Clay Bennett is 58, retired lineman, 32 years with Georgia Power, forced out four years prior when a falling crossbeam shattered two vertebrae in his lower back during an ice storm. He’s lived in the same 1972 ranch home outside Ellijay for 31 years, hasn’t attended the annual summer street fair since his wife Linda died in 2020, hates the way the town’s ladies hover, pat his arm, offer him casseroles like he’s incapable of boiling water. His buddy Ron drags him out this year, says the bluegrass band playing won a state award, and the Lions Club is serving smoked brisket so tender it melts on your tongue.
He’s halfway through a root beer float, vanilla ice cream dripping down his wrist onto the frayed cuff of his work flannel, when he spots her. Maeve Carter, 52, newly elected school board rep, ex-wife of his old foreman Jimmie, the same woman he ranted about for 15 minutes at the hardware store two weeks prior, furious that she’d cast the deciding vote to move the high school football field’s parking lot 300 yards from the stands. He’d called her a carpetbagging bureaucrat with no sense of small town tradition, loud enough that half the store turned to look.
She’s leaning against the side of the beer tent, holding a lime seltzer, wearing a faded 2018 Alabama national championship shirt, cutoff denim shorts, scuffed white sneakers, no makeup, sun streaking the auburn strands of hair pulled back in a loose braid. She spots him before he can duck behind the popcorn stand, smirks, and pushes off the tent pole to walk over. The ground is sticky under her boots, the hum of the crowd buzzing around them, the faint twang of a fiddle cutting through the noise from the main stage.
“Clay Bennett,” she says, stopping so close he can smell coconut sunscreen and mint gum on her breath. Before he can mutter a greeting, she reaches out, brushes the ice cream off his wrist with her thumb, the callus on the pad of her finger rough against his skin—she boards horses out at her place on the edge of town, he remembers, mucks stalls every morning before work. “Heard you had some choice words about me at Lowe’s last week.”
He flushes, shifts his weight, his back twinging a little from standing too long. “Turns out I might’ve been missing some context,” he says, because Ron had told him three days prior the old parking lot was sitting on a half-collapsed sinkhole, the county was going to charge the school $200k in repairs if they didn’t relocate, and Maeve had buried the report to keep the town from throwing a fit over tax hikes. “Sorry about that.”
She snorts, leans back against the tent pole beside him, their shoulders almost touching, the heat from her arm seeping through his flannel. “Don’t be. Half the town’s been calling me a witch for that vote. You’re at least creative with your insults.”
They talk for 40 minutes, the crowd ebbing and flowing around them, kids darting past with cotton candy stuck to their cheeks, the band cycling through fast bluegrass numbers and slower, twangy covers of 70s country. He tells her about the fence he built for widow Henderson last week, free of charge, just to get out of the house. She tells him she left Jimmie six months ago, after she caught him cheating on her with his secretary at the construction company, hasn’t told anyone in town besides the divorce lawyer, didn’t want the gossip mill churning so soon after she ran for office.
Clay’s chest tightens a little at that. He’s known Jimmie for 25 years, respected him, still goes fishing with him once a month. He knows if anyone sees them standing this close, laughing, the whole town will be talking by sunrise. The thrill of that sits low in his gut, warm, a little forbidden, a feeling he hasn’t had since he was 19, sneaking Linda out of her parents’ house after curfew. He fights the urge to step back, tells himself he’s not doing anything wrong, Jimmie’s the one who messed up.
The band slows down, strikes up a soft, meandering cover of Pure Prairie League’s “Amie”, and Maeve pushes off the pole again, holds out her hand. Her nails are chipped, no polish, a thin scar across her knuckle from a horse kick last winter. “Jimmie hated this song,” she says, grinning. “Refused to dance with me at every fair we went to for 22 years. You dance, Bennett?”
He hesitates, says he hasn’t danced since his wedding, that his back aches if he moves too fast. She tugs his wrist anyway, pulls him toward the small patch of packed dirt in front of the stage where a handful of other couples are swaying. He lets her, his palm rough against hers, the calluses on his fingers matching hers from decades of gripping tools, hauling equipment. When they stop, she steps close, her hand resting light on his shoulder, their chests almost brushing. He can feel the heat off her neck, the way her fingers tap a quiet rhythm against his back.
They don’t talk for the whole song, just sway, his boots scuffing the dirt, the fiddle wrapping around them like a blanket. Once, she steps a little too close, her forehead brushing his jaw, and she doesn’t pull away immediately, just laughs soft, quiet, right against his skin. He finds himself looking at the freckles across her nose, the way her eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles, the way she keeps glancing at the power pole tattoo on his bicep, peeking out from the rolled up sleeve of his flannel.
When the song ends, the crowd cheers, and neither of them moves. She tilts her chin up, looks him dead in the eye, no smirk, no teasing, just warm, unapologetic interest. “I got a bottle of 12-year bourbon on my porch swing,” she says. “No casseroles, no gossip, no one asking you how you’re ‘holding up’ since Linda died. You wanna come?”
He nods, grabs his faded ball cap off the fence post where he’d set it earlier, follows her across the fairgrounds to her beat up silver Ford F-150. She opens the passenger door for him, waits until he’s settled before climbing into the driver’s seat, the truck rumbling to life under them. When she leans across the cab to roll down his window, her shoulder presses solid against his, and he doesn’t bother suppressing the smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth.
