Clay Bennett, 58, retired power lineman for the Auglaize County electric co-op, holds grudges longer than he holds a grudge against the 2008 ice storm that put him in a neck brace for three months. Four years after his wife Sue passed from metastatic breast cancer, he still spends most Friday nights at the VFW, drinking Pabst, yelling about town politics, and avoiding anyone who tries to set him up with the widows from the local church. For the last two years, his favorite target has been Mara Carter, 52, the school board president he blamed for killing the veteran’s memorial project he spent three years fundraising for.
The August air hangs thick enough to sip at the annual New Knoxville street fair, fried onion and cotton candy fumes stinging his eyes as he balances a sweating plastic cup of beer in one calloused hand, scuffed work boots caked with grass clippings from mowing his 3-acre lawn that morning. The only empty spot at the beer tent picnic tables is wedged next to a woman in a faded Led Zeppelin tee and worn work boots, a smudge of oak stain on her left ankle, and when he sits down hard to avoid a group of yelling teens, his shoulder brushes hers. He looks over, jaw tightening immediately. It’s her.
He’s already opening his mouth to snap when she holds up a can of lime hard seltzer, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners like she’s been expecting the lecture. “Hold that thought. I know why you’re mad.” Her voice is lower than he expected, rougher, like she spends half her time yelling over power tools. She shifts a little closer, her knee pressing against his under the splintered table, and passes him a crumpled piece of paper warm from being tucked in her jeans pocket. It’s a grant approval letter, dated three days prior, for $32,000 earmarked specifically for the high school veteran’s memorial, plus extra funds for the post-9/11 vet name plaque he’d fought so hard to include.
She explains the old school board had embezzled $12,000 from the general fund before she took office, so all discretionary projects had to be frozen while the audit wrapped up, and she couldn’t say anything publicly to avoid tanking the grant application before it was approved. She’d been meaning to call him all week, she says, but kept putting it off because she’d heard all the names he called her at the VFW, from “boardroom hack” to “waste of tax dollars”. He feels his face heat up, equal parts embarrassed and confused, the grudge he’s nurtured for two years suddenly feeling as flimsy as the cheap paper cup in his hand.
She asks if he wants to walk down to the creek at the edge of the fairgrounds to get away from the noise, and he says yes before he can overthink it, even though he knows half the guys from the VFW are watching from the next table, already placing bets. The grass is cool on his bare ankles where his jeans are rolled up, the roar of the fair fading as they step under the shade of the oak trees lining the bank, crickets chirping loud enough to drown out the distant music. Her hand brushes his twice more before she laces their fingers together, her palm warm and rough, and he doesn’t pull away, even though it’s the first time he’s held anyone’s hand since Sue was in hospice.
She says she’s seen him at the VFW a dozen times, carrying groceries for the 92-year-old WWII vet who can barely walk, fixing the leaky faucet in the kitchen last month, and she knew he wasn’t just the grumpy guy yelling about school board meetings. He admits he was an idiot, that he never bothered to ask for her side of the story, just repeated the gossip the other guys spouted without doing any research. She leans against his bicep, her shoulder warm through his thin cotton tee, and laughs, says her ex-husband used to call her far worse when she left him after 20 years of him cheating on her with his secretary.
The sun dips below the treeline, fireflies blinking to life around them as they sit on a fallen sycamore log at the edge of the creek, water gurgling soft over smooth stones. He tilts her chin up with his thumb, and kisses her slow, no rush, no pressure, the taste of lime seltzer and mint gum on her tongue, her hand coming up to rest on his chest right over the dog tags he still wears under his shirt, the ones he got when he enlisted in the Army right out of high school. When he pulls back, she’s smiling, her cheeks pink, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this light, like the weight of the last four years, the weight of the grudge, the weight of being alone, has finally lifted off his shoulders.
He tucks a strand of wind-tousled gray hair behind her ear and lets his thumb brush the curve of her jaw, no hurry to go back to the fair, no hurry to do anything at all.
