Royce Pritchard swiped sweat off his brow with the back of a calloused hand, the scar across his left eyebrow pulling tight as he glowered at the row of pickled morel jars lined up on his fair booth table. At 62, 18 years removed from his last smokejumper jump and 8 years out from his wife’s sudden heart attack, he’d built a quiet, predictable life selling foraged mushrooms and running weekend foraging tours for soft city folks who couldn’t tell a chanterelle from a toxic jack-o’-lantern. His biggest flaw, as his old jump team buddies loved to rib him, was holding a grudge tighter than he held his chainsaw when felling fire-damaged firs, and the grudge he’d carried against the county health department for shutting down his downtown pop-up two months prior was strong enough to make him skip the fair entirely—until the organizers offered him double the usual booth space for free.
He’d just finished handing a jar of truffle salt to a tourist in a neon fanny pack when he heard the low, warm laugh from the booth next to him, and his jaw tightened. It was Mara Hale, the 48-year-old health inspector who’d written him the $350 fine, the one who’d stood on his pop-up’s sidewalk with her arms crossed, her brown hair pulled back in a braid, and told him he had to close immediately no exceptions. The fair organizers had dumped her on the adjacent county produce booth when the scheduled volunteer bailed that morning, and now he was stuck within two feet of her for six more hours, the air thick with the smell of fried Oreos, hay dust, the faint, sweet lavender of her hand cream that kept drifting over when she leaned forward to restock tomato baskets, and the distant creak of the ferris wheel turning over the fairgrounds.
He didn’t speak to her for the first three hours, only grunted when she asked if he had an extra roll of paper towels to wipe up a spilled jar of jam. The turning point came when a kid on a scooter crashed into the side of their shared table, sending three of Royce’s pickled chanterelle jars rolling toward the edge. They both lunged at the same time, their hands brushing when they caught the middle jar at once, and Royce felt the rough callus on her index finger, the same kind he had from gripping axe handles, before she pulled her hand back like she’d been burned. She held his eye for three full seconds, her cheeks pink, before she set the jar down and mumbled an apology.
He found himself talking to her after that, first about the kid’s terrible scooter skills, then about the summer heat, then about the scar on his eyebrow when she kept glancing at it. He told her he’d gotten it in 2011, when a wind shift had thrown his jump off course and he’d crashed into a ponderosa pine branch 20 feet above the fire line, and she nodded like she already knew. She admitted she’d followed his foraging YouTube channel for two years, that she’d hated writing him the fine, but a retiree had called in a formal complaint saying his mushrooms were “poisoned by forest chemicals” and her boss had told her she had no choice but to shut the pop-up down. She’d been meaning to reach out ever since, she said, to apologize and ask him if he’d teach her how to identify morels, but she’d been too nervous he’d slam the door in her face.
Royce’s chest felt tight, the grudge he’d carried for two months melting faster than popsicles in the fair sun. He was disgusted with himself at first, for being attracted to the woman who’d cost him $350 and a weekend of good sales, for even thinking about anyone that way after his wife had died, but the way she laughed at his dumb joke about the time he’d mistaken a plastic grocery bag for a giant puffball made his chest feel light in a way he hadn’t felt in almost a decade.
The sky turned dark purple an hour after the fair closed, and a sudden thunderstorm hit, rain pouring so hard it blurred the line between the fairgrounds and the parking lot 50 feet away. They huddled under the booth awning, their shoulders almost touching, the sound of rain hammering the vinyl tent drowning out the distant music from the fair’s beer garden. Mara leaned in to yell over the noise, her breath warm against his ear, that her sedan was too low to make it through the flooded parking lot, and he yelled back that his old F150 had four wheel drive, he could drop her off at her place on the edge of town.
She nodded, and they made a run for it, rain soaking through his flannel shirt and her leather jacket by the time they reached the truck. He opened the passenger door for her, and she shook water off her braid as she climbed in, droplets running down her neck and under the collar of her t-shirt. He turned the heat on full blast, then reached out without thinking to brush a wet strand of hair off her cheek, and she caught his wrist, her thumb brushing the scar on his knuckle, before he pulled his hand back to turn the key in the ignition.
The tires crunched through the puddles as he pulled out of the parking lot, and she pulled a crumpled pack of cherry sour candy out of her bag, holding one out to him without saying a word.
