Silas Marlow, 53, vintage travel trailer restorer, has spent the last eight years avoiding anything that might give the gossips in his small mountain town outside Asheville more ammo. His ex-wife left him for the owner of the local hardware store, and the whole county acted like he was the one who’d done something wrong, so he stuck to his barn workshop, only left to pick up supplies or man his tiny booth at the weekly Saturday farmers market, selling hand-carved oak hitch covers to out-of-state tourists passing through on their way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Late September air nips at his cheeks this particular Saturday, sharp with woodsmoke and the tang of pressed apple cider from the stand two booths over, a bluegrass trio plucking a slow rendition of *Foggy Mountain Breakdown* from the picnic area at the edge of the lot. He’s half sanding a trout-shaped hitch cover, half watching a golden retriever steal a piece of cornbread off a kid’s paper plate, when a shadow falls over his display.
He looks up. The new Methodist minister, the one everyone in town has been chattering about for the last month, is leaning in to squint at the trout, a smudge of white chalk on her left wrist, flannel tied around her waist over dark jeans, scuffed work boots caked with mud from the community garden she tends behind the church. She’s got a small silver nose ring, a fox tattoo curling up her right forearm, neon orange crew socks peeking out over the top of her boots, and no clerical collar in sight. “That’s perfect for my Tacoma,” she says, nodding at the trout, her voice low and warm, no preachy lilt he’d been expecting. His first instinct is to brush her off. He hasn’t stepped foot in a church since his divorce, hasn’t spoken to anyone affiliated with one since the pastor showed up at his barn to try to “mediate” between him and his ex, so he just grunts, keeps sanding. She laughs, soft, and leans a little closer, her elbow brushing his forearm where his flannel sleeve is rolled up. He smells pine soap and roasted chestnuts on her, and his throat goes tight.
She doesn’t push. Just leans against the edge of his booth, tells him she uses her Tacoma to haul sleeping bags and canned goods to the unhoused encampment at the edge of town, has been looking for a hitch cover that isn’t some cheesy American flag or Punisher skull. He finds himself talking before he can stop himself, teases her about how half the congregation probably had a fit when she showed up with a tattoo and a nose ring. She snorts, says half of them still won’t make eye contact with her when she preaches about queer rights at Sunday service, so she’s gotten used to it. They banter back and forth for twenty minutes, he doesn’t even notice the crowd thinning out around them. When a toddler runs between their legs chasing the golden retriever from earlier, she stumbles forward, her shoulder pressing firm to his for three full seconds, and he doesn’t step back. A familiar, sharp guilt nags at him the whole time. Part of him is disgusted that he’s even entertaining this, that he’s flirting with the town minister for god’s sake, that everyone around them is probably staring, already whispering about how the bitter old trailer restorer is preying on the new church girl twenty years his junior. The other part of him hasn’t felt this light, this seen, in eight years.
The bluegrass trio packs up their instruments, the last of the vendors start loading their trucks. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, holds his eye contact steady, no shyness there. “You wanna get a cider before the stand closes?” she asks. He almost says no. Almost makes up an excuse about having to get back to a 1962 Airstream he’s restoring, about having a pile of lumber to cut first thing tomorrow. But he looks at her, at the gold flecks in her green eyes, at the smudge of chalk still on her wrist, and he nods. They walk over to the cider stand, get two paper cups spiked with a shot of bourbon the owner slips them when no one’s looking, sit on the tailgate of his beat-up 1999 Ford F150 parked at the edge of the lot. She tells him she heard all about his ex, that she doesn’t care what the town gossips say, that she thinks his hitch covers are the coolest thing at the market, that he’s a lot funnier than the grumpy scowl he wears for the public lets on. She reaches over to brush a piece of sawdust off his jaw, her palm lingering warm against his skin for a beat, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away.
He walks her to her Tacoma when they finish their cider, grabs the trout hitch cover and a screwdriver out of his truck bed, kneels down to install it for her while she leans against the rear bumper watching. When he’s done, she pulls a crumpled scrap of paper out of her jacket pocket, scribbles her cell phone number on it in blue ink, the back of the paper printed with lines from a sermon about radical kindness. He tucks the paper into the inner pocket of his flannel, presses his thumb against it through the fabric to make sure it doesn’t fall out. She climbs into her truck, waves as she pulls out of the parking lot, the carved oak trout glinting gold in the last of the sunset as she turns onto the main road. He pulls his phone out of his jeans pocket, opens a new text thread, and types her name before he can talk himself out of it.
