Moe Sorenson, 62, retired typewriter restorer, had only dragged himself to the Ashland summer street fair for one reason: a quart of wild blackberry honey he’d preordered from a beekeeper who only sold in person three weekends a year. He’d planned to be in and out in 10 minutes, before the fried cheese curd smell clogged his sinuses, before a kid with a sticky lollipop bumped into his jeans, before some well-meaning neighbor cornered him to ask how he was “holding up” eight years after his wife’s heart attack. He hated that question. Hated the pity in people’s voices when they asked it. He’d spent those eight years deliberately walling himself off, convinced any flicker of new interest in anyone else was a betrayal of the 32 years he and Ellen had shared. It was easier to stay home, work on the 1950s Royals and Underwoods people dropped off for repair, listen to old jazz records, eat frozen dinners alone.
The beekeeper was 20 minutes late, so Moe loitered by the edge of the homebrew contest tent, scuffing the toe of his work boot in the dust, pretending to scroll through his flip phone so no one would talk to him. He didn’t notice the woman judging the contest until she cleared her throat, and he looked up to find her leaning against the table, grinning like she’d caught him staring at something he shouldn’t. She was 58, he guessed, gray streaks laced through the braid slung over her shoulder, a smudge of dark berry juice on her left cheek, flannel shirt tied around her waist over faded denim overalls, work boots caked with dark garden mud. “You look like you’d rather be anywhere but here,” she said, nodding at the sour look on his face. Her voice was rough, like she spent half her days yelling over lawnmowers, which made sense when he spotted the county extension office name tag pinned to her shirt: Carla, horticulture educator.
He shrugged, tried to look uninterested. “Just waiting for someone.” She pushed a small plastic cup across the table toward him, filled with pale pink liquid that smelled like cherries and summer rain. “Cherry mead. Made by a kid from the 4H club. Tastes nothing like the skunky beer the guys bring in every year. On the house, if you stop scowling long enough to try it.” He hesitated, then reached for the cup. His knuckles brushed hers when he grabbed it, and he flinched like he’d been burned. Her hand was calloused, rough from pulling weeds and turning soil, warm even through the thin plastic. He took a sip, and it was sweet, not too sugary, bright with the taste of tart cherries from the orchards up the shore. “Not bad,” he said, and she laughed, the corners of her eyes crinkling so deep he could see the tiny sunspots dotted across her cheekbones.
She asked what he did for work, and when he said he restored old typewriters, her face lit up. “My dad had a whole stack of them in his garage. He was a newspaper reporter back in the day, typed every story on a 1948 Smith Corona. I’ve been meaning to get them fixed up for my niece, who’s into vintage stuff, but I didn’t know who to ask. Everyone around here just uses laptops.” He wanted to say he was booked for the next three months, that he didn’t do house calls, that he didn’t want to get roped into anything that would require spending more than 10 minutes around another person. But the words got stuck in his throat when she leaned a little closer, her shoulder brushing his bicep, the scent of lavender soap and fermented fruit and rich, dark garden dirt wrapping around him. He felt that low, warm hum in his chest he’d thought died the day Ellen flatlined in the ER. For half a second he felt sick, disgusted with himself for even noticing, for wanting to stay here instead of running for his truck like he’d planned. But then she smiled again, and that disgust melted away faster than butter on hot toast. “I can come take a look tomorrow,” he said before he could talk himself out of it. “No charge, if you’ve got cold iced tea to offer. I don’t do house calls for people who don’t have good iced tea.”
She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, and a couple of the guys standing by the contest table turned to look. “I’ve got sweet tea that’ll make you forget all about that honey you’re waiting for,” she said, and right on cue the beekeeper walked up, handed Moe the glass jar of honey, thick and dark gold through the glass, already sticky around the rim. Moe paid him, tucked the jar into the inside pocket of his denim jacket so it wouldn’t break. He should leave now. He had a 1952 Royal Quiet De Luxe sitting on his workbench at home waiting for a new ribbon spool, a frozen meatloaf in the freezer, a John Coltrane record he’d been meaning to listen to all week. But when she asked if he wanted to walk the fairgrounds with her for a bit once she finished tallying the contest scores, he said yes.
They walked past the cotton candy stand, the sugar smell so thick it stuck to the back of his throat, and she bumped his shoulder when they watched a guy in a neon cowboy hat fly off the mechanical bull, landing in a pile of foam. Their fingers brushed when they both reached for a free sample of pickled asparagus from the 4H booth, and this time he didn’t flinch. She told him about the community garden she ran for low-income families, about the kid who’d grown a 12-pound zucchini this year, about how her dad used to bring her to this exact fair every summer when she was a kid. He told her about Ellen, about the typewriter shop in St. Paul, about the kid from Milwaukee who’d driven three hours last month to pick up a restored Underwood he was going to use to write his first novel. He didn’t realize how much he’d wanted to talk about any of it until he did.
They stopped at the Ferris wheel line, and she nodded at the cars swinging high over the fairgrounds, the string lights strung along the poles already glowing pink in the dusk. “I haven’t ridden one of those since I was 16,” she said. “Got stuck at the top for 20 minutes with my first boyfriend. Thought we were gonna die.” Moe thought about his first Ferris wheel ride, with Ellen, at the Minnesota State Fair in 1983, how he’d kissed her at the top, how she’d laughed and said he tasted like cotton candy. He didn’t feel guilty thinking about it, not this time. He bought two tickets from the kid running the booth, handed one to her, his fingers lingering on hers for a beat longer than necessary. She stepped ahead of him when the line moved, and he followed, tucking his hand into his jacket pocket to make sure the honey jar was still safe.
