Elias Voss, 53, vintage camper restoration specialist, has spent the last six years in the hills outside Knoxville, running his shop out of a cinder block barn with a hand-painted sign hanging crookedly above the roll-up door. He’s got a scar snaking four inches up his left forearm from a rusted 1968 Shasta trim piece that slipped three years back, and a rule he’s stuck to rigidly since his ex-wife drove cross-country with a yoga instructor: no unnecessary small talk, no letting anyone get close enough to mess up the routine he’s built. He only leaves his property twice a week, usually for hardware runs or the occasional lumber drop, and the only reason he’s at the county fair on a drizzly October Saturday is to pick up a custom felling axe he ordered from the blacksmith who sets up a booth every fall.
The sky opens up without warning ten minutes after he collects the axe, fat cold raindrops soaking through his plaid flannel before he can even make it three booths down the row. He spots the closest awning, strung above a table stacked with mason jars of honey, and ducks under it without looking first, his boot catching on the leg of a folding chair and sending him lurching forward. His hand knocks a jar of wildflower honey half off the table before a small, calloused palm wraps around his wrist, yanking him steady and righting the jar at the same time.
He looks up, and it’s Mara, the woman who moved into the cottage two miles down his road two months prior. He’s only ever waved at her once, when she was hauling a stack of beehive boxes out of her pickup, and he’d driven away fast before she could yell a greeting, too used to keeping his distance. The awning is barely four feet wide, so they’re pressed close enough that he can smell the raw honey on her clothes, mixed with pine and the vanilla lip balm she’s wearing. Rain pounds so loud on the tin awning that the distant twang of the fair’s country cover band is muffled to a low hum, and she has to lean in two inches, her shoulder brushing his bicep, to be heard when she says “I was wondering when I’d get to meet the hermit who restores campers up the road. The old lady at the post office says you only come into town when you’re out of beer or drill bits.”
He snorts, surprised, and feels his ears go pink, which hasn’t happened to him since he was a teenager asking a girl to prom. He tries to yank his wrist back, slow, so he doesn’t seem jumpy, but her thumb brushes the scar on his forearm first, her gaze flicking down to it then back up to his face, her dark brown eyes flecked with gold like the honey in the jars in front of them. “That’s mostly true,” he says, shifting his weight so his boot is half in the mud outside the awning, half under it, trying to put a little space between them even as he’s hyper aware of the way her flannel shirt is unbuttoned at the collar, the way a strand of her curly brown hair is stuck to the side of her damp neck. He’s spent six years telling himself he doesn’t have time for this, that any kind of connection is more trouble than it’s worth, that the gossipy old biddies in town will make a meal out of even a casual conversation with the new single woman who sells CBD honey out of her booth, and for a second he feels a sharp twist of disgust at himself for noticing how pretty she is when she smirks.
She doesn’t push the space, just grabs a popsicle stick from a mason jar on the table, dips it into an open jar of sourwood honey, and holds it out to him. “Try this. I harvested it last week, from the hives up on the ridge behind my house. Tastes like fall, basically.” He hesitates, then takes it, the honey thick and sweet on his tongue, with a faint woody aftertaste he can’t place. He finds himself talking before he can stop himself, telling her about the 1971 Airstream he’s restoring for a client in Nashville, about the time a raccoon got into his barn and chewed through half his wiring, about how he’s lived in four different states since he was 18, never staying anywhere longer than three years until he moved to Tennessee. She listens, leaning in closer when he talks about the Airstream, her knee brushing his every time she shifts her weight, and when he mentions he’s got a spare set of vintage Airstream windows in his barn, her face lights up.
“I bought a beat up 1972 Airstream last month,” she says, and she’s so excited she reaches out and touches his arm again, her palm warm through the wet flannel. “I’m fixing it up to drive to every national park west of the Mississippi, but I can’t find windows that fit for shit. I’ve been scouring Facebook Marketplace for weeks.” The rain slows to a drizzle right as she says it, and he sees a group of three older women from the local Baptist church walking past, staring at them under the awning, their mouths pressed into thin disapproving lines. He feels that old urge to pull away, to mumble an excuse and leave before the gossip starts, to go back to his quiet barn and his routine where no one expects anything from him. But then she licks a drop of honey off her thumb, slow, and winks at him, like she knows exactly what he’s thinking, and the urge vanishes as fast as it came.
“I can bring the windows by your place tomorrow, if you want,” he says, and he’s surprised at how steady his voice is, how little he cares about the women staring. “I can help you hang them, if you need. It’s a two person job, basically.” She grins, and grabs a full jar of sourwood honey off the table, tucking it into the pocket of his work jacket, which is still damp at the cuffs. “Come over for dinner first, then we can look at it. I make real good fried chicken, and I’ve got that local stout you like, the one they sell at the gas station on the highway.” He nods, and picks up his axe, which he’d propped against the table leg when he ducked under the awning.
He walks back to his beat up Ford F-150 a minute later, the honey jar heavy in his jacket pocket, the sun breaking through the clouds and gilding the wet grass of the fairground. He notices a small bumblebee has landed on the lid of the honey jar peeking out of his pocket, and he doesn’t swat it away, just opens the truck door and slides into the driver’s seat, already mentally clearing his schedule for the next day.
