Manny Ruiz is 53, a minor league baseball scout who’s logged 22 years crisscrossing South Texas to spot raw talent in dusty small-town ballparks. Since his wife Lila died of breast cancer six years prior, he’s avoided every community event within a 30-mile radius, sticking to late nights at dive bars, gas station brisket tacos, and sleeping in the cab of his dented 2008 Ford F-150 half the week. His biggest flaw, if you ask the few people who still talk to him, is that he’s convinced any good thing that comes his way will only break later. He showed up to the town square chili cookoff only because his boss threatened to reassign him to North Dakota if he didn’t network with local high school coaches.
The air smells like smoked brisket, cumin, and the faint acrid tang of lighter fluid drifting from the volunteer fire department’s grill. Crushed Lone Star cans and peanut shells crunch under the soles of his work boots, still caked with red clay from the Corpus Christi ball field he visited that morning. He leans against a splintered wooden post by the beer tent, pretending to flip through his scouting notebook so no one stops to pester him with the same tired “how you holding up” question he’s heard a thousand times. That’s when she bumps his elbow, sending his notebook fluttering into the dirt.
She’s Clara Voss, 48, the new county medical examiner everyone in town has been gossiping about for months. She left a prestigious Dallas hospital job to move to their tiny speck of a town after a messy divorce, and the local rumor mill has painted her as cold, clinical, the kind of woman who eats lunch over autopsy tables. Manny had carried a quiet grudge against her for three months, ever since she signed his old fishing partner Joe’s death certificate after Joe dropped dead of a heart attack mid-cast on the lake. He’d assumed she’d written Joe off as just another statistic, no care for the family he left behind.
“Shit, sorry,” she says, bending down to grab the loose pages, her hand brushing his when they both reach for the same scouting report on a 19-year-old lefty with a 96 mph fastball. Her skin is cool, calloused at the knuckles, her burgundy nail polish chipped at the edges, a thin scalpel scar slicing across her left index finger. She wipes a smudge of dirt off the notebook cover with her thumb before handing it back, and Manny’s ready to grunt out a gruff no problem until she says, “You’re Manny, right? Joe talked about you nonstop. Said you could spot a good pitcher from 500 feet away even if you were three beers deep.”
He blinks, thrown. He’d had no idea she knew Joe. She laughs, a warm, rough sound that cuts through the mariachi music drifting from the gazebo. “Grew up next door to him. He taught me to bait a hook when I was 7. Cried for an hour when I did his autopsy. Hated that I had to be the one to tell his wife he was gone.” The anger Manny’s carried for months melts fast, stupid and heavy, and he feels like an idiot for buying into the small-town gossip without asking a single question.
They stand by the beer tent for 45 minutes, talking, her shoulder brushing his every time a passerby squeezes past, close enough that he can smell cedar soap and vanilla lip balm on her, the faint mint of the spearmint gum she chews. She teases him about the peeling baseball bat sticker on his notebook cover; he teases her about the “DEATH INVESTIGATOR” ID badge hanging around her neck on a lanyard covered in corgi stickers. When the fire department blares the siren on their old pumper truck to announce the chili judging, everyone turns to gawk, and Clara stumbles back, stepping on a loose brick in the sidewalk.
Manny reaches out without thinking, catching her by the waist, his hand splayed across the small of her back, her palm flying up to rest right over his heart. She’s lighter than he expects, the heat of her skin seeping through her faded Willie Nelson tee, her breath fanning across his neck when she laughs and says “Whoa, thanks. Didn’t realize they were gonna blow the damn thing out.” They hold that position for two beats, no one looking their way, everyone’s eyes locked on the firemen waving from the truck roof. He doesn’t let go right away. She doesn’t pull away.
Later, they grab a bowl of the third-place brisket chili, loaded with roasted hatch chilis, and sit on the tailgate of his truck parked at the edge of the square. She steals a bite of his cornbread; he steals a sip of her root beer. She tells him about the guy who died from eating 27 deviled eggs at a church potluck, the weirdest autopsy of her career, and he tells her about the 17-year-old pitcher who threw a fastball that hit him square in the ribs, leaving a bruise that lasted three months. He admits he hasn’t been fishing since Joe died, hasn’t had anyone to go with. She says she’s got Joe’s old fishing rod in her garage, left there when she was 16, Joe saying she could keep it once she caught a bass over five pounds.
“We could go out next Saturday,” she says, picking a shred of cheese off her chili. “Early, before the jet skis show up and ruin the whole lake.” He nods before he can talk himself out of it, before he can pull out the excuses he’s used for six years: he’s got scouting to do, he’s terrible company, he’ll only mess it up.
The sun dips low, painting the sky pink and tangerine, the mariachi band switching to slow cumbias as couples dance on the grass in front of the gazebo. Clara slides off the tailgate, grabs her canvas bag slung over the post, says she’s got to get home to feed her two 80-pound rescue dogs that think they’re lap dogs. She pauses, leans in, presses a quick, soft kiss to his cheek, her lips warm, leaving a faint vanilla tang on his skin. “Don’t forget the beer for Saturday,” she says, walking backwards toward her beat-up Subaru, grinning. “And don’t wear those clay-caked boots, you’ll get mud all over my boat.”
He watches her taillights fade down Main Street, the hum of her car engine fading into the noise of the cookoff. He pops the tab on another cold Lone Star, and for the first time in six years, he doesn’t feel like he’s waiting for something to end.
