Elias Voss swiped sweat off his brow with the back of a calloused hand, the throbbing bee sting on his left wrist pulsing in time with country music blaring from the county fair’s main stage. It was 92 degrees in late August sun, air thick with the smell of fried Oreos, cotton candy, and clover honey he’d drizzled into sample cups of his small-batch mead. He’d manned the booth for seven hours, and the only thing that could make the day worse was a visit from the county extension office.
Sure enough, he spotted her ten feet out. Clara Marlow, head of the local pollinator program, the woman who’d sent him three certified letters in the last year demanding to inspect his 42 hives for mites, the woman he’d chewed out over the phone two weeks prior for enforcing rules written for corporate apiaries, not guys with a couple acres off a dirt road. He crossed his arms, ready to tell her to leave before he sicced a stray drone on her, but she didn’t have a clipboard. She held a half-eaten fried pickle, and she was smiling.
She leaned in over the folding table, khaki work shirt unbuttoned at the collar, a smudge of dirt on her left cheek, and the scent of lavender hand cream and wild mint hit him, sharp enough to cut through the fair’s greasy fog. “Heard your peach mead’s the best thing at the fair this year,” she said, nodding at the jug behind him. Her elbow brushed his when she reached for a sample cup, the contact light, unexpected enough that he fumbled the bottle he was grabbing for half a second. He poured her a half-inch of mead, watched her sip it, her eyes fluttering shut for half a beat. “Tastes like summer,” she said, and he had no snarky comeback ready.
She pointed at the bee sting on his wrist, skin puffy and red. “Got salve for that in my bag. Beats the hell out of the baking soda paste you’re probably using.” Before he could protest, she pulled a small tin out of her cargo pocket, popped the lid, and reached for his wrist. His first instinct was to yank back—he hadn’t let anyone touch him that wasn’t a grocery store cashier in close to three years—but he stayed still. Her fingers were cool, calloused at the tips from planting milkweed along county roads, the salve smelling like tea tree and chamomile, stinging fading almost as soon as she rubbed it in.
They talked for 20 minutes, the crowd thinning as the sun dipped low. He found out her husband had been a logger, killed in a felling accident four years prior, that she’d taken the extension job to get out of her empty house, that she hated the mite inspection rules as much as he did, had lobbied the county council for six months to amend them for small independent beekeepers. He told her about his wife Mara, who’d gotten him into beekeeping for their 25th anniversary, how he’d kept the hives going after she died of breast cancer, how he’d stopped letting anyone help with them because it felt like letting go of a piece of her.
The first crack of thunder hit right as the fair’s closing announcement blared over the speakers. Rain poured down ten seconds later, fat warm drops drumming against the metal awning over his booth, stranding them under it as everyone else ran for their cars. He pulled two crates out from behind the table, grabbed a bottle of reserve blackberry mead he’d saved for a special occasion, and poured them each a plastic cup full. They sat shoulder to shoulder to stay out of the rain blowing in under the awning, knees bumping every time one shifted, lightning flashing occasionally and lighting up the smile on her face when he told her about the hive that swarmed the county commissioner’s back porch earlier that spring, the same commissioner who’d pushed through the inspection rules. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, her hand landing on his forearm, warm through his damp denim shirt, and she didn’t move it for ten full seconds.
The rain slowed to a drizzle 40 minutes later. She helped him load crates of mead and empty jugs into the bed of his beat-up Ford F-150, their hands brushing when they lifted a full case of peach mead together, rough texture of her work gloves catching on the calluses on his palm. He leaned against the truck bed after they were done, the paper she’d scribbled her phone on crumpled in his hand, the back of one of the same inspection notices he’d been ready to burn a month prior. He asked her to come out to his farm the next day, see the hives, taste the wildflower mead he’d been aging in oak barrels for the last year. She nodded, tucking a strand of wet silver hair behind her ear, and told him to text her when he got home safe so she knew he didn’t hydroplane on the dirt roads.
He watched her climb into her own beat-up pickup, wave at him through the windshield, and pull out of the fair parking lot. He unfolded the crumpled paper in his hand, smoothed it out, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his work shirt, right next to the queen bee marking pen Mara had given him for their first beekeeping season.
