Woody Tharp, 61, spent 38 years as a full-time fire apparatus mechanic for the city of Akron, retired three years back after his wife Diane’s ovarian cancer diagnosis turned into six months of hospital beds and empty prescription bottles. His only flaw, if you asked the guys he used to work with, is that he holds a grudge so long it fossilizes. He still won’t eat at the diner on Main Street because the owner shorted him $2 on a breakfast sandwich in 2017, still crosses the street when he sees his high school ex’s older brother Jimmie, the guy who punched him so hard at the 1982 prom after party he lost a crown on his left molar.
He’s manning his booth at the Portage County summer street fair the third Saturday of August, the air thick enough to drink, sweat beading at the hairline under his faded fire department ball cap. The table is stacked with restored vintage fire patches, custom keychains made from old nozzle parts, and a few polished 1970s fire axe heads he refinished in his garage workshop over the winter. Most of the families with little kids have cleared out by 8pm, the crowds shifting to the beer garden at the end of the block, the air smelling like fried oreos, cut clover, and the faint diesel fumes from the Tilt-A-Whirl idling a few rows over.
He’s wiping sawdust off an axe head with a shop rag when he sees her. Lena Carter, Jimmie’s little sister, 58, the girl he used to stare at across the high school cafeteria when she was a sophomore and he was a senior, too scared to say anything because Jimmie already threatened to break his legs if he so much as looked at any of his sisters. She’s got that same silver streak running through the front of her dark brown hair, the one she got when she crashed her dirt bike into a fence at 16, wearing cutoff jean shorts, a faded Fleetwood Mac tee that’s frayed at the hem, and flip flops that show off chipped red nail polish on her toes. She’s holding a vanilla vodka seltzer in one hand, a paper plate with a half-eaten corn dog in the other, and she’s grinning like she already knows he’s flustered.
“Still selling old fire junk, huh?” she says, leaning against the edge of the table, close enough that he can smell coconut sunscreen and the faint, sweet fizz of her drink. He tenses up automatically, half expecting Jimmie to pop up behind her and take another swing. She laughs, low and warm, and nods at the empty spot next to his chair. “Relax. Jimmie’s at home with his grandkids. Told me last week he still feels bad about that prom punch, for what it’s worth. Said you didn’t even do anything, he was just mad his girlfriend danced with you.”
Woody snorts, but he doesn’t move away when her arm brushes his as she leans in to look at a 1968 Akron Fire Department patch laid out on the table. He’s spent the last three years telling himself he’s too old for this, too old for flirting, too old for the kind of small town gossip that would spread like wildfire if anyone saw him talking to Lena Carter, who’s been married three times, who lived in Key West for 20 years bartending, who everyone in town calls “the wild Carter girl.” He’s disgusted with himself for even noticing how her tan line cuts sharp across her wrist where her watch sits, for noticing the way her lip ring glints when she smiles, for feeling his face heat up when she says she used to hang around the fire station after school just to watch him work on the trucks.
“I brought you a peach pie a month after Diane died,” she says, soft enough that no one walking by can hear. She reaches across the table to pick up a nozzle keychain, and her hand lands right on top of his, calloused from years of mixing drinks and fixing up old beach cottages, warm even through the thin cotton of his work glove. He doesn’t pull away. “Left it on your porch. You never called. I didn’t push it. Knew you needed space.”
Woody’s throat goes tight. He remembers that pie, remembers throwing it in the trash the next morning, mad at the world, mad at anyone who tried to be nice to him when Diane was gone, convinced he didn’t deserve any kind of kindness. He yanks off his work glove, lets his bare hand rest under hers, and for the first time in years he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, doesn’t care that Jimmie might see them, doesn’t care that the ladies from the church will be whispering about it at Sunday service.
“Was an idiot back then,” he says, and she laughs, squeezes his hand once before she pulls back to pick up the keychain, twists it between her fingers.
“Still are, probably,” she says, and she’s not teasing anymore, her eyes steady on his, the pink and orange neon from the cotton candy stand glowing on her cheeks. The Tilt-A-Whirl rumbles in the background, someone a few booths over is playing Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” on a portable speaker, and a group of drunk college kids yell as they carry a pitcher of beer past the booth.
He asks her if she wants to get a beer at the garden once he packs up, and she nods, leans against the table while he folds up the table cloth, locks the metal storage chest he keeps his stock in, tucks the cash box into the pocket of his work jeans. She loops her arm through his when he’s done, her shoulder pressing firm into his bicep, as they walk down the sawdust-covered pavement toward the string lights strung above the beer garden entrance. When she tilts her head up to grin at him over the rim of her seltzer can, the neon “BEER GARDEN” sign glows bright green in the corner of her eye, and he doesn’t care who sees them.
