Milo Rourke, 53, retired smokejumper turned one-man wildfire mitigation consultant, slumps into a sticky plastic folding chair at the Missoula County Fair beer tent at 7 PM on a Thursday, nursing a cold hazy IPA. His right knee throbs, the permanent damage from a botched 2017 jump outside Darby acting up after three hours tramping the fairgrounds to meet a client who bailed 20 minutes prior via text, saying he couldn’t miss his grandson’s sheep show. The tent hums with the distant whine of the Ferris wheel motor, the air thick with the smell of fried dough, spilled seltzer, and cotton candy syrup. He’s about to crumple his empty can and head home to his quiet, empty house when Clara drops into the seat across from him, huffing like she just sprinted the full length of the midway.
He recognizes her immediately: she moved into the blue bungalow three houses down four months prior, runs the local beekeeping co-op, they’ve only ever exchanged quick waves from their driveways before. She’s got beeswax smudged on the side of her jaw, a frayed plaid flannel tied around her waist, and a stack of empty honey stick tubs tucked under one arm. She apologizes for crashing his table, says every other seat in the tent is taken, and he grunts and gestures to the empty chair next to him, not thinking twice. She orders a hard cider, and they fall into easy, meandering conversation: she complains about the fair board jacking up booth fees 30% this year, he rants about the county council’s new half-baked fire code that ignores how Ponderosa pines burn in dry August heat.
Every time she leans in to make a point, her knee brushes his under the table, deliberate enough that he notices, not so bold that he can call her on it. He tenses up at first, old habits kicking in hard. He’s spent the last seven years deliberately keeping everyone at arm’s length after his ex-wife left him for a rookie Forest Service tech half his age, convinced the thick scar slashing across his left bicep and his permanent limp make him too broken to be anyone’s first choice. But she laughs at his dumb story about the time a moose stole his lunch mid-fire line, and she doesn’t look away when he adjusts his bad knee under the table, wincing as a sharp pain shoots up his thigh. She pulls a honey stick out of her jacket pocket, shoves it across the table, says it’s on the house, and when he tears it open, the clover honey tastes sweeter than anything he’s had in years.
She brings up the new county ordinance that passed last month, the one that bans unmarried couples from sharing a campsite at the Lolo Pass county park, and says she’s been fighting it for weeks, since half the co-op’s seasonal workers are unmarried and rely on the park for cheap weekend trips. She’d planned to head up there alone this weekend to do hive checks at the co-op’s mountain apiary, but the park rangers started turning away single women after dark last week, citing “public safety concerns” that are just a thin excuse to enforce the stupid, puritanical rule.
They leave the tent together an hour later, the sun dipping low over the Bitterroot Mountains, painting the sky streaks of tangerine and dusty rose. She steps off the curb wrong, her work boot catching on a loose chunk of asphalt, and he reaches out to catch her before she falls, his hand wrapping firm around her waist. He can smell the clover honey on her shirt, the pine sap in her hair, the faint tang of cider on her breath when she looks up at him, her eyes dark and steady. She doesn’t step back, doesn’t pull away, just holds his gaze for three long beats, the noise of the fair fading into background static for a second. He tells her he’s heading up to Lolo Pass Saturday too, to scope out burn risk for a new client, his truck has an insulated camper shell, he’s got an extra zero-degree sleeping bag, they can say they’re engaged if the rangers hassle them. She laughs, the sound rough and warm, and says she’s got a cooler of homemade mead in her hatchback, would that work as a bribe for the rangers, or for him?
They stop at his house first to grab his gear, his knee aching less than it has all week as he walks up the driveway. She reaches past him to hit the garage door opener when he fumbles with the remote, her forearm brushing the scar on his bicep, and she pauses, running her thumb over the raised, pale skin lightly, saying she’s seen worse scars on her hives’ guard bees. He tosses his sleeping bag and fire assessment notebook into the back of the truck, then turns to look at her, leaning against his tailgate, holding her canvas honey tote, the last of the sunset gilding the edges of her hair. He reaches into his jeans pocket, pulls out the half-eaten honey stick he’d stashed there earlier, and holds it out to her.
