Dale Rainer is 58, a retired power lineworker who still carries the 12-inch crescent wrench he used for 32 years on his belt, even when he’s just grabbing a beer at the farmers market’s outdoor beer garden. His worst flaw, his late wife used to tease, is that he holds a grudge longer than he holds a lineman’s knot—right now, that grudge is fixed on Clara Bennett, 42, the newly elected school board president whose father fired Dale’s older brother from the local power co-op back in 1998 over a petty safety rule dispute that everyone knew was just old man Bennett flexing his authority. Dale had skipped every community event for six months after Clara won the election, but the town had just hosted a packed town hall about reviving the high school trade program he ran for 12 years before the board cut it in 2019, and he’d stuck around for a cold Pabst to cool off after yelling at three separate city council members.
The July air is thick enough to sip, cloying with the smell of grilled sweet corn and cut clover from the adjacent park, sweat beading under the rolled cuffs of his faded flannel and trailing down the scar on his left forearm he got when a transformer blew in 2011. He’s mid-sip when he sees her walk through the beer garden gate, no stuffy navy blazer like she wore to the town hall, just a loose white linen blouse half-tucked into dark high-waisted jeans, work boots caked with a little mud, gold hoop earrings glinting in the sun. He tenses, ready to pretend he doesn’t see her, but she spots him immediately, a half-smile tugging at her mouth as she walks straight to his table.
“Mind if I sit?” She nods at the empty chair across from him, and he grunts, not saying yes or no, but she pulls it out and sits anyway, setting her own can of hard seltzer on the sticky plastic tabletop. He’s ready to snap at her about her dad, about the trade program cuts, but she beats him to it, leaning forward a little so her voice cuts through the hum of the crowd and the bluegrass band playing by the market entrance. “I read all your old lesson plans, by the way. The ones where you took the kids out to fix low-income folks’ porch steps for free? That’s exactly what I want the new program to be.”
He blinks, taken off guard, his fingers tightening around his beer can. He’s about to ask what her angle is, what old man Bennett has to do with this, when she laughs, soft and low, and says, “I quit my dad’s construction company in 2017, for the record. He cut health benefits for non-union workers, and I told him to go to hell. I ran for school board explicitly to bring the trade program back. I’m not him.”
Her knee brushes his under the table when a golden retriever runs past, yanking its owner behind it, and she doesn’t yank it away, just shifts a little closer so their legs are pressed together from calf to knee, the thin fabric of her jeans warm through his work pants. They reach for the napkin holder at the same time, their knuckles brushing, and he notices the small, rough callus on her right index finger, the same kind he has from gripping a hammer for hours. “You frame on weekends?” he asks, before he can stop himself, and she grins, holding up her hand to show the faint white scar across her thumb from a misfired nail gun. “Half the houses on the west side of town have my drywall work in them.”
The sun dips a little lower, gilding the edges of her hair, and he smells citrus and cut grass on her skin, no heavy perfume, just the smell of someone who spends most of her time outside. She holds his gaze when she talks, no skittering eye contact, no corporate politeness, and he feels that tight, unfamiliar pull low in his chest, the kind he hasn’t felt since his wife died four years prior. He’s spent six months hating the idea of her, seething every time he saw her name in the local paper, and now he can’t remember why he was ever angry, not really, not when her knee is still pressed to his, not when she’s asking him what supplies he’d need for the first semester of the program, leaning in so close he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose.
He reaches out before he thinks better of it, brushing a strand of blonde hair that fell across her face, his calloused thumb grazing her cheekbone for half a second. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away, just tilts her head a little, her smile softening. “I know you don’t trust me,” she says, quiet enough that only he can hear it, over the clink of beer bottles and the band playing a cover of a Johnny Cash song he loves. “I’ll earn it. Promise.”
She stands up a minute later, grabbing her seltzer can, and squeezes his shoulder on her way out, her hand lingering a beat longer than necessary, warm and firm through his flannel. “I’ll call you Tuesday, okay?” she says, and he nods, lifting his beer in a small salute.
He sits there for another 20 minutes, finishing his beer, watching kids chase each other through the market stalls, the crinkle of corn husks and the sound of a kid laughing carrying over the crowd. The grudge he’s carried for 25 years isn’t gone, exactly, but it’s dulled, soft around the edges, no longer sharp enough to make him turn down a good thing before he even gives it a chance. He pulls out his beat-up flip phone, scrolls to the calendar app, and marks the Tuesday she said she’d call with a tiny, wobbly X.
