Rudy Galvan is 62, has spent the last 12 years as a part-time hay broker outside Missoula, his only regular company a border collie named Mabel and 12 hives of Italian honeybees he keeps out behind his trailer. His worst flaw, if you asked the few people who know him well, is that he’s made a performance out of being alone, turning down every dinner invitation, every fix-up from the ladies at the county fair, every chance at casual connection like it’s a moldy bale of alfalfa he wouldn’t feed to a goat. He lost his wife Linda to ovarian cancer in 2011, sold 80 acres of their farm to a conservation group, and has convinced himself that’s enough, that wanting anything more is greedy, a betrayal of the 28 years they had together.
He’s leaning against the sticky Formica bar at The Hitching Post on a rainy Tuesday in April, nursing a PBR and waiting for the 4H fundraiser raffle draw to start, when he hears the laugh first. Low, throaty, a little rough from cigarettes, the kind that cuts through the jukebox’s Johnny Cash and the clink of beer bottles like a knife through butter. He turns, and there she is, leaning against the pool table, one boot propped on the lower rail, flannel shirt rolled up to her elbows, silver streaks in her dark hair catching the neon beer sign glow. It’s Mara, Linda’s second cousin, the one who used to come visit every summer when they were first married, who’d help him haul hay bales and tease Linda for marrying a guy who’d rather talk to bees than people. He hasn’t seen her in 10 years, not since Linda’s funeral.
She catches him staring, holds eye contact for three full beats longer than polite, smirks, and pushes off the pool table to walk over. Her work boots scuff the linoleum, she’s wearing the same vanilla and pine perfume she used to wear back in the 90s, and when she stops a foot away from him, close enough that he can feel the heat off her shoulder, he has to fight the urge to step back. “Rudy Galvan,” she says, and her voice is lower than he remembers. “I’d know that scowl anywhere. Still pretending you hate being around people?”
He snorts, takes a sip of beer, tries to play it cool even as his pulse picks up. “Mara. Thought you were still in Boise selling real estate.”
“Got sick of selling million dollar vacation homes to tech bros who don’t know the difference between alfalfa and timothy grass,” she says, and reaches past him to grab a handful of napkins from the stack on the bar behind him. Her left breast brushes his upper arm as she leans, soft through the flannel, and he freezes, his fingers tightening around his beer can so hard the aluminum dents a little. She doesn’t apologize, just smirks again when she pulls back, wiping a streak of beer off her wrist. “Took the county extension agent job last month. Figured I’d come home.”
He’s torn between two impulses, the first to make an excuse and leave, to run back to his trailer and his bees and the quiet he’s grown used to, the second to lean in closer, to smell her hair, to find out if her lips are as soft as he’d wondered about once, drunk on homemade wine at Linda’s 30th birthday party, when he’d caught her staring at him across the backyard and looked away fast, guilty. It feels wrong, like he’s cheating, like he’s breaking some unspoken promise he made to Linda when she died, even though he knows Linda would have yelled at him for hiding away for 12 years, called him an idiot for wasting the rest of his life.
They talk for 45 minutes, leaning closer by degrees, until their boots are touching under the bar, until every time she laughs she knocks her shoulder against his, until he’s forgotten to be anxious, forgotten to perform the grumpy lonely widower act. She tells him about her ex husband, who left her two years ago for a 28 year old yoga instructor who thinks honey is “toxic processed sugar.” He tells her about the time a bear broke into his hives last summer, ate 30 pounds of honey and left a paw print on his trailer door. She mentions she remembers he used to leave a jar of wild honey on Linda’s nightstand every morning, that no one ever cared about Linda as well as he did, and he has to blink hard to keep from crying, no one’s said that to him in years.
The raffle ends, the bar starts to clear out, the rain is beating harder against the front windows. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, glances at the door, then back at him. “Walk me to my truck?” she says. “I parked out back, don’t feel like getting accosted by the drunk ranchers who keep asking me if I know how to ride a horse.”
He nods, grabs his jacket off the back of the bar stool, follows her outside. The rain is cold, smells like wet dirt and pine, and they huddle under the awning over the back door for a second before they run for her beat up Ford F150. When they get to the truck, she stops, turns to him, and reaches out to touch his wrist, her fingers brushing the calluses on his skin from years of hauling hay and working hives. He doesn’t pull away.
“ I’ve wanted to kiss you since I was 22 years old,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it over the rain. “You gonna let me?”
He doesn’t answer, just leans in, and when their lips meet, he can taste the peach hard seltzer she’s been drinking, the faint tang of cigarette, the same sweetness he remembers from all those summers ago. It doesn’t feel like betrayal. It feels like coming up for air after 12 years underwater.
She pulls back after a minute, grins, and unlocks the truck door. “Coffee tomorrow at my place,” she says, not a question. “I got fresh biscuits. Don’t be late.”
He nods, watches her climb into the truck, wave, pull out of the parking lot onto the wet road. He stands there in the rain for another minute, his lips still tingling, his hand still warm where she touched his wrist, Mabel will be waiting for him back at the trailer, the bees are tucked safe in their hives, and for the first time in 12 years, he’s looking forward to tomorrow.
