Clay Bennett, 58, retired power lineman, had only agreed to man the VFW brat booth at the town’s summer community fair because his buddy Jim owed him $40 for a case of bourbon, and Jim had offered to wipe the debt if Clay pulled a four hour shift. Clay’s biggest flaw was that he could never turn down a deal that saved him money, even if it meant spending an afternoon surrounded by the kind of performative community nonsense he’d spent the last seven years avoiding since his wife died. He’d spent months rolling his eyes at neighborhood Facebook rants about “woke events” and “divisive programming”, so when he saw the booth two feet to his left— a library banned book stand draped in a rainbow tablecloth, stacked with paperbacks he’d read half of as a teen—he snorted so loud Jim smacked him on the arm. Back when he was 14, stealing a dog-eared Hemingway from his dad’s nightstand was the most rebellious thing you could do, not a political statement.
The woman running the stand was Mara, 52, part-time reference librarian who’d moved back to town two years prior after her divorce went through. She had sun-streaked brown hair pulled back in a messy braid, chipped navy nail polish, and a scar snaking up her left forearm from a motorcycle accident when she was 19. The first time she leaned over the barrier between their booths to ask for a brat with extra sauerkraut, Clay’s throat went dry before he could even answer. He handed her the paper plate, and their fingers brushed when she took it—her skin was cool, calloused at the fingertips from turning book pages, he realized later. She paid him with a crumpled five dollar bill, and winked when he tried to give her change. “On the house for the guys who keep the lights on around here,” he’d mumbled, staring at the grill so he didn’t have to look at the way her eyes crinkled when she smiled.
Clay had spent the last year dismissing the entire banned book debate as overblown political noise, the kind of thing people fought about online when they had nothing better to do. But when she picked up a tattered copy of *For Whom the Bell Tolls* and waved it at him, saying the high school had pulled it last month because of “anti-patriotic themes”, something shifted in his chest. He’d read that book when he was 16, right before he signed up for the National Guard, had carried a beat up copy in his duffel the whole time he was deployed. It wasn’t woke. It was just a book.
The crowd thinned out as the sun dipped low, painting the sky pink and orange over the park’s oak trees. The band wrapped up their set, and Jim had left an hour early to go meet his girlfriend, so Clay was left to pack up the grill and the cooler of leftover brats alone. Mara was stacking her books into cardboard boxes, her t-shirt riding up a little when she bent over, revealing a sliver of tanned skin at her lower back. He walked over to help her, his boots crunching on discarded popcorn kernels and paper napkins, and picked up the heaviest box without asking. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, but she was smiling, and her hand brushed his when she reached for the stack of bookmarks on the table.
They walked to her truck, parked at the edge of the lot, and he set the box in the bed. The air was warm, thick with the smell of cut grass and leftover cotton candy, and crickets were starting to chirp in the bushes. “I got a cooler of pale ale in my fridge, and a porch with a decent view of the sunset,” she said, leaning against the truck door, her eyes locked on his. “And I got the rest of the banned Hemingway collection stacked on my coffee table, if you wanna come make fun of how stupid the school board is with me.”
Clay hesitated for half a second. He’d not gone home with anyone since his wife died, had told himself he was too old for dating, too set in his ways, too annoyed by all the new rules and fights people seemed to be having every day. But he looked at her, the smudge of brat mustard still on her left cheek, her boots scuffed at the toes, the way she was shifting her weight like she was nervous he’d say no, and he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “That sounds good.”
She laughed, that gravelly, warm laugh he’d gotten used to over the course of the afternoon, and shifted closer, her thigh pressed fully against his. “I’ll read it to you,” she said, and reached out to turn the page for him.
