Moe Petrov, 61, owned the only vintage snowmobile restoration shop within 70 miles of northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, and he’d avoided the town’s annual harvest festival for seven straight years before his drinking buddy begged him to haul kegs to the beer tent that Saturday. His flaw was simple: he’d built walls thick enough to stop a blizzard after his wife died of ovarian cancer eight years prior, and he considered all small-town social events a waste of time better spent sanding rust off 1970s Ski-Doos. He’d planned to drop the kegs, grab one free beer, and bolt, but the tent was so packed he couldn’t squeeze back through the crowd without knocking over a group of retirees playing cornhole, so he leaned against a splintered wooden pole at the back, hat pulled low over his graying buzzcut, grease still crusted under his fingernails from the sled he’d been working on that morning.
The first time she bumped him, he thought it was a drunk kid stumbling through the crowd, until he smelled cinnamon and spiced rum, and looked down to see half a cup of hot cider sloshed across the cuff of his worn plaid flannel. She was 49, sharp hazel eyes, a streak of silver in her dark brown hair pulled back in a loose braid, wearing a cream cable knit sweater and work boots instead of the heels he’d seen her in at the county commissioner meetings last spring. She was Clara Hale, wife of the newly elected county sheriff, the same guy who’d ticketed Moe’s shop for “improper hazardous waste disposal” six months prior even though the old oil drum he’d left by the dumpster was headed for a certified recycling center the next day. Moe had hated the man on principle ever since.
When the band launched into a terrible cover of “Friends in Low Places”, she tilted her head toward the exit and said she needed fresh air, and Moe followed her without thinking. The October air bit at his cheeks the second they stepped outside, crinkled oak leaves crunching under their boots as they walked to a weathered picnic table at the edge of the fairground, far enough from the tent that the music faded to a low hum. She sat down next to him instead of across the table, their knees almost touching, and pointed up at the sky, asking if he knew what the bright cluster of stars just above the pine line was. Moe had taught constellation navigation to his wildland fire crew back when he spent 22 years fighting fires out west, so he told her it was the Pleiades, explained how he used to use it to find his way back to camp after 12 hour shifts on the fire line. She leaned in even closer to follow where he was pointing, her hair brushing his cheek, and he smelled pine shampoo under the cinnamon of the cider.
He almost pulled away when she said she’d been following his shop’s Facebook page for six months, that she’d bought a beat up old 1976 Ski-Doo at a garage sale over the summer and had been wanting to ask him to teach her how to fix it up. He thought about the sheriff, about the small town gossip that would spread faster than a grass fire if anyone saw them together, about how he’d spent eight years avoiding any kind of mess that didn’t involve motor oil and rust. That was the conflict, sharp and clear in his chest: disgust at the idea of being labeled a homewrecker, at getting tangled up in the sheriff’s political drama, fighting the quiet hum of desire he hadn’t felt since his wife died, the warm buzz of being seen by someone who didn’t just see him as the grumpy snowmobile guy.
She must have noticed the hesitation, because she laced her fingers through his for half a second, her palm soft, a faint blue ink stain on the side of her thumb from the farm crop reports she filled out every week as the county’s agricultural extension agent. “I’m leaving him the day after the election,” she said, quiet enough only he could hear. “I’ve been waiting for months to get out, I just didn’t want to tank his campaign first.”
Moe didn’t say anything for ten seconds, just stared at their hands, his calloused, grease-stained ones next to hers. He didn’t care about the sheriff’s campaign. He didn’t care about the gossip. He squeezed her hand once, let go, and told her to meet him at his shop at 5 a.m. the next Saturday, before anyone else in town was awake, that he’d have coffee and a workbench cleared for her.
She smiled, stood up, and walked back toward the tent alone, glancing over her shoulder once to wink at him before she disappeared into the crowd. Moe sat there for another ten minutes, finishing his warm IPA, watching the stars peek through the thin cloud cover. He rubbed the faint sticky splotch of cider on his flannel sleeve and smiled, already mentally clearing a workbench for her next to the half-restored 1978 Ski-Doo he’d been tinkering with all summer.
