Merv Puckett, 62, retired high school woodshop teacher, leaned against a dented aluminum beer tent pole, cold IPA digging into the callus on his left palm. He’d spent the last two hours grumbling to anyone who’d listen about Lila Marlow, the new 48-year-old county extension agent who’d chewed him out that morning for submitting a birdhouse entry made with reclaimed cedar from his late uncle’s barn, claiming it didn’t meet the county’s new “certified sustainable” sourcing rules. He’d been entering the fair’s birdhouse auction for 18 years, every last dollar going to the district’s underfunded shop classes, and he’d half a mind to load his entry back into his truck and drive home before the judging even started.
The bluegrass band on the small stage wrapped their final set with a wobbly rendition of Foggy Mountain Breakdown, the fiddle’s scratch fading into the hum of crickets and the distant pop of a corn dog fryer. The tent was half empty now, most families herding tired kids toward the parking lot, the smell of fried oreos and cut clover thick in the humid August dusk. Merv shifted his weight, scuffing the sticky vinyl tent floor with the toe of his steel-toe work boot, when he spotted her through the crowd.
Lila was in the same scuffed work boots she’d worn that morning, jeans with a grass stain streaked across the left knee, her county-issued work shirt unbuttoned one button too far at the collar, a few strands of chestnut hair stuck to the sweat on her neck. She hesitated when she saw him, then lifted her chin and walked straight over, stopping close enough that Merv could smell lavender shampoo mixed with the faint, sharp scent of pine mulch from the fair’s garden displays.
“I owe you a beer,” she said, no preamble, nodding at the half-empty cooler at his feet. The county board voted to roll back the certified sourcing rule an hour ago, she explained, she’d argued for 45 minutes that penalizing local makers for using salvaged material defeated the entire point of the sustainability initiative, and she’d specifically cited his 18 years of donations to the shop program as proof.
Merv blinked, caught off guard. He’d written her off as another out-of-touch bureaucrat, hired to check boxes and enforce rules that made no sense for the people who actually lived in the county. He pulled a can from the cooler, handed it to her, and their elbows brushed when she reached for it, her skin warm against his through the thin cotton of his flannel shirt. She didn’t step back.
They talked for 20 minutes, leaning against the pole, the crowd thinning out around them. She laughed at his dumb joke about the county board having the collective attention span of a squirrel hoarding acorns, holding eye contact a beat longer than strictly necessary, and Merv noticed the thin, pale scar slicing through her left eyebrow. She said she got it when she was 12, falling off a ladder helping her dad build a treehouse, that she’d loved woodworking as a kid but never had time for it anymore, buried under permit applications and grant reports. Merv found himself leaning in when she talked, not having to force the conversation the way he did with the few blind dates his sister had tried to set him up on over the last 15 years, ever since his ex-wife left him for his former department head. He’d spent so long closing himself off to anyone new, convinced all they’d do is let him down, that the light, warm buzz in his chest felt foreign, almost reckless.
The tent attendant wandered over, flipping off the string lights over the bar, and said they were locking up for the night. They walked out into the fairgrounds, the empty craft booths strung with flickering fairy lights, the distant whine of a ride operator shutting down the Tilt-A-Whirl carrying on the breeze. Lila stopped next to Merv’s beat-up Ford F-150, and he pulled the half-finished wren birdhouse he’d left in the truck bed out to show her, the dovetail joins still sanded smooth, no nails, no glue, just interlocking wood.
She leaned in to get a better look, her shoulder pressing soft against his chest, and her hand brushed his when she reached out to run a finger along the carved oak perch. Merv didn’t pull away. He didn’t overthink it, didn’t tell himself he was too old for this, didn’t remind himself of how badly the last time he’d let someone close had gone. She looked up at him, her eyes dark in the dusk, and said she had a small workshop in her garage, all the tools she never used, if he ever wanted to come over sometime, show her how to cut dovetails that clean.
Merv nodded, pulled his phone out of his pocket, handed it to her. She typed her number in, added a tiny blue bird emoji next to her name, and squeezed his wrist lightly before she stepped back, turning toward her own sedan parked two rows over. She waved over her shoulder when she opened the driver’s side door, yelled that she’d see him at the birdhouse auction Saturday morning.
Merv leaned against his tailgate, watched her taillights fade down the fairground access road, and took the last sip of his warm IPA. He pulled up her contact on his phone, tapped the little bird emoji, and smiled to himself, the crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the last of the fair’s noise.
