Ray Hargrove, 58, retired lineman for Auglaize County Electric, nursed a sweating plastic cup of Pabst at the county fair beer tent. He’d only showed up to watch his 10-year-old granddaughter take first place for her 4-H hog, and he’d been planning to leave as soon as the ribbon was pinned to the pig’s pen, but the line at the exit was backed up and the beer was cold, so he’d lingered. His left work boot still had a smudge of pig manure on the toe, his flannel was tied around his waist against the evening humidity, and he still carried a grudge so thick he could taste it against the beer’s bitter fizz: the county had rezoned his 12-acre hunting plot six months prior to build a low-income senior complex, and he’d yelled himself hoarse at three separate town hall meetings over it.
The woman who’d signed off on that rezoning slid onto the bar stool two feet from him ten minutes later. He recognized her immediately: Clara Bennett, 49, the county planning director who’d stood at the front of those meetings, calm as a summer morning, while he screamed about the 70-year-old oak tree he’d sat under after every deer hunt for 22 years, the one they’d bulldozed first. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts, scuffed white sneakers, and a faded county parks hoodie rolled to the elbows, her sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a loose braid that had come half undone, a stray piece stuck to the sunscreen-slick skin of her neck. When she reached across the bar for a napkin, her elbow brushed his hard enough to slosh a drop of beer over the edge of his cup onto his jean-clad thigh.