Leo Marquez, 62, retired lineman for the Brazos Electric Co-op, hasn’t voluntarily spoken to anyone outside his hound dog and the feed store cashier in three years. Not since his wife Linda lost her fight with ovarian cancer, not since he handed in his work truck keys and boarded up the side porch where he used to rebuild vintage fishing reels for the neighborhood kids. He’s got a scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2018 hurricane repair, when he scaled a 60-foot pole in 70-mile-an-hour winds to restore power to a nursing home, and a stubborn streak wider than the Texas plains he calls home. That stubbornness is why he’s spent the last two hours at the annual town chili cookoff deliberately avoiding Clara Bennett, the 48-year-old county extension agent who’s been blowing up his flip phone for a month begging him to volunteer for the senior home repair program.
The air smells like smoked paprika, mesquite, and cheap domestic beer. A warped George Strait cassette blares from the picnic pavilion speakers, and the grit of red dirt sticks to the sweat on his calves below the frayed hem of his Wranglers. He’s leaning against the folding table by his brisket chili booth, nursing a lukewarm Dr Pepper, when he spots her weaving through the crowd, UT hoodie slung over cutoff denim shorts, cowboy boots scuffed at the toes, a smudge of chili powder high on her left cheek. He’s known her since she was 16, snuck a six pack of Shiner out of his cooler at Linda’s 40th birthday party and lied about it to her mom. He’s always thought of her as a kid, a nuisance, someone to wave at from the cab of his truck if he can’t avoid her. So when she makes a beeline straight for his booth, his first instinct is to duck behind the crockpot.
He doesn’t. She stops a foot away, close enough that he can smell coconut shampoo mixed with the cedar perfume she’s worn since she was a teen, and leans in to sniff the chili simmering in the pot. Her shoulder brushes his through his thin denim work shirt, and he tenses so hard his jaw aches. He hasn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t handing him a receipt in longer than he can remember. “You’ve been dodging my calls,” she says, grinning, like she knows he has no good excuse. Her hazel eyes are flecked with green, crinkled at the corners the same way Linda’s used to when she was teasing him. He grunts, grabs a sample spoon, shoves it in the chili, holds it out to her. “Chili’s good. Won first place last year,” he says, deliberately ignoring her comment.
She laughs, that low, throaty laugh he remembers from the night she got caught sneaking beer, and reaches for the spoon. Her fingers brush his, calloused from working in her community garden, and a jolt shoots up his arm so sharp he almost drops the spoon. He yanks his hand back like he touched a live wire, face heating up. He feels sick, almost, guilty. She’s 14 years younger than him. He knew her when she was still getting grounded for skipping school. Thinking about her like that, even for half a second, feels like a betrayal of Linda, like he’s some kind of creep preying on a girl he watched grow up. But he can’t look away from her mouth, the way her tongue darts out to taste the chili, the way she hums low in her throat and nods. “Damn, that’s even better than last year. You gonna enter the state contest?” she asks, leaning against the table next to him, their knees brushing now.
He mumbles something about not having the time, staring at the scuff on his left work boot. She nudges his knee with hers. “C’mon, Leo. You don’t have to hide away forever. Linda would kick your ass if she saw you holed up in that house all by yourself, wasting those skills you worked 30 years to build,” she says, soft, no teasing this time. He looks up at her, and for a second he can’t breathe. She’s not a kid anymore. She’s a woman, sharp and warm and looking at him like he’s not just some broken old widower who can’t be bothered to talk to anyone. He doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods.
An hour later, he’s holding a second place ribbon and a check for $150, which he hands straight to the 4-H kid running the bake sale by the pavilion. The sun is dipping low on the horizon, painting the sky pink and tangerine, when she finds him by the oak tree at the edge of the park. “Wanna walk down to the creek? I wanna talk to you about something that’s not the repair program,” she says, kicking a rock across the dirt path. He hesitates, thinks about his hound dog waiting at home with his bowl of kibble, thinks about the empty house, the silence that’s been eating at him for three years. “Yeah, okay,” he says, before he can talk himself out of it.
The path to the creek is lined with bluebonnets, their sweet scent mixing with the damp smell of the water. Crickets chirp in the underbrush, and the distant sound of the cookoff cleanup fades behind them. She stops at a fallen oak log half-buried in the bank, pats the spot next to her. He sits, their thighs pressed together, warm through the thin denim of their jeans. “I’ve had a crush on you since I was 16,” she says, no preamble, turning to look at him. “I thought you were the toughest, kindest guy I’d ever met. The way you took care of Linda when she was sick? I used to tell my friends I wanted to marry someone like you.” He feels his throat go tight, his hands shaking a little. “Clara, I’m 14 years older than you. I knew you when you were still getting sent to your room for talking back,” he says, but there’s no bite in it.
She smiles, leans in, and he doesn’t pull away. Her lips are soft, taste like root beer and the peppermint gum she always chews, and for the first time in three years, he doesn’t feel like half a person. His hand comes up to cup the back of her neck, her hair soft under his fingers, and when they pull apart a minute later, they’re both grinning like stupid teenagers. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” she says, standing up, brushing dirt off her shorts. “We can talk about the volunteer program, and maybe get dinner at that BBQ place out on Highway 6. You still like brisket extra smoky?” He nods, watching her walk back up the path, her boots kicking up little clouds of red dirt. He bends down, grabs a smooth flat stone from the creek bank, skips it across the water. It bounces four times before sinking under the surface, ripples spreading out slow and soft across the darkening water.
