Roland Voss is 62, a retired high school woodshop teacher who hasn’t let anyone sit closer than three feet to him at a public event since his wife Linda passed four years prior. His biggest flaw, one he’d never admit out loud, is that he assumes every new person who speaks to him is angling for access to the 1972 A-frame lake cabin he inherited from his dad, the one the county has been threatening to seize via eminent domain for the past six months to build an overpriced public marina. He showed up to the post-town-hall beer garden mostly for the cold IPA on tap, not for the yelling, so he claimed the far end of a splintered pine picnic bench 20 feet from the main crowd, twisting a loose screw on the bench edge with his pocket knife out of old habit.
The air smells like cut grass, citronella, and fried cheese curds from the food truck parked by the entrance. Crickets hum under the din of arguments about zoning ordinances and county budget grifts, and the aluminum can of IPA in his hand is cold enough to leave a ring of condensation on the weathered wood below it. He’s half debating leaving early when someone slides onto the bench two feet from his hip, close enough that the shoulder of their faded black flannel brushes his bicep when they adjust their seat.
He looks over, ready to make a gruff excuse about saving the spot for someone who doesn’t exist, and stops. The woman is 58, he’d guess, with streaks of silver in her dark braid, mud caked on the cuffs of her work jeans, and a carved raven pin pinned to her flannel lapel. She holds up a crumpled stack of petition papers in one calloused hand and laughs, low and warm. “Sorry, every other bench is packed with guys yelling about how the county commissioner owns a boat slip already. I’m Mara, I run the bird rescue on the north end of the lake.”
Roland nods, tenses a little, already waiting for the question about his cabin. He doesn’t answer at first, just picks at a splinter on the bench edge, until she nods at the stand of oak trees behind his property line, the ones with the pair of pileated woodpeckers that nest there every spring. “I’ve been leaving sunflower seed blocks out at the base of that big oak for six months now. Never knew who owned the land there, just didn’t want the woodpeckers moving off when all the construction starts.”
He blinks, surprised. No one has ever mentioned the woodpeckers to him before, not even the neighbors he’s lived next to for 18 years. He relaxes his grip on his beer can, tells her the oak and the land it sits on is his, that he watches the woodpeckers tap on his cabin gutters every morning when he drinks his coffee. She grins, leans in a little to grab the peanut bowl set between them on the bench, and her knuckles brush his when she reaches. The contact is light, accidental, but he feels it shoot up his arm, warm and sharp, like the static he gets when he runs his hand over planed pine in dry weather.
They talk for 20 minutes, first about the woodpeckers, then about the time a baby great horned owl fell down his chimney three years ago, then about the county inspector who tripped over a nesting goose last week when he tried to survey the shoreline. When she laughs at the story, her eyes crinkle at the corners, hazel flecked with gold, and she holds his eye contact a beat longer than strictly polite, no quick dart away, no awkward smile to defuse the tension. Roland hasn’t felt this seen, this unhurried, since Linda got sick. Part of him twists with guilt, sharp and sour, like he’s betraying her memory by laughing with a stranger, wants to pull back, to remind himself that everyone has an angle, that he’s just setting himself up to get played, but the other part of him is tired of sitting alone in his cabin, talking only to the woodpeckers and the stray cat that hangs out on his porch.
She leans in closer then, so he can hear her over a group of guys yelling about property taxes, and her shoulder presses fully against his, warm through the thin cotton of his work shirt. “I saw the official survey last week,” she says, her voice low, only for him. “That big oak on your property is a registered heritage tree. They can’t bulldoze it, can’t even trim it without a permit. If you sign the petition, we can anchor the entire fight around your land. They won’t be able to touch any of the lakefront properties if yours is untouchable.”
Roland hesitates for half a second, then takes the pen she holds out to him. Their fingers lace for a heartbeat when he grabs it, neither of them pulling away fast, and the noise of the crowd fades for a second, just the sound of the lake lapping at the shore a few feet away, the buzz of a mosquito near his ear, her soft breath fanning over his wrist. He signs his name scrawled and bold, the same way he used to sign his woodwork projects, and hands the pen back.
She tucks the petition back into her canvas bag, then nods at the dock that juts out into the lake, strung with fairy lights that blink on as the sun dips below the treeline. “The Perseids peak tonight,” she says. “I got a couple extra wool blankets in my truck, and a thermos of spiked hot cocoa. Wanna go watch? No talk of eminent domain, no talk of zoning laws, just meteors and whatever birds are flying overhead after dark.”
Roland nods, takes a slow sip of his now-warm IPA, watches her tuck a loose strand of braid behind her ear as she stands up. He shoves his pocket knife back into his jeans pocket, stands to follow her, and his boot scuffs a loose pinecone off the edge of the path as he walks.
