Delmar Hanks, 62, retired wildland fire crew boss, had only dragged himself to the Gallatin County Fair to watch his granddaughter show her grand champion steer, and he’d planned to sneak out before the county commissioners could corner him for a bullshit photo op with the award winners. He’d spent five years avoiding every last one of them, ever since they’d gutted his crew’s budget three months before the 2018 Blacktail fire that took two of his guys. The grudge sat heavy in his chest most days, sharp as the edge of the Pulaski he still kept propped by his cabin front door.
He’d ducked into the beer garden ten minutes after the steer show wrapped, ignoring the line of kids begging for cotton candy just outside the tent flaps, and planted himself against the splintered wooden support pole where he could keep an eye on the exit. The air smelled like fried Oreos, alfalfa hay, and cheap lager, the hum of the fair’s rides thrumming low through the soles of his scuffed work boots. The woman behind the bar wiped a spill off the Formica counter with a ratty dish towel, and when she looked up, their eyes locked.
He recognized her immediately: Marnie Cole, ex-wife of the commissioner who’d led the charge to cut his crew’s funding. His jaw tightened. He should leave. He grabbed his beer can tighter, the cold aluminum biting into his palm, but he didn’t move. She was 58, he remembered, silver streaked through her dark blonde hair pulled back in a messy braid, a smudge of beeswax on her left wrist, calluses thick on the fingers that curled around the neck of the beer she was passing to a kid in a 4-H jacket. She wore a faded flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, work boots caked with mud, no makeup, and when she smiled at the kid, the corners of her eyes crinkled the same way they had back in high school, when she’d sold lemonade outside the county rodeo grounds every summer.
She walked over to him a minute later, wiping her hands on her jeans, and he tensed, ready for a snide comment from someone who’d spent two decades married to the man he blamed for his guys’ deaths. “You’re Delmar, right?” she said, leaning against the pole a foot away from him, close enough that he could smell clover honey and lemon hard candy on her breath. “I know you probably don’t want to talk to anyone connected to that asshole I used to be married to, but for what it’s worth, I quit the county auxiliary the day he pushed that budget cut through. I’ve been donating 10% of my honey farm’s sales to the volunteer fire department ever since the Blacktail fire.”
His throat went dry. He’d spent five years painting everyone connected to the commission as the enemy, and he’d never once stopped to wonder if any of them had pushed back. He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and when she passed him a second beer a minute later, their fingers brushed. Her skin was rough, warmer than he expected, and he didn’t pull away. They talked for an hour, the noise of the fair fading into background static as she told him about splitting from her ex three years prior, about the 120 hives she kept up in the Bridger Mountains, about how she’d volunteered to run the beer garden that weekend because all the proceeds went to buying new gear for the fire crew that covered his side of the county. He told her about his granddaughter’s steer, about the cabin he’d built himself after his wife died eight years prior, about the way he still kept photos of his old crew taped to the door of his fridge.
The first firework burst over the fairgrounds just after nine, painting the sky bright pink, and a group of drunk teens sprinted past the tent, yelling, one of them slamming into Marnie’s shoulder hard enough that she stumbled forward into Delmar’s chest. He caught her automatically, one hand splayed across her upper back, the flannel of her shirt soft under his calloused palm, and she laughed, the sound loud and bright over the boom of the fireworks, as she steadied herself. She didn’t step back right away, looking up at him, her eyes glinting with the gold of the next firework that burst overhead, her hand resting lightly on his forearm. He could feel the heat of her through his shirt, the steady thud of her heartbeat against his chest, and for the first time in years, the sharp edge of his grudge softened, just a little.
She had to help take down the tent after the fireworks ended, so he stuck around, hauling crates of empty beer cans into the back of her beat-up Ford pickup, stacking folding chairs against the side of the tent. When he slammed the tailgate shut after loading the last crate, his hand brushed hers again, and this time she laced her fingers through his for half a second before letting go, grinning at him when he raised an eyebrow. He asked her if she wanted to get huckleberry pie at the diner on Main Street, the one that stayed open until midnight on fair weekends, and she said yes, wiping a streak of dirt off her cheek with the back of her hand. He climbed into his own old truck, turning the key in the ignition, and glanced over at her in the driver’s seat of her pickup, waving at him through the window. He tucked the crumpled fair admission ticket into his flannel pocket, already looking forward to the drive back into town with her truck following his.
