Rudy Galvan, 62, retired Border Patrol canine handler, swipes dust off the glass jar of pickled jalapeños at the edge of his Tucson farmers market stall. He’s spent 11 years running a no-kill working breed dog rescue outside the city, and the jerky he sells here every Saturday funds 70 percent of operations. For 12 years, he’s avoided anyone tied to his ex-wife, a grudge he’s clung to so tight it’s left a permanent knot between his shoulder blades. That’s his flaw, per his few friends: he holds grudges longer than his late K9 Ace held a scent trail.
October air smells like roasted corn and mesquite, the sun low enough to gild the tops of saguaros lining the parking lot. Most of the crowd has filtered out, only teen girls selling friendship bracelets and the tamale vendor packing up left. Rudy’s stacking jerky bags into a plastic bin when a shadow falls over his stall.
He looks up. Marisol. His ex-wife’s younger sister. He hasn’t seen her since the divorce finalized, hasn’t spoken to her since she left a sharp voice mail calling him a selfish idiot for letting her sister walk away. She’s 54 now, silver streaks threading through dark curly hair pulled back in a messy braid, scuffed work boots on her feet, flannel tied around her waist over a faded Pima cotton tee. She smells like sage and citrus, the same perfume she wore when they hiked the Superstitions in 2008, when she tripped on a prickly pear and he carried her three miles back to the trailhead. The thin white scar on her left wrist is still there, peeking out from her work glove edge.
He opens his mouth to tell her to leave, but she beats him to it, grinning, one elbow propped on his table so close her forearm brushes his. “You still make that chili lime jerky I taught you?” she says, her voice lower than he remembers, rougher, like she’s spent the last decade smoking and laughing too loud.
Anger hits first, hot and sharp, the same anger he’s carried every time he thought of her siding with her sister. The second thought? She’s still the most interesting woman he’s ever met. He doesn’t move his arm away.
He grunts, pulling a bag of the chili lime jerky off the stack and sliding it across the table. She doesn’t pay, just tucks it into the canvas bag slung over her shoulder, leaning in further so their faces are only a foot apart, her dark eyes steady on his. He doesn’t look away, even when his neck warms.
She’s in town to settle their mom’s estate, she tells him. Her sister hasn’t spoken to her in three years, fought over who got the family’s old Nogales ranch property. Marisol won, she says, snorting, and plans to turn it into a rescue for horses abandoned by border crossers. She stopped by the market because an old friend told her Rudy was here, selling jerky, running his dog rescue. She wanted to see if he was still as stubborn as she remembered.
They talk for 40 minutes, the last of the market crowd vanishing around them, the tamale vendor waving as he drives away. When she asks if he wants a beer at the dive bar down the street, he hesitates half a second, thinking of his ex-wife, the grudge he’s carried so long it’s become part of him, then nods.
The back booth smells like old beer and peanuts, neon signs casting faint blue glow over the table. She slides in across from him, and when she shifts to let a server pass, her knee brushes his under the table. He doesn’t move his leg. She tells him she never thought her sister was right to leave him, that he was the best thing that ever happened to her family, even when she was mad at him for not fighting harder to stay. She admits she’d had a crush on him since they first met, when he showed up to their family Christmas with a puppy in his jacket, but never said anything out of respect for her sister. The knot between Rudy’s shoulder blades loosens, just a little, the anger he’s carried 12 years melting into something softer, warmer, something he hasn’t felt since Ace died six months prior.
They finish two beers each, and when they walk out the sun is almost set, the air cool enough that she shivers, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. He pulls his old canvas Border Patrol jacket off, the one with Ace’s name patch sewn on the sleeve, and drapes it over her shoulders. She links her arm through his as they walk toward his beat-up pickup, her hip pressed to his, the smell of sage and citrus wrapping around him. When she tilts her chin up to look at him, the pink and orange light gilding the edge of her smile, he doesn’t hesitate before leaning down to kiss her.
