Delmar Voss, 62, spent 31 years teaching high school woodshop before retiring last spring, now runs a small custom axe handle restoration business out of his double garage in Allegan, Michigan. His biggest flaw, per his only sister, is that he’s spent 12 years deliberately walling himself off from any romantic connection, convinced his ex-wife leaving him for a traveling roofing salesman proved he was too set in his sawdust-covered, routine-driven ways to ever fit with another person. He’d dragged himself to the town’s 4th of July beer garden only for the bluegrass band, had planned to nurse one draft IPA and leave before the fireworks started, avoid the small talk with former students and parents he’d known for decades.
He was picking at a splinter on the edge of the picnic table when the chair across from him scraped against the gravel. He looked up, and recognized her immediately. Margot Hale, 58, had been the high school’s cheerleading coach for 25 years, retired the same year he did. Back when they worked together, strict school board policy forbade staff from fraternizing outside of official events, and the principal had made a brutal public example of two teachers fired for dating in 2008, so Delmar had never even spoken to her, just snuck occasional glances when he walked past the gym after school, listened to her sharp, warm laugh carry down the hallway between classes. She was wearing a cutoff denim shirt and white sneakers, a streak of silver running through her auburn hair pulled back in a loose braid, and she gestured at the empty spot across from him when he stared. “Every other table’s full. Mind if I crash?”
He shrugged, nodded, pushed the extra bowl of pretzels across the table toward her. She thanked him, popped one in her mouth, and said she’d dropped off a beat-up 1960s axe handle at his garage two days prior, for her older brother who lives up in Traverse City. He’d wondered who left that, he said, had already started sanding the split out of the grip that morning. The conversation unfolded slow, easy, no forced small talk. She leaned in when he described the difference between white ash and hickory for handle blanks, her elbow brushing his across the table when she pointed out the banjo player fumbling a chord, the smell of her coconut sunscreen mixing with the pine scent stuck to his Carhartt shirt and the bitter hops of his beer. Under the table, her knee brushed his once, when she shifted to get a better look at a group of kids chasing a dog past the table, and he froze, didn’t move his leg away, felt a heat crawl up his spine he hadn’t felt in more than a decade.
Part of him was screaming that this was a bad idea. Everyone in this town knew both of them, had gone to school with their kids, had worked with them for decades. If anyone saw them laughing too hard, leaning too close, the gossip would spread faster than the wildfire that burned through the state forest two years prior. But he couldn’t look away from the laugh lines crinkling at the corners of her eyes, couldn’t stop focusing on the way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear when he told her about the time a student glued his favorite chisel to the workbench as a senior prank. When the band slowed down to play a twangy cover of Folsom Prison Blues, couples started drifting onto the patch of grass they were using as a dance floor, and she held her hand out across the table, palm up. “C’mon. I’ll teach you. Don’t look so scared.”
He hesitated, said he hadn’t danced since his wedding in 1987, but he put his calloused hand in hers anyway, let her pull him to his feet. She was a few inches shorter than him, her hand resting light on his shoulder when they got into position, his hand hovering awkwardly at her waist at first, until she shifted closer, pressed her hip against his, and told him to just sway with the music. No one was watching them, everyone’s eyes were fixed on the first burst of red and blue fireworks going off over the lake a half mile away, and she leaned in close enough that her breath was warm against his ear when she said she’d had a crush on him back in 2010, saw him carrying a stack of 2x4s down the hallway, thought he looked like the kind of guy who could fix anything. He laughed, quiet, admitted he used to take the long way to his classroom every afternoon just to walk past the gym and hear her yelling at the cheer squad to hold their stunts higher, that her voice had been the best part of most of his work days. She pulled back a little, looked up at him, and brushed the smudge of linseed oil he’d missed off his jaw with her thumb, her skin soft against his stubble.
The song ended a minute later, and they walked back to his beat-up 2008 Ford F-150 together, no mention of going their separate ways. He drove her to her house, three blocks from his, walked her up to her front porch, and she stood on the top step for a second, looking down at him, before she leaned in and kissed him, slow, her hands resting on his shoulders, tasting like peach hard seltzer and mint. He kissed her back, his hand light on her waist, no rush, no pressure, the distant boom of the last of the fireworks echoing through the neighborhood. She pulled back, smiled, said she’d bring him a cherry pie she baked that morning when she came by his garage tomorrow to check on her brother’s axe handle. He nodded, said he’d leave the side door unlocked for her.
He drove home slow, the windows rolled down, the warm summer air blowing through his hair. He kicked off his work boots when he got inside, wiped the last faint streak of linseed oil off his jaw with a paper towel, and propped the side garage door open before he turned the lights off to go to bed.
