Earl Hagstrom, 62, retired forest fire spotter and part-time maple syrup producer, nursed a draft Pabst at the M-22 Roadhouse the second Saturday of April, post-maple festival. He’d sold out his entire batch of bourbon-barrel aged syrup an hour prior, his cash box stuffed with crumpled twenties and a few handwritten recipe cards people had pressed on him in exchange for extra samples. For the last eight years, ever since his wife Linda died of ovarian cancer, he’d claimed the far end of the bar every weekend, left the adjacent stool empty, and shot sharp enough glares at anyone who tried to slide into it that most people got the hint within three seconds. He didn’t do small talk. Didn’t do company. Had convinced himself that liking being alone wasn’t just a habit, it was a virtue, even when his adult kids called every Sunday to nag him about joining the local senior center hiking group.
The stool scraped against the linoleum at 8:17 p.m. He didn’t look up, just shifted his elbow an inch closer to his beer, ready to deploy the glare. The person who sat down smelled like turned soil and lavender, not the usual sawdust and diesel of the loggers and farmers who frequented the place. “You got any more of that syrup stashed in your truck?” The voice was low, rough around the edges like she spent half her day yelling over wind or farm equipment. He looked up. She was 58 or so, dark hair streaked with silver braided down her back, work boots caked in mud, flannel peeking out under a frayed wool blazer. She held up an empty sample cup, the one he’d stamped with his tiny maple leaf logo. “Tried it at your booth. You were busy showing that little kid how to tap a tree so I didn’t bug you. Best stuff I’ve had up here, by a mile.”
He grunted, half flattered, half annoyed at the intrusion. Mara, she said, new county agricultural extension agent, moved up from Indianapolis three months prior after her husband dropped dead of a heart attack mid-golf game. He felt that familiar twist of something sharp in his chest, equal parts disgust and hunger—disgust that he was even noticing how the corners of her eyes crinkled when she laughed, that he didn’t immediately tell her to go find another seat, hunger for something that wasn’t the same quiet routine of tapping trees, checking his old fire watch radio, eating frozen dinners alone at his kitchen table. They talked about sugar maples, he mentioned the stand of 120-year-old trees he’d stumbled on last fall, deep in the state forest, untapped for at least four decades. She leaned in, her knee brushing his under the bar, and he froze, didn’t pull away. The jukebox in the corner blared Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues,” the bartender slid a jar of dill pickles down the bar, and she reached across him to grab it, her forearm pressing firm against his chest for half a second, warm through his thin flannel. He felt his ears go red. “Coulda asked,” he said, teasing, rough, like he wasn’t replaying that split second of contact on loop in his head. “You looked like you were hoarding the pickles,” she shot back, popping one in her mouth, grinning.
He almost made an excuse when she asked if he’d take her out to that old stand the next weekend, said she could run soil tests, make sure he didn’t damage the root systems when he ran tap lines the next year. Almost said he had to fix his sap boiler, almost said he didn’t bring strangers out to his spots. But he looked at her then, her thumb brushing the chipped edge of her root beer mug, eyes steady, no pity, no weird unspoken pressure about being two widows in a small town, just curiosity. “I leave at 7 a.m.,” he said. “Wear waterproof boots. The trail’s mud this time of year.” She scribbled her number on a napkin, pressed it into his palm, her fingers lingering a beat longer than necessary, and he felt that jolt he hadn’t felt since he was 22, leaning against Linda’s parents’ porch rail, asking her out to the drive-in.
She left 20 minutes later, said she had two rescue hounds at home that would chew through her couch if she didn’t get back to feed them, waved at him through the frosted bar window when she climbed into her beat-up forest green Ford pickup. He sat there for another hour, his beer gone warm, the napkin crumpled slightly in his jeans pocket. The bartender, a guy he’d known since high school, slid him another draft on the house, grinning. “Told you you’d stop being a hermit one of these days.” Earl didn’t reply, just pulled the napkin out of his pocket, folded it careful, tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat, right next to the tattered drive-in ticket stub he’d carried in there for 38 years. He pulled his truck keys off the bar, stood up, and headed for the door, already mentally checking his pack for extra waterproof socks the next morning.
