Ronan Hale, 57, makes custom fly fishing rods for a living, his hands crisscrossed with tiny scars from razor blades and hot epoxy, his knuckles permanently dusted with the fine graphite powder that coats every surface of his converted garage workshop. He hasn’t set foot at a town community event since his wife left him for a Denver real estate broker eight years prior, swears the mix of forced small talk and nosy neighbors asking about his love life is worse than stepping barefoot on a nest of fire ants. He only shows up to the summer fire department barbecue because Jake, his old backcountry ranger partner, has a kid on the volunteer force, and Ronan owed him a favor for bailing him out of a DUI back in 2019.
He’s parked himself by the steel beer cooler, half-hidden behind a stack of paper plates, when a woman he doesn’t recognize bumps into his shoulder hard enough to slosh half her lemonade onto the front of his faded gray flannel, the one he wears even in 80 degree heat because he hates the way sunburn feels on his arms. “Shit, I am so sorry,” she says, leaning in before he can protest, dabbing at the wet spot with a crumpled paper napkin she pulls from the back pocket of her cutoff jeans. He can smell lavender hand cream and old paper dust on her, see a thin trout tattoo curling around her left wrist, her nails chipped with the same pale blue polish he remembers his niece wearing when she was 16. Her knee brushes his thigh when she leans in closer to get a spot near the button placket, and he freezes, hasn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t a client dropping off a rod deposit in almost a decade.
He wants to brush her off, mumble something about it being fine and walk back to his truck, head home to sand the new rod he’s building for a client in Texas, but she says his name before he can turn away. “You’re Ronan, right? The rod builder? I sell those old 90s Montana fishing guides in my shop, you’re quoted in one of them talking about how most mass-produced rods are garbage for small stream fishing.” She runs the used bookstore on Main Street, the one that opened three months prior, he’s walked past it a dozen times but never had the guts to go in, convinced the whole “small town new business” vibe was just an excuse for people to chat him up. He feels that familiar twist in his gut, half disgust at himself for being interested, half sharp, unnameable excitement he hasn’t felt since he was 20 years old sneaking into his college girlfriend’s dorm after curfew.
He makes a dumb joke about how most people who buy those guides wouldn’t know a dry fly from a grasshopper, and she laughs so hard she snorts, swatting his arm lightly with the back of her hand. The noise of the barbecue fades a little, the shouts of kids on the bouncy house, the crackle of the grill, the local country band tuning up in the gazebo, all fading to background hum when she asks if he wants to walk down to the creek behind the park to get away from the noise. He hesitates for a full three seconds, his brain screaming at him that this is a bad idea, that he’s going to mess it up, that he’s better off alone, but he nods before he can talk himself out of it.
They walk the dirt path down to the creek, their boots kicking up clumps of dry grass, and she points to a deep eddy half-hidden by willow trees, says she’s seen 18 inch brown trout rising there at dusk most nights this week. He tells her he’s got a half-finished rod in his shop, 7 foot, 3 weight, perfect for casting tight under those willows, that he’s been testing it on the stream behind his house but hasn’t found the right water to really put it through its paces. They sit down on a fallen cottonwood log at the edge of the water, their shoulders brushing when he leans over to point out a rise just off the bank, and she reaches over to take his left hand, running her thumb over the thick callus on his index finger from wrapping thread around rod blanks 10 hours a day. “I’ve got the same one,” she says, holding up her right hand, showing him the matching callus on her thumb from prying open the spines of old hardcovers. He doesn’t pull his hand away.
They sit there for 40 minutes, not talking much, watching the trout jump, listening to the crickets start to chirp as the sun dips below the mountains. He asks her if she wants to come by his shop the next morning, he’ll grab glazed donuts from the place on Main, show her the rod, maybe even take her down to his private stretch of stream after if she’s got the time. She grins, pulls a crumpled receipt from her bookstore out of her pocket, scribbles her number on the back with a ballpoint pen she keeps tucked behind her ear, tucks it into the breast pocket of his flannel. Her fingers brush his chest when she does it, she holds eye contact for three beats longer than necessary, then stands up, says she’s got to get back to the barbecue to help her roommate pack up the book sale table.
He stays on the log for five more minutes after she leaves, sipping the warm beer he’d forgotten he was holding, feeling the receipt crinkle under his fingers when he presses his palm to his chest. A brown trout jumps clear out of the water 10 feet in front of him, catching the last pink light of the sunset on its scales.
