Manny Ruiz, 59, has spent the last 32 years driving 40,000 miles a year scouting high school and college ballplayers for a single-A team out of Peoria. He’s got a scar snaking up his left knee from a line drive that ended his own playing career at 22, a habit of leaving half-drunk cans of root beer in rental car cup holders, and a grudge he’s carried so long he forgot what it felt like to not clench his jaw when someone says Darlene Mae Carter’s name. He’d only showed up to his 40th high school reunion because his sister threatened to leave his childhood T206 Honus Wagner replica card collection out in the Iowa summer rain if he bailed again, and he’d stuck to the back corner of the bowling alley bar all night, dodging small talk about second marriages and grandkids and how the local corn yield’s up 12% this year thanks to the new GMO seed strains everyone’s been fighting about on the town Facebook group.
Then she sits down next to him, so close her denim-clad hip brushes his bad knee, and he freezes. He’d half-expected her to avoid him, same as he’d avoided her all night, but she pulls the bar stool right up to his, no space left between them. She’s got streaks of silver in the chestnut hair she still wears pulled back in a loose ponytail, laugh lines fanning out from the corners of her hazel eyes, and she smells like lavender hand cream and the fried cheese curds the alley sells out of a dented stainless steel warmer by the front door. “You gonna ignore me all night, Ruiz?” she says, and her voice is a little rougher than he remembers, like she’s spent the last few decades laughing too loud and singing along to old Loretta Lynn songs with the truck windows rolled all the way down. He stares at the chipped cherry red nail polish on her fingers as she wraps them around a frosty bottle of Bud Light, remembers how she used to paint his nails that exact same color before his playoff games for luck, even when the guys on the team teased him nonstop for it.
He grunts, takes a too-big sip of his rye and Coke, doesn’t look at her face for ten full seconds, half-disgusted with himself that his heart’s beating faster than it did when he scouted that 17-year-old lefty out of Springfield last month who throws 97 miles an hour. “Didn’t think you’d talk to me. You made it pretty clear back in ‘86 you wanted nothing to do with my baseball plans.” She snorts, loud enough that the middle-aged couple playing darts a few feet away glance over and snicker, and she leans in so close he can feel her warm breath on the shell of his ear when she speaks. “You left a crumpled note on my porch at 2 a.m., dummy. You didn’t even give me a chance to say I’d already packed a duffel to come with you. I married Earl three years later ‘cause I thought you’d forgotten I existed before you even crossed the state line.”
That stops him cold. He’d spent 38 years convinced she’d bailed because she didn’t want to live out of a motel room, follow him from tiny town to tiny town, eat gas station bologna sandwiches for dinner half the week. He’d never once considered he’d been the one who messed up, that his own stupid pride had made him run before he could hear her answer. He turns to look at her, and she’s already watching him, her thumb brushing the faint, ragged scar on his forearm he got sliding into second base during their senior year homecoming game, the one he still gets tattoo touch-ups on every five years. “Earl died three years ago,” she says, soft, no pity in her voice, just unvarnished honesty. “Left me the feed store and the old 40-acre farm out on Route 7. I fix up old porch furniture for people in town on the side.”
He laughs, sharp and surprised, and she smiles, the same tiny gap between her two front teeth he’d spent three years of high school daydreaming about kissing. “I fix up old ball gloves in my hotel room on the road for the kids who can’t afford new ones,” he says, and she nods, like she already knew, like she’d been keeping track of him this whole time even when he wasn’t keeping track of her. They talk for three hours, the bar emptying out around them, the clatter of bowling pins fading to the low hum of the neon Pabst Blue Ribbon sign above the bar. Her shoulder presses against his the whole time, her knee knocking his when she leans in to tell a story about the time a baby goat got loose in the feed store and ate half a bag of sunflower seeds, and when she brushes a crumb of cheese curd off his worn navy flannel shirt, her fingers linger on his chest for half a second longer than they need to.
He walks her to her beat-up 2019 Ford F-150 when the bartender locks up, the July air thick with the smell of cut alfalfa and diesel from the grain truck parked at the end of the lot. She leans against the driver’s side door, and she’s close enough that he can count the silver strands in her ponytail, see the faint smudge of black mascara under her left eye. “You gonna leave another crumpled note this time?” she teases, and he shakes his head, reaches out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. His calloused, glove-worn fingers brush her warm cheek, and she shivers, even though the temperature’s still 78 degrees, no breeze to speak of.
He tells her he’s got three full weeks off before the fall scouting season starts, and she tells him the wraparound porch of the old farm has the best view of the sunset in the whole county. He doesn’t drive back to Peoria the next morning like he planned. He follows her truck out to the farm, and he spends those three weeks fixing the rotted slat on her front porch, eating peach pie she bakes for breakfast every Sunday, and letting her paint his nails chipped cherry red before they go to the local American Legion baseball games on Friday nights. When his three weeks are up, he packs an extra duffel with her favorite spearmint gum and a jar of her peach jam, and she climbs into his rental truck next to him, no note required.
