The Sourdough Lesson

I want to start by explaining how I ended up sitting in a canvas tent full of quilters on a Saturday, because it makes no sense on paper. I'm thirty-four, I sell office supplies for a living, and the only reason I was within fifty miles of the Pacific Northwest Folk Festival was my sister's dog.

Waffle is a corgi. My sister got him two years ago and he has never once been calm. She called me on Wednesday and said, "I have festival tickets and you have nothing going on, watch the dog or I'll find someone who will." I said yes because I always say yes, and that's how I came to be standing at the festival grounds outside Eugene with a lanyard that said VOLUNTEER on it, which I had not earned, and a dog on a leash who was trying to drag me toward the fry bread stand.

The volunteer thing happened because a woman at the gate said dogs needed to be with a registered handler and I panicked and lied, and then someone handed me a vest and pointed me at the quilting bee tent. Apparently the quilting bee tent needed a strong back. That was me. Strong back, no skills.

The tent was big, a proper canvas shelter with a long table down the middle and about a dozen women in floral aprons swapping stitches and gossip at full volume. Waffle flopped under the table and immediately became the most popular creature in the place. Six women were already asking about his diet.

That's where I met Keira.

She came in through the back flap carrying a coil of rope over one shoulder as if it weighed nothing, and she was maybe thirty-two, dark hair in a braid, flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She dropped the rope on a folding chair and started talking to the oldest quilter about a stage rigging problem, something about a pulley and a load limit, and then she turned to me and said, "You the new muscle?"

"Apparently," I said. "Philip."

"Keira. I do the stage rigging for the festival. I also get volunteered here because Roxie feeds me pie." She gestured at the oldest woman, who nodded like this was a settled arrangement. "Can you hold the other end of this without dropping it?"

I could hold the other end of it. We spent twenty minutes reroping a banner frame over the tent entrance while the quilters narrated our progress to each other like a radio broadcast. Keira knew her stuff. I found out later she'd started at twenty-three working regional fairs, learning rope work from older riggers who'd been doing it since the seventies, and it showed in how she moved. Everything was deliberate. Nothing was wasted.

Then she reached up to cinch a knot and her flannel pulled tight across her chest, and I saw the harness.

Okay. Let me back up. Under the flannel she was wearing a flat woven thing across her ribs, wide straps, neat buckles, and it looked exactly like nothing I'd ever seen outside of a certain kind of internet rabbit hole I had maybe visited once or twice. Or eleven times. It was clearly a rope harness, and it was clearly not a work harness, because work harnesses don't get worn under flannel with nothing to hold.

And I stared. I stared for a solid three seconds before Waffle barked at a pigeon and saved me.

Keira didn't say anything right away. She finished the knot, stepped down off the folding chair, and looked at me with an expression I'd describe as amused the way a cat is amused.

"So," she said. "You want to tell me what you were just looking at?"

"The... banner frame," I said.

"Sure. The banner frame." She folded her arms. "That was a chest harness, Philip. I wear it under my shirt when I'm rigging because it saves my back, and also because I like it. You looked at it like you knew what it was. So which is it, work harness or the other kind?"

"The other kind," I said, because lying twice in one minute seemed like pushing my luck. "I think. I mean, I've seen pictures."

She laughed. Actually laughed, head back, and one of the quilters called out, "What'd you say to him, Keira, he's blushing."

"I showed him my harness, Roxie," Keira called back, and the whole tent cackled like this was normal tent content. Maybe it was. I had been there an hour and already understood the quilting bee was a lawless place.

"Hey, don't look so stricken," she said to me, softer now. "It's fine. You looked, I caught you, we're adults, nobody died. You're thirty-something, right?"

"Thirty-four."

"I'm thirty-two. There, we've done the part where we establish we're grown-ups. You want to ask me something? Ask."

I opened my mouth and nothing came out, which is a recurring problem for me. She let me off the hook, mostly.

"Actually, no, I need a favor first," she said. "I forgot a bowl in my trailer. Big blue mixing bowl, the quilters need it for the raffle tickets. Trailer B-14, backstage, past the vendor tents. You seem to need something to do with your hands while your brain reboots. Go get it, come back, and then you can ask me anything you want. Deal?"

"Deal," I said, mostly because Waffle was asleep and Roxie volunteered to guard the dog, and because a walk to clear my head sounded excellent.

Trailer B-14 was one of a row of them behind the stage, tucked between a food truck and a chain link fence. The door was unlocked, because apparently this festival ran on trust and pie. I went in and it was small and tidy, a bunk, a camp stove, a rack of rope coils on the wall, each one coiled so neatly it looked like a store display.

The blue bowl was on the counter. I picked it up.

And then, because I am a nosy person with poor impulse control, I looked around a little. That's when I saw the sourdough crock on the shelf above the bunk, a big stoneware thing with a cloth tied over the top, and it caught my attention because my sister had one just like it and hers was a family relic. This one had a strip of masking tape on the front with handwriting that said FEED ME TUESDAYS. It was late Saturday. Somebody had not fed their sourdough.

The nightstand, such as it was, a plastic drawer unit, had a couple of things on it. A paperback with a broken spine. A phone charger. And a tube of lube, just sitting there, plain as a flashlight, the kind you'd buy at any drugstore in town.

I am not going to pretend I processed that calmly. I stood in Keira's trailer holding a blue bowl and staring at a tube of lube like it was going to explain itself. The harness made sense now, sort of. Or made less sense, depending. Either way, the woman running the stage rigging and volunteering at the quilting bee had a chest harness under her flannel and a tube of lube by her bed, and I had been invited back to "ask anything I want."

I put the lube back exactly where it was, moved the paperback a half inch back toward its original position to cover my tracks, and walked out with the bowl like a man carrying evidence.

Waffle was awake when I got back and working the tent for snacks, which Roxie swore she hadn't given him, while holding the evidence of at least three crackers. Keira was at the table tying off the banner rope. She looked up and held out her hand.

"Bowl?"

"Bowl," I said, and handed it over.

"Good. So." She set it down, wiped her hands on her jeans, and gave me a look that was way too steady for someone whose nightstand I had just been rummaging through, not that she knew that. "You had a question. Ask it or lose the chance, I've got a stage call at four."

I had several questions. None of them were the kind you ask in a tent full of quilters.

"What's the crock for?" I said, which was not one of the questions I'd been planning, and her face did something interesting when I said it.

"It's for sourdough," she said, slow, like I might be simple. "Why, what did you think it was for?"

"Nothing. I mean, I saw it. In the trailer. When I got the bowl."

"You snooped in my trailer."