Rudy Gallo, 62, retired commercial beekeeper, didn’t want to be at the McDowell County fire department chili cookoff. The gravel parking lot reeked of burnt sausage, cheap lager, and diesel fumes from the 1987 pumper truck parked by the entrance, and every third person who walked past clapped him on the back and asked how his post-op knee was holding up, like his March surgery was the most exciting thing to hit this town since a black bear broke into the general store’s honey shelf two years prior. He’d only shown up because 12-year-old Jase from next door had begged him to buy a raffle ticket, and Jase had mowed his lawn twice a week for six weeks when he couldn’t bend his leg far enough to reach the mower’s pull cord, so he owed the kid.
He was halfway through a bowl of five-alarm chili that made his eyes water, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his frayed gray flannel sleeve, when someone stepped up next to him so close their shoulder brushed his. He tensed, ready to brush off another round of empty small talk, when he caught the scent of lavender shampoo mixed with the sharp, sweet tang of clover honey. “You’ve got a little chili on your cuff,” a woman’s voice said, soft, rough around the edges like she spent half her time outside yelling over mountain wind. Before he could react, she was dabbing at the bright red splotch on his left sleeve with a crumpled paper napkin, her knuckle brushing the thin, silvery scar on his wrist from a 2017 hive swarm that had landed him in the ER for three hours.
He looked down at her. Silver hair pulled tight in a braid, work boots caked in red clay, a patch on her navy flannel that read “Buncombe County Apiarist” stitched in sunflower yellow thread. He knew who she was. Maren Hale. Fire chief Jim Hale’s ex-wife. The whole town had picked Jim’s side when they split two years prior, gossiping that she’d left him for a fancy government job in Raleigh, no one bothering to mention she’d spent 20 years volunteering as the fire department’s EMT, that she’d coached half the town’s Little League teams when their parents couldn’t make it. No one talked to her if they could help it. Rudy’s first instinct was to step away, to not give the gossips camped out at the picnic tables any more fodder than they already had.
She held out a small glass jar of honey, the label handwritten in loopy cursive. “Wild blackberry, picked last month up on Craggy Mountain. Figured a beekeeper might appreciate a sample. I read your paper on varroa mite-resistant stock back in 2011, when I was still getting my certification. The split-hive method you laid out? Saved my old operation three years running.” Rudy blinked. No one had mentioned that paper in a decade. He’d written it a year before his wife Lorraine got sick, when he still thought his work mattered more than anything, before he sold his 40-hive Catskills operation and moved south to outrun the ghost of her sitting at their kitchen table sorting honey labels.
He took the jar from her, their fingers brushing for half a second. Her hands were calloused, just like his, sticky with a thin film of honey around the knuckles. The jolt went up his arm so fast he almost dropped the jar. Hot shame climbed up his neck immediately. He hadn’t so much as looked at another woman since Lorraine died, had told himself he’d never be that widower, the one who jumped at the first crumb of attention from someone who wasn’t a cashier at the grocery store. He wanted to step back, to mumble a thank you and walk back to his truck, but he couldn’t make his feet move.
They talked for 45 minutes by the chili table, ignoring the side-eyed glances from the other attendees. She told him she’d moved back to the county three months prior, running the native pollinator program for the extension office, had been trying to track him down for weeks to ask about his old hive stock because she’d heard he kept a small operation at his house. He told her about the 12 hives he kept in his backyard, the peach tree he’d planted the year before that was finally bearing fruit, the peach pie he’d baked that morning that was sitting on his kitchen counter cooling. He didn’t know why he said that, didn’t know why he followed it up with “You could come by and try it, if you want. I can show you the hives, too.” He held his breath, half hoping she’d say no, half terrified she would. She smiled, the corner of her mouth tugging up higher on one side, and said “I’d like that.”
They drove back to his place in her beat-up Ford Ranger, her brindle pit bull curled up in the back seat, snoring loud enough to cut through the Johnny Cash playing on the busted radio. The sun was dipping below the Blue Ridge Mountains by the time they walked out to his backyard, the sky streaked pink and tangerine, the bees drifting back to their hives for the night, the air cool enough to make the hair on his arms stand up. He pulled two slices of pie out of the tin, handed her one on a paper plate. Their fingers brushed again, this time he didn’t pull away. She took a bite of pie, hummed, and leaned against the fence post next to him, her shoulder pressed firm against his. A honeybee landed on the edge of her plate, crawling toward the crumbs of flaky crust, and she didn’t swat it away, just watched it move, a soft smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
