Maceo Ruiz, 53, has been keeping bees for 14 years, ever since he quit his job as a high school shop teacher post-divorce to live off 7 acres of wooded land outside Marion, North Carolina. He’s stubborn to a fault, has held the same grudge against his ex-wife’s younger cousin for 12 straight years, and hasn’t attended a single family gathering since the papers were signed. He only agreed to run a booth at the McDowell County Fair this year because his regular farmers market got rained out three weekends in a row, and he was low on rent money.
The August sun hangs low enough to turn the fairgrounds pink by 4pm, sweat sticking the collar of his worn bee-themed t-shirt to the back of his neck. He can smell the peach cobbler from the booth next to him before he even sees who’s running it, and his jaw tightens when he spots Elara Voss, the woman he’s spent more than a decade blaming for the end of his marriage. He’d always assumed she’d told his ex about the drunk night he kissed a bee supply rep at a conference, a mistake he’d spent three months begging for forgiveness for before his ex served him papers.