21. Nora #2
We spent the next twenty minutes committing what probably qualified as pie contest fraud, circling the display table and purchasing “seconds” from the vendors whose pies had already been judged.
Hunt somehow acquired an entire slice of the winning peach pie, which he fed me bite by bite while we stood in the shade of the exhibitor tent.
“This is bribery,” I said, around a mouthful of perfectly flaky crust.
“This is nutrition.”
“You’re trying to buy my affection with baked goods.”
“Is it working?”
I took another bite instead of answering.
We ended up in the bleachers by the hay-bale toss.
The competition was one of the fair’s oldest traditions, a simple test of strength and accuracy. Contestants had to throw a forty-pound hay bale over a high bar using only a pitchfork. Highest clearance won.
The first few competitors were local farmers, men who’d been tossing hay bales since they could walk. They made it look easy, the bales sailing over the bar with practiced efficiency.
Then Hunt’s name was called.
I turned to look at him. “You entered?”
“June entered me.” He stood up, peeling off his flannel jacket but leaving his t-shirt on. “Apparently she had a very productive morning.”
He walked down to the competition area, and it hit me that I was about to watch my husband do manual labor in front of the entire town.
The first throw was smooth. The bale cleared the bar with room to spare, and the crowd gave a polite round of applause.
The bar went up, Hunt threw again, and the bale cleared.
The bar went up again. The field narrowed to three competitors, then two, then just Hunt and a massive farmer named Big Mike who’d won this competition six years running.
Big Mike went first. His bale barely scraped over the bar.
Hunt picked up his pitchfork.
I watched him plant his feet, watched the muscles in his shoulders coil under his thin shirt, watched him swing the pitchfork up with the kind of controlled power that made the whole bleacher section lean forward. The bale flew. It cleared the bar by a wide margin.
The crowd erupted.
Hunt grinned, actually grinned, the shy genuine expression I remembered from years ago, and accepted the winner’s ribbon with his flannel still draped over the fence post.
I was staring.
I knew I was staring. Half the women in the bleachers were staring. My husband had just won a hay-bale toss while looking like the cover of a certain kind of calendar, and I was allowed to stare. I was his wife.
Even if I wasn’t sure what that meant anymore.
He was still down by the fence shaking hands with Big Mike when Cole Hutchins slid onto the bleacher beside me.
I knew Cole a little. He ran cattle out past the Meyer place, had brought his heeler in for a torn pad my second week in town, tipped his hat every time we crossed paths on the square. Nice man. Easy smile. The particular flavor of single that a small town keeps a running mental file on.
“Doc Smith.” He nodded at the field. “Didn’t know your-” He stalled on the word, because the whole county was hazy on exactly what Hunt was to me, which made two of us. “Didn’t know your friend there had an arm like that.”
“Neither did he, I think.”
Cole laughed. “You coming to the dance later? Down by the main stage, they do it every fall. Be a shame to miss it your first year.” A pause, warm, unmistakable. “I could show you around some. Introduce you to folks, if you wanted.”
It was a nice offer. A normal offer, from a nice, normal, uncomplicated man who tipped his hat and mended his own fences and had never once left me crying in a hospital parking lot. I opened my mouth to say yes in the friendliest, most noncommittal way I could.
“She’s got plans.”
Hunt was just there, suddenly, at the end of the bleacher, flannel back on, ribbon crushed in one fist, every easy line of him gone hard.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to.
He put himself half a step between me and Cole without appearing to decide to, shoulders squared, jaw set the way I hadn’t seen since a bloody barn floor, and he looked at Cole Hutchins like Cole had reached for what belonged to him.
Cole read the whole thing in about a second and a half. “Right. ’Course.” He stood, tipped his hat, careful now. “Enjoy the fair, Doc.” And he was gone.
I turned on Hunt.
“What are you doing?”
“I-”
“No. What was that.” My voice came out low and shaking.
“A man asked me to a dance, Hunt. A single woman, asked by a single man, to a dance, and you-” I gestured at the whole territorial line of him, the shoulders, the fist. “You don’t get to do that.
You don’t get the jealous-husband routine.
You gave that up somewhere around the third roster with her name on it, and then sent your assistant to our anniversary.
You don’t get to stand there and glare at the first decent man who’s looked at me like I’m a person. ”
The words landed. I watched them land, watched the hard thing in him crack and fall away and leave wreckage underneath.
“You’re right.” His voice was gravel. His fist opened; the ruined ribbon fluttered to the bleacher. “You’re right, I don’t have the right, I know I don’t.” He dragged a hand down his face. “I saw him lean in and I stopped thinking. That’s not an excuse. I’m sorry.”
He meant it. That was the maddening part. He wasn’t defending it, wasn’t spinning it, just standing in the wreckage of his own worst instinct and owning every inch of it.
And some feral, disloyal corner of my heart had liked it. Had liked being a thing he’d cross a bleacher to plant himself in front of. I hated that corner of my heart with everything I had.
Golden hour found us at the edge of the fairgrounds.
The band had moved to the main stage, playing a slow, twangy waltz that drifted across the crowd. People were starting to drift toward the dance area, couples and families claiming their spots as the sun painted everything warm.
Hunt stopped walking.