Ray Hayworth, 58, spent 32 years as a U.S. Forest Service ranger patrolling the Sawtooth Range before he retired last spring, and he’s spent the two years prior grumbling about every “newfangled social fad” that drifts into his small Idaho town: self-checkouts at the grocery store, rainbow stickers on the coffee shop door, pronoun labels on name tags at local events. Widowed seven years, he lives alone in a two-bed cabin 20 minutes outside Boise, avoids downtown unless he has to, and only agreed to attend the summer street fair because his 16-year-old niece begged him to watch her dog agility demo, bribing him with a free IPA ticket.
He’s leaning against the rough cedar rail of the beer tent patio, waiting for his drink, when a woman half-turns into him, her shoulder bumping his bicep hard enough that he sloshes a quarter inch of cold, hoppy IPA onto the toe of her scuffed leather work boot. He’s already halfway through a gruff apology, ready to follow it with a grouse about people not watching where they’re going, when he looks down. She’s 54, maybe, sun-freckled across the bridge of her nose, streaks of silver woven through her thick chestnut braid, a grey pit bull rescue bandana tied tight around her left wrist, calluses ridged across her knuckles like she lifts 50-pound dog crates for a living. Her name tag, stuck to the lapel of her faded tan Carhartt jacket, reads Clara, with she/they printed small underneath. For half a second, his jaw tightens—he’s made more than one snarky comment to his hunting buddies about those pronoun tags, called them performative nonsense, a waste of ink. Then she laughs, a low, raspy sound, like she’s been yelling over barking dogs all day, and says “Relax, that boot’s already got three years of mud, dog piss, and chicken poop on it. A little beer’s an upgrade.”