Mose “Moe” Prawdzik leans against the splintered split-rail fence lining the Newport fire department’s annual chili cookoff, condensation from his sweating Rainier can soaking through the knee of his oilskin work pants. He’s 62, spent 34 years running a commercial salmon troller up and down the Oregon coast before he sold the boat three years back to open his tiny bait and tackle shop off Highway 101, and he’s carried the same grudge for 12 of those years, sharp as the fillet knife he keeps strapped to his belt. The grudge’s name is Mara Hale, Linda’s college roommate, the woman he’d blamed for talking his wife into that solo redwood road trip where she hit a patch of black ice and never came home. She moved to town 18 months ago to run the used bookstore downtown, and he’s avoided every run-in he could, even crossing the street to walk the other way if he saw her restocking the front window.
He’d entered his smoked salmon chili this year, spent three days brining the fish he’d caught on his last recreational run out to the continental shelf, and only got third place, beaten out by the fire chief’s beef chili that everyone knew only won because he’d given the judging panel free glazed donuts for a month straight. He’s rolling the edge of his third place ribbon between his calloused fingers when he smells lavender lotion cut with campfire smoke, and he knows she’s there before she speaks.
“Your chili was better,” she says, and he looks over to find her leaning against the fence three inches from his shoulder, holding a paper plate stacked with cornbread and a scoop of his own salmon chili, red pepper flakes stuck to the corner of her mouth. She’s 60, same as Linda would have been this year, dark hair streaked with silver pulled back in a messy braid, flannel shirt tied around her waist over worn jeans and rubber rain boots caked with mud from the field. He grunts, doesn’t answer, takes a long sip of beer to avoid making eye contact, but he can feel her gaze on the side of his face, warm as the late September sun on his neck.
She takes a bite of chili, hums soft enough that only he can hear it, and says Linda used to bring jars of that exact chili to their girls’ weekends every spring, would brag for 20 minutes straight about how Moe smoked the salmon himself on the back deck of the troller. The words twist in his chest, old anger warring with the stupid little flutter he’s been trying to ignore every time he sees her laugh at the bookstore’s open mic nights, every time he drives past and sees her sitting on the front steps with a rescue cat curled in her lap. He wants to snap at her, tell her she has no right to talk about Linda, but his throat feels tight, and he can’t get the words out.
She reaches for the beer can in his hand then, just to look at the vintage label on the limited run Rainier, he thinks, and her fingers brush his, the rough callus on her index finger from turning thousands of book pages scraping against the scar on his knuckle from a fishing hook accident back in 2017. He doesn’t pull away, neither does she, and for two full seconds they’re just standing there, fingers almost tangled around the cold metal can, eye contact locked, and he can smell the chili on her breath, the faint pine scent of the shampoo she uses, the campfire smoke woven into the cuff of her jacket. She’s close enough that he can see the tiny laugh lines fanned out around her hazel eyes, the little silver hoop earring in her left ear that Linda had given her for her 40th birthday.
“I know you blamed me,” she says, quiet enough that the noise of the cookoff, the kids yelling, the country song playing over the speakers, the judges arguing over the best garnish, all fades out for a second. “I blamed myself too, for years. But Linda had been begging you to go to the redwoods with her for 10 years. You were always out on the boat, always working. She didn’t need me to talk her into anything. She bought the reservation herself, told me not to say anything to you because she didn’t want you to feel guilty for skipping the run to go with her.”
The words hit him like a wave over the bow of the troller, cold and sharp and exactly what he’s known deep down for 12 years, what he’s been too stubborn to admit. He’d been angry, so angry, and he’d needed someone to blame that wasn’t himself, someone that wasn’t the black ice, someone that wasn’t Linda for wanting to take a trip he’d been too busy to go on. He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, the grudge he’s carried for 12 years feeling lighter, suddenly, like the weight of it had been tied to an anchor he just cut loose. “I’m sorry,” he says, gruff, like the words are being pulled out of him one by one, and that’s the first time he’s apologized to anyone for anything in longer than he can remember.
She smiles, soft, not pitying, just like she knows how hard that was for him to say, and she nods, takes another bite of chili. He offers to buy her a drink, nods toward the hard cider truck parked at the edge of the field, and she says yes, falls into step next to him as they walk across the gravel, her shoulder brushing his bicep every few steps, no space between them now that the grudge is gone. When they get to the truck, she leans up to yell her order over the noise of the generator, her hair brushing his jaw, and he doesn’t flinch away, just lets the soft strands catch on the stubble on his face, feels the warmth of her body next to his seep through his flannel shirt.
When she turns back to him holding two cold cans of blackberry cider, her knuckle brushing his wrist as she hands one over, he doesn’t even think about the grudge he carried for 12 years, not even for a second.
