Judd Pritchard is 57, spent 31 years as a high-voltage lineman for Duke Energy before a 2017 ice storm sent him sliding 20 feet down a utility pole, wrecking his left knee so bad he walks with a permanent slight limp, retired early, now runs a small natural beekeeping operation out of his 7-acre plot outside Marshall, North Carolina. His biggest flaw? He holds grudges like a squirrel holds acorns, and he’s been holding one against the county extension office for two years, ever since they started sending him passive-aggressive emails about his “unregulated hive placement” and refusal to use synthetic miticides. He’s been single since his wife left him six years prior, convinced he’s too set in his gruff, work-obsessed ways to make space for anyone new, and he’s written off every extension agent on staff as a stuffy, rule-obsessed stick in the mud who cares more about checklists than actual bee health.
He’s set up at the Madison County Fair on a sticky late August Saturday, folding handwritten labels for his wildflower honey jars, when a woman drops a stack of wooden jam crates two feet from his booth, and he looks up and recognizes her immediately. Clara Marlow, the extension agent who signed every single one of those emails. She’s 49, wears faded high-waisted jeans and a linen button-down tied at the waist, has a thin silver scar slicing through her left eyebrow, and when she meets his gaze, she smirks like she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
They don’t speak for the first two hours. Judd can hear her laughing with customers who stop by her jam booth, the sound warm and throaty, nothing like the stiff, formal tone of her emails. When a hyper 7-year-old in a cowboy hat knocks over a full jar of his sourwood honey, she’s over before he can even push himself up from his folding chair, dabbing at the sticky puddle with a roll of paper towels she keeps tucked in her back pocket. Her forearm brushes his when they both reach for a stray shard of glass, and he catches a whiff of jasmine lotion mixed with the fried Oreo and cotton candy scent hanging over the fairgrounds, his chest tightens so sudden he almost forgets to breathe.
She teases him first, wiping honey off her palm onto her jeans. “For a guy who fights me every time I suggest a concrete hive stand, you sure make the best honey in the county. I’ve been buying it from the general store in Mars Hill for a year, didn’t want to give you the satisfaction of knowing I liked it.” Judd blinks, for a second he forgets every snarky comeback he’s rehearsed for the day he finally met her. “You could’ve just knocked on my door. I would’ve given you a free jar.” She leans against the edge of his table, crossing her arms, and her knee brushes his where he’s sitting, the rough denim of her jeans scraping softly against his. “And listen to you lecture me about how my miticide guidelines are ‘corporate garbage’ for an hour? No thanks. I’d rather pay $8 a jar.”
The sky turns dark fast, fat raindrops starting to splatter on the wooden tabletops before either of them can react. Judd grabs his stack of honey jars, she grabs her crates of jam, they both haul their inventory under the metal grandstand as the rain pours down so hard it drowns out the sound of the Tilt-A-Whirl and the carnival barker’s shouts. They huddle under a frayed blue tarp he grabbed off the back of his truck on the way, pressed shoulder to shoulder, their legs tangled so close he can feel the heat of her calf through their jeans. A drop of water drips off the edge of the grandstand right onto the tip of his nose, and she snorts so hard she has to cover her mouth with her hand, shoulders shaking with quiet laughter.
He kisses her before he can talk himself out of it, one hand cupping the side of her jaw, the other braced against the rusted metal beam behind her. She kisses him back immediately, her fingers tangling in the graying hair at the nape of his neck, and he tastes peach jam and lemonade on her tongue, feels the rough edge of her scar against his thumb when he brushes it over her eyebrow. When they pull apart, she’s grinning, her cheeks pink, and she taps the faded lineman logo on the front of his worn flannel shirt. “You gonna stop ignoring my emails now?” Judd laughs, shaking his head, rain dripping off the brim of his baseball cap onto her shoulder. “I’ll sit through your stupid guidelines meeting. But only if you bring that peach jam you sell. And only if we do it at my place, so I can show you the hives aren’t as reckless as you think.”
They wait out the rain for 40 minutes, talking about his hives, about the 10 years she spent working on organic farms in Oregon before moving back to North Carolina to care for her ailing dad, about the way the ice storm that wrecked his knee knocked out power for 12 days in her old neighborhood, how she’d sat on her porch drinking cold tea and listening to the trees crack, wondering if any linemen were out working in the mess. When the rain lets up, they don’t go back to their booths. Judd drives her back to his place in his beat-up 2004 Ford F-150, the floor of the cab littered with hive tools and empty honey jars, country radio playing low through the crackling speakers. He pulls a chunk of fresh comb out of one of the hives behind his Airstream when they get there, hands it to her, and she bites into it, honey dripping down her wrist, golden and thick in the golden hour light slanting through the oak trees. She wipes a drop of honey off his chin with her thumb and pops it into her mouth.
