Page 1 of Bonfire with the Mountain Man

1

BOONE

Ihear her truck before I see her.

That old flatbed has a particular cough to it. A rattle in the engine that’s been getting worse for three autumns running. I know the sound the way I know my own copper.

Every fall, she comes down off the pass at dawn and delivers to the grocer, the coffee shop, and the market on the corner. By the time the sun’s over the ridge, she’s gone again. I’ve watched her unload crates in the alley behind the tasting room more mornings than I’d admit to anyone.

I’ve never once said a word to her.

Now it’s late afternoon, the light going gold through the front windows, and the rattle cuts off right outside my door. Wrong time of day for her. She’s a dawn creature, gone before the town’s awake, and here she is with the sun already dropping behind the ridge. I set down the glass I’m polishing.

The bell rings. She steps in.

Maggie Lang. I know her name the way you know a landmark. She has a smudge of dirt along her jaw and her hair’s coming loose from whatever she tied it back with this morning. She holds a clipboard against her middle like a shield.

“Are you the owner?” she asks.

“I am.”

She gives a quick nod, and I watch her square up. She’s rehearsed this. I can see it in the way she plants her feet.

“My name’s Maggie. I run Lang Orchard, down valley. I’ve got a load of apples that need to move fast, and I was hoping…” She stops. Starts again. “You make an apple brandy. I saw it on your shelf last year. And I thought, if you’re buying fruit anyway, maybe you’d want to talk to somebody local instead of trucking it in from three hundred miles off like everybody else in this town’s started doing.”

“Yes,” I say.

She keeps going.

“They’re seconds, mostly. Not pretty. The grocer up the street had a standing contract with me, and he canceled it two days ago—went with the resort’s distributor—so I’ve got half a ton sitting on the truck that’s going to turn in a couple days if it doesn’t get pressed.” She flips a page on the clipboard she doesn’t look at. “I know seconds aren’t ideal. There’s some bruising. A little scab on the Jonathans, but it’s cosmetic, it doesn’t touch the flesh, and honestly for a mash it doesn’t matter what they look like. You’re cooking them down anyway, so…”

“Maggie.”

She stops.

“I said yes,” I say. “And my name’s Boone Hudson. Since you gave me yours.”

She blinks. Her mouth opens, closes. For a second, she just stands there, clutching the clipboard.

“You don’t want to see them first?” she asks. “I can back the truck up. You should check the load before you commit to a number. That’s just good business. My dad always said never buy fruit you haven’t put your hands on.”

I come around the end of the bar. She holds her ground, but her chin lifts a degree, tracking me.

“How much do you want for the load?” I ask.

She names a price. It’s low. It’s lower than the fruit’s worth, lower than I’d pay a supplier. She says it fast, like she’s bracing for me to talk her down.

“I’ll pay you a third more than that,” I say.

Her eyebrows come together. “That’s not how this works. You’re supposed to argue me down, not up.”

“You underpriced it.”

“I priced it to move.”

“You priced it like you expected me to say no.”

That registers somewhere. I watch it. Her jaw tightens, and she looks out the front window at the strip, where the hay bales and the cornstalk bundles run down both sides of Prospect Street. When she looks back, she’s dropped the sales pitch entirely.