Hank Collier is 58, retired after 32 years as a U.S. Forest Service ranger patrolling the Blue Ridge Mountains, and his biggest flaw is that he holds grudges like he’s still staking claim to a backcountry campsite. Seven years after his wife’s sudden heart attack, he still refuses to let anyone drop by his garage unannounced, still yells at the county zoning board every time they try to change the rules for the vintage truck show he runs out of his side lot, still hasn’t deleted his wife’s voice from his old answering machine.
He’s at the Buncombe County Fair on a sticky late August Tuesday, picking crumbs of fried apple pie off his oil-stained work jeans, when the collision happens. He’s reaching for a root beer at the concession stand, and a woman’s elbow knocks his wrist hard enough that half the soda sloshes over the rim, soaking the cuff of his flannel shirt. She’s holding a cherry slushie in one hand, a stack of 4-H prize ribbons in the other, and she laughs, bright and unapologetic, before she hands him a crumpled napkin from her back pocket.
He’s ready to snap, until he sees the plastic ID clipped to the strap of her canvas tote: Clara Bennett, County Health Department. That’s the woman he’d screamed at over the phone two weeks prior, the one who’d shut down his best friend Jake’s BBQ stand at the last truck show, the one who’d told him he needed to install a $1,200 handwashing station or he’d lose his permit for all future events. He’d called her a pencil-pushing buzzkill then, had hung up on her mid-sentence. Now she’s standing 12 inches from him, wearing cut-off denim shorts that show a faint scar on her left knee, a faded 1990s Willie Nelson tour tee, and work boots caked in chicken coop mud, no blazer, no clipboard, no scowl.
The air smells like fried dough, cow manure, and cut grass, and the crickets are starting to hum as the sun dips pink over the fairground’s Ferris wheel. She tilts her head, and her grin gets sharper, like she recognizes the tight set of his jaw. “You’re the truck guy, right? The one who told me I could stick the handwashing regulation where the sun don’t shine?” She leans in a little, and he catches the scent of peppermint lip balm and pine cleaner on her clothes, no fancy perfume. Her nails are chipped pale blue, her hands calloused at the knuckles, like she fixes things too.
He grunts, doesn’t deny it. He’s still mad about Jake’s stand, still convinced half the new health codes are just the county making up excuses to take small business owners’ money, but he can’t bring himself to yell at her when she’s watching him like he’s the most interesting thing at the fair, not the demolition derby set to start in 10 minutes. She explains Jake had a leaky sewage line three feet from his food prep table, that she’d given him three extra weeks to fix it before she wrote the ticket, that she’d even connected him to a low-interest grant for the repairs. He didn’t know that. Jake had only told him she’d shown up and shut him down for no reason.
A group of teens sprint past, chasing a goat that stole a kid’s cotton candy, and she stumbles into him, her shoulder pressing firm against his bicep for three full seconds before she pulls back. She doesn’t apologize this time, just holds eye contact, and he feels heat crawl up the back of his neck, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was 17 and asked his wife to prom. She asks if he’s going to the derby, says she’s got an extra seat in the grandstand, that her bailing on her plans last minute left her with a spare ticket. He says yes before he can talk himself out of it.
The grandstand is packed, the engines so loud he can feel the vibration in his molars. Every time a car crashes into the barricade, she leans in to yell in his ear, her breath warm against his neck, and when a rusted Camaro takes out the crowd favorite, she grabs his wrist to point, her fingers wrapping tight around his skin. Halfway through the final heat, a drunk guy trips over the bench behind them, slams into Hank’s back, and he reaches out to steady her, his hand landing on her waist, right above the waistband of her shorts. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just turns her head to look at him, their faces three inches apart, and he can taste the cherry from her slushie on the air between them.
He kisses her, quick at first, like he’s testing the waters, and she kisses him back, her free hand tangling in the gray hair at the nape of his neck, the slushie cup forgotten at her feet. The crowd cheers as the last car running crosses the finish line, but he doesn’t hear it, doesn’t see anything except the freckles across her nose, the way her eyes are still crinkled at the corners like she’s still laughing at him for yelling at her over the phone.
They walk out to the parking lot after the derby ends, the night air cool enough that he can see his breath when he laughs. She tells him she can help him fill out the grant paperwork for the handwashing station, that he won’t have to pay a dime for it, and he tells her he’ll drive her to Jake’s shop tomorrow, to go over the repairs Jake finished last week, no hard feelings. He opens the passenger door of his 1978 Ford F-150 for her, tosses her the extra wool flannel he keeps rolled up behind the seat because she’s shivering a little. She wraps it around her shoulders, grins, says she’s been begging to ride in a first-gen F-150 since she was 16 and her dad sold theirs to pay for her college tuition.
He turns the key, the old truck roaring to life, and the radio cuts on to a Johnny Cash deep cut, the same one he and his wife danced to at their wedding. He doesn’t tense up, doesn’t reach to change the station. He glances over at her, leaning her head against the window, singing along under her breath, and he pulls out of the parking lot, heading for the 24-hour diner on the edge of town, the one that serves peach pie till 3 a.m.
