife of 32 years, standing two inches from him, holding a half-eaten fried Oreo, crumbs dusting the corner of her mouth. He remembered she was 54, had worked as a dental hygienist for 20 years before quitting to help Gary run for county commissioner, her blonde hair streaked with gray pulled back in a loose ponytail, sun spots dotting the tops of her bare shoulders. He tensed up immediately, ready to snap that he didn’t want to hear whatever canned campaign pitch she’d been told to give him, but she laughed, soft, and held up a napkin. “Relax. I snuck away from the booth ten minutes ago. I can’t listen to one more speech about fiscal responsibility when he spent $800 on custom embroidered campaign hats last month.” Her arm brushed his when she reached past him to grab an extra napkin from the stack by the register, the skin of her forearm sun-warmed, soft, and Ron’s brain short-circuited for half a second, the smell of lavender shampoo mixing with fried dough and diesel fumes from the Tilt-A-Whirl curling around him, sharp and sweet.
He didn’t walk away. He couldn’t, honestly, not when she started talking about the birdhouse her grandson had made in his last woodshop class, the one that still hung on her back porch, had a family of wrens nesting in it every spring. She said she’d watched his boat restoration videos too, had been thinking about fixing up the old 12-foot rowboat she’d inherited from her dad, didn’t know where to start with its rotted transom. They wandered over to a splintered wooden bench by the horse barn, sat down with their cold beers, and her knee brushed his every time she shifted to look at a kid chasing a runaway goat or a couple walking by with a cotton candy bigger than their head. Ron spent the first 10 minutes waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for her to ask him to pose for a campaign photo, to say Gary was sorry and would bring the program back if he voted for him, but it never came. She complained about Gary’s 6 a.m. campaign strategy calls, about how he never remembered to take the trash out, about how he thought woodshop was “a waste of time for kids who should be learning coding.” Ron felt the familiar burn of anger in his chest, but it softened when she said she’d argued with him about it for three nights after the vote, that she’d told him he was cutting the only class some of those kids looked forward to all week.
The first firework went off with a deafening boom right above them, painting the sky bright fuchsia, and Clara jumped, leaning into him without thinking, her shoulder pressing firm against his, her hand flying to his forearm to steady herself. She didn’t move away when the light faded, just kept her hand there, her fingers light against the faded flannel, and Ron looked down at her, her face lit up blue and gold from the next round of explosions, her eyes shiny. A horse whinnied from the barn behind them, and somewhere a kid screamed with joy on the roller coaster. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for months,” she said, quiet enough that only he could hear it over the crowd’s oohs and aahs. “I was scared you’d tell me to go to hell because of Gary. I get it if you still want to.” He hesitated, thought about all the times he’d ranted about Gary to his VFW buddies, about all the “Gary Bennett Sucks” stickers he’d stuck to his toolbox, about how he’d spent three years holding onto that anger like it was a security blanket he didn’t know how to put down. He rested his hand on her knee, calloused from decades of planing wood and sanding fiberglass, and she didn’t flinch. “I don’t,” he said.
They made plans to meet at the diner on Main Street Wednesday morning, 7 a.m., before Gary’s first campaign rally of the week. She squeezed his hand, hard, before she stood up, wiping the last of the fried Oreo crumbs off her high-waisted jeans, and winked over her shoulder when she walked back toward the campaign booth, Gary too busy kissing a baby to notice her. Ron stayed on the bench for another 10 minutes, finishing his now-warm beer, watching the last of the fireworks fade into the hazy dark summer sky. The calluses on his palm still tingled from where her hand had been, and for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel like driving straight home and locking himself in the garage.
