Russell Pritchard, 62, spent 28 years manning the remote Devil’s Lookout fire tower 40 miles north of Grand Marais, and he’d spent the 8 years since retirement avoiding crowds whenever humanly possible. His worst flaw, if you asked his old crew chief, was that he’d turned stubbornness into a full-time personality trait—he hadn’t let anyone stay at his off-grid cabin longer than an hour since his wife passed from ovarian cancer in 2015, and he’d shut down every half-hearted set-up the ladies at the town diner tried to throw his way. He’d only come into town for the annual fishing opener fair to pick up the custom felling axe he’d commissioned from the local blacksmith, and he’d only ducked into the beer tent because his former crew partner had waved him over so aggressively he’d looked like he was about to flag down a medevac flight.
The tent reeked of fried cheese curds, spilled IPA, and the citronella candles set out to chase away the north woods mosquitos, and the bluegrass band playing by the entrance was so loud his molars vibrated a little when he stepped through the flap. He’d just grabbed a cold cup of ale from the bartender when someone stepped back fast to avoid a toddler running with a cotton candy stick, and he stumbled, sloshing half his beer down the front of a woman’s high-waisted denim jeans. He swore under his breath, fumbling for a crumpled napkin in his flannel pocket, and when he looked up to apologize he recognized her immediately: Clara Voss, ex-wife of his old crewmate Jake, who’d moved down to Duluth to run a beekeeping co-op after their divorce 10 years prior.
He pressed the napkin to the wet spot on her thigh before he thought better of it, his knuckles brushing the soft, sun-warmed skin just above the cuff of her jeans, and he froze, half convinced she’d slap him, half convinced the dozen old fire guys sitting at the table behind them would start hooting loud enough to scare the loons off the lake. She didn’t slap him. She just laughed, a low, throaty sound he remembered from the annual crew cookouts back in the day, and leaned in a little so she didn’t have to yell over the band, her shoulder brushing his bicep as she did. The honey and clover scent of the lip balm she was selling hit him first, then the faint smell of lavender soap, and he felt his face heat up like he was a 16 year old kid asking a girl to prom for the first time.
He’d spent the first 10 minutes of their conversation mentally kicking his own ass, convinced he was making a fool of himself, convinced every person who glanced their way was whispering about how the widowed fire spotter was hitting on Jake’s ex, how he was disrespecting his wife’s memory by even talking to another woman. That disgust curdled in his chest until she said she still had the jar of wild blueberries he’d left on her porch back in 2010, when Jake was stuck on a fire for three weeks and she’d just had her knee surgery and couldn’t get up the hill to pick them herself. She said she’d thought about that jar more than once over the years, had even asked about him a couple times when she was in town selling honey, but everyone had told her he was a hermit who hated talking to anyone who wasn’t a pine tree or a trout.
They snuck out of the tent 45 minutes later, grabbing a pack of her honey sticks on the way, and climbed into the bed of his beat-up 2008 Ford F150 parked on the edge of the fairgrounds, where the trees blocked the view of the crowd. He pulled a bottle of chilled white wine he’d stashed in the cooler for his fishing trip the next day, and they passed it back and forth, their fingers brushing every time they handed the bottle off, the distant sound of the pie eating contest announcer drifting over the treeline. She leaned into him when a breeze picked up, her shoulder pressed firm against his, and when he turned to look at her she was already staring, her dark eyes flecked with silver catching the golden hour light, and he didn’t overthink it when he leaned in to kiss her. She tasted like honey and root beer and the mint gum she’d been chewing, and when she tangled her fingers in the graying hair at the nape of his neck he forgot all about the gossips in town, forgot all about the guilt he’d carried for 8 years, forgot everything but the warm weight of her against him.
When the fireworks started going off over the lake 20 minutes later, he asked her if she wanted to skip the rest of the fair and come up to the cabin for the weekend, said he had a porch swing that faced the lake and enough fresh lake trout in the freezer to feed them for three days. She said yes before he finished talking, popping a honey stick into her mouth and grinning when he laughed. They loaded her unsold crates of honey and lip balm into the back of his truck, and when he passed her the last crate, his hand brushed hers, and she laced their fingers together for three slow, deliberate seconds before letting go to lock the doors of her own sedan.
