Page 2 of Bonfire with the Mountain Man

“People usually do,” she says.

Three years, I’ve watched that truck come down the pass. Three years of a woman doing the work of two people alone before the sun’s up, delivering to business owners who’ll drop her the second something cheaper rolls through. And here she is, apologizing for fruit that’s better than anything the resort’s distributor would truck in, waiting for me to be one more no.

I’m not going to be a no. I decided that somewhere around the second sentence. The truth is, I think I decided it a long time before she ever walked through my door.

“Half a ton,” I say. “When does it turn?”

“Two days. Maybe less if it warms up.”

“Then we press it tonight and tomorrow.”

“We?”

“I’ve got one still and two hands. You’ve got half a ton of apples and a truck.” I lean back against the bar. “You know your fruit better than I do. Stay. Help me sort it, and I’ll pay you the full number and the labor on top.”

She stares at me. The clipboard’s come down from her middle, hanging loose at her side now, forgotten.

“You don’t even know me,” she says.

“I know your truck.”

Her forehead creases.

“You come down the pass every morning in October,” I say. “That rattle in your engine’s going to strand you one of these days. You should let somebody look at it.”

Color climbs up her neck. She glances toward the window like she can see the truck from here, then back at me. There’s a question in her face she doesn’t ask.

“It’s just a load of apples,” she finally says, almost to herself.

“Then it’s an easy yes.”

Outside, the light’s sinking behind the ridge, and the string lights over Prospect flicker on, one strand at a time down the length of the street. The tasting room goes warm and dim around us. In an hour, the locals will start drifting in for the fire pit out back, the way they do every night this time of year, and I’ll pour and she’ll be here. I haven’t felt this settled about anything in longer than I can remember.

She sets the clipboard down on the bar, squaring her feet again, but different this time. Instead of bracing, she’s deciding.

“Your number plus the third,” she says. “And labor. Since you’re set on robbing yourself.”

“My number plus the third,” I say. “And labor.”

“And I’m telling you right now, if you nick a single one of my knives on that press, you’re buying me a new set.”

The corner of my mouth goes up before I can stop it. “Fair.”

She almost smiles. Almost. She catches it and pulls it back, and I decide, standing there in the gold light with half a ton of her apples still out on that rattling truck, that I’m going to spend the next two days getting the rest of it.

“Back the truck up to the alley door,” I tell her. “I’ll open the bay.”

She goes. The bell rings behind her. Through the window, I watch her cross to the flatbed. I’m already reaching for the keys to the back.

2

MAGGIE

The bay door rolls up, and there he is, backlit, bigger than he looked behind the bar.

I back the flatbed the last few feet by feel, one arm over the seat, the mirror useless in the dark of the alley. When I cut the engine, it rattles twice and dies, the way it always does, and I sit there a second with my hands still on the wheel.

Half a ton of apples. A stranger who said yes before I finished asking.