Earl Hagstrom, 62, spent 37 years keeping honeybees across 120 acres of northern Minnesota pine and clover, sold the whole operation three years after his wife died of ovarian cancer, still wears the same scuffed black leather work gloves every single day, even to the annual Aitkin County Harvest Festival street dance. The fingers are thin at the pads, cracked along the palm seam, stiff from years of propolis, bee stings and rain, and he won’t let anyone touch them. Not the guys at the VFW when they slap his back over a beer, not his niece when she tries to yank them off to paint his nails for a joke, no one. He says they’re the only thing that keeps his arthritic knuckles from throbbing when the temperature drops below 50, but that’s only half the truth. The other half is that they’re a barrier, a way to keep from having to touch anything that might feel too soft, too new, too much like moving on.
He’s leaned against the beer tent pole sipping a Grain Belt Premium when it happens. The music’s loud, some cover band hammering through a Garth Brooks deep cut, the air smells like fried cheese curds, pine smoke and fermented apple cider, and a woman he recognizes from the public library trips over a kid’s discarded glow stick and spills half her spiked cider right down his left forearm, right where the glove cuff meets his flannel sleeve.
“Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in her jacket pocket. He knows her name is Lila, 28, moved to town six months ago to work part-time at the library while she finishes her master’s in environmental science, and he’s avoided talking to her this whole time because he’s got no business noticing how her overalls sit low on her hips, or how she bites the corner of her lip when she’s looking up a book call number, or how she laughs so loud at the old guys’ bad fishing jokes that she snorts a little. He’s old enough to be her dad. The thought makes his stomach twist, equal parts shame and stupid, fluttery want he hasn’t felt since he was 16 and took his high school sweetheart to the same exact street dance.
She steps in close, so close her shoulder presses against his bicep, her cool hand brushing the cuff of his glove before he can flinch back. The cider is still warm, spiked with cinnamon and clove, seeping through the flannel to his skin. “Let me get that, I didn’t see the damn glow stick on the ground, some kid left it right in the walkway,” she says, dabbing at the wet spot on his sleeve, her fingers brushing the edge of his wrist again. He flinches hard, and she pulls back, eyes wide. “Oh, sorry, did I hurt you? Your hands, I heard you have arthritis, I didn’t mean to jostle you.”
He blinks. “How’d you know about the arthritis?”
She grins, crinkling the corners of her hazel eyes, and the wind blows a strand of chestnut hair across her face. “Checked out that dog-eared copy of *Commercial Beekeeping for Cold Climates* you donated to the library last spring. You wrote a whole rant in the margins about how winter hive checks wrecked your knuckles, and then a note about that scar on your left wrist from that 2018 bee sting that almost got your arm amputated. Mrs. Henderson told me who you were.” She nods at his gloved hand. “Can I see it? The scar, I mean. I’ve been thinking about getting into small-scale beekeeping for the community garden, I want to know what I’m getting into.”
He stares at her for a full ten seconds. No one’s asked to see his hands in three years. No one’s cared enough to ask. The shame that’s been coiled in his gut all night loosens a little, replaced by something warmer, sharper, like the first sip of good whiskey after a long day out in the hives. He hesitates for half a second, then tugs the glove off, his calloused, scarred, knobby knuckles exposed to the cool October air.
She takes his hand in both of hers, turning it over gently, her palms soft, her fingers light as she runs a thumb along the thick, silvery scar snaking up his wrist. He can feel the heat of her skin through his, the faint smell of lavender soap on her wrists mixing with the cider on her breath, and he doesn’t pull away. “Jesus, that’s intense,” she says, looking up at him, their faces so close he can count the freckles across her nose. “You’re lucky you kept the arm.”
“Lucky I had a good nurse,” he says, referring to his late wife, and she nods like she already knows. She doesn’t let go of his hand. The band shifts to a slower, softer cover of a Patsy Cline track, and people start pairing up to sway in the middle of the street. A group of his old beekeeper buddies hoot and wave at him from across the tent, and he flips them off, making her laugh.
They stand there for another five minutes, her still holding his hand, him telling her quick stories about the hives: the time a bear broke into his apiary and ate 12 full frames of honey, the time he won first place at the state fair for his clover honey, the way the hives sound in the spring when all the queens start laying. She asks questions, actually listens, doesn’t flinch when he tells her about the 2018 sting, about how his wife sat with him in the hospital for three days reading him terrible western novels while he waited to see if he’d lose the arm.
When she finishes her cider, she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and nods toward the diner down the street, the one that’s open until 2 a.m. serving rhubarb pie and coffee. “You wanna get a slice? I hear they add extra cinnamon to the crust this time of year. I’ve got a hundred more questions about beekeeping, if you’re not sick of talking about it yet.”
He tucks the worn leather glove into the pocket of his work jacket, doesn’t put it back on. He nods, and she grins, lacing her fingers through his as they step around the glow stick on the ground, past the beer tent, past the old guys polkaing in the street. The cool October wind bites at his bare knuckles, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t mind the ache.
