Ray Voss, 58, retired lineman with a 4-inch scar snaking across his left forearm from a 2019 line fire, spent 7 years avoiding exactly this kind of crowded, loud small-town event. His sister badgered him for three weeks straight to come to Maplewood’s annual Summer Fair, saying he was turning into a hermit who only talked to his hound dog and the elderly neighbors he did free electrical work for. He’d caved mostly for the craft beer tent, which poured a vanilla porter he couldn’t get at the corner gas station.
He leaned against a splintered wooden tent pole, condensation dripping down his plastic cup onto scuffed work boots, when someone bumped his elbow hard enough to slosh half his beer onto the dirt. He looked down first, at a dainty rosé cup tipped half over near his foot, then up, and his throat went tight. Clara Bennett. 52, his son Jake’s 10th grade math teacher, the woman he’d stammered through three parent-teacher conferences with back when Jake was 16, the woman he’d actively avoided at grocery stores and football games for years because it felt wrong to look at her like that when she’d graded his kid’s algebra tests.
He nodded, suddenly aware he wore a faded John Deere hat and a t-shirt with a shoulder hole, the same one he’d worn to fix Mrs. Henderson’s breaker that morning. “Yeah. Clara. How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you around since Jake graduated.” He knew exactly how long that had been: 11 years, 2 months, 3 days, not that he was counting.
She leaned in to hear him over the noise, sun-warmed arm brushing his bare bicep, and he smelled lavender lotion mixed with sugary fried dough from the stand 10 feet away. “Retired last spring. Spent three months driving to Montana, camped out in a Craigslist camper van. Finally got sick of sleeping on a dog-scented foam mattress, so I came back last week. You still fixing up old trucks in your garage, or did you give that up when you retired?”
He blinked, surprised she remembered. He’d mentioned it once, in passing, at that last conference, when he’d showed up 10 minutes late covered in motor oil from working on his 1978 F-150. “Still at it. Got that old Ford almost running now. Just need a new carburetor.”
She shifted closer, shoulders pressed tight together, and tilted her head up. The setting sun caught silver streaks in her dark brown hair, and she had a smudge of cotton candy pink on her left cheek. “I’ve been trying to learn basic car stuff for years. Every mechanic charges me double for an oil change because they think a retired teacher doesn’t know what a filter costs. You ever give lessons?”
His first instinct was to say no, that it was inappropriate, that his kid would lose his mind if he found out he was hanging out with his old math teacher, let alone teaching her to change oil. But then she bit her lower lip a little, like she was nervous he’d say no, and he felt that tight pull in his chest he hadn’t felt since his wife died. He wasn’t disgusted by the idea, not even a little. He was just scared, for the first time in years, that he’d mess something good up.
He was still fumbling for a response when the first firework went off, red and gold bursting directly above them, and a group of running kids knocked her straight into his chest. He caught her by the waist, calloused hands resting on the soft curve of her hips, and her hand landed directly on his forearm scar. She ran her thumb over the raised, pale skin slowly, like she was memorizing it, and the noise of fireworks, crowd, band all faded out for a second.
“Line fire, 2019,” he said, quiet enough only she could hear. “Got knocked off a pole by a surge. Spent three weeks in the hospital. That’s when I decided to retire.”
She nodded, not pulling her hand away. “I remember. Jake told me about it when he came back to visit after graduation. Said you refused pain meds so you could work on your truck when you got out.” She smiled, that same crinkle at the corner of her eyes he’d thought about a hundred times alone in his garage at night. “Always thought you were stubborn as hell. That’s not a bad thing, by the way.”
The last firework faded, and the crowd started heading for the exit, kids yelling and parents herding them like cattle. He didn’t want the night to end, didn’t want to go back to his empty house, frozen pizza, old westerns alone. “I got a six pack of that same porter in my fridge at home,” he said, before he could talk himself out of it. “You wanna come over? See the truck. I’ll even show you how to check your oil, no charge.”
She laughed, lacing her fingers through his, her hand warm and calloused on the fingertips from the gardening she’d mentioned earlier. “I’d like that. But if you try to charge me for the lesson, I’ll tell Jake you used to bring peanut butter cookies to parent-teacher conferences so hard they could break a window.”
He grinned, squeezing her hand, and led her through the crowd, stepping around strollers and half-eaten cotton candy sticks on the sidewalk. He’d spent 7 years thinking he was done with anything that felt like adventure, risk, something that made his heart beat fast for a reason that wasn’t a downed power line. He’d been wrong.
He opened the passenger door of his beat-up 2006 Silverado for her, and when she slid in, she left her hand resting on his thigh the whole drive home.
