Moe Pritchard, 62, has built custom fly rods out of his backwoods western North Carolina workshop for 18 years, ever since he took a medical retirement from the forest service after a falling tree crushed his left ankle. His worst flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he’s turned stubbornness into a personality trait since his wife Linda died of COVID in 2020. He skips every community potluck, turns down fishing trips from old coworkers, hasn’t let anyone but the mail carrier step foot on his property in three years. He only left the house at all that Saturday because the annual Watauga River Trout Festival promised a $500 grand prize for best custom rod, and he’d spent six months carving the handle from a piece of walnut he’d pulled from Linda’s favorite backyard tree.
He won, obviously, and stopped at The Rusty Minnow, the only dive bar within 20 miles that doesn’t blare top 40 country, to drink one cold draft before heading home to his empty house. The place was mostly cleared out, festival crowds having left to beat the mountain dusk, and the only open stool was pressed up against the bar next to Clara Hale, the 58-year-old town librarian who’d moved to the area right before Linda got sick. He almost turned around and left, but the bartender already spotted him, so he slid onto the stool, keeping as much space between them as the narrow seat would allow.
He ordered a Pabst, stared straight ahead at the row of neon beer signs, hoping she wouldn’t recognize him. She tapped his elbow ten seconds later. He flinched like he’d been burned. “I saw you win that contest,” she said, nodding at the rod case propped against his boot. “That handle was stunning. I’ve been trying to learn to fly fish for a year, and my ex husband always said I’d never be coordinated enough to cast a rod that nice.”
Moe grunted, unsure what to say. He’d only spoken to Clara a handful of times, mostly when he’d drop off donated outdoor books for the library’s teen summer program, and he’d always written her off as too prim, too tied to the life he’d had with Linda to even look at twice. Guilt coiled tight in his chest when he glanced over and noticed the way her silver hoop earrings caught the pink glow of the Coors sign, the faint smudge of dirt under her thumbnail from the native wildflower beds she planted outside the library every spring. The bar was warm, smelled like fried green tomatoes and old pine, and Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” hummed low on the jukebox in the corner.
She slid a bowl of salted peanuts across the bar toward him, and their fingers brushed when he reached for it. Her skin was cool, soft, and he jerked his hand back so fast he knocked a peanut off the bar onto his jeans. She laughed, a low, throaty sound that made the back of his neck feel hot. “Relax, I don’t bite,” she said, leaning in a little so she didn’t have to yell over a group of drunk fishermen yelling about the one that got away by the door. Her shoulder pressed against his bicep through his thin flannel shirt, and he could smell lavender hand cream on her wrists, mixed with the faint hoppy scent of the IPA she was drinking.
He spent the next 45 minutes talking to her, almost against his will. He told her about the walnut tree he’d used for the rod handle, about the way Linda used to sit on the bank of the creek behind his house and read while he fished. She told him about her divorce, how her ex had hated living in the mountains, had moved back to Florida to sell timeshares six months prior, how she’d been eating frozen dinners alone every night and was sick of it. Moe’s internal monologue screamed at him the whole time, told him he was betraying Linda, told him he was too old to be flirting, told him he should just pay his tab and leave. But every time he tried to stand up, she’d say something that made him laugh, or her knee would brush his under the bar, and he’d sit right back down.
The conflict hit him sharp when she leaned in, her face inches from his, and asked if he’d be willing to teach her to cast on that creek behind his house the next afternoon. His first instinct was to say no. That creek was sacred, only for him and Linda, no one else had stepped foot there in three years. But he looked at her, at the faint crinkles around her eyes when she smiled, at the way she was twisting the stem of her beer glass between her fingers like she was nervous he’d say no, and the guilt he’d been carrying for so long felt less like a weight and more like a cage he’d been choosing to stay inside. He realized the disgust he’d been feeling all night wasn’t at her, or at the way his body was reacting to her, but at himself for thinking he had to be miserable forever to honor Linda’s memory.
He said yes. She grinned, bright and genuine, and leaned in to kiss his cheek, soft, her peach lipstick leaving a faint pink mark on his stubble. He didn’t wipe it off. They finished their beers a few minutes later, and he walked her to her beat up Subaru parked at the edge of the lot. She handed him a tattered copy of Norman Maclean’s *A River Runs Through It* from her tote bag, said she’d had it behind the library desk for three months waiting for a chance to give it to him.
