Manny Rios, 53, has made a living keeping 47 hives of wild bees on his half-acre Lancaster County lot for 18 years, ever since he quit his job as a high school shop teacher after his wife died of ovarian cancer. His worst flaw is that he holds grudges longer than his bees hold a grudge against someone who swats at their hive. For 12 full months, he’d skipped every single town event, from the spring trash pickup day to the holiday tree lighting, all because he’d gotten a $275 zoning fine in the mail for “unauthorized livestock within city limits” — a fine he’d assumed was pushed through by the new zoning officer, the one he’d only ever seen in a blurry headshot on the township website. He only agreed to set up a booth at the annual summer beer and food festival because his 16-year-old granddaughter, Lila, was doing an FFA project on local pollinators and begged him to sell their wildflower honey alongside her hand-painted seed packets.
The air hung thick and soupy at 82 degrees, smelling like smoked bratwurst charred on cast iron grills, citrusy hazy IPA, and the sweet, heady scent of clover growing in the cracks of the fairground parking lot. Manny was wearing a faded gray Carhartt flannel rolled to the elbows, work boots caked with dried beeswax and mud, a pale silvery scar snaking up his left forearm from a bad swarm three years prior. He was handing a jar of raw sourwood honey to a tourist when a sharp elbow bumped his, sloshing golden honey over the rim of the jar onto his wrist.
He looked up ready to snap, and found himself staring at Clara Hale, the zoning officer he’d spent a year mentally cursing. She held his eye contact steady, no flinch, no awkward look away, like she wasn’t scared of the cranky bee guy everyone in town avoided. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts, a threadbare 2008 Phillies World Series tee, white sneakers dusted with grass stains, sun freckles scattered across her nose and the tops of her shoulders, holding a sweating plastic cup of peach seltzer. She apologized immediately, grabbing a paper towel from the roll on his booth table and dabbing at the honey on his wrist before he could pull away. Her hand was warm, calloused at the fingertips, and Manny tensed up so hard he almost dropped the jar he was holding.
He was halfway to a snarky comment about her showing up to hassle him about his hives again when she laughed, the sound low and rough, like she spent too much time yelling over construction sites at township meetings. “I know you’re mad about that fine,” she said, leaning against the edge of his booth, one boot propped on the lower support rail, close enough he could smell coconut sunscreen and the faint fizz of peach seltzer on her breath. “I overturned it three months ago, for what it’s worth. Grandma kept hives in her backyard for 30 years. I knew yours weren’t a hazard. The old board pushed that fine through the week before I took the job.”
Manny blinked, suddenly feeling stupid for the 12 months he’d spent avoiding the grocery store on township employee discount days, for the angry letters he’d drafted and never sent, for the way he’d yelled at a kid selling candy bars for the township rec league back in April. He grunted, shifting his weight, and when she reached across the table to pick up a jar of honeycomb to look at the label, her knuckles brushed his, sending a jolt up his arm like static from a plastic grocery bag on dry winter air.
They talked for an hour, while the festival crowd thinned out, while the sun dipped lower and painted the sky pink and tangerine. She told him her husband had left her two years prior, moved to Florida to sell timeshares, and she’d moved to Lancaster to be closer to her grandma, who was in a memory care facility nearby. He told her about his wife, about how they’d bought their first two hives for their 10th wedding anniversary, about how he still kept her old sunhat hanging on the hook by his back door. She didn’t look pitying, just nodded, and when a bee buzzed past her ear, she didn’t swat it, just held still until it flew away.
Lila left early with a friend, promising to meet him to restock the booth the next morning, and Manny was loading cases of honey jars into the back of his beat-up 2006 Ford F150 when Clara walked over, offering to help. She picked up a heavy case of 1-pound jars, and when they both reached for the tailgate to shut it at the same time, her shoulder pressed firm against his, the thin cotton of her tee warm against his flannel.
He asked her if she wanted to come back to his place, try the fresh honeycomb he’d pulled that morning, served over the homemade peach ice cream he made every summer from the tree in his backyard. She paused, grinning, and said she’d only go if he promised not to sic his bees on her for the old zoning mixup. Manny laughed, the first real, full laugh he’d had in months, and said the bees liked people who didn’t swat at them, so she was already in their good graces.
They drove with the windows rolled down, the warm summer air whipping through the cab, crickets chirping loud enough to hear over the old Johnny Cash tape playing on his broken radio. The honey jars in the back clinked soft and steady against each other, like tiny wind chimes. He led her around back to his porch, handed her a chipped ceramic bowl of vanilla ice cream topped with a chunk of glistening honeycomb, and when she took a bite, thick golden honey dripped down her chin. He reached out with his thumb to wipe it off, his skin brushing the soft edge of her jaw, and she didn’t pull away.
